Speaking on the occasion, Ajay Srinivasan, Chief Executive – Financial Services, Aditya Birla Group who had in the interim taken additional charge as Managing Director, BSLI said “The life insurance industry completes a decade long journey this year since the entry of the private sector, presenting larger and even more challenging opportunities ahead. Jayant, with his diverse exposure across various facets of business will play a key role in leading Birla Sun Life Insurance towards achieving its goals.”

Jayant brings with him rich and diverse work experience across various facets of business like Sales, Marketing, IT and Strategy. He has been associated with the Aditya Birla Group for the last 14 years. Prior to his appointment with the Insulators Business, Jayant spent close to a decade in the Groups’ Cement Business in roles as diverse as Marketing, IT and Strategy.

Jayant is a Chemical Engineer from IIT Delhi and an MBA from IMI, Delhi. He has recently completed the Advanced Management Program (AMP) from Harvard Business School, USA.

Lohan has been sentenced to serve 90-days in jail for violating the terms of her probation.

“This is not the girl I raised. She’s gotta start all over again. Get off the prescription meds,” the Daily Express quoted Michael as telling U.S. TV show Access Hollywood.

The pills the actress is popping includes medication for depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and acid reflux.

“That combination will kill her,” said the worried father insisting that the all the pills she is taking are needless.

“She was never on medication up to the pinnacle of Mean Girls. My wife Dina and I got divorced, Lindsay started partying and going on medication… (and) she never did a serious movie again… Her life went into a downward spiral,” he added.

Moreover, he blames his ex-wife for enabling his daughter’s prescription drug use.

“I thought she was the best mother when the kids were growing up. She’s turned out to be the worst mother on the planet… She doesn’t think Lindsay has a problem,” he said.

“ISAF officials offer sincere condolences to those affected and accept full responsibility for the actions that led to this tragic incident,” the statement, received late on Friday, said.

The country’s interior ministry initially blamed the deaths on a rocket fired by insurgents hitting a local bazaar.

Civilian casualties and friendly fire deaths among Afghan security forces have been a frequent irritant between President Hamid Karzai and Western military forces during the nine-year war since the ousting of the Taliban in 2001.

ISAF said commanders had held two days of meetings, or “shuras”, with local elders in Jani Khel to discuss the incident.

New U.S. and NATO forces commander General David Petraeus is considering a change to rules of engagement drawn up his predecessor to avoid civilian casualties, following complaints they tie the hands of coalition troops combating insurgents.

Casualties among NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan hit a record high in June and commanders expect violence to rise in parallel with an anti-insurgent offensive in coming months, raising questions about whether more can be done to protect troops.

Two coalition soldiers were killed on Friday in separate bomb attacks, the alliance said, while a suicide car bomb hit a NATO convoy on a bridge outside Jalalabad, killing one civilian and wounding nine others.

Five Afghan government soldiers were accidentally killed and two others wounded in a pre-dawn NATO helicopter air strike on Wednesday, prompting condemnation from the country’s government.

The attack took place after a aircraft mistook Afghan National Army soldiers for Taliban insurgents during an operation in southwest Ghazni.

‘Nirupama Rao is reaching McLeodganj at around 1.30 p.m. for a two-day visit,’ Superintendent of Police Atul Fulzele told IANS.

The foreign secretary is a former Indian ambassador to China.

Officials of the external affairs ministry at McLeodganj said the foreign secretary has no other programme except meeting the Dalai Lama and officials and functionaries of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

‘A meeting between the Dalai Lama and Rao has been scheduled at his official palace post-lunch, where other high-ranking officials of his administration would also be present,’ a ministry official said.

However, the Dalai Lama’s office did not comment on Rao’s visit.

Tenzin Taklha, joint secretary at the Dalai Lama’s office, said: ‘Right now we are not making any comments.’

The exiles are hosting a dinner in her honour Saturday.

A source in the Dalai Lama’s office said the foreign secretary would discuss issues relating to Tibetan exiles with the Nobel Laureate.

Security for the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since fleeing his homeland in 1959, would also be discussed, the source said.

Fulzele said the Tibetan government has made arrangements for her stay at McLeodganj. She would leave for Delhi Sunday afternoon.

Rao’s visit to this picturesque hill station has been cancelled a number of times earlier.

Deputy Commissioner (Kangra) R.S. Gupta told IANS: ‘Her visits have been cancelled three to four times earlier.’

The Himachal Pradesh government has declared Rao a state guest.

The Dalai Lama, who believes in the ‘middle-path’ policy that demands ‘greater autonomy’ for the Tibetans, is viewed by the Chinese as a hostile element who is bent on splitting Tibet from China.

The Chinese government has stepped up pressure on foreign governments that receive visits from the spiritual leader.

The Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile is not recognised by any country.

Some 140,000 Tibetans now live in exile, over 100,000 of them in different parts of India. Over six million Tibetans live in Tibet.

The blasts killed 105 people and wounded 140 others, Miraj Ali Khan, a local government official, said by telephone from Mohmand today.

The Edhi Foundation ambulance service counted 85 people killed and more than 150 injured, its provincial coordinator, Mujahid Khan said yesterday.

Bombs built into a car and a motorcycle exploded yesterday at Yaka Ghund, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the main northwestern city of Peshawar. The bombs struck near the office of Assistant Political Agent Rasul Khan, the government administrator in the village, who has been organizing local Mohmand tribesmen to fight the Taliban.

The attack is the biggest in the frontier region since a Jan. 1 bomb killed 105 people.

Guerrillas

While Mohmand has been one of the calmer Pakistani regions along the Afghan border, guerrillas have been gathering there after fleeing the army’s latest offensive in the Orakzai Agency, south of Peshawar, Malik Naweed, chief of police for Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, said yesterday.

Taliban guerrillas seized an army post on the Mohmand frontier with Afghanistan on June 15, forcing scores of soldiers to flee.

Taliban guerrillas claimed responsibility in February for a series of bomb attacks that destroyed or damaged schools in Mohmand and other tribal areas.

Kashmir police finds 176 kgs of explosives, which included 75 kgs of explosive material packed in two bags, 6 IEDs weighing 15 kgs each, 90 kgs of explosives, 75 gelatin sticks, 23 grenades, 12 bore rifles and various other materials.

“We believe this is Lashkar-e-Toiba’s attempt to take advantage of the volatile situation in the Valley,” said a senior officer.

Many parts of the Kashmir Valley has been brought under a curfew after  civilians were killed by the security forces.

This is one of the biggest cache of explosives recovered in Jammu and Kashmir in the year 2010.

The conviction has come in sharper focus following the confessions of David Coleman Headley who was LeT’s chief scout for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. It’s not just India that has mounted a campaign to put Hafiz Saeed — the chief of LeT’s cover organisation Jamaat-ul-Dawa — in prison, he’s now emerged as a global threat.

The report by the US-based organisation, Investigative Project on Terrorism, quotes Gen David Petraeus, now commander of the Afghan campaign, telling the Senate a few months ago: “There’s no question but that there are elements in Pakistan that have not yet been the focus of the Pakistani counter-insurgency efforts…obviously India has expressed its concern as well. The rise of LeT and the need to take action against it has been a ‘source of dialogue’ with Pakistani authorities.”

The report says Westerners who underwent training in LeT’s camps include Australian David Hicks, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Dhiren Barot who had masterminded a failed gas cylinder bombing in London.

What makes it difficult to mount a concerted international action against the group is the fact that in Pakistan they enjoy an unprecedented popular and state support. The report details growing cooperation among LeT and al-Qaida and other terrorist groups — the Afghan Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban (the Pakistani Taliban), Harakat-ul-Jihadi-Islami and Jaish-e-Muhammad.

The report says, “The attraction of Lashkar to Westerners may be traced to a number of factors. Although the group has shown willingness since the 1990s to train foreigners as a means of establishing networks in the West, this activity surged after September 11 because LeT did not experience the same crackdown that its al-Qaida brethren did. As a result, the camps became an especially appealing destination for many would-be jihadists. The group makes its training camps accessible to English speakers, providing crucial skills to an increasingly young and Western-born generation of extremists.”

It adds that after 2003, Hafiz Saeed broadened the mandate of the group to urge his followers to “fight against the evil trio: America, Israel, and India.” Later, the terror group has coordinated attacks on Western forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

LeT expert Stephen Tankel says, “LeT has made its camps available to English speakers, and also acts as a gateway for would-be Western recruits to access other outfits. Lashkar remains easier to get to in Pakistan than al-Qaida or the Tehrik-i-Taliban, though the latter has become easier to reach. Partly, this stems from the fact that LeT is simply easier to find. You can go to offices for JuD (LeT’s above-ground religious party) and social welfare organization in any province…. LeT is believed to have networks in South Asia, Europe, North America, the Gulf and (at one point at least) Australia.”

The first US conspiracy to be expressly linked to LeT was the Virginia Paintball Jihad Network and is still known to be the largest US jihadi plot connected to LeT. “The entire conspiracy was initiated in 2000 when one of its members, Randall Todd Royer, travelled to Pakistan to attend a Lashkar terrorist training camp. He and his fellow jihadists earned the ‘paintball’ soubriquet when they decided, soon after his return from Lahore, to use that game as a way of preparing for jihad.”

Its ringleader Al Timimi was indicted in 2004. while the following year, the FBI uncovered a second plot, and a third one surfaced in the southern state of Georgia. The last case demonstrated the global reach of the terror group and how it was using the internet to get messages across to operatives across the world.

Human rights groups and activists welcomed a wave of international publicity and protests over the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, who was awaiting execution in the western Iranian town of Tabriz after what her lawyer called an unjust trial and a sham conviction.

The Iranian embassy in London said in a statement that “according to information from the relevant judicial authorities” the stoning would not go ahead. If confirmed it would be an victory for a brief but intense campaign that was first highlighted by the Guardian last week.

However, there are still concerns over her plight. In a previous case a prisoner who was to be stoned was instead executed by hanging.

Speaking to this paper Mohammadi Ashtiani’s son Sajad, said his mother – whom he had spoken to by telephone – believed the pressure on her behalf might succeed, although he had not heard of any reprieve. “The campaign for her release is going very well,” he said. “They gave me permission to talk to her and she was very thankful to the people of the world for supporting her. I’m very happy that so many have joined me in protesting this injustice. It was the first time in years I heard any hope in my mother’s voice.”

Without a reprieve, Mohammadi Ashtiani would have been buried up to her neck before being pelted with stones large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately. Iran routinely censors information about executions, but all the 12 other women on death row have been convicted on adultery charges, as has one of the three men.

Azar Bagheri, 19, was arrested when she was 15 after her husband accused her of seeing another man. She has been subjected to mock stonings along with partial burial in the ground.

Ashraf Kalhori, 40, also sentenced to death by stoning, was forced to confess to a relationship with her husband’s murderer, and has been in Tehran’s Evin prison for seven years, according to her lawyer.

In one especially gruesome case, Maryam Ayubi, another alleged adulteress, fainted while being ritually washed before her execution in 2001 and was stoned to death while strapped to a stretcher. Outrage over that led to the marking of 11 July as the annual international day against stoning – which will see demonstrations at the Iran embassy in London.

Iranian activists say the tragedy is that the families of those sentenced to death often ignore them. “It doesn’t matter to them whether the charge of adultery is true or not because the honour of the family is tainted so they forget the poor creature awaiting death,” said Soheila Vahdati, who is now based in California.

“It’s not possible to talk about these prisoners in public because their families don’t want their names mentioned or their pictures published. Their families don’t want to defend them neither. Mohammadi Ashtiani’s case is amazing because her children are campaigning for her courageously and said that their mother is innocent.”

Shammameh Ghorbani, who is awaiting stoning, begged not to be freed from prison because she feared being killed by her family.

Shadi Sadr, an acclaimed Iranian lawyer, said it was hard to know exactly how many people were still facing stoning. Last year the Iranian parliament passed a law banning it, but the powerful Guardian Council has been silent on the issue.

“Many women are kept in prison because the government is very scared of the public attention,” Sadr said. “One of my clients has been there for eight years and her family have abandoned her.”

Publicity helps. “The only reason the Iranian government has not carried out stoning sentences on all these people is that it is afraid of Iranian public reaction and international attention,” said Sadr.

The embassy said in its statement: “This kind of punishment has rarely been implemented in Iran” and condemned media reports about the case as unreliable.

The 12 women on death row also include Mariam Ghorbanzadeh, 25, Iran Iskandari, 31, Kheyrieh Valania, 42, Sarimeh Sajadi, 30, Kobra Babaei, and Afsaneh R.

Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted of having “illicit relationships” with two men. But her lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaie, insisted there was no evidence to justify an adultery conviction. As a member of Iran’s Azerbaijani minority, her inability to understand the language of the court also prevented a fair trial, he said.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, added his voice to the outrage today, condemning a “medieval punishment that has no place in the modern world”. He added: “The continued use of such a punishment in Iran demonstrates a blatant disregard for international human rights commitments … as well as the interests of its people. I call on Iran to put an immediate stay to the execution of Ms Mohammadi Ashtiani on the charge of adultery and review the process by which she was tried, and her sentence.

“She has already faced the disgraceful punishment of 99 lashes for adultery; her execution would disgust and appal the watching world.”

Actors Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Juliette Binoche have backed the appeal to halt the stoning and playwright Sir David Hare. John Bercow, the Commons speaker, made a rare statement condemning a “horrific” matter and a “grotesque abuse” of human rights.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party, requires states that have not yet abolished the death penalty to restrict its use to the “most serious crimes”. The United Nations general assembly has called on all states to introduce a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

Property dealer Pawan Nagia returned home at about 3 am to find the bodies of his wife Anuradha and son Cherish.

“The mother and son were brutally murdered as the attacker first strangulated them and then stabbed them with a sharp object several times,” a police officer said.

Pawan Nagia had left home around 3 pm on Thursday and returned at around 3 am after partying with friends. He found the doors of his house open and his wife and son lying in a pool of blood, according to the police.

“We have sent the bodies for autopsy to ascertain the time and cause of death,” the officer added.

About 10-12 armed rebels attacked a road construction camp and killed contractor S.S. Chawla near Chikalmari village, some 20 km from the police station at Semiliguda town, Inspector General of Police (Operations) Sanjeev Marik told IANS.

The rebels also torched a machine used for lifting sand and a tipper truck, he said. The contractor was doing local road work in the area.

Maoists have influence in more than half of Orissa and Koraput, some 500 km from here, is one of the worst hit.

The incident comes two days after the rebels attacked and ransacked a police building and forest beat house at Daitari town in mineral-rich Keonjhar district late Wednesday and abducted an assistant sub-inspector of police at gunpoint.

The rebels, through local television channels, have demanded the release of at least 68 tribals lodged in various jails of Keonjhar district in order to free the police officer.

The attack came during the shutdown Communist Party of India-Maoist called Wednesday and Thursday to protest the killing of their top leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad in an alleged shootout July 2 in Andhra Pradesh.