Indian [email protected] RNI No: APENG/2010/35309 www.indianhorizon.org Volume No: 6 English Daily Hyderabad, Wednesday, January 21, 2015 CPI raps Centre on “Black Money”; Suravaram urges Left parties to reunite 2 More trouble for Kejriwal, EC issues another notice for bribe speech Briefs Trinamool Congress Supremo and Chief Minister of WB Mamata Banerjee lights the lamp at the inauguration of Uttarbango Utsav in Siliguri on Tuesday. PTI Tiger population rises to 2226 in 2014, up from 1706 in 2010 New Delhi: Tiger population in the country is estimated to be around 2,226, a rise of over 30 per cent since the last count in 2010, according to the latest census report released on Tuesday. The total number of tigers were estimated to be around 1,706 in 2010. Tiger population had dipped to an alarming 1,411 in 2006 but has improved since then. Releasing the country wide tiger assessment report for 2014, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar termed it as a “success story” and noted that while the tiger population is falling in the world, it is rising in India. “Most of the tigers in the world are presently in India. 70 per cent of the world’s tigers are now in India. We have the world’s best managed tiger reserves. When we last counted the tigers, it was 1,706. The latest estimation shows there are 2,226 tigers. We must be proud of our legacy. We have increased by 30 per cent from the last count. That is a huge success story,” Javadekar said. According to the National Tiger Conservation Authority, India lost 64 tigers in 2014 with Tamil Nadu topping the chart with the maximum number of deaths. HYDERABAD WEATHER FORECAST Min Max 16 28 FAJAR ZOHAR ASAR MAGRIB ISHA Sensex BSE 28,784.67 NSE 8695.60 GOLD 22 CT 28,180 SILVER 1 KG 39,200 Forex Rates Indian Rupees US Dollar British Pound Euro Qatar Riyal Saudi Riyal UAE Dirham 5:26 12:16 3:27 5:50 7:07 61.71 94.05 72.04 16.96 16.55 16.84 public speech made by Kejriwal that invited the EC’s ire was: “it’s election time. When people both from BJP and Congress come offering money, don’t refuse, accept... some have looted money from 2G, some have looted money from coal scam...Take money from both the parties but vote for AAP. “We will fool them this time. They have been deceiving us for the last 65 years. Now it’s our turn,” he had said.The notice said the poll panel “prima facie” was of the opinion that by making the said statement Kejriwal has “violated the model code of conduct” which is in force in the national capital in view of the forthcoming Assembly polls on February 7. Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN) Having introduced the cashless enforcement, the Hyderabad Traffic Police have decided to send legal notices for several challans which are pending against the violators. The legal notices would be sent through speed post with acknowledgement due. If the respondents do not turn up then charges will be framed against such in the court of law for taking necessary action as per law, the Traffic Police said. On Tuesday, some notices have been being issued to violators and further notices would be issued in a phased manner. Price: 3.00 8 New Delhi, Jan 20 (PTI)High drama was witnessed at the BJP office here as angry supporters of Delhi unit chief Satish Upadhyay shouted slogans and staged a sit-in protest against the top leadership for not giving a ticket to him. Upadhyay, on his part, tried to pacify them but the unrelenting supporters kept on shouting slogans against the leadership and demanded that he be fielded from Mehrauli constituency, considered a stronghold of BJP. The BJP leader, who had earlier indicated his willingness to fight the polls, said he voluntarily opted out to focus on campaigning in the entire city. “I want to contest on all the 70 seats. I want to focus on entire Delhi and that is why I am not con- testing. BJP workers want the party to win and this is their feeling.” “These are momentary issues. We want the party to win under Kiran Bedi’s leadership. We have to oust Arvind Kejriwal. I am a worker of the party and it is my responsibility to make BJP victorious,” Upadhyay told his supporters. He said he has decided himself not to contest the elections. “It is my own decision. The Parliamentary Board asked me and I conveyed them my decision.” Supporters of another ticket aspirant Sikha Rai, who is Vice President of Delhi BJP, also staged a protest at the Delhi BJP office openly slamming the senior leaders for denying tickets to her. Amit Shah slams Mamata over Burdwan blast, Trinamool says flop show Burdwan, Jan 20 (IANS) Lashing out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the Saradha chit fund scam and the Burdwan blast, BJP president Amit Shah Tuesday called for uprooting the Trinamool Congress for jeopardising national security for the sake of vote bank. While Shah blamed the Banerjee government for the Burdwan blast in which a Bangladeshi militant outfit was involved, the Trinamool the NGO’s account”. The court further said the inspection in the matter has already been carried out by the ministry of home affairs (MHA) and they have produced no material on record against the NGO here and Greenpeace International. “So at least at this juncture it is not good enough to hold back Greenpeace India from using their account,” it said. It observed that MHA in its reply had stated that Greenpeace India Society (GPIS) can have access to all other foreign funds except those from Greenpeace International as it has been put on a watch-list. Traffic Police serve legal notices to recover pending challans Pages 12 + 4 pull out (P16) New Lankan govt to implement 13th amendment:PM Unblock foreign funds of Greenpeace India: HC to govt New Delhi, Jan 20 (PTI) Delhi high court on Tuesday directed the government to “unblock” foreign contributions to the tune of Rs 1.87 crore received by controversial NGO ‘Greenpeace’ from its Amsterdam headquarters, saying the ministry showed “no material to restrict access” to the foreign fund. “According to me, there is no material on record to restrict the petitioner (Greenpeace India Society) from accessing the bank account with the IDBI bank in Chennai,” Justice Rajiv Shakdher said while observing that the “amount in fixed deposited in the bank be unblocked and transferred to Postal Registration Order No HD/1188/2014-16 Satish Upadhyay’s supporters protest at BJP office, demand ticket for leader Arvind Kejriwal addressing a press conference in New Delhi. PTI New Delhi, Jan 20 (PTI) The Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday issued a showcause notice, the second in last three days, to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal for “prima facie” violation of the poll code by allegedly making a speech where he asked voters to take bribes from BJP and Congress but only vote for his party. The EC notice said the statement, made during a public rally on January 18 in Uttam Nagar here, amounts to “abetting and promoting electoral offence of bribery” under relevant sections of the Representation of People Act read with provisions of the IPC. Read: Iron lady will run over I-run man: BJP on Kejriwal challenge. The [email protected] In memory of Dr Asima Kemal and Prof. Dr. Salim W Kemal Published from Hyderabad & New Delhi Issue No: 19 Horizon in turn dubbed the BJP rally a “flop show” and ridiculed its attempt to uproot the Trinamool from power through “missed calls”. Addressing a Bharatiya Janata Party rally in Burdwan where the Oct 2 blast last year had killed two Bangladeshi militants, Shah hit out at the alleged involvement of Trinamool leaders in the Saradha scam and charged Banerjee with focusing only on trying to save her scam ‘tainted’ leaders. Kejriwal challenges Bedi to debate, BJP declines New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS) Former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal of the AAP Tuesday challenged the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi to a public debate. But the BJP turned it down. The Bharatiya Janata Party called it a popularity stunt of Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, while Bedi said her focus was on “delivery” and not on just debate. Ajay Maken, the Congress’ face in the Delhi polls, meanwhile, agreed to the challenge. Kejriwal, in a message on Twitter, congratulated Bedi for her nomination and said: “I invite you for a public debate moderated by neutral person and telecast by all.” He also said Bedi has blocked him on Twitter. Later, talking to reporters, Kejriwal said: “Ajay Maken, Kiran Bedi and I, all three should have a debate so that people can make an informed choice about selecting their chief minister.” The BJP, however, turned down the proposal, and Bedi said any debate would take place only in the Delhi assembly. “I accept the challenge but I will do it only in the Delhi assembly. Right now, I am focusing on delivery, while debate is all he (Kejriwal) has been doing,” Bedi told reporters. Sunanda Pushkar murder case: Tharoor may be questioned again, says police New Delhi, Jan 20 (PTI) A day after Shashi Tharoor was questioned by Delhi Police in connection with his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s mysterious death, Delhi Police Chief B S Bassi indicated that he could be examined again. Bassi also said that the former Union Minister was “cooperative” during the questioning while maintain- Hyderabad, Jan 20 (PTI) Seven persons have died due to swine flu in Telangana this year and as many as 169 patients are currently undergoing treatment for the H1N1 virus at various hospitals, an official said on Tuesday. “From January 1, we have 169 confirmed cases of swine flu. There have been seven deaths due to the disease this month. Last year, there were 11 deaths in Telangana and 5 deaths in Andhra Pradesh,” Dr K Subhakar, swine flu coordinator of Telangana and ing that their objective was to reach to the bottom of the truth for which they will look into everything “relevant” to the case, including the IPL angle. Police sources said other than various matters that could be related to the incident, 58-year-old Tharoor was also questioned about the IPL controversy. 169 swine flu patients in Telangana, 7 deaths this year pulmonology professor, said. Subhakar said they have started carrying out swine flu test for most of the patients suffering from flu, even though it is not necessary as per Central government guidelines. The situation appears to be grim in the state capital Hyderabad. According to Dr K Narasimhulu, coordinator for swine flu at Gandhi Hospital here, 27 patients of swine flu are currently undergoing treatment in the state-run hospital while 35 cases are under investigation for suspected influenza. The hospital received four fresh cases of the disease to- They said that the police may call the Congress MP for questioning again in the next couple of days even as Bassi noted that some more people will be called as the process of investigation is on. Referring to yesterday’s questioning which started at around 8 PM and continued till midnight, the Police Commissioner said, “We have spoken to him about the background. We have spoken to him about what happened on that day and certain things, which have been said otherwise in the media. They raise certain questions and we sought information on these issues as well.” day from various private hospitals, Narasimhulu said. “Till yesterday we had 23 patients undergoing treatment in our hospital. We received four more cases today. At the same time, 35 suspected cases, including 10 children, are under observation,” he said. Health officials here maintained that swine flu this year is not as virulent as it was in 2009, but high risk groups (those suffering from different serious ailments and low immunity) need to remain alert. 2 Indian Horizon, Hyderabad City Short Takes Medak gets 51 tmc reservoirs; Govt to spend Rs 9000 crore Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Telangana Government today sanctioned 51 tmc capacity reservoirs to Medak district. The project is aimed at catering to the irrigation needs of crops in 5.5 lakh acres in the district. The Government has to spend a whopping Rs 9,000 crore for this project to become functional. Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao said the State government will release the funds to begin the works without further delay. “Our aim is to supply waters to irrigate 5.5 lakh acres”, he said. The minister also said 2,400 villages will get drinking waters through the prestigious water grid project. The Government will spend Rs 4,200 crore on this project, he added. CM okays Nakkalagandi drinking water project Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today approved the long-pending Nakkalagandi Project to provide drinking water to people of Nalgonda district. The Chief Minister gave green signal to the project, which was neglected by the previous governments for quite some time. TRS leaders, including MP B Narsaiah Goud, MLAs Prabhakar Reddy, Sekhar Reddy, Parliamentary secretary G Kishore, Zilla Parishad Chairman Balu Naik and others called on KCR at Secretariat and appealed to him for okaying the drinking water facility. On getting nod for the pending project, the delegation thanked the Chief Minister. The MP alleged that the previous governments had failed to address the drinking water problem in the district. The Chief Minister is resolving the issues on priority basis, he added. KCR’s wife admitted toYashoda for fever Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Shobha, wife of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, has been admitted to the Yashoda Hospital at Somajiguda this morning. She is reportedly suffering from fever. The doctors attending on her said there was nothing to worry about her health and the fever could be due to seasonal changes. KCR visited the hospital in the afternoon and enquired about her health condition. It may be mentioned here that KCR’s daughter and Nizamabad MP K Kavitha too was treated in the same hospital a few days ago. Ministers offer pujas at Nagoba temple Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Telangana Endowments Minister A Indrakaran Reddy, Tribal Development Minister Jogu Ramanna today offered special pujas to Nagoba, the Goddess of Adivasis at Indravelli in Adilabad district. MP G Nagesh, MLAs Surkha Naik and Bapu Rao also offered pujas on the occasion. The MP felicitated the ministers in Adivasi tradition on the occasion. Wanted Maoist couple surrenders Hyderabad, Jan 20 (PTI): A Maoist couple allegedly involved in several offences in Chhattisgarh surrendered before police in Telangana’s Warangal district today, police said. B Bhikshapathi, a divisional committee member involved in several offences and carrying a reward of Rs 5 lakhs on his head, surrendered along with his wife P Rukmini before Warangal Urban Superintendent of Police A K Jha. Rukmini was carrying reward of Rs one lakh, Jha said. Bhikshapathi joined the Naxal movement in 2001. He was un- derground in the initial period in Warangal before being involved in various offences in different districts of Chattisgarh, including attack on police stations, killing of policemen and CRPF personnel and theft of weapons, he said. The surrendered rebel belongs to Warangal district while his wife is a native of Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district, the police officer added. Pocharam leads sugarcane farmers to KVK at Baramathi Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, accompanied by Nizamabad Rural MLA Bajireddy Govardhan, KorUtla MLA Vidyasagar Rao, Director of Sugars Badru Naik and 200 progressive sugarcane farmers visited Krishi Vigyan Kendra at Baramathi in Maharashtra State today. They visited different sugarcane fields and interacted with farmers and scientists there. The KVK Coordinator explained modern methods of cultivation and high yielding varieties of sugarcane through a power point presentation. The Minister and his team members also visited the fields of Dr Pramod Bhagath (organic sugarcane farmer), Rajendra (National Best Sugarcane Farmer Awardee) and Madhukar (Progressive Sugarcane Farmer) at Someshwar. The team also visited Someshwar Sahakar Sugar Factory. FTAPCCI team calls on Iran diplomat in city Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): A delegation led by Anil Reddy Vennam, Senior Vice President, FTAPCCI consisting of Chairman & Members of International Trade Committee, FTAPCCI called on Hassan Nourian, Consul General of Islamic Republic of Iran, here on Tuesday at Consulate Office. Senior officials of the Consulate and business representatives participated and interacted at the meeting. The purpose of the visit was to create awareness about business opportunities and promoting trade and investment partnerships between India and Iran. OU’s B.Ed (Distance Mode) entrance test on Feb 1 Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): Osmania University’s Director of Admissions Prof Ch Gopal Reddy on Tuesday informed all those candidates, who have applied for entrance test and admission into B.Ed.(Distance Mode) for the academic year 201415, that the entrance test would be conducted on February 1 from 11.00 am to 12.30 pm. The downloadable hall tickets would be made available in website “www.osmania.ac.in” by January 22. Candidates without hall tickets would not be allowed to appear for the entrance test, Prof Gopal Reddy said. Recruitment Rally at 1 EME Centre from Feb 2 Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): Under the Unit Headquarter Quota, an Army Recruitment Rally is being conducted at the 1 EME Centre, Secunderabad from 2nd February to 1st March for the sons of War Widows, Ex-servicemen and Servicemen and their own brothers including wards of Territorial Army personnel from any State/Union Territories. The vacancies are available for the posts of Soldier (Technical), Soldier (General duty), Soldier (Tradesmen and Soldier (Musician Category) under X class pass standard. Eligible candidates have been asked to report at the Milkha Singh Stadium of 1 Training Battalion, 1 EME Centre, Bolarum, Secunderabad at 6:00 am on 2nd February along with requisite documents. Wednesday, January 21, 2015 CPI raps Centre on ‘Black Money’; Suravaram urges Left parties to reunite Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Likening seven-month-old BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre to UPA- Rule, CPI general secretary Suraravam Sudhakar Reddy today lambasted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for encouraging corporate culture and miserably failing to keep his promise of bringing back “black money” stashed abroad. Addressing mediapersons at Makhdoom Bhavan along with CPI leaders Dr K Narayana and Chada Venkat Reddy here, Suravaram alleged that the BJP Government has failed on all fronts leading to discontent among people. Accusing the Narendra Modi Government of being unmindful of communal forces and showing no much difference to that of UPA-II Government, the CPI leader said the saffron party has shown its true colours by roping in former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who joined BJP for the sake of chief minister post and will be contesting in Delhi Assembly polls scheduled to be held on February 7. Stating that the BJP would face stiff fight in the elections, he stressed the need for reunification of the Left parties across the nation. He exuded confidence that all the Left parties will get back together probably in three years now and become a unified force at national level to fight 2019 general elections. Stating that the CPI central committee has introduced a new political policy, Sudhakar Reddy said they would disclose its resolution on January 24. He also said the Left parties began to lose ground ever since CPI split. “Now reunification of the Left parties is our agenda to strengthen the party and we will become a strong force at national level in three years to fight other parties”, Sudhakar Reddy said. The CPI with CPM and other Left parties will take on the “anti-people” policies of the BJP Government CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat at a media interaction in Hyderabad on Tuesday. Left Front Chairman Biman Basu is also seen. (PTI Photo) which is encouraging communal elements, he said. “Ours is not an outdated struggle as the Left parties fight on land reforms and problems pertaining to oppressed class. We will fight tooth and nail at all levels against the anti-people and anti- farmer policies of the Government”, he said. Venkaiah addresses 30,000 CPWD employees through video-conferencing Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): Union Minister for Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday reached out to all the 30,000 employees of the public sector construction major Central Public Works Department (CPWD), sharing his concerns over the functioning of the organization and urging them for a change over in the public perception about it. For the first time in the history of the 160 year old CPWD, Naidu addressed all its employees at 33 locations in the country through videoconferencing and live web streaming. Venkaiah Naidu insisted that CPWD needs to achieve a makeover in its working and public perception through timely completion of projects, zero tolerance to corruption, transparency and accountability. During the interaction that lasted over an hour, Naidu directed top brass and all the employees of CPWD to ensure that payments are made from April 2015 to contractors only after social and third party audit of works costing more than Rs 5 Crore; Only Online payments by all the 274 divisions from April Digvijay chides T Congress leaders for non-performance Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh today lambasted his party’s senior leaders in the State for not organizing protests against the people’s representatives, who had defected from party. The AICC leader pulled up the leaders for not performing well in the Assembly and also for their failure to strengthen the party in the State. He was speaking at the brainstorming session held with Coordination Committee meeting at Gandhi Bhavan on Tuesday. It was a part of three-day tour of Digvijay Singh. Digvijay reportedly questioned them as to why they failed to launch agitation in a democratic manner KTR seeks 50 pc funds for Water Grid New Delhi, Jan.20 (NSS): Telangana Panchayat Raj Minister K Taraka Ramarao today urged the Centre to provide 50 per cent of funds for the prestigious Telangana Water Grid project. He also urged the Centre to set up a mega powerloom, textile clusters and social security to workers. KTR, who is against the defected MLAs and MLCs. He suggested to the party coordination committee members to lodge complaints against MLAs and MLCs in the High Court and fight for justice. He also lashed out at the leaders for not cooperating with each other in fighting with government’s defective politics and policies. Expressing his displeasure over the party affairs, Digvijay asked the senior leaders to go all with one voice in order to strengthen the party in the State. The AICC leader said, “Except our student organization, all other student organizations were protesting against the TRS government’s FAST Scheme”. in the national capital, called on Union Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Beerendra Singh and sought 50 per cent of funds for the project and release of pending funds for employment guarantee scheme. Speaking to mediapersons later, KTR said the Union minister asked him to meet him again during budget preparations. KTR also called on Union ministers Bandaru Dattatreya, San- which is now being done by half of them; Introduction of Bio-metric attendance markers in all the circle and field units by December 2015; All project managers to reside at the site of work and all cases of pending promotions to be cleared by February this year. The Union Minister noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s suggestion of enhancing ‘Skills, Speed and Scale’ is most suited to CPWD given its scale of operations, skills required and speedy delivery of services and should be adopted forthwith to survive the growing competition. The CPI leader Dr K. Narayana has opposed Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s statement that erstwhile Nizam’s history will be included in Telangana curriculum. “This illogical plan should immediately be withdrawn as Nizam’s rule is notorious for anarchy and torture of people”, he said. He alleged that AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was chanting RSS “manthra” of many children norm only to appease the BJP, the ally of Telugu Desam. However, Naidu’s ideas will not fructify as the BJP has its own agenda in 2019 elections, he added. Four killed, five hurt as van hits culvert in Medak Kondapaka (Medak), Jan.20 (NSS): Four persons were killed on the spot and five others suffered grievous injuries when a Tata Winger dashed against a culvert on the Rajiv Rahadari on the outskirts of Kondapaka mandal headquarters town in the early hours of Tuesday. The condition of four of the injured is stated to be critical. The police personnel were trying to extricate the driver, who got stuck up in the vehicle. The injured were rushed to the regional government hospital at Siddipet in Karimnagar district. Police identified the deceased as natives of Godavarikhani town. The victims were proceeding from Hyderabad to Godavarikhani. Two killed, four hurt in Srikakulam In another accident in Srikakulam district, two persons were killed and four others grievously injured when an Innova car hit a stationary lorry at Subhadrapuram junction on the National Highway No. 16 in Laveru mandal. The car speeding from Visakhapatnam towards Srikakulam dashed against the lorry from behind killing two old persons on the spot. The injured were rushed to the RIMS hospital at Srikakulam. AIIMS to replace Bibinagar NIMS in 400 acres: KCR Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao today announced that an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) will be set up replacing NIMS at Bibinagar in Nalgonda on the city outskirts. The Chief Minister paid a visit to Bibinagar wherein the NIMS hospital is pending for quite some time. The Chief Minister held a review meeting with the officials on the occasion and said Bibinagar will become Health and smart city in the days to come. The CM’s visit assumes significance as the Centre announced AIIMS to thosh Gangwar and Sujana Chowdhary and brought to their notice the issues and problems of Telangana State and sought suitable financial assistance. KTR also said he has spoken to Santhosh Gangwar on setting up of Textile Park and incubator centers in Warangal district. He exuded confidence that Telangana issues and problems will be resolved soon as ministers promised him of timely assistance. Telangana State as per Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act. The Government is responsible for providing adequate land for this prestigious project to come up near Warangal highway with better connectivity near Outer Ring Road, he said. As of now, the government identified 400 acres for the purpose and efforts were being made to allocate more land, if necessary. The national level hospital of high standards will get a medical college, nursing institute and others, he added. The place is near to all districts and will propel development activity, he said. There is large scope for setting up of a township, new companies, industries, educational institutions, business and entertainment, the Chief Minister said. Deputy Chief Minister T. Rajaiah, Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma, MP Boora Narsaiah Goud, parliamentary secretary G Kishore, MLAs Shekhar Reddy, Gongidi Sunitha, Sudheer Reddy, Prabhakar Reddy, Legislative Council vice-chairman N. Vidyasagar, MLCs Karne Prabhakar, Poola Ravinder, Medical department secretary Sureshchandra, district Collector, ZP chairman Balu Naik and others were present. Govt to boost new industries: Jupally Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Minister for industries, Jupally Krishna Rao today said that the Government is encouraging on large scale to set up new industries and expansion of new ones. During his visit to Bharath Biotech, MS Pharmasia Pharma companies at ICICI Knowledge Park in Shamirpet here he said that the new industrial policy will be made available online soon. Steps will be taken to help many businesses and companies of national and international level to rope in with huge investments. The government has decided to offer hassle free regime of providing immediate permissions at one go and help the companies to start functioning he said. We will encourage the startups with loan facilities, infrastructure and subsidies he said adding that SC, ST businessmen should dare to set up companies and startups. Indian Horizon, Hyderabad Short Takes Panchayat Secretary held for accepting bribe of Rs 1 lakh Hyderabad, Jan 20 (PTI): A Panchayat Secretary was arrested today by Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh for allegedly taking bribe of Rs 1 lakh for returning official favour. The Panchayat Secretary of KCN Gunta village in Sullurupeta mandal of Nellore district was caught red-handed by officials at his residence when he demanded and accepted the amount from a complainant, the ACB said in a release. It did not specify the identity of the Secretary. After recovery of the bribe amount, the accused officer was arrested and he will be produced before a court dealing with ACB cases in Nellore tomorrow, it said. 3 dead, 6 injured in cylinder blast Vijayawada, Jan 20 (PTI): Three women were killed and six persons sustained injuries when a gas cylinder exploded at a house here leading to fire in early hours today. One of the injured persons is critical, police said. There was leakage in the LPG cylinder at a house in Ambedkarnagar area of the old city and unaware of it, a woman turned on the gas stove leading to an explosion and spread of the blaze, Kothapet police station inspector Subba Rao said. The house’s roof collapsed under impact of the impact, he said. Three women - Ramanamma (80), Nirmalamma (48) and Ramana (56) - died on the spot, he said. Firemen rushed to the place and doused the flames. They also rescued the injured persons, who were later admitted to government hospital. According to doctors, one of the injured was critical, he said. A case has been registered in this regard, Rao added. Chandrababu leaves for Davos summit Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): As part of his efforts to attract investments, AP Chief Minister N Chandrbabu Naidu left for Davos today. During his two-day stay there, the Chief Minister would meet industrialists and attend the World economic summit. He will also present a power point program explaining opportunities for investing in the State. The Chief Minister would also meet Prime Ministers of Japan and Malaysia during the summit, official sources said. Two Special Trains between Vijayawada Secunderabad Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): In order to clear extra rush of Passengers, South Central Railway will run two special trains between Vijayawada Secunderabad Train No.07207 Vijayawada - Secunderabad Special train will depart Vijayawada at 11:00 pm on January 29 and arrive Secunderabad at 05:40 am on the next day. In the return direction, Train No. 07208 Secunderabad – Vi- jayawada Special train will depart Secunderabad at 11:15 pm on January 30 and arrive Vijayawada at 05:45 am on the next day. Enroute, these special trains will stop at Mangalagiri, Guntur, Sattenapalli, Piduguralla, Nadikudi, Miryalaguda and Nalgonda stations in both the directions. No nominations yet for Tirupati Assembly by-polls Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): No nominations were received on Tuesday, the second day of filing of nominations, for the by-elections for Tirupati Assembly seat of Chittoor district. The notification for the by-polls was issued on Monday although no nominations were filed in the last two days. The last date for filing of nomination will be January 27. The nominations will be scrutinised on January 28 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature will be January 30. The polling will be on February 13 and the counting of votes will take place on February 16. By-elections for Tirupati seat got necessitated due to the death of sitting MLA M Venakataramana of TDP on December 15. Sharmila to resume ‘Paramarsa Yatra’ in Telangana today Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): YSR Congress Party leader YS Sharmila will resume here ‘Parmarsa Yatra’ on Wednesday. During the 600 KM Yatra, Sharmila proposes to cover six Assembly constituencies in Nalgonda district and console 30 families that lost a member due to shock on hearing the death of her father and the then Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy. “Sharmila along with party Telangana President P Srinivas Reddy and other state leaders will start from Lotus Pond at 9 AM and will be accorded a warm welcome at Mal from where the Paramarsa Yatra begins,” party spokesperson Konda Raghava Reddy told reporters in Hyderabad on Tuesday. The next phase of Paramarsa Yatra will begin in February, he said. On the first day, she will visit two thandas and one village and will halt at Sagar for the night. Mahender Reddy opposes Naidu’s tour in T Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Telangana Transport Minister P Mahender Reddy today opposed AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s proposed plan of touring in Telangana districts. Talking to mediapersons here on Tuesday, Mahendar Reddy expressed surprise at Naidu’s plan of touring Telangana area when Andhra Pradesh State was facing many problems. The TRS leaders will not remain mute spectators at the tour of Naidu, he said, adding they would stiffly oppose it. He also wanted to know why Chandrababu wants to go on a tour in Telangana when his own State was reeling under many problems. “We will see how the AP Chief Minister will embark on a journey in Telangana districts”, Mahender Reddy warned. 3 State Wednesday, January 21, 2015 15 more marine police stations along AP coast: Dy CM Visakhapatnam, Jan 20 (PTI): Andhra Pradesh government will set up 15 more marine police stations along the coast in the state, Deputy Chief Minister N Chinna Rajappa said today. “Fifteen more marine police stations will be set up soon in addition to the existing 21 such police stations in the state,” he told reporters after launching the I-CLIK (Instant Complaint Login Internet Kiosk) and mobile app ‘Abhayam’ for safety of citizens, particularly women. I-CLIK enables citizens to log their grievances through an online kiosk. It focuses specifically on women’s problems and issues. He said the kiosk has been launched in the city as a pilot project and based on its performance, it will be adopted in other cities in the state. Referring to Abhayam, the Minister said that it will empower citizens to have the power to protect themselves. At the click of the button, the app will send a notification to the person’s near and dear ones and nearest police station. The Home Minister said that the state government has effectively controlled the red sanders’ smuggling in the state and a task force has also been established for the purpose. The police department is taking all necessary steps to prevent ‘ganja’ smuggling in the state, particularly in agency areas of the district, he said. The police department is striving hard to provide efficient, transparent and responsive administration in the state aided by latest technology and gadgets, he said. Stating that Visakhapatnam is a peaceful city, he said unlawful elements will be firmly dealt by the police. State Director General of Police J V Rumudu said people’s cooperation is essential to control crimes. He appealed to girl students, who were present at the function, to utilise the facilities launched by the police for their safety. TRS government on the matter while admitting the petition. The former minister revealed that AICC leader Digvijay Singh suggested that the party leaders file another petition in the HC on the defected MLAs from the party to TRS. He said they would file another petition in two or three days under anti-defection law. According to sources, Digvijay pulled up Danam Nagendar for not working sincerely for membership drive to help strengthen the party in view of the ensuing GHMC elections. Though Danam is not a member of the Congress Coordination Committee, Digvijay specifically called him to attend the meeting and sought his suggestions on the ensuing GHMC elections. Digvijay asked him to work along with all party leaders to strengthen party in City. Congress, TDP file petitions in HC over defections Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Telangana Congress and Telangana TDP leaders have separately filed petitions in the High Court against the defection of their leaders to the ruling TRS. In their petitions, they stated that the Speaker of Telangana Assembly was not invoking provisions of the Anti-Defection Law against the defectors and the government was trying to shield them. Congress whip M S Prabhakar Rao filed the petition in the court seeking disqualification of Congress MLCs, who have defected to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi. Similarly, TDP senior leaders Errabelli Dayakar Rao, Revanth Reddy and Sandra Venkata Veeraiah also filed a writ petition stating that there was inordinate delay in dealing with the defectors of TDP. They faulted the Speaker for not initiating proceedings against Talasani Srinivas Yadav, Teegala Krishna Reddy and Dharma Reddy as per the Act concerned in spite of their petition to the Speaker. Admitting the petition, the court issued notices to Advocate General to submit reports on what actions have been taken against the defectors. The court also asked him to submit report by January 27 and adjourned the matter to next week. The High Court also responded to a petition filed against Legislative Council chairman Swamy Goud. The court served a notice on the Advocate general to submit an explanation in this regard. TS Govt allots 3.5 acres of land to Kaloji Foundation Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): The Telangana Government on Tuesday sanctioned for allotment of 3.5 acres of land to Kaloji Foundation for the construction of Kaloji Kala Kendram and Kaloji Cultural Centre in Warangal district. The allotted land is located in Survey No 1066 situated in between in 33/11 KV SubStation and existing Municipal Vehicle Depot of Warangal Municipal Corporation. The State Government had earlier sanctioned Rs 17 crore for construction of Kaloji Kala Kendram (Rs 15 Crores) and Kaloji Cultural Centre (Rs 2 Crores) by Kaloji Foundation. New Delhi, Jan. 20 (NSS): The Supreme Court today granted bail to mining baron and former Karnataka minister Gali Janardhan Reddy, who is an accused in the illegal mining case involving Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) owned by him. The Apex Court granted bail to Gali after the CBI submitted that the investigation in the case involving Reddy is complete and both the charge-sheet as well as the supplementary charge-sheet has been filed. Taking on record the submission of the agency, a bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu said, “Since the investigating agency has no objection in granting bail, we are granting bail to the petitioner (Reddy).” The bench also comprising justices A K Sikri and Arun Mishra noted that the submission of Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh and Reddy’s counsel Dushyant Dave that the accused has been in jail for around four years. While granting bail, the bench imposed certain conditions, including that Reddy will be released from jail on furnishing two sureties of Rs 10 lakh each and that he shall not leave the country without the permission of the court while directing him to surrender his passport. The bench further said the accused should not in any way try to influence the witnesses or tamper with evidence. Reddy moved the apex court in 2013 challenging the High Court’s decision to reject his bail petition. He is facing several criminal cases and was lodged in a jail here. He was arrested on September 5, 2011 and ever since he was incarcerated in Chenchalguda jail. Janardhan Reddy may be released from jail in two days. He and his brother-in-law B V Srinivas Reddy, Managing Director of OMC, were arrested by the CBI from Bellary in Karnataka and brought to Hyderabad. TS Govt gives new postings to 21 IFS officers Danam deplores inaction against defected legislators Hyderabad, Jan.20 (NSS): Congress senior leader and former minister Danam Nagender on Tuesday accused Telangana Assembly Speaker and Council Chairman for not initiating actions against the defected MLAs and MLCs respectively. Speaking to mediapersons at Gandhi Bhavan here, Danam said there was no other go except filing a petition in High Court on this matter since Constitutional authorities failed to take action against the defected members even after they received complaints on the issue. Danam said his party has already filed a petition in the High Court on the defection of MLCs two days ago and the HC directed Advocate General to file a reply within a week. He said the HC also strongly reacted against the At last, Janardhan Reddy granted bail by SC Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): The Telangana Government on Tuesday issued orders giving new posting and transfers to as many as 21 IFS officers. The officials along with their new posting are: A K Srivastava (1981) - Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Administration); R Sundaravadan (1982) - Conservator of Forests (Environment); DK Pandey (1982) - Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Development); Dr. K.P. Srivasuki (1982) Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests/Director General; Chandan Mitra (1982) - Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Extension); P Madhusudhana Rao (1982) - Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Research); Prashant Kumar Jha (1983) - Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Production); Dr Manoranjan Bhanja (1984) - Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Social Forestry); M Prudhvi Raju (1984) Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (IT and Working Plans); Dr. Chandra B.Malasi (1985) Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (JFM&CSS); R.U. Kashappa (1985) - Chief Conservator of Forests/Conservator of Forests (STC); R Sobha (1986) - Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Y Babu Rao (1987) - Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (LR); Ashok Kumar Sinha (1992) - Chief Conservator of Forests / Conservator of Forests, Nizamabad; Vinay Kumar Netherlands Hunter Douglas inaugurates its unit at Sri City SEZ Sri City, Jan 20 (INN): Hunter Douglas India Pvt Ltd, the wholly owned Indian subsidiary of Hunter Douglas N.V. of Netherlands, the world market leader in window covering products and a major manufacturer of architectural products, inaugurated its unit at Sri City on Tuesday. In a colourful ceremony held at the factory premises, David H. Sonnenberg, Co-President & COO, Hunter Douglas Group, administered the dedication ceremony and declared the unit inaugurated in the presence of P.K Sundaramoorthy, Managing Director, Hunter Douglas India, Ravindra Sannareddy, (1992) - Director, Project Tiger Circle, Kawal Tiger Reserve, Headquarters Nirmal; Sanjeev Kumar Gupta, IFS (1993) - Director, Project Tiger Cirlce, Amarabad Tiger Reserve, Headquarters Achampet; C Saravanan (2001) - Divisional Forest Officer, Paloncha, Khammam District; B Shafiullah (2002) - Additional Commissioner (Urban Biodiversity), GHMC; S Shantharam Divisional Forest Officer, Kothagudem, Khammam District and Sivala Ram Babu (2011) - Divisional Forest Officer, Bhadrachalam (North). The services of G Chandrashekar Reddy (1991) have been placed at the disposal of Municipal Administration & Urban Development Department for appointment as Member (Environment), HMDA. Managing Director, Sri City, and a host of dignitaries. Addressing the gathering, Mr. David H. Sonnenberg said, “With global manufacturing and distribution capabilities, our international presence is uniquely multi-cultural, yet distinctly dedicated to a shared vision to meet the everchanging needs of our customers. I am happy to inaugurate yet another unit in India, in right time. It will strengthen our offerings to the architectural & interior market in India.” Speaking on the occasion, Ravindra Sannareddy said, “I congratulate Hunter Douglas for starting this unit in right time and at right place. Its tradition of bringing breakthrough products to market makes the company of choice for an array of demand based solutions.” Kemal Publications ADVERTISEMENTS INVITED Excellent modern multi colour offset press. Services for quality printing Newspapers, Magazines, Journals, Books, Text Books, Company Annual Reports etc. To Advertise in Please Contact: Ph: 9885183853: 040-66616611 E-Mail: [email protected]. [email protected] INDIAN HORIZON English Daily at concessional rates. Pleasing display, Wider reach Please contact: 040-66616611, 66839818, or Email: [email protected], [email protected], 4 Indian Horizon, Hyderabad South Short Takes 7 die as bus falls into valley Carcasses found Erode, Jan 20 (PTI): Carcasses of four peahens and two peacocks were found near here today. Forest officials said an autopsy would reveal how the birds died as the carcasses were found near a water source at Akkaraipalayam village. Officials are not sure whether the birds were killed by someone by administering poison in grains or if they consumed some poisonous grass or other eatables. The officials said the area is noted for peacock population and hundreds of the birds visit the area to feed on grains, fruits and other eatables from farm lands. Dharmapuri (TN), Jan 20 (PTI): Seven persons died and over 50 were injured when a bus went out of control and fell into a valley, a senior police official said. “Seven persons were declared dead and more than 50 persons, including the driver and conductor, have sustained simple injuries. They are being treated in the government hospital,” Dharmapuri Superintendent of Police J Loganathan told PTI over phone. The government bus was on its way to Hogenakkal from Pennagaram in Dharmapuri district when around 10.30 am, it took a sharp turn near a temple, and fell into the 30 transgenders held valley some 50 feet below, he said. Erode, Jan 20 (PTI): Thirty transPolice and rescue personnel genders were today taken into cusrushed to the spot, he said, adding tody for trying to stage a picketing that a case has been registered. near Erode Municipal Central Busstand, demanding removal of some Cuddalore among 100 scenes in the Tamil film ‘I’, which, they alleged, showed their commudistricts under ‘Beti light. Bachao Beti Padhao’ nityThein bad film stars Vikram and Amy Chennai, Jan 20 (PTI): The coastal Jackson in lead roles. district of Cuddalore in northern Tamil Nadu is among the 100 se- Village nurse relieved of lected districts across the country, Rs two lakh gold chain where ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ scheme would be launched by Erode, Jan 20 (PTI): A village Prime Minister Narendra Modi on nurse was relieved of her 10 soverJanuary 22. eign gold chain worth about Rs two The scheme, to be kickstarted at lakh by two men on a motorbike at Sonipat in Haryana on Thursday Ukkaram village today, police said. and to be joined by all states and The 40-year-old woman was on Union territories, aims at prevent- her way to work at the Primary ing gender-biased sex selective Health Centre in the village when elimination and ensuring survival, the two men on the bike snatched protection, education and partici- her chain and sped away, they said. pation of the girl child, a PIB release 65-yr-old man said. This will be put into practice by arrested for sexually rigorous enforcement of all existing assaulting minor girl Legislations and Acts, especially by strengthening the implementation Erode (TN) Jan 20 (PTI): A of Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal 65-year-old man has been arrested Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibi- for allegedly sexually assaulting a tion of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 with five-year-old girl at Veerappanchastern punishments for violations of tram village in the district, police the law, it said. said. The minor’s parents had gone out Man dies of swine flu when the man allegedly took the girl Chennai, Jan 20 (PTI): A 53-year to his house yesterday and sexually old man died of H1N1 (Swine flu) assaulted her. The parents returned a short infection at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, a top of- while later to find heir daughter missing. The father then went next ficial said today. P Srinivasan, a resident of Man- door to the old man’s house, and nady here was referred to the hospi- raised an alarm after finding the tal on January 16 from Apollo Hos- man allegedly assaulting his daughter, police said. pitals with high fever. The old man fled the spot, but was The man was treated and various tests were done done and the pa- arrested late last night. tient tested positive for H1N1 infecCasual labourer trampled tion. “He had severe respiratory dis- to death by elephant tress when he was admitted here. We provided all the requisite treatErode (TN), Jan 20 (PTI): A ment as per the protocol. He died 61-year-old casual labourer was yesterday,” Dean, Madras Medical trampled to death by elephants in College and RGGGH Dr R Vimala Burgur forest area, police said. told PTI. Forest officials said the man from His body has been handed over to Onnakarai tribal hamlet was tendhis relatives. ing to some cattle and took them inside the forest, but did not return New Air Traffic till last night. Relatives launched a search for Control Tower starts him and found his dead body at functioning at MIA Sadesamyparai area with marks of Mangaluru,Jan 20 (PTI): The new elephant feet all over the ground, Air Traffic Control tower at the Man- indicating he had been trampled. They then informed police about galuru International Airport has started functioning on a trial basis, it and the body was recovered. Airport Director J T Radhakrishna Students of local govt has said. The new ATC installed by the school complain of Airport Authority of India would ‘severe itching’ be functional round the clock, he said in a release here. The fully airTuticorin, Jan 20 (PTI): Authorites conditioned tower with a height of of a local government school went 25 metres was equipped with lift into a tizzy today when some boys facility. and girls complained of ‘severe itchThe tower would provide air traf- ing’ and started rolling on the floor. fic services to the arriving and deOfficials of the Government High parting flights at the MIA upto 60 School at Silanatham said the stunautical miles from the airport, he dents were rushed to the governsaid. ment hospital here, where doctors Radhakrishna said that the me- said it was an “allergic condition”. teorological department would also They were examining as to what construct a new technical building caused the condition, doctors said, at the airport to supplement easier adding, it was curable. handling of air traffic. It was not known whether any insect had bitten them. Wednesday, January 21, 2015 CPI(M) seeks clarification from Jaitley on meeting Jaya Chennai, Jan 20 (PTI): CPI(M) today joined the chorus of political parties criticising Union Minister Arun Jaitley’s recent meeting with AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa and sought a clarification from the minister on the matter. Party’s state unit Secretary G Ramakrishnan said in a statement that the meeting was one to “mutually assist each other for their political gains”. He said that in the ‘light’ of Jayalalithaa’s conviction in a disproportionate assets case and her ensuring ‘swift’ bail, besides withdrawal of prosecu- tion by tax authorities after allowing a plea by her to compound offences relating to non-filing of IT returns for a particular period, had raised “suspicion” among people. He pointed out that Union IT Minister Ravishankar Prasad had earlier appeared for the former Chief Minister in the case in the Supreme Court. “Considering these, it cannot be termed as wrong the suspicion that has arisen in the minds of the people that Jaitley had met Jayalalithaa as part of a discreet agreement. “This is a meeting to mutually assist each other for political gains and it is not in the interest of people. Arun Jaitley should explain to people about this,” he demanded. Ramakrishnan said that his party does not approve of such meetings with “wrong intentions.” The meeting described by AIADMK as “courtesy call” came in the wake of Centre’s move to drum up support for ordinances including coal block allocation in a likely joint parliamentary session of the two Houses. It had drawn flak from political parties in the state, including DMK and Congress. ing later after the culmination of the run at nearby Central Stadium, Tendulkar wanted people of Kerala to extend complete support and solidarity to sportspersons coming to participate in the National Games. “The run is a fantastic initiative by the Kerala government. I hope to see the same response and enthusiasm in the coming National Games also, which the state hosts after a gap of 28 years,” Tendulkar said. “This kind of energy and support from well wishers is significant for every sportsperson.I hope you will extend the same energy and support, which you gave to the Kerala Blasters team, to sportspersons participating in the National Games also,” he said. Bengaluru, Jan 20 (PTI): The then DMK-led government had “erroneously” over-valued the jewellery of AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa and they were purchased before she became chief minister, her counsel told the Special Bench of the Karnataka High Court today. The gold and diamond jewellery seized belonged to Jayalalithaa but she bought them before she became Chief Minister in 1991, her counsel L Nageswar Rao told Justice C R Kumaraswamy. The bench is hearing appeals by the former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and three others challenging their conviction in a disproportionate assets case. Bickerings in UDF over bar bribe scam on Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 20 (PTI): As the bar bribe scam continues to haunt Kerala’s ruling Congress-led UDF, the front’s liaison committee is expected to meet soon as the estranged partners Kerala Congress (M) and Kerala Congress (B) kept up mutual wranglings denting the coalition’s image. A day after audio tapes of conversation between KC(B) leader R Balakrishna Pillai and hotelier Biju Ramesh were aired by television channels bringing the front under a cloud, UDF convener P P Thankachan had a brief discussion with Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and said the UDF meeting would be convened soon. AIMS performs Kerala’s first small bowel transplantation Kochi, Jan 20 (PTI): In what is claimed to be the first of its kind in Kerala, small bowel transplantation was successfully carried out by doctors at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences here. The transplantation surgery, lasting six hours, was performed on a 37-year-old woman, Seena Shojan of Irinjalakuda on January 5. The patient had undergone multiple ‘small bowel resection’ surgeries during the last six years, doctors said. The normal length of the Unruffled by reports that Kerala Congress (M), led by Finance Minister K M Mani, wanted the KC(B) to be expelled from UDF, Pillai dared the front leadership to take action against his party. Addressing a press meet here, Pillai said he would welcome if he was ousted from the UDF but asserted that he would be more powerful once he was out of the coalition. “Let the UDF take action against me. I only want to say once I am ousted from UDF I would become more powerful,” 79-yearold Pillai, a founder-leader of the coalition, said. The bar bribe scam, which pertains to graft allegation against Mani levelled Chennai, Jan 20 (PTI): Taking a swipe at ruling AIADMK, NDA ally PMK today said it would neither contest nor support any other political party for the February 13 Srirangam assembly bypoll. “In Tamil Nadu a situation has arisen in which only the ruling party could win and Srirangam is no exception,” PMK said in a release. Stating that barring Pennagarm bypoll, the party has never contested any other byelections, PMK said bypolls were unnecessary, a waste of money and time. PMK said it was for amendment to the Representation of People Act to facilitate unanimous election of a candidate in bypoll to either the assembly or parliament. The candidate of a party which represented the constituency in the assembly or parliament after general elections should be unanimously elected, it argued. Referring to the victory of ruling parties in the successive bypolls in Tamil Nadu, PMK said such victories were “murders of democracy.” Alleging that disbursement of gifts and distribution of money were on the cards for Srirangam, PMK said it had under the circumstances decided to refrain from bypolls. “The administrative committee of the party has unanimously decided not to contest nor support any other political party for the Srirangam bypoll,” the PMK headquarters said. Jaya Case: DMK govt erroneously over-valued jewellery, counsel Kerala’s ‘Run Kerala Run’ sets history; thousands participate Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 20 (PTI): Heralding the arrival of the 35th National Games to the state after a gap of 28 years, thousands of people from all sections of society today took part in the historic marathon ‘Run Kerala Run’ across the state. Giving a boost to the spirit of the run, cricket maestro Sachin Tendulkar, goodwill ambassador of the Games, took part and ran for about 200 metres in the state capital as part of the event, which was officially flagged off by Governor P Sathasivam. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his cabinet collegues Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, V S Shivakumar, P K Kunhalikutty accompanied Sachin in track suits. Speaking at a public meet- PMK not to contest Srirangam bypoll by a leading hotelier, took a murkier turn yesterday with TV channels airing telephone tapes in which Pillai asked hotelier Biju Ramesh to go ahead with his graft charge against Mani. Pillai later confirmed its authenticity and claimed he had already told these things to Chandy, which the latter refuted. Rattling the UDF Ministry, Ramesh had alleged three months ago that Mani had been given a hefty sum on the promise that he would help in re-opening some of the closed liquor bars. Based on the allegation, the government initially ordered a “quick verification” and later lodged an FIR for a detailed investigation. small bowel is 5-6 metres. A normal human being requires at least two metres of small bowel for survival. Seena had only 96 cm length of the small bowel. For the last one month, she was in critical stage and the only option for her was transplantation, the hospital said. The patient’s condition now is stable. Though she has started taking normal diet, the transplanted small bowel will take about two months to gain all its normal functions, hospital sources said. During this period she will be under strict monitoring. The special bench has been set up at the direction of the Supreme Court on December 18 to decide Jayalalithaa’s plea in three months. Rao also argued that the trial court had overlooked several judgements and not considered the binding nature of various income tax orders and decisions of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, which had accepted the income and level of expenditure pleaded by her. He submitted that Jayalalithaa had acquired the property, including jewellery, through legal means. Rao also said the trial court cited the clean chit given by Income Tax Tribunal but did not consider it while giving the verdict, sentencing Jayalalithaa and three others to four- year jail term and imposing a Rs 100 crore fine on her. A Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu, had granted conditional bail to Jayalalithaa who was sent to jail by a trial court on September 27, saying that hearing on her appeal against conviction in the High Court should be completed in three months from December 18. Jayalalithaa and three others were held guilty of corruption and awarded four years jail term by the Special Court here, which had also slapped a fine of Rs 10 crore each on the three others. TN reports first H1N1 death, govt says no need for panic Chennai, Jan 20 (PTI): Tamil Nadu has reported its first swine flu death this year with a 53-year-old man succumbing to the H1N1 virus at a hospital here. Stepping in to allay fears, the state government said there was no need for panic as it was only a seasonal flu and not pandemic. Srinivasan died of H1N1 (Swine flu) infection at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital yesterday and his body was handed over to his relatives today. “It is no more pandemic even according to the WHO. It is only a seasonal flu. We have adequate stocks of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir phosphate),” Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan told PTI. On Srinivasan’s death, he said the patient got himself admitted to a private hospital only after five days of high-grade fever. “It was a case of late reporting. After getting himself admitted in a private hospital he got himself discharged suddenly and came to government hospital,” he added. Also, he had a travel history to Telangana which was witnessing swine flu cases, he said. “He had severe respiratory distress when he was admitted here. We provided all the requisite treatment as per the protocol. He died yesterday,” Dean, Madras Medical College and RGGGH Dr R Vimala said. The man was treated and various tests were done and the patient tested positive for H1N1. British Council keen to encourage greater student mobility Puducherry, Jan 20 (PTI): With Indian students forming an important segment of international students studying in the UK, Britain aims to make India the largest recipient of its global scholarship programmeChevening scholarshipsover the next two years, Mei Key Barker, Director South India, British Council, today said. The British Council is keen to encourage greater student mobility and exchange of students between India and the UK to build deeper relationship, she said at a press conference. “The UK welcomes all legitimate international students. More than 2.5 lakh Indians have studied in the UK during the last ten years,” she said. A seminar, titled ‘the GREAT UK Education Seminar’ would be held here tomorrow by the British Council to provide information on student life and culture for Indian students aspiring to study in the UK. Andrew Soper, the Minister Counsellor (Political and Press) in the British High Commission, New Delhi, said the UK and India shared “a well established, broad ranging and expanding partnership on education.” “With 401 scholarships this year and more than 750 scholarships during the last two years the Great Britain Scholarships-India 2015 is the largest ever scholarships programme offered to Indian students,” he said. The scholarships were worth around 1.51 million pounds. Indian Horizon Hyderabad Woman denied admission in hospital, delivers a stillborn baby under tree Bhopal Jan 20 (PTI): A 26-year-old woman on Tuesday delivered a stillborn child under a tree in the compound of state-government run Sultania hospital, after she was allegedly not admitted to a ward and refused medical care. In his complaint, district’s Gehukheda area resident Ajmer Khan (30) alleged that his wife Rubina Bi reached Sultania hospital at around 6 am, but was refused admission.The Speculation rife about TMC leader Dinesh Trivedi joining BJP woman later delivered a stillborn boy at around 10 am in the hospital’s compound, Talaiya police station Sub-Inspector Umesh Singh Chauhan said. Police have started investigation in the matter based on the complaint, Chauhan said.After post-mortem report and investigation, we will register a case against the guilty, he said.“The concerned people at the hospital asked us to shell out Rs 1,000 to admit Rubina. However, we refused to ac- Kolkata Jan 20 (PTI): Days after a Trinamool Congress minister Manjul Krishna Thakur joined BJP, speculation is rife about another TMC leader and former railway minister Dinesh Trivedi switching to the saf- cept it,” Ajmer told reporters.He said that at around 8 am his wife started having pains after which she delivered the stillborn baby under a Neem tree. Later, a group of locals gathered and staged a protest against the hospital. “They took my wife and the child inside, but by that time it was too late. Had the hospital helped us in time, this tragedy could have been averted,” a distraught Ajmer said. fron camp even as he evaded questions in this regard. Asked, Trivedi said “I really don’t like to predict anything. For me the country comes first ... At the end of the day why are we in public life ... The bigger picture JD(U) meet at Nitish house, Manjhi meets BJP minister PATNA Jan 20 (PTI): Amid infighting in JD(U) triggered by power tussle between chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi and senior leader Nitish Kumar, a meeting of party leaders began at Kumar’s residence here on Tuesday to take stock of political situation. Chief minister Manjhi meanwhile had an hour-long meeting with Union minister of state for rural development and sanitation Ramkripal Yadav. The CM is not present in the “training programme” for party district heads and other leaders at Kumar’s 7 Circular Road residence. Ramkripal Yadav, MP from Patliputra and who left mentor Lalu Prasad’s RJD to join BJP, told PTI that during his talks with CM he sounded “hurt” over recent controversy within his party triggered by unwanted comments from some JD(U) leaders. Senior Bihar minister Narendra Singh, one among the three ministers whose resignation was sought by party spokesman Ajay Alok for alleged proximity with BJP, met state president Basistha Narayan Singh before start of programme at Kumar’s house and sought strict enforcement of discipline in the party. Besides Singh, two other ministers whose resignation was sought are Brishen Patel and Nitish Mishra, son of former CM Jagannath Mishra. Narendra Singh is the country.”“It is not the question of switching from one platform to another. We need to change the DNA of Indian politics and whatever it takes for doing that, I think we should do that,” he told a TV channel. told reporters that he expressed his “peera” (pain) over resignation demand by Alok and allegation of proximity with BJP. “I am the person who said BJP is playing in the hands of corporate houses and is anti-farmers. So how come somebody allege I have proximity with BJP,” Singh said. State party chief Basistha Narayan Singh, who returned from Delhi on Tuesday, said though there was no talk of initiating action against anybody but “people issuing statements shall ensure it does not encroach limit.” He exuded confidence that things would be set right in the party. Asked that one minister Jay Kumar Singh and other leaders have sought early return of Kumar on chief minister chair, Basistha Narayan Singh said, “first let me go inside (Kumar’s house) and talk to leaders.” Army apprehends attack from Pak troops, security heightened Jammu Jan 20 (PTI): Apprehending attack by Pakistan’s Border Action Team (BAT) on forward posts and patrol parties in the run up to Republic Day, Army has sounded an alert along the boundary with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir. Battling thick fog, treacherous terrain and unpredictable enemy, soldiers armed with thermal imagers and surveillance equipments are keeping a hawk eye on any movement along the Line of Control. According to officials, there are intelligence inputs that BATs, which are small groups of specialised Pakistani troops supported at times by terrorists, could strike in the run up to Republic Day, especially as US President Barack Obama will be visiting the country.“As per Intelligence inputs there is a possibility of Pakistan Army’s Border Action Team crossing over into Indian territory and targeting posts,” a senior Army officer told PTI.The BAT could also target Indian patrol parties near the LoC, he said, adding army is keeping a close watch on LoC and troops are vigilant. “Any such BAT action by Pakistani with covering fire from its border posts would be counted as diplomatic offencive to rake up Kashmir issue,” the officer said. Asked about the possible terror attacks along LoC, Spokesperson of Udhampur based Northern Command Headquarters, Col S D Goswami told?PTI that troops are vigilant.The BAT generally targets patrol teams or isolated posts across the LoC. “BAT operations are specialised military actions conducted in close vicinity of enemy posts across the LoC and need detailed planning preparation and support,” Col Goswami said. The Line of Control with Pakistan stretches up to 740 km, out of which India has fenced 550 km to stop infiltration and smuggling. The international border stretches to over 180 km in Jammu frontier.Major BAT attacks were carried out in 2013. Novelist moves HC accusing ‘PK’ makers of plagiarism New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS) Novelist Kapil Isapuri has approached the Delhi High Court, accusing the makers of Aamir Khan’s film “PK” of plagiarism.He said certain portions from his Hindi novel “Farishta” published in 2013 were “stolen and copied” and used in the film. Isapuri has sought punitive damages of Rs.1 crore from the filmmakers along with credit for his work.The Rajkumar Hirani directorial, which raises questions about religion and people’s blind faith in godmen, has been co-produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Hirani. The movie also stars Anushka Sharma and Sanjay Dutt. The plea, filed through advocate Jyotika Kalra, alleged that the makers of the film as well as scriptwriter Abhijat Joshi stole the characters, expression of ideas and sequences from the novel “Farishta”.“The novel has criticised blind following of so-called godmen and that profession of religion is not natural but is man-made and artificial and, in a group of people, nobody can identify their respective religion,” the plea said. 5 Nation wednesday, January 21, 2015 On August 6 that year, in an audacious and provocative attack, Pakistani troops had entered Indian territory along the Line of Control in the Poonch sector and ambushed a patrol killing five Indian soldiers.Pakistani troops on January 8, 2013 had crossed into the Indian territory and ambushed an Army patrol party beheading two jawans Lance Naik Hemraj and Sudhakar at Sarla post along LoC in Poonch. In May last year, an army jawan was killed and two of his colleagues were injured in an attack by suspected BAT which set off a mine blast and opened fired on a patrol party along LoC near Akhnoor. The state is already on high alert with the army saying that there were inputs about possibility of attacks by Pakistanbased terror outfits on “soft targets” such as schools, religious places, military convoys and civilian areas?in Jammu and Kashmir ahead of Obama’s India visit. Jharkhand’s ex-CM Koda summoned in coal block case New Delhi, Jan 20 (IANS) A court here Tuesday issued summons to former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda and seven others in a coal block allocation case involving Vini Iron and Steel Udyog Ltd. Special Judge Bharat Parashar took cognizance of the chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) last month and issued summons to Koda and the others in the case for Feb 18. The other accused in the case are ex-coal secretary H.C. Gupta, former Jharkhand chief secretary A.K. Basu, Vini Iron and Steel director Vaibhav Tulsyan, two government officials Basant Kumar Bhatacharya and Bipin Bihari Singh - and alleged middleman Vijay Joshi.The Kolkata-based Vini Iron and Steel has also been named as an accused in the case. The CBI filed the chargesheet in December last year in the case against Koda and the others on various charges like cheating and criminal conspiracy under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The case involves allocation of coal blocks to Vini Iron and Steel in Jharkhand’s Rajhara town, in which its directors and unknown public servants of the coal ministry, the Jharkhand government and others were named as accused in the first information report lodged in September 2012. In its FIR, the CBI alleged that the firm had applied for allocation of coal blocks, including Rajhara North (central and eastern) coal block in Jharkhand.It said the company was not recommended by either the union steel ministry or the Jharkhand government. However, the then Jharkhand chief secretary, who had attended the 36th screening committee meeting July 3, 2008, had signed its minutes recommending the allocation to the firm. The CBI alleged that the company had fraudulently claimed an inflated net worth and its ownership too had changed hands ahead of the 36th screening committee meeting. The court in September had returned the chargesheet filed by the CBI after it failed to adequately respond to queries raised by the judge. 20 Injured in Bus-Truck Obama’s India visit: UP Collision in MP police to hire chopper BETUL, MADHYA PRADESH Jan 20 (PTI): As many as 20 persons were injured today when the bus in which they were travelling collided with a truck in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district, police said. The accident took place when the bus enroute to Betul from Maharashtra’s Paratwada town rammed into a truck head on near Mahadgaon village on Betul-Indore national highway, around 10 kms from the district headquarters, Betul Kotwali police station in-charge Pankaj Tyagi said.All injured passengers were admitted to the district hospital and the condition of 16 persons is stated to be critical, he added. Due to strong impact of the collision almost all seats of the bus uprooted, causing serious injuries to the occupants, Mr Tyagi said. Soon after being alerted, senior police officials reached the spot and pressed 108 ambulance into service.A case has been registered in this regard and further probe is on, police added. Lucknow Jan 20 (PTI): Uttar Pradesh police is all set to hire a helicopter to secure the air in view of the likely visit of US president Barack Obama to Agra later this month. “The state government has authorised the police to hire Pawan Hans helicopter for the next 11 days to assist in the air security,” IG (Law & Order) A Satish Ganesh said. “IG, Meerut zone, has been made the nodal officer to work out the route and sorties by the helicopeter in view of the inputs with regard to the security,” he said. The helicopter would start making sorties soon, he said adding that an air support unit team is being developed.Two rounds of talks at the DGP level were held to review security arrangements, and a demand for ten companies of RAF for Agra and the same number of CRPF for districts adjoning the NCR region has been made, he said. The IG said that work on all dimensions of security for the foreign dignitary was being done. To questions whether the Yamuna Expressway would be closed for traffic for security reasons, the IG said that no decision has been made but the state would cooperate as per the instructions from the protocol. The IG said that in view of the Republic Day, all the districts have been issued necessary directives to implement the security scheme and take precautions. Attempt to separate More interested in bringing back black money than disclosure of names: SC Mumbai from Maharashtra New Delhi Jan 20 (PTI): Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it was more interested in getting the black money stashed abroad back to the country than the disclosure of names of illegal account holders in foreign banks. “We are interested in money coming back and not on disclosure of names,” a bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu said when arguments were advanced that the Government should disclose the names of those who have admitted having illegal accounts in foreign banks. However, the Bench, also comprising Justices M B Lokur and A K Sikri, accepted the plea of noted jurist Ram Jethmalani, one of the petitioners in the matter, that the apex court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by its Chairman Justice M B Shah and Vice Chairman Justice Arijit Pasayat, consider the various suggestions put forth to bring back illegal black money stashed abroad.“We permit all parties including the interveners to bring to the notice of the SIT their suggestions within two weeks from today and if such suggestions are given in time, we only request the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the SIT to consider the same in accordance with law and send a copy of the report to that aspect to this court in a sealed cover,” it said. The bench clarified that it was not saying anything on the suggestions put forward by Jethmalani in his fresh application and it was for the SIT to consider those. Jethmalani’s counsel and senior advocate Anil Divan alleged that “not a single rupee has come to this country” in last six months and only some searches and attachment have been conducted. The apex court also granted three weeks time to Divan to file reply to the stand of the Centre, which has so far shown unwillingness to share documents concerning its correspondence with French Government on the issue.The Centre has taken a stand in its reply in this regard that it has submitted all documents and communications to the SIT, which has to take a call for supplying them to the petitioners. is afoot: Shiv Sena Mumbai Jan 20 (PTI): Referring to the Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s proposal of a committee headed by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Mumbai-related issues, Shiv Sena on Tuesday alleged that some industrialists and politicians were conspiring to separate the city from Maharashtra. “In the last one month, discussions have once again started about Mumbai. Industrialists with deep pockets and politicians are trying to separate this city from the state. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis spoke about a committee under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for development of Mumbai,” Sena leader Sanjay Raut said while speaking to a news-channel. Sena is a partner in the BJP-led state government. “There are more than 100 cities that the Centre wants to convert into smart cities, but people still aspire to take Mumbai away. This city fills the stomach of Maharashtra. This city must not be taken away if the Marathi-speaking people are to get the respect they deserve. This is what Balasaheb (Thackeray) fought for. People who want to separate Mumbai will not be able to do so as long as Sena is here,” Raut said. Raut, who edits the Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, also announced that ‘Balkadu’, a film produced by him on the life of the late Bal Thackeray, will release on Thackeray’s birth anniversary, January 23.“We want to spread the thoughts of Balasaheb among the young generation through the film,” he said. Calcutta High Court Orders CID Probe Into Alleged Police Torture of Woman Kolkata Jan 20 (PTI): West Bengal government today informed the Calcutta High Court that it would hand over to CID the case of alleged torture of a woman by police personnel in Birbhum district. State Additional Advocate General Lakshmi Gupta informed the court of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice Joymalyo Bagchi that the state has decided to hand over the investigation to CID to ensure free and fair probe as the allegations were against district police personnel.Appearing for the victim, counsel Firoze Edulji submitted that the state police was not investigating the matter and the alleged torture on the woman should be treated as a case of gangrape under Section 376(D) of IPC, which was formulated after the Nirbhaya case in Delhi in December 2012. The division bench directed the victim’s counsel to move the appropriate bench of the court over alleged police inaction while keeping the matter open before it.The bench said the petition cannot be considered as a PIL as the victim and the de facto complainant in the criminal case had herself moved the court and as such the proper bench entrusted with jurisdiction in such matters should be approached.A woman, stated to be the relative of a BJP activist wanted in connection with a bomb attack case, had filed charges of being forcibly taken to police station by policemen after a raid at her Ilambazar residence in Birbhum district yesterday. Devotees taking holy dip in River Ganges on the occasion of “Mauni Amavasya” at Sangam during Magh Mela festival in Allahabad on Tuesday. PTI 6 Indian Horizon Hyderabad EDIT Indian Horizon Hyderabad Wednesday january 21, 2015 Bedi is BJP’s trump card but some leaders are sulking BY RAHUL VAISHNAVI Wednesday january 21, 2015 Modi`s strategy in recent elections It must be admitted that the BJP as an organization has several weaknesses. The reason for this wide gap between various wings of the BJP is inherent in the way Mr. Modi had started his campaign for the Delhi elections. Mr. Modi has single handedly planned the campaign in direct cooperation with the head of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat. We were wondering whether elections in a secular state would be justified, if they start under the shadow of a communal organization like the RSS. We had feared that this arrangement did not adhere or comply with secular credentials for a secular state but, we were surprised that the Election Commission did not make a note of this and did not find it objectionable. The second surprising point was, Mr. Modi had started the campaign much earlier than it should have been possible for any national election. Apparently, there have been many surprises in ignoring the requirements of a secular party before they are in the field of election with a clear manifesto. This is the first time that unusually non-secular steps have been taken without any fear of objections. When the results were announced, certainly even the BJP and all their associates were surprised with the type of majority that Mr. Modi won the election by. It was natural that this was the first election after a long time with an unusual sweep. We had thought that there after no one could check Mr. Modi`s march through all other elections that the BJP was participating in. It became evident, that Indian political parties all of a sudden tied their girdle for the other campaigns through a process of reorganization to prove their credentials and the secular parties strength. Then onwards, all other elections which Mr. Modi fought, the results were outstandingly surprising. The role that Shiv Sena played in Maharashtra was a shock to the Maratha community. Since then, every community in India seems to have taken careful stocks and assesses the efficacy of a secular constitution and more safeguards are needed for the protection of secularism in the country which should be the top priority. Every conscious person and community has awakened to the future danger, to the integrity of Indian unity within the present Indian constitution. We will be able to assess it fully after the Delhi election, when all the cases under various objections are finally decided and the efficacy of the secular constitution and the court’s interpretation become available for critical study, only then will we be able to draw any conclusions for the future of the country. How the Indian political parties will decide, what sort of reforms will be needed to protect Indian secularism remains to be seen. The reelection is a very minor but, very important test for the political wisdom of Indian politicians and for the future of the Indian constitution. T he BJP’s projection of India’s first woman police officer Kiran Bedi as its face in Delhi has divided the party, with one section overjoyed and the other left sulking. Some also feel that while the decision was right, it may have come a little too late for the Bharatiya Janata Party to score its first victory in assembly elections after 1993. The move took even some leaders in the BJP in Delhi by surprise but has boosted the morale of workers who were stunned by the aggressive campaign of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), party sources said. “The BJP has definitely found the right candidate (Bedi) and it will help the party’s prospects as she has decades of administrative experience and knows how to get things done,” party spokesman Ashwini Upadhyay told IANS. “She has worked on international assignments with the UN as well as on the streets to help children through her NGO,” he added. Another party functionary, however, said that some leaders were sulking as their ambitions had been stifled. Arivind Kejriwal’s AAP finished a surprise close second in the December 2013 election winning 28 seats against the BJP’s 31. The Congress finished a distant third with just eight seats in the house of 70. Before Bedi was brought in, opinion polls were predicting another hung house in Delhi although with the BJP doing marginally better than in 2013. Many in the BJP hope that Bedi, 65, will prove a tough match for Kejriwal, who at age 46 too has strong anti-corruption credentials. Bedi has been an anti-corruption activist, a former tennis player and her innings in Delhi Police is still widely remembered in the city. Bedi initiated prison reforms in the Tihar Central Jail. She has won the Ramon Magsaysay award, an honour she shares with Kejriwal. Both were part of the anti-corruption agitation led by Gandhian Anna Hazare. Since her induction in the BJP, Bedi has talked about her priorities -- as a likely candidate to lead the party’s campaign. BJP leaders say that while the party has considerable support among the middle class, it needs to work harder to woo the poor and the working class. They also said that the BJP could not have gone without a local face after the Congress named Ajay Maken as its campaign chief. “AAP had Obama visit: India-US ties set to move to transformative level BY RANJANA NARAYAN I ndia-US ties are set to move to the transformative level during President Barack Obama's India visit later this week, building also on the personal rapport developed between him and Prime Minister Narendra Modi with both sides keen to have promising outcomes from the talks on a range of issues, including defence, energy, education and economic cooperation. Obama, chief guest at this year's Republic Day parade, has described Modi as a "man of action". The two leaders have met thrice already in the recent past - in Washington during the bilateral in September last year, in Myanmar during the East Asia Summit and in Brisbane during the G20 in November. But the Jan 25 bilateral would be an "important summit" meeting in that it would seek to give a more concrete shape to many of the agreed points of the joint statement issued last year in Washington. The summit would see a "more broader partnership and more energized" ties between the two sides. In the field of defence, both sides are set to ink a new 10-year defence framework agreement that would take defence cooperation to a higher level. Talks on developing the next generation aircraft carrier are likely to gain steam as well as on coproduction of defence equipment. The US is keen to replicate in part the kind of defence cooperation that India and Russia share, especially on the lines of the BrahMos missiles that is jointly developed by the two countries. The US is also to cooperate with a planned National Defence University to be set up by India. The agreement for US involvement the Smart Cities project for Ajmer, Allahabad and Vishakhapatnam is also to get a push during the talks. Talks have been going on between relevant authorities to take forward the project over the past few months. It would see the US participating in the three cities as knowledge partner in the areas of traffic management, solid waste management, garbage disposal, recycling waste water and in water storage, said sources. Economic ties are also set to get a major leg up. The fact that the US government and business houses view the Modi government as business-friendly is evident from the fact that an 80-member team from the US with 12 CEOs attended the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in Gandhinagar, led by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry had met Modi during the sidelines of the Vibrant Gujarat for talks on the agenda for Obama's visit. The US Secretary of State later told reporters that both sides would strive to make progress on the four main issues of climate change, defence, civil nuclear cooperation and economic partnership. The Kejriwal and the Congress named Maken. We were the only ones left without a prominent local face. It would have been better if the decision (about Bedi) had been taken earlier,” another leader said. The source added: “The BJP conducted an internal survey which showed that Kejriwal’s anti-corruption credentials and the BJP not having a prominent face were working against the party.” The BJP continues to bank on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal but now Bedi is a new face in the party’s propaganda campaign. “It would be very tough for AAP to target Bedi. The BJP needed such a face in Delhi,” another leader said. Delhi goes to the polls Feb 7. The BJP is keen on a victory after losing face in 2013 when the AAP went on to form a minority government and ruled the city for 49 days before Kejriwal resigned. Delhi has been under President’s rule for the past 11 months. The BJP had named Harsh Vardhan as its chief ministerial candidate in 2013 but he is now in the Modi cabinet. Pradeep Kumar Dutta, who teaches at Delhi University, said Bedi was a strong and effective administrator and her joining the party “will beef up support among the middle class and the government employees who previously voted for Kejriwal”. Senior journalist Kuldip Nayar said the BJP “has got a face” in Delhi with Bedi’s induction and this will help it to get swing votes. IANS stalled civil nuclear deal is also expected to get a major push with the contact group from both sides having held two rounds of talks so far. Issues over India's liability laws are expected to be ironed over. The US is hoping to build on the Modi government's bold policy initiatives like Make in India, Smart Cities, Skilling India and renewable energy. After Modi's assurance to foreign companies to ensure ease in doing business in India by cutting away red tape, more investments have been flowing into India from the US. More concrete movement on the Modi government's Digital India initiative as well as on India's proposal to establish the Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN, or Knowledge) would be seen during the summit. As part of cooperation under GIAN, which is part of the joint statement, India is to invite and host up to 1,000 American academics each year to teach in centrally-recognized Indian Universities, at their convenience. While the American teachers are to be reimbursed by their parent universities, India would be looking after their stay in the country and also pay a token amount. The process of identifying the universities on both sides is underway. The talks would also see forward movement to cooperation in the health sector, especially in developing affordable vaccines for dengue, malaria, and tuberculosis and also in cancer research. Obama is the first US president to visit India twice during his tenure and the first to attend the Republic Day parade as chief guest. IANS Manufacturing moving to Vietnam, Amarinder for declassifying Indian cellular industry warns 1962 India-China war report BY APARAJITA GUPTA T he Indian cellular industry has expressed concern that manufacturing is moving out of the country to Vietnam and says the government needs to create a business-friendly environment to attract more investors. "Manufacturing has been moving out to Vietnam due to an investor friendly and predictable regulatory environment in place and better incentives available. The big brands are now buying products for the Indian market from Vietnam," Indian Cellular Association (ICA) president Pankaj Mohindroo told IANS. Mohindroo, along with other industry players, said in a presentation to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley: "Vietnam offers a 30-year tax holiday window at just 10 percent tax on mobile manufacturing which further goes down to 100 percent exemption in the first four years and reduction of 50 percent in the next nine years."The presentation was made ahead of the union budget for 2015-16 due in February. According to ICA, India's mobile manufacturing industry is only 1/12th of Vietnam and 1/60th of China. "A 10-year tax holiday in a block of 15 years should be granted on all profits and gains from manufacturing or rendering of services in or in relation to the mobile phone industry for all fresh investment made in plant and machinery and other equipment of a durable nature for all three environments," Mohindroo has recommended to Jaitley. The three en- vironments are special economic zones, domestic tariff areas and export-oriented units. The ICA is the apex body of the mobile industry comprising manufacturers, brand owners, technology providers, value-added service and solution providers, distributors, retail chains and eminent consumers of mobile handsets. It has members like Samsung, LG, Microsoft Devices, HCL Infosystems and Apple Europe Ltd, among many others. India's position in mobile phone exports has fallen from seventh in 2009 to 14th in 2013. The value of exports was $3.40 billion in 2009 and fell to $2.28 billion in 2013. The estimated domestic market for mobile handsets was Rs.75,000 crore ($12 billion) in 2014, of which handsets worth Rs.58,550 crore were imported. For 2015, the estimated market size is Rs.1 lakh crore, with imports accounting for Rs.75,500 crore. As of November-end 2014, there are 964.20 million telephone subscribers in India, of whom 937.06 million are wireless subscribers. The ICA, in its budget recommendations, said: "India achieving a 25 percent share in global mobile phone manufacturing by 2019 from the current share of three percent" should be the aim of the 'Make in India' initiative in the mobile industry. "Mobile phones, mobile tablets and computers are the same category. We recommend that they should be charged the same duty as applicable for mobiles," he added. BY ANURAG DEY N otwithstanding the fact that it apparently indicts late prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru for India's military defeat in the 1962 war with China, Congress MP and former army captain Amarinder Singh has called for the release of the Henderson-Brooks report. "The report should have been out a long time ago. When reports on Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka or the 1965 war are out, then why are we sitting on 1962?" Amarinder Singh told IANS. "If you want to protect some politicians or some army generals, then it is unfortunate. One learns from experiences and it should be out so that the people may know what actually happened," he said during the Kolkata launch of his latest book "Honour and Fidelity: India's Military Contribution to the Great War 1914-1918". The former Punjab chief minister said there was a consensus among political parties to oppose the declassification of the report that has remained a state secret for the past 50 years. "There is a consensus among political parties of opposing its release. I have written on the 1962 war and I do not think there is anything that needs to be covered up. If somebody has made a mistake at the political level or at the military level, it should be out for the public to know," he said. Jointly authored by Lt. Gen. T.B. Henderson Brooks and Brigadier P.S. Bhagat, the report squarely blames the then Nehru government and the military leadership for India's crushing defeat. Portions of the classified report, which clinically analysed the military defeat, were uploaded online by Australian author and journalist Neville Maxwell who was the India correspondent of the Times, London, in New Delhi during the war and had extensively written on it. Incidentally, the BJP, which had clamoured for its release during the Lok Sabha poll campaigns, made a volte face IANS after assuming power. IANS Readers Response and contribution Welcome 7 OP-ED Indian Horizon Hyderabad Wednesday january 21, 2015 EU’s bashing of Egypt is misguided The hapless, harmless Palestinian leader? Where other Arab strongmen nurture an image of power, Abbas relies on being seen as an underdog. BY SHARIF NASHASHIBI Al Sissi is leading the global fight against radical ideologies and he is one of the few voices of wisdom BY LINDA S. HEARD L ast Friday, several small bombs exploded or were discovered in Egypt’s second largest city of Alexandria and a bus was attacked with petrol bombs. Such despicable incidents do not make global headlines nowadays. They have become the norm in Cairo and Alexandria over the past 18 months, so are not considered news-worthy. Were they to occur in Europe or the US, such murderous acts would merit rolling media coverage. For the Egyptian authorities, keeping citizens safe is their number one priority. President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi has declared war on terrorists and their death-worshipping ideology with the support of the vast majority of the population. He is facing an uphill battle, but is determined to succeed because, as he announced recently, if the state collapses, a million terrorists will be unleashed. That may sound like an exaggeration, but it isn’t really so when all we have to do is look at Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen — weak states that have been unable to contain the terrorist phenomenon that is now displaying its ugly face in France, Belgium and Australia. “Honestly, more than a year ago, I had warned that the region was heading to great danger from extremist thought,” Al Sissi told Associated Press during a recent interview. “I repeatedly said the gathering of foreign fighters from across the world was extremely dangerous. Why? Because theoretical, radical ideologies have been turned into a real practice; those foreign fighters have gathered from across the world. It was no longer just a joint idea, but rather joint action ... Those individuals will return to their home countries — England, France, Egypt and other countries — and will talk and spread that ideology in their home countries. So, we will find that ideology present and ready for implementation in every country, including those that have never had such an ideology. Then we will see terrorism in the whole world and the world will see no reprieve.” US and European leaderships have either unwittingly or wilfully failed to see what the Egyptian president is all about: In western capitals, he is viewed as a “dictator” without respect for human rights and civil liberties. In reality, he is leading the global fight against radical ideologies and he is one of the few voices of wisdom. But, astonishingly, his efforts are wholly unappreciated beyond his own country’s borders with the exception of Egypt’s Arab allies. Likewise, the western media has been generally unsupportive. So I was gratified to read the words of Piers Akerman writing in Australia’s Daily Telegraph: “Under President [Barack] Obama, the US cannot even bring itself to mention the nature of this terrorism, referring only to ‘violent extremists’, even as some remarkable Muslim leaders such as Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi urge imams to change their radical rhetoric and lead a religious revolution that leads to peace.” George W. Bush fought a war against terrorism and sent his troops to invade Iraq and Afghanistan in the process and received material backing from almost all western governments. The US military picked up terrorist suspects, many simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, packed them off into aircraft or ships, chained, handcuffed and hooded to be thrown into secret detention camps where they were tortured, humiliated and, in some cases, killed. Bush was applauded by European heads of state, some of whom conspired with illegal renditions. Yet, today, the European Parliament is demanding that Egypt immediately release all those (read Islamist extremists) currently being detained. Never mind, that the majority has been convicted by the courts for serious crimes related to terrorism. The European Union (EU) has further insulted the Egyptian government by refusing to monitor upcoming parliamentary elections on the grounds that doing so would erode its credibility! Strange, when that same body had no such compunctions about monitoring presidential elections during the Hosni Mubarak era, whose outcomes were always preordained and were known to be so. Even more odd is the timing of this critical EU statement when European interior ministers are liaising on common security measures, intelligence cooperation and the monitoring of borders. I think we can all agree on the importance of human rights and free expression within society, but at the same time, there needs to be a realisation that a nation under attack from within has to walk a fine line between liberty and security. The EU should understand this especially since it may be en route to facing a similar dilemma as the one experienced by the Egyptian president. Perhaps it will take European leaders to walk in his shoes before they change their tune to one that is more empathetic. Al Sissi has big dreams. He is out to drag his country out of poverty and on that score, he is doing well. He is with the Egyptian people, not with the terrorists and their supporters. And if the suits in Brussels or those in the White House are shedding crocodile tears for the poor old terrorists locked-up in Egyptian jails, then tough! COURTESY : GULF NEWS J anuary 15 marks a decade since Mahmoud Abbas became the Palestinian president, during which time the goals he claims to espouse not only remain unrealised, but are more remote than ever. He is still in office despite his term ending six years ago; the democratic process that brought him to power no longer in existence. He speaks of his people’s human rights while his Palestinian Authority actively curtails them. He claims to champion their national rights while collaborating unconditionally with the country that denies them. Abbas’ image as a hapless, harmless figure deflects from the cunning and ruthlessness of someone whose primary concern, like the Middle East’s other autocrats, seems to be his longevity. The fact that he plays ball with the West and Israel somehow makes this okay. Where other Arab strongmen nurture an image of power to maintain it, he relies on being seen as an underdog. Burden for the people But this illusion, which has traditionally served Abbas well, no longer extends to his people. Many think he and the PA serve their own interests and those of Israel, rather than those of the Palestinians. According to a poll last month, 55 percent believe that the PA has become “a burden on the Palestinian people”. Regarding the presidency, Abbas has consistently lagged in opinion polls behind his Fatah colleague, Marwan Barghouti. Since Israel’s last Gaza invasion, he also runs behind Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Is it mere coincidence, then, that Abbas has been lacklustre in campaigning for Barghouti’s release from Israeli jail; or in pursuing and implementing national unity deals with Hamas that call for elections? Since the signing of the latest reconciliation agreement in April, Abbas has at various times threatened to end it, and has been openly adversarial towards Hamas. Elections that were due within six months never happened, so he remains unchallenged - this has gone largely unnoticed. The PA - which is meant to safeguard Palestinian rights - serially abuses them. Human Rights Watch has documented “police beatings and arbitrary arrests of demonstrators”, “excessive force”, “repressing critical news reporting and demonstrations”, “suppressing dissenting views”, and “serious rights abuses, including credible allegations of torture”, for which “no security officials were convicted”. As such, the PA is not only failing to curb Israeli abuses, but is busy perpetrating its own, all under Abbas’ watch. The PA has garnered a reputation among Palestinians for managing the occupation rather than striving to end it. One way it does this is “security coordination” with Israel, which Abbas described last year as “sacred” despite the vast majority of Palestinians opposing it. Such coordination serves Israel by enabling it to subcontract its occupation, and serves the PA by helping it suppress internal dissent. It certainly does not benefit the Palestinian people. Abbas and his foreign minister have made grotesque assurances that as long as he is president, he will not allow an uprising against Israel. So the PA, which is supposed to be part of a national liberation struggle, is willing to put down an uprising by its own people against their subjugation. This is nothing short of betrayal. For more than 20 years, the PA has participated in a “peace process” that has greatly entrenched Israeli control. Abbas himself was an architect of the disastrous Oslo Accords. The occupied territories are now so colonised and fragmented that a viable Palestinian state is widely considered impossible. Yet, Abbas still wants to negotiate, despite Israel being clearly opposed to Palestinian self-determination. Privileged elites What, then, is the point of negotiating? Perhaps to preserve the privileged elites to which the PA and the “peace process” gave birth. After all, allegations of corruption and nepotism, including Abbas and his family, are nothing new. With the help of international aid, the PA is the largest employer of Palestinians, much like other autocracies that encourage public dependence on the state to avoid mass unrest. A power imbalance alone cannot explain Abbas’ policy choices regarding Israel. He opposes armed resistance, and has gone to great lengths to disarm militants in the West Bank. However, he also opposes peaceful forms of resistance, including the increasingly effective Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Furthermore, it took the PA more than two years since Palestine’s upgraded UN status to apply to join the International Criminal Court, despite repeated threats to do so amid constant Israeli provocations. That Abbas finally relented may not only, or necessarily, be about losing patience with Israel, but about assuaging mounting Palestinian anger at his procrastination in applying to the ICC. Meanwhile, he says he will keep pushing for a UN Security Council resolution calling for a deadline to end Israel’s occupation, despite the certainty of repeated failure by US veto. Abbas seems to be attempting a balancing act. He wants to prove to Israel, and his western and Arab backers, that he is their best Palestinian partner, safe in the knowledge that they will not accept Hamas rule, but mindful not to suffer the same fate as Yasser Arafat once he was no longer deemed useful or reliable. However, his recent, uncharacteristic defiance against Israel reflects a need to stop his flagging domestic popularity turning into an uprising against him and the PA. Abbas has nothing to show his people after 10 years as president, and at least another decade as part of the “peace process”. He remains in office because of, not despite, Israel’s occupation and Palestinian disunity. COURTESY : AL-JAZEERA America’s disenchantment with Syrian rebels Congress’s view of the Free Syrian Army is shared by many officials in the Obama administration, following the rebels’ losses to the Al Assad regime, Daesh and the Al Nusra Front BY JOSH ROGIN A s Congress narrowly passed the bill to fund the government for the rest of the year, one curious and significant item was left on the cutting room floor: A request from the Barack Obama administration for $300 million (Dh1.1 billion) to expand the secret CIA programme to arm the “moderate” Syrian rebels. The request, which administration officials had been lobbying for in recent weeks, was held up by the House Intelligence Committee, which has serious doubts about the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel groups that for years have been receiving arms secretly from the US and its allies, two administration officials told me. Without the money, Syrian opposition leaders say, the FSA will struggle to hold its remaining positions in northern Syria, much less make progress against Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and the Bashar Al Assad regime. “The requested funds are a crucial indication of the partnership between the United States and Syrian freedom fighters. This comes at a particularly important time,” said Oubai Shahbandar, a senior adviser for the Syrian National Coalition. Nonetheless, not everyone in the White House will lament the decision to drop it from the spending bill: Congress’s disenchantment with the Syrian rebels is shared by many officials inside the administration, following the rebels’ losses to Bashar Al Assad, Daesh and the Al Nusra Front in northern Syrian cities such as Idlib. There is particular frustration that these setbacks resulted in some advanced American weaponry falling into extremist hands. Reflecting that dissatisfaction, the Obama administration has taken a series of steps in recent weeks to distance the US from the moderate rebels in the north, by cutting off their weapons flow and refusing to allow them to meet with US military officials, right at the time they are struggling to survive in and around Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. Leaders of the FSA and representatives of the Syrian National Coalition tell me they have now been almost completely cut off from what they saw as already meager support from the western coalition led by the US. Over the last month, the flow of weapons and ammunition to FSA groups in the north has stopped, these leaders say. Three FSA-linked groups are still receiving limited financial assistance, but that’s it. “The Americans are saying they are not cutting us off, that the Saudis and Qataris are cutting us off,” a senior FSA official in the northern Syria, who asked to be cited anonymously for security reasons, told me. “But we know the Americans are in charge.” Administration officials confirmed to me that there has been an intentional refocusing of lethal assistance away from the rebel groups in the north, which are supplied from a coordination cell in Turkey, to FSA-related groups in the South, which covertly receive arms through a separate cell in Jordan. These officials insist that this is a refocus of the effort, from north to south, not a drop in the US commitment to aid the rebels. The FSA groups no longer getting arms, however, are not so sure. They see this as one more sign that the Obama administration doesn’t see them as a reliable partner. For the FSA, its a problem compounded by they fact they are still seen inside Syria as allies of the West. “We got the stigma of being a US supported group, but without the support. We have a huge American flag in our back but not a gun in our hands,” the senior FSA official said. “The Americans say the FSA is not organised and can’t deal with Al Nusra, and we say well if you support us then we will be able to deal with them.” When confronted with the rebel complaints that they are being cut off from western support, White House officials point to the new US-led programme to train and equip a rebel army in bases in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. That programme, which is not secret and will be run by the military rather than the Central Intelligence Agency, is key to the administration’s plan to fight Daesh and eventually confront Al Assad. But it has been hampered by delays and has a limited mission to produce only about 5,000 trained fighters a year, despite its planned $500 million annual budget. What’s more, the moderate Syrian rebels who have been working with the US Why BJP may want to lose Delhi The party’s top brass is aware that even if it wins, the state will remain a headache due to intra-party bickerings and because of impatient voters BY BOBBY NAQVI T here are enough signs to indicate what you see in Delhi may not be true at all. There is something going on behind closed doors and is not known outside a tiny group in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Notice the developments: BJP inducts three rejects of India Against Corruption movement and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) into its fold — Kiran Bedi, Shazia Ilmi and Vinod Kumar Binni. While the last two are of little consequence, Bedi is being projected as BJP’s chief ministerial candidate. In a single stroke, BJP has managed to divert the attention from party mascot Narendra Modi to Bedi as far as Delhi polls are concerned. So if BJP loses or fails to get a majority, you have a convenient scapegoat. On the other hand, media has reported an implosion of sorts in the BJP rank and file. That BJP’s Delhi unit is not a disciplined and united force is known to all. Evidence for AAP’s expose on Satish Upadhyay’s dubious businesses came from a BJP leader. How? Moreover, while AAP and Congress have declared their candidates for the February 7 polls, BJP is yet to decide on the names. Even the sitting MLAs are unsure of tickets. Why this delay? Why? This week, BJP president Amit Shah’s rally was cancelled because the party could not obtain police clearance on time! BJP is a very well-organised outfit with sympathisers in every layer of government, judiciary, media, commerce and industry. It is unlikely all this is happening due to poor management. Then is all this ‘bad management’ part of a deliberate plan to lose Delhi? Or to let Arvind Kejriwal win? But what will BJP gain from losing Delhi? A lot actually. If Kejriwal wins Delhi, it will be projected as a victory of a mass movement, media will eulogise Kejriwal, hail him as a hero and will dissect AAP’s campaign for days. Prime time on television will be reserved for one man only — Kejriwal. More importantly, Kejriwal’s victory will divert attention of the people who are getting restless from Modi’s inability to deliver on his election promises. Once a government led by Kejriwal is sworn in, the focus of national media and by extension national discourse will shift to his government and ministers. Kejriwal will have no honeymoon period, both media and voters will demand immediate results, at least on corruption, power tariffs, VAT (value added tax), health hotline and WiFi. for years have been frozen out of the plans. They say that General Michael Nagata, the head of the training programme, has never met with representatives of the FSA or the civilian Syrian National Coalition. Recruiting for the programme among rebel groups has not begun. The FSA thinks the White House is not serious about the effort. “As of now, there is no interaction between the train and equip programme and the FSA,” the FSA official I spoke with said. “We’ve tried several times to make contact with Nagata, but the administration has been keeping him on a very short leash. Maybe they are just keeping the status quo and they are not interested in making any significant moves.” A former Pentagon official who worked on the Middle East also said that the White House has barred Nagata from meeting with the rebels, complicating the military’s efforts to set up the train-and-equip programme and frustrating military leaders, who want to engage more robustly with the FSA groups. National Security Council (NSC) Spokesman Alistair Baskey denied flatly that the White House was preventing military officials from meeting with the rebels. “General Nagata and his team are free to meet with members of the moderate Syria opposition as appropriate in order to advance the train and equip programme. The NSC has no involvement in determining who they meet with,” he said. COURTESY : AL-JAZEERA A hostile government at the Centre will not help him either. This spotlight on Kejriwal will come as a huge relief for Modi. It will shift the focus from his government at the Centre. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is planning a radical budget and several unpleasant decisions are expected this March. The media spotlight on Kejriwal government will allow Jaitley to quietly to push through unpopular reforms — disinvestment of PSUs (public sector undertakings), budget cuts in health, education — in his attempt to cut budget deficit. Secondly, away from media spotlight, the rightwing Sangh Parivar machinery can then unleash its foot soldiers to polarise voters with low-intensity disturbances ahead of the two big battles — Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar. These two states are absolutely essential for BJP’s growth. Victory in Bihar and UP will complete the Parivar’s dominance in the cow belt. Moreover, UP and Bihar will shore up BJP’s strength in Rajya Sabha, an absolute necessity for pushing far more radical and unpopular reforms. Last but not the least, these two states will make Modi, Shah and Jaitley the most powerful political coterie in the history of democratic India. BJP’s top brass is aware that even if the party wins Delhi, the state will remain a headache — partly due to intra-party bickerings and partly because of impatient voters who expect immediate results and good governance, something the BJP is unsure of delivering. BJP has controlled the city-state’s civic bodies for years but has failed miserably. Losing Delhi won’t be such a bad idea! COURTESY : GULF NEWS The views expressed in these columns are the writers’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Indian Horizon or its management.-Editor 8 International the two men as Kenji Goto, a well-known freelance journalist, and Haruna Yukawa, who reportedly went to Syria to set up a private military contracting company. Mr Abe is currently in Jerusalem as part of a six-day tour of the Middle East. However, he is expected to cancel the remainder of his trip and return to Japan to deal with the hostage crisis.In a press conference in Jerusalem, Mr Abe said he was “indignant” and felt “strong resentment” at the threats, and demanded the immediate release of the hostages.“Extremism and Islam are completely different things,” he said, adding: “The international community will not give in to any form of terrorism and we have to make sure that we work together.” Mr Abe added that Japan’s pledges of non-military support to countries in the Middle East would continue.On Saturday, while in Cairo, Mr Abe promised $2.5bn (£1.6bn) in non-military assistance to the region, with $200m (£130m) in non-military aid for countries fighting Islamic State. Officials said that much of the $200m fund would be focused on helping refugees displaced from Syria and Iraq.As he announced the aid, Mr Abe argued that the world would suffer “immeasurable” damage if terrorism spread in the region. Australian police raise terror threat levels Canberra, Jan 20 (IANS) Australian police have raised the terror threat levels from medium to high Tuesday following recent terror-related incidents in Sydney, Canada and France.Police in New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland have upgraded their terror warnings, joining Australia’s national alert from medium level to high, Xinhua reported.However, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) suggested it was not just local incidents that led to the raising of terror level and EU lifts ban on import of Mangoes from India London, Jan 20 (PTI) The European Union today decided to lift a ban on the import of mangoes from India after the country made improvements in plant health controls and certification system, clearing the way for them to return to the 28-member bloc.A European Commission committee voted to lift the ban today. The legislation now needs to be formally adopted New Lankan govt to implement 13th amendment: PM Colombo, Jan 20 (PTI) Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today said his government will implement the India-backed 13th amendment to the constitution within a unitary framework for the devolution of power to provinces to achieve reconciliation with the minority Tamil community.“We will implement the 13A within a unitary framework,” Wickremesinghe told parliament.He was addressing the house convened for the first time since President Maithripala Sirisena succeeded Mahinda Rajapaksa after the January 8 presidential election.Rajapaksa’s majority Sinhala nationalist regime was opposed to conferring full powers to the provincial councils.The issue of devolution of power also featured during Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera visit to India this week. India has been pressing Sri Lanka to implement the 13th amendment on devolution of powers in “letter and spirit” and to fulfil the aspirations of the ethnic Tamils.The 13th amendment that followed the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord of July 1987 signed between then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then Sri Lankan President J R Jayewardene envisaged the devolution of powers to the provinces in the midst of the island’s bitter ethnic conflict.TNA, Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party, had supported Sirisena in this month’s elections after Rajapaksa failed to implement the 13th amendment. Elaborating his government’s 100-day programme, Wickremesinghe said introduction of democratic reforms would form a major part of it.“We were a coalition of different political parties with different objectives. But we got together to end the dictatorial family rule,” Wickremesinghe said.In the same spirit, he said the new government welcomes proposals, ideas and criticism from all political parties. cited attacks on Canadian Parliament in October last year and the Charlie Hebdo magazine office in France earlier in the month. “As a result of intelligence information and discussions with our partners, the terrorism threat level against police is assessed as high, which is commensurate with the broader threat level for the community,” the AFP said via a statement released Tuesday. “The factors that led to the elevated terrorism threat level for Australia to high in September 2014 persist and the security environment remains increasingly complex and challenging. EU-India trade relationship and especially for Indian exporters and UK consumers. “The British Government worked hard to have the ban lifted. This includes sending an expert to provide technical training, prior to the EU inspection in September. This is great news for the UK-India and EU-India trade relationship and especially AirAsia jet climbed fast then stalled: minister Jakarta, Jan 20 (AFP) An AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month with 162 people on board climbed at a faster than normal speed and then stalled, the Indonesian transport minister said today.Flight QZ8501 went down on December 28 in stormy weather, during what was supposed to be a short trip from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. Indonesia’s meteorological agency has said bad weather may have caused the crash, and investigators are analysing the data from the jet’s black boxes before releasing a preliminary report.Just moments before the plane disappeared off the radar, the pilot had asked to climb to avoid the storm. He was not immediately granted permission due to heavy air traffic. “In the final minutes, the plane climbed at a speed which was beyond normal,” Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan told reporters, citing radar data.“The plane suddenly went up at a speed above the normal limit that it was able to climb to. Then it stalled.” Earlier at a parliamentary hearing, he said radar data showed the Airbus A320-200 appeared at one point claimed responsibility for the attack but roadside bombs have been the Taliban’s weapon of choice in their war against foreign and Afghan security forces, now in its fourteenth year. The bombs also increasingly kill and wound civilians. According to a UN report released in December, civilian casualties hit a record high in 2014, with 3,188 civilians killed and 6,429 injured by the end of November, a 19 per cent jump compared to the year before, making 2014 the deadliest year for non-combatants.Last year also saw a 33 per cent rise in casualties among children and a 12 per cent increase among women.While ground fighting between troops and insurgent groups as well as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) remained leading causes of deaths and injuries, the Taliban were responsible for 75 per cent of all civilian casualties, according to the UN report. Nembang announced the house could go ahead with the voting to bring out the draft statute, which led to rampage in the assembly. Nembang allowed former prime minister and UCPN-Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai to address the assembly. Bhattarai said the “assembly could turn into Mahabharata”, and that triggered a conflict. As soon as he completed his address, Nembang tabled a proposal to allow the formation of a questionnaire committee to work over the disputed issues of the new statute before the voting. The opposition parties rejected Nembang’s proposal. An unidentified Nepalese politician from the opposition party Bhattarai said: “Formation of the lifts a chair to throw, during the Constituent Assembly meeting, questionnaire panel will split the in Kathmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015. Opposition parties staged general strike to shut down Nepal on Tuesday as opposi- Constituent Assembly, paving the way for its demise.” tion politicians threw chairs and attacked the parliamentary The first Constituent Assembly speaker in a bid to block the government from pushing through a draft of a new constitution. AP/PTI was also dissolved in Nepal in 2012, Congress and Communist Party with voting to bring out the draft following a conflict among parties, of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist of the new statute. Constituent As- and ended without the promulga(CPN-UML) wanted to go ahead sembly chairman Subash Chandra tion of the constitution. Kathmandu, Jan 20 (IANS) Over a dozen Constituent Assembly members in Nepal, including senior leaders, were injured Tuesday when opposition members attacked lawmakers of the ruling parties over issues concerning the new statute and disrupted the proceedings. Lawmakers from the opposition parties led by Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPNMaoist) vandalised the Nepal Constituent Assembly and attacked the lawmakers from the ruling coalition during the sitting Tuesday. A self-imposed deadline set for Jan 22 over the promulgation of the new constitution is approaching after repeated failure to reach a consensus over the intricacies of the new statute.The ruling Nepali and published by the European Commission.This will take around a month, but the positive vote by the Committee gives certainty to Indian exporters and UK importers about the position for the forthcoming mango season.Welcoming the decision, British High Commissioner in India James Bevan said: “This is great news for the UK-India and Roadside Bomb Kills At Least 8 Afghan Civilians: Officials GHAZNI Jan 20 (PTI): At least eight civilians including women and children were killed when their van struck a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said. The incident occurred in the Jaghuri district of Ghazni province, Deputy Provincial Governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told AFP. It comes weeks after the NATO combat mission which began in 2001 was downgraded to support and training duties to help the Afghan army and police. ”Eight civilians, including one woman and a child, were killed in this morning roadside blast. One child and one woman were wounded,” he said, adding that the injured child and woman were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Asadullah Safi, the deputy police chief of the province told AFP that four of those killed belonged to one family.No one has Wednesday , Janauary 21, 2015 Dozen Nepal lawmakers injured in clash over statute Japan PM Shinzo Abe in Islamic State ‘hostages’ vow Jerusalem Jan 20 (AFP): Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has condemned an apparent threat by the Islamic State group to kill two Japanese hostages. A video purportedly from the group shows a militant threatening to kill two hostages unless a ransom is paid. In the video, which has not been independently verified, the militant also criticises Japan for pledging aid to countries fighting IS.Mr Abe said the threat was unacceptable and vowed to save the hostages.He added that their lives were his “top priority” and that Japan would not give in to terrorism.Japan’s foreign ministry said it was working to verify the video.The video named Indian Horizon Hyderabad to be climbing at a rate of 1,800 metres a minute before the crash. There were several other planes in the area at the time. “I think it is rare even for a fighter jet to be able to climb 6,000 feet per minute,” he said. “For a commercial flight, climbing around 1,000 to 2,000 (feet) is maybe already considered extraordinary, because it is not meant to climb that fast.” His comments came after Indonesian investigators said they were focusing on the possibility of human error or problems with the plane having caused the crash, following an initial analysis of the cockpit voice recorder.“We didn’t hear any other person, no explosion,” investigator Nurcahyo Utomo told reporters, explaining why terrorism had been ruled out. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Committee were now looking at the “possibility of plane damage and human factors”, he said, without giving further details.As well as the cockpit voice recorder, the committee is also examining a wealth of information in the flight data recorder, which monitors every major part of the plane. for Indian exporters and UK consumers,” Bevan?said.“We are pleased to have played an important role in bringing the ban to an end,” Bevan said.? The EU accounts for more than 50 per cent of total exports of fruits and vegetables from India. The UK is the main destination, followed by the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Armed Swiss police officers stand guard on the roof of a hotel, the day before the opening of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015. The world’s financial and political elite will head this week to the Swiss Alps for 2015’s gathering of the World Economic Forum at the Swiss ski resort of Davos. AP/PTI Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal Defends Controversial Remarks on Muslims WASHINGTON Jan 20 (PTI): Some countries have allowed Muslims to establish autonomous neighborhoods in cities where they govern by a harsh version of Islamic law, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said on Monday at a speech in London. The Republican, who is considering a presidential campaign in 2016, later defended - and repeated - the statement after facing reporters’ questions about his claims.In a speech prepared for delivery at a British think tank, Jindal said some immigrants are seeking “to colonize Western countries, because setting up your own enclave and demanding recognition of a no-go zone are exactly that.” He also said Muslim leaders must condemn the people who commit terrorism in the name of faith as “murderers who are going to hell.” The claims on “no-go zones” are similar to those a Fox News guest made last week about places where non-Muslims were not welcome in parts of the United Kingdom such as Birmingham, and “Muslim religious police” enforce faith-based laws. Steven Emerson, an American author who often is asked about terror networks, told Fox News that in Britain “there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”Prime Minister David Cameron responded by calling Emerson a “complete idiot.”Emerson later apologized and said his comments “were totally in error.” Fox News also issued apologies for broadcasting the comments.Jindal, however, used similar rhetoric during a speech, warning of “no-go zones” in London and other Western cities“The huge issue, the big issue in non-assimilation is the fact that you have people that want to come to our country but not adopt our values, not adopt our language Shubham, 13, Silicon Valley’s youngest entrepreneur, develops Braille printer Guatemalan ex-police chief gets 90-year jail for 37 killings Guatemala City, Jan 20 (IANS/EFE) A court in Guatemala sentenced a former police chief to 90 years in prison on charges of murdering 37 people in 1980, media reported Tuesday. The court Monday found Pedro Garcia Arredondo guilty of murder, attempted murder and crimes against humanity when he murdered 37 people at the Spanish embassy in Guatemala in 1980. Garcia Arredondo, 69, was responsible for burning the people to death Jan 31, 1980, found the court after four months of hearings. Among those who were burnt to death was the Spanish Consul Jaime Ruiz del Arbol Soler.The security forces of the then military regime ruling the country attacked the Spanish embassy after rural workers and students occupied it to protest the dictatorship. and in some cases want to set apart their own enclaves and hold onto their own values,” said Jindal. “I think that’s dangerous.”Jindal’s parents immigrated to the United States from India. As a young man, Jindal converted from Hinduism to Catholicism. Asked for evidence of “no-go zones,” Jindal pointed to a weekend article in The Daily Mail, a London tabloid, that said killings, sexual abuse of minors and female genital mutilation are believed to go unreported to local police in some areas. The article did not give specific religious groups or towns. Shubham Banerjee, right, world on his Lego robotics braille printer as his dad Neil watches at home Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015, in Santa Clara, Calif. Banerjee launched a company to develop a low-cost machine to print Braille materials for the blind. It’s based on a prototype he built with his Lego robotics kit for a school science fair project. Last month, tech giant Intel Corp. invested in his startup, Braigo Labs, making the 8th grader the youngest entrepreneur to receive venture capital funding. AP/PTI SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA, machines to print Braille. Tech Jan 20 (PTI): In Silicon Valley, it’s giant Intel Corp. recently invested never too early to become an en- in his start-up, Braigo Labs. Mr. Shubham built a Braille trepreneur. Just ask 13-year-old Shubham Banerjee.The Califor- printer with a Lego robotics kit nia eighth-grader has launched as a school science fair project in a company to develop low-cost 2014 after he asked his parents a simple question - How do blind people read? “Google it,” they told him. Mr. Shubham then did some online research and was shocked to learn that Braille printers, also called embossers, cost at least $2,000 too expensive for most blind readers, especially in developing countries. “I just thought that price should not be there. I know that there is a simpler way to do this,” said Mr. Shubham.Mr. Shubham wants to develop a desktop Braille printer that costs around $350 and weighs just a few kilograms, compared with current models that can weigh more than nine kilograms. The machine could be used to print Braille reading materials on paper, using raised dots instead of ink, from a personal computer or electronic device. “My end goal would probably be having most of the blind people ... using my Braille printer,” said Mr. Shubham. 9 Business Indian Horizon Hyderabad Wednesday, January 21, 2015 India’s growth to reach 6.3% in 2016: UN report Geneva Jan 20 (PTI): India will see a gradual growth acceleration with its GDP expected to reach 5.9 percent this year and 6.3 percent in 2016, the UN said Monday while partly crediting the recovery to improved market sentiment after the new government took office and announced key reforms. “India’s economy expanded by an estimated 5.4 percent in 2014, an improvement from growth of 5 percent recorded in 2013, but still significantly below the 8 percent pace of the pre-crisis period,” said the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects 2015 (WESP) report, launched today. India is projected to see a gradual acceleration in growth, with GDP forecast expanding to 5.9 percent in 2015 and 6.3 percent in 2016, the report said. “The recovery is partly the result of improved market sentiment after the new administration took office in the second quarter of 2014 and announced plans to reform the bureaucracy, labour laws and public subsidies,” it said. The WESP report is produced at the beginning of each year by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the five UN regional commissions and the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). Economic growth in South Asia is set to gradually pick up from an estimated 4.9 percent in 2014 to 5.4 percent in 2015 and 5.7 percent in 2016, the report said. “While the recovery will be led by India, which accounts for about 70 percent of regional output, other economies such as Bangladesh and the Islamic Republic of Iran are also projected to see stronger growth in the forecast period,” it said. The global economy is expected to grow at 3.1 percent in 2015 and 3.3 percent in 2016, compared with an estimated growth of 2.6 percent in 2014. The world imports of goods and services is projected to grow by 4.7 percent in 2015. The tepid growth of the world economy is a legacy of the global financial crisis of 2008 that continues to weigh on growth, while new challenges have emerged, including geopolitical conflicts such as in Ukraine and the Ebola epidemic, the report said. “Among the developing countries, Asia will record the fastest growth which is based on domestic demand,” said Alfredo Calcagno, the UNCTAD head of macro economic and development policies branch. Despite a weak start in 2014, India’s manufacturing sector registered employment gains in several sectors such as textiles, metals and information technology, which saw marked increases in employment levels through June 2014, the report said. In general, the job market situation in South Asian countries appeared to be relatively stable in 2014, the report said. Unemployment rates remained significantly higher for women than for men including in India, Pakistan, Iran and Sri Lanka. The share of vulnerable employment defined as unpaid family workers and own-account workers is a high 80 percent in India and 60 percent in Pakistan, which illustrates the challenges of generating quality employment in the region, it said. On a global scale, the unemployment situation remains dire, the report warned. “In the developed econo- Entertaining JSPL plea to affect coal block auction: Govt to HC New Delhi Jan 20 (PTI): Govermment on Tuesday opposed in Delhi High Court the pleas of JSPL and its promoter Naveen Jindal challenging its order changing end-use of coal blocks earlier alloted to them, saying the decision was taken to ensure optimal use of reserves of the natural resource. “Entertaining the plea will result in stunting the entire process undertaken subsequent to apex court verdict,” Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi submitted before a bench of justices B D Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva. The AG contended that the Supreme Court while cancelling the coal blocks had made it clear that there cannot be any link with the past. Hence, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd’s (JSPL) contention, that change of end-use would affect its Rs 20,000 crore investment in a steel unit, is “wiped out”, he said. The Centre was responding to the petition in which JSPL contended that it was allocated coal blocks in Odisha and Chhattisgarh for the setting up steel and sponge iron production units respectively, and changing the end-use has resulted in making it ineligible to participate in the ongoing auction process which is expected to culminate on February 14. Rohatgi made it clear that while cancelling the coal blocks, the apex court had said not to look at prior allocation or the investment made on the same as the process of allocation was “fundamentally flawed, illegal and arbitrary”. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the JSPL and Jindal, opposed the submissions, saying the aspect of auction of coal blocks was never contemplated by the apex court. “Auction was never contemplated by the apex court as the point was never put before it. The government had contended that Coal India Ltd (CIL) will fill the void and take things forward,” Sibal said. The AG said the decision to change enduse as well as merge some coal blocks, as was done in the case of Utkal B1 and B2 in Odisha (allotted to JSPL), was taken on the basis of the recommendations of a high powered committee. Rohatgi said one of the members of the panel was from Central Mines Planning and Design Institute Ltd (CMPDIL), a premier body for coal exploration and mining. He also said that the government’s Coal Ordinance of 2014 was a direct fallout of the apex court verdict. The AG said the priority to power sector was given to comply with the ordinance’s mandate to carry out auction in public interest, in a transparent manner and for optimal utilisation of the coal reserves. “So areas having over 100 million tonnes of low grade coal were earmarked for power as this sector requires low grade coal in huge volumes while iron and steel requires high grade coal in low volumes,” he said. mies, unemployment figures remain elevated in several countries, especially in the euro area, while wage levels continue to be affected by the financial crisis, it said. “In developing economies, despite slower employment growth, unemployment rates have remained relatively stable since 2013, partly owing to lower labour force growth, although informality and vulnerable employment are still highly prevalent,” it added. UNCTAD head of macro economic and development policies branch Calcagno said, “Schemes like MGNREGA have generated employment and have been good for the economy. Fiscal space of South Asia could be improved. For instance, only three per cent of the population of India pays income tax. Tax collection could be vastly improved.” The consumer inflation rate in India was below 7 percent year on year in the third quarter -- fall of 3.4 percent from the final quarter of 2013 -- thus lessening price pressures in Nepal, which is closely tied to India through the exchange-rate peg and strong trade flows. RCom gets Rs 650 cr from TIFPL; promoter group firm ups stake Mumbai Jan 20 (PTI): Reliance Communications on Tuesday said its group entity Telecom Infrastructure Finance Pvt Ltd has paid it Rs 650 crore, increasing promoters’ holding to 59.7 per cent in the company. “The Committee of Directors at their meeting held today have allotted 8,66,66,667 equity shares to TIFPL, against Warrants issued to them. As a result, the Promoter Group?s holding has gone up to 59.70 per cent from existing 58.25 per cent,” RCom said in a BSE filing. The proceeds from TIFPL are expected to be utilised by RCom to lower its debt which was at Rs 36,334 crore in second quarter ended September 30, 2014. The company’s shareholders on July 24 had approved issuing of preferential shares of over 8.6 crore to TIFPL. On August 7, it had paid Rs 650 crore, which was 50 per cent of the issue price of the warrants. Reliance Communications on Tuesday said its group entity Telecom Infrastructure Finance Pvt Ltd has paid it Rs 650 crore, increasing promoters’ holding to 59.7 per cent in the company. The balance Rs 650 crore was to be paid whenever firm would exercise right to subscribe equity shares against the warrants on or before March 31, 2015. RCom said: “Further to our letter dated August 7, 2014 intimating allotment of 8,66,66,667 Warrants to Telecom Infrastructure Finance Private Limited (TIFPL), a Promoter Group company, the Company has now received balance Rs 650 crore from TIFPL and it has exercised its right to subscribe equity shares against said Warrants which were issued at an issue price of Rs 150 per Warrant.” TIFPL paid the balance today which also resulted in the increase of RCom capital from Rs 1,201.16 crore to Rs 1,244.49 crore. The RCom scrip was trading at Rs 80.30, up 0.82 per cent, on the BSE. India’s growth rate to surpass China’s in 2016: IMF Washington Jan 20 (PTI): India is expected to grow at 6.3 percent this year and 6.5 percent in 2016 by when it is likely to cross China’s projected growth rate, the IMF said today while terming the new government’s reforms as “promising” but insisted that their implementation is key. In 2014, India’s growth rate was 5.8 percent against China’s 7.4 percent, said the World Economic Report update released by the International Monetary Fund. India’s growth rate in 2013 was five percent as against China’s 7.8 percent. India is projected to grow at 6.3 percent in 2015 and 6.5 percent in 2016, when it is likely to cross China’s projected growth rate of 6.3 percent, the IMF said. “I think the reform plans of the new Prime Minister are promising. We are going to have to see the speed of the implementation,” said Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, Deputy Director in IMF’s Research Department. Responding to a question, the IMF official said the effect of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government’s economic reform would be difficult to predict as these are structural reforms and are growing gradually over the medium term. “Key is going to be implementation,” Milesi-Ferretti said. According to the latest IMF report, in India, the growth forecast is broadly unchanged, however, the weaker external demand is offset by the boost to the terms of trade from lower oil prices and a pickup in industrial and investment activity after policy reforms. The report said global growth will receive a boost from lower oil prices, which reflect to an important extent higher supply. But this boost is projected to be more than offset by negative factors, including investment weakness as adjustment to diminished expectations about medium-term growth continues in many advanced and emerging market economies. Global growth in 2015?16 is projected at 3.5 and 3.7 percent, a downward revision of 0.3 percent relative to the October 2014 World Economic Outlook (WEO). The revision reflect a reassessment of prospects in China, Russia, the euro area and Japan as well as weaker activity in some major oil exporters because of the sharp drop in oil prices. The United States is the only CII, Alibaba tie up to provide global platform to Indian SMEs major economy for which growth projections have been raised, the IMF said. Investment growth in China declined in the third quarter of 2014, and leading indicators point to a further slowdown. The authorities are now expected to put greater weight on reducing vulnerabilities from recent rapid credit and investment growth and hence the forecast assumes less of a policy response to the underlying moderation, the report said. Slower growth in China will also have important regional effects, which partly explains the downward revisions to growth in much of emerging Asia, it said. Among major advanced economies, growth in the United States rebounded ahead of expectations after the contraction in the first quarter of 2014. Beijing Jan 20 (PTI): To facilitate greater economic engagement between Indian and Chinese SMEs, Confederation of Indian Industry has signed an MOU with China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba to build business-to-business linkages through global online platform. Alibaba.Com and CII will collaborate and develop various trade opportunities and online promotions to facilitate greater economic engagement between Indian and Chinese small and medium enterprises (SMEs). CII Shanghai has signed an MOU with Alibaba.Com to build business-to-business linkages between SMEs from India and the rest of the world through better utilisation of digital services for cross border and domestic trade, Chief Representativen of CII Shanghai Madhav Sharma, who signed the agreement at Hangzhou city last week, said today. CII and Alibaba.Com will also work jointly towards providing trainings, promoting Industry clusters for SMEs in some key business sectors. Alibaba will work with CII to run their e-certificates programmes in India, Sharma said. The MoU is a step forward in forging greater partnerships, engagement between Indian and global business especially among SMEs, he said. India’s manufacturing and services sector will be able to achieve the objectives of building greater India-China SME engagement by benefiting with the expertise of Alibaba.Com in the digital space - especially on the B2B area, and CII through its network of 64 offices in India - with 8000 direct members and more than a lakh indirect members through its affiliated sectorial association, he said. It fills the need to strengthen cooperation between Indian and global SMEs to support the integration of Indian SMEs into the global supply and value chains of large enterprises across all markets. The MOU helps to support the transfer and expansion of knowledge and technology for forging strategic partnerships, collaborations, joint ventures, joint research and development leading to new innovations and?help Indian SMEs build brand image at B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) levels leading to increased trust. Sahara Group close to $2 billion deal with Mirach Capital New Delhi Jan 20 (PTI): Looking to garner funds to secure bail for its Chairman Subrata Roy, Sahara Group is in advanced stages of tying up a financial package worth nearly USD 2 billion (over Rs 12,000 crore) from US-based Mirach Capital Group. Sahara Group’s Head of Corporate Finance Sandeep Wadhwa told PTI that documentation process is progressing and the deal with Mirach Capital is expected to be completed before February 20. The deal under progress comprises investments to the tune of USD 1.1 billion and a senior loan of close to USD 882 million having a one-year tenure. The latter amount would be for replacing money borrowed from Bank of China related to Sahara Group’s three overseas hospitality properties. Mirach Capital would replace loans worth around USD 882 million taken from Bank of China on the three overseas properties -- Plaza hotel and Dream hotel in New York and Grosvenor House hotel in London. “It will also make investments of USD 650 million in Grosvenor Hotel and the amount would finally come to Amby Valley Ltd,” he said. Further, Mirach Capital would pump USD 450 million into the hospitality vertical of Sahara Group, he added. The money would be invested in Sahara Group entities by Mirach Capital through a Special Purpose Vehicle. When asked whether funds worth USD 1.1 billion from Mirach Capital would be enough to add up funds for securing the bail of Roy, Wadhwa replied in the affirmative. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court had allowed Sahara Group to go ahead with its proposed transactions for foreign loan as part of raising Rs 10,000 crore to ensure release of Roy from jail. Roy has been in jail for over nine months for non-refund of over Rs 20,000 crore with interest to depositors. “This (USD 1.1 billion) amount will be enough to take care of the short fall,” he said and added that the group has already paid Rs 3,600 crore in cash towards bail. From investment of USD 1.1 billion, about Rs 1,400 crore would be utilised as cash and Rs 5,000 crore as bank guarantee towards the bail amount, Wadhwa said. ONGC signs pact with IITs to develop indigenous technology New Delhi Jan 20 (PTI): India’s largest oil producer ONGC has signed an agreement with seven IITs for developing indigenous technologies to enhance exploration and production of hydrocarbons and alternate energy sources. The industry-academia collaboration is aimed at bolstering ‘Make in India’ campaign in energy sector, ONGC Chairman and Managing Director Dinesh K Sarraf said here. ONGC signed the Memorandum of Collaboration (MoC) with Pan-IIT, a consortium of seven premier Indian Indian Institutes of Technology - IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Madras, IIT-Mumbai, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Guwahati and IIT-Roorkee. “Under the MoC, ONGC’s R&D Institutes and the IITs shall jointly undertake advanced research and development projects for the E&P sector of the country in general and oilfield specific activities of ONGC in particular,” he said. The MoC also ideates promoting internships, visiting and adjunct faculty pro- grams, research oriented career programmes through an ONGC Scholar Programme. Within the ambit of this collaboration, while ONGC will make its high-tech laboratories available to students and research scholars of IITs, ONGC geoscientists and engineers will also have the opportunity of working with IITs, he said. Prof Partha P Chakrabarti, Coordinating Director for the Pan-IIT Forum, said seven thematic research areas in the domain of geoscience, reservoir characterization, enhanced production of oil and gas, exploiting unconventional sources of hydrocarbons, software development, engineering solutions and alternate energy resources have been identified. Sarraf said the collaboration was in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for Make in India and develop indigenous technologies. The programme will be funded by Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and shall take advantage of the available infrastructure and manpower of the IITs and ONGC. 10 Business Commodity takes Oil prices down in Asian trade Singapore, Jan 20 (AFP) Oil prices tumbled further in Asia today, with weak global demand and an oversupply dictating the trend for the commodity, analysts said. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in February eased USD 1.32 to USD 47.37 in late-morning trade and Brent crude for March fell 12 cents to USD 48.72. “We see no near-term catalysts that would change the supply/demand equation,” credit ratings firm Moody’s said in a market commentary. It said the drop in crude prices by more than half between June last year and this month reflected an increase in US production, a slow rise in worldwide demand and oil kingpin Saudi Arabia’s decision “not to keep acting as OPEC’s -- and the world’s -- swing producer”. Saudi Arabia is the major producer among the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, which decided in November to leave crude output unchanged, further pressuring prices. Moody’s said it has lowered its price assumptions for Brent crude to USD 55 a barrel through 2015 and USD 65 in 2016. It also lowered its price assumption for WTI to USD 52 a barrel through this year and to USD 62 in 2016. Futher confirming weak demand, the International Monetary Fund today sharply cut its 2015-2016 world growth forecast of only six months ago. The IMF said poorer prospects in China, Russia, the euro area and Japan will hold world growth to just 3.5 per cent this year and 3.7 per cent in 2016. That was 0.3 percentage points lower than in its previous World Economic Outlook in October, and underscored the steady deterioration of the economic picture for many countries. (10,000), copra Rajapur Mumbai (per quintal) 20,500 (21,000), copra edible Mumbai (per quintal) 13,600 (13,500). Small sugar declines on subdued demand Mumbai, Jan 20 (PTI) Small sugar prices declined modestly at the Vashi wholesale market here today on subdued demand from stockists and bulk consumers amid adequate supplies. Meanwhile, medium sugar ended stable due to lack of any worthwhile buying activity. Small sugar (S-30) eased by Rs 9 per quintal to Rs 2,700/2,791 from Monday’s closing level of Rs 2,700/2,800. However, Medium sugar (M-30) was quoted at yesterday’s level of Rs 2,812/2,952. Following are today’s closing rates for sugar (per quintal) with the previous rates given in brackets: Small sugar (S-30) quality: Rs 2,700/2,791 (Rs 2,700/2,800). Medium sugar (M-30) quality: Rs 2,812/2,952 (Rs 2,812/2,952. Edibles and non-edible drops on subdued demand Mumbai, Jan 20 (PTI) Groundnut oil prices dropped further at the Vashi oils and oilseeds wholesale market here on subdued demand from stockist and retailers on the back of ample arrivals from producing belts. Refined palmolein declined further owing to reduced demand from retailers. While, linseeds oil ruled steady following absence of any worthwhile buying activity. In the non-edible section, castorseeds bold and castor oil commercial dipped due to lower demand from shippers and soap industries. In the edible segment, groundnutoil eased by Rs 10 per 10kg to Rs 1,010 from Monday’s closing level of Rs 1,020. and refined palmolein fell by Rs 7 per 10kg to Rs 505 from Rs 512. Moving to non-edible segment, Castorseeds bold dipped by Rs 50 per 100kg to Rs 4,250 from Rs New Delhi, Jan 20 (PTI) Riding high on 4,300 and castoroil commercial moved wedding season demand from jewellers down by Rs 10 per 10kg to Rs 880 as and a firming trend overseas, gold con- against Rs 890 previously. tinued its upward streak for the fourth straight session, with prices rising by another Rs 100 to Rs 28,180 per ten gram at the bullion market here today. Silver also rose by Rs 100 to Rs 39,200 Mumbai, Jan 20 (PTI) Tin and nickel per kg on increased offtake by industrial prices slipped at the non-ferrous metal units and coin makers. Marketmen said market here today on stockists selling apart from persistent buying by jewel- amidst reduced demand from alloy lers and retailers to meet ongoing wed- industries. Elsewhere, select copper, ding season demand, a firming global aluminium, and zinc also declined foltrend mainly kept the precious metal lowing subdued offtake from industrial prices higher. Globally, gold rose 0.83 users. At the London Metal Exchange per cent to USD 1,290.90 an ounce and (LME), copper climbed in early thin silver was up 0.79 per cent to, USD 17.92 trade ahead of a spate of Chinese ecoan ounce in London in early trade to- nomic reports that were expected to day. In the national capital, gold of 99.9 show stuttering growth in the world’s and 99.5 per cent purity added another top metals user, casting a pall on the Rs 100 each to Rs 28,180 and Rs 27,980 outlook for metals demand. Copper per ten gram respectively. The precious wire bar slumped by Rs 16 per kg to metal had gained Rs 760 in the previous Rs 450 from Monday’s closing level of three sessions. Sovereign, followed suit Rs 466. Copper cable scrap dipped by and gained Rs 100 to Rs 24,000 per piece Rs 8 per kg to Rs 430 from Rs 438. Tin of eight gram. . and nickel fell by Rs 5 per kg each to Rs 1,470 and Rs 1,060 as against Rs 1,475 and Rs 1,065. Copper armiture and zinc moved down by Rs 2 per kg each to Rs 413 and Rs 173 from Rs 415 and Mumbai, Jan 20 (PTI) Copra Rajapur Rs 175. Aluminium utensils scrap softMumbai slipped at the Spices market ened by a Re per kg to Rs 132. However, here today on subdued demand from brass honey climbed by Rs 3 per kg to stockists and exporters amidst lower Rs 315 from Rs 312 and Lead moved up upcountry offtake. Ginger bleached by Rs 2 per kg to Rs 134 from Rs 132. and unbleached declined on reduced retail offtake on the back of poor export enquiries. While, copra edible gained further due to sustained demand from stockist and retailers amid good export New Delhi Jan 20 (PTI): India is conenquiries. Rest of the spices ruled sta- sidering removing price controls on ble due to absence of any worthwhile urea and scrapping an import duty of 5 buying activity. Copra Rajapur Mum- percent, a daily newspaper reported on bai climbed by Rs 500 per quintal to Rs Monday, as Prime Minister Narendra 21,000 from last Saturday’s closing lev- Modi moves to check subsidy costs and el of Rs 20,500. Following are today’s cut wasteful use of the crop nutrient. closing rates (in Rs) with previous Fertiliser subsidy costs quadrupled over rates in brackets: Black pepper (per the past decade as the previous governkg) 700/750 (700/750), ginger bleached ment kept urea prices below the cost of (per kg) 210 (225), ginger unbleached production, fearing a backlash from the (per kg) 230 (245), copra office Alapu- powerful farm lobby. Urea is the most zha (per quintal) 10,100 (10,100), copra widely used fertiliser in India. Modi`s office Kozhikode (per quintal) 10,000 government is now planning. Gold extend gains on wedding season demand; global cues Tin, nickel slip on reduced demand Copra Rajapur slips on subdued demand Government explores deregulating urea Indian Horizon Hyderabad Wednesday, January 21, 2015 11.5 crore Jan Dhan accounts opened; most of India is banked: FM New Delhi: As many as 11.5 crore bank accounts have been opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, exceeding the enhanced target of 10 crore and covering 99.74 percent of households, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday. “Most of India today is included in the banking system,” he said, adding that more than Rs 9,000 crore has been deposited in the Jan Dhan accounts. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the financial inclusion scheme in his first Independence Day speech last year. It was launched in August with a target to open bank accounts for 7.5 crore poor persons by January 26, 2015. The target was later increased to 10 crore accounts. Addressing a press conference here, Jaitley said the government would use these bank accounts to pass on benefits to individuals under its various social security schemes. Financial Services Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said that even Guinness Book of World Records has recognised the achievements made under PMJDY. In its citation, the Guinness Book said: “Most bank accounts opened in one week as part of the Financial Inclusion Campaign is 18,096,130 and was achieved by the Department of Financial Services, Government of India from August 23 to 29, 2014.” Exclusion of a large number of people from the banking network was inhibiting growth, Jaitley said. “Financial Inclusion is one of the top most priorities of the government. PMJDY is the biggest financial inclusion initiative in the world.” He said that out of the accounts opened, 60 percent are in the rural areas and 40 percent in the urban areas. Share of female account holders is about 51 percent. Jaitley said that RuPay cards have been issued to more Rupee up 2 paise against dollar at 61.69 Mumbai, Jan 20 (PTI) The Indian rupee on Tuesday gained 2 paise against the dollar at 61.69 with banks and exporters selling the US currency amid sustained capital inflows in view of strong equity markets, extending gains for the forth day in succession. The rupee resumed lower at 61.82 per dollar as against the Monday’s closing level of 61.71 per dollar at the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) Market on initial dollar demand. The local currency however staged a comeback with banks and exporters selling dollar on hopes of more foreign capital inflows in view of strong equity market. The rupee finally end the day’s trade at 61.69, showing a marginal gain of two paise from its previous close. The rupee has gained by 49 paise or 0.79 per cent in four days. Meanwhile, the benchmark BSE Sensex rose by 522.66 points or 1.85 per cent to all-time closing high of 28,784.67. The dollar index was up by 0.19 pct against a basket of six major global rivals. The benchmark sixmonth rupee premium payable in June eased to 198-200 paise from 199.5201.5 paise on Monday, while forward contracts maturing in December finished stable at 396-398 paise. The Reserve Bank of India fixed the reference rate for dollar at 61.8475 and for Euro at 71.5699. The rupee firmed up further against the pound to 93.44 from Monday’s close of 93.53 and also hardened further to 52.04 per 100 Japanese yen from 52.60. The rupee also strengthened further to 71.44 per euro from 71.53 per euro on Monday. Meanwhile, premia showed marginal changes due to uneven demand and supply transactions. The benchmark sixmonth premium payable in June eased to 198-200 paise from 199.5-201.5 paise yesterday while forward contracts maturing in December finished stable at 396-398 paise. The Reserve Bank of India fixed the reference rate for dollar at 61.8475 and for Euro at 71.5699. The rupee firmed up further against the pound to 93.44 from yesterday’s close of 93.53 and also hardened further to 52.04 per 100 Japanese yen from 52.60. The rupee also strengthened further to 71.44 per euro from 71.53 per euro yesterday. than 10 crore beneficiaries who will get a benefit of personal accidental insurance of Rs 1 lakh besides a life insurance cover of Rs 30,000 for eligible beneficiaries. Describing the scheme as “a game changer for the economy”, the minister said that it would provide the platform for Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) and help in plugging leakages in subsidies. Overall, public sector banks alone opened 9.11 crore accounts under PMJDY, followed by regional rural banks which opened about 2.01 crore accounts. On the other hand, 13 private sector banks together open just 37.58 lakh. POSCO CEO calls on PM Modi, discusses investment plans New Delhi Jan 20 (PTI): South Korean steel company POSCO’s CEO Kwon Oh-Joon Tuesday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is believed to have discussed new investment plans in Gujarat and Maharashtra besides its much-delayed USD 12-billion Odisha project. “POSCO officials, who called on the Prime Minister today discussed with him the company’s India investment plans which include big plans for Maharashtra and Gujarat,” an official privy to the development.. “They also shared ideas about the Odisha project and discussed the overall developments on the project so far,” the official added. The Korean company’s proposed 12 million tonne per annum (MTPA) project at Jagatsinghpur district in Odisha is stalled for about a decade. POSCO India CMD Gee Woong Sung and Korean Ambassador Joon-Gyu Lee also met the Prime Minister. The official said so far there has been no new development on Odisha project and the state government is still to renew the pact for setting up the plant. Assuring the steel giant of allocating a mine to meet its raw material requirement, the Odisha government has sent a proposal to seek the Centre’s approval for grant of prospecting licence to POSCO for iron ore over a notified area of 2082.50 hectares. However, the Mines ordinance, promulgated recently provides for allocation of all mines through auction route. Caught between Odisha’s assurance and Centre’s ordinance for auction, POSCO’s wait for getting mines to feed its initial 8 MTPA plant is likely to be little longer. A POSCO official, however said, “We have to study the Ordinance. We will take proper action only after that.” Odisha Steel and Mines Minister yesterday had said that “The nation will be sending a very wrong signal to the international investor community by completely ignoring these international commitments for supporting the raw material requirement. Sensex soars 522 pts to scale new high;Nifty touches 8700 mark Mumbai, Jan 20 (PTI) Extending its winning streak for the fourth day, benchmark index BSE Sensex today surged by over 522 points to record a new closing high of 28,784.67, and NSE Nifty breached the 8,700-mark for the first time in its history. The market rally was driven by strong buying in the banking space and recovery in metals and oil & gas counters. Traders said sustained foreign capital inflows also boosted investor sentiment. Earning season guidance and expectations from upcoming budget also aided the rally, brokers said. HDFC at 5.84 per cent was the biggest Sensex gainer, followed by SSLT at 5.36 per cent, Tata Steel 4.50 per cent, Axis Bank 4.33 per cent and Tata Motors 3.78 per cent. The 30-share BSE index resumed higher remained in the positive terrain throughout the day before ending at at all-time closing high of 28,784.67, a steep jump of 522.66 points of 1.85 per cent from its previous close. The 50-share NSE Nifty also rose by 144.90 points or 1.69 per cent to 8,695.60, its record closing high, after crossing 8,700-level for the first time in its history. “Markets continued the good run and closed at a fresh high on the back of positive sentiments emanating from the RBI rate cut, expectations of further reforms from the Government, expectations of ECB stimulus and a slightly netter-than- expected GDP number from China,” said Dipen Shah, Head, Private Client Group Research, Kotak Securities. Asian markets ended higher after China reported its economy had not slowed as far as many had feared. Key indices in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan finished higher by 0.80-2.07 per cent. “Equity markets (in India) scaled a new high today. There is no one reason for this, the market is in a bull grip. The IMF?s optimistic forecast on India?s expected growth rate till 2016 was another shot in the arm, as was the prediction that India?s growth rate may exceed China?s after a long time,” said Jayant Manglik, President, Retail Distribution, Religare Securities. Foreign portfolio investors bought shares worth a net Rs 433.72 crore yesterday, as per provisional data from stock exchanges. . “Markets touched all time high on both global as well as local investors huge buying. There is a left out feeling amongst domestic investors who are hugely underweight on equity as an asset class. “There is optimism also due to Obama?s visit during coming week,” said Motilal Oswal, CMD, Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Metal and mining shares rose after the latest data showed China’s GDP grew 7.4 per cent in December quarter, its lowest in 24 years but a tad higher than market expectations “Fall in the GDP growth of the world?s largest manufacturing hub has spooked the prospects of recovery in oil prices ever more and the brent oil prices corrected by almost 40 cents and was trading around USD 48.46,” said Hiren Dhakan, Associate Fund Manager, Bonanza Portfolio. Of 30 Sensex scrips, 22 ended higher and the rest lower. ITC (3.57 pct), Hindalco (3.00 pct), Relinace Ind (2.42 pct), HDFC bank (1.76 pct), ICICI Bank (1.70 pct), SBI (1.58 pct), Bharti Airtel (1.36 pct) and Wipro (1.03 pct) were the other big gainers. Gail India lost by 1.90 pct. Among BSE sectoral indices, ,etal rose by 3.03 pct followed by Bankex 1.84 pct, FMCG 1.69 pct, Oil&gas 1.33 pct and Realty 1.20 pct. Sports Indian Horizon Hyderabad Wednesday, January 21, 2015 Kane Williamson scores ton as New Zealand beat Sri Lanka by four wickets Wellington Jan 20 (PTI): Kane Williamson hit a century and Luke Ronchi smashed 24 runs off one explosive over when the match was still in the balance to steer New Zealand to a four-wicket win over Sri Lanka in the fourth One Day International in Nelson on Tuesday. Sri Lanka set New Zealand a testing victory target of 277 to win the match at Saxton Oval after being bowled out for 276 in 49.3 overs and the Black Caps reached the mark with 11 balls to spare for the loss of six wickets. Williamson continued his rich run of form with the bat, scoring 103 off 107 deliveries to provide the backbone of New Zealand`s innings. He was well supported by Corey Anderson, who made a quickfire 47 before being run in the 46th over with the home team still needing 32 for victory. New Zealand required 25 off the last 18 balls when Ronchi tied the scores in the blink of an eye, blasting three sixes, a boundary and a two off the 48th over from Thisara Perera. Daniel Vettori spanked a boundary off the first ball of the next over to end the match, leaving Ronchi unbeaten on 32 from 15 balls. “Really good effort from the bowlers to India`s media slams `motormouth` David Warner New Delhi Jan 20 (PTI): India`s media on Tuesday lashed out at David Warner over his repeated verbal clashes with Mahendra Singh Dhoni`s touring team, demanding the aggressive Australian opener be reined in. “Brakes on motormouth Warner” and “Talkative Warner crosses the line” read two headlines in Indian newspapers after Warner was fined 50 percent of his match fee for demanding Rohit Sharma “speak English” during Sunday`s one-dayer in Melbourne. “Warner has a knack of getting into trouble. Despite warnings in the past he does not seem to learn,” the Times of India wrote, referring to his constant run-ins with the Indians during the preceding Test series. The Hindustan Times said Indian team managers had decided to ignore Warner rather than react to the sledging. give us a score under par,” New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum said at the post-match presentation. “Kane showed how experienced he is and how he can formulate a game plan. Also finished off well by Corey and Ronchi.” Sri Lanka`s big three batsmen all made significant contributions to their total but the tourists did not get enough runs from the rest of their lineup on a good batting wicket. Mahela Jayawardene fell just six runs shy of a century and Kumar Sangakkara made a swift 76 after Tillikaratne Dilshan gave the Sri Lankans a solid platform with 44. “After the start we got, I thought the lower order batted poorly,” Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews said. “I thought Dilshan, Sangakkara and Mahela batted beautifully. It was a very good wicket, didn`t turn as much or slow up, but it was a good batting track.” Fast bowler Adam Milne was the pick of New Zealand`s attack with 2-28 from seven overs, while opening bowler Tim Southee was expensive but finished with 3-59. New Zealand lead the best-ofseven series 2-1 after they shared the first two games and the third match in Auckland on Saturday was rained out. Tri-series 3rd ODI: England crush India by 9 wickets in Brisbane BRISBANE Jan 20 (PTI): A spineless India suffered their second consecutive defeat as England crushed them by nine wickets with a bonus point, throwing their cricket tri-series campaign in jeopardy here on Tuesday. Electing to bat, India were bundled out for 153 in 39.3 overs with the top-five batsmen returning to the dressing room with just 67 runs on board by the 19th over on a lively Gabba track. Steven Finn (5/33) and his pace colleague James Anderson (4/18) exploited the pacer-friendly deck to the hilt by extracting extra bounce as the Indians, barring Roger Binny (44), struggled to come to terms. Binny was the lone Indian batsman to show some resilience on a day when the others got out due to poor shot selection. Opener Ajinkya Rahane (33), Virat Kohli (4), Ambati Rayudu (23) and Suresh Raina (1) were out playing poor shots, while Shikhar Dhawan (1) fell to a beauty from Anderson in the third over of the India innings. England chased down the easy target with more than 22 overs to spare to collect five points, including a bonus point, from the comprehensive win. Opener Ian Bell led the England run chase with a 91-ball unbeaten 88 while James Taylor also scored an unbeaten half century (56 not out from 63 balls) to take their side home. The duo stitched 131 runs for the unconquered second wicket stand as they negotiated the Indian bowlers without much difficulty on a pitch that seemed to have demons while the Indians were batting. Taylor hit the winning runs, a four, as England reached 156 for one in 27.3 overs to wrap up the match. The other English opener, Moeen Ali (8), was dismissed cheaply off the bowling of Binny, who opened the Indian bowling during the first session as England batted before the break after India folded early. Australia are now on top of table with nine points from two matches while England have five points from two games. India will now have to win both their remaining matches if they are to qualify for the final. England started their chase before the schedule innings’ break and were placed at 41/1 from six overs with Bell and Taylor batting on 28 and three respectively. After the resumption of play, India did not show any urgency or energy in the field as Bell and Melbourne Jan 20 (PTI): World number eight and Liverpool fanatic Caroline Wozniacki has lamented the departure of another number eight, describing Steven Gerrard`s impending exit from the Merseyside club as “sad” as she ponders trips to Los Angeles to watch him play. The 34-year-old Liverpool captain announced earlier this month he was moving to Major Soccer League champions Los Angeles Galaxy after playing his entire career at Anfield. Gerrard was quoted by media as saying he would have stayed at Liverpool had he been offered a new contract in the close season and that coach Brendan Rodgers had informed him he would not play every game. “I`m obviously sad. I think Stevie has done so much for the team over the years,” Wozniacki told reporters on Tuesday after the Dane opened her Australian Open campaign with a 7-6 6-2 victory over American Taylor Townsend. “He`s a legend. I think if that`s what he thinks is the right time, I have to support that.” The former world number one, who famously warmed up in a Liverpool shirt signed by Gerrard before a match at the 2011 Qatar Open, said she wanted the player to remain at the Reds. “But at the same time he had a talk with the manager and said that maybe he wasn`t going to be playing as much,” she added. “Yeah, I`m a little sad. I don`t know. I`m going to have my Stevie G jerseys hanging somewhere. Unfortunately he won`t be playing there anymore. “I`ll have to make a trip probably to L.A. to have a look again. But, stole the headlines with his 30th hat-trick for the club as Barca eased past Deportivo la Coruna 4-0 on Sunday, but Enrique praised Suarez’s work rate and insisted his class will ensure a return to goalscoring form sooner rather than later. “Luis Suarez looks fine to me,” Enrique said ahead of his side’s Copa del Rey quarterfinal, first leg against Atletico Madrid on Wednesday. “He is working incredibly hard and helping us a lot both in attack and defence. “The goals will come for sure because he is a goalscorer and has shown that throughout his career.” One of Suarez’s two La Liga goals came against Atletico just over a week ago when Barca turned in arguably their best performance of the campaign to beat the Spanish champions 3-1. The pressure had been mounting on Enrique prior to that game with reports of Messi leading a dressing room coup against the former Barca captain. However, he shrugged off suggestions that his position could be back under the spotlight should the Catalans fail to produce a repeat performance against Diego Simeone’s men. “I don’t have the feeling that tomorrow my job is on the line. All we are playing for is to get through a tie against . Australian Open, Day 2: Victoria Azarenka, Novak Djokovic lead proceedings as top seeds progress Melbourne Jan 20 (PTI): Twotime Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka stormed through her grudge match with American Sloane Stephens on Tuesday to reach the second round at Melbourne Park. Azarenka, ranked just 44 going into the seasonopening Grand Slam after an injurymarred 2014, showed why she is regarded as the most dangerous unseeded player at the tournament as she downed Stephens 6-3, 6-2. Azarenka will face 24-year-old Caroline Wozniacki. The eighth seed advanced in straight sets but American teenager Taylor Townsend made her work hard for a 7-6 (7-1), 6-2 victory over 92 minutes. World number one Novak Djokovic got his quest for a fifth Australian Open title off to a winning start in straight sets on Tuesday. The Serb top seed eliminated Slovenia`s Aljaz Bedene 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 in 1hr 49min on Rod Laver Arena and will next play either Russian Andrey Kuznetsov or Spain`s Albert Ramos-Vinolas. Stan Wawrinka`s title defence got off to a flying start at the Australian Open on Tuesday, the Swiss easing past Turkish battler Marsel Ilhan 6-1 6-4 6-2 to reach the second round. Though struggling to land his first serve, the fourth seed barely broke a sweat on a steamy day at Melbourne Park, blasting 34 winners to wrap up the match in less than one and a half hours at Rod Laver Arena. Wawrinka raised a gasp from the crowd when he took a tumble on the court stretching for a volley late Taylor went about accumulating runs without any worries. They brought up the 50-mark in the eighth over as runs flowed easily enough with the Indian bowlers not making an impression after a listless batting performance. Thereafter, Bell brought up his 32nd ODI fifty off 50 balls as the 100-mark came up in the 19th over. The duo also celebrated their 100-run partnership for the second wicket, off just 111 balls, in the 22nd over. Liverpool fan Caroline Wozniacki laments Steven Gerrard departure Goals will come for Suarez, insists Barcelona boss MADRID Jan 20 (PTI): Barcelona coach Luis Enrique has backed Luis Suarez to come good in front of goal despite the Uruguayan’s paltry record of two league goals since becoming the most expensive signing in the club’s history. Suarez has only made 15 appearances in all competitions since his reported £75 million ($114 million, 98 million euros) move from Liverpool in July after serving a four-month ban for biting Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup. However, since his return he has failed to show the same form that saw him register 31 Premier League goals last season. Suarez missed two glorious chances as Lionel Messi 11 in the first set, but was untroubled thereafter and sealed the onesided contest with a cross-court volley. He will play the winner of Romanian qualifier Marius Copil and Spaniard Pablo Andujar in the next round. Earlier, Azarenka, who controversially defeated Stephens in the 2013 semi-final with the help of a lengthy medical timeout, admitted before Tuesday`s match she was uncertain about the reception that awaited her. But all was forgiven with the crowd cheering on a display that was reminiscent of the former world number one`s best before a string of injuries left her battling with depression. Azarenka left no doubt she was chasing her third Grand Slam title at Melbourne Park after triumphing in 2012 and 2013. “You`ve got to win seven matches to win a title and this was a great first round for me to really test my game,” the 25-year-old said. “I`m happy with what I did... Sloane`s a tricky opponent who has big weapons so I tried to stay aggressive and take every opportunity and control the game. I really had to stay focused and composed.” The service game of both players was rusty in the early exchanges and they exchanged breaks before Azarenka pulled ahead to take the first set in 29 minutes. yeah, 17 seasons, 17 years, it`s a long time.” Wozniacki has a tough second round match against two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, who has been on the comeback trail after injury wiped out most of her 2014 season. Li Na always dreamed of being a stay-home mum Melbourne Jan 20 (PTI): Pioneering Chinese tennis star Li Na Tuesday said she has long wanted a child and to be a stayat-home mum after announcing she was pregnant at the Australian Open. The twotime Grand Slam winner, hugely popular at Melbourne Park where she won the title last year and reached the final in 2011 and 2013, unexpectedly retired in September. “I think it`s a very tough decision for me to make, saying goodbye to tennis,” she said. “But my dream is be a housewife. I think every child they learn from the family. I learned from my mum, so I was feeling the woman has to be like housewife. “I guess I was not bad at tennis, so I was feeling, okay, tennis can take care of a lot. But I think now is the time to turn back.” Li announced her pregnancy on Monday in front of 15,000 cheering fans on Rod Laver Arena, where she has been a guest of honour, saying she was hoping for a daughter. Li, who won nine titles in her career, is credited with introducing tennis to the masses in China. She became a sporting pioneer in her homeland when she decided to break from the state sports system in 2008 with a group of up and coming players, in a move dubbed by local media “fly alone”. The move meant she was able to choose her own coaches and keep most of her winnings rather than giving them to the government. Despite her fame and fortune, Li said she would not be pushing her child onto the tennis courts. “Tennis is my job, it`s not their job, you know,” she said. “Everyone has (their own) personality. I just wish them to be happy and healthy.”He is still waiting for his first ATP 500 title and wants to do well at the Masters 1000s again as well as the Slams. Stan is looking forward to being back in India and enjoying his favourite chicken tikka masala. 12 Entertainment Indian Horizon Hyderabad Wednesday, January 21, 2015 Indian Horizon How Preity gulp down the truth? History lessons are often synonymous with being boring, stretched and dull. But actress-producer Preity Zinta seems to have come up with an interesting method to gulp down all the facts, and that's through watching "true stories" on screen. "I love 2watch true stories. It's like a history lesson. Sadly these people changed the course of history but still struggled personally," the actress tweeted. The actress, who was last seen in the 2014 release "Happy Ending", also heaped praise on Hollywood movie "American Sniper", which is based on the biography of American army sniper Chris Kyle. "Loved how 'American Sniper' showed the personal side of war and how it affects people emotionally...Eventually there are NO winners in war," she further posted. Starring Bradley Cooper, the film encapsulates the internal as well as external turmoil of Chris, starting from his childhood right through his marriage and short career span that lasted only four trips to the strife-torn zone in Iraq. Courtesy:SantaBanta.com Varun Dhawan floored by Badlapur response Here’s what the actor tweeted to thank his fans Actor Varun Dhawan is excited by the response that his dark, intense revenge drama Badlapur has garnered. The actor feels the appreciation will act as an impetus for the small budget movie. Just two songs from the film have been released — Jee karda and Jeena jeena – but both of them have taken the audience by storm with their intensity and depth. The film’s teaser also adds to the dose of intensity with Varun taking over the big screen in a whole new look accompanied by anger and a spirit of vengeance. “#badlapur teaser is at 3m and #jeekarda over 1m views and #JeenaJeena getting the love. Can’t believe this small film is getting big love TY,” he tweeted. Badlapur, which also stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Huma Qureshi and Divya Dutta, is set to release Feb 20. Courtesy:Bollylife.com Hyderabad Literary Festival Hyderabad Literary Festival is all set to begin with a grand inaugural ceremony on Friday evening at Park Hyatt, Banjarahills. The grand inaugural program starts off with formal opening and goes with a literature based program, which is called ‘Dastan-goi’, a storytelling in Urdu. “HLF’15 has become one of the biggest events all over the world and especially in India. This year, there are many innovations and additions to the Festival. Hyderabad Public School being the venue, the festival is celebrated for four days, starting from 23rd Evening, and culminates with a closing ceremony on 26th Evening. The entry to the festival is free for everyone. There are special and innovative seminars and workshops for children, adults and couples” says T Vijay Kumar, Professor in Osmaina University who is one of the organizers. Adding to that, Amita Desai, Director, Goethe-Zentrum who is also one among the team of organizers, said that, “Festival this time is focusing on Urdu and the guest Nation in the festival is Poland. HLF’15 invites everyone, who keeps keen interest in Art, Culture and Literature. The festival is growing year by year, and is drawing the attention of not just citizens of Hyderabad, but citizens of the World. We have many poets, authors, artists, experts coming for the event to take up various sessions and panel discussions. Famous personalities like Javed Akthar, Mahesh Butt, Tom Alter and many more would be attending the Festival”. While addressing the media, in the press conference, one of the organizers listed the highlights of the festival. HLF’15 highlights are, Javed Akhtar reciting a collection of Urdu poetry, Mahesh Bhatt in a Panel Discussion with Leela Samson on “Cultural and creative pluralism in modern day India”, Artport, an international curatorial practice that aims to raise awareness and inspire social change about environmental issues, with a focus on climate change, Dastan Goi - a revival of traditional story-telling, by Rana Pratap and Rajesh Kumar, Tom Alter will give a theatre performance based on the works of Sahir Ludhianvi and Mangala Bhatt and Jameela Nishat in an evening of Dance and Qawwalis. This amalgamation of culture, art and literature gives out an opportunity for everyone to experience the quality and power of Literature on a wider sense and also plays a pivotal role in exchange of culture and understanding the efforts put by authors, poets and artists in making their work perfect for their audience. Reported by- Raygalla Kalyan Srinivas, Special Correspondent Sachin Tendulkar reminds Aamir Khan about his prophesy? It's very rare that someone gets a chance to say that I had told you exactly this. Now it is Sachin Tendulkar who has been saying this to Aamir Khan. When Sachin watched the recently released film, PK, he was the one who said it is Aamir's best performance ever. And now everyone has been saying the same thing to Aamir. The film is not just garnering immense accolades and love from across the globe for the entertainer that it is but everyone has also been particularly raving about Aamir's performance in the film. Everyone feels his performance is notches higher and the best that they have seen of Aamir, which is saying a lot. He was seen essaying the role of an alien. It was the first time an Indian portrayed such a character and successfully so. The feedback that Aamir has been receiving is that while he has delivered such phenomenal performances, his performance in PK exceeds them all. Sachin has been sending messages to Aamir saying I told you so with a smile every time he hears someone saying that the film is Aamir's best performance. He even called Aamir when the PK hit 300 cr club (336.53cr till Sunday) talking about how the film would be his best ever. To this the humble actor had to agree to Sachin's judgment. Aamir Khan's Spokesperson confirms the news and adds, "Since Sachin had seen the film he has been trying to convince Aamir that PK is his best so far whereas the actor constantly kept denying it. Now there is an easy banter going on between Sachin and Aamir where Sachin has been telling Aamir "I told you so." Courtesy:SantaBanta.com Pallavi Sharda eyes Madhubala biopic If actress Pallavi Sharda had a chance to feature in a biopic, she'd like it to be on the life of late Indian cine icon Madhubala. "I would like to do a biopic on Madhubala. I like her story, her life was interesting and there is romanticism in her life. I think it would be an interesting story," Pallavi, who's awaiting the release of "Hawaizaada", told IANS. Madhubala, considered one of the most beautiful actresses of her times in the country, is remembered for her roles in films like "Mahal", "Amar", "Mr & Mrs '55", "Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi" and "Mughal-e-Azam". She died young at 36 in 1969 due to illness. Pallavi, who comes from a non-film background, says that to survive in the film industry, one needs talent as well as luck. "Talent is important. You can't be successful without talent, but luck also matters. My luck was not that great, if I may say so because I have worked really hard," said the actress, who has earlier featured in films like "Love Breakups Zindagi", "Heroine" and "Besharam". Pallavi's next film "Hawaizaada" is directed by Vibhu Puri. Courtesy:SantaBanta.com How Sidharth's popularity increases footfalls? Sidharth Malhotra came on board as the brand ambassador of aquamagica a while back. The theme park which opened gates in August was keen to get a brand ambassador who has a broad appeal amongst audiences at large and especially the youth. After doing an intricate survey they zeroed in on Sidharth Malhotra. The aquamagica team had an active 6 months high on visibility campaign which they started with a bang. However in the initial burst itself they witnessed returns coming in. The team was also keen to shoot a TVC with Sidharth but with solely a print outburst they realized the footfalls had increased and hence changed the marketing plan and saved on to the budgets for then. The team is now conjuring a bigger marketing plan and will be shooting a TVC after Sidharth wraps shooting for his ongoing film Brothers for which he has undergone a drastic look change. Sidharth Malhotra has risen to fame film after film. He made his debut with Students of the year where the youth, especially girls were raving about him no bounds. After his first film the young actor has tried to try versatile roles like the boy next door in Hassee Toh Phasee and the angry young man in EK Villian. While both films did well at the box office, the latter crossed the 100 crore and Sidharth's acting was received very well by audiences. Courtesy:Bollylife.com Printed, published & Owned by Dr.Rahimuddin Kemal, Printed at Kemal Publication's, H.No-8-2-618/3, Road No. 11, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad. 500034, TS. Editor Mr.Fahim Kemal. Published from Dil-a-Veez, H.No.8-2-618/3, Road No. 11, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad-500034.TS. India. Phone Nos: 040 66839818: Fax No: 040 23373717. Email: [email protected] [email protected] T ODAY’s Four-Page Supplement About Indian Horizon emails [email protected] [email protected] I Science HYDERABAD - WEDNESDAY - JANUARY 21, 2015 & Scientists Discover an Earth-Sized Exoplanet That Orbits Its Star Every 8.5 Hours Scientists from MIT have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet, named Kepler 78b, that orbits its star every 8.5 hours and has estimated surface temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees Kelvin. In the time it takes you to complete a single workday, or get a full night’s sleep, a small fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year. Researchers at MIT have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet named Kepler 78b that whips around its host star in a mere 8.5 hours — one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected. The planet is extremely close to its star — its orbital radius is only about three times the radius of the star — and the scientists have estimated that its surface temperatures may be as high as 3,000 degrees Kelvin, or more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. In such a scorching environment, the top layer of the planet is likely completely melted, creating a massive, roiling ocean of lava. What’s most exciting to scientists is that they were able to detect light emitted by the planet — the first time that researchers have been able to do so for an exoplanet as small as Kepler 78b. This light, once analyzed with larger telescopes, may give scientists detailed information about the planet’s surface composition and reflective properties. Kepler 78b is so close to its star that scientists hope to measure its gravitational influence on the star. Such information may be used to measure the planet’s mass, which could make Kepler 78b the first Earth-sized planet outside our own solar system whose mass is known. The researchers reported their discovery of Kepler 78b in The Astrophysical Journal. In a separate paper, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, members of that same group, along with others at MIT and elsewhere, observed KOI 1843.03, a previously discovered exoplanet with an even shorter orbital period: just 4 1/4 hours. The group, led by physics professor emeritus Saul Rappaport, determined that in order for the planet to maintain its extremely tight orbit around its star, it would have to be incredibly dense, made almost entirely of iron — otherwise, the immense tidal forces from the nearby star would rip the planet to pieces. “Just the fact that it’s able to survive there implies that it’s very dense,” says Josh Winn, an associate professor of physics at MIT, and co-author on both papers. “Whether nature actually makes planets that are dense enough to survive even closer in, that’s an open question, and would be even more amazing.” Dips in the data In their discovery of Kepler 78b, the team that wrote the Astrophysical Journal paper looked through more than 150,000 stars that were monitored by the Kepler Telescope, a NASA space observatory that surveys a slice of the galaxy. Scientists are analyzing data from Kepler in hopes of identifying habitable, Earth-sized planets. The goal for Winn and his colleagues was to look for Earth-sized planets with very short orbital periods. “We’ve gotten used to planets having orbits of a few days,” Winn says. “But we wondered, what about a few hours? Is that even possible? And sure enough, there are some out there.” To find them, the team analyzed light data from thousands of stars, looking for telltale dips indicating that a planet may periodically pass in front of a star. Picking out these tiny dips among tens of thousands of light curves is typically a time-intensive ordeal. To speed the process along, the group devised a more automated approach, applying a basic mathematical method known as the Fourier transform to the large dataset. The method essentially whittles the field to those light curves that are periodic, or that exhibit a repetitive pattern. Stars that host orbiting planets may display periodic dips of light each time a planet crosses, or transits, the star. But there are other periodic stellar phenomena that can affect light emission, such as a star eclipsing another star. To pick out those signals associated with actual planets, physics graduate student Roberto Sanchis-Ojeda searched through the set of periodic light curves, looking for frequent smaller dips in the data midway between the planetary transits. The group was able to detect the light given off by the planet by measuring the amount by which the overall light dimmed each time the planet passed behind the star. The researchers posit that the Sunbots aim to slash the cost of solar arrays planet’s light is possibly a combination of radiation from its heated surface and light reflected by surface materials, such as lava and atmospheric vapor. “I was just looking by eye, and all of a sudden I see this extra drop of light right when it was expected, and it was really beautiful,” Sanchis-Ojeda recalls. “I thought, we’re actually seeing the light from the planet. It was a really exciting moment.” Living on a lava world From their measurements of Kepler 78b, the team determined that the planet is about 40 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun. The star around which Kepler 78b orbits is likely relatively young, as it rotates more than twice as fast as the sun — a sign that the star has not had as much time to slow down. While it is about the size of Earth, Kepler 78b is most certainly not habitable, due to its extreme proximity to its host star. “You’d have to really stretch your imagination to imagine living on a lava world,” Winn says. “We certainly wouldn’t survive there.” But this doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of other habitable, short-period planets. Winn’s group is now looking for exoplanets that orbit brown dwarfs — cold, almostdead stars that somehow failed to ignite. “If you’re around one of those brown dwarfs, then you can get as close in as just a few days,” Winn says. “It would still be habitable, at the right temperature.” Co-authors on the two papers are Alan Levine of MIT, Leslie Rogers of the California Institute of Technology, Michael Kotson of the University of Hawaii, David Latham of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Lars Buchhave of the University of Copenhagen. This research was supported by grants from NASA. Courtesy: newscientist.com 12 Billion Year Old Explosion Illuminates a Galaxy from the Dark Ages NEXT to the Santa Rita jail in sunny Dublin, California, a robot tends a field of solar panels. It quietly makes its way along a rail underneath them, stopping at each to adjust its tilt to face the sun. This is SolBot, one of a handful of robots on the leading edge of a movement to use automated construction, operation and maintenance to slash the cost of solar power – critical if it is ever to compete with fossil fuels. Solar power is booming, more than doubling to some 100 gigawatts of capacity worldwide between 2010 and 2012. Roboticists are getting in on the act, seeing opportunities to boost efficiencies in a young industry. The SolBot tending the Santa Rita field is made by QBotix, in nearby Menlo Park. “The clever part comes in realising that the sun moves slowly across the sky, taking 40 minutes to move 10 degrees,” says Wasiq Bokhari, founder and CEO of QBotix. “For a flat photovoltaic plate, you can adjust it once every 45 minutes and keep maximum efficiency.” This means one robot can tend about 1200 solar panels – roughly 300 kilowatts – on its own. SolBot’s sensors pinpoint the sun’s position to within 1 degree and it adjusts each panel accordingly. Having a robot do this avoids the need for expensive tracking structures to keep the panels moving throughout the day. Matthew Muniz, who is the energy programme manager for Alameda County, says the presence of the robots makes the solar field about 20 per cent more efficient than the roof-mounted solar panels that also supply the jail’s microgrid. Meanwhile, Alion Energy, based in Richmond, California, uses robotics to bring down the cost of building and maintaining solar arrays. The company uses concrete as the base for its set-up, as well as the guide rail for an automated cleaning robot. Once the base has been laid, a custom-built robot called Rover trundles over it, gluing rows of panels in place. At the end of the row, a human worker loads the robot with the next set of panels, and it crawls to the next concrete baseline. Once the panels are installed, a cleaning robot called Spot keeps them in working order. Alion is due to start building its first commercial solar plant – a 3-megawatt array in California – by the end of the year, says spokesman Jesse Atkinson. Spot could be especially useful in the Middle East and western China, Atkinson says, as most of the proposed solar farms there are in desert areas where dust can rob panels of as much as 40 per cent of their energy potential, if they are not cleaned frequently. The company is working on a pilot plant at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, as well as with the country’s national energy company Aramco. “We can do it at a quarter of the cost [of hiring cleaners], and with a 90-per-cent reduction in water use,” says Atkinson. Courtesy: newscientist.com More than 12 billion years ago a star exploded, ripping itself apart and blasting its remains outward in twin jets at nearly the speed of light. At its death it glowed so brightly that it outshone its entire galaxy by a million times. This brilliant flash traveled across space for 12.7 billion years to a planet that hadn’t even existed at the time of the explosion – our Earth. By analyzing this light, astronomers learned about a galaxy that was otherwise too small, faint and far away for even the Hubble Space Telescope to see. “This star lived at a very interesting time, the so-called dark ages just a billion years after the Big Bang,” says lead author Ryan Chornock of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). “In a sense, we’re forensic scientists investigating the death of a star and the life of a galaxy in the earliest phases of cosmic time,” he adds. The star announced its death with a flash of gamma rays, an event known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB). GRB 130606A was classified as a long GRB since the burst lasted for more than four minutes. It was detected by NASA’s Swift spacecraft on June 6th. Chornock and his team quickly organized followup observations by the MMT Telescope in Arizona and the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. “We were able to get right on target in a matter of hours,” Chornock says. “That speed was crucial in detecting and studying the afterglow.” A GRB afterglow occurs when jets from the burst slam into surrounding gas, sweeping that material up like a snowplow, heating it, and causing it to glow. As the afterglow’s light travels through the dead star’s host galaxy, it passes through clouds of interstellar gas. Chemical elements within those clouds absorb light at certain wavelengths, leaving “fingerprints.” By splitting the light into a rainbow spectrum, astronomers can study those fingerprints and learn what gases the distant galaxy contained. All chemical elements heavier than hydrogen, helium, and lithium had to be created by stars. As a result those heavy elements, which astronomers collectively call “metals,” took time to accumulate. Life could not have existed in the early universe because the elements of life, including carbon and oxygen, did not exist. Chornock and his colleagues found that the GRB galaxy contained only about one-tenth of the metals in our solar system. Theory suggests that although rocky planets might have been able to form, life probably could not thrive yet. Courtesy: newscientist.com Indian Horizon SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY II WEDNESDAY - JANUARY 21, 2015 Rapid Changes in the Arctic Ecosystem During Ice Minimum Huge quantities of algae are growing on the underside of sea ice in the Central Arctic: in 2012 the ice algae Melosira arctica was responsible for almost half the primary production in this area. When the ice melts, as was the case during the ice minimum in 2012, these algae sink rapidly to the bottom of the sea at a depth of several thousands of metres. Deep sea animals such as sea cucumbers and brittle stars feed on the algae, and bacteria metabolise what’s left, consuming the oxygen in the sea bed. This short-term reaction of the deep sea ecosystem to changes in sea ice cover and ocean productivity has now been published in the scientific journal Science by a multidisciplinary team of researchers around Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. Scientists and technicians from twelve nations travelled the Central Arctic on the research icebreaker Polarstern in the late summer of 2012. In and under the ice they used a large number of ultra-modern research devices and methods such as camera-guided sampling devices and an underice remotely operating vehicle (ROV). Prof. Antje Boetius, who leads the Helmholtz-Max Planck Research Group on Deep-Sea Ecology and Technology has a first answer to the all-important question of how the Arctic is changing due to warming: “Far quicker than has so far been expected! The seabed at a depth of more than 400 metres was littered with clumps of ice algae which had attracted lots of sea cucumbers and brittle stars,” explains the microbiologist. The algal deposits with diameters of up to 50 centimetres covered up to ten per cent of the seabed. The researchers were able to count them using an Ocean Floor Observation System (OFOS). Also for the first time in the ice-covered Arctic, the Helmholtz-Max Planck researcher Dr. Frank Wenzhöfer was able to measure the bacterial and faunal oxygen consumption directly in the deep sea using microsensors. And life was thriving under the algae cover: bacteria had started to decompose the algae as evident from a greatly reduced oxygen content in the sediment. By contrast, the sea bed in the adjacent algae-free areas was aerated down to a depth of 80 centimetres and had virtually no algal residues. But where do the large quantities of algae on the deep-sea floor come from? Plants cannot grow in 4000 m Research team investigating sea ice habitat at ice station water depth because there is no light. Using an ROV, the researchers found lots of remains of ice algae everywhere under the sea ice. “It has been known for some time that diatoms of the type Melosira arctica can form long chains under the ice. However, such a massive occurrence has so far only been described for coastal regions and old, thick sea ice ,” explains Boetius. When planning the expedition three years ago the researchers proposed the hypothesis that ice algae Scientists Put A Working Eyeball On A Tadpole’s Tail could grow faster under the thinning sea ice of the Central Arctic. And the observations now published in the scientific journal Science support their hypothesis: at 45 per cent, the ice algae were responsible for almost half of the primary production in the Central Arctic Basin. The remaining primary production was attributable to other diatoms and nanoplankton which live in the upper layers of the water column. Normally, the small phytoplankton cell sinks only very slowly through the water column and is largely consumed already within the ocean surface layer. By contrast, the long chains of algae formed by Melosira arctica are heavy and can quickly sink to the bottom of the sea. In this way they exported more than 85 per cent of the carbon fixed by primary production from the water surface to the deep sea in summer 2012, just before the expedition. The researchers suppose that the algae had actually grown recently because they found only one-year old ice in the Central Arctic, and because the algae extracted from the guts of sea cucumbers were still able to photosynthesise upon return to the ship’s laboratory. The good nutritional state of the sea cucumbers was also evidence of the massive food supply: the zoologist Dr. Antonina Rogacheva of the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology found that the animals were larger than normal and with highly developed reproductive organs -- an indication that they had been eating abundantly for some two months. The sea ice physicists on board investigated why ice algae are able to thrive beneath the thinning Arctic sea ice, and how they may also lose their habitat quickly due to the increasing ice melt. They determined the ice thickness with an electromagnetic probe dragged by a helicopter and by ice drillings. They also used an underwater robot (ROV) to view the ice from below and to measure how much light penetrates through the ice. Dr. Marcel Nicolaus from the Alfred Wegener Institute explains: “At the end of the summer we still found a lot of ice algae remains, and could quantify them by using an under-ice ROV. The increasing cover by melt ponds permits more light to permeate the ice, and makes the algae grow faster.” However, since the ice has become so much thinner in recent years, and the Arctic so much warmer, the ice algae will melt out more quickly from the ice and sink. “We were able to demonstrate for the first time that the warming and the associated physical changes in the Central Arctic cause fast reactions in the entire ecosystem down to the deep sea,” summarises lead author Boetius. The deep sea has so far been seen as a relatively inert system affected by global warming only with a considerable temporal delay. The fact that microbial decomposition processes fueled by the algal deposits can generate anoxic spots in the deep sea floor within one season alarms the researcher: “We do not know yet whether we have observed a one-time phenomenon or whether this high algal export will continue in the coming years.” Current predictions by climate models assume that an ice-free summer could occur in the Arctic in the next decades. Boetius and her team warn: “We still understand far too little about the function of the Arctic ecosystem and its biodiversity and productivity, to be able to estimate the consequences of the rapid sea-ice decline.” Courtesy: scimag.com What Makes Sleep Paralysis Scary Imagine waking up to find you can’t move a muscle. It’s dark, but you’re sure you feel a presence in the room, hovering near your bed — or perhaps sitting on your chest, crushing the breath out of you. IT TURNS OUT WE SERIOUSLY UNDERESTIMATED THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM It’s hard to say what’s crazier: the fact that Tufts University researchers spent a year cutting out the tiny eyeballs of tadpole embryos and sticking them back on to the tadpoles’ tails, or: the fact that, when they hatched, a few of the tadpoles COULD ACTUALLY SEE OUT OF THE EYES ON THEIR TAILS. As you know, this is not the way vision is supposed to work--your eyeballs are supposed to be connected to a big fat nerve that carries incoming signals back to your brain, which combines the information from both your eyes into a 3D picture of the world in front of you. Without that direct link to the brain, your eyeballs are useless. At least, that’s the way scientists have thought about it for the last several centuries. But over the past few decades, experiments in animals and humans have repeatedly shown that the central nervous system--including the brain and spinal cord--is a lot more flexible and adaptable than people used to think it was. If one part of the brain gets damaged, for instance, the information that used to flow to the damaged sector is often re-routed, and another part of the brain takes on the job of processing it. So these newer findings got the Tufts University researchers wondering: could the optic nerve really be the only route for incoming visual signals? And could a different part of the nervous system, like the nerves further down the spinal cord, process those signals on their own, without help from the brain? Tadpoles, they realized, would be a good way to test this question: they would perform surgery at a time when the tadpoles were still developing, so that the transplanted eyes would have time to put down nerve roots that could potentially hook up to the rest of the tadpoles’ nervous systems. The surgeries were painstaking, but the researchers were able to successfully graft eyeballs onto the tails of over 200 tadpole embryos: But in the other quarter of the subjects--31 tadpoles in total--the nerves extended all the way to the animals’ spinal cords; six of the seven seeing tadpoles belonged to this group: The researchers’ findings seem to indicate that the neurons in the spinal cord are capable of doing at least some of the tasks as the brain. If that’s true, scientists could someday exploit the spinal cord’s smarts for a number of medical treatments, like restoring movement to paralyzed limbs. Courtesy: Discoveryscience.com This weird phenomenon is known as sleep paralysis, and a new study finds that understanding why it happens helps people feel less distressed after an episode. Believing that sleep paralysis is brought on by the supernatural, on the other hand, makes people feel more unnerved. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain and body aren’t quite on the same page when it comes to sleep. During rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, dreaming is frequent, but the body’s muscles are relaxed to the point of paralysis, perhaps to keep people from acting out their dreams. Researchers have found that two brain chemicals, glycine and GABA, are responsible for this muscle paralysis. Estimates of how many people experience sleep paralysis vary from 5 percent to 60 percent, likely because of differences in survey methods. Some peo- ple find themselves experiencing sleep paralysis frequently, while others wake up paralyzed only once or twice in their lifetimes. The good news is that sleep paralysis is ultimately considered harmless. Night terror Becoming mentally aware before the body “wakes up” from its paralyzed state can be a terrifying experience, as people realize they can’t move or speak. Frequently, these episodes are accompanied by hallucinations and the sensation of breathlessness. Such hallucinations likely gave rise to the myths of the incubus and the succubus, demons that pin people down in their sleep (and sometimes have sex with them). People may also sense a malevolent presence nearby or believe they are about to die. Some sleep paralysis episodes come with feelings of falling, floating or dissociating from the body. These sensory experiences are more likely to distress people than mere paralysis alone, according to the study published online in February in the journal Clinical Psychological Science. Researchers James Cheyne and Gordon Pennycook of the University of Waterloo in Canada surveyed 293 people, mostly women, on their experiences with sleep paralysis. They found that people were most distressed after an episode when hallucinations felt threatening and when they held supernatural beliefs regarding the cause of the paralysis. Thinking away fear People with analytical thinking styles were less likely to hold such supernatural beliefs, and were less likely to be distressed after experiencing sleep paralysis, the study found. Though the study couldn’t pin down the causal relationship, analytical thinkers may be more likely to seek out and believe naturalistic or scientific explanations for the condition, the researchers wrote, while intuitive thinkers might be drawn to supernatural explanations. “These results suggest that it is not only important for clinicians to be aware of the implications of supernatural beliefs on SP [sleep paralysis] distress but also sensitive to the likelihood that not everyone will accept or experience relief from naturalistic interpretations,” the researchers wrote. The online survey drew from a self-selected, rather than random, sample and relied on selfreport, the researchers wrote. But allowing respondents to tell their stories can be important, they wrote, because patients complain that their doctors often dismiss the very real fear they feel when they wake up paralyzed. Courtesy: Discovermag.com Indian Horizon SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Bats Build Mental Maps Of Their Surroundings And Remember Them For Future Flights III WEDNESDAY - JANUARY 21, 2015 NASA’s Van Allen Probes Reveal a New Radiation Belt Around Earth Like people choosing which path to take from the grocery store, bats develop preferred routes and remember them. Many species of bats use echolocation to orient themselves and to hunt their insect prey, but they also rely on a pretty detailed memory to find their way around, a new study suggests. Their seemingly erratic flight patterns are not erratic after all--they’re following detailed internal maps. Let’s call it batnav. Jonathan Barchi and colleagues at Brown University wanted to figure out how bats seemingly remember complex flight patterns that take them through obstacles, dense clouds of other bats, and to feeding grounds far away from their cave dwellings. They send and receive calls at superfast speeds, but they also fly pretty quickly, so they don’t have much time to orient themselves in a given location. Figuring they must be relying on prior knowledge of their surroundings, Barchi and fellow researchers set up a bat obstacle course and set some bats loose. They worked with big brown bats, Eptesicus fuscus, a common species that live in caves and forage for insects. The team hung chains from the ceiling in a dark room, and embedded sensitive microphones in the walls to record the animals’ ultrasonic calls. Then they released bats from specific locations, and reconstructed their paths using the microphone data. After a couple of days of flights, the bats figured out preferred paths through the obstacles, the researchers found. Each bat found its own way--some looped in tight figure eight patterns, while others made wide lasso-like shapes, each according to its own preference. Then the team moved the bats’ release spots, and found the bats would soon re-establish their preferred flight paths. To test how well they could recall these patterns, the team put the bats on a month-long hiatus. The bats remembered the room and followed the same paths. “We postulate that the development of stable flight paths allows bats to depend on their accumulated internal representation of a space, as well as on moment-to-moment echolocation, and to navigate within the space as a whole,” the team writes in their new research paper. These findings could have implications for the neural basis of spatial memory. Unlike rats, which can stop in unfamiliar surroundings and orient themselves, bats are constantly on the wing, moving away from any given location all of the time. Somehow their brains are able to keep up with their ever-changing surroundings, the Brown team says. Courtesy: Discoveryscience.com Sleeping Children Learn Better Than Adults While you’re asleep, your brain is busy updating and rebooting. It takes the information you’ve gathered throughout the day subconsciously and processes it into explicit, conscious knowledge. Children usually perform worse than adults at cognitive tasks, but a new study shows that they are significantly better at this process of implicit to explicit conversion than adults. As a child, you sleep more deeply than an adult, and experience three times more slow-wave sleep and higher electrical activity in the brain during that sleep. This may help turn the large amount of information you accumulate during the day into knowledge you can recall intentionally. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience this week, looked at 35 children between 8 and 11 years old, as well as 37 adults between 18 and 35. They were each asked to quickly press a sequence of buttons after they lit up. Half of them performed the activity before sleep, and half after. They were then asked to recall the sequence of the eight lights 10 to 12 hours later. After sleeping, almost all of the children turned the implicit knowledge into explicitly and could remember the sequence they had pressed perfectly, while adults experienced smaller gains. Both groups remembered the sequence better after sleep than those who were asked to recall it right after their training. This result seems to be unique to the transfer of implicit to explicit memories. Other studies have found that children benefit from sleep at or below the level of adults when it comes to other memory tasks. Courtesy: Discoveryscience.com NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission has discovered a previously unknown third radiation belt around Earth, revealing the existence of unexpected structures and processes within these hazardous regions of space. Previous observations of Earth’s Van Allen belts have long documented two distinct regions of trapped radiation surrounding our planet. Particle detection instruments aboard the twin Van Allen Probes, launched Aug. 30, quickly revealed to scientists the existence of this new, transient, third radiation belt. The belts, named for their discoverer, James Van Allen, are critical regions for modern society, which is dependent on many space-based technologies. The Van Allen belts are affected by solar storms and space weather and can swell dramatically. When this occurs, they can pose dangers to communications and GPS satellites, as well as humans in space. “The fantastic new capabilities and advances in technology in the Van Allen Probes have allowed scientists to see in unprecedented detail how the radiation belts are populated with charged particles and will provide insight on what causes them to change, and how these processes affect the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. This discovery shows the dynamic and variable nature of the radiation belts and improves our understanding of how they respond to solar activity. The findings, published February 28 in the journal Science, are the result of data gathered by the first dual-spacecraft mission to fly through our planet’s radiation belts. The new high-resolution observations by the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) instrument, part of the Energetic Particle, Composition, and Thermal Plasma Suite (ECT) aboard the Van Allen Probes, revealed there can be three distinct, longlasting belt structures with the emergence of a second empty slot region, or space, in between. “This is the first time we have had such high-resolution instruments look at time, space and energy together in the outer belt,” said Daniel Baker, lead author of the study and REPT instrument lead at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “Previous observations of the outer radiation belt only resolved it as a single blurry element. When we turned REPT on just two days after launch, a powerful electron acceleration event was already in progress, and we clearly saw the new belt and new slot between it and the outer belt.” Scientists observed the third belt for four weeks before a powerful interplanetary shock wave from the sun annihilated it. Observations were made by scientists from institutions including LASP; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.; and the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Each Van Allen Probe carries an identical set of five instrument suites that allow scientists to gather data on the belts in unprecedented detail. The data are important for the study of the effect of space weather on Earth, as well as fundamental physical processes observed around other objects, such as planets in our solar system and distant nebulae. “Even 55 years after their discovery, the Earth’s radiation belts still are capable of surprising us and still have mysteries to discover and explain,” said Nicky Fox, Van Allen Probes deputy project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “We thought we knew the radiation belts, but we don’t. The advances in technology and detection made by NASA in this mission already have had an almost immediate impact on basic science.” The Van Allen Probes are the second mission in NASA’s Living With a Star Program to explore aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. Goddard manages the program. The Applied Physics Laboratory built the spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA. Courtesy: Discoveryscience.com Beating Heart Cells in a Lab Dish: Creating New Tissue Instead of Transplanting Hearts Embryonic stem cells can develop into any kind of tissue. Adult stem cells can still turn into different kinds of cells, but their differentiation potential is significantly reduced. “The mechanisms influencing the differentiation of stem cells into tissues are still far from being understood,” says Professor Marko Mihovilovic (Vienna University of Technology). However, his research group has now managed to synthesize substances which control the differentiation process. Progenitor cells can be turned into heart cells, which eventually start beating in the petri dish. “Various substances are known to influence the development of heart tissue. We have systematically synthesized and tested substances with cardiogenic potential,” says Thomas Lindner, PhD-student at the Vienna University of Technology. The tailored chemicals are then tested on the progenitor cells of mice at the Medical University of Vienna. “The new triazine derivatives we are using are much more efficient at turning the stem cells into heart cells then any other substances ever tested before,” says Marko Mihovilovic. The team at the Vienna University of Technology has already patented the new method. Construction Kit for Molecules The key advantage of the method developed at the Vienna University of Technology is its flexibility. “Our modular synthetic strategies are a bit like playing with LEGO bricks. A very high degree of complexity can be achieved by assembling very simple building blocks,” says Marko Mihovilovic. Many different variations of the substances can be produced without having to develop new synthetic methods for each substance. On the Verge of New Medicine Now the goal is to turn this pharmacological tool into a pharmaceutical drug for humans. “It is crucial to unveil the exact mode of action. We want to know on a molecular level, how our triazine derivatives influence the cell development,” says Mihovilovic. “We want to open the door to a completely new kind of regenerative medicine,” Marko Mihovilovic hopes. “At the moment, transplant medicine dominates, but it would be much better to create tissue in the lab, with the patient’s own DNA, so that the danger of tissue rejection is completely eliminated.” Not only the differentiation of stem cells to tissues can be influenced by chemical signals. It is also possible to go the opposite way and turn differentiated cells back into pluripotent cells, which can turn into different kinds of tissues. “Our vision is to take cells which are easy to extract, such as skin cells, and to treat them with a cocktail of different chemicals, creating new tissue,” says Mihovilovic. Synthetic chemistry will help to overcome the problem that heart tissue regenerates so poorly. If the therapy can used for humans, the patients’ quality of life could be increased dramatically, and health care cost could be reduced. Courtesy: escience.com Indian Horizon SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY IV WEDNESDAY - JANUARY 21, 2015 Novel Wireless Brain Sensor Unveiled: Wireless, Broadband, Rechargeable, Fully Implantable In a significant advance for brain-machine interfaces, engineers at Brown University have developed a novel wireless, broadband, rechargeable, fully implantable brain sensor that has performed well in animal models for more than a year. They describe the result in the Journal of Neural Engineering and at a conference this week. A team of neuroengineers based at Brown University has developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals from up to 100 neurons in freely moving subjects. Several copies of the novel low-power device, described in the Journal of Neural Engineering, have been performing well in animal models for more than year, a first in the brain-computer interface field. Brain-computer interfaces coud help people with severe paralysis control devces with their thoughts. Arto Nurmikko, professor of engineering at Brown University who oversaw the device’s invention, is presenting it this week at the 2013 International Workshop on Clinical Brain-Machine Interface Systems in Houston. “This has features that are somewhat akin to a cell phone, except the conversation that is being sent out is the brain talking wirelessly,” Nurmikko said. Neuroscientists can use such a device to observe, record, and analyze the signals emitted by scores of neurons in particular parts of the animal model’s brain. Meanwhile, wired systems using similar implantable sensing electrodes are being investigated in brain-computer interface research to assess the feasibility of people with severe paralysis moving assistive devices like robotic arms or computer cursors by thinking about moving their arms and hands. This wireless system addresses a major need for the next step in providing a practical brain-computer interface,” said neuroscientist John Donoghue, the Wriston Professor of Neuroscience at Brown University and direc- tor of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. Tightly packed technology In the device, a pill-sized chip of electrodes implanted on the cortex sends signals through uniquely designed electrical connections into the device’s laser-welded, hermetically sealed titanium “can.” The can measures 2.2 inches (56 mm) long, 1.65 inches (42 mm) wide, and 0.35 inches (9 mm) thick. That small volume houses an entire signal processing system: a lithium ion battery, ultralowpower integrated circuits designed at Brown for signal processing and conversion, wireless radio and infrared transmitters, and a copper coil for recharging -- a “brain radio.” All the wireless and charging signals pass through an electromagnetically transparent sapphire window. In all, the device looks like a miniature sardine can with a porthole. But what the team has packed inside makes it a major advance among brainmachine interfaces, said lead author David Borton, a former Brown graduate student and postdoctoral research associate who is now at Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne in Switzerland. “What makes the achievement discussed in this paper unique is how it integrated many individual innovations into a complete system with potential for neuroscientific gain greater than the sum of its parts,” Borton said. “Most importantly, we show the first fully implanted microsystem operated wirelessly for more than 12 months in large animal models -- a milestone for potential [human] clinical translation.” The device transmits data at 24 Mbps via 3.2 and 3.8 Ghz microwave frequencies to an external receiver. After a twohour charge, delivered wirelessly through the scalp via induction, it can operate for more than six hours. “The device uses less than 100 milliwatts of power, a key figure of merit,” Nurmikko said. Co-author Ming Yin, a Brown postdoctoral scholar and electrical engineer, said one of the major challenges that the team overcame in building the device was optimizing its performance given the requirements that the implant device be small, lowpower and leak-proof, potentially for decades. “We tried to make the best tradeoff between the critical specifications of the device, such as power consumption, noise performance, wireless bandwidth and operational range,” Yin said. “Another major challenge we encountered was to integrate and assemble all the electronics of the device into a miniaturized package that provides long-term hermeticity (waterproofing) and biocompatibility as well as transparency to the wireless data, power, and on-off switch signals.” With early contributions by electrical engineer William Patterson at Brown, Yin helped to design the custom chips for converting neural signals into digital data. The conversion has to be done within the device, because brain signals are not produced in the ones and zeros of computer data. Ample applications The team worked closely with neurosurgeons to implant the device in three pigs and three rhesus macaque monkeys. The research in these six animals has been helping scientists better observe complex neural signals for as long as 16 months so far. In the new paper, the team shows some of the rich neural signals they have been able to record in the lab. Ultimately this could translate to significant advances that can also inform human neuroscience. Current wired systems constrain the actions of research subjects, Nurmikko said. The value of wireless transmission is that it frees subjects to move however they intend, allowing them to produce a wider variety of more realistic behaviors. If neuroscientists want to observe the brain signals produced during some running or foraging behaviors, for instance, they can’t use a cabled sensor to study how neural circuits would form those plans for action and execution or strategize in decision making. Scientists Teleport Photonic Qubits with Extreme Reliability By means of the quantum-mechanical entanglement of spatially separated light fields, researchers in Tokyo and Mainz have managed to teleport photonic qubits with extreme reliability. This means that a decisive breakthrough has been achieved some 15 years after the first experiments in the field of optical teleportation. The success of the experiment conducted in Tokyo is attributable to the use of a hybrid technique in which two conceptually different and previously incompatible approaches were combined. “Discrete digital optical quantum information can now be transmitted continuously – at the touch of a button, if you will,” explained Professor Peter van Loock of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). As a theoretical physicist, van Loock advised the experimental physicists in the research team headed by Professor Akira Furusawa of the University of Tokyo on how they could most efficiently perform the teleportation experiment to ultimately verify the success of quantum teleportation. Their findings have now been published in the prestigious specialist journal Nature. Quantum teleportation involves the transfer of arbitrary quantum states from a sender, dubbed Alice, to a spatially distant receiver, named Bob. This requires that Alice and Bob initially share an entangled quantum state across the space in question, e.g., in the form of entangled photons. Quantum teleportation is of fundamental importance to the processing of quantum information (quantum computing) and quantum communication. Photons are especially valued as ideal information carriers for quantum communication since they can be used to transmit signals at the speed of light. A photon can represent a quantum bit or qubit analogous to a binary digit (bit) in standard classical information processing. Such photons are known as ‘flying quantum bits’. The first attempts to teleport single photons or light particles were made by the Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger. Various other related experiments have been performed in the meantime. However, teleportation of photonic quantum bits using conventional methods proved to have its limitations because of experimental deficiencies and difficulties with fundamental principles. What makes the experiment in Tokyo so different is the use of a hybrid technique. With its help, a completely deterministic and highly reliable quantum teleportation of photonic qubits has been achieved. The accuracy of the transfer was 79 to 82 percent for four different qubits. In addition, the qubits were teleported much more efficiently than in previous experiments, even at a low degree of entanglement. The concept of entanglement was first formulated by Erwin Schrödinger and involves a situation in which two quantum systems, such as two light particles for example, are in a joint state, so that their behavior is mutually dependent to a greater extent than is normally (classically) possible. In the Tokyo experiment, continuous entanglement was achieved by means of entangling many photons with many other photons. This meant that the complete amplitudes and phases of two light fields were quantum correlated. Previous experiments only had a single photon entangled with another single photon – a less efficient solution. “The entangle- ment of photons functioned very well in the Tokyo experiment – practically at the press of a button, as soon as the laser was switched on,” said van Loock, Professor for Theory of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at Mainz University. This continuous entanglement was accomplished with the aid of so-called ‘squeezed light’, which takes the form of an ellipse in the phase space of the light field. Once entanglement has been achieved, a third light field can be attached to the transmitter. From there, in principle, any state and any number of states can be transmitted to the receiver. “In our experiment, there were precisely four sufficiently representative test states that were transferred from Alice to Bob using entanglement. Thanks to continuous entanglement, it was possible to transmit the photonic qubits in a deterministic fashion to Bob, in other words, in each run,” added van Loock. Earlier attempts to achieve optical teleportation were performed differently and, before now, the concepts used have proved to be incompatible. Although in theory it had already been assumed that the two different strategies, from the discrete and the continuous world, needed to be combined, it represents a technological breakthrough that this has actually now been experimentally demonstrated with the help of the hybrid technique. “The two separate worlds, the discrete and the continuous, are starting to converge,” concluded van Loock. Courtesy: newscientist.com In the experiments in the new paper, the device is connected to one array of 100 cortical electrodes, the microscale individual neural listening posts, but the new device design allows for multiple arrays to be connected, Nurmikko said. That would allow scientists to observe ensembles of neurons in multiple related areas of a brain network. The new wireless device is not approved for use in humans and is not used in clinical trials of brain-computer interfaces. It was designed, however, with that translational motivation. “This was conceived very much in concert with the larger BrainGate* team, including neurosurgeons and neurologists giving us advice as to what were appropriate strategies for eventual clinical applications,” said Nurmikko, who is also affiliated with the Brown Institute for Brain Science. Borton is now spearheading the development of a collaboration between EPFL and Brown to use a version of the device to study the role of the motor cortex in an animal model of Parkinson’s disease. Meanwhile the Brown team is continuing work on advancing the device for even larger amounts of neural data transmission, reducing its size even further, and improving other aspects of the device’s safety and reliability so that it can someday be considered for clinical application in peop0le with movement disabilities. In addition to Nurmikko, Borton and Yin, the paper was also co-authored by Juan Aceros, an expert in mechanical engineering. Courtesy: escience.com Astronomers Think They’ve Captured The Birth Of The Youngest Planet Ever Astronomers have likely caught one of the first glimpses of a planet being born. Over the past few years, other astronomy teams have found evidence of other still-forming baby planets, but this object may be the youngest yet. “The other planets are a little older,” says Sascha Quanz, an astronomer at ETH Zurich in Switzerland who led the discovery, in a phone interview. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, Quanz directly observed a planet still in the midst of a disk of gas and dust that surrounds its central star, HD 100546, located 335 light-years away from Earth. The planet hasn’t had the time to gather enough mass to clear the dust around it. The other probable protoplanets, discovered in 2011 and 2012, are a step ahead. “They have already cleared a big gap in the disk of their host stars,” Quanz says. The newfound object is very bright, which Quanz thinks is because gas is actively falling on the forming planet. Right now, the planet is about as massive as Jupiter, Quanz says. Like Jupiter, it is also gas giant. Quanz will still have to confirm that the data he and his team gathered really point to a forming planet. Another possible explanation for what they’re seeing is that the object is actually being ejected from its solar system, he says. There are data, although not direct observations, that suggest HD 100546 has another planet orbiting closer to it. Interactions between two planets closer to the star could shoot one of the planets out into the dust ring. Observations made about five years from now should help astronomers differentiate between the two scenarios. Why five years? From its location, astonomers expect the new object to make a full orbit every 360 years. So after five years, the planet should move five degrees, if it’s truly in orbit as forming planet. Quanz and his team will make some observations far before that, however. In April, they’ll get another turn at the Very Large Telescope, during which they’ll make measurements that will help them determine the object’s temperature. If they’re lucky, Quanz says, they may be able to observe the object accreting gas--growing like any healthy baby would. Courtesy: Discoveryscience.com
© Copyright 2024 Paperzz