Aggressive kids born of poor parenting

02:27 Entertainment, Health, India News, Motivation, News, Tips, Top News No Comments

 

 Kozhikode: Poor parenting and changes in lifestyle brought about by  the new socio-economic realities are also to blame for the increasing aggressiveness displayed by children and their use of abusive language today, believes noted psychiatrist, Dr S. Santhakumar.

 

“Changes in the socio-economic profile of the st­ate during the past three or four decades have to be taken into account while addressing the issue,” he says.

 

While agreeing that the language used by the new generation cinema and  on television has a big  influence on  children who are at an impressionable age and scores of studies have established the negative influence of television on them, he says this alone  cannot be blamed  for the foul language used by many of them today.

 

“We have to look at the larger picture as in most families parents don’t have enough time for their children as they are both working. They may think that by working hard to make  a living they are providing for their children’s future,  but unfortunately it is not so simple. Children have their own fantasies and desires and if parents are unable to devote more time to listening to them,  they  will try to fulfill them through other sources,” he warns.

 

“This is especially important in the age of the Internet and mobile phones. I am not saying parents should spy on their children, but they should have a clear understanding about the kind of networking they have, “ he underlines.

 

Although in most cases  children can be cured of aggressive behavior if the problem is addressed, in  some cases they are beyond help, he says. “ I feel sad for such children and their parents,” he adds. 

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01:54 India News, News, pics, politics, Top News No Comments

Pranab makes way for Modi's rally in Patna, to cut short his Bihar trip

Narendra Modi and Pranab Mukherjee

The BJP claimed a shot in the arm claiming that President Pranab Mukherjee has agreed to cut short his visit to Bihar by a day in the wake of its rally in Patna on October 27.

BJP leaders Shahnawaz Hussain and Rajiv Pratap Rudy called on the President at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday. Even though they called it a "courtesy call", they told reporters after the meeting that he has told them that he would not stay in Bihar on October 26 night, as scheduled originally.

"It was a courtesy call since he is coming to Bihar and our rally is on the 27th. The President is coming to Bihar on October 26 and he has cancelled his night halt. He will return the same day. Now he will arrive at Patna airport and go directly to convocation and return," Hussain said after coming out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

"We were concerned that he doesn't have to face any problem due to the BJP rally... It is great that the prime minister-in-waiting is visiting a day after the President," he added.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is also the NDA's prime ministerial candidate, is scheduled to address the Patna rally on October 27.

The BJP had accused the ruling Janata Dal-United of deliberating scheduling the President's visit to Bihar to clash the date with its rally. The JD-U, however, had rubbished the charge saying it had no say in the President's trip plan.

The BJP and the JD-U had snapped ties earlier this year after it became evident that the BJP would declare Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's bete noire Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate.

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04:26 General Tips, India News, News, Pictures, Technology, Top News, World News No Comments

World's 10 safest and unsafest airlines

 1.Finnair

Finnair has been rated the safest airline in the world, based on the study that monitors plane crashes around the world. 

 

 

 2.New Zealand

Air New Zealand has been rated as the world's second safest airline. 

 

 

 

3.Cathay Pacific

According to the report, none of the top nine ranked airlines had lost an aircraft or had a fatality during the 30-year period. Cathay Pacific is ranked at No.3 in terms of safety.

 

4.Emirates Airline

Dubai-based Emirates Airline is ranked at No.4 for safety.

 

 

 

5.Etihad airways

Another airline from the United Arab Emirates; Abu Dhabi-based Etihad airways comes in next in the rankings.

 

 

6.EVA Air

Rank 6: EVA Air is an airline based in Taiwan, operating passenger and dedicated cargo services to over 40 international destinations in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. It is the second largest Taiwanese airline, next in size to its main rival, China Airlines.

7.TAP Portugal

Rank 7: TAP Portugal, founded 1945 as Transportes Aéreos Portugueses, SGPS, S.A., commonly known as TAP, is the national airline of Portugal.

 

8.Hainan Airlines

Rank 8: Hainan Airlines is the largest privately owned air transport company and the fourth largest airline in terms of fleet size in the People's Republic of China. It operates scheduled domestic and international services on 500 routes from Hainan and nine locations on the mainland, as well as charter services.

9.Virgin Australia

Rank 9. Virgin Australia: formerly Virgin Blue Airlines, is Australia's second-largest airline as well as the largest by fleet size to use the Virgin brand. Now based in Bowen Hills, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, the airline was co-founded by British businessman Sir Richard Branson and former Virgin Blue CEO Brett Godfrey. It was established in 2000 with two aircraft operating on a single route, and suddenly found itself catapulted to the position of Australia's second airline after the collapse of Ansett Australia in September 2001. The airline has grown to directly serve 29 cities in Australia from hubs in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, using a fleet of narrow-body Boeing and Embraer jets; and Airbus and Boeing widebody jets.

10.British Airways

British Airways has been ranked as the tenth safest airline in the world.

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Opening Brief in Supreme Court Gay Marriage

03:39 Entertainment, Funny, India News, Top News, World News No Comments

Opening Brief in Supreme Court Gay Marriage Case

Let the filing of the gay marriage briefs begin! On Tuesday, proponents of Proposition 8 — the controversial California ballot initiative that defines marriage as between a man and a woman — filed their opening briefs with the Supreme Court, urging the justices to reverse a lower court decision that struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage.

Arguments in the case will be heard at the end of March, and briefs from the opponents are due in about a month.
“By adopting Proposition 8,” Charles Cooper, a lawyer for ProtectMarriage.com, writes, “the People of California demonstrated their belief that this matter is best resolved by the People themselves, not by their courts. The Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit the People of California — or any State — from making this choice. To the contrary, it leaves them free to do what they are doing — debating this controversial issue and seeking to resolve it in a way that will best serve their families, their children, and, ultimately their society as a whole.”
ProtectMarriage.com, the original sponsor of Prop 8, is defending the law because California’s elected officials refused to do so. The group argues that preserving traditional marriage furthers society’s “existential interests in responsible procreation and childrearing.”
“An animating purpose of marriage is to increase the likelihood that children will be born and raised in stable and enduring family units by their own mothers and fathers,” Cooper writes.”  Because relationships between persons of the same sex do not have the capacity to produce children, they do not implicate this interest in responsible procreation and childrearing in the same way.”
Cooper criticizes a federal appeals court that struck down Prop 8 on narrow grounds tailored closely to California and its history with gay marriage.
For a few months in 2008, gay couples in California were able to obtain marriage licenses after a ruling from the California Supreme Court. Some 18,000 same sex couples obtained marriage licenses in the state before Prop 8 was passed in November 2008.
In February of 2012, a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Prop 8 “stripped same-sex couples” of the right to use the designation of marriage to describe their relationships and that Prop 8 “serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California and to officially reclassify their relationship and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.”
In his brief, Cooper points out that there was only a brief period of time in California’s history when same-sex marriage was allowed. He writes, “it is difficult to think of a law with deeper roots in California’s and our Nation’s history, practices, and traditions than one defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. That definition has prevailed for all but 142 days of California’s 162 year history, and it continues to prevail in federal law and in the overwhelming majority of the States, most often through constitutional provisions much like Proposition 8. ”
Cooper makes a veiled reference to the fact that President Obama has only recently come out in support of gay marriage. He writes, “The Ninth Circuit’s charge thus impugns the motives of over seven million California voters and countless other Americans who believe that traditional marriage continues to serve society’s vital interests, including the citizens and lawmakers of 40 other states, the Members of Congress and President who supported enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the large majority of state and federal appellate judges who have addressed the issue, an until very recently President Obama. ”
Cooper points out that prop 8 left “undisturbed” other laws, including domestic partnership laws available to gays and lesbians in the state.

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03:10 India News, News, Top News, World News No Comments

'UN mission in Kashmir can be terminated only by UNSC'

As India and Pakistan clashed in the Security Council over relevance of the UN observer group at the LoC, a spokesperson for UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the force can be terminated only by a decision of the 15-nation body.
The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) was "established in 1948 by the Security Council. The Secretary-General's position has always been that UNMOGIP can only be terminated by a decision of the Security Council," Ban's spokesperson Martin Nesirky said in an email said.
During a UNSC open debate on peacekeeping organised by Pakistan yesterday, India's Permanent Representative to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri had said that UNMOGIP's role had been "overtaken" by the 1972 Simla Agreement, which was signed between India and Pakistan.
Following the Simla pact, the two countries had resolved to settle their differences by "peaceful means through bilateral negotiations," Puri said.
The Indian envoy had also suggested that it would be better to spend the resources allocated for UNMOGIP in other areas or missions to ensure the finances are better utilised elsewhere in times of austerity.
Rejecting any suggestion of winding down the UN mission in Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN Masood Khan said UNMOGIP continues to monitor the ceasefire in accordance with Security Council resolution and its mandate is "therefore fully valid, relevant, and operative".
Khan said no bilateral agreement between the two nations has "overtaken or affected" the role or legality of the observer group adding that "the fact is that both India and Pakistan are hosting UNMOGIP".

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06:42 Entertainment, General Tips, Knowledge, News, Top News, World News No Comments

Facebook shares rise in buildup to mystery event, earnings

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc's stock opened on Monday above $32 for the first time since July as anticipation about upcoming products and financial results underscored Wall Street's renewed confidence in the online social network.

                                            Facebook will on Tuesday host its first major press event at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, since its troubled initial public offering in May, triggering a guessing game among technology observers and online blogs about what it could unveil - everything from a smartphone to a search engine.
"There's a lot of speculation. Nothing to me seems to be that certain," Jefferies & Co analyst Brian Pitz said.
"If I were to bet, I'd think it was something that was ad-platform related. I'm not convinced on the phone," said Pitz, citing previous comments by Facebook's leaders including CEO Mark Zuckerberg that making a smartphone would be the "wrong strategy" for Facebook.
In an email to reporters last week, Facebook invited the media to "come and see what we're building" without providing details.
Some analysts said the stock's recent gains - shares are up roughly 17 percent since the start of the year - may have more to do with the company's upcoming fourth-quarter financial results, slated for January 30.
"The stock is up because they have driven a dramatic increase in the ad load of their mobile app which is giving investors hope that they exceeded expectations," BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said.
Shares were down about 1.3 percent to $31.30 in mid-afternoon trading.
The world's No.1 social network with 1 billion users, Facebook became the first U.S. company to debut on stock markets with a value of more than $100 billion. Its value subsequently plunged by more than 50 percent on mounting concerns about slowing revenue growth and the challenges of making money as users shift from personal computers to mobile devices.
Facebook surprised Wall Street in the third quarter by announcing that mobile ads accounted for 14 percent of its total ad revenue. Some analysts expect the company to report further growth in its nascent mobile ad business for the fourth quarter.
Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, has said that mobile is the "most misunderstood aspect" of Facebook. But he has repeatedly poured cold water on rumors that Facebook would build its own smartphone to compete against Apple Inc's iPhone and smartphones based on Google Inc's Android operating system.
During an on-stage interview at a conference in September, Zuckerberg said that he believed search could be a ripe area of growth for Facebook.
"Facebook is really uniquely positioned to answer a lot of the questions that people have," Zuckerberg said, such as finding a good restaurant or learning more about a job opportunity.
Still, many technology observers believe that Facebook is more likely to improve the search capabilities within Facebook than to develop a full-fledged search engine that indexes all the Web's content and competes head-on with search leader Google.
Among the other items that technology blogs and analysts speculate might be unveiled on Tuesday were new standalone apps for Apple's iPad tablet, new features to display video ads and even a new wing of corporate headquarters.
Some cautioned that expectations of a game-changing new product were likely to cause disappointment.
"There's no way they're announcing anything that has financial impact, or they wouldn't do it now, they'd wait two weeks," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, citing Facebook's upcoming earnings

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06:09 India News, News, Top News, World News No Comments

6 security personnel killed in militants' attack in Pakistan

 

                                  ISLAMABAD: Six security personnel were on Tuesday killed and 16 others injured when militants attacked a check post in the restive Khyber tribal region of northwest Pakistan.

Militants attacked a check post in Shalobar area in Khyber Agency.

State-run Radio Pakistan quoted officials as saying that six security personnel were killed and 16 others injured.

Security forces retaliated against the attack and forced the militants to retreat, the officials said.

TV news channels reported that militants attacks four check posts in Shalobar area.

The reports said personnel of the Frontier Corps and Khasadar militia were among those killed in the overnight clash.

The militants attacked the troops with heavy weapons that damaged one of the check posts.

The attacks occurred in an area dominated by the Lashkar-e-Islam group led by warlord Mangal Bagh Afridi.

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