Washington, Jan 30 : Naked and Famous Denim, the boutique jean world that makes glow in the dark jeans, has now come up with a pair of scratch-and-sniff, raspberry-scented jeans for 2012.

A coating of scented micro capsules have been baked into the Montreal company's jeans and when they're scratched, raspberry fragrance is released, Discovery news reported.

As for the scent fading, Naked and Famous said they've washed these jeans five times and they still smell fresh.

read more

Washington, Jan 29 - Washington-based Sikh organization EcoSikh is appealing to Sikhs around the world to celebrate Mar 14 as a Sikh Environment Day for the second year. Guru Har Rai, a nature and animal lover, became the seventh Sikh Guru on this day in 1644.

EcoSikh has set the goal of enrolling more than 700 Sikh institutions and Gurdwaras all over the world to celebrate the day this year, up from 450 who celebrated last year. It is urging them to start the signing up on Jan 31, the birth date of Guru Har Rai. This year it also plans to approach Sikh-owned businesses to join in this endeavour.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 - India ranks a lowly 125th in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges with Switzerland taking the top spot, according to the 2012 Environmental Performance Index
(EPI).

China ranks 116th in the Index produced by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, reflecting the strain rapid economic growth imposes on the environment in emerging economies.

read more

Nevada (US), Jan 23 : A school district in Pennsylvania (USA) is offering Hindi, the official language of India, to its pupils from the next semester.

Students in this course offered by Bensalem Township School District (BTSD) will reportedly learn speaking and writing Hindi and expressing themselves in Hindi. They will be taught “conversational Hindi using authentic written and visual materials” and will be “consistently engaged in interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational modes of communication”.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 - The Pakistan-US relationship was certainly not going through "normal" times, Islamabad's ambassador to Washington Sherry Rehman has said, and asked the Pakistani-American community for their support to bring the two countries closer.

The relationship has never been as important, yet the tensions have never been so grave, Rehman was quoted as saying by the Online news agency.

"This embassy is not going to work alone in Washington. It is going to work with many ambassadors, which are yourselves, to attempt to change the way this important bilateral relationship works," Rehman said.

read more

Nevada (US), Jan 23 : NBC Chicago (USA) television station removed from its website within few hours the content which Hindus considered “inappropriate” as it labelled their deities “weird”.

A commentary on its website titled “Why a 3-1 Blackhawks Loss Isn''t So Bad” dated January 25, detailing ice hockey team Nashville Predators beating Chicago Blackhawks 3-1in Chicago on Tuesday night, said that Predators were “swallowing up space like some weird Hindu god”, which Hindus strongly objected to.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 : A physician has completed the voyage to one of the remotest places on Earth, which takes even longer than the voyage to the International Space Station.

Alexander Kumar, the next ESA-sponsored crewmember to stay in Concordia, has arrived safely at the research base in Antarctica.

The international outpost’s programme of research includes glaciology, human biology and the atmosphere. ESA uses the base to prepare for future long-duration missions beyond Earth.

Concordia is an ideal place to study the effects on small, multicultural teams isolated for long periods in an extreme, hostile environment.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 - US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said he still believes someone in authority in Pakistan knew where Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was hiding before the US raid on his hideout.

Bolstering his hunch were intelligence reports of Pakistani military helicopters passing over the compound in Abbottabad, near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, where Navy Seals found and killed bin Laden last May, he said in a TV interview to air Sunday.

read more

New York, Jan : A woman in US has been arrested for setting up a fight between her daughter and another teenage girl to settle a beef.

According to police, Sandra Padilla Miranda, 38, of Florida has been accused of child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

The arrest affidavit posted on The Smoking Gun. com said that Miranda asked her daughter’s enemy to come to their Orlando-area apartment complex after school so the girls could fight, the New York Daily News reported.

Once the opponent arrived, a large crowd gathered and the two, ages 14 and 17, started throwing punches.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 - The Pentagon has stepped up efforts to make a bomb capable of destroying Iran's most heavily fortified underground facilities, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

"The 30,000-pound (around 13,600 kg) 'bunker-buster' bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programmes," the daily said quoting unnamed US officials briefed on the plan.

read more

Washington, Jan 28: A new poll has revealed that if given a chance then a majority of American citizens would like to vote out every single member of the US Congress. According to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, as many as 56 percent of Americans would like to hand pink slips to every member of the House and Senate if there was a ballot measure to do so. This antipathy is not limited to any particular party supporters but it’s bipartisan in nature with 55 percent of liberals, 55 percent of moderates and 58 percent of conservatives wanting to give a boot to the Congress.

read more

Washington, Jan 28: The US Navy is converting an aging warship into a makeshift staging base for the commando teams in the Middle East amid escalating tensions with Iran, al-Qaeda in Yemen and Somali pirates and other threats.

The floating base dubbed as a “mothership” could accommodate smaller high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by NavySeals.

A Navy Fleet Forces Command spokesman Lieutenant Commander Mike Kafka declined to elaborate on the floating base’s purpose or disclose where exactly it would be deployed in the Middle East.

read more

Washington, Jan 28: US Defence Secretary and former CIA chief Leon Panetta was the only member of the inner circle who had urged President Obama to give a go-ahead to the Navy Seals raid on former Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden''''s compound, Vice President Joe Biden has claimed.

Biden admitted that he had tried to stop Obama from giving a green signal to the mission because he felt that the administration should first ascertain whether Bin Laden was actually hiding in the compound.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 : US President Barack Obama has said he wants to win the reelection "badly," insisting that he has proved himself to be a better leader now than when he began his stint, by learning from his mistakes that he committed “every hour, every day”.

"I make a mistake, you know, every hour, every day," The News York Daily News quoted Obama, as saying.

"There''s always things that you''re learning in the job. And I have no doubt that I''m a better President now than the day I took office just because you get more experience," he added.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 : Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman has said the country's ties with Washington should be bilateral and not unilateral, insisting that Pakistan should be given its justified status.

Rehman said that a healthy bilateral relationship was important because it was through this that peace and stability could be assured in the region, The News reports.

She said Pakistan has given a clear message to the US that ties between both the countries should be based on mutual respect and equality.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 : The United States has said it is not sidelining Pakistan from peace talks with the Taliban, insisting that the South Asian country has an important role to play in the Afghan reconciliation process.

"Absolutely untrue," the US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said when asked about the impression in Pakistan that they are being sidelined in contacts with the Taliban.

Formal talks are scheduled to take place in Qatar, where the militant group is settling up an office.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 : Dr Conrad Murray has filed legal documents asking to be released on no bail pending his appeal against the manslaughter conviction, which put him in jail.

Dr Murray was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson's death.

He has filed for the appeal on grounds of "improper exclusion of defense evidence and witnesses that resulted in violating the defendant's State and constitutional rights to due process, to present a defense and to the effective assistance of counsel".

read more

Washington, Jan. 28 : Ron Paul, who is a well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian, has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas.

According to CBS News, the Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views.

read more

Washington, Jan 28: The Secret Service has launched a probe into an incident involving a Facebook picture showing armed young men holding a T-shirt that depicts US President Barack Obama's face covered in what appear to be bullet holes.

"Any time information such as this is brought to our attention, where an individual or a group expresses unusual direction of interest in one of our protectees, we conduct appropriate follow-up. This posting falls into that category. We'll conduct the appropriate follow-up measures on this," Politico quoted a Secret Service spokesperson Max Milien, as saying.

read more

Washington, Jan 28 : While campaigning for Mitt Romney, John McCain took a swipe at fellow Republican Newt Gingrich with a space related joke.

Romney is a former governor for Massachusetts and a candidate for 2012 presidential nomination by his party.

"I think we ought to send Newt Gingrich to the moon and Mitt Romney to the White House," Politico quoted McCain as saying.

The senator and `08 candidate also told the crowd in Florida that it's a two-man race now, and suggested Romney could pick Marco Rubio as his vice-presidential running mate, CBS news reported.

read more