India's lunar mission set for Oct 22

Jayesh Limaye, Oct 16, 2008 1019 hrs IST
India's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 is set to lift off on Oct 22 early morning from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.
is a time to rejoice and history will be made because India is finally entering the space age by sending its first ever lunar mission within two weeks. India's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 is set to lift off in the early morning hours of October 22 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, about 90km from Chennai, a top space agency official has said.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish said, "The tentative launch date is Oct 22 though the window will be kept open till Oct 26. Depending on the weather, we plan to launch the lunar spacecraft (Chandrayaan) around 6.30 a.m. IST."

Built at ISRO's satellite centre, this 1,380 kg spacecraft will be carried into a lunar orbit by a specially designed 320-tonne Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C11), with six strap-on propellants weighing 12 tonnes each.

"The formal countdown will begin 50 hours before the launch in the early hours of Oct 20. All going well and weather permitting, the final countdown will begin hours before the actual launch on Oct 22", S. Satish added.

The spacecraft is currently in the stages of being integrated with the PSLV rocket at the SHAR launchpad, situated off the Bay of Bengal in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh. "All systems and instruments will be checked and tested for operational purposes. The spacecraft will orbit around the moon at an altitude of 100 km to map the topography and the mineralogical resources of the lunar soil", S. Satish said.

Costing a cool Rs 3.9-billion, Chandrayaan-1 has 11 payloads, including five from India and six from the US, Europe and Bulgaria. It will also carry a moon impact probe payload to demonstrate and test the technology needed for soft-landing on the moon's surface in subsequent missions.

Soruce: http://www.techtree.com/India/Techtree_Notes/Indias_lunar_mission_set_for_Oct_22/551-94136-889.html

Novel About India Wins the Man Booker Prize

LONDON — Aravind Adiga, 33, won the 40th Man Booker prize on Tuesday night for his debut novel, “The White Tiger,” a vivid exploration of India’s class struggle told through the story of a village boy who becomes the chauffeur to a rich man.

Man Booker Prize Web SiteMr. Adiga, who lives in Mumbai, was born in India and brought up partly in Australia. He studied at Columbia and Oxford and is a former correspondent for Time magazine in India. He is the second youngest writer to win the award; Ben Okri was 32 when he won for “The Famished Road” in 1991.

Michael Portillo, a former cabinet minister and the chairman of this year’s panel of judges, praised Mr. Adiga’s novel, saying that the short list had contained a series of “extraordinarily readable page-turners.” However, Mr. Adiga’s book had prevailed, he said, “because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure.”

Mr. Adiga said his book was an “attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India — the voice of the colossal underclass.”

“This voice was not captured,” he added, “and I wanted to do so without sentimentality or portraying them as mirthless humorless weaklings as they are usually.”

When he accepted the award, Mr. Adiga dedicated it to “the people of New Delhi where I lived and where I wrote this book.” When asked what he would do with the money, Mr. Adiga joked, “The first thing I am going to do is to find a bank that I can actually put it in.”

The Man Booker prize, Britain’s best-known and most generous literary award, is given annually to a novel written by an author from Britain, Ireland or the Commonwealth nations and is accompanied by a check for £50,000 — about $86,000 — as well as an inevitable increase in sales.

This year’s list of finalists was one of the least star-studded in recent years. It included two first-time novelists, and several of the favorites were snubbed by judges. Joseph O’Neill’s critically acclaimed “Netherland” was omitted from the short list, as was “The Enchantress of Florence” by Salman Rushdie.

As a result, bookmakers were divided over the likely winner, oscillating between Mr. Adiga and the Irish writer Sebastian Barry, 53, whose book “The Secret Scripture” is the story of an Irish patient in a mental hospital sharing her shocking family history with her psychiatrist.

The other books on the shortlist were “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh, “The Clothes on Their Backs” by Linda Grant, “The Northern Clemency” by Philip Hensher and “A Fraction of the Whole” by Steve Toltz.

More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on October 15, 2008, on page A14 of the New York edition.

Soruce: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/world/europe/15booker.html?bl&ex=1224302400&en=2dc94ea08df22d41&ei=5087%0A

Orissa violence: Paswan wants CBI investigation

New Delhi: With violence against Christians continuing unabated in Orissa, the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) today demanded a CBI probe to nail the culprits behind the communal violence in the tribal state.
"I am writing to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to get the entire gamut of the communal clashes in Orissa investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation," party chief Ram Vilas Paswan said.
The union minister, who recently visited Orissa, also smelt a rat in "transfers of sincere District Magistrates (DM) and Superintendents of Police (SP) from the affected areas" when the violence broke out.
"The BJD-BJP government led by Naveen Patnaik transferred the officers, who were impartial and would have worked hard to stop the communal violence," he said.
The number of victims who are leaving their villages to take shelter in relief camps is rising. The state officials are not admitting them in camps and asked them to return to villages, where they are threatened either to convert to Hinduism or face the consequences, Paswan charged.
"Most of the Christians killed in the Orissa violence were Dalits and they were well to do. It appears that the fanatics led by (Bajrang) Dal and VHP attacked them due to jealousy," he alleged, adding a number of Dalit Christian women and members for SC/ST associations met him in Bhuvaneshwar and narrated their plight.
In the letter to the PM, LJP has repeated its demand for ban on Bajrang Dal and VHP besides a compensation of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 5 lakh each for family members of the deceased and the injured. Christians returning to their homes should be given security guarantee, he added.
Soruce: www.mid-day.com

Bombay Stock Exchange, Sensex, negative cues, Asian, other markets

Jamshedpur: World's sixth largest steel maker Tata Steel today said that there would be no job cuts in the company following the global financial turmoil.
"Tata Steel has faced such a situation in the past boldly and will face the global financial crisis this time as well. It has prepared the strategy," company's Vice-President (corporate services) Partho Sengupta told said.
Tata Steel would continue to be the largest producer of steel in the world, he said on the sidelines of a function organised by the Jharkhand cricket academy.
To a query about the sliding steel prices, he said it was a global phenomena.
Soruce: www.mid-day.com

Sensex closes by more than 227 points

The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex today closed lower by more than 227 points, but managed to erase huge intra-day losses caused by negative cues from Asian and other markets.
The 30-share Sensex, which dipped by over 790 points to a more than 2-year low in intra-day trade, ended with a loss of 227.63 points at 10,581.49.
Similarly, the wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty declined by 69.10 points at 3,269.30.
The market remained weak following reports of more European governments offering blanket bank deposit guarantees, as regulators from Washington to Seoul scrambled to contain the fiancial crisis, brokers said.
Asian markets plummeted for the second day in a row, with key Japanese index Nikkei 225 reportedly falling over 11 per cent while Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng declined by 4.80 per cent to 15,230.20 points.
The marketmen added that a third cut of one per cent in cash reserve ratio by the Reserve Bank last night failed to influence trading sentiment this morning, as did lower inflation numbers released today.
However, later in the day, the market rebounded to prune early losses following reports of Europe emerging from lows and US stock futures indicating a higher opening.
The market recovered nearly 465 points during the day backed by surging realty, banking and FMCG stocks.
Source: www.mid-day.com