Sunday, July 29, 2012

Earthquake of moderate intensity rocks north-east

; An earthquake of moderate intensity shook Meghalaya, Assam and some other north-east states on Sunday but there was no report of any casualty or damage to property.  

The quake, which had a magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale, hit the region at around 7:51 AM and the epicentre was located 70 km underneath the earths crust in Myanmar, officials at the Seismological Survey of India said.
The officials said the quake was of "moderate" intensity and all major towns in the region felt the tremor.
Earlier this month, tremor having a magnitude of 5.4 and 5.5 on the Richter Scale hit the region with their epicentres located in Phek and Nagaland region of Nagaland respectively.
Sunday's tremor was also felt in Itanagar, Guwahati, Agartala besides Kohima and Imphal.
Police said there was no report of any casualty or damage to property in Meghalaya.

Sherry:“This is a new Pakistan. Catch up, gentlemen,”


Radio Pakistan- Pakistan says it has changed the policy of seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan as well as attitude towards India.
Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US pointed out that Pakistan’s old policy of seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan had changed and so had its attitude towards India.
“We are not hedging bets on the Taliban,” she said. But this change was not recognised in Washington nor was Pakistan’s sacrifices in the war against terror, said the ambassador.
Quoting IMF estimates, she said Pakistan had lost almost $78 billion during the conflict that started after the Sept 11, 2011, terrorist attacks in the US. “More than 42,000 Pakistani civilians and soldiers have been killed,” she said. “We are fighting every day and we are taking the hit.”
Pakistan, she said, had taken the responsibility for what happens inside its borders, “we are still paying the price and there should be some strategic sympathy.”
The ambassador noted that the US and Pakistan had experienced “an extraordinarily difficult period” after an American air strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, but they were still staunch allies. Mr Lute agreed, saying that the countries shared the vital interests of defeating Al Qaeda and stabilising Afghanistan.
The CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft asked the ambassador if Dr Shakil Afridi’s punishment demonstrated that the Pakistanis “have more loyalty to Osama bin Laden than they do to the United States.”
“In a word, I’d call it outrageous,” said Lt-Gen Karl Eikenberry (retd), who served as US ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011.
Ms Rehman rejected the US position, saying that Dr Afridi was convicted by a court in accordance with the country’s law.
“Dr Afridi was contracting with a foreign intelligence agency without any permission. He was contracting with militant groups who were beheading our soldiers,” she said. “He had no clue that he was engaged in a fight against or search for Osama bin Laden.”
His conviction demonstrated that “we are working according to a constitutional norm,” she said.
Ms Rehman referred to President Obama’s statement on the day Bin Laden was killed, noting that he too had acknowledged that this could not have been done without help and support the US had received from Pakistan.
She wrapped up her arguments by urging the Americans to recognise the changes happening in Pakistan. “This is a new Pakistan. Catch up, gentlemen,” she said.
At a meeting in Aspen, Colorado, Obama officials again accused Pakistan of not doing enough to combat terrorism while the Pakistani envoy insisted that her country was doing all it could but was not getting credit for its sacrifices.
Although the United States and Pakistan agreed recently to renew efforts to rebuild their troubled relationship, the discussion — posted live on the internet — made it amply clear that they still disagreed on all major issues. The discussion precedes a key meeting between US and Pakistani spy chiefs in Washington on Aug 2 in which Pakistan is expected to renew its demands for ending drone strikes and may seek US help to stop cross-border attacks from Afghanistan.
But senior US officials disagreed with Pakistan on both the issues.
“These are critical masses of people that come in; this is not just potshots,” said Ms Rehman while explaining Islamabad’s position on cross-border attacks by Pakistani Taliban groups.
“They come in large numbers, with sophisticated weapons.”
Speaking through a video link from Washington, she said that on 52 different occasions during the last eight months Pakistan had provided to American and Nato commanders in Afghanistan the locations from which the militants were attacking, to no avail.
President Obama’s top adviser on the Afghan conflict Douglas E. Lute, however, rejected her claim. Mr Lute, a retired three-star general, insisted that cross-border infiltrations into Pakistan were less serious than the attacks carried out by the Afghan Taliban from their bases
inside Pakistan.
“There’s no comparison of the Pakistani Taliban’s relatively recent, small-in-scale presence inside Afghanistan…to the decades-long experience and relations between elements of the Pakistani government and the Afghan Taliban. So to compare these is simply, I think, unfair,” Mr Lute said.
Criticising the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan, Ms Rehman said it’s time for that sort of ‘robotic warfare’ to end. “The drone strikes now see diminishing returns,” she said, while acknowledging that up to this point they had helped kill dangerous militants. “We will be seeking an end to drone strikes and there will be no compromise on that.”
The drone strikes, she said, whipped up anti-American sentiment and “add to the pool of recruits we’re fighting against,” she said.Media agencies

12th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Indian, Asian and Arab Cinema

12th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Indian, Asian and Arab Cinema
The 12th Osian’s-Cinefan Film Festival of Indian, Asian and Arab will be held in collaboration with the Government of NCT of Delhi from 27th July 27 to 5th August 2012 at the Siri Fort Complex and Osianama and Blue Frog at The Kila, New Delhi.
In its 12th year Osian’s-Cinefan has finally chosen the turtle as its future symbol for a number of reasons, one key reason being that Delhi stands on the River Yamuna and the turtle happens to be her vahana (spiritual vehicle). Turtles also represent longevity and wisdom.
The exciting and eclectic programme will showcase the best of Asian, Arab and Indian Cinema, all within an all-embracing framework which focuses on our freedom of creative expression and thought. First Features and Short films will be given special platforms. The art of creating Animation films will be intensively discussed and the ingenuous works will be presented for both the young and old. Our new ’7.4′ section on Environment films will be a precursor of a summit on natural and manmade heritage.The countries like China, Estonia, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Morocco and Algeria are set to be screened at the festival.
09:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Death For Sale
Siri Fort 1
19:15 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Baby Factory
Siri Fort 4
16:45 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Palas In Bloom
Siri Fort 4
16:15 | 29.07.2012
Screening
The Orange Suit
Siri Fort 1
21:45 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Three And A Half
Siri Fort 4
16:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Café Regular, Cairo
Siri Fort 3
13:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Cosmic Sex
Siri Fort 1
10:00 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Drapchi
Siri Fort 2
16:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Kore
Siri Fort 3
10:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Man Arising From The Surface
Siri Fort 4
11:00 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Youth H2: Hyper Villain
blueFROG
14:00 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Are We Really So Far From The Madhouse?
blueFROG
22:00 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom
Siri Fort 3
16:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
What’s For Dinner?
Siri Fort 3
21:45 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Underwater Love: A Pink Musical
Siri Fort 1
19:15 | 29.07.2012
Screening
As The River Flows
Siri Fort 3
16:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Four Walls Sarajevo
Siri Fort 3
16:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
The Hemingway’s Pen
Siri Fort 3
14:15 | 29.07.2012
Screening
The Miscreants
Siri Fort 4
16:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Short Films Programme 1
Siri Fort 3
13:45 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Sentimental Animal
Siri Fort 3
19:00 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Tatsumi
Siri Fort 1
22:00 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Roadside Fugitive
Siri Fort 2
16:30 | 29.07.2012
Screening
Modern Family
Siri Fort 3

Hamas: Gaza-Egypt border to be eased

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya announced border restrictions  soon to be eased between Egypt and the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. Haniya met Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi on Thursday. He told supporters on Saturday that Morsi had agreed to relax border controls.Haniya said border open times will be extended by four hours to twelve hours a day. The number of people allowed to cross the border per day will be increased from 1,000 to 1,500. Hamas is the ruling party in the Gaza Strip and an offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas politicians have been working on improving the relationship with Cairo since the inauguration of the new Egyptian president.The border was strictly controlled under the former government of ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
Israel too appears to be trying to rebuild its relationship with Egypt to improve security. It is increasingly concerned about the deepening relationship between Hamas and Egypt.

Massive valley found beneath Antarctica

Massive valley found beneath Antarctica

Friday, July 27, 2012 5:22:56 PM by Aishwarya Bhatt  
London, July 27 (THAINDIAN NEWS) British researchers from CNN say that they have discovered a grand canyon beneath Antarctica.
They say that they discovered a massive rift valley that is causing loss of ice in the Antarctic. They say that the rift resembles the Grand Canyon.
The leader of the team of researchers, Robert Bingham said that if ice is stripped from the area, people would see a great rift that resembles those that are found in Africa. His assistant also added that the rift is allowing warmer ocean waters to come in and they are contributing to the melting of ice.
The rift valley is in the western Antarctica, which is the area that is recently losing the most ice as compared to other polar regions. This report was given by the researchers this week.
Researchers say that the melting that is taking place in western Antarctica is contributing to 10 percent of the rise of the sea level in the world. It has been said that this will contribute a great deal in making scientists able to predict the rise of the sea levels.
The researchers discovered the valley in the year 2010 when they went to the Antarctica to research on why there was a rapid increase in the sea level. This was the first time the place was being explored in five decades.

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