Kamal Haasan, Vidya Balan, J.S. Verma, Yuvraj among 127 Padma awardees

Noted scientist R.A. Mashelkar, yoga expert B.K.S. Iyenger, actors Kamal Haasan and Vidya Balan, tennis player Leander Paes, cricketer Yuvraj Singh, and former chief justice of India, the late J.S.Verma were Saturday conferred the Padma awards on the eve of the 65th Republic Day.

While Mashelkar and Iyengar were the two named for Padma Vibhushan, 24 eminent people including Verma, Justice Dalveer Bhandari, Haasan, writers Anita Desai and Ruskin Bond, badminton player P.Gopichand and Paes got the Padma Bhushan.

The 101 conferred the Padma Shri include Vidya Balan and Paresh Rawal, cricketers Yuvraj and Anjum Chopra, Odisha sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik, and fashion designer Wendell Rodricks.

Padma Awards - the country's highest civilian awards, are conferred to eminent people for their contribution in the field of social work, public affairs, science and engineering, trade and industry, medicine, literature and education, sports, civil service.

The awards will be presented by President Pranab Mukherjee at a function held at Rashtrapati Bhavan around March/April.

Of the total 127 Padma Awardees, 27 are women and ten are foreigners, NRIs and PIOs.

Verma, who headed a government committee set up in the wake of the Dec 16, 2012 Delhi gang rape to frame a tough law for crime against women, has been awarded Padma Bhushan posthumously in the public affairs category. Bhandari is a former apex court judge who now represents India in the International Court of Justice.

Others who have been conferred Padma Bhushan include artist Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, classical singer Begum Parveen Sultana and ghatam performer T.H. Vinayakram.

Padmanabham Balram, Madappa Mahadevappa, Thirumalachari Ramasami, Vinod Prakash Sharma, Radhakrishnan Koppillil, and (late) Anumolu Ramakrishna have been conferred Padma Bhushan for science and engineering.

Padma Bhushan for literature and education has been conferred on Mrityunjay Athreya, Anita Desai, Dhirubhai Thakar, Vairamuthu Ramasamy Thevar and Ruskin Bond, Anisuzzaman (Bangladesh), Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne H. Rudolph (both US) jointly.

While Neelam Kler got Padma Bhushan for medicine, Vijayendra Nath Kaul got the award in the civil service category.

Kler is a senior consultant in the neonatology department in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here, as well as president of the National Neonatology Forum.

The Padma Shri awardees also include Paresh Rawal, cricketers Anjum Chopra and Yuvraj Singh, kabaddi player Sunil Dabas for Kabbadi, squash player Dipika Rebecca Pallikal, H. Boniface Prabhu (wheelchair tennis), mountaineers Love Raj Singh Dharmshaktu and Mamta Sodha and former bureaucrat Praveen Talha.

SRK discharged, back to work

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who was taken to a city hospital following a minor injury that he suffered while shooting a film here Thursday, has now been discharged. He is going back to work, said his spokesperson.

'Shah Rukh got a slight cut on his forehead and he was taken to the hospital as a precaution to make sure there was no serious injury. He is going back to work now,' the actor-producer's spokesperson told IANS.

Shah Rukh left the Dr. Balabhai Nanavati Hospital here Thursday afternoon after he sought medical aid for the injury that he is said to have suffered during the shoot for Farah Khan's 'Happy New Year'.

His wife Gauri Khan was by his side. However, she left the hospital premises a few minutes before SRK. There was tight security outside the hospital.

A source had confirmed to IANS that SRK was in the physiotherapy department of the hospital.

Midnight raid

One of the African women assaulted in a midnight raid in south Delhi has accused Delhi Law Minister Somnath Bharti of having led the group that barged into her house and assaulted them.

The Ugandan national had recorded her statement before a magistrate yesterday, saying that she would be able to
identify the persons who had barged into her house on the intervening night of January 15-16.

The woman recorded her statement in camera under Sec 164 CrPC which is admissible in court. The statement has been now
given to police in a sealed cover and will be opened only during the trial.

'We were attacked on Wednesday night by Indians who were led by Somnath Bharti...We were harassed, we were beaten, they were having long sticks. They said we should leave their country or else they would kill us one by one,' she said.

The woman said she identified Bharti because 'he came in the night and the next day I saw him on television. The Delhi
Police came in time and saved us from the mob.'

Police has listed the Ugandan national as a prosecution witness in the case. She will again testify in court during
the trial over the alleged incident.

The court had ordered registration of an FIR upon a petition filed by the woman in question seeking a criminal
case against the alleged offenders.

A city court had ordered registration of an FIR against unknown persons in connection with the midnight raid against
African women at Khirki Extension here.

Bharti had accused the foreign nationals of being involved in a drug and prostitution racket.

Meanwhile, Air Deccan founder and AAP member Capt G R Gopinath has reportedly said that while AAP demanded action
against police officers pending an inquiry on ground that they may interfere in the probe, the same yardstick should apply to
Bharti.

He had also said that Arvind Kejriwal and his Cabinet should govern from their offices and only his party workers
must protest.

Gopinath said Kejriwal sitting on dharna demanding action against four junior police personnel is, according to many
opinion leaders, the last straw that may break the camel's back when it comes to AAP mis-steps.PTI

Diet drinks not a guarantee to lose weight

If you thought gulping down diet coke would help you lose weight, think again.

Researchers found that overweight and obese adults who drink diet beverages actually consume more calories from food than obese or overweight adults who drink regular soda or other sugary beverages.

'Although obese adults who drink diet soda eat a comparable amount of total calories as heavier adults who drink sugary beverages, they consume significantly more calories from solid food at both meals and snacks,' said Sara Bleich, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.

To reach this conclusion, researchers looked at national patterns in adult diet beverage consumption and caloric intake by body-weight status, said the study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Individuals who drink diet soda typically have a higher BMI (Body Mass Index) and consume more snack food than those who drink sugary beverages.

Artificial sweeteners present in high doses in diet soda disrupts appetite control and the brain's sweet sensors may no longer provide a reliable gauge of energy consumption, it added.

As a result, consumption of diet drinks may result in increased food intake overall.

'Overweight and obese adults may need to look carefully at other components of their solid-food diet, particularly sweet snacks, to potentially identify areas for modification,' said Bleich.

Fahad Fazil, Nazriya Nazeen to wed in August

Another star wedding to add colour to Malayalam cinema. The marriage of rising star Fahad Fazil and Nazriya Nazeen has been fixed. The marriage will take place in August and was arranged by both their families. Fahad Fazil's father and director Fazil announced the wedding to the media.

Fahad Fazil, who is basking in the success of his last release Oru Indian Pranayakadha, has many movies lined up for the year. His One By Two, God's Own Country, a movie with director Anjali Menon are on roll.

Sunanda Pushkar found dead in hotel

Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor, was found dead in a luxury hotel here Friday night, police said.

Police sources told that she was found sprawled on a bed in room 345 at The Leela Palace hotel in south Delhi.

Tharoor, Sunanda deny split after Twitter row

Union Minister Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar have issued a joint statement over the Twitter controversy. The two have in a joint statement in Twitter revealed they are happily married and everythibng is fine from their end. 

'We are distressed by the unseemly controversy that has arisen about some unauthorised tweets from our Twitter accounts. Various distorted accounts of comments allegedly made by Sunanda have appeared in the press. It appears that some personal and private comments responding to these unauthorised tweets -- comments that were not intended for publication -- have been misrepresented and led to some erroneous conclusions,' the statement said. 

The Twitter handle of Shashi Tharoor, one of the most popular Indian politicians on the networking site, was hacked and some wacky tweets were sent from it to a Pakistani journalist.

The tweets instantly created a buzz on social media websites.

'Sorry folks, my @Twitter account has been hacked & will be temporarily deactivated. Bear with me while we solve this,'
he told his followers in his page.

Most of the tweets from his hacked account were addressed to Mehr Tarar, who was taken aback by the flurry of messages
from the minister's handle.

'You unfollowed me. You don't RT me and you don't answer me on twitter. I can live with your favourites. I have your
personal validation,' one of the hacked tweets read, which went on to add, 'Have your personal validation of my words, I
don't need any public one. For that I will wait until we are together publically really mehr.'

As the tweets went viral on the social media, Tarar responded, 'Okay. What's going on? Who's tweeting to me? I had
an 'affair' with Shashi Tharoor and he's tweeting to me? How does that work?'

'I know Shashi T& respect him greatly. Hv tweeted/written abt it openly.Feel awful abt wht's being tweeted. Maybe
@TwitterIndia shld check?' she said in another tweet. 

Another of the hacked tweets read, 'Shashi. I'm not crying any more. I'm not falling to pieces. I'm more lucid than ever.
How little I knew you became visible to me.@mehrtarar.'

The messages, with wacky mention of a romantic link between Tarar and Tharoor, were followed by a tweet
purportedly from the minister's wife Sunanda Pushkar's account.

'I am sending @mehrtars bbbm msgs to the works to see what a horrible woman she is and how she iis stalking my husband,'
a tweet said.

Tharoor's twitter page shows that he has 2.02 million followers. PTI