Assorted

Suman More's life has been a rags-to-recognition journey. As an illiterate, impoverished ragpicker from Pune, the 50-year-old could never have imagined that she would one day be the centre of attention at a conference held all the way in Geneva by the International Labour Organisation. Just the past fortnight, over 2,000 experts from all over the world listened enthralled, as she spoke about her...

London, Jun 15: An all-girls school in the UK has banned senior students from wearing short skirts, instructing them to wear "sober" suits and minimal makeup in bid to keep the pupils "committed to learning". St Margaret's School, a 28,500 pounds-a-year boarding school in Bushey, Hertfordshire, has banned A-level students from wearing short skirts. Rose Hardy, headmistress of the school, has...

New Delhi, May 6: Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Salman Khan, 49, the eldest son of writer Salim Khan, has had an easy ride into Bollywood. Though he made his acting debut as a supporting actor in the 1988 film "Biwi Ho To Aisi", it was his charming boyish looks in the 1989 film "Maine Pyar Kiya" that helped catapult him to fame at the age of 25, and give him a strong female fan base. From...

Ahmedabad, May 2: Mauli Teli has people coming up to her often and asking what 'halal' has to do with cosmetics. "Are such cosmetics only for Muslims?" they sometimes enquire. Teli is not a Muslim, but the smart, suave, CEO of a company whose Iba product - India's first halal-certified cosmetic brand - is more than ready with her answers. Thanks to this, Iba's consumer base is growing steadily...

The PEW Research Center has released a report (2nd April 2015); which gives the projections of populations in times to come. It says that in India the population of Hindus will fall down from present 79.5 % to 76.7% and the Muslim population will rise up to 18% by 2050. The population of Indian Muslims will overtake the population of Muslims in Indonesia and Pakistan. Disturbed by these...

New York, Apr 5: After one year of acquiring mobile messaging service WhatsApp, Facebook has begun testing a new feature in its 'Facebook for Android' app that includes the first major integration of WhatsApp. The social networking site has added a 'Send' button with the familiar WhatsApp icon as a part of the status actions buttons that appear under each status update. The new button appears on...

Washington, May 2: Facebook has introduced a standalone app called Riff that has been designed as an evolving mix of clips that revolve around a specific topic. The app is meant to work like a video version of the Facebook chat thread, where users can make additions and make it go viral. According to the Verge, when users create a Riff video for the first time, they can tag a friend and make it...

Apr 1: Earlier this month, WhatApp had started rolling out voice calling feature for everyone. However, the activation didn"t really go through for several users and it looked like the invites had been disabled. However, today, users in India have started receiving the WhatsApp voice feature without the need for any invite. If you"ve still haven"t got the WhatApp voice feature activated , then...

Mumbai, Mar 27: A majority of Indians who make online purchases prefer making payments through credit or debit cards rather than cash-on-delivery or online banking modes, says a survey by financial services firm Visa. "About 74 per cent of the respondents preferred using payment cards -- credit, debit and prepaid -- to pay for their online purchases, while only 51 per cent used cash-on-delivery...

Mar 25: People in the tech industry have been digging a grave for email for more than a decade, but their predictions have always seemed a little out of touch. Email, despite its terrible, horrible, no-good impact on our daily lives, is wonderfully ubiquitous, accessible, forgiving and still apparently a good business. In the last year, Amazon, Dropbox, Google and Microsoft have all announced new...