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MUMBAI: India's foreign exchange (forex) reserves decreased by $720.3 million to $292.64 billion for the week ended March 29, according to data released by the central bank.


The reserves had increased by $1.05 billion to $293.36 billion for the week ended March 22.

The foreign currency assets (FCA) - the biggest component of the forex reserves - fell by $689.4 million at $259.72 billion, according to the weekly statistical supplement released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

The FCA had risen by $1.06 billion at $260.41 billion in the previous week.

The central bank said FCA in US dollar terms included the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US currencies held in reserve, such as the pound sterling, euro and yen.

Gold reserves value remained the same at $26.29 billion.

However, the special drawing rights (SDRs) decreased by $14.3 million to $4.32 billion during the week under review, while reserves with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) went down by $16.6 million to $2.30 billion.

The SDRs had decreased by $7.5 million to $4.34 billion during the previous week, while reserves with the IMF had went down by $4.1 million to $2.31 billion.
The second day of the Lux Cozi TOIFA celebrations, leading up to the grand finale in Vancouver, saw notable names from Bollywood and quotable quotes by them becoming the highlight of the evening.

A vibrant extravaganza by designer Manish Malhotra celebrated 100 years of Indian cinema and the trendsetting fashion in Hindi films over the decades, with Urmila Matondkar, Raveena Tandon, Neha Dhupia, Nargis Fakhri and Sonal Chauhan turning showstoppers. The evening saw technical awards being given across 12 categories. 

Award                                             Winner                                         Film
Best Editing                                  Namrata Rao                                   Kahaani
Best Cinematography                   S Ravi Varman                                 Barfi
Best Choreography                    Ganesh Acharya -                             Chikni Chameli     Agneepath
Best Special Effects                   Kvsanjit, Rajiv Ghosh                         Raaz 3
Best Costume Design               Aki Narula, Shafalina                           Barfi
Best Art Direction                        Rajat Podar                                     Barfi
Best Action                               Conrad Palmisano, Markos               Ek Tha Tiger
Best Background Score                   Pritam                                          Barfi
Best Sound Recording             Anita Khushwaha                                  Talaash
Best Story                             Advaita Kala, Sujoy Ghosh                    Kahaani
Best Screenplay                         Sujoy Ghosh                                     Kahaani
Best Dialogue                     Anurag Kashyap, Akhilesh Jaiswal,         Gangs of Wasseypur I
                                              Zeishan Quadri, Sachin Ladia    
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — It's the world's highest glass ceiling. Of the 3,755 climbers who have scaled Mount Everest, more than half are Nepalese but only 21 of those locals are women.
Aiming to change the all-male image of mountaineering in their country, a group of Nepalese women have embarked on a mission to shatter that barrier by climbing the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents.
The women, aged between 21 and 32, have already climbed Everest in Asia, Kosciuszko in Australia and Elbrus in Europe. They are preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa to mark International Women's Day this week.
"The main goal of our mission is to encourage women in education, empowerment and environment," Shailee Basnet, the 29-year-old team leader, said before leaving for Africa.
Women in this Himalayan nation rarely got the chance to climb because they were confined to their homes while their husbands led expeditions or carried equipment for Western climbers, Basnet said.
It was only in 1993 that a Nepalese woman — Pasang Lhamu — first reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit of Everest. She died on the descent.
According to Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Nepalese women had traditionally expressed little attraction to mountaineering.
"It is only recently that women have shown interest," Tshering said.
Since they climbed Everest in 2008, the women have spoken in more than 100 schools across Nepal to tell students about their mission.
"We are hoping to attract more women to mountaineering, both as a profession and as a hobby," said Pema Dikki, 25, another member of the team.
Basnet said the response to the Everest climb encouraged them to push ahead.
"After Everest, we felt that we needed to go beyond the borders, so we decided to travel to all seven continents to climb the highest mountains there," Basnet said.
Basnet said the team members have spent their savings, taken out loans and sought sponsorships to finance their expensive gear, climbing permits and plane tickets.
The team plans to speak to students while in Africa to spread their theme, "You can climb your own Everest," to encourage girls to stay in school.
The team will be joined by two women from Tanzania and one from South Africa during the Kilimanjaro climb.
Nepal has eight of the 14 mountains that are more than 8,000 meters (26,240 feet) in height.
Serial blasts rock Hyderabad, high alert declared
Ten to fifteen feared killed and several injured in the explosions that happened near a movie theater in Dilsukh Nagar area.

Serial blasts rocked a busy commercial hub of Hyderabad this evening killing nearly 15 people and injuring over a score others.
Around 1915 hrs, the first blast occurred near a cinema theatre in Dilsukhnagar area on the busy Vijayawada highway. Thereafter, a couple of other explosions in quick succession in the vicinity sent shock waves and panic.

At least 15 people are feared killed and over 60 injured, some of them critically, in three serial explosions near a busy bus stop and two cinema theatres at Dilsukh Nagar in Hyderabad on Thursday evening.

Union Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde has confirmed that 11 people have been killed in the Hyderabad blasts.

Local reports said the five blasts all happened at Dilsukh Nagar area, which is a crowded locality in Hyderabad. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) though pegged the number to have rocked Andhra Pradesh's capital at three, while Hyderabad police said at least two blasts have taken place.

Police have confirmed that these blasts that ripped through the crowded area in Hyderabad are an act of terror attack.

However, there is no clarity yet on who engineered these well-coordinated and pre-planned explosions.

Authorities have also expressed the fear that the death toll is likely to increase.

The injured, meanwhile, have been rushed to Yashoda Hospital at Malakpet and to the government-run Osmania Hospital, and police have cordoned off the entire area.
Initially, gas cylinder blasts were suspected, but the series of explosions, point to extraneous elements, said police. Fire tenders and ambulances were rushed to the spot, even as the police tried to cordon of the area and halt traffic flows towards the busy area.
The injured have been rushed to the nearly Yashoda Hospital and the Government run Osmnia Hospital.
Dilsuknagar is one of the densely populated areas and the place where the explosions occurred is a beehive of commercial, education and eateries. The area adjourns the old city of Hyderabad. Nearly a decade ago a blast had occurred in the neighbourhood.
Hyderabad has seen a blast after 5-6 years. The blasts in Gokul chat and Lumbini Park in 2007 had taken a heavy toll.
The Chief Minister expressed condolences and asked the administration to take quick steps.

 NEW DELHI: Thirteen years after the mutilated body of Captain Saurabh Kalia of the 4 Jat Regiment was handed over to Indian authorities, his father Dr NK Kalia has approached the United Nation Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for justice as the family wants the ghastly act to be declared a war crime.

The petition has been filed by Dr NK Kalia, Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Flags of Honour Foundation.

The petitioners urged the UNHRC to ensure a full and independent investigation is opened immediately, justice is achieved and also to conduct enquires into this matter and takes appropriate steps to urge the Government of Pakistan to conduct an enquiry into the matter and ascertain those responsible for the torture and death of Captain Kalia.

Saurabh Kalia and his five men of the 4 Jat regiment were taken captive by Pakistani troops in the icy hills of Kargil and barbarically tortured for over 22 days.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an active voice in urging the government to take up the issue with the UN Human Rights Council, said: "I am supporting this petition to UNHRC filed by Flags of Honour Foundation and Dr. N.K. Kalia to seek justice for the family of Capt Saurabh Kalia who was tortured and shot dead performing his duty - a clear case of war crime and violations of Geneva conventions.

This is about principles of natural justice and laws being violated against Indians anywhere in the world and about men and women in uniform who serve the nation and expect the nation to back them and take care of their families."

Saurabh's parents NK Kalia and Vijaya have been raising their voice against human rights violations and pleading with the government to take up the issue of war crimes at the international level.

Dr Kalia who has been running from pillar to post to fight for justice for his son, said: "This matter is about dignity and honour of Capt Saurabh Kalia and five soldiers and a national issue where country's prestige was slighted due to such heinous crimes which go unchallenged."

Saurabh Kalia of 4 Jat Regiment, who was the first army officer to report incursion by the Pakistani army on Indian soil, had along with five soldiers - Sepoys Arjun Ram, Bhanwar Lal Bagaria, Bhika Ram, Moola Ram and Naresh Singh - went for a routine patrol of the Bajrang Post in the Kaksar sector when they were taken captive by the Pakistani troops on May 15, 1999.
Sydney, Dec 11(ANI): A rare video featuring Sir Donald Bradman in action has been released, and the 13 minute black and white film titled 'Australians in Toronto' shows the cricket legend taking part in matches against Canadian teams in 1932.
Bradman was visiting Toronto as part of a 51-match tour organised by former Australian Test leg spinner Arthur Mailey, who had gathered a team of past and present cricketers including lower level grade players, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
The tour also acted as an unofficial honeymoon for Bradman and his new wife Jessie Menzies, who joined the touring party at Bradman's request, the paper added.
Captured by the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau, it is believed to be only one of two known surviving films depicting Bradman at play somewhere other than Australia or the British Isles, it said.
The National Film and Sound Archive, whose curator Simon Smith said the archive was happy to share the clip made at a time when "the spirit of cricket was as important as the result", released the film, the paper concluded. (ANI)
This week Foreign Policy published a “Sex Issue.” They explained their decision to feature a special issue with these words
Foreign Policy's first-ever Sex Issue…is dedicated…to the consideration of how and why sex—in all the various meanings of the word—matters in shaping the world's politics. Why? In Foreign Policy, the magazine and the subject, sex is too often the missing part of the equation—the part that the policymakers and journalists talk about with each other, but not with their audiences.…Women's bodies are the world's battleground, the contested terrain on which politics is played out. We can keep ignoring it. For this one issue, we decided not to.
It is commendable that Foreign Policy highlights the all too common silence about sex and gender politics in its own pages. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a serious and continued engagement, rather than a one off matter. Despite the editors’ good intentions, however, Foreign Policy disturbingly reproduces much of the dominant and sensationalist discourse about sex in the Middle East. The “Sex Issue” leaves much to be desired. 

To begin with, it is purportedly about how sex shapes the world’s politics. But with the exception of one article that urges US foreign policy makers to understand women as a foreign policy issue and a target of their “smart-power arsenal,” its focus is almost exclusively on Iran, the Arab world, and China. Thus “the world” is reduced for the most part to Arabs, Iranians, and Chinese—not a coincidental conglomeration of the “enemy.” The current war on women in the United States is erased. 

The primary focus is Islam and its production and repression of sex and gender politics in the Middle East. In discussing the role of fatwas in the regulation of sexual practices, Karim Sadjadpour parades a tone of incredulity. Leaving aside his dismissal of the centuries old tradition of practicing Muslims asking and receiving advice on sexual and gender practices, the article assumes an unspoken consensus with its readers: the idea of a mullah writing about sex is amusing if a little perverted.

Then there is the visual. A naked and beautiful woman’s flawless body unfolds a niqab of black paint. She stares at us afraid and alluring. We are invited to sexualize and rescue her at once. The images reproduce what Gayatri Spivak critiqued as the masculine and imperial urge to save sexualized (and racialized) others. The photo spread is reminiscent of Theo van Gogh's film Submission, based on Ayyan Hirsli Ali’s writings, in which a woman with verses of the Quran painted on her naked body and wearing a transparent chador writhes around a dimly lit room. Foreign Policy’s “Sex Issue” montage is inspired by the same logic that fuels Submission: we selectively highlight the plight of women in Islam using the naked female body as currency. The female body is to be consumed, not covered! 

For those of us now long familiar with the depictions of the Arab/Muslim woman as repressed but uncontrollable sex object, these images only reify the fascination with the hidden underside of that liberated, secularized self. This week, they also echoed two other media events, which paraded European repulsion from and fascination with the Muslim other. One was the Breivik trial, in which the ultra-right wing crusader against multiculturalism cited al-Qaeda almost daily as a source of tactical inspiration in his war against Islam. As Roqaya Chamseddine argues, the other image Foreign Policy called to our imaginations was that other spectacle of desire and repulsion at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. There, artist Makode Linde howled in black face and feigned pain as the Swedish minister of culture sliced through his cake-body designed like a “native” African woman. Then she fed it to him.

The painted on niqab introduces, adorns, and interrupts Mona El Tahawy’s feature article: “Why Do They Hate Us: The Real War on Women is in the Middle East.” The title is an adaption of the Fareed Zakaria article that exposed the “real” reasons behind September 11. In a moment when many of us have been relieved to move past binaries, El Tahawy has chosen to revive them. 

That choice has inspired a deluge of tweets, blogs, articles, letters, and comments that have applauded her courage or attacked what many have called a reductive and simplistic analysis that flattens women’s lives, histories, and choices. The image of “Tahrir woman” who wore a blue bra that fateful day when Egyptian forces dragged, stripped, and beat her is the backdrop for El Tahawy’s argument: men in the Arab world, and especially Islamists, who she repeatedly locates in the seventh century, hate women.

We would suggest, as many have, that oppression is about men and women. The fate of women in the Arab world cannot be extracted from the fate of men in the Arab world, and vice versa. El Tahawy's article conjures an elaborate battle of the sexes where men and women are on opposing teams, rather than understanding that together men and women must fight patriarchal systems in addition to exploitative practices of capitalism, authoritarianism, colonialism, liberalism, religion, and/or secularism. 

Indeed, Mubarak’s authoritarian regime did not use the woman’s body alone as a site of its policies of repression and torture. El Tahawy cites Bouazizi several times as the spark of revolution in the Arab world. But she forgets Khalid Said, whose face—tortured and mangled beyond recognition—became an icon of the revolution. El Tahawy overlooks this shared experience of the body as a site of humiliation and pain. She does not see what Ahdaf Soueif powerfully explained: “As the tortured face of Khaled Said broke any credibility the ministry of the interior might have had, so the young woman in the blue jeans has destroyed the military’s reputation.” Indeed, the hatred of the people, women and men, has been a, if not the, unifying characteristic of colonial, neo-colonial, and authoritarian rulers in the Middle East and beyond.

In her sloppy indictment of Arabs, Muslims, authoritarian rulers, and Islamists, El Tahawy has papered over some messy issues that complicate her underlying message: liberalism is the solution. Why is female genital mutilation practiced widely in Egypt? Because men hate women. Why can't women drive in Saudi Arabia? Because men hate women. Why are men and women against raising the age of consent in Yemen? Because men hate women. Hatred is a one size fits all answer. The use of hatred in this way is important. Hatred is irrational. It is a state or emotion. As Wendy Brown reminds us, such emotional or affective states are understood to be outside of, or unwelcome in, liberalism. 

Of course, female genital mutilation and ages of consent are topics that require our careful attention. In the case of former, the reality is that women are often those that insist on the practice because of ways that gender and political economy regimes together make it a necessary rite of womanhood. In fact, critical thinkers have long argued that this practice has more to do with the lack of economic opportunity for women, the imperative to marry, and the hardening and modernization of tradition in response to colonial and neocolonial interventions (including rights frameworks) than some irrational and razor crazed “hatred.” The same insight could be extended to the question of ages of consent. A reductive framework of hatred makes these topics even more difficult to critically think about and work on. 

Many writers and activists have called El Tahawy to account for erasing women’s histories. For Arabs, like all peoples, have histories that one must engage, as Lila Abu-Lughod reminds us, in order to understand the “forms of lives we find around the world.” Critics have pointed to the long history of the Egyptian women’s movement and that formative moment in 1923 when Huda Sha‘rawi took off her face veil at the Ramses train station. This is a useful point to revisit, if only to reflect on why the liberalism that Sha‘rawi and her cohorts fought for—men and women—drastically and resoundingly failed. One reason, and there are many, was that liberalism resonated with only a small elite. As Hanan Kholoussy points out, women under domestic confinement who like Sha‘rawi were expected to don the face veil made up only two percent of Egypt’s five million females at the end of the nineteenth century. 

One would have to also critically and historically engage how women’s movements have been implicated in the policies and longevity of authoritarianism. After all, the two countries where women enjoyed the broadest scope of personal status law were Tunisia and Egypt, before the recent revolutions. Indeed, of all the countries of the Arab world, it was only in Tunisia and Egypt that a woman could pass her citizenship on to her children if she was married to a foreigner. (In Egypt there was a small qualification for women married to that other other, the Palestinian; post-revolutionary Egypt has, at least in law if not in practice, done away with this exception). 

How can we account for these legal achievements under authoritarian regimes? We could turn to the source of El Tahawy’s inspiration: Fareed Zakaria’s “Why They Hate Us: The Politics of Rage.” There, Zakaria’s muddled logic counsels: “we have to help moderate Arab states, but on the condition that they embrace moderation.” As Mahmood Mamdani and Lila Abu-Lughod often write, moderate Islam has often been produced on the wings of women's and minority rights. 

We can also look to the experiences of feminists and women’s activists. Rema Hammami and Eileen Kuttab have shown that in the Palestinian context, the women’s movement lacked a coherent strategy linking gender equality to democracy. The women’s movement thus appeared to be sponsored by the Palestinian Authority; its fate became dependent on that of the political system. In 1999, Hammami and Kuttab warned:
Examples are myriad—eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union saw massive attacks on women’s rights issues after the fall of communist regimes because they came to be associated with other undemocratic and unpopular regime policies. Turkey, Algeria, Egypt are situations where you have small women’s movements whose popular legitimacy is lost because over time they have been seen as linked to or sponsored by authoritarian secular regimes.
Is it liberalism then that will fight off the misogyny of authoritarianism? Is the much-feared Islamist summer the real enemy here? And if so, how do we explain that it is women just as much as men, as Shadi Hamid has noted, who have gone to the ballot box and voted Islamists into power? 

El Tahawy’s presumes that she is starting a conversation. We respectfully invite El Tahawy to join the conversation among women and men in Tahrir and outside of it. After all, the shameful and state-sanctioned sexual violence of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ “virginity tests” did not take place in silence. They happened a day after International Women’s Day when women claimed Tahrir as a space of gender equality and liberation. The “virginity tests” did not meet silence either, as El Tahawy herself points out. Samira Ibrahim continues her fight; her following and her courage are formidable. 

The battle against misogyny does not follow a “men hate women” formula. It cannot be reduced to a generic battle of the sexes spiced with a dose of Islam and culture. It cannot be extracted from the political and economic threads that, together with patriarchy, produce the uneven terrain that men and women together navigate. It is these lessons that one would have to engage before meting out an indictment about the politics of sex, much less envisioning a future of these politics. There is no one answer because there is no single culprit, no single “culture” or “hatred” that we can root out and replace with “tolerance” or “love.” Similarly, the absence of a sustained and critical attention to sex and gender cannot be solved, syllabus style, by a separate glossy special “Sex Issue,” the content and form of which reproduce what it purports to critique.

 I was sitting in a restaurant the other night,” Sunny Leone giggled, her brightly-coloured fingernails curling in her palms, “and aunties and uncles with their kids came looking for an autograph! I’ve never had nine- and ten-year-old boys ask me for an autograph before.”

Leone is right to be surprised. She has, after all, built her name and reputation as a porn star. And when Leone became a household Indian name last winter, thanks to her participation in Bigg Boss 5 (a reality show structured around the format of the Dutch-created, mega-franchise Big Brother), a public controversy erupted over her supposed “past”. It was enough to incite the Press Council of India (PCI) to weigh in on her growing popularity.

“My opinion is that Sunny Leone was earning her livelihood in America in a manner acceptable in that country, though it is not acceptable in India,” read a statement by Markandey Katju, the PCI chief. “There is no saint without a past, and no sinner without a future,” he added. But what was striking about Katju’s statements, and the debate surrounding Leone at large, was the expressed interest in her supposed past and future. Sunny Leone “was earning her livelihood”: the implication being that Leone somehow arrived on Indian shores seeking an entirely new life. Leone’s extremely popular website, however, broadcasts a different narrative to the millions of men (and perhaps women) who actively visit it: “Goddess”, a clickable icon proclaims in reference to Leone, “Watch Sunny’s first B/G [Boy/Girl] anal scene.”

Leone’s future, it would seem, does not involve any deliberation about whether she wants to be a sinner or a saint. What is most fascinating about the story that’s being told about her rise to mainstream Indian stardom – including the rash of rumours about Bollywood castings, and asinine celebrity gossip linking her romantically to Indian male celebs (Leone is, in fact, a married woman) – is that it misunderstands the obvious truth: Leone is exploiting her ethnicity (and, for that matter, cultural issues of Indian male sexual repression) for money. According to an article inMint, Leone’s X-rated website saw an increase in traffic numbering somewhere around 630 per cent during the run of Bigg Boss 5. Her website was (at the height of the show’s popularity) ranked at 296 in terms of viewership in India. (As a comparison point, the paper notes, the website for The Indian Express fell 15 slots behind it.) Charging over `1,000 in monthly subscription, Leone’s foray into the consciousness of Indians has earned her a lot of money, perhaps more than she could have earned as a B-grade Bollywood actress.

Strikingly attractive in person, Leone’s brown eyes brim with the confidence of a woman who has been told her entire life that she is good-looking, and been paid well for it. When asked about how active she is in the porn industry, Leone is completely forthright. “Oh, I’m not done,” she smiles, “I’m going home now to [host] the AVN [Adult Video News] awards in Las Vegas.” The AVN awards, heavily protested against in America by feminists and Christian groups, and referred to affectionately by insiders as the “Oscars of porn”, is hardly the place to go when a woman wants to escape her promiscuous past. It’s also located not too far from Leone’s wealthy and comfortable life in California.
Thousands of children lined up the streets, clapping and waving the different national flags, as the ASEAN-India car rally reached the capital city of Cambodia after covering a total distance of 3,232kms across four nations on Wednesday.

Organised by the CII and MEA, the rally, which was flagged off from the Angkor Wat temple, the largest Hindu temple in the world, was given a rousing welcome by the Cambodians.

 Elders and school children lined up the streets throughout the highway to welcome the 124 participants, who had set out to cover around 8,000kms across nine nations from Yogyakarta, Indonesia on November 26.

As the 31 cars moved past the highway, children were seen waiting for the convoy. With paper flags of different countries in their hand, they waved, clapped and even stretched out their hands to greet the participants.

The participants also had a rare chance to cross the Kampong Kdei bridge, which is located in Doeumpor village in Chi Kreng district of Siem Reap province.

Erected in the 12th century, the bridge is 80m long and 14m wide with four naga heads on both its ends. It was a great experience for the participants as they clicked pictures and also marvelled at the archaeological sophistication.

The historic rally, which covered a distance of 322km on Wednesday from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, made a stop at Solar Cafe, where the participants were served deep fried spiders and crickets for lunch and they savoured them with pleasure.

The rally will cover around 250 km on Thursday and make its entry to Vietnam through the Babet border.
How about using your mobile phone to beam an image or a presentation? There are phones that can be used as mini projectors. This is an emerging technology and is catching on fast. However, big companies are yet to invest in this segment, save for Samsung. There are many options from small handset companies such as Maxx, GFive and Intex. They may offer cheaper alternatives but they are not built very well. Here are some of the good options in this segment.

Samsung Galaxy Beam
Samsung should perhaps change its tagline to "We have a phone for everything" . The phone is available for pre-order on Samsung's website at Rs 29,900. It is a fully functional smartphone running on Android 2.1, and its 12.1 mm frame can pack a lamp with 15 lumens. It is ideal for a quick business presentation.
Obviously with a projector packed into the device , the battery life does take a beating, but the specs say the phone can run 14 hours on 2G network and about 7 hours on 3G network. With the projector, it's safe to assume the phone can run up to about 3 hours on a full charge.
The phone comes with a tripod and you would probably have to use office supplies to make a stand or keep it at the edge of the table, but it does come with an impromptu portable screen maker.
The telescopic rod extends out and has a small clip where one can place a sheet of paper and the base can support it during presentations. The sheet can be placed in landscape mode or portrait mode depending on your presentation.
The projector also tops up as a torch; and the intensity can be changed using the volume buttons and so too the colours. (Try beating Nokia 1100.)
Micromax X40
Micromax competes in this segment as always with a low-cost alternative. The X40 is a dual SIM phone and the projector's lamp is rated at 20 lumens. It is good value for money though the construction could be a bit more elegant.
The phone also comes with a tripod, so that should make presentations a bit more easy. The projector lens is also analog and the image can be focussed using a dial near the lens. However, there are some glaring problems with the projector . The image is beamed at 90 degrees and anti-clockwise , and there is no default program to correct this and one would have to tilt their heads to navigate to the file. The image corrects itself once the the video being played goes into full screen. It also runs on a rather old Java-based OS. Better luck next time Micromax.
Spice M9000 Popkorn
The problems that plague Micromax are present in Spice as well; and a lot more too. It can play videos in 3GP format and the projector is not that great. The image projected is a pain in the neck (literally) and projects is projected at 90 degrees and anti-clockwise . The build feels cheap and plastic. There are vents in the side to keep the projector cool.
The phone includes a tripod, which is even more cumbersome than the one Micromax has, and includes an external speaker; no marks again for the quality of the speakers. There were alarming reviews about the battery life. The phone's price varies from Rs 6,700 to Rs 5,700; keep an eye out for bargains.
New drugs could be developed to treat hardening of the arteries, say American scientists. Hardening of arteries - atherosclerosis - a major cause of heart disease, has been thought to be caused by complex interactions between excess cholesterol and swollen heart and blood vessels.

But now scientists from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, along with other American colleagues, believe a forerunner to cholesterol subdues inflammatory response genes.

This precursor molecule could be targeted by atherosclerosis drugs, according to the study published in the Cell medical journal.

In our arterial walls are immune system cells called macrophages (which means "big eater" in Greek) that consume other cells or matter that are believed to be foreign or dangerous.

Senior author Christopher Glass, MD, PhD, a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine and senior author says, "When they do that, it means they consume the other cell's store of cholesterol. As a result, they've developed very effective ways to metabolize the excess cholesterol and get rid of it."

Some macrophages do not adequately dispose of the excess cholesterol and allow it to build up as foamy lipid (fat) droplets, hence their name, macrophage foam cells.

These foam macrophages generate molecules that call other immune cells and release molecules, signalling some genes to launch an inflammatory response. It assumed that atherosclerotic lesions - areas of fat-laden foam cells in arterial walls - are caused by a link between unregulated cholesterol accumulation and inflammation, says Christopher Glass.

The researchers set out to discover how cholesterol accumulation causes inflammation, and why macrophages perform. Using modelling based on mice that produce many macrophage foam cells, they had two unexpected discoveries.

"The first is that foam cell formation suppressed activation of genes that promote inflammation. That's exactly the opposite of what we thought happened. Second, we identified a molecule that helps normal macrophages manage cholesterol balance. When it's in abundance, it turns on cellular pathways to get rid of cholesterol and turns off pathways for producing more cholesterol."

That molecule is desmosterol - the last forerunner in cholesterol production, which cells create and use as a structural component of their membranes. In atherosclerotic lesions, the ordinary function of desmosterol seems to be "crippled."

The next area of research is to discover why that happens, says Christopher Glass. It may be connected to overwhelming, pro-inflammatory signals from proteins called Toll-like receptors on macrophages and other cells that are vital parts of the immune system.

Discovering desmosterol's ability to cut macrophage cholesterol gives researchers and drug developers a new target to cut the risk of atherosclerosis.

Christopher Glass says a synthetic molecule much the same as desmosterol already exists, which offers an immediate test-case for new studies.

Scientists in the 1950s developed a drug called triparanol that reduces cholesterol production, effectively boosting desmosterol levels. It was sold as a heart disease drug, but was later found to cause severe side effects, including blindness, so it was abandoned.

"We've learned a lot in 50 years. Maybe there's a way now to create a new drug that mimics the cholesterol inhibition without the side effects," concludes Christopher Glass
Another fire in a Bangladeshi garment factory, over 120 lives lost and more than a hundred injured - the only difference this time from the many other factory fires in the past 30 years is the scale of the deaths and human suffering. It is this that makes it 'worthy' of comment, for a brief moment, in the international media. But fire is an occupational hazard for both bosses and workers in this industry(1). For employers - and their foreign buyers whose brand names are on the labels - it is merely part of a cost and profitability equation and an element of Corporate Image management. This particular death-trap factory was operated by Tazreen Fashion Ltd in the Dhaka industrial suburb of Ashulia and supplied, among other major brands, C & A in Europe and Walmart in the US.

 That factory fires have for decades been such a common occurrence in the ready made garment (RMG) industry means that fire risk is, in effect, factored in as an influence on decisions on how production is organised. With fast turnaround times demanded by buyers for foreign orders in the highly competitive global fashion retail markets, time is always tight and any production stoppages edge businesses ever-closer to invoking contractual financial penalty clauses for late delivery. Inevitably, corners are cut and workers' health & safety is a low priority(2). (Employers claim that fires have been reduced in recent years. But it may only be that - as production models develop and their scale increases - that though there may be less fires, bigger factories will mean their death count becomes larger when fires do occur.)
In this case the fire began at around 6.45 on Saturday evening, for reasons that remain so far uncertain, on the ground floor and quickly swept upward through the nine storey block. Survivors report hearing a fire alarm and beginning trying to leave the building; but workers claim that management told them to return to work, saying there was no fire and that the alarm was simply malfunctioning.
This lie was shortly revealed; as fire began sweeping up the stairwells of the building it ignited piles of fabric and yarn stored in corridors. Over a thousand workers were trapped in the building; trying to escape, with only three staircases and no safety exits, many found themselves trapped by locked grills separating the floors.

Workers were forced to leap from windows in trying to escape the heat, smoke and flames, many jumping to their deaths trying to reach roofs of surrounding buildings. Some managed to find their way to upper floors from where they were rescued by firefighters. Others created improvised bridges to nearby buildings or rope ladders from rolls of fabric. The rest were trapped by locked exits and the advancing fire... Dozens of bodies were recovered from various upper floors, many so charred as to remain unidentifiable.

Locked gates are another common danger workers repeatedly complain of in relation to factory fires. For security reasons - to guard against theft of fabric stock and to control movement of workers - exits are often kept locked. That this has repeatedly been noted for decades as a major contributing factor in fire deaths has made little difference to factory bosses; it remains a cost-effective measure and that's what counts. For the Tuba Group (a major garment exporter of which this factory was a subsidiary) this is probably a relatively minor set-back and temporary embarrassment. Basic factory start-up costs are low and, in one of the world's poorest countries, labour power is easily replaceable. Lost productive capacity will soon be re-established. A few cosmetic crocodile tears will be shed by employers; 

This is business as usual for the garment industry; compensation at the rate of $1200 a life will be paid out by the garment bosses and production is likely to carry on much as before.
The country is a major clothing exporter, second only to China. There are around 4 million workers in 4,000 Bangladeshi RMG factories earning the bosses up to $20 billion a year and these profits are built on these conditions. RMG workers earn some of the lowest industrial wages in the world. Exporting cheap clothing to the West has its price, cheap or dear depending on your viewpoint and material interests.
As part of maintaining the Global Brand Image, corporations employ compliance officers to check the working conditions of their factory suppliers. All sides know how this game is played; a minority of workplaces largely comply with minimum standards while the rest make some show of doing so, knowing that an attractive sale price trumps all other issues and that international brands will not let the necessary image of compliance inspection to interfere too much with the reality of a regular supply chain. Model compliant factory areas may be maintained as showpieces for compliance officer visits - while actual daily factory conditions bear no resemblance to this. A separate set of compliant books, showing fictitious higher rates of pay and safety expenditure may be kept. Compliance visits can be simple audits of paperwork rather than effective inspection. Equally, government-employed safety inspectors - who are paid lower wages on the tacit understanding that income can be 'topped up' - are easily bribed to turn a blind eye.

This shows how easy it is for RMG suppliers to appear to comply with the minimum asked of them by foreign buyers - even when concerns have been flagged up. This was not some back street hole-in-the-wall fly-by-night marginal operation. It was a major exporter's large factory supplying leading international brands; making clear how prevalent these deadly conditions are, forming the basis of the $450 billion global clothing industry. It also shows, once again, that these fires are known by workers, bosses and foreign buyers to be both entirely predictable and, if desired, largely preventable.
One might assume that such horrific scenes could become a tipping point where the demands for significant lasting safety improvements in the industry becomes irresistible; but there have been many other horrific scenes, other "worst ever fires" before this one. Meanwhile the profits keep growing.
Today, Monday 26th, there was another factory fire in Ashulia, this time with no reported injuries. 200 factories in Ashulia are closed and roads have been blockaded as thousands of workers have walked out to march to the factory ruins to protest the deaths and demand improvements in conditions.

Initial assessments by local police and fire services have stated there is no evidence for deliberate arson, suggesting that an electrical fault in the basement is a likely cause. Firefighters have also noted the absence of safety exits and that they had to cut through locked gates, verifying workers' claims.
But Bangladeshi politicians on all sides have never been slow to shamelessly mobilise the dead in the service of propaganda gains. (This is rooted in the conflicting loyalties of the nation's War of Independence that have continued to divide the society ever since(3).) The latest reports are that the government is claiming the fire as an act of sabotage by political opponents - yet with no evidence so far produced to support such a claim. Two garment workers who were arrested on Sunday at nearby Debonair factory in Ashulia have confessed to an act of attempted arson. Released factory CCTV footage shows a woman, Sumi Begum, setting fire to clothing at Debonair - which was quickly spotted and dowsed by other workers; she is reported to have later confessed that a fellow worker, Zakir Hossain, paid her TK20,000 [$246] to set the fire. But, though Prime Minister Hasina is linking the arrests with the deadly Tazreen Fashion fire, those arrested have not confessed to any involvement in it and no evidence has so far linked them.

 sorce:












Bangalore: Vimochana, a Women rights group today protested in Bangalore demanding action against the chief administrative officer (CAO) of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, one of the prestigious management college, after a lady doctor accused him of alleged sexual harassment. The lady, a medical officer of the institute has alleged that the CAO had been harassing her since 2009. Member of Women Rights' Group, Vimochana, Dona Fernandes said the business school failed to take action despite repeated complaints by the lady doctor.

Microsoft has jumped on the visual device bandwagon and now plans to create their own eyeglasses.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has touted their company's innovative product at star-studded events
throughout the year and in July, news emerged that Apple had received a patent for a wearable display device -- seemingly bearing a close resemblance to Google's Project Glass.

Not to be left behind, sketches filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office show the Redmond,
Washington company has plans to create its own head-mounted display device. Though the patent application was sent on May 20, 2011, it was only recently discovered on fie at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Microsoft's product is described as being distinct from Google's device and Apple's planned version
as Microsoft's 'head mounted display...would provide supplemental information when viewing a live
event,' according to the patent application.

'A user wearing an at least partially see-through, head mounted display views the live event while
simultaneously receiving information on objects, including people, within the user's field of view.'
A drawing of a potential scene shows a user watching a baseball game and how the device could
provide statistics and additional details to enrich the viewing of the sporting event.

At least in the patent application, it doesn't appear that the device would be intended for everyday use - like walking down the street. 'The information is presented in a position in the head mounted display which does not interfere with the user's enjoyment of the live event,' the description added.

It's expected that the device would be operated by either a wrist-worn computer, eye movements or
voice commands. The discovery of Microsoft's foray into the eye wear field comes amid the massive publicity drummed up by the Mountain View, California based company for their Project Glass.

The pet project of Sergey Brin has been marketed as a fashionable yet fully functioning device that
even made its way to the runway in designer Diane von Furstenberg's show at New York Fashion
Week in September. Brin has sported the sci-fi looking accessory throughout 2012 but it isn't expected to be sold as a consumer product until 2013 or even 2014.

The very sight of the Google Glasses and the prospect of incorporating the technology into every day
life has sparked excitement among the industry. The wraparound frame has a tiny display over the left eye, that lets the wearer surf the web, make video calls, listen to music and even take notes.
The user won't even even have to lift a finger since the screen is controlled by voice commands and
even is sensitive enough to respond to the the tilt of the head. A prototype is currently being tested and reviewed by Google employees before the device will be presented to the public.

In a promotional video for the new technology, a person wearing the device walks down the street
and instantly helpful neighborhood tips and information on surrounding landmarks appear on the screen before their eyes.

Additionally, the screen will alert the user to their friends and family in the environs so the person can
pop in and surprise someone they know. Apple is also said to be scurrying its engineers to get its own eye wear available in the near future. Reports emerged in July that the Cupertino based company had filed a patent application for a 'head-mounted display apparatus for a user,' according to the application.

According to early diagrams for the device, the accessory would include one or two LCDs.
Though it is difficult to understand fully how the device would operate, according to the patent
description it would be a 'full immersion' device, not a 'walk around' device like the one developed by
Google. Apple's would likely be easily embedded in anything from a helmet, a pair of glasses, or a visor.

According to the New York Times, the company has been working on projects that could become
'wearable computers' and even hired a wearable computing engineer in 2011.
We’re all familiar with the story of the special forces unit that killed Osama Bin Laden, the world’s most notorious terrorist. Kathryn Bigelow‘s latest feature, ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ is the story of SEAL

Team 6, the men responsible for bringing Bin Laden down. We’ve got an official first look at the film via a new teaser trailer and images.

The images come courtesy of Entertainment Weekly and don’t give us much to go on besides aesthetics. There’s a smoky image of members of the SEAL team, the guys outside of a compound with weapons drawn (looking kind of bad-ass), a serious-looking Joel Edgerton, Kyle Chandler doing a pretty solid thinking pose, and Mark Strong not being the villain of something (and that appears to be Mark Duplass in the background to the left in the Strong image).

A little more illuminating is the teaser, which gives us a hint of the tone of the film, featuring a male
voice shouting, “When was the last time you saw Bin Laden?!” along with some overhead shots 
the area where Bin Laden was found (nice graphics) and Jennifer Ehle doing some investigating. For
a brief, one-minute teaser, it’s a little intense. Screenwriter Mark Boal says of the film, “There’s no
political agenda in the film. Full stop. Period.” We’re into it.

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ features a huge cast, including Joel Edgerton, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Harold
Perrineau, Mark Duplass, Nash Edgerton, Jessica Chastain, Edgar Ramirez, Mark Strong, Chris Pratt,
Jason Clarke and many more. Bigelow is quoted as saying, “There are over 100 speaking roles,
featuring teams of operatives, from [Department of Defense], CIA, Navy SEALs, et. al. that intersect
with foreign nationals and enemy combatants.”

The film hits theaters December 19. Merry Christmas, America!

 
John Storms of Austin, Texas has been putting on phenomenal Christmas LED outdoor light displays for years, but 2012's decorative "Gangnam Style" exhibition has really drawn some viral attention! The stunning 25,000+ synchronized LED light display set to K-pop sensation Psy's hit summer dance tune flashes and sparkles in all the right ways. Read on to check out an awesome YouTube video of the mesmerizing "Gangnam Style" Christmas display (which was just posted earlier this week and already has over 22,000 views and counting).

The glowing snowflakes and flashing bulbs match up perfectly to Psy's catchy four-minute long tune (with a bright green cactus even making a synchronized stop-and-go appearance in-between chorus lines). The entire display goes pitch-black during breaks in the song, and then quickly fires back up in a dazzling array of bright blinking lights. Check it out:

Storms, who just moved into the residential neighborhood with his family about two months ago, spent the last two weeks meticulously adorning the house with thousands of twinkling lights (with hired help for safety reasons). According to Storms, who has his own website listentoourlights.com, it took 2-3 hours to program the display with Psy's "Gangnam Style." Thankfully the light display has received mostly positively reviews - the music can't be heard blaring from the roadside because Storms made it so that onlookers can listen in from a local radio station while watching the amazing show from their own cars.



On the eve of his 100th Test match, swashbuckling batsman Virender Sehwag declared that his goal
is to play in the 2015 World Cup, and that the thought of retirement hasn't crossed his mind as yet.
"My target is to retire only after playing in the next World Cup, to be held in Australia and New
Zealand," Sehwag told Mail Today in an interview on Thursday.

Sehwag, who would become only the ninth Indian to appear in a century of Tests on Friday when he
plays in the second Test against England, said that there'd be no dearth of motivation to play in his
fourth World Cup.

"To participate in a World Cup is a great honour and achievement. I've played in three World Cups.
The whole world watches you during a World Cup and expects you to play innings to win games for
your country," said the 34-year-old batsman.

The only Indian triple Test centurion said that he was not feeling nervous on the eve of his milestone.  "I don't think I am nervous; I was waiting for this moment."

"When I was a kid my first dream was to play Test matches and the second one was to play 100 Test
matches because there are very few people who have played 100 Tests for India," he emphasised.
"And I am the luckiest one, though there a couple of my colleagues who too are close to the mark.
Zaheer Khan (86 Tests) and Harbhajan Singh (98) will, hopefully, also play their 100th Test matches
very soon. So, I'm very happy and waiting for this Test match," he said.

Sehwag's wife, two sons and a few friends have confirmed to be at the Wankhede Stadium on
Friday. The Delhi dasher's has been a roller-coaster Test journey that began when captain Sourav
Ganguly prevailed upon the selectors to include him in Tests.

Sehwag lived up to Ganguly's expectations and hammered a century on debut and went on to score
two Test triple tons. Sehwag says it was comforting to find Sachin Tendulkar at the pitch when he
went in at No.6 in Bloemfontein on his Test debut.

"The first highlight of my career is the hundred on my debut. I'll never forget that moment when I went in and Tendulkar was batting at 30 or 40-odd."

"He asked me in Hindi if I was having gudgudi [nervousness] in stomach. I said 'yes'. He then said it
happens with everybody and asked me to enjoy the game and bat the way I do," he said.

"It [Sachin's presence] helped me a lot because the bowlers were concentrating on him. They wanted
Tendulkar to get out; they were not worried about Sehwag at the time."

"When we were building our partnership, he was guiding me. I was lucky as my role model was
playing with me in the first innings of my first Test," he said. Sehwag disclosed that he and Tendulkar came closer when they returned to South Africa for the 2003 World Cup.

"Before that I was very shy. We used to go to gym together in South Africa. When he asked me to go
with him for dinner or gym sessions, it gave me a lot of confidence and comfort. That shows that he's
also a very very good human being, and not just a good player," he said.

Some former cricketers have at times opined that Sehwag tends to become complacent because he
seemed to have achieved much more than he had perhaps set out for. "If I had become satisfied I would have retired. When a person becomes satisfied, he doesn't run after things, doesn't worry about it, and doesn't make efforts.

Everyone has his opinion. Whatever one wants- whether he is a big player or a small one- he can
write and say. Everything has his own thinking, but the person concerned [player] actually knows the reality," he said.

On the occasion of his 100th Test, Sehwag remembered his late father, who wanted him to play well
for India, his coach since childhood, Amar Nath Sharma, and late Satish Sharma, who gave him an
opportunity when he picked him for his Madras Club in Delhi league cricket.

Sehwag considers the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where he hit 195 in 2003-04, and the Mohali
Stadium, where he has scored two centuries, as his favourite venues.
To many people, the idea of a love addiction seems far-fetched or made up to explain irrational behaviors.

However, love addiction is not a new concept, nor is it fabricated. Early literature and history are full of references to people — often very powerful and famous people — who allowed their dependence on others to destroy them.

People become so dependent on others because of emotional needs that are not met through positive relationships; they are met through negative and destructive relationships. But love addiction is more than just an emotional need unmet — there is also a potential for serious injury because of this behavior.

When a person continues in a relationship that is abusive, either physically or mentally, there is a very real danger. Women and men are abused in relationships, and unfortunately, death by an intimate partner is a very real concern in today’s society. Here are questions you can ask yourself to see if you are addicted to love:

    Have I been hurt, physically or emotionally, by my partner?
    Do I make excuses or rationalize the abuse?
    Do I tend to choose partners that are emotionally distant or do I have a history of being in abusive relationships?
    Is there a give and take in this relationship or do I give and give but seem to get nothing or very little in response?
    Can I leave this relationship and move on in my life?
Answering these questions honestly is the first step in determining if you may have an addiction to love that is potentially dangerous.

Most people need help with this very serious issue and greatly benefit from talking with a therapist or counselor that specializes in addictions and addiction recovery.
The Mumbai police on Monday arrested a 21-year-old girl from Thane for questioning the total shutdown in the city for Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray's funeral on her Facebook account. Another girl who 'liked' the comment was also arrested. However, both the girls were later released on bail. 

The funeral of Bal Thackeray was described by the Mumbai police commissioner as the biggest challenge in the history of the police force. He said it was a big challenge for the police department to maintain peace and law and order as lakhs of Shiv Sena supporters thronged the streets as their leader made his last journey.
The commendable showing of the force though was marred by a controversial move by the police to arrest the 21-year-old girl for posting a comment on Facebook, questioning the shutdown in the city. The girl is believed to have written that there was no need to observe a bandh for Thackeray’s funeral. 

Enraged by the post on the social networking website, a mob of Shiv Sainiks allegedly vandalised a hospital owned by the girl’s uncle in Palghar and filed a complaint with the local police, who arrested the 21-year-old and her friend. 

The two girls were arrested under sections 505(2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes)a and 66 a of the IT act. 

The state Director General of Police (DGP) has directed the Inspector General to begin a probe into the girl's arrest and submit a report soon. Sources in the Home Ministry say they are closely monitoring the case.
Meanwhile, Press Council of India chairman Justice Markandey Katju in a letter to Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan called the arrest absurd, wrongful and a criminal act. He sought action against police officials who arrested the girl. 

He said, "We are living in a democracy, not a fascist dictatorship. I request you to immediately order the suspension, arrest, chargesheeting and criminal prosecution of the police personnel (however high they may be) who ordered as well as implemented the arrest of that woman." 



VIGILANTE parents are attacking teachers and students as young as six in vicious schoolyard confrontations after their own children fall victim to bullies.

In what the NSW Department of Education fears is a growing trend, at least 20 frustrated parents engaged in "violent and anti-social behaviour towards pupils and teachers" in the first half of 2012 - most of which was fuelled by the belief schools weren't doing enough to protect their children.

In one shocking example, the father of a female student in the Hunter region allegedly approached a boy in year 11 and verbally abused him before punching him in the mouth and splitting his lip.

In another incident, a school mother allegedly threatened to assault a deputy principal's son because she was frustrated the Bourke school wasn't doing enough to prevent her year 9 son being bullied.

She then allegedly verbally abused a female teacher in the library then grabbed her by the throat.

In another outburst, police were called after the mother of a North Coast student allegedly violently and repeatedly punched, kicked and scratched her school's principal within full view of students.

Even students as young as six haven't been immune to the violence. In May, the mother of a primary school student in the Illawarra allegedly entered the school and approached a year 1 boy and threatened him before grabbing him by the back of the neck.

According to the Education Department most cases were investigated by police and led to a number of bans under the Inclosed Lands Act.

Parents and Citizens Association publicity officer Rachael Sowden said she understood some parents' frustration but taking matters into their own hands was not the answer.

"Obviously parents get frustrated when they don't feel they are being listened to and when there are concerns around their children," Ms Sowden said.

"Parents have a right to be concerned about something that's happening to their children so it is understandable that they become emotive.

"What we would suggest is if you feel the need to take it into your own hands, that you contact the school to arrange a meeting, or the children's parents rather than the children - that's never appropriate and ranting and raving won't fix the problem."

NSW Secondary Principals' Council deputy president Chris Presland said some parents had unrealistic expectations.

"Our school has a really good process making it easy for parents to make contact with teachers but I don't doubt there are parents who act inappropriately," Mr Presland said.

"Other parents expect they can speak to the teacher immediately, but the teacher is in class almost all day."

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