Sikh leader charged with poll fraud in NZ
Melbourne, October 14
A Sikh leader in New Zealand was today charged with 20 counts of forging election documents to increase his chances of winning a local body poll in 2010.

Punjab student missing in Oz since Oct 4
Melbourne, October 14
A 30-year-old Indian student has gone missing in Australia and the police have launched a massive search operation after finding some of her belongings on the banks of a river in Tasmania state.

Pakistan court summons Zardari in graft cases
Islamabad, October 14
Pakistan’s former President Asif Ali Zardari was today summoned by a court to appear before it on October 29 in relation to five corruption cases against him which were re-opened last week, compounding his legal woes. Zardari, 58, failed to submit a response in accordance with the court's earlier order, upon which the bench took a recess to wait for his response.

Arafat was ‘poisoned’ with radioactive polonium
Paris, October 14
Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which “support the possibility” the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned.

London, October 14
Scotland Yard has arrested four suspected Islamist terrorists here on suspicion of plotting a "potentially very serious" terror attack.

The men, whose identities are not yet known, are being questioned at a south London police station on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

They had been monitored by counter-terrorism police and MI5 spies for some time and the arrests were part of a pre-planned operation.

Scotland Yard armed officers arrested the suspected Islamist terrorists in simultaneous raids across three separate areas of London on Sunday evening to foil the alleged terror plot.

The arrests were made in Whitechapel, Bayswater and Peckham areas of the city and searches under the Terrorism Act 2000 are continuing at six addresses and on two vehicles.

The Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism officers believe the alleged plot was "potentially very serious" but did not appear to be on the scale of earlier major plots.

Two men, both aged 25, were arrested in a car in Whitechapel, east London, after police fired "Hatton rounds" - ammunition designed to blow out tyres and blow open doors with minimal collateral damage. A 28-year-old man was arrested at Westbourne Grove in west London, and the fourth man, aged 29, was arrested in Peckham Hill Street in south-east London.

George Paul, a businessman who witnessed the west London arrest, said it had been "very dramatic, like the movies". "What I saw was three policeman holding an individual down while he was shouting 'please don't break my arms' or something of that ilk," he told BBC News.

The deployment of Scotland Yard's Firearms Unit raises the prospect that the Met police were looking at a possible plot to target public places with guns. — PTI

Pre-planned operation The suspects, their identities yet to revealed, were being monitored by the counter-terrorism police and spies for some time Two men, both aged 25, arrested in a car at Whitechapel in east London, after police fired Hatton rounds — ammunition designed to blow out tyres A 28-year-old man arrested at Westbourne Grove in west London, and the fourth man, aged 29, held from Peckham Hill Street in south-east London Deployment of Scotland Yard's Firearms Unit raises the prospect that the Met police was looking at a possible plot to target public places with guns

Stockholm, October 14
US trio Lars Peter Hansen, Eugene Fama and Robert Shiller won the Nobel prize in economics today for groundbreaking work on spotting trends in asset markets, the jury said.

The three “have laid the foundation for the current understanding of asset prices. It relies in part on fluctuations in risk and risk attitudes, and in part on behavioural biases and market frictions,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

Fama and Hansen are both professors at the University of Chicago, while Shiller is a professor at Yale University in Connecticut.

The economics prize is the only Nobel not originally included in the last will and testament of the prizes' creator, Swedish scientist and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

It was established in 1968 by the Swedish central bank to celebrate its tri-centenary, and first awarded in 1969.

The other prizes have been awarded since 1901. Americans have dominated the list of economics laureates, with 17 out of 20 laureates coming from the US in the past 10 years. — AFP

Melbourne, October 14
A Sikh leader in New Zealand was today charged with 20 counts of forging election documents to increase his chances of winning a local body poll in 2010.

Daljit Singh, Labour Party member and a leader of the country's small Sikh community, has pleaded not guilty to charges in the High Court in Auckland.

Singh, who was running for the Otara-Papatoetoe local board area in Auckland in the 2010 election, faced 20 charges of forging documents to change people's residential addresses.

Crown prosecutor Robin McCoubrey told the court that Singh falsely changed a large number of people's addresses on the Electoral Enrolment Centre (EEC)'s website so they fell into the catchment of the Otara-Papatoetoe board.

Seven other men, who helped Singh, are also on trial on the same charges, but on fewer counts, Radio New Zealand reported.

McCoubrey told a jury of 10 women and two men that Singh and Gurinder Atwall, who he called Singh's "right-hand man," used the names of Sikhs to go on to the EEC's website. "The vast majority of those whose addresses were changed were unaware it was happening," he said. The trial is set for six weeks and 200 witnesses will be called to give evidence. — PTI

in the dock Daljit Singh, a Labour Party member and leader of the country’s small Sikh community, has pleaded not guilty to charges He faced 20 charges of forging documents to change people's residential addresses Seven other men, who helped him, are also on trial on the same charges, but on fewer counts

Paris, October 14
Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which “support the possibility” the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned.

In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat's belongings.

Arafat died in France on November 11, 2004, at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death. No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow's request.

His remains were exhumed in November 2012 and samples taken, partly to investigate whether he had been poisoned -- a suspicion that grew after the assassination of Russian ex-spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

That investigation is ongoing, conducted separately by teams in France, Switzerland and Russia. — AFP

JuD raises funds for quake victims
Lahore: The JuD, a front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, is busy collecting funds in the name of providing relief to victims of an earthquake in Pakistan despite efforts by the world community to cut off its access to financing. The organisation has set up camps to collect funds across the country. — PTI