Subhaditya News Channel Present Science, Political ,Other , Sports and Movie Release News of This Week (15)

3D Picture of Science News

Science News This Week :

 

Nobel Prize in Physiology 2012

1) The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent:

The Nobel Prize recognizes two scientists who discovered that mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body. Their findings have revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop.

John B. Gurdon discovered in 1962 that the specialisation of cells is reversible. In a classic experiment, he replaced the immature cell nucleus in an egg cell of a frog with the nucleus from a mature intestinal cell. This modified egg cell developed into a normal tadpole. The DNA of the mature cell still had all the information needed to develop all cells in the frog.

Shinya Yamanaka discovered more than 40 years later, in 2006, how intact mature cells in mice could be reprogrammed to become immature stem cells. Surprisingly, by introducing only a few genes, he could reprogram mature cells to become pluripotent stem cells, i.e. immature cells that are able to develop into all types of cells in the body.

These groundbreaking discoveries have completely changed our view of the development and cellular specialisation. We now understand that the mature cell does not have to be confined forever to its specialised state. Textbooks have been rewritten and new research fields have been established. By reprogramming human cells, scientists have created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy.

From surprising discovery to medical use:

The discoveries of Gurdon and Yamanaka have shown that specialised cells can turn back the developmental clock under certain circumstances. Although their genome undergoes modifications during development, these modifications are not irreversible. We have obtained a new view of the development of cells and organisms.

Research during recent years has shown that iPS cells can give rise to all the different cell types of the body. These discoveries have also provided new tools for scientists around the world and led to remarkable progress in many areas of medicine. iPS cells can also be prepared from human cells.

For instance, skin cells can be obtained from patients with various diseases, reprogrammed, and examined in the laboratory to determine how they differ from cells of healthy individuals. Such cells constitute invaluable tools for understanding disease mechanisms and so provide new opportunities to develop medical therapies.

Nobel Prize in Physics 2012

 

2) A French-American duo Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics

A French-American duo shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for inventing methods to observe the bizarre properties of the quantum world, research that has led to the construction of extremely precise clocks and helped scientists take the first steps toward building superfast computers.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2012 was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems"

Serge Haroche

Born: 1944, Casablanca, Morocco

Nobel Prize in Physics motivation: "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems" : a study about the light particles, the photons.

David J. Wineland

Born: 1944, Milwaukee, WI, USA

 Nobel Prize in Physicsmotivation: "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems": His work has included advances in optics, specifically laser cooling of ions in Paul traps and use of trapped ions to implement quantum computing operations.

Particle Control in a Quantum World:

The Nobel Laureates have opened the door to a new era of experimentation with quantum physics by demonstrating the direct observation of individual quantum particles without destroying them. For single particles of light or matter the laws of classical physics cease to apply and quantum physics takes over. But single particles are not easily isolated from their surrounding environment and they lose their mysterious quantum properties as soon as they interact with the outside world. Thus many seemingly bizarre phenomena predicted by quantum physics could not be directly observed, and researchers could only carry out thought experiments that might in principle manifest these bizarre phenomena.

Through their ingenious laboratory methods Haroche and Wineland together with their research groups have managed to measure and control very fragile quantum states, which were previously thought inaccessible for direct observation. The new methods allow them to examine, control and count the particles.

Their methods have many things in common. David Wineland traps electrically charged atoms, or ions, controlling and measuring them with light, or photons.

Serge Haroche takes the opposite approach: he controls and measures trapped photons, or particles of light, by sending atoms through a trap.

Both Laureates work in the field of quantum optics studying the fundamental interaction between light and matter, a field which has seen considerable progress since the mid-1980s. Their ground-breaking methods have enabled this field of research to take the very first steps towards building a new type of super fast computer based on quantum physics. Perhaps the quantum computer will change our everyday lives in this century in the same radical way as the classical computer did in the last century. The research has also led to the construction of extremely precise clocks that could become the future basis for a new standard of time, with more than hundred-fold greater precision than present-day caesium clocks.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012

 


3) The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012 was awarded jointly to Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors".

Nobel prize in chemistry 2012 for work on cell receptors: as it happened

Americans Robert J Lefkowitz and Brian K Kobilka have won this year's chemistry Nobel for their work on G-protein-coupled receptors, which allow cells to sense light, flavour, odour and receive signals from hormones and neurotransmitters


Robert J. Lefkowitz

Born: 1943, New York, NY, USA

Prize motivation: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"

Brian K. Kobilka

Born: 1955, Little Falls, MN, USA

Prize motivation: "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors"


G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)

Various ligands use G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) to stimulate membrane, cytoplasmic and nuclear targets. GPCRs interact with heterotrimeric G proteins composed of alpha, beta and gamma subunits that are GDP bound in the resting state. Agonist binding triggers a conformational change in the receptor, which catalyses the dissociation of GDP from the alpha subunit followed by GTP-binding to Galpha and the dissociation of Galpha from Gbetagamma subunits1. The alpha subunits of G proteins are divided into four subfamilies: Galphas, Galphai, Galphaq and Galpha12, and a single GPCR can couple to either one or more families of Galpha proteins. Each G protein activates several downstream effectors2. Typically Galphas stimulates adenylyl cyclase and increases levels of cyclic AMP (cAMP), whereas Galphai inhibits adenylyl cyclase and lowers cAMP levels, and members of the Galphaq family bind to and activate phospholipase C (PLC), which cleaves phosphatidylinositol bisphosphate (PIP2) into diacylglycerol and inositol triphosphate (IP3). The Gbeta subunits and Ggamma subunits function as a dimer to activate many signalling molecules, including phospholipases, ion channels and lipid kinases. Besides the regulation of these classical second-messenger generating systems, Gbetagamma subunits and Galpha subunits such as Galpha12 and Galphaq can also control the activity of key intracellular signal-transducing molecules, including small GTP-binding proteins of the Ras and Rho families and members of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family of serine-threonine kinases, including extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), c-jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), p38 and ERK5, through an intricate network of signalling events that has yet to be fully elucidated1, 4, 6. Ultimately, the integration of the functional activity of the G-protein-regulated signalling networks control many cellular functions, and the aberrant activity of G proteins and their downstream target molecules can contribute to cancer progression and metastasis. 5-HT, 5-hydroxytryptamine; ECM, extracellular matrix; GABA, gamma-aminobutyric acid; GEF, guanine nucleotide exchange factor; GRK, G protein receptor kinase; LPA, lysophosphatidic acid; PI3K, phophatidylinositol 3-kninase; PKA and PKC, protein kinase A and C; S1P sphingosine-1-phosphate.


Diversity of G Protein-Coupled Receptor Signal Transduction Pathways

Receptors coupled to heterotrimeric GTP-binding proteins (G proteins) are integral transmembrane proteins that transduce extracellular signals to the cell interior. G protein-coupled receptors exhibit a common structural motif consisting of seven membrane spanning regions. Receptor occupation promotes interaction between the receptor and the G protein on the interior surface of the membrane. This induces an exchange of GDP for GTP on the G protein a subunit and dissociation of the a subunit from the bg heterodimer. Depending on its isoform, the GTP-a subunit complex mediates intracellular signaling either indirectly by acting on effector molecules such as adenylyl cyclase (AC) or phospholipase C (PLC), or directly by regulating ion channel or kinase function.

Mars Rock Touched by NASA Curiosity Has Surprises

 


4) a) Mars Rock Touched by NASA Curiosity Has Surprises :

The first Martian rock NASA's Curiosity rover has reached out to touch presents a more varied composition than expected from previous missions. The rock also resembles some unusual rocks from Earth's interior.

The rover team used two instruments on Curiosity to study the chemical makeup of the football-size rock called "Jake Matijevic" (matt-EE-oh-vick). The results support some surprising recent measurements and provide an example of why identifying rocks' composition is such a major emphasis of the mission. Rock compositions tell stories about unseen environments and planetary processes.

"This rock is a close match in chemical composition to an unusual but well-known type of igneous rock found in many volcanic provinces on Earth," said Edward Stolper of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who is a Curiosity co-investigator. "With only one Martian rock of this type, it is difficult to know whether the same processes were involved, but it is a reasonable place to start thinking about its origin."

On Earth, rocks with composition like the Jake rock typically come from processes in the planet's mantle beneath the crust, from crystallization of relatively water-rich magma at elevated pressure.

Jake was the first rock analyzed by the rover's arm-mounted Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument and about the thirtieth rock examined by the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument. Two penny-size spots on Jake were analyzed Sept. 22 by the rover's improved and faster version of earlier APXS devices on all previous Mars rovers, which have examined hundreds of rocks. That information has provided scientists a library of comparisons for what Curiosity sees.

"Jake is kind of an odd Martian rock," said APXS Principal Investigator Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. "It's high in elements consistent with the mineral feldspar, and low in magnesium and iron."

ChemCam found unique compositions at each of 14 target points on the rock, hitting different mineral grains within it.

"ChemCam had been seeing compositions suggestive of feldspar since August, and we're getting closer to confirming that now with APXS data, although there are additional tests to be done," said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens (WEENS) of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Examination of Jake included the first comparison on Mars between APXS results and results from checking the same rock with ChemCam, which shoots laser pulses from the top of the rover's mast.

The wealth of information from the two instruments checking chemical elements in the same rock is just a preview. Curiosity also carries analytical laboratories inside the rover to provide other composition information about powder samples from rocks and soil. The mission is progressing toward getting the first soil sample into those analytical instruments during a "sol," or Martian day.

"Yestersol, we used Curiosity's first perfectly scooped sample for cleaning the interior surfaces of our 150-micron sample-processing chambers. It's our version of a Martian carwash," said Chris Roumeliotis (room-eel-ee-OH-tiss), lead turret rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Before proceeding, the team carefully studied the material for scooping at a sandy patch called "Rocknest," where Curiosity is spending about three weeks.

"That first sample was perfect, just the right particle-size distribution," said JPL's Luther Beegle, Curiosity sampling-system scientist. "We had a lot of steps to be sure it was safe to go through with the scooping and cleaning."

Following the work at Rocknest, the rover team plans to drive Curiosity about 100 yards eastward and select a rock in that area as the first target for using the drill.

During a two-year prime mission, researchers will use Curiosity's 10 instruments to assess whether the study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the project and built

Mars Meteorite that landed in the Moroccan desert

b) Meteorite Delivers Martian Secrets:

A meteorite that landed in the Moroccan desert 14 months ago is providing more information about Mars, the planet where it originated.

University of Alberta researcher Chris Herd helped in the study of the Tissint meteorite, in which traces of Mars' unique atmosphere are trapped.

"Our team matched traces of gases found inside the Tissint meteorite with samples of Mars' atmosphere collected in 1976 by Viking, NASA's Mars lander mission," said Herd.

Herd explained that the meteorite started out 600 million years ago as a fairly typical volcanic rock on the surface of Mars, until it was launched off the planet by the impact of an asteroid.

"At the instant of that impact with Mars, a shock wave shot through the rock," said Herd. "Cracks and fissures within the rock were sealed instantly by the heat, trapping components of Mars' atmosphere inside, and forming black, glassy spots."

The team estimates that for a period of between 700,000 and one million years the rock floated through outer space, until July 2011 when it streaked through Earth's atmosphere to land in Morocco.

This is only the fifth time a Martian meteorite landing was witnessed. Herd says the key reason this meteorite is so important is that it was picked up just a few months after landing and was not subjected to weathering or contamination on this planet.

The rock's Martian weathering involved water, which means water was present on the surface of Mars within the past few hundred million years. But Herd says this meteorite sample does not carry any evidence that the water supported any life forms.

"Because the Martian rock was subjected to such intense heat, any water-borne microbial life forms that may have existed deep within cracks of the rock would have been destroyed," said Herd.

Curiosity, NASA's current Mars Rover mission, is moving around the red planet searching for more information on the history of Mars.

The team's study makes a return mission to Mars that will bring rocks back to Earth all the more crucial, says Herd. "Martian rocks delivered to Earth by a spacecraft would provide the best opportunity to see if life was ever clinging to the surface of Mars."

A multinational team worked on the Tissint meteorite research. Joining Herd from the U of A's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences was geochemistry technician Guangcheng Chen. John Duke, director of the U of A's SLOWPOKE Nuclear Reactor Facility, was also a co-author of the research paper published online Oct.11 in the journal Science.

 

Transplantation of Embryonic Neurons Raises Hope for Treating Brain Diseases

5) Transplantation of Embryonic Neurons Raises Hope for Treating Brain Diseases:

The unexpected survival of embryonic neurons transplanted into the brains of newborn mice in a series of experiments at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raises hope for the possibility of using neuronal transplantation to treat diseases like Alzheimer's, epilepsy, Huntington's, Parkinson's and schizophrenia.

The experiments, described this week in the journal Nature, were not designed to test whether embryonic neuron transplants could effectively treat any specific disease. But they provide a proof-of-principle that GABA-secreting interneurons, a type of brain cell linked to many different neurological disorders, can be added in significant numbers into the brain and can survive without affecting the population of endogenous interneurons.

The survival of these cells after transplantation in numbers far greater than expected came as a shock to the team, which was led by UCSF professor Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, PhD, and former UCSF graduate student Derek Southwell, MD, PhD.

The prevailing theory held that the survival of developing neurons is something like a game of musical chairs. The brain has limited capacity for these cells, forcing them to compete with each other for the few available slots. Only those that find a place to "sit" (and receive survival signals derived from other cell types) will survive when the music stops. The rest die a withering death.

Based on this theory, the UCSF team had expected only a fixed and small number of transplanted embryonic interneurons would survive in the brains of older recipient mice, regardless of how many they transplanted. What they found was very different: Regardless of how many they transplanted, a consistent percentage always survived.

"[This constant rate of survival] suggests that these cells, which other collaborative studies have shown have great therapeutic promise, can be added to cortex in significant numbers," said Alvarez-Buylla, who is the Heather and Melanie Muss Professor of Neurological Surgery and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF.

Past work at UCSF and elsewhere has shown that transplanting these cells can create a new critical period of plasticity in the recipient brain, reduce seizures in animal models of epilepsy, and reduce Parkinson's-like movement disorders in laboratory rats. The activity of these cells is often disrupted in Alzheimer's disease, and their number is altered in the brains of people with schizophrenia. When transplanted into the spinal cord, they also help decrease pain sensation.

In the current study, the UCSF team found that as they altered the number of cells they transplanted, a constant proportion of these cells survived -- rather than a constant number -- suggesting that a fraction of the cells is destined to die by cell-autonomous mechanisms or that a survival factor is secreted by the inhibitory neurons themselves. The work shows that these interneurons may be transplanted in far greater numbers than previously thought -- an observation that could have important implications for the use of these cells to correct defects in the excitatory/inhibitory valance in the disease brain.

Survival of Cells Depends on Unknown Signals

GABAergic interneurons are essential for brain function because they balance the action of "excitatory" neurons in the cerebral cortex by producing inhibitory signals. Diseases like epilepsy, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's and schizophrenia are all variously linked to disruptions in this excitatory/inhibitory balance, and problems with the GABAergic interneurons have been documented in all these diseases.

These GABAergic interneurons are not born in the cerebral cortex -- the part of the brain where they will ultimately become incorporated into functional circuits. Instead, they are created in a distant part of the developing brain and then migrate to their final destination. For decades, scientists have not known how the appropriate number of these interneurons is determined, how many are formed, when they die and how many survive after reaching the cerebral cortex. The recent publication addresses some of these unknowns, but also revealed an unexpected observation.

It is generally believed that neuronal numbers are determined by availability of survival signals provided by other target cells. This idea, generally known as the "neurotrophic hypothesis," is based on Nobel Prize-winning experiments in the 1940s showing how the survival of developing neurons in the spinal cord and peripheral nervous system is determined. That work showed that only the nerve fibers that could correctly connect to targets outside the nervous system would survive and that these targets produced a protein called nerve growth factor responsible for keeping the nerves alive.

For many years, the neurotrophic hypothesis has dominated ideas of how and why cells in the brain live and die. "The neurotrophic hypothesis has since been assumed to apply to all types neurons and all areas of the nervous system," said Southwell.

The assumption was that once the GABAergic interneurons winded their way to the right part of the brain, only those that melded with the other neurons already there would be protected by a protein or some other factor to stay alive. Instead, the survival of the transplanted interneurons was determined in a manner that was independent from competition for survival signals produced by other types of cells in the recipients.

While the new experiments do not overthrow this theory as it applies to how nerves outside the brain connect to their targets, they suggest there may be something else going on with GABAergic interneurons.

This work was funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the John G. Bowes Research Fund, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the National Institute of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke, one of the National Institutes of Health, through grant.

3D Picture of Political and Other News

Political  and other News of This Week:







 

The shooting of Malala Yousufzai on Tuesday as she was coming home from school set off an international out cry

1) Malala Yousufzai Shooting: Pakistani Girl Activist's Condition 'Satisfactory':

A 14-year-old Pakistani activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman after speaking out for girls' education is in "satisfactory" condition at a military hospital, a spokesman said Friday, cautioning that the next few days will be critical.

The shooting of Malala Yousufzai on Tuesday as she was coming home from school set off an international out cry.

Maj. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa said she is being kept unconscious and on a ventilator, and doctors will decide when to take her off.

"Her blood pressure is normal. Heartbeat is normal, and thanks to God, her condition is satisfactory," Bajwa said.

Bajwa said the bullet entered her head and went into her neck toward her spine, but it was too soon to say whether she had any significant head injury.

Yousufzai is widely respected for her role in promoting girls' education in the Swat Valley, where she lives, and the rest of Pakistan. A Taliban gunman shot and wounded her and two other girls Tuesday, sparking widespread condemnation. There has been an outpouring of praise for her bravery from Pakistani and international leaders.

The school she attended in Mingora, owned and operated by her father, reopened Friday. The atmosphere was grim as children and teachers tried to come to terms with what happened to their star pupil.

"We have decided to open the school after two days to overcome the fear among our students that gripped them due to the attack. The number of students is low today. We have not resumed regular teaching activity, but held an assembly to pray for Malala and the other two injured girls," said one of the teachers, Zafar Ali Khan.

Police had been deployed around the school, but even so, many students stayed away.

"Although we have gathered here for to pray for Malala, this shows we will keep her mission going," Ayesha Khan, a ninth-grade student. "Many of the students haven't come due to fear, but I believe this fear will subside ultimately."

The girl was initially airlifted from the town of Mingora in the Swat Valley to a military hospital in the frontier city of Peshawar, where doctors operated on her to remove a bullet from her neck. On Thursday she was transferred to a hospital in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani army is headquartered.

In addition to the team of Pakistani military and civilian doctors who have been treating her, two foreign doctors have also been consulted, Bajwa said. He said so far there are no plans to send her abroad for treatment.

Salman Khurshid's Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust comes under CAG scanner

 



2) Salman Khurshid's Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust comes under CAG scanner:

The Comptroller and Auditor General(CAG), in its latest report, has pointed out irregularities in the functioning of Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid's trust, sources said on Friday.

The development comes as a setback to the minister as he and his wife Louise Khurshid, who happens to be the chief functionary officer of NGO Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust, as both of them had vehemently denied any wrongdoing after a Headlines Today-Aaj Tak report highlighted the alleged forgery of Rs.71 lakh, meant for physically challenged people.

The CAG report also points out that despite knowing about the alleged malpractices, the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment did not hesitate in giving funds to Khurshid's NGO in 2011.

The ministry is being audited by the CAG. In the audit it has found that the funds given to the trust did not reach the desired destination. The audit began almost one-month-and-a-half ago and the report would be ready in the next eight months.

Documents procured in course of investigation and a sting operation carried out by Headlines Today-Aaj Tak reporters had revealed that the prestigious trust had forged signatures and stamps of senior officials of several districts in Uttar Pradesh depriving physically challenged people of their due.

Complaint filed against Vadra in Jaipur

3) Complaint filed against Vadra in Jaipur:

A complaint was Thursday filed in a lower court in Jaipur against Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra for his alleged "mango people in banana republic" comment on his Facebook page recently, a lawyer said.

The complaint was filed by lawyer A.C. Upadhyay in the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate S.K. Ojha.

Upadhyay said: "I approached the court as the remarks of Vadra are defamatory and against the Constitution of India, the court and its people. I had filed a complaint which the court has accepted."

The complaint was filed under sections 124A (sedition), 153B (Imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 500 and 501 (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code.

"The court will take up the matter for hearing Oct 18," said the officer.

Vadra reportedly wrote a comment on his Facebook page Monday that read: "Mango people in banana republic...."

The comment had come two days after activist Arvind Kejriwal of India Against Corruption (IAC) alleged that the son-in-law of the country's ruling party chief Sonia Gandhi had indulged in quid pro quo real-estate deals with a realty major.

Robert Vadra not new to controversy

4) Robert Vadra not new to controversy:

Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is mired in controversy after charges of corruption were levelled against by him by Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan. While Vadra continues to deny the allegations, as many in the Congress defend him, here is an extract from the book 'Sonia A Biography' authored by Rashid Kidwai which suggests that this is not the first time he is embroiled in a controversy.

Kidwai, in his book, states that five years after Robert Vadra married Priyanka Gandhi in February 1997, Sonia Gandhi had gone public cautioning Congress leaders to not deal in any way with close relatives of Robert Vadra.

The directive came shortly after Vadra himself issued a public notice snapping ties with his family. Sonia's action was unusual to say the least, as she was known to guard the family's privacy zealously.

Kidwai's book states that Priyanka Gandhi first came in contact with Robert Vadra in 1986, when she was fifteen. There was little in common between the two except for their love for dogs, music, fashion and dancing. The simple friendship developed into a relationship. The two were spotted for the first time in public at fashion designer Ashish Soni's show in New Delhi in 1993. The next day, newspapers carried a picture of Priyanka in a sleeveless black T-shirt with Vadra.

Many were surprised by Priyanka's choice. Vadra was the son of a brassware magnate from Moradabad (about 150 kilometers north-east of Delhi). He kept a low profile till the world came to know about the marriage on February 18, 1997. Sonia reportedly had some reservations about Priyanka marrying him as he had not gone to college after completing his A-levels. Moreover, some members of the Vadra family had a strong Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh links, having donated their property and wealth to the Sangh.

Informed sources said Sonia took the step of issuing a directive to chief ministers of party ruled states, All India Congress Committee functionaries and others after receiving many complaints that the Vadras (not Robert) were seeking favours using the Nehru-Gandhi family name. It was said that when Salman Khurshid was Uttar Pradesh Congress Committe president, Robert's brother Richard had allegedly called him up to recommend names of some local politicians from his hometown Moradabad.

Robert's public notice published in a leading national daily on January 3, 2002, was drafted by Arun Bhardwaj, son of former law minister Hansraj Bhardwaj (the current governor of Karnataka).

It read: "It has been brought to the notice of my client that some persons including Rajindra Vadra (Robert's father) resident of C-7, Amar Colony and Richard Vadra, resident of Basant Vihar Colony, Civil Lines, Moradabad, UP are misrepresenting to the public that they are working on behalf of my client and allegedly promising jobs and other favours in return for money. Even though Rajindra Vadra and Richard Vadra are relatives of my client but they have no access to my client. Public at large is hereby put to notice that my client has not authorized Rajindra Vadra and Richard Vadra and anyone else to work for him or to use his name in any manner and make such misrepresentation to anybody. Such misrepresentations are without the knowledge and consent of my client."


Rajindra Vadra was outraged by the public notice. He accused Sonia Gandhi of 'engineering split' among the Vadras and snatching away his son. He denied any financial irregularity and insisted that Robert had not consulted him before issuing a public notice. Domestic quarrels, defamation suits soon became public.

Between 1997-2002, Robert ran Artex, a company that dealt in costume jewellery in bone, wood, plastic and black metal. He used to frequently travel to Australia, USA and Europe. Priyanka too had developed an interest in designing costume jewellery and often traveled with him.

Brahmos Missile Test-Launched Successfully From Indian Navy’s Warship Ins Teg

 5) Brahmos Missile Test-Launched Successfully From Indian Navy’s Warship Ins Teg:
India has successfully test-fired the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from INS Teg which is the Indian Navy’s latest frigate. The test-firing of BrahMos missile took place yesterday off the coast of Goa and it is the second successful test-firIng from INS Teg since its sea-trials last year.

According to BrahMos officials, the 290 km range BrahMos missile performed major manoeuvres at two given points in whIch the mission was to elude detection by enemies' radars and successfully hit the target ship at a distance of 290 kms. The target ship was successfully devastated by the BrahMos missile as planned.

The BrahMos missile system, developed jointly by Russia and India, is a two-stage missile system inducted into the Indian Navy in 2005.The supersonic cruise missile has also been inducted in the Indian Army. Besides, an air-launched and a submarine-launched version of the advanced weapon system are under development at present. The BRAHMOS missile has a flight range of up to 290 km and is capable of carrying a conventional warhead of 300 kg. The missile can cruise at a maximum speed of 2.8 Mach.

One of the salient features of BrahMos is its vertical launch configuration. This system augments the stealth capabilities of the ship as the missiles are not exposed and remain under the deck. In fact, the Universal Vertical Launcher (UVLM) being used in these ships is unique and it is designed, developed and patented by BrahMos Aerospace. This also facilitates maneuverability of the missile in any direction after launch, independent of ship movement. Besides, it greatly enhances its stealth capability and enables snoop attacks.

The BrahMos surface-to-surface missile was launched from the Russian-built Project 1135.6 class warship INS Teg. This warship was commissioned in April this year and has been fitted with an upgraded multi-role combat suite. INS Teg has been built as part of a $1.6 billion contract signed between India and Russia in 2006. Two other frigates of the class, namely INS Tarkash and INS Trikand, are at different stages of construction at Russia's Yantar shipyard.

India has decided that the three above-mentioned warships will be equipped with 8 vertical launched BRAHMOS missile system as the main strike weapon as it is capable of engaging targets at extended ranges at supersonic speed. INS Teg's weapons suite includes surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missile systems, 100 mm medium range gun, close-in weapon system, torpedo tubes and anti-submarine rockets.

Non-bailable arrest warrant issued against Vijay Mallya

6)  Non-bailable arrest warrant issued against Vijay Mallya:


 A special magistrate court here on Friday issued a non-bailable arrest warrant (NBW) against the Chairman of Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallya, and four other directors for non-appearance in cases relating to bouncing of cheques issued in favour of GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL) towards user charges.

Four cheques totalling Rs.10.5 crore were issued since January this year to GHIAL, which operates Rajiv Gandhi International Airport here. But, they were dishonoured when presented for clearance following which legal notices were served on Kingfisher.

As the airline did not make the payment, GHIAL filed a case in the special court under the Negotiable Instruments Act in August. The court issued summons to Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallya, chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal, chief financial officer H. G. Raghunath and two others asking them to appear in the court on Friday but they did not.

The lawyer for the airline and the directors filed a petition under provisions of criminal procedure code to dispense with their personal attendance. However, the judge, L. Kedarachari, dismissed the petition and issued the NBW against the airline representative and five directors led by Mr. Mallya.

Kingfisher and GHIAL had entered into an agreement under which the former was collecting user development charges from passengers for parking, landing and navigation with regard to Hyderabad airport. The airline was supposed to remit the money to GMR but it did not.

When GMR demanded the unpaid user charges, Kingfisher issued cheques over a period of time since January, and those were dishonoured. Similar cases were said to be pending in Mumbai and New Delhi after the airport operators moved the court.

Mr. Mallya did not immediately face the threat of arrest as he could get the NBW recalled by appearing in the court before November 5 when the case is posted for next hearing or move the High Court for a temporary stay, sources said. 

Nobel Prize in Literature, 2012: Mo Yan had received the Nobel Prize

7) Nobel Prize in Literature, 2012: Mo Yan had received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary".

On 11 October 2012, the Swedish Academy announced that Mo Yan had received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". Aged 57 at the time of the announcement, he was the 109th recipient of the award and the first ever resident of mainland China resident to receive it—Chinese-born Gao Xingjian, a citizen of France, having been named the 2000 laureate. According to Swedish Academy head Peter Englund, Mo Yan was "overjoyed and terrified" to hear the news and had been at home with his father when he heard the news. Englund also said, "He has such a damn unique way of writing. If you read half a page of Mo Yan you immediately recognise it as him".

His Works:

Mo has published 11 novels so far, as well as dozens of short stories and novellas. His work is set largely in the past, in rural areas, and many of his books are described as family histories, though they also have a strong affinity with magical realism—he once remarked: “García Márquez wrote my novel.” His 2006 novel Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, for example, is the story of a landowner who, following his execution under Mao Zedong, is reincarnated as a donkey.

Stylistically Mo is a maximalist: his novels are distinguished by their playfulness and their stylistic flamboyance, as well as occasional scenes of graphic violence—The Red Sorghum Family, on which the movie is based, includes a scene in which a human being is flayed alive. He occasionally includes himself as a character in his fictions. Mo is frequently classified as a satirist: The Republic of Wine tells the story of an official sent to the countryside to investigate rumors of cannibalism. His novel Big Breasts and Wide Hips, which appeared in China in 1996 and the West in 2005, was an epic, sprawling indictment of the male dominance of Chinese society. Frog, his most recent novel, addresses the Chinese policy of one family, one child.

Mo’s work unquestionably contains powerful elements of social criticism, but he has been engaged in a career-long game of brinksmanship with the Chinese government, and while he has had his share of run-ins with the censors, he still lives in Beijing and writes and publishes within the constraints of Chinese state censorship.

3D Picture of Movie Release this Week

 



Movies News This Week:

 

Special Forces

1) Special Forces:

In Afghanistan, French journalist Elsa and her colleague Amen are covering the story of Maina, a woman sold to a man when she was a child. Taliban leader Ahmed Zaief abducts Elsa and Amen and tries to force them to read a message to Western governments. The French president sends six Special Force to rescue Elsa who's hidden in a fortress in Pakistan. The team composed of Commander Kovax, Tic-Tac, Lucas, the sniper Elias, Victor and Marius release Elsa and Amen from their imprisonment but lose their radios. Now the group needs to cross the inhospitable land to save their lives with the Taliban chasing them. 

Sinister

 



2) Sinister:

A true crime novelist discovers a box of mysterious, disturbing home movies that plunge his family into a nightmarish experience of supernatural horror. 

Atlas Shrugged: Part II

3) Atlas Shrugged: Part II :

With the global economy on the brink of collapse, Dagny Taggart discovers what might be the answer to a mounting energy crisis and races against the clock to prevent the motor of the World from being stopped for good. 

Aiyyaa (2012)

4) Aiyyaa (2012):

The story is about a Marathi girl Meenakshi Deshpande (Rani Mukerji) falling in love with a Tamil artist Surya (Prithviraj). It is a quirky and funny love story with the backdrop of a Marathi-Tamil cultural clash. The lead female protagonist woos the stranger she desires as he smells good. 

Chittagong

5) Chittagong:

Chittagong
Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Rajkumar Yadav
Direction: Bedabrata Pain
Rating:  Three and a half Star out of Five   

You know the story if you have seen Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se. Chittagong reprises the same slice of history, only with a more solid cast. Manoj Bajpayee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, offbeat cinema's two most explosive talents, are the only familiar faces here but debutant director Bedabrata Pain scores with apt casting of mostly greenhorns for the other characters, too.

The film narrates the historic Chittagong Uprising of the 1930s. The town of Chittagong (now in Bangladesh) came alive with revolutionary fervour as freedom fighter Surya Sen (Manoj), or Masterda, built an army of schoolkids to launch attacks on the region's British armoury. The film unfolds through the eyes of young Jhunku (Delzad Hiwale), who joins the movement.

Director Pain and his co-writer Shonali Bose create a taut narrative and the film works as a socio-political drama. Crisply cut (Aldo Velasco) and riding Resul Pookutty's flawless sound design, the film is a treat for lovers of quality cinema.

Bachchan throws 70th birthday bash with Bollywood in tow

6) Bachchan throws 70th birthday bash with Bollywood in tow:

Actor Amitabh Bachchan rang in his 70th birthday with a party attended by a majority of the Bollywood film industry who were treated to an Indian contemporary ballet performance set to his father's poetry.

Leading actors including Shah Rukh Khan and Anil Kapoor and veterans Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu attended the celebration on Wednesday night.

Apart from Bollywood celebrities, the event held at a suburb of Mumbai was attended by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and industrialist Anil Ambani.

Dressed in a velvet sherwani, Bachchan posed for shutterbugs alongside wife Jaya, daughter Shweta, son-in-law Nikhil Nanda and son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya.

"Birthdays are special for all .. mine is no different for tomorrow .. but would never be the same without your love and affection," Bachchan wrote on Twitter on Wednesday night.

Media reports said the birthday cake was cut at the stroke of midnight after a ballet performance set to a poem of Harivansh Rai Bachchan, recited by Amitabh.

3D Picture of Sports News This Week

Sports News of This Week:

Roger Federer wins, to stay No. 1 for 300th week

 

1) Roger Federer wins, to stay No. 1 for 300th week:

 Roger Federer assured himself the No. 1 ranking for the 300th week of his career by beating Davis Cup teammate Stanislas Wawrinka 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-0 Thursday in the third round of the Shanghai Masters.

''It's obviously an amazing number and I never thought of anything like this when I was a little kid,'' Federer said. ''I just thought one day my dream would come true to play on the tour. So here I am at 300 weeks, and it's probably one of my biggest accomplishments and something I'm very proud of. No doubt about it.''

Clash of titans as CLT20 enters main stage

 
2) Clash of titans as CLT20 enters main stage :

After their not so memorable outing in the just-concluded ICC World T20 in Sri Lanka, it will be a test of character for the Indian boys in the Champions League Twenty20 which enters the business stage from Saturday.

There are four Indian Premier League teams in the fray in the cash-rich tournament, including defending champions Mumbai Indians (MI) and this season's IPL winners Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). The other two IPL sides are Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Delhi Daredvils (DD).

But the interesting to watch in the tournament will be the desperation of the Indian cricketers, who will be eager to erase the scars of their Super Eight elimination in the Twenty20 World Cup.

While KKR and DD have been placed in Group A, the other two IPL teams -- MI and Mahendra Singh Dhoni-led CSK -- are in group B, raising the hopes of an all India clash in the semis, as the top two teams from each group will qualify for the knockout stage. However, in no sense it would be an easy task for the Indian outfits as they will be up against some of the best T20 outfits of the world.