It is part of the Vegetarian Festival at Bang Neow Shrine, Phuket, Thailand Participants are island’s ethnic-Chinese who believe ritual will banish evil They believe that the holes in their cheeks help them to purify themselves Not only must they refuse meat but also sex, alcohol and other vices They also walk on hot coals, climb ‘bladed’ ladders and take baths in hot oil This Chinese spiritualist may soon realise […]

New York: If you wish to shield your kids from depression, driving home the point that personalities can be changed may help, a study suggests. A low-cost, one-time intervention that educates teenagers about the changeable nature of personality traits may prevent an increase in depressive symptoms, the findings showed. “We were amazed that a brief exposure to the message that people can change – during a key transition, the first […]

It’s one thing to wax eloquent on positivity, but quite another to be a positive person at heart. Despite believing to have a positive outlook, we invariably weigh the cons first, consider several times before sparing a compliment, and broadcast only the odds when someone counts on us for advice. What’s more, we prefer needless sarcasm for humour, manage a wry smile when something is genuinely funny, and believe deep […]

The trailer of actor Vikram’s upcoming Tamil magnum opus I crossed over two million views in 24 hours on YouTube. “We have not witnessed such a huge pickup for any trailer. I will set new benchmarks across film industries and we are proud to be associated with it,” Ashok Parwani, head – South, Sony Music India, said in a statement. Directed by Shankar, I has been reportedly made on a budget of over Rs 150 crore. […]

Washington: In light of US President Barack Obama’s pledge to ‘destroy’ Sunni extremist group, ISIS, the terror group on Tuesday released a Hollywood-styled trailer which appears to warn of attacks against American force. The 52-second video – another addition in the growing list propaganda videos – features slow-motion effects showing exploding tanks and attacks previously carried out by the militant group on American forces including a wounded serviceman being carried by American soldiers. In […]

Karoly Takacs. You’ve probably never heard of him. However, in Hungary, he’s a national hero – everybody there knows his name and his incredible story. After reading his story, you’ll never forget him… In 1938, Karoly Takacs of the Hungarian Army, was the top pistol shooter in the world. He was expected to win the gold in the 1940 Olympic Games scheduled for Tokyo. Those expectations vanished one terrible day […]

I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Big ones, little ones, expensive ones. Name it and I’ve messed it up. Yet the mistake I made when I left a job haunts me more than any other. In 2000 I took a leadership position at a commercial print facility that had just been acquired by a venture capital firm. Initially I was in charge of quality which was ironic since I came from […]

Memory specialist SanDisk has created an SD card with 512 gigabytes (512GB) of storage space – the highest capacity ever released. The card, which is the size of a postage stamp, will go on sale for $800 (£490). The launch comes a decade after the firm released a 512-megabyte (MB) SD card with one-thousandth of the space. Experts believe SD cards could eventually hold up to 2 terabytes (TB) of […]

The federal government has quietly tightened the rules for travel on special and diplomatic Canadian passports. It comes after Prime Minister  Stephen Harper ordered a review amid alleged misuse for travel and personal business. Additional changes could flow out of an ongoing review of who should be eligible for government-sanctioned travel documents. Diplomatic passports, easily identified by their distinctive red cover, are issued to high-ranking government officials, diplomats and representatives, […]

LONDON: Scientists have for the first time properly observed a theoretical cousin of the Higgs boson, one that inspired the decades-long hunt for the elusive particle. The Higgs field is credited with giving other particles mass by slowing their movement through the vacuum of space. The particle, which was first proposed in the 1960s, finally appeared at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, in 2012. The idea was […]