|
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are among the world’s best 100 institutes, according to a latest global ranking by The Times of London. The premier Indian institutes are ranked 57th and 68th respectively, according to the exhaustive university ranking complied by the Times Higher Education Supplement
(THES).
The top slot has been bagged by Harvard University flowed by Oxford and Cambridge universities while the highest-ranking Asian university was Beijing University, taking the 15th spot.
The rankings were based on a survey for the THES of 3,703 academicians worldwide. |
A veteran Indian actor has been chosen to play Pakistan’s former military ruler, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, in a Hollywood production about the CIA’s role in arming Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan.
Bollywood actor Om Puri, known for playing strong, serious characters, said he had been cast in Universal Pictures’ “Charlie Wilson’s War” alongside Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. The film, based on a book of the same name, revolves around Charlie Wilson, a charismatic, wheeler-dealer Texas Congressman, played by Hanks.
Wilson teams up with a rogue CIA agent to manipulate U.S. Congress, the CIA and a host of foreign governments in a covert operation. “The film discusses the entire political scenario of the time,” says 56-year-old Puri. “I appear as a well-settled Pakistani President who strikes a deal with the Americans that money and arms to the Afghans must flow through his country,” said Puri, adding that he loved the character of Zia.
Zia ruled Pakistan from 1977, when he took power in a bloodless military coup, until 1988 when he died in a still unexplained plane crash. |
