defence minister resigns over sri lanka bombings

The Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando steped out his post. He has announced his resignation on Friday. He is the only secretary took  responsibility for the suicide bomb attacks on the country last Sunday. Fernando told Reuters that while there had been no failure on his own part, he was taking responsibility for failures of some institutions he headed as the secretary of defence.He said that security agencies were actively responding to intelligence they had about the possibility of attacks before they were launched."We were working on that. All those agencies were working on that," he said.The Easter Sunday bombings on churches and luxury hotels killed at least 359 people and wounded around 500 others. Here, the Department of Foreign Affairs is advising people to avoid non-essential travel to Sri Lanka following the weekend bombings.

Narendra Modi in Varanasi: Mega NDA meet ahead of PM's nomination filing

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has filed his nomination papers on Friday from the temple town Varanasi seat for the Lok Sabha elections. On the other side opposition congress announced his party candidate on Thursday against Modi. Ajay Roy as he contested earlier 2014 also in Varanasi.Top leaders including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan, Tamil Nadu Deputy CM O Panneerselvam and others are present at the nomination-filing centre in Varanasi. SAD leader Parkash Singh Badal and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray are also present. On Thursday, PM Modi held a mega roadshow in Varanasi, drawing massive crowds, that culminated in a show of strength with the Ganga aarti at the Dashashwamedh ghat. Modi was joined by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and other senior BJP leaders in the temple town.

penguin disaster as only two chicks survive from colony of 40,000 in antarctica

Now penguins life in Antarctica under in alarming stage. For the moment, sea ice is increasing and this is a problem for this species as it pushes the feeding place – the sea ice edge – farther away from their nesting place, study leader Yan Ropert-Coudert, from France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, told The Guardian.Thousands of Adélie penguin chicks have starved to death in Antarctica. Climate change has led to particularly thick sea ice, so parent penguins have had to travel further to find food – leaving their hungry chicks behind.French scientists, supported by the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), studied a colony on Petrels Island, Antarctica, with 18,000 breeding pairs. The region is commonly referred to as Terre Adélie (“Adélie Land”) due to the vast numbers of penguins that live there.This year, out of all the chicks born in the colony, only two survived. The researchers discovered thousands of unhatched eggs and dead chicks scattered in the snow.“This devastating event contrasts with the image that many people might have of penguins. It’s more like ‘Tarantino does Happy Feet’, with dead penguin chicks strewn across a beach in Adélie Land,” said Rod Downie, WWF’s head of polar programmes, in a statement.Four years ago, a similar event happened. The colony – then with 20,196 breeding pairs – didn’t produce a single surviving chick. "The risk of opening up this area to exploratory krill fisheries, which would compete with the Adélie penguins for food as they recover from two catastrophic breeding failures in four years, is unthinkable," said Downie.

ec to ensure mamata biopic trailers removed from websites social media

The Election Commission today jumped in to the action against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee`s biopic movie. EC have initiated steps to take down trailers of a biopic `Baghini' from at least three websites. After the chief electoral officer of West Bengal submitted a report on the biopic, titled 'Baghini' (tigress), the EC has initiated steps to ensure that the trailers are brought down. Though the producer has claimed that it is slated for release on May 3, an EC official said so far the Central Board for Film Certification has not issued it a certification. The BJP had approached the poll panel seeking a ban on the release of the movie till the election process is over.