Sydney's iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge went dark Saturday night as the world's first major city turned off its lights for this year's Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness of climate change.
The lights on the arch of Harbour Bridge were turned off at 8 p.m., followed shortly by the shells of the Opera House and other city landmarks. Most businesses and homes were already dark as Sydney residents embraced their second annual Earth Hour with candlelight dinners, beach bonfires and even a green-powered outdoor movie.
The city was noticeably darker, though not completely blacked out. The business district was mostly dark; organizers said 250 of the 350 commercial buildings there had pledged to shut off their lights completely.
The number of participants was not immediately available but organizers were hoping to beat last year's debut, when 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses shut off lights and appliances, resulting in a 10.2 percent reduction in carbon emissions during that hour.The effect of last year's Earth Hour was infectious. This year, 26 major world cities and more than 300 other cities and towns have signed up for the event.
New Zealand and Fiji kicked off the event this year. In Christchurch, New Zealand, more than 100 businesses and thousands of homes were plunged into darkness, computers and televisions were switched off and dinners delayed for the hour from 8 to 9 p.m. Suva, Fiji, in the same time zone, also turned off its lights.
Auckland's Langham Hotel switched from electric lights to candles as it joined the effort to reduce the use of electricity, which when generated creates greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
After Australia, lights will go out in major Asian cities, including Manila and Bangkok before moving to Europe and North America as the clock ticks on. One of the last major cities to participate will be San Francisco -- home to the soon-to-be dimmed Golden Gate Bridge.
"What's amazing is that it's transcending political boundaries and happening in places like China, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea," said Earth Hour executive director Andy Ridley. "It really seems to have resonated with anybody and everybody."
Organizers see the event as a way to encourage the world to conserve energy. While all lights in participating cities are unlikely to be cut, it is the symbolic darkening of monuments, businesses and individual homes they are most eagerly anticipating.
Even popular search engine Google put its support behind Earth Hour, with a completely black Web page and the words: "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn."
"It is a wake-up call," said Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. "We need to really plan for our future. (Earth Hour) is something we can all do together. Going global is very empowering."
Six women in burqas, all from the same family, tried to set themselves ablaze outside the Uttar Pradesh assembly building here Friday to protest harassment by a bully.
Timely arrival of the police prevented them from carrying out their mission.
They said they were trying to extreme step to draw the attention of authorities to harassment by a local bully.
The women have been arrested and booked for attempting to commit suicide.
Senior Superintendent of Police Lucknow Akhil Kumar said: "60-year-old Shamim Bano was being harassed by a local tough against whom she had lodged a FIR (police report) for alleged oppression of her son, who was eventually driven to end his life about a month back."
He said: "Bano's son, Mohammad Salim, was a pavement shopkeeper who committed suicide because of alleged extortion by some toughs of the locality. Since she named them in her FIR, they went about threatening her with dire consequences. Virtually driven against the wall, she decided to immolate herself along with her sister, widowed daughter-in-law and three daughters."
Police is now on the lookout for two people - Mohammad Anis and Mohammad Yunus - who were alleged to be responsible not only for the suicide by Bano's son but also for driving the entire family to this pass.
Credits for this post to www.wakeuplater.com
I was in high school in the mid-nineties when I first encountered the ever-expanding world of websites. At the time, I didn't realize that my future career would rely on this industry -- one which did not exist when I was in elementary school. Now in the year 2008, having created websites for over half my life, I look back and see how much websites have changed in the last decade and a half. At the same time, I can see how little they've changed as well, and I've realized that the internet as we know it today is only a teenager, with many years of growth still ahead. So in the vein of change, let's look at ten popular websites and their evolution throughout the last many years. (Note: All pictures can be clicked on to view a larger size.)
Apple Today / 5 Years Ago / 10 Years Ago
Apple has always championed solid design and simplicity and their websites have followed these axioms. Except for their early websites which (like everyone else) utilized the upper-left logo and left-aligned website, all their websites in recent memory have employed center-top navigation, ample use of Helvetica, and gridlike simplicity.
Amazon Today / 9 Years Ago
Amazon has changed very little over the years, perhaps because they made sure it was right the first time. Amazon has always pioneered customer experience and although they have the least-updated design of any website here, it's probably because it works. Because in website design (especially in the retail world), a website's first concern is not a "cool design," but fulfillment of its purpose (in this case, maximum sales).
Adobe Today / 5 Years Ago / 9 Years Ago / 12 Years Ago
Over the years, Adobe has had the difficult task of portraying themselves as a software company (product links and information first) and as a creative company (large pictures and imaginative layouts). I think their current design does both well. It's interesting to see that the early site has as many images as it does in a time when 56k modems were "blazing fast."
CNN Today / 5 Years Ago / 8 Years Ago
At first glance, it seems that a news site like CNN hasn't changed much, but when you look at the layout, typography, and inclusion of new media (like web video), you'll see how much better the current website is. (Granted, it looks like the oldest version here might be missing its CSS, but it's still lagging behind in design.)
Nike Today / 5 Years Ago / 8 Years Ago
As you can see below, even their early sites strove to be hip with consumers. The second image shows how in the last several years, most larger websites require international compatibility and like many other companies, Nike requires new visitors to pick a locale. Nowadays, Nike uses almost all Flash in their site and they continously win Flash awards for these sites.
Yahoo Today / 4 Years Ago / 8 Years Ago / 12 Years Ago
Yahoo defined the gateway/homepage concept and they've always had a text-heavy front page. In recent years, they've really cleaned up their design to incorporate straighter lines, more uniform typography, and easier-to-manage content (via DHTML tabs). Also note that among all these sites, the last few years have really helped the design quality of websites. I wonder if that's because more great designers are now being educated and entering the field of website design whereas before, many sites were designed by "techies."
Microsoft Today / 5 Years Ago / 10 Years Ago
Microsoft has always been a technology company with a strong audience among technologists and programmers. As you can see, their past sites have always followed this demographic, disseminating content as quickly and efficiently as possible. Only in the past couple years has Microsoft's website really begun to appeal to consumers in a fun way. Many feel it's a bit pretentious, but Microsoft really does need to adjust to a world where "look and feel" has become so paramount to computer users.
ESPN Today / 8 Years Ago
ESPN has always followed a simple formula: Show the main stories on the front page, supplement them with links to other popular stories, and then have easy-to-find linkage for every sport they cover. As the years have gone on, they've continued to find more ways to utilize Flash, javascript, and asynchronous technologies to deliver more information in better ways (like the rotating scoreboard in their current site). Now if only the audio on their current site wouldn't autoplay...
Starbucks Today / 7 Years Ago
Although their website from seven years ago looks dated, it's still much "cooler" than what you would expect from 2001. Furthermore, you can see that good use of CSS and actual text has all but eliminated the kind of sites where the entire front page was sliced images.
MTV Today / 5 Years Ago / 10 Years Ago / 11 Years Ago
The problem with trying to cater to current trends of culture is that you regret it all the more in the years ahead (flannel shirts anyone?). It's hard to believe that they had a Java version of their site and even harder to believe that they sported a "Best Viewed with IE" badge. In the second image, they seemed to swing too far in the "news" direction, but nowadays, have settled down nicely.
In Conclusion
Although it's easy to laugh at the past designs of many of these websites while praising current designs, remember that you are a contemporary of 2008 and five years from now, you might think that even these current sites are a mess. Overall, I'm sure most would agree that design standards have been raised over the last decade, and it will be exciting to see what the next ten years hold...
The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) will be setting up a committee to examine if anti-conversion laws in India throttle people's freedom to practise any faith, says panel chief Mohammad Shafi Qureshi.
"Several states have enacted legislations to regulate conversion from one religion to another and maintain public order. It is high time to examine if the provisions of state legislations violate the constitution that guarantees freedom of religion," Qureshi told IANS.
"A committee will be set up to look into different aspects of conversion laws and suggest remedial measures to remove irritants, if any, for communal peace and harmony. People's constitutional rights need to be protected," said Qureshi, a former governor and union minister.
Several states, including Orissa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Arunachal Pradesh have enacted legislation to check religious conversion through "fraud, force and inducement" or any other such means.
"Nobody can support religious conversion through coercion. The law of land must prevail if anyone is found guilty of effecting conversion through coercive measures. At the same time, it must also be ensured that the people's absolute right to practise and preach any religion is preserved," Qureshi said.
He said the panel would formalise the blueprint for the new committee in the next meeting of the commission.
"It is one of the priority concerns of the commission, and will set up the committee as soon as possible," Qureshi added.
There are many takers for preserving the constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Said J. Kuldip Singh, senior vice president of the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee: "The people should be allowed to practise the religion of their choice and no organisation should be permitted into acts of religious conversion and re-conversion through coercion or inducements. Such things disturb communal peace and harmony."
Chairperson of city-based Friends For Education Firoz Bakht Ahmed added: "We do not need any anti-conversion laws. Indians are mature to take decisions like which religion they should practise. Yet many states have enacted legislation on conversion.
"There is a need to see that such laws do not subvert the people's constitutional right to practise a religion of their choice."
The National Commission of Minorities Act 1992 puts those practising Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism as minority communities.
The conversion controversy has always veered around "tribals and others". They are found to be more vulnerable to conversions effected through "inducements" or other such means.
On March 17, the NCM had called a closed-door meeting of minority MPs here to discuss "the state laws on conversion and their impact on the right to freedom of religion".
Participants at the meeting expressed the need to look into anti-conversion laws and other issues confronting minorities.
According to the 2001 Census, minorities account for 18.4 percent of the country's total population.
Muslims constitute 13.4 percent, Christians 2.3 percent , Sikhs 1.9 percent, Buddhists 0.8 percent and Parsis (Zoroastrians) 0.07 percent. Muslims constitute 72.8 percent of the country's total minority population of 189.5 million.
They may be barely literate but for the women at the forefront of this people's movement the focus is clear - education.
For the nearly 500,000 members of the National Alliance for Fundamental Right to Education (NAFRE), it's a matter of pride that 32 of their 48 leaders in different parts of the country are women.
Hailing from rural backgrounds and belonging to minority communities, they understand the ground realities of their lives and have a deep commitment towards the movement's objective.
Take Tara Kranti of Jharkhand for instance.
Clad in a multicoloured sari and wearing bright red vermilion on the parting of her hair, Kranti was one of the over 500 members of NAFRE in the capital this week for the conclusion of their two-month 'Jann Haq Yatra' (Journey for the rights of people).
The yatra began Jan 23 in 15 states where the movement is functional, bringing to the forefront specific issues. So if West Bengal concentrated on the issue of special economic zones, Jammu and Kashmir demanded repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act.
The representatives of each state came together in the capital, putting forth their demands to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
"NAFRE works for a number of issues but our primary focus is education. And I strongly believe in this objective. Education, especially for women, is an absolute must. Without that, she doesn't know her rights which the law of the land has endowed upon her," Kranti told IANS.
Having studied till Class 10, Kranti said education was the only tool to curb the negative trend of female foeticide.
"So many girls are getting killed every day, sometimes even before they are born. People have to be made to understand that if their daughters are educated, then even they can seek employment like their sons and support them financially. They are therefore not a burden to the family," she said.
Nasreen of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh added that education was important because it taught people to question.
"Education helps break barriers and teaches one to question, ask why this is happening and why that is not. There are so many laws which are aimed at protecting women, but because most of the rural women are illiterate, they are oblivious to these things," Nasreen said.
But in their endeavour to spread the message of education, these women have understood there are various limitations as well.
"When we go from house to house in the villages and tell the people the importance of education, most of them and especially the women, give us bored uninterested looks. Their question is how education is going to benefit them immediately.
"That made us realise that we need to change our approach. So instead of giving them books right away, we started telling the women what their rights were if they got beaten up by their husbands or harassed for dowry. That got them interested and made them eager to know more," said Lakhi Das of Jharkhand.
Agreed Bhaleria Guriya of Sambalpur, Orissa: "We had similar experiences in our villages. To encourage more girls to join school, we told the parents that if their girls are educated, they could seek employment like their sons and support them financially. That seems to have worked because a larger number of girls are now going to school in our village than before," she said.
Indo-Asian News Service
The government has decided to establish four new Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and six Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) campuses, Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh said Friday.
The new IITs will come up in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab, while the IIMs will be set up in Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Haryana.
Singh told reporters: "The prime minister has approved the proposals made by us for the location of these four new IITs and six IIMS."
Indo-Asian News Service
The Indian home ministry never tires of finding newer classifications to present a much diminished perception of the intensity and spread of the Communist Party of India-Maoist, better known as Naxalites.
Based on information provided by his officials, Home Minister Shivraj Patil told the Rajya Sabha March 19 that "a mere 14,000 villages out of a total of 650,000 villages are Maoist-affected, which accounts for just two percent of the total number of villages in the country".
It is intriguing why mention was not made of the number of towns that are Maoist affected, and their percentage. The omission was perhaps made because no violent activities were reported from towns and cities. Nevertheless, it is by now well known that the rebels use towns and cities for rest, recreation and recuperation as well as for logistics support.
It is an altogether different issue that the Maoists have a certain 'urban presence', and have devised an action plan to build a strong and vibrant 'urban movement'. In 2007 alone, three top-ranking leaders of the all-powerful Central Committee and the Central Military Commission (CMC) were caught in towns/cities: Malla Raji Reddy in Kerala, Sridhar Krishnan Srinivasan alias Vishnu in Mumbai and Misir Besra alias Bhaskar alias Sunirmal in Jharkhand.
Barely three weeks ago, the West Bengal State Committee secretary of the rebels, Somen alias Sumanand alias Suman, was arrested in Kolkatta. It is believed that Somen heads the five-member Urban Sub Committee set up by the Central Committee in January 2007 to review the Urban Perspective Plan -- which is some kind of blueprint to spearhead the urban movement.
The home ministry, it appears, is of the view that as long as statistics present a 'rosy picture', it does not really matter if the Maoists run an elaborate logistics network stretching across towns and villages in various states. Thus, one should turn a blind eye to the unearthing of an arms-making-cum-R&D unit of the Maoists in Bhopal Jan 10, 2007.
On Jan 12, 2007, another arms-making unit was busted in Rourkela, Orissa. Raids in Andhra Pradesh in September 2006 led to the unearthing of an elaborate pan-India network -- involved in manufacturing empty rocket shells and knocked-down kits of rocket launchers -- which originated in the Ambattur industrial estate, a suburb of Chennai.
For long, the home ministry has maintained and disseminated statistics about the number of affected districts. At the time the Congress took power in 2004, the common perception was that 53 districts in nine states were Maoist-affected. The previous government was revealing just the number of highly affected districts. The figure 53 corresponded to this.
Breaking from practice, in early 2005 the government informed parliament that 126 districts in 12 States were Naxalite-affected; of these 76 districts in nine states were said to be "badly (highly) affected". The 126 districts included "highly affected", "moderately affected", "marginally affected" and "targeted districts". Thus, suddenly, the expanse of the Maoist presence seemed huge. This created a flutter. Ever since, the home ministry has made tireless efforts to retrieve lost ground, to present a diminished view of rebel-presence.
As part of its efforts to address the issue, the home ministry has an initiative known as "Public Perception Management". Its objective is to create antipathy among the people towards the Maoists by highlighting their misdeeds, mistakes and macabre violence. Instead, this exercise has degenerated into 'managing the people's perception' of the Maoist problem through a clever concealing of facts and playing with numbers.
Thus, in 2006, in the annual report of the home ministry and in the "Status Paper on the Naxal Problem", the ministry introduced this "new" classification of the number of police stations where Maoists were active. It contended that a mere 509 police stations of the total 8,695 police stations in 12 states had reported Maoist violence. This would account for 5.85 percent of the total.
Two points need to be noted. One, the home ministry statistics relate to the number of police stations from which Maoist violence was reported, not the number in which Maoist presence has been noticed. Two, if one were to consider the 509 stations as a percentage of the total number of police stations in the country -- 12,476, then the figure will be different -- and lower. In its annual report for 2006-07, the ministry noted: "Of the total 12,476 police stations, Naxal violence has been reported during 2006 from 395 police stations..." This would give the impression that only four percent of the stations are problematic.
Patil also said in his reply on March 19 that 300 police stations in the country were Maoist affected - this comes to 2.14 percent of the stations nationwide.
By merely changing the denominator from total number of police stations in affected states to the total number of police stations across the country, the percentage figure just dips!
As it were, in their latest endeavour to assure us that we are safe and secure, home ministry officials seem to have prompted Patil to say March 19 that "the Naxalite problem is confined to only two percent of the country's 650,000 villages". It was added that the number of Naxal violence related incidents at 700 accounts for a mere 1.1 percent of the total extremist-related incidents.
(P.V. Ramana is Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. He is author of "The Naxal Challenge - Causes, Linkages and Policy Options" and can be contacted at talepuramana@gmail.com)
Indo-Asian News Service
The violent death of Rajbir Singh, Delhi Police's much decorated police officer, threw the spotlight once again on India's Dirty Harrys who lived by the gun, earned their fame and notoriety through it and, as in Rajbir's case, died by it.
With over 50 extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals under his belt, Singh, 48, who was murdered Monday by a man said to be his friend of 20 years, earned the reputation in the last decade for taking on the "dirtiest" cases and resolving them - even if it involved the violation of the suspects' basic human rights.
"Dirty Harry" was a Hollywood movie on Inspector Harry Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood). Callahan's nickname, "Dirty Harry", was a reference to his reputation for taking on the "dirtiest" cases and resolving them even if it involved the violation of criminals' rights.
In Indian lexicon, these were called "encounter specialists", police sharpshooters who bumped off their criminal adversaries without legal sanction after making their 'encounters' with them look like shootouts.
Singh, Delhi Police's "encounter specialist", has also been accused of hiring out his services for builders and landlords and his brutal death proved his dangerous liaison with the latter.
His first brush with fame came in 1994 with the arrest of notorious and most dreaded criminal Virendra Jatta from Haryana, following which he was promoted to the rank of inspector.
The next big ticket targets were gangsters Rajbir Ramola and his accomplice Inder Pal Singh in March 1995. Ramola was accused in over 40 cases of murder, robbery, extortion and kidnapping.
A few years later Singh won more laurels for killing a rewarded criminal Ranpal Gujjar in Faridabad. The shoot-out brought another out-of-turn promotion for Singh, who joined Delhi Police in 1982 as a sub inspector.
Singh was promoted to assistant commissioner of police and was posted in west District. And with that the killings of more high-profile criminals continued unhindered.
The controversial cop killed at least 38 ultras and hard-core criminals in Delhi and its adjoining areas.
But in 2002 the ace sharpshooter became the cynosure of many watchful eyes with the "encounter" of two alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants at the sprawling shopping mall Ansal Plaza. An eyewitness, Sri Krishna stoutly maintained that the two alleged militants were shot at point blank range.
India's other Dirty Harrys are Mumbai's Daya Nayak and Pradeep Sharma and D.G. Vanjhara from Gujarat.
All these people flourished due to political patronage, with out-of-turn promotions and departmental benefits even as they gave protection to key political figures and indulged in actions that were not completely within their purview.
Daya Nayak, perceived as Mumbai's 'encounter specialist' cop, now faces prosecution over charges that he made millions by renting out his services.
Starting his life as a waiter in a small Udupi hotel in Mumbai, Nayak joined as a lowly sub-inspector in the Juhu police station and within no time worked his way into the charmed special squad.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) probing Nayak reportedly recovered at least Rs.90 million worth of illegal assets in separate raids.
Nayak's monthly salary was a mere Rs.12,000 but investigations revealed that he was a partner in a Dubai hotel, which boasted of a lavish dance bar and also had a flat in Switzerland in his wife Komal's name.
Nayak's colleague inspector Pradeep Sharma created a record of sorts with over 100 killings.
One of the rare Mumbai police officers to find a place in Time magazine for his action against the underworld, Sharma gunned down the gangsters in a span of nearly 14 years.
Gujarat's Vanjhara, a man who rose up the ranks, is alleged to have amassed assets amounting to Rs.1.5 billion including bungalows and hotels in and around Gandhinagar.
"It is clear that some policemen are increasingly functioning as the personal assassins of politicians. The cops are sometimes pressurized to carry out such orders in lieu of personal benefits," said a senior police officer
"The alleged encounter specialists deliberately choose to come closer to politicians for better postings and perks. The current system provides power to these ministers to transfer officials anywhere in the state," the official added.
Indo-Asian News Service
There is a new option for car-buyers in India. Maruti will launch its new model, the Swift D'Zire on Wednesday.
The sedan version of the Swift is expected to cost around Rs 75,000 more than the hatchback. It will be launched in both petrol and diesel options.
Suzuki is looking to compete in the entry-level mid-size segment with the Tata Indigo and Renault Logan.
With plans to further consolidate its position in the big-car segment, Maruti [Get Quote] Suzuki on Wednesday launched its new entry level sedan Swift DZire with an introductory price ranging from Rs 4,49,000 to Rs 6,70,000 (ex-showroom Delhi).
The DZire, the seventh model Maruti Suzuki has launched in the last three years, comes in both in diesel and petrol variants powered by 1.3 litre engines.
The petrol variant will cost Rs 4,49,000 to Rs 5,90,000 and the diesel Rs 5,39,000 to Rs 6,70,000.
"It has a special place in our product strategy. Millions of Indians own compact cars. With growing incomes and better lifestyle, many of them want to upgrade to a sedan. But on Wednesday, they are not able to find an entry level sedan that offers style, features and performance. The DZire offers all this, and at an attractive price," Maruti Suzuki India Managing Director S Nakanishi said.
The DZire, which offers features, including integrated stereo, steering mounted audio controls, automatic climate control, power windows and dual airbags, has come as replacement of MSI's earlier mid-size sedan Esteem.
It is being launched at a time when the company has managed to race past competition in the mid-sized sedan segment (A3) selling nearly 41,000 units in the April-February period of this fiscal.
While continuing to lead India's small car market, Maruti Suzuki has emerged as the market leader in the A3 segment as well during 2007-08.
The car boasts of added leg room and more space in the boot and is said to be the replacement for the Esteem. The Esteem was phased out in the later half of 2007 on account of poor demand.
However, whether this Swift sedan will ever make it out of India is doubtful now that Suzuki has already debuted the SX4 sedan in North America and Europe.
A US satellite has captured chilling images of over 400 square kilometres of Antarctica's massive Wilkins Ice Shelf collapsing because of rapid climate changes.
The area is part of the much larger shelf of nearly 13,000 square kilometres that is now supported only by a narrow strip of ice between two islands.
"If there is a little bit more retreat, this last 'ice buttress' could collapse and we'd likely lose about half the total ice shelf area in the next few years," warned Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
In the past 50 years, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on earth, rising by 17.27 degrees Celsius per decade.
The university said NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer captured the images.
"We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years, but warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up," said Scambos, who first spotted the collapse earlier this month.
Satellite images indicate the Wilkins began its collapse on Feb 28. Data revealed that a large iceberg, measuring 41.03 by 2.41 kilometres, fell away from the ice shelf's southwestern front, triggering a runaway disintegration of 569.79 square kilometre of the shelf interior.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad sheet of permanent floating ice on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula roughly 1,600 kilometres south of South America.
The edge of the shelf crumbled into the sky-blue pattern of exposed deep glacial ice that has become characteristic of climate-induced ice shelf break-ups such as the Larsen B ice shelf break-up in 2002, said Scambos.
A narrow beam of intact ice about 5.95 kilometres wide was protecting the remaining shelf from further break-up as of March 23, he added.
Scientists track ice shelves and study collapses carefully because some of them hold back glaciers, which, if unleashed, can accelerate and raise sea levels, Scambos said.
"The Wilkins disintegration won't raise the sea level because it already floats in the ocean, and few glaciers flow into it. However, the collapse underscores that the Wilkins region has experienced an intense melt season."
With Antarctica's summer melt season drawing to a close, scientists do not expect the Wilkins to further disintegrate in the next several months.
"This unusual show is over for this season," Scambos said. "But come January, we'll be watching to see if the Wilkins continues to fall apart."
Indo-Asian News Service
Army's help has been sought to rescue the two-year-old girl Vandana who fell into a 45-foot borewell at Tehra village in Agra on Tuesday night while playing with her friends.
The rescue operation started soon after the villagers complained about the incident to the authorities. The Army and the civil authorities have so far succeeded in sending in oxygen for the girl with the help of a tube.
Armed personnel manning the rescue operation said that the child was breathing and could be heard crying.
Agra Commissioner Sitaram Meena said, "The rescue team has managed to dig a 40-feet hole. I think it is just a matter of another two hours before the child can be pulled out to safety."
Agra District Magistrate Mukesh Kumar Meshram said, "We have been able to provide the child with glucose water and biscuits. She is conscious right now. Work is also being done to dig a parallel well as an alternative means of rescue."
Earlier, in a similar incident, a five-year-old boy, Prince, fell into a 53 feet and 1.5 wide shaft in Shahbad, Haryana in July 2006. He was rescued from the pit after over two days of continuous rescue operations by the Army.
Army personnel had dug up a 56-feet deep, 15-feet wide parallel tunnel from a dried up well alongside the shaft to rescue Prince after almost 50 hours.
Later, three more similar incidents were also reported in Madhya Pradesh. (ANI)
Indian history abounds in lores of brave women who sacrificed themselves to protect the honour of the country, clan, family and personal dignity. But rarely has a woman of Indian origin defended a foreign country and allowed herself to be tortured and shot to death by enemy forces - not out of compulsion, but out of choice.
London-based journalist Shrabani Basu's non-fiction "The Spy Princess" chronicles the extraordinary tale of India's lone allied spy in Europe during the World War II, Noor Inayat Khan, a Sufi girl who was shot dead by the Gestapo at the infamous prison of Dachau.
A descendant of Tipu Sultan, Noor was awarded the George Cross, the highest British civilian honour, posthumously. Nafisa Ali released the paperback edition of the book Tuesday evening at the Oxford Bookstore in the capital.
"On Sep 13, 1944, Noor Inayat Khan, the first female wireless operator to be flown into occupied France, was shot at Dachau. Noor was born in Moscow and was raised in the Sufi style of Islam. From this unlikely background, she became the only secret agent in Europe in World War II.
"Brought up in France and Britain, Noor joined the Red Cross when the war broke out. She felt that she had to do more to oppose the horrors of fascism. In Britain, she trained as a wireless operator before being recruited by the SOE (Special Operations Executive)," goes the gist on the book jacket.
She was known as agent Nora Baker and then became Madeleine for the French Resistance - one of the few tough agents the Germans could not crack. And till her death, the Nazis knew her by no other name apart from Madeleine.
Shyam Benegal is making "The Spy Princess" into a movie.
"More than anyone else, I want children to read the book so that they can learn about the virtues of courage and sacrifice," the author, who has worked for more than 20 years as the London correspondent of the Ananda Bazar Patrika group, told IANS.
"I have received a book from Year 6 primary school students in UK. It is a project titled 'Liberty' about the life of Noor Inayat based on the book. It is full of imaginary conversations.
"I want it to happen in India too, but I have too little time to promote it personally. I want to see postage stamps of Noor Inayat and comic strip series on her life - like the Amar Chitra Katha," Basu said.
She will be touring the East and the West coasts of US with the book where Omega Publishing is releasing it next month.
However, Basu refuses to divulge details about the movie. "The cast has not been decided and I will have to go through the final screenplay. I leave characters and the cast to your imagination," laughs the author.
The book is the result of three years of relentless research.
"Actually two years of compiling documents and a year of writing," Basu says.
The inspiration was an innocuous newspaper clipping announcing 50 years of Noor Inayat's death.
"There were five lines. 'Noor Inayat, wireless operator, George Cross winner of Indian Muslim origin...' It set me thinking and I started researching about her. It is difficult to believe that she went through all this," recalls the author.
Eyewitness accounts, interrogation, records of war crime tribunals, Noor's telegrams - and three letters that described what happened to Noor helped Basu thread the story.
Basu was helped by Noor's family, which provided her with details of her childhood. "I interacted a lot with them," she said.
"She was so beautiful that everyone, including her code maker, was in love with her," says Basu.
Noor Inayat had two failed relationships.
"But I am sure that there was a mystery man in her life because before she left for France she had said she would marry upon her return. But she did not come back. I searched high and low for the man but could not find. My guess is he died or else he would have been in touch with her family," Basu said.
The author is working on her new non-fiction, a volume on Queen Victoria and "someone".
"It is more exhaustive than 'Spy Princess'. Doing a non-fiction is so much more fun. It is rooted in life," Basu said.
Indo-Asian News Service
Assistant Commissioner of Delhi Police Rajbir Singh was shot dead on the outskirts of the national capital allegedly by a property dealer following a dispute over money.
The suspect, Vijay Bhardwaj, has been arrested and the weapon used in the crime has been recovered, the police said.
The incident occurred Monday evening when Singh, known as an "encounter specialist" for the number of alleged criminals he had shot down, had gone to collect Rs.6 million from Bhardwaj at his office on Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road here.
Singh, who otherwise had top security cover (Z plus category) due to threats from various terrorist organisations, had only one personal security officer (PSO) with him when he went to meet the property dealer.
According to police sources, Singh and Bhardwaj had shared a drink before exchanging heated arguments over a dispute involving property.
The sources said Singh had asked his PSO to remain outside the room while he was talking to Bhardwaj.
After killing Singh, Bhardwaj called the media and the police to confess the murder.
Bhardwaj in his statement recorded at the Sector 40 police station here, has admitted that a scuffle broke out between them over a money dispute following which he pumped two bullets into Singh's body.
"Rajbir Bhai Sahib, ACP Delhi Police, and I had some long standing money dispute and he (Rajbir) was pressurising me for the past five-six months to pay the money or else face dire consequences," Bhardwaj told reporters outside his office.
"I was too scared. Once I tried to commit suicide but my family prevented me. Monday was the deadline for arranging the money but I failed," Bhardwaj said before he was whisked away by the police.
Singh's body has been sent for post-mortem examination and forensic teams were collecting evidence from the scene.
He headed the special operations squad of the Delhi Police's crime branch and was also involved in the successful investigation of terrorist attack on parliament in 2001.
Singh, who had served for six years with the Delhi Police special cell, had earlier been transferred to Delhi Armed Police (DAP) and later to the traffic department after tapes of his purported conversations with a contractor on a land deal were made public.
Later, a vigilance probe gave him a clean chit stating that a retired police official connived with others and recorded his phone calls illegally to settle scores with him.
He started his career as a sub-inspector in 1982 and climbed up the hierarchy through a series of shootouts. Singh was involved in nearly 50 shootouts.
Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat said officials were investigating why security officers did not accompany Singh, when they were supposed to.
Deputy Commissioner of Delhi Police (Crime Branch) Anil Shukla said: "We received the call from the Gurgaon police about the incident. A team was rushed to Gurgaon to confirm the victim's identity.
"We are providing full support to the Gurgaon police in their investigations."
Indo-Asian News Service
His rise from a sub inspector to a high profile assistant commissioner of police was as sensational as the violent end to his life. Delhi Police's 'encounter specialist' Rajbir Singh was murdered Monday night - ending a career that was as controversial as it was illustrious.
ACP Rajbir Singh, who was allegedly shot dead by a property dealer in the suburb of Gurgaon, had courted many controversies during his otherwise remarkable career that began in 1982 when he entered the Delhi Police as a sub inspector.
Shunted out of the Crime Branch following his alleged links with a drug mafia and touted as a 'property grabber', Rajbir Singh last year returned as the head of the newly established Special Operation Squad, a special anti-terror cell.
Rajbir, who had over 50 'kills' to his credit, had become the face of counter-terrorism operations in the capital. He was the man instrumental in cracking the attack on parliament in 2001 and the Red Fort in 2000.
Rajbir was the only officer in the police history to be promoted to the rank of ACP in just 13 years.
His first brush with fame came in 1994 with the arrest of notorious criminal Virendera Jat following which he was promoted to the rank of inspector. The next big ticket targets were gangsters Rajbir Ramola and Ranpal Gujjar. He was then posted as ACP (operations) in west district.
"Rajbir Singh was an able police officer of the Delhi Police and had two promotions during his career," ACP Rajan Baghat said.
The word 'encounter' entered the lexicon in the mid-1990s when gangsters from western Uttar Pradesh began making forays into the capital. Rajbir was among the most prominent 'encounter specialists' at the time.
He came into the limelight Nov 3, 2002 when he allegedly killed two 'terrorists' in basement of the Ansal Plaza shopping mall in south Delhi. A man, Hari Krishna, who claimed he saw the deaths labelled it fake. Later, suspicions were raised about the genuineness of the operations supervised by him.
Rajbir's alleged links with a drug trafficker came to the fore after a telephonic conversation between them -- tapped by the narcotics wing -- was leaked to the media. An inquiry headed by the joint commissioner of police (Vigilance) was ordered.
The Delhi High Court also issued notices to him and other officers on charges that he and his colleagues manhandled some people in west Delhi's Kirti Nagar in connection with a property dispute.
Despite the many controversies, Rajbir was not shifted out of the Special Cell.
But circumstances, and maybe one of the many controversies that dogged him, caught up with him Monday night.
Indo-Asian News Service
In a rare signed piece, India TV Editor-in-Chief Rajat Sharma has suggested a rethink on elitist, insensitive and hypocritical judgements against television news channels. The signed piece will appear in the FICCI-FRAMES publication which has been produced by indiantelevision.com. FICCI-FRAMES kicks off at Mumbai on March 25, 2008 and Mr Sharma will be a key speaker there. The text of the piece is reproduced below --
The Pot and The Kettle
By Rajat Sharma
When my friend Amit Mitra invited me to speak at FICCI-FRAMES on, "Is News Entertainment: changing face of television news in India," I hoped that he will have a similar session for the print media.
I was wrong!
Perhaps, FICCI doesn't see the need to put our friends in the print industry in the dock. Yet, it sees merit in putting together four founders and news managers of India's top TV channels, on Tuesday, to defend ourselves and our editorial credentials.
As I prepare myself for the challenge of accepting Amit's invitation, there is little left to my imagination on what FICCI thinks of me and my tribe of television journalists (read Hindi television journalists).
The inaugural brochure is judgemental! In the three sentences introducing our session, the brochure says "The very concept of news delivery and content has changed to the extent that there is now a thin line between news and entertainment channels."
What thin line, how thin, and defined by whom hasn't exactly been left to our collective imaginations: The next and final line of the brochure promises that "this session will discuss the present scenario of `news' and future trends."
The use of single inverted commas to describe TV news, tells me what FICCI thinks of TV news (read Hindi TV news)!
For me, the inverted commas isn't just about two punctuation marks. It represents an elitist mindset and insensitivity to the information needs of millions of Indians.
In fact, let me go beyond elitism and insensitivity. Let me add a third dimension, ie, hypocrisy.
A brief comment on all three--
First, I disagree with the elitist mindset of describing news on (Hindi) TV channels in single inverted commas, because it tells me that only a few hundred intellectuals (influenced by print publications, columnists and niche channels in our country) know what really news is.
Next, I talk of insensitivity because intellectuals who rue over the state of news channels forget the niche audiences that they serve (usually in thousands and at the most of a few lakhs) against the several millions of that a top Hindi television news channel like India TV does.
Finally, the hypocrisy behind the single inverted commas hurts, when I consider the one hour that I spend in the morning reading the most respected dailies and news weeklies in our country. Let me rest my case with a recent example. Printed below a long, self-righteous news story on democratic rights of Tibetans was this unprintable sms joke asking why women like gold more than they like boys! (The reply said something about `the number of carrots' that gold has.in my view so repulsive that it spoilt my morning). Yet, no one has called this respected newspaper a `news'paper!?
It's time some of us did. Between now and the next FICCI-FRAMES, I suggest that those who punctuate the word news on (Hindi) TV channels in single inverted commas should do the same to our top `news' magazines who place lurid sex surveys on their covers. These lovers of single inverted commas should question lewd stills of Paris Hilton's lip locks on the colour pages of our important newspapers. Not to mention instructive details of Ms Hilton's sexual preferences, usually with pointers on Page 1. How about questioning the acres on `news' space devoted to Pam Anderson, with no rationale to support the flesh? What of Bipasha Basu longingly lying over her beau on the covers of our most venerated film magazine, helpfully advertised in the sister newspaper?
Suffice to say that unlike our friends in the print, Hindi television news informs, as per TAM's representative sample of what ordinary people want to know; and in the idiom of the news consumer, without the elitism, the insensitivity and the hypocrisy.
The kettle doesn't call the pot black. Should the pot do the same? We'll see next year. Right, Amit?
About Rajat Sharma and Independent News Service Private Limited (INS):
Rajat Sharma is Chairman of Independent News Service (INS) and Editor-in-Chief of India TV. INS was co-founded by Mr Sharma and Ritu Dhawan in 1998. Mr Sharma edited important publications before entering television in 1992 with the iconic 'Aap Ki Adalat' and India's first private news bulletin.
With 20 years of work behind her, Ms Dhawan is one of India's senior most television producers.
INS launched India TV in August 2004. Today it has a talent pool of 400+ personnel. As per TAM, India TV is a leader, on the Elite Panel and in the C&S Hindi news market in terms of shares, TVRs, time spends and audience reverts.
In March last year Fuse+ Media, an entity of ComVentures, a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital and private equity group with over $1.5 billion of assets under management, had placed an equivalent of Rs 50.9 crore of FDI in INS for a 19.17 per cent stake, taking INS's enterprise value to Rs 270 crore. Earlier this year, after another strategic investment, INS's enterprise value stood at Rs 500 crore.