Indu Malhotra to be 1st woman lawyer to directly become Supreme Court judge

Indu Malhotra will be the first women lawyer to be directly appointed as a judge of the apex court

The Supreme Court collegium has recommended the name of senior advocate Indu Malhotra as the first woman lawyer to be directly appointed as a judge of the apex court, sources said on Thursday.

Along with her, Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice K M Joseph, who was part of the bench which in 2016 had quashed the imposition of President's Rule in the state, has also been cleared for elevation to the apex court.

Malhotra, who was designated as a senior advocate in 2007, would be the first woman lawyer to be directly appointed as a judge of the top court, instead of being elevated from a high court.

She will be the seventh woman judge since independence to make it to the Supreme Court. At present, Justice R Banumathi is the lone woman judge in the apex court.

The first woman to be appointed as a judge of the apex court was Justice M Fathima Beevi in 1989.

Thereafter, Justice Sujata V Manohar, Justice Ruma Pal, Justice Gyan Sudha Misra and Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai made it to the top court as judges.

Smoking puts your sperm at risk

Smoking puts your sperm at risk

Do you smoke? You could be unwittingly lowering your sperm quality, a new study warns.

The research that included 20 nonsmoking men and 20 men who smoked found that that sperm of smokers has a greater extent of DNA damage than that of non-smokers.

Researchers also assessed 422 proteins in participants' sperm. One protein was absent, 27 proteins were underrepresented, and 6 proteins were over-represented in smokers. Analyses of these proteins suggest that cigarette smoking may promote an inflammatory response in the male reproductive tract.

"More and more studies are demonstrating a harmful effect of smoking on male fertility. Our results point in the direction of important semen alterations: semen of smokers presents an inflammatory nature, associated with decreased capacity of sperm to achieve fertilization and generate a healthy pregnancy," said senior author Dr Ricardo Pimenta Bertolla.

Bertolla added that in the study, sperm DNA fragmentation was increased. Other studies have proposed this to be a potentially promutagenic effect, which is to say that sperm with altered DNA may lead to health problems in the offspring.

The study appears in BJU International. Read More

PM Modi to meet Chinese president; will attempt to win support for NSG membership

PM Modi to meet Chinese president; will attempt to win support for NSG membership

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday in the Uzbekistan capital Tashkent in an attempt to win Beijing's support for India's membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

Modi will be meeting President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit meeting that is currently on in Tashkent. The SCO is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Highly placed sources said that the meeting between PM Modi and President Xi Jinping would be an exclusive one-on-one discussion, where the top agenda would be to seek China's support for India's membership in the NSG.

China, till now, has been playing the role of a dampener on the issue of clearing the way for India's admission to the NSG, by repeatedly stating that it is not on the agenda of the grouping which began its plenary session in Seoul, South Korea, yesterday.

On the other hand, the United States has called on the participating governments of the NSG to support India's application for membership.

State Department spokesperson John Kirby said in a press briefing that Washington has not changed its stand regarding India's application for membership to the elite group. Read more.

Mumbai University likely to announce TYBA results on Monday

Mumbai University likely to announce TYBA results on Monday

The University of Mumbai (MU) will declare results of the Third Year Bachelor of Arts (TYBA) examination on June 20, 2016. It will be available on the official website of the varsity, http://mu.ac.in, most likely in the afternoon.

Candidates, who have appeared for the exam, can download the result from the website.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to:

1. Open the results page on MU official website http://mu.ac.in/portal/results/

2. Select the stream – Arts

3. Enter your Seat Number, name, date of birth and other credentials as required

4. Click submit

5. Download the marksheet / score card and take a printout

The marksheet issued will include subject-wise details and the candidates can check their overall percentage. However, the online marksheet is a reference copy and hence temporary.

The valid and original marksheet by the MU board would be available at the students' respective colleges. The University is yet to announce date of issuance of the marksheet.

It is likely that owing to the heavy traffic the page might load a bit slowly. The students are therefore urged to be patient and keep refreshing the page.

For more information about the TYBA results 2016, students can contact theMumbai University board by calling on Fort Campus or Kalina Campus:contact No.

Read More.

'Udta Punjab' leaked online? Producers file plaint with cops

'Udta Punjab' leaked online? Producers file plaint with cops

Producers of drug-themed drama "Udta Punjab", slated for Friday release, today lodged a complaint with cyber police alleging that the film was leaked online.

In their compliant lodged with the cyber crime police in Bandra, they stated the film was uploaded before its release by some unidentified persons.

Police are tracing the IP address through which the movie was allegedly uploaded, an official said without elaborating. Read More News Udta Punjab

China to block India's NSG bid if Pakistan not included

China to block India's NSG bid if Pakistan not included

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Thursday assured Prime MinisterNarendra Modi of his country’s support to India’s bid for the membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), even as China led five other countries at a meeting of the export control group in Vienna to stall the proposal.

According to sources, China will approve of India’s membership only ifPakistan is also included in the elite group.

Modi, meanwhile, is likely to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on June 23-24, where India and Pakistan are likely to be admitted to the six-member group. China had objected to India’s entry to the SCO as well. However, it had relented once Pakistan’s request to join the group was accepted.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Thursday assured Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his country’s support to India’s bid for the membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), even as China led five other countries at a meeting of the export control group in Vienna to stall the proposal.

According to sources, China will approve of India’s membership only if Pakistan is also included in the elite group.

Read more.

PM to visit Switzerland, US in five-nation tour

PM to visit Switzerland, US in five-nation tour

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a five-nation tour from Saturday. He will visit Afghanistan, Qatar, Switzerland, the US and Mexico. He is also slated to head for a four-nation tour to Africa in the first half of July. While the itinerary of that visit is still being worked out, it is likely to include visits to Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya. It will be the first visit of his tenure to mainland Africa. The PM had visited the island nations of Seychelles and Mauritius in March 2015.

The highlight of the PM’s five-nation tour will be the visit to Switzerland on June 5 and 6, en-route to the US. In Switzerland, the PM will hold discussions with the President of the Swiss Confederation Johann Schneider-Ammann. Modi is also likely to take up early conclusion of an agreement on the automatic exchange of tax information.

This agreement will facilitate the exchange of information between the tax authorities of the two countries and potentially help Indian tax authorities to track unaccounted money, or ‘black money’, suspected to be stashed away in Swiss banks by Indian nationals. Tracking down the ‘black money’ was a key promise of the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Read More.

CBSE class 12 results to be declared Today at 12 pm

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) class 12 results for the 2016 batch is scheduled to be announced on May 21 at 12 p.m., a report said on Friday. Candidates can access the results from the official CBSE website.

To check the results online, the candidates are required to follow the steps listed below:

1. Go to the official website http://www.cbse.nic.in,www.cbseresults.nic.in

2. Click on the link and go to 'CBSE Class 12 Results 2016'

3. Enter your roll number

4. Your CBSE class 12 result 2016 will pop up

5. Download your results and if needed, take a print out for future referenceRead more