He isn't involved with Indian tennis but the legendary Boris Becker knows that the country's top stars have been "fighting a little" and Monday urged the trio of Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza to work together for the sport's sake.
Talking about Indian tennis, which has not been able to produce world-class singles players in the last three decades, Becker said the trio (all doubles specialists) need to unite to take the game forward in their country.
"India has a long success history in tennis. You have to have large pool of players, so that some of them go on to win titles. At the moment you don't see them but I would say it is a matter of time," the German great told PTI.
"Tennis is very popular in India, I know that for a fact. May be the likes of Sania, Bhupathi and Paes need to do something about it. I know they are fighting a little but that is the only solution (to work together)," he added.
Paes, Bhupathi and Mirza have had public spats over choice of doubles ...

Becker knows Indian tennis stars 'fighting a little', urges them to work together

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The heir to Britain's throne, Prince Charles, has spoken out in favour of wider use of yoga by the UK's state-funded National Health Service (NHS) as a means to ease the pressure on healthcare resources.
The 70-year-old royal, known for his support for alternative therapies, came out in favour of the ancient Indian practice in a written message to the Yoga in Healthcare conference in London over the weekend.
"The development of therapeutic, evidence-based yoga is, I believe, an excellent example of how yoga can contribute to health and healing, said Charles, the Prince of Wales.
"For thousands of years, millions of people have experienced yoga's ability to improve their lives This not only benefits the individual, but also conserves precious and expensive health resources for others where and when they are most needed, he said.
Queen Elizabeth II's son and heir expressed his support for more yoga classes because he said they not only had tremendous social benefits but also built ...

Britain's Prince Charles backs wider use of yoga in UK

Saudi Arabia on Monday vowed to try to "de-escalate tensions between India and Pakistan in the wake of the deadly terror attack in Pulwama by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman prepares to head to New Delhi from Islamabad.
The terror attack happened when a suicide bomber blew up an explosive-laden vehicle near a convoy of CRPF buses in Pulwama district on Thursday, killing 41 CRPF soldiers.
Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir met Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Monday.
Officials said that Qureshi briefed him in detail about the situation after the Pulwama attack in Kashmir.
Tensions have been mounting between the two nuclear-armed neighbours amidst war of words and diplomatic brinkmanship over the attack.
"Our objective is to try to de-escalate tensions between the two countries, neighbouring countries, and to see if there is a path forward to resolving those differences peacefully," Jubeir told the media.
He ..

Saudi Arabia vows to try to "de-escalate tensions between India and Pakistan

A combination of two drugs could effectively help treat patients with an advanced form of kidney cancer, a study has found.
In a clinical trial, people who received the immunotherapy drug avelumab plus axitinib, a targeted agent, had a significant advantage in progression-free survival compared with those who received sunitinib (Sutent), a targeted drug that has been a standard treatment for advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma -- the most common form of kidney cancer.
"Patients receiving the drug combination also had a higher response rate -- meaning their tumors shrank -- than the sunitinib-only group," said Toni K Choueiri, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the US.
"This is certainly better than sunitinib -- hopefully this will lead to Food and Drug Administration approval soon," said Choueiri.
While progression-free survival was improved with the combination treatment, additional follow-up is needed to show whether the two-drug therapy extends overall survival compared to the 

Drug combo may help treat advanced kidney cancer

Britain's Opposition Labour Party suffered a jolt on Monday as seven anti-Brexit MPs quit the party in protest against its leader Jeremy Corbyn's approach to issues including Brexit and anti-Semitism.
MPs Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Mike Gapes, Gavin Shuker and Ann Coffey held a press conference in London to tell reporters that they would sit as a separate independent group within Parliament.
"This morning we have all now resigned from the Labour Party. This has been a very difficult, painful, but necessary decision," said Berger, who is Jewish herself and been very vocal about anti-semitism within the Labour party.
"I cannot remain in the party that I have today come to the sickening conclusion is anti-semitic. I am leaving behind a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation," she said.
In her statement on behalf of the group, she said the seven MPs represented different parts of the UK, different backgrounds and generations who share the same ...

7 MPs split from UK's Labour Party over Brexit

Six persons, including a sacked army major, were charged in Bangladesh on Monday with the gruesome murder of a controversial atheist blogger four years ago.
Avijit Roy, a Bangladesh-born US national, was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants in February 2015 while returning home with his wife from a Dhaka book fair. His wife, Rafida Ahmed, was seriously injured.
Police Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit chief Monirul Islam said at a press conference that the charge sheet has to be approved by the Ministry of Home Affairs before it is sent to the court, bdnews reported.
Among the six accused in the murder are alleged Ansarullah Bangla Team leader and sacked military officer Major Syed Ziaul Haq and militant blogger' Safiur Rahman Farabi.
Of the accused, Ziaul Haq and Akram Hossain aka Abir are absconding. The remaining four are currently in prison.
Investigators say all of the suspects, aside from Farabi, were members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team.
"Through ...

Six charged in Bangladesh over atheist blogger's murder

Legendary Boris Becker feels the three icons of Indian tennis, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Saina Mirza need to bury their differences and work together for the betterment of the sport in the country.
Talking about Indian tennis, which has not been able to produce world-class singles players in the last three decades, Becker said the trio (all doubles specialists) need to unite to take the game forward in their country.
"India has a long success history in tennis. You have to have large pool of players, so that some of them go on to win titles. At the moment you don't see them but I would say it is a matter of time," the German great told PTI.
"Tennis is very popular in India, I know that for a fact. May be the likes of Sania, Bhupathi and Paes need to do something about it. I know they are fighting a little but that is the only solution (to work together). That is what the former players did in Germany and France, they went back to sport administration," he added.
Becker has ...

Paes, Bhupathi, Saina need to work together for growth of Indian tennis: Becker

The most common meteorites that fall to Earth -- known as L chondrites -- come from at least two different debris fields in the asteroid belt, a study has found.
According to the study published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, the belt contains many debris fields created from former dwarf planets, or those in the making, that collided long ago.
These fragments, called asteroids, continue to collide, producing the meteorites that fall to Earth today.
"When meteorites fell near Creston, California on October 24, 2015, they initially seemed to be from the same debris field as those that fell three years earlier in Novato, 200 miles to the North," said Peter Jenniskens, a researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center in the US.
"Both meteorites were classified as L chondrites of type L6 and shock stage S3," said Jenniskens.
L chondrites are the most common type of meteorites, but they come in two varieties: meteorites like Novato that long ago, at the dawn of the solar ...

Common meteorites come from two debris fields: Study

Seven MPs from Britain's opposition Labour Party on Monday announced they were breaking away and forming an independent group in protest at the party's support for Brexit and its failure to stamp out anti-Semitism.
"This has been a very difficult, painful but necessary decision," one of the MPs, Luciana Berger, said at a hastily arranged press conference in London.

Seven MPs leave Britain's Labour Party over Brexit, anti-Semitism

Poland warned on Monday that it may pull out of a summit of central European countries in Jerusalem this week on the heels of comments by Israel's new foreign minister accusing Poles of anti-Semitism.
The move comes after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki backed out of the summit on Sunday, following uproar in Poland over reported comments by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu about the Poles and the Holocaust.
Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz was due to replace Morawiecki, but a senior government official in Warsaw said on Monday that this was now under a "question mark" following comments by Israel's diplomatic chief Israel Katz.
He told Israel's i24 television that "there were many Poles who collaborated with the Nazis, and like Yitzhak Shamir, whose father was murdered, said: Poles suckle anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk."
"The situation has changed since yesterday," Michal Dworczyk, head of the Polish prime minister's chancellery, told Polish radio on Monday, 

Poland says may withdraw from summit as Israel row escalates

Iran is harbouring terrorist groups and should be the last country to accuse others of terrorism, Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir said here on Monday.
Addressing a joint press conference with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Jubeir, who is part of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's entourage, said Iran was supporting terrorism and Saudi Arabia was its victim.
"Iran should be the last country to accuse others of terrorism," Jubeir said in response to a query about Tehran accusing Islamabad of harbouring a jihadist group behind a deadly suicide attack in which 27 Iranian soldiers were killed in Wednesday.
Al-Jubeir said terrorism was a common enemy and Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the US were working jointly to eradicate it.
To a question about India-Pakistan relations, the Saudi minister said both countries were facing similar challenges, including the scourge of terrorism.
"We want both countries to resolve their conflicts ...

Iran harbouring terrorist groups: Saudi

Popular video-sharing site YouTube may be the prime driver behind the rise in the number of people who think the Earth is flat, scientists say.
Researchers from Texas Tech University in the US attended the world's largest gatherings of Flat Earthers held in the last two years.
They interviewed 30 attendees to understand how they were convinced that the Earth was a large flat disc spinning in space.
All but one said that they had not considered the Earth to be flat two years ago but changed their minds after watching videos promoting conspiracy theories on YouTube.
"The only person who didn't say this was there with his daughter and his son-in-law and they had seen it on YouTube and told him about it," Asheley Landrum, who led the research at Texas Tech University, was quoted as saying by 'The Guardian'.
The interviews revealed that most had been watching videos about other conspiracies, with alternative takes on 9/11 and whether NASA really went to the moon, when YouTube offered up ...

YouTube videos behind rise of 'Flat Earthers'

The Pulwama terrorist attack has cast a doubt over
Pakistan shooters' participation in the season-opening shooting World Cup in New Delhi, with the country's federation Monday saying it will not send its marksmen if the visas don't come through by this evening.
The ISSF (International Shooting Sport Federation) event, which will offer 16 quota places for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, starts at the Dr Karni Singh Range on Thursday.
"We will wait till 6.00 today if we get the visas fine, our contingent will travel to Delhi, but if we don't get visas today than we can't go at a short notice as the championship begins from 21st February," National Rifle Shooting Federation president Razi Ahmed told PTI.
The official said they were yet to get visas from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad despite applying well in advance.
The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) said the Indian government had given clearance for the applications, but that was before last Thursday's dastardly ...

Pak shooting body says won't send marksmen to Delhi WC if visas not issued by evening

Iran's president has described the U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran as an economic war and stressed that "economic war is more difficult than military war."
Hassan Rouhani spoke on Monday as he inaugurated the third and final phase of the sprawling Persian Gulf Star refinery built in the Persian Gulf port city of Bandar Abbas.
Construction began in 2006. The refinery has the capacity of 400,000 barrels a day, or about 20 percent of Iran's 2.1 million barrels of daily refining capacity.
Rouhani praised the inauguration, saying in a televised speech that it comes despite America's "imposing the harshest sanctions" on Iran.
The Trump administration last year pulled the US out of Iran's nuclear deal with world powers and re-imposed sanction on Iran, targeting its vital oil sector.

Iranian president: US sanctions are 'economic war' on Iran

A major Chinese food producer said Monday that traces of the African swine fever virus had been found in its frozen dumplings.
China, the world's biggest consumer and producer of pork, has struggled to contain an outbreak of the virus since the first cases were detected last August.
Officials have said hundreds of thousands of pigs were culled in a bid to stop its spread - an effort that has also seen restrictions placed on moving pigs from affected areas.
Sanquan Food, based in central Henan province, issued a public statement confirming media reports published in recent days that contaminated pork dumplings were detected in two provinces that do not share a border.
The company said suspect batches of dumplings had reached grocery stores, but that it was sealing affected products and cooperating with authorities.
The statement did not mention a broader recall.
Unconfirmed Chinese media reports have said that products manufactured by several other companies also contained traces of ...

Chinese food producer says swine fever found in dumplings

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says Brexit talks are entering a "crucial final period" but that an agreement can be sealed before Britain leaves the European Union on March 29.
Hunt told reporters Monday that "there is a way through this. We know how we can get a majority in Parliament" in the U.K., with less than six weeks to go before Brexit.
Speaking at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Hunt said that "what we need is trust and vision on both sides." Brexit talks resume later Monday, but the EU so far is refusing to renegotiate the legally binding divorce agreement sealed between the bloc and Prime Minister Theresa May in November.

UK's Hunt says Brexit talks in 'crucial final period'

Former Maldives President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has appeared in court to answer money laundering charges.
Yameen appeared in criminal court in Male, the capital, on Monday afternoon after the country's top prosecutor charged him last week with money laundering.
Prosecutors say police investigations found $1 million allegedly linked to
a shady tourist resort development deal in his bank account.
Yameen lost his bid for re-election last year in a surprise upset by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who campaigned on a promise to investigate allegations of corruption by his predecessor's government.
Solih has also suspended two of his Cabinet ministers over money allegedly found in their accounts from the same deal.

Maldives ex-president appears in court on laundering charges

A scathing British parliamentary report on Monday branded Facebook "digital gangsters" that knowingly violated data privacy and competition laws.
Lawmakers' 18-month investigation into disinformation and "fake news" also accused Facebook of failing to faithfully fight Russia's alleged attempts to influence elections.
Cultural select committee chair Damian Collins said Facebook "deliberately sought to frustrate our work by giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times misleading answers to our questions." Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg turned down three requests to appear before the committee.
"Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like 'digital gangsters' in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law," the report said.
"Social media companies cannot hide behind the claim of being merely a 'platform' and maintain that they have no responsibility themselves in regulating the content of their sites."
The committee urged a ...

Facebook 'digital gangsters' violated privacy laws: MPs

Scientists are developing a predictive model to help NASA anticipate conflicts and communication breakdowns among crew members and head off problems that could make or break the US space agency's future manned mission to Mars.
NASA has formalised plans to send a crewed spacecraft to Mars, a journey that could involve 250 million miles of travel, said researchers from the Northwestern University in the US.
In a multi-phase study, scientists are studying the behaviour of analogue astronaut crews on mock missions, complete with isolation, sleep deprivation, specially designed tasks and mission control, which mimics real space travel with delayed communication.
The goal is to establish the effects of isolation and confinement on team functioning, to identify methods to improve team performance, to develop a predictive model that NASA could use to assemble the ideal team and identify potential issues with already composed teams before and during the mission.
Even for an astronaut, the ...

Weak spots for NASA's manned Mars mission revealed

Australia's major sporting organisations Monday threw their weight behind a drive to close the pay gap between top male and female athletes, drawing on a landmark cricket deal in the push for more equality.
The chief executives of cricket, golf, rugby union, tennis and swimming were among those to sign up to the "Pathway to Pay Equality" report by the Male Champions of Change Institute, led by former Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.
The study outlines some of the inequities faced by women, including lower salaries and poorer facilities, and steps necessary to achieve more equality.
It involves a shift in mindset away from male sport being valued more than women's, providing greater equal opportunities from grassroots level up and long-term plans to make it happen.
All the signatories have agreed to self-assess against 16 measures each year and report on their performance to ensure progress is made over the next five years.
Tennis legend Billie Jean King .

Australia's major sports pledge to close gender-pay gap

Children living in homes with all vinyl flooring or flame-retardant chemicals in the sofa have significantly higher levels of potentially harmful toxins in their blood or urine, putting them at risk of cancer and other diseases, study has found.
Researchers from Duke University in the US found that children living in homes where the sofa in the main living area contained flame-retardant polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in its foam had a six-fold higher concentration of PBDEs in their blood serum.
Exposure to PBDEs has been linked in laboratory tests to neurodevelopmental delays, obesity, endocrine and thyroid disruption, cancer and other diseases.
According to the study published in the journal Children from homes that had vinyl flooring in all areas were found to have concentrations of benzyl butyl phthalate metabolite in their urine that were 15 times higher than those in children living with no vinyl flooring.
Benzyl butyl phthalate has been linked to respiratory disorders, ..

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