NEW DELHI: India’s Mars spacecraft was “successfully” raised into a higher orbit around Earth early on Tuesday, after a brief engine failure during an earlier attempt, the space agency said. The Mars Orbiter Mission, which blasted off on November 5 for a 11-month trip to the Red Planet, is being launched on its way via an unusual “slingshot” method for interplanetary journeys. Lacking a large enough rocket to blast directly out of Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational pull, the Indian spacecraft is orbiting Earth until the end of the month while building up enough velocity to break free. On Tuesday, the spacecraft completed a fourth repositioning to take it 100,000 kilometres (62,000 miles) from Earth, aft...
November 13, 2013 at 1:01 am | News Desk
LONDON: Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl activist, who was shot in the head by militants for campaigning for girls education, has been named one of 2013’ s Glamour Women of the Year. Glamour magazine normally waits until December to name its recipients but in honour of “Day of the Girl,” it decided to announce that Malala is one of its 2013 Women of the Year. Malala Fund will be the recipient of money raised by the Women of the Year Fund initiative which will help to support girls’ education globally.She was also a favourite among experts and betting agencies for the Nobel Peace Prize 2013 but lost it to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Despite losing out on the Nobel...
November 13, 2013 at 1:01 am | News Desk
Warsaw: Nations launched a new round of talks Monday for a 2015 deal to cut Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, in the aftermath of a devastating Philippines typhoon the UN’s climate chief labelled “sobering”. Christiana Figueres urged progress at the notoriously fractious talks amid a slew of new warnings of potentially disastrous global warming as a Filipino negotiator made a tearful undertaking to fast until the talks yield a tangible result. “What happens in this stadium (talks venue) is not a game. There are not two sides but the whole of humanity. There are no winners and losers, we all either win or lose in the future we make for ourselves,” said Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Clima...
November 12, 2013 at 1:14 am | News Desk
Damascus: Nine children were killed and 27 people wounded when mortar rounds hit a school and a school bus in the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday, state television reported. “The toll in the terrorist targeting of the St. John of Damascus school with mortar rounds has risen to five dead, all of them children, and 27 injured,” a news alert on Syrian state television said. Another four students were killed when a mortar hit the vehicle they were in, in the central Bab Sharqi district of the capital, state news agency SANA said, adding that the driver was also killed. Six others inside the bus, including four more students, were wounded in the “terrorist attack,” SANA said. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad uses...
November 12, 2013 at 1:01 am | News Desk
Los Angeles: The dystopian universe of “The Hunger Games” returns to cinema screens Monday, aiming to harness the star power of Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence and convey an unambiguous message of youthful rebellion. After the phenomenal success in 2012 of the first film adapted from Suzanne Collins’ trilogy of novels, Lawrence returns as Katniss Everdeen, the teenage heroine pitched into a deadly battle for survival in the macabre post-apocalyptic kingdom of Panem. Produced by Lionsgate studio, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” will be looking to match the stellar performance of the first installment of the franchise, which took in $693 million worldwide last year. The film makes its global premiere in...
November 12, 2013 at 1:01 am | News Desk
Tehran: The United States said Monday no state has the existing right to enrich uranium, as Iran and the UN watchdog agreed on a “roadmap for cooperation” over its nuclear programme. As France said world powers were still close to an agreement with Iran on its disputed nuclear drive, US Secretary of State John Kerry accused the Islamic republic of scuttling the latest efforts to end the deadlock. Speaking in Abu Dhabi, the top US diplomat insisted a deal with Iran would protect Israel and America’s Gulf allies, saying “war should be the last resort” and that no state has “existing right to enrich”. “The P5+1 was unified on Saturday when we presented our proposal to the Iranians… But Ira...
November 12, 2013 at 1:01 am | News Desk
Washington: Google’s flagship device Google Nexus 5 is now available at T-Mobile in its retail stores on November 20 for $450. Google started selling the unlocked Nexus 5 through its online store on Oct. 31 and quickly sold out of its initial supply of the handset. It is currently listing the 16GB model as being available to ship in 3 – 4 weeks. If that’s too long of a wait and you’re a T-Mobile customer, you’ll be happy to know that the carrier has just announced its launch plans for Google’s new flagship smartphone. T-Mobile will begin taking orders for the Nexus 5 online beginning on Nov. 14 and will have it in its retail stores on Nov. 20. The carrier will be charging $41.99 down with 24 equal month...
November 11, 2013 at 1:50 am | News Desk
Tehran: Diplomats insisted Sunday they were closing in on an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear programme despite the failure to clinch a long-sought deal in high-profile, marathon negotiations in Geneva. Israel meanwhile doubled down on efforts to avert a “bad deal,” as Tehran insisted it would not abandon its “right” to enrichment and Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington was neither “blind” nor “stupid” about the Islamic republic’s nuclear ambitions. Hopes had soared after top world diplomats rushed to Geneva to join the talks, but then faded as cracks began to appear among world powers when France raised concerns over a heavy water reactor being built at Arak. But diploma...
November 11, 2013 at 1:03 am | News Desk
Frankfurt: Legendary Swedish pop group ABBA could reunite next year to mark the 40th anniversary since they won the Eurovision Song Contest and were catapulted to global stardom, singer Agnetha Faltskog revealed on Sunday. “Of course it’s something we’re thinking about,” 63-year-old Faltskog told the German weekly Welt am Sonntag in an interview. “There seem to be plans to do something to mark this anniversary in some way. But I can’t say at this point what will come of them,” she said. ABBA formed in 1972 when Faltskog met guitarist and songwriter Bjorn Ulvaeus — whom she later married — and Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Visitors sing karaoke with giant holograms of members of...
November 11, 2013 at 1:03 am | News Desk
Helsinki: In just five years Nokia fell from dominating the mobile phone industry to abandoning the handset business, a swift fall from grace with lessons for market leaders. The story of Nokia, now at the toughest stage of the restructuring cycle, is a particularly salutary business case about the fast-moving, high-risk, high-reward, tech sector for hip consumer goods. The rapid decline, which is ending with the 5.44 billion euro ($7.5 billion) sale of the mobile phone division to Microsoft, owed much to Nokia growing too big, too fast and its management getting drunk on their own success, analysts say. Looking back after years of Apple iPhone dominance, some may have difficulty in recalling that Nokia, in its heyday in 2007 took more than...
November 11, 2013 at 1:03 am | News Desk
JUGON-LES-LACS (France): French riot police fired tear gas at hundreds of anti-tax demonstrators in northwest France on Saturday after protesters pelted them and tried to drive a tractor through a barricade, an AFP photographer said. One demonstrator was arrested in Jugon-les-Lacs, a commune in the Cotes-d’Armor region where some 700 people had gathered earlier in the day. A security camera was torched and some protesters pelted police, who responded with tear gas. Demonstrators chanted slogans against France’s Socialist government, which earlier this month suspended the application of the so-called ecotax. “People struggle to pay their bills at the end of the month, and now we’re going to ecotax them” said one...
November 10, 2013 at 1:13 am | News Desk
Quito: Think Galapagos and you think nature in its most pristine expression. But the destructive weather phenomenon called El Nino turns coral reefs there a sickly white and sea iguanas scrawny. And now, in an unprecedented experiment, scientists using unmanned submarines in the waters off the Ecuadoran archipelago are probing whether global warming is related to El Nino. There is not yet conclusive evidence of a link. But experts are very serious about the possibility that climate change is making El Nino — unusually warm water in the Pacific off the west coast of South America — more frequent and more intense. For hundreds of years, the weather system at the Galapagos did not have to worry about global warming, said Eduardo Es...
November 10, 2013 at 1:01 am | News Desk
Tacloban (Philippines): One of the most powerful typhoons in history is believed to have killed 1,200 people in the Philippines, the Red Cross Saturday, as rescue workers raced to reach towns devastated by tsunami-like waves. A day after Super Typhoon Haiyan whipped across the central Philippines with maximum sustained winds of around 315 kilometres (195 miles) an hour, a picture emerged of entire communities having been flattened. Authorities said that, aside from the ferocious winds, storm surges of up to three metres (10 feet) high that swept into coastal towns and deep inland were responsible for destroying countless homes. “Imagine a strip one kilometre deep inland from the shore, and all the shanties, everything, destroyed,&rdqu...
November 10, 2013 at 1:01 am | News Desk
Geneva: If world powers and Iran fail to reach a hoped-for deal Saturday over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme, a new round of talks will be held in seven or 10 days, Iran’s foreign minister said. “If we do not reach an agreement tonight, the talks will be resumed in the next seven or 10 days,” Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying by Iranian news agency IRNA. Iranian officials had previously said the talks were unlikely to continue Sunday, but could move on to another round if they did not finish on Saturday. US Secretary of State John Kerry (2L), EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton (C) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (2R) in Geneva Zarif’s comments followed initial optimism after...
November 10, 2013 at 1:01 am | News Desk
Rugwerero: (Uganda): The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the defeated M23 rebels will Monday sign a peace deal, Kinshasa and Kampala said, with Uganda adding it will not send the fleeing insurgents back across the border. The March 23 Movement (M23) on Tuesday ended its 18-month insurgency after a resounding defeat at the hands of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then the majority of its fighters have fled across the border into Uganda. “The agreement is ready and we are expecting everybody to return Monday to sign it,” Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo told AFP of the deal. “The signature will take place on Monday,” DRC Foreign Affairs Minister Raymond Tshibanda...
November 9, 2013 at 1:56 am | News Desk
London: Defending champion Novak Djokovic booked his place in the semi-finals of the ATP World Tour Finals with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 victory over Juan Martin del Potro on Thursday. After Roger Federer defeated Richard Gasquet earlier in the day 6-4, 6-3 to keep his hopes of a last-four spot alive, Djokovic knew any win against the Argentine fourth seed would guarantee his qualification from Group B with one match still to play. And the world number two seized his chance, surviving a tough test lasting nearly two hours to extend his current winning run to 19 matches. Del Potro can still make the last four as well, but he will have to beat Federer on Saturday. “With his serve it’s definitely a big advantage if I can get a break a...
November 9, 2013 at 1:08 am | News Desk
Pakistan Rupee Exchange Rate