British Child Returns To His Family
March 18, 2010
British Child Returns To His Family:ISLAMABAD: The British child kidnapped from Jehlum Sahil Naqqash has been handed over to his family at British High Commission Thursday.
British High Commission spokesman George Scherff told that Sahil has been handed over to his family. He said that the selected representatives of media will be given a chance to talk to the child. From Pakistan, only the state news agency was invited to meet and briefly interview the child that will provide the footage to Pakistani media later on.
The spokesman said that the purpose of inviting only selected media representatives is not to bother child more than he can handle. He said that the family of the child will decide whether to keep child in Pakistan or to take him to Britain.
Kidnapped British Boy Freed
March 16, 2010
Kidnapped British Boy Freed:ISLAMABAD: A British boy who was kidnapped from Jhelum earlier this month has been released, a relative said on Tuesday.
“He is safe,” said Raja Basharat, the boy’s grand-uncle.
Police in Jhelum, the town where Sahil Saeed was kidnapped, had said the gunmen who abducted him after holding relatives at gunpoint for several hours took away 150,000 rupees ($1,750) and some gold and later demanded a 10 million rupee ($118,000) ransom.
The circumstances around his release were not clear.
“It is fantastic news which brings an end to the traumatic ordeal faced by Sahil and his family,” the British High Commissioner in Islamabad said in a statement.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik had said he suspected relatives were involved in the kidnapping.
Tarbela And Mangla Dams At Dead Levels
March 15, 2010
Tarbela And Mangla Dams At Dead Levels :ISLAMABAD: Usable water in Tarbela and Mangla dams has touched bottom after water level in Tarbela has also reached dead level Monday.
According to Meteorology Department, water level in Tarbela dam has reached 1,378 ft whereas usable water in the lake has finished. In Mangla dam, water level is at dead level the last one week.
Water flow in River Sindh at Tarbela is 21,004 and exit is 30,100 cusec. In River Jehlum, water flow at Mangla 20750 cusec whereas water exit is 21,865 cusec.
PAPCO spokesman Engineer Mohammad Khalid said that due to absence of usable water, water cannot be released from the two dams and hydro power will be produced on the basis of water flow. He said that the volume of water going from dams will be same as the volume of water coming into rivers. The production of hydro power can be highly reduced due to dead levels of water in the dams.
Time Change Spring 2010
March 14, 2010
Time Change Spring 2010:Spring has arrived and now it’s time for the routine Spring time change this 2010.
In the USA, Daylight Savings 2010 symbolizes a time change that helps in saving an additional hour of daylight in the spring and early summer months.
The clocks are set 1 hour forward on the night of March 13th, or else in the early morning hours of March 14th, as part of the Daylight Savings time change for each year.
Although people may choose setting their clocks 1 hour forward before they go to sleep on March 13 or just in the early hours of March 14, it is very important to make sure that the clocks are set 1 hour forward before your day start – if you want it to start as per the new time!
In order to understand a little more about Daylight Savings Time 2010, let’s look at Wikipedia’s explanation” “In a typical case where a one-hour shift occurs at 02:00 local time, in spring the clock jumps forward from 02:00 standard time to 03:00 DST and that day has 23 hours, whereas in autumn the clock jumps backward from 02:00 DST to 01:00 standard time, repeating that hour, and that day has 25 hours.”
Set your alarm on if need be, but don’t forget to change your clock one hour forward by 2:00am on March 14, 2010 and welcome the new spring time change of 2010!
In Karachi Police Commandos Deployed At 100 Sensitive Places
March 14, 2010
In Karachi Police Commandos Deployed At 100 Sensitive Places
:KARACHI: Police commandos have been deployed at 100 places of the sensitive nature here in metropolis on Sunday.
A police Said That the decision came in regard to improvement of law and order situation in Karachi.
After receiving intelligence in connection with possible terror strikes and improvement of law and order situation in different parts of country including Karachi, it was decided to deploy at around 100 sensitive places, the specially trained commandos belonging to Rapid Response Force (RRF) and Special Police Groups (SPGs), police authorities claimed.
Police commandos will also undertake snap checking at 100 sensitive places including key official buildings, offices and main roads, sources told media.
The commandos were deployed keeping in view the spate of terrorism recently hit country, as the common police personnel engaged on their duties at various police stations in Karachi have not received advanced anti-terrorism training, sources added.
American Forward Their Clock For Daylight Saving Time
March 13, 2010
American Forward Their Clock For Daylight Saving Time:RALEIGH – Sunday, Americans will set their clocks forward for daylight saving time. In 2007, the federal government extended the period by four weeks with the goal of reducing energy consumption. But the plan may actually have gotten people to consume more.
The pre-2007 plan required people to spring forward on the last Sunday of April and fall back on the last Sunday of October. Now, we start earlier, on the second Sunday in March, and end on the first Sunday in November.
Though designed to help with energy consumption, some experts say even more is burned.
“People do increase their usage of gasoline during warmer weather months because when you increase that kind of time, people have more leisure time in the afternoon, they go out,” Gary Harris, of N.C. Petroleum and Convenience Marketers, said.
Both petroleum experts and energy officials say they are unclear whether daylight saving time is beneficial.
“We’ve looked back on our numbers of energy use over this period since the change and before the change, and we really don’t see any discernable difference,” Drew Elliot, of Progress Energy, said.
If it’s proven there are no significant energy savings nationwide, the government may revert back to the previous daylight saving time schedule.
Fire officials are also reminding residents to change batteries in both smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors when changing the time on their clocks. They say you should test smoke and carbon monoxide detectors every month and replace the batteries every year.
Researchers:Brain Scan Can Read People’s Thoughts
March 12, 2010
Researchers:Brain Scan Can Read People’s Thoughts:WASHINGTON: A scan of brain activity can effectively read a person’s mind, researchers said Thursday.
British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identify thought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone.
“We’ve been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory to look at actual memory traces,” said senior author of the study, Eleanor Maguire.
“We found that our memories are definitely represented in the hippocampus. Now that we’ve seen where they are, we have an opportunity to understand how memories are stored and how they may change through time.”
The results, reported in the March 11 online edition of Current Biology, follow an earlier discovery by the same team that they could tell where a person was standing within a virtual reality room in the same way.
The researchers say the new results move this line of research along because episodic memories — recollections of everyday events are expected to be more complex, and thus more difficult to crack than spatial memory.
In the study, Maguire and her colleagues Martin Chadwick, Demis Hassabis, and Nikolaus Weiskopf showed 10 people each three very short films before brain scanning. Each movie featured a different actress and a fairly similar everyday scenario.
The researchers scanned the participants’ brains while the participants were asked to recall each of the films. The researchers then ran the imaging data through a computer algorithm designed to identify patterns in the brain activity associated with memories for each of the films.
Finally, they showed that those patterns could be identified to accurately predict which film a given person was thinking about when he or she was scanned.
The results imply that the traces of episodic memories are found in the brain, and are identifiable, even over many re-activations, the researchers said.
The results reinforce the findings of a 2008 US study that showed similar scans can determine what images people are seeing based on brain activity.
Bhasha Dam Construction To Begin By June
March 11, 2010
Bhasha Dam Construction To Begin By June:ISLAMABAD: Construction of Diamir Bhasha dam will begin by June after resolution of conflicts between the stakeholders.
According to sources, the decision was taken by a committee of 5 ministers in a meeting Wednesday. The meeting, which was attended by governments of NWFP and Gilgit-Baltistan, decided that those affected by the construction of Diamir Bhasha dam will be compensated by the federal government. The federal government will pay Rs40 billion for the compensations.
According to sources, the government was demanded Rs8 billion, however, the parties agreed on payment of Rs40 billion. The sources said that payments will be made before June and the construction will start immediately.
For the dam, 150,000 canals land will be bought and around 30 villages will be affected by its construction.
Cisco Unveils System For Super Fast Internet
March 10, 2010
Cisco Unveils System For Super Fast Internet:Cisco Systems on Tuesday unveiled super-fast Internet hardware that promises to boost US competitiveness and bolster economic recovery by moving mountains of data at astounding speeds.
The leader in networking equipment said its new router “triples the capacity of its predecessor,” and “enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second.”
The system also would enable “every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes,” Cisco said.
The new Cisco hardware is for the backbones of telecom firms and other Internet service providers that will be able to vastly ramp up the amount of data they handle and how fast it travels.
“They are the plumbers of the Internet,” analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley said of Cisco.
“They are the ones that make sure that the pipes are clean and large enough to handle the flow of traffic and remain up and running.”
AT&T said it is testing the new routers in its network and is eager to use the technology on a wide scale.
The US telecom giant has found itself “bandwidth constrained” as people’s lives increasingly revolve around the Internet and accessing rich content such as digital movies, videos and television shows.
Cisco chief executive John Chambers called digital video “the new killer app” and said that most gadgets connecting to the Internet are evolving to handle demand for such content.
The high-performance platform could also be tempting for Google, which recently revealed plans to create its own high-speed broadband Internet network.
“It’s going to take a long time to deploy it,” Enderle said of the new Cisco hardware. He expected people in the United States to begin seeing the effects of the new Cisco Internet hardware mid-decade.
“This is very important for Cisco, for the country, and for us individually,” Enderle said.
“This could make the country more competitive, not just by selling the technology but by how it increases the ability of players here to perform in an Internet Age economy.”
With 12 times the traffic capacity of the nearest competing system, the Cisco CRS-3 “is designed to transform the broadband communication and entertainment industry by accelerating the delivery of compelling new experiences for consumers, new revenue opportunities for service providers, and new ways to collaborate in the workplace,” the company said.
Internet traffic is predicted to grow fivefold by the year 2013, with 90 percent of that content being digital video, according to Cisco senior director of service provider marketing Doug Webster.
Add to that data demands fueled by a booming global smartphone market and an unabated trend of software applications being offered online as services.
Along with ramped up capacity, the new routers have been made with “twice the intelligence” to keep data flowing efficiently, smoothly deliver video, and prioritize emergency telephone calls, Webster told AFP.
“The Internet is becoming a part of all aspect of our daily lives,” Webster said. “We need assurance that it is in strong shape and can keep up with the incredible demand for services.”
The routers will be available about mid-year at a starting price of 90,000 dollars per unit. Cisco said it is in discussions with Internet service providers around the world.
“Bandwidth can basically be the foundation for economic prosperity and social transformation,” Webster said, noting that high-speed Internet can be used to improve health care, education, and transparency in governments.
Not all analysts were swept up in Cisco’s euphoria, saying that the new router is evolutionary, not revolutionary and that other parts of the Internet infrastructure will need to be upgraded for users to notice much improvement.
Internet service providers still stinging from the economic meltdown could be slow to open wallets to invest in the new routers, some analysts cautioned.
World Observes Women Day Today
March 8, 2010
World Observes Women Day Today:The International Women Day is being celebrated across the globe including Pakistan today (Monday).
Various ceremonies have been organized in this regard. While the federal capital is holding exhibitions of different women-made items.
On the occasion, a two-day colorful exhibition is being organized in collaboration with Nomad Center and Art Gallery and an NGO named ‘ActionAid’. Paintings of female artists and various items made by women have been placed in the exhibition.
Various women leaders expressed their views on this special occasion. A women rights leader said that women play a huge part in making this world beautiful.
Prominent poet Kishwar Naheed said that women should be given equal right to live.
During the event, shields were given to high-achiever women of different fields. The gathering specifically appreciated the girl, whose face was burnt with acid by her husband, and she kept fighting for her rights.
