Sunday 9 March 2014

Passport Theft Adds to Mystery of Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet

Passport Theft Adds to Mystery of Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
Passport Theft Adds to Mystery of Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
Passport Theft Adds to Mystery of Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
Investigators trying to find out what happened to a Malaysia Airlines jet that disappeared en route to Beijing on Saturday morning were examining the usual causes of plane crashes: mechanical failure, pilot error, bad weather. But the discovery that two of the passengers were carrying stolen passports also raised the unsettling possibility of foul play.
By early Sunday morning, there was little to go on: no wreckage of the jet, a Boeing 777-200 with 239 people aboard, and other than oil slicks on the surface of the Gulf of Thailand that may have been from a crash, no clue that an accident had even taken place. The airline said the plane, which departed from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, had recently passed inspection, and Malaysia’s deputy minister of transport, Aziz bin Kaprawi, said the authorities had not received any distress signals from the aircraft. The plane was flying at 35,000 feet with no reports of threatening weather when it last made contact.
After officials in Rome and Vienna confirmed that the names of an Italian and an Austrian on the manifest of the missing flight matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand, officials emphasized that the investigation was in its earliest stages and that they were considering all possibilities, including terrorism.
“We are not ruling out anything,” the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, told reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday night. “As far as we are concerned right now, it’s just a report.”
Using a system that looks for flashes around the world, the Pentagon reviewed preliminary surveillance data from the area where the plane disappeared and saw no evidence of an explosion, said an American government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the subject matter was classified. A team of aviation experts led by the National Transportation Safety Board was on its way to the area.
If all aboard were killed, it would be the deadliest commercial airline accident since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines Airbus crashed just after takeoff from Kennedy Airport en route to the Dominican Republic.
A senior American intelligence official said law enforcement and intelligence agencies were investigating the issue of the stolen passports. The American authorities were scrutinizing the flight manifest closely, the official said, noting that forged travel documents are also used routinely by smugglers and illegal immigrants.
“At this time, we have not identified this as an act of terrorism,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity Saturday because of the continuing inquiry. “While the stolen passports are interesting, they don’t necessarily say to us that this was a terrorism act.”
A European counterterrorism official said the Italian man whose passport was stolen, Luigi Maraldi, 37, called his parents from Thailand, where he was vacationing, after discovering that someone by the same name was listed on the passenger manifest. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Maraldi reported the theft last August to the Italian police. The official said the passport of the Austrian man, Christian Kozel, 30, who is currently in Austria, was stolen about two years ago.
The European official said that he was surprised it had been possible to check in with stolen passports at the Kuala Lumpur airport and that an alert should have popped up on the airline agent’s computer.
Security experts in Asia said the use of false travel documents was a growing problem in the region, but they differed on the significance of the two stolen passports to the investigation.
“My guess is that illegal migration is also a possibility,” said Xu Ke, a lecturer at the Zhejiang Police College in eastern China who studies aviation safety and hijackings and has advised the Chinese authorities. “There are many cases of falsified and counterfeit passports and visas for illegal migration that our public security comes across, even several cases every day.”
But Steve Vickers, the chief executive of a Hong Kong-based security consulting company that specializes in risk mitigation and corporate intelligence in Asia, said the presence of multiple travelers on stolen passports aboard a single jet was rare and a potential clue.
“It is fairly unusual to have more than one person flying on a flight with a stolen passport,” said Mr. Vickers, who publicly warned a month ago that stolen airport passes and other identity documents in Asia merited a crackdown. “The future of this investigation lies in who really checked in and what they looked like,” he added.
Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the director general of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, said investigators were already reviewing video footage of the passengers. “There are only two passengers on record that flew on this aircraft that had false passports,” he said. “And we have the CCTV recordings of those passengers from check-in bags to the departure point.”
Malaysian officials also said Sunday that investigators had noted that five ticketed passengers failed to board the flight. Their luggage was removed from the plane before it departed, the authorities said.
Photo

Oil slicks on the surface of the Gulf of Thailand  may have been from a crash. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Operating as Flight MH370, the plane left Kuala Lumpur just after midnight, headed for Beijing. Air traffic control in Subang, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, lost contact with the plane around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, Malaysia’s civil aviation department said.
China Central Television said that according to Chinese air traffic control officials, the aircraft never entered Chinese airspace.
At a news conference in Beijing after the arrival of a team of employees to assist families of the passengers in China, an official of Malaysia Airlines said the missing plane had no history of malfunctions. “It was last inspected 10 days ago, well before scheduled service,” said the executive, Ignatius Ong. “It was all in top condition.”
When pressed about possible security lapses, he repeated several times that the airline had no confirmation from the Malaysian authorities that passengers had boarded with stolen passports.
Malaysia, the United States and Vietnam dispatched ships and aircraft to the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand on Saturday to join an intensive search, and the state-run Xinhua news agency said China was sending a Coast Guard vessel and two naval ships. The Chinese Ministry of Transport said a team of scuba divers who specialize in emergency rescues and recovery had been assembled on Hainan, the southern island-province, to prepare to go on Sunday to the area where the airliner may have gone down.
Lai Xuan Thanh, the director of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam, said on Saturday that a Vietnamese Navy AN26 aircraft had discovered oil on the surface of the water toward the Vietnam side of the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, east of the Malaysian Peninsula. The oil is suspected to have come from the missing plane, he added.
But on Sunday, Malaysia’s defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, added a confusing twist, saying the plane might have gone down west of the Malaysian Peninsula. “We are looking at the possibility of an aircraft air turnback,” he said without elaborating whether the plane might have changed course for mechanical reasons or a hijacking, or why the authorities suspected the plane might have reversed course.
Malaysia Airlines said the plane had 227 passengers aboard, including two toddlers, and an all-Malaysian crew of 12. According to the manifest, the passengers included 154 citizens of China or Taiwan, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans, as well as two citizens each from Canada, New Zealand and Ukraine and one each from Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia — although the true nationalities of the passengers carrying the Austrian and Italian passports are still unknown.
The family of one of the Americans aboard the flight, Philip Wood, an IBM employee in Kuala Lumpur, said they had little information beyond what had been reported in the news media.
“We’re relying on our Lord,” Mr. Wood’s father, Aubrey, said from his home in Keller, Tex. “He’s the one who carries the load.”
The tickets to the holders of the stolen Austrian and Italian passports were sold by China Southern Airlines, which has a code share agreement with Malaysia Airlines, according to China Southern’s account on Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblog platform. China Southern said it sold five other tickets to the flight: to a Dutch passenger, two Ukrainians, and one Malaysian and one Chinese passenger.
Arnold Barnett, a longtime Massachusetts Institute of Technology specialist in aviation safety statistics, said that before the disappearance of the plane, Malaysia Airlines had suffered two fatal crashes, in 1977 and 1995. Based on his estimate that Malaysia Airlines operates roughly 120,000 flights a year, he calculated that the airline’s safety record was consistent with that of airlines in other fairly prosperous, middle-income countries but had not yet reached the better safety record of airlines based in the world’s richest countries.
Malaysia has not been targeted in terrorist attacks in recent decades, although the 1977 crash was attributed to a hijacking. But some of the planning for the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States was done in Malaysia, which has a relatively lax visa policy. The country is a major trading nation and a natural meeting place for a variety of groups involved in illicit activities.
The plane’s disappearance came at the end of the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing, and took place at a time of rising concern in China about terrorism. Mr. Ahmad Jauhari of Malaysia Airlines said early on in a statement that there was speculation that the plane had landed safely somewhere along the route to Beijing. But in a telephone interview before reporting the sighting of the oil in the ocean, Mr. Thanh expressed concern about the aircraft’s fate.
“The possibility of an accident is high,” he said.

Canadian couple on missing Malaysian Airlines plane identified

Canadian couple on missing Malaysian Airlines plane identified
Vietnamese air force planes on Saturday spotted two large oil slicks close to where a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 went missing earlier in the day, the first sign that the aircraft carrying 239 people — including two Canadians — had crashed.
The air force planes were part of a multinational search operation launched after Flight MH370 fell off radar screens less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early Saturday morning.
The oil slicks were spotted late Saturday off the southern tip of Vietnam and were each between 10 kilometres and 15 kilometres long, the Vietnamese government said in a statement. There was no confirmation that the slicks were related to the missing plane, but the statement said they were consistent with the kinds that would be produced by the two fuel tanks of a crashed jetliner.
Two-thirds of the missing plane’s passengers were from China, while others were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.
Two Canadians, Muktesh Mukherjee, 42, and Xiaomo Bai, 37, have been confirmed by a Malaysia Airlines manifest as passengers on that flight. Mukherjee is a Beijing-based vice-president of Chinese operations for Xcoal Energy and Resources, a Pennsylvania-based coal supplier while Bai has been studying at the Beijing Foreign Studies University.
The two are listed as married to each other on Bai’s Facebook page and have two young boys.
An airline spokeswoman says company officials are not able to get in touch with their families but have contacted the Canadian embassy in Malaysia.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper tweeted Saturday morning regarding the couple and all other missing from the flight, saying, “Our thoughts & deepest prayers are with those affected by the disappearance of the plane in Malaysia. #cdnpoli”
Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said there was no indication that the pilots had sent a distress signal, suggesting that whatever happened to the plane occurred quickly and possibly catastrophically.
Asked whether terrorism was suspected, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said, “We are looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks.”
Foreign ministry officials in Italy and Austria said the names of two nationals from those countries listed on the flight’s manifest matched passports reported stolen in Thailand.
Italy’s Foreign Ministry said the Italian man who was listed as being a passenger, Luigi Maraldi, was travelling in Thailand and was not aboard the plane. It said he reported his passport stolen last August.
Austria’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that a name listed on the manifest matched an Austrian passport reported stolen two years ago in Thailand. It said the Austrian was not on the plane, but would not confirm the person’s identity.
Canadian couple
Canadian couple
At Beijing’s airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather at a nearby hotel to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service. A woman wept aboard the bus while saying on a mobile phone, “They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good.”
Relatives and friends of passengers were escorted into a private area at the hotel, but reporters were kept away. A man in a grey hooded sweatshirt later stormed out complaining about a lack of information. The man, who said he was a Beijing resident but declined to give his name, said he was anxious because his mother was on board the flight with a group of 10 tourists.
“We have been waiting for hours and there is still no verification,” he said.
The plane was last detected on radar at 1:30 a.m. (1730 GMT Friday) around where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand, authorities in Malaysia and Vietnam said.
Lai Xuan Thanh, director of Vietnam’s civil aviation authority, said air traffic officials in the country never made contact with the plane.
The plane “lost all contact and radar signal one minute before it entered Vietnam’s air traffic control,” Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said in a statement.
The South China Sea is a tense region with competing territorial claims that have led to several low-level conflicts, particularly between China and the Philippines. That antipathy briefly faded Saturday as China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia all sent ships and planes to the region.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that Malaysia had dispatched 15 planes and nine ships to the area, and that the U.S. navy was sending some planes as well. Singapore, China and Vietnam also were sending aircraft.
It’s not uncommon for it to take several days to find the wreckage of aircraft floating on the ocean. Locating and then recovering the flight data recorders, vital to any investigation, can take months or even years.
“In times of emergencies like this, we have to show unity of efforts that transcends boundaries and issues,” said Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda, commander of the Philippine military’s Western Command.
After the oil slick was spotted, the air search was suspended for the night and was to resume Sunday morning, while the sea search was ongoing, Malaysia Airlines said.
The plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said. It said there were 152 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia, six from Australia, five from India, three from the U.S., two from Canada and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan and the Netherlands.
In Kuala Lumpur, family members gathered at the airport, but were kept away from reporters.
“Our team is currently calling the next of kin of passengers and crew. Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilize its full support,” said Yahya, the airline CEO. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members.”
Fuad Sharuji, Malaysia Airlines’ vice-president of operations control, told CNN that the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,670 metres when it disappeared and that the pilots had reported no problem with the aircraft.
Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers, all teenagers from China.
Airliner “black boxes” — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — are equipped with “pingers” that emit ultrasonic signals that can be detected underwater. Under good conditions, the signals can be detected from several hundred miles away, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. If the boxes are trapped inside the wreckage, the sound may not travel as far, he said. If the boxes are at the bottom of an underwater trench, that also hinders how far the sound can travel. The signals also weaken over time.
Air France Flight 447, with 228 people on board, disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009. Some wreckage and bodies were recovered over the next two weeks, but it took nearly two years for the main wreckage of the Airbus 330 and its black boxes to be located and recovered.
Malaysia Airlines said the 53-year-old pilot of Flight MH370, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, has more than 18,000 flying hours and has been flying for the airline since 1981. The first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Hamid, has about 2,800 hours of experience and has flown for the airline since 2007.
The tip of the wing of the same Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200 broke off Aug. 9, 2012, as it was taxiing at Pudong International Airport outside Shanghai. The wingtip collided with the tail of a China Eastern Airlines A340 plane. No one was injured.
Malaysia Airlines’ last fatal incident was in 1995, when one its planes crashed near the Malaysian city of Tawau, killing 34 people. The deadliest crash in its history occurred in 1977, when a domestic Malaysian flight crashed after being hijacked, killing 100 people.
In August 2005, a Malaysian Airlines 777 flying from Perth, Australia, to Kuala Lumpur suddenly shot up 900 metres (3,000 feet) before the pilot disengaged the autopilot and landed safely. The plane’s software had incorrectly measured speed and acceleration, and the software was quickly updated on planes around the world.
Malaysia Airlines has 15 Boeing 777-200s in its fleet of about 100 planes. The state-owned carrier last month reported its fourth straight quarterly loss and warned of tougher times.

Search intensifies for Malaysian airliner and 239 people, rescue ships head to sea

Search intensifies for Malaysian airliner and 239 people, rescue ships head to sea
Malaysia Airlines says 5 Indians on flight that crashed
Malaysia Airlines says 5 Indians on flight that crashed
Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared Saturday after air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, the airline said.
"At the moment we have no idea where this aircraft is right now," Malaysia Airlines Vice President of Operations Control Fuad Sharuji said on CNN's "AC360."
Subang Air Traffic Control lost contact with Flight MH370 at about 2:40 a.m. local time (1:40 p.m. ET Friday), Sharuji said.
Map: Malaysia airliner lost contactMap: Malaysia airliner lost contact
Quest: Odd to lose contact while cruising
Plane loses contact with airline
"We tried to call this aircraft through various means," he said. The airline checked reports that the jet had landed in several places, but determined that none of the reports was true, he said.
The Boeing 777-200 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41 a.m. and was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., a 2,300-mile (3,700 kilometer) trip. It was carrying 227 passengers, two of them infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said.
At the time of its disappearance, the plane was carrying about 7.5 hours of fuel, Sharuji said.
The passengers are of 13 nationalities, the airline said. They were from China and Taiwan (154), Malaysia (38), Indonesia (12), Australia (7), France (3), United States (4), New Zealand (2), Ukraine (2), Canada (2), Russia (1), Italy (1), Netherlands (1), Austria (1).
One infant from the United States and another from China were included in the tally.
By CNN's math, that adds up to 228 passengers, one more than the total cited by the airline. There was no immediate explanation offered.
"Malaysia Airlines is currently working with the authorities who have activated their Search and Rescue team to locate the aircraft," the statement said. The public can call +603 7884 1234 for further information.
"We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, said CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya in a statement.
Efforts to contact the plane in the hours after it disappeared were fruitless. China deployed two rescue ships in the South China Sea to begin a search, state-run broadcaster CCTV said.
Family and friends of those missing on the flight gathered at a hotel complex in the Lido district of Beijing. People were being led in through a throng of reporters, with those friends and relatives saying nothing to the media.
One woman had her hand to her face. As the door opened, a man inside looked anxious as he talked on a cell phone.
The airline's website said the flight was piloted by Cap. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, a Malaysian. He has 18,365 total flying hours and joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981, the website said. The first officer is Fariq Ab.Hamid, 27, a Malaysian with a total of 2,763 flying hours. He joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007.
The airline said in a statement that its representatives were contacting the relatives of those aboard. "Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilize its full support," it said.
China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said the flight lost contact and its radar signal as it was flying over the Ho Chi Minh air traffic control area in Vietnam.
China's embassy in Malaysia formed an emergency team headed by the Chinese ambassador to deal with the incident, it said.
"We're closely monitoring reports on Malaysia flight MH370," Boeing said in a tweet. "Our thoughts are with everyone on board."
"It doesn't sound very good," retired American Airlines Capt. Jim Tilmon told CNN's "AC360." He noted that the route is mostly overland, which means that there would be plenty of antennae, radar and radios to contact the plane.
"I've been trying to come up with every scenario that I could just to explain this away, but I haven't been very successful."
He said the plane is "about as sophisticated as any commercial airplane could possibly be," with an excellent safety record.
"The lack of communications suggests to me that something most unfortunate has happened," said Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, in an interview with CNN International. "But that, of course, does not mean that there are not many persons that need to be rescued and secured. There's still a very urgent need to find that plane and to render aid."
There is one recent blemish for the Boeing jet: An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 carrying 291 passengers struck a seawall at San Francisco International Airport in July 2013, killing three people and wounding dozens more.
Malaysia Airlines operates in Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and on the route between Europe and Australasia.
It has 15 of the Boeing 777-200 planes in its fleet, CNN's Richard Quest reported.
Part of the company is in the private sector, but the government owns most of it.
Malayan Airways Limited began flying in 1937 as an air service between Penang and Singapore. A decade later, it began flying commercially as the national airline.
In 1963, when Malaysia was formed, the airline was renamed Malaysian Airlines Limited.
Within 20 years, it had grown from a single aircraft operator into a company with 2,400 employees and a fleet operator.

Read More Details : http://www.havegooday.com/search-intensifies-malaysian-airliner-239-people-rescue-ships-head-sea/

Saturday 8 March 2014

Pakistani actress Sana Khan dies in a car accident

Pakistani actress Sana Khan dies in a car accident
Pakistani actress Sana Khan died in a car accident near Looni Kot on super highway 30 kilometres from Hyderabad. The actress was on her way to Karachi with her husband Babar Khan.
According to Dawn.com, the car driven by Babar went out of control near Looni Kot and overturned as a result of which both Sana Khan and Babar Khan received serious injuries.
The ambulance reached on spot and the two were shifted to Liaquat University Hospital Jamshoro where Sana Khan succumbed to her injuries. And, according to reports Babar Khan is in critical state.
Pakistani actress Sana Khan dies in a car accident

Pakistani actress Sana Khan died in a car accident near Looni Kot on super highway 30 kilometres from Hyderabad.

Sana Khan and Babar Khan are known for their work in television serials in Pakistan. The couple tied the knot in December 2013.

Pakistani actress Sana Khan dies in a car accident

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Friday 7 March 2014

Movie review: Kangana Ranaut makes Queen worth a watch

Movie review: Kangana Ranaut makes Queen worth a watch
Vikas Bahl's Queen hits theatres on Friday.

Songs like London Thumakda and a Kangana Ranaut claiming to be on a Honeymoon trip all alone, Queen promised to be a fun ride, or so we thought.

The film, however, does not quite meet the expectations.

Plot: Kangana Ranaut (Rani)and Rajkummar Rao (Vijay) are set to be married but the wedding is called off after Rao decides he has moved ahead of Rani. She then goes on the honeymoon trip she had planned – all alone. Through the journey , Rani discovers the joys of breaking free, cherishing life and living on her own terms.
The Kangana Ranaut-Rajkumar Rao-Lisa Hayden-starrer has a predictable storyline and stereotypical sets.

The first half of the film is especially boring and full of stereotypes. Even after she leaves for her 'honeymoon' all alone, Kangana does not really shake off the shackles of traditions and society. Kangana's character fears strangers, is unable to gel into a new environment and is scandalised each time she gets a culture shock (public display of affection or women drinking or smoking) during her trip abroad.

There is one point that was not predictable – when a stressed out heroine goes out and drinks alcohol for the first time in her life, you expect her to go crazy and break free. Kangana does not.

Even when she drinks and sort of breaks off the bonds, she still remains in the confines of the traditions.



nterestingly, a high point in the movie arrives right there. Just as she goes into flashback and remembers that her fiancé (Rajkummar) did not like her dancing at public places, she literally lets her hair down. There is angst, aggression, revenge and there is defiance.

Kangana really impresses with her performance. Though Rajkummar does not have much of a screen space, he plays the regressive fiancé perfectly.

Be it the Lajpat Nagar girl all excited about her first night (after wedding) or the girl rejected in marriage (because she has not 'changed' as much as the London-returned guy has) or the confident girl who makes a place for herself, Kangana touches the right cords.

The film takes an upward graph in the last twenty minutes. Kangana is actually out to have fun and you can imagine a younger Sridevi from English Vinglish – discovering herself, within the confines of her own culture and upbringing, yet defying norms set by others.

If there is one reason why you should watch the film, it is Kangana's acting.

Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/

International Women’s Day 2014 Quotes: 25 Sayings That Empower Women

International Women’s Day, which has existed for more than 100 years, was the product of an era marked by rapid change and upheaval in the industrialized world. As the planet's population grew and the demand for labor increased, and as new ideologies took shape, women were thrust into a brave new world and confronted with a host of challenges.

The first day dedicated to women was established in 1911, and it was observed for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19, when more than 1 million people attended rallies around the world to assert women’s right to work, vote, be trained and hold public office. Two years later, the day was officially changed to March 8, the date on which it's been celebrated globally ever since as International Women’s Day.

Today, International Women’s Day is recognized by the UN and is an official holiday in 27 countries. On this day each year, men are asked to honor their mothers, wives, girlfriends and colleagues -- similar to Mother’s Day, when boys and men celebrate and give gifts to their mothers and grandmothers.

While women have made great strides, a gender equality gap still exists. In 2014, International Women’s Day will focus on the role men play in standing up for women’s rights. According to a World Health Organization report, men can play a critical part in reducing domestic violence and increasing communication about contraception, children's health and social support for wives and partners.

“It’s an objective fact, that if you want to solve some of these huge, kind of bigger problems of extreme poverty, you have to include the women,” actor Matt Damon, founder of Water.org, a nonprofit group that provides access to safe water and sanitation in Africa, South Asia and Central America, said about the UN’s “He For She” campaign, which was unveiled on Friday. "They’re the ones who will get it done."

“This is a moment when we review past achievements and look ahead to the challenges that remain, as well as to untapped potential and opportunities,” she said. "In moving forward, we must ensure that women’s empowerment and gender equality stand at the heart of all of our work to craft a better future.”

International Women’s Day will be celebrated on March 8, 2014, with an event held on March 7 at the UN headquarters in New York at noon. A live stream of the event can be viewed here.

For those celebrating International Women’s Day 2014, below are 25 empowering quotes to share:

Empowerment Quotes

“Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity.” -- Ghandi

“Women are leaders everywhere you look -- from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women, and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes.” -- Nancy Pelosi

“Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.” -- Eleanor Roosevelt

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.” -- Virginia Woolf

“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” -- Roseanne Barr

“I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us.” -- Louisa May Alcott

"The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world." -- Charles Malik
Inspirational

“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.” -- Oprah Winfrey

“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” -- Margaret Thatcher
“In too many instances, the march to globalization has also meant the marginalization of women and girls. And that must change.” -- Hillary Clinton

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." – Marilyn Monroe
“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” -- Maya Angelou, African American Poet

“Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.” -- Susan B. Anthony, Women's Activist

“Men and boys, we show our manhood through the way we treat our women. Our wives, our sisters, our mothers.” -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” -- Simone de Beauvoir

“Women are the real architects of society.” -- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult." -- Melinda Gates

“A charming woman doesn’t follow the crowd. She is herself.” -- Loretta Young

Funny 

“I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.” -- Frank Sinatra

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.” -- Joseph Conrad
"The reason women don't play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public." -- Phyllis Diller

“A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.” -- Coco Chanel

"Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy, fat women." -- Nicole Hollander
“God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met.” -- Farrah Fawcett

“By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacation-less class.” -- Anne Morrow Lindberg

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Source : http://www.ibtimes.com/

Women's Day 2014 celebrated with a Google Doodle

International Women's Day, which celebrates women's rights across the globe, has been celebrated with a Google Doodle  

 

Ahead of International Women's Day on Saturday (March 8), Google's creative team have created a special doodle to celebrate women around the world. The doodle, which features 27 female chromosomes, will be interactive with a video featuring over 100 women, including the President of Lithuania, the brave Pakistani education activist, and an ever-curious explorer.

With music provided by the Belgian Congolese vocal group Zap Mama, the doodle celebrates the "amazing things women around the world have done and continue to do".

The doodle is tailored to different countries across the world. In the UK, it features Camila Batmanghelidjh, who founded the place2be and Kids Company, caring for 17,000 children and young in London and Katelyn Donnelly, executive director of the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund.

 The team behind the latest Google Doodle told Wonder Women that trying to come up with a graphic for International Women’s Day this year completely flummoxed them.
Ryan Germick, Google doodle’s team leader, said: “International Women’s Day is a really hard topic. How do you surmise what women represent in a graphic?”

He explained why the team felt an interactive video would help. “It’s a quick glimpse of what some women across the world are doing. We’re just going for people doing great things. A 20-part DVD wouldn’t have scratched the surface. We decided with the doodle format we could probably do a fun video."

“We tried to be as sincere as possible," he added. "In certain countries, it’s OK to give a woman flowers for International Woman’s Day, in other countries it’s patronising. We tried to concentrate on the universal positive aspects of it.”

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