 |
|
|
Search for Water
Herta Mueller wins Nobel for literature
|
|
|
Qureshi concerned over clauses in US aid bill
26\11 perpetrators not friends of Pak
Obama to sign
Kerry-Lugar bill
French company snaps up Gandhi’s house in SA
India disappointed
|
|
Search for Water
Washington, October 8 Scientists will see two spacecraft slamming into the moon's south pole at 9,000 kmph kicking up a 10-km-high shower of debris that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) hopes will confirm the presence of enough water necessary to supply future visits by astronauts. Amateur astronomers in parts of the world may be able to view the impact through a telescope; for everyone else, the crash will be broadcast live on the NASA website along with early pictures of the lunar dust cloud during the dramatic mission. Within an hour of the impact, scientists will know whether water was hiding there or not. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had announced last month that the country's first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-I found evidence of water on the moon. NASA had also announced last month that it found evidence of water. The crashing spaceship was launched in June along with an orbiter that is now mapping the lunar surface. LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross, is on a collision course with the moon, attached to an empty 2.2-tonne rocket that helped get the probe off the ground. NASA is carrying out this mission to see if any water, ice or vapour is revealed in the cloud of debris. Discovering sub-surface ice is important because the ice could be used as a source of water for efforts to build a colony on the moon’s surface. The mission itself continues to be controversial. Questions have been raised as to whether the crash-landing on the moon was necessary for science or will it be worth the damage done to the moon. Critics say the bombing mission interferes with natural forces. But NASA says the bombing isn’t an act of hostility and is a part of search for water in space. According to reports, the spacecraft will hit that part of the moon where scientists believe billions of tonnes of trapped ice may be held. In the early hours of Friday, LCROSS and its empty rocket will separate. Later, the larger empty rocket will crash into a permanently dark crater and kick up a 6.2 mile high spray of debris. Railing just behind that rocket is the LCROSS satellite itself, beaming back to Earth live pictures of the impact and the debris plume using colour cameras. It will scour for ice, fly through the debris cloud and then just four minutes later take the fatal plunge itself, triggering a dust storm one-third the size of the first hit. The mission is a set-the-stage venture dreamed up by the NASA that has been working on a $75-billion plan to eventually return astronauts to the moon. The two spaceships will smash into the moon at 9,000 km per hour, more than seven times the speed of sound. The explosion will have the force of 1.5 tonnes of TNT and throw 3,50,000 kg of lunar dirt out of the crater. It will create a new crater inside an old one about half the size of an Olympic swimming pool. — PTI
|
|
Herta Mueller wins Nobel for literature
Stockholm, October 8 The 56-year-old author, who emigrated to Germany from then-communist Romania in 1987, made her debut in 1982 with a collection of short stories titled ‘Niederungen’, or ‘Lowlands’ in English, which was promptly censored by her government. In 1984 an uncensored version was smuggled to Germany where it was published and her work depicting life in a small, German-speaking village in Romania was devoured by readers there. That work was followed by ‘Drueckender Tango’ (‘Oppressive Tango’), published two years later in Romania. In ‘Niederungen’ and ‘Drueckender Tango’ Mueller wrote about corruption and repression in a German-speaking village in Romania. Her works reflect her experiences growing up in Romania under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, whose rule came to an end in 1989 when he was executed. Most of her works are in German, but some works have been translated into English, French and Spanish, including ‘The Passport’, ‘The Land of Green Plums’, ‘Travelling on One Leg’ and ‘The Appointment’. Mueller is the 12th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Recent female winners include Austria's Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and British writer Doris Lessing in 2007. "The Romanian national press was very critical of these works while, outside of Romania, the German press received them very positively”, the Academy said. "Because Mueller had publicly criticized the dictatorship in Romania, she was prohibited from publishing in her own country”. The prize includes a 10 million kronor (US $1.4 million) prize and will be handed out December 10 in the Swedish capital. The nationality of this year's award has been more closely watched than usual after comments last year by former Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl that Americans did not participate in literature's "big dialogue”. — AP, Reuters
|
|
Qureshi concerned over clauses in US aid bill
Under fire from the military and opposition for accepting US aid with several strings attached, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi admits he is concerned about the language used in the legislation, but is hopeful the US president will use a waiver provision to bypass strict reporting conditions. The House of Representatives and the Senate have passed the Kerry-Lugar legislation that will triple financial aid to Pakistan. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill. In an interview with The Washington Times, Qureshi welcomed the legislation as “a long-term, multi-year commitment to development” in Pakistan. “There is appreciation on that, knowing the difficult financial situation here the fact that the Congress unanimously approved the legislation is an expression of commitment to Pakistan and a vote of confidence in the policies being pursued by the government in Pakistan,” he said. “We are allies. We talk to each other. We have to see if the objectives in the legislation are in line with our policies?” he said. Under the Bill, the US president must provide regular reports to the Congress on steps taken by the government of Pakistan to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaida, the Taliban, and other extremist and terrorist groups in the FATA areas; close terrorist camps, including those of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Lashkar-e-Toiba, and the Jaish-e-Mohammed; cease all support for extremist and terrorist groups; and prevent cross-border attacks. The president must also provide a detailed description of Pakistan’s efforts to prevent proliferation of nuclear-related material and expertise. “The policies advocated by the government and the military are in agreement with them, they are not contradicting.... I do not see any major clash of policy,” Qureshi said. He admitted “better language could be used. You’re not writing a piece of literature... it’s a legislation to authorise a piece of expenditure. You could rewrite the same thing in softer language”. Noting provisions for a waiver in the legislation, Qureshi suggested it was for the US executive to “use its judgement and come to a conclusion”. In a meeting with his top commanders in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s Army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani reiterated that Pakistan was a sovereign state and had all the rights to analyse and respond to the threat in accordance with its own national interests. The bill came up for discussion in that meeting and the military leadership “expressed serious concern regarding clauses impacting national security,” said a statement from Gen Kiyani’s office. In Islamabad, the Parliament was debating the consequences of the bill.
|
|
French company snaps up Gandhi’s house in SA
Johannesburg, October 8 The specialist touring company Voyageurs du Monde, which is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, plans to turn the property into a Gandhi museum in line with its philosophy of investing in the heritage properties worldwide. The then young lawyer Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi lived in the house from 1908 to 1910. The thatched-roof rondavel- style house was designed by Gandhi's confidant and architect Hermann Kallenbach. The previous owners of the house, Nancy and Jarrod Ball, bought the house for Rand 65,000 in 1981 and have sold it because they are retiring to the coast. They said they were relieved that the buyer would be respecting the Gandhian heritage. Informally referred to as ‘the Kraal’, the house in the leafy suburb of Orchards in Johannesburg is one of several that Gandhi lived in during his stay here as he developed his Satyagraha philosophies and led the local Indian community in their struggle against oppression. — PTI
|
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday, honoured for work that "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed," the Swedish Academy said.
