Deployed by the space shuttle on 23 July 1999, the Chandra telescope is Nasa’s flagship mission exploring the realms of X-ray astronomy.
The observatory, which is named after the Indian-American astronomer Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, orbits the Earth once every 64 hours.
Here, Darren Baskill, an X-ray astronomer at the University of Sussex, explains Chandra’s importance, and looks at some of the colourful images it has produced in the past 10 years.
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(Submitted by reader)
Original Aye Katib e Taqdir was sung by Kundan Lal Saigal
By Andrew Buncombe
Almost 150 women living in the Maldives face a public flogging for indulging in extra-marital sex after being convicted by the Muslim country’s conservative courts. Around 50 men also face the punishment.
Earlier this month, an 18-year-old woman fainted after she was flogged 100 times having been found guilty of having sex with two different men. The woman, who was pregnant at the time of sentencing, had her punishment deferred until after the birth of her child and the court said the teenager’s pregnancy was proof of her guilt. In contrast, the accused men were acquitted, with one of them escaping punishment simply because he denied the charge.
The head of the country’s Criminal Court, Judge Abdulla Mohamed, told the island’s Minivan News that flogging was a deterrent and not designed to cause injury and said the person carrying out the punishment was prohibited from raising his arm higher than his shoulder. “The public should know this lady or man have done these things and they will stay away from these things,” he said. As to why fewer men were prosecuted, he said: “A man, after making this problem, will go away and maybe the woman will have relations with more than one man and won’t know who was responsible. Or the man denies it.”
But Amnesty International’s Maldives specialist, Abbas Faiz, called flogging “a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment which is banned by international human rights law. The practice is humiliating and leads to psychological as well as physical scars for those subjected to it for years. [It is] a form of torture.” The most recent official statistics available to the group date from 2006 and show that a total of 184 people were sentenced to flogging for extra-marital sex under a penal code that includes elements of Sharia law. Of those 146 were women, with the majority of the punishments still to be carried out.
In the Maldives, an island nation made up of more than 1200 atolls, the issue of flogging has become a political battleground following the whipping of the teenager earlier this month outside a government building in the capital, Male. Reports said that the women required hospital treatment after she was flogged in front of a jeering crowd of men.
Since then there have been a number of demonstrations in favour of flogging and several articles published defending its use. Since the case was publicised there have been a number of demonstrations in support of flogging, some calling for the deportation of a British journalist, Maryam Omidi, who published reports of the incident in the local Minivan News. “It’s hard to tell whether this is indicative of a wider feeling, because people are afraid to speak out,” Omidi said. “But I had people calling me up to offer their support.”
In its first free polls held last year, the Maldives elected as its president Mohammed Nasheed, a former prisoner of conscience. But campaigners say the liberally-inclined Mr Nasheed feels prevented from speaking because of his dependence on Islamist coalition allies and because of opponents who are using a debate over Sharia law as political lever.
Independent for more
In the spirit of transparency, the Obama Administration posted on its White House blog a detailed list of who makes what at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
According to the WhiteHouse.gov blog, every administration since 1995 has been required to “deliver a report to Congress listing the title and salary of every White House Office employee.” In January, in one of his first acts as president, Obama announced that he was freezing the salaries of employees who made more than $100,000 a year, saying, “Families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington.”
It may be a government job, but a gig in the White House isn’t so bad: The highest earners take home $172,200, while at the low end, staff assistants get $36,000. The big winner, however, is David Marcozzi, the Director of Public Health Policy, who earns $192,934 a year.
The $172,200 Club: This exclusive club includes Obama’s top aides, such as Senior Advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, press secretary Robert Gibbs and Jon “Favs” Favreau, Obama’s head speechwriter.
Other notable salaries:
— $102,000 Reggie Love, the president’s personal aide and “body man,” who was named the Hottest White House Employee according to a Huffington Post poll, barely edging out “Favs.”
— $113,000 Desiree Rogers, who is on every D.C. socialite’s speed-dial, was tapped to be the White House social secretary, charged with coordinating every social event held by the White House. The stylish Chicagoan pals around with Anna Wintour and was the subject of an extensive Vogue magazine feature.
— $84,000 Catherine Lelyveld, press secretary to First Lady Michelle Obama, hails from the Windy City as well, and served as Mrs. Obama’s communication director during the presidential campaign.
— $36,000 That’s how much Darienne Page, the White House receptionist, or “ROTUS” takes home annually. In a recent New York Times profile, Obama introduced Page as “the receptionist of the entire United States.” Before serving in the Obama White House, Page served as an Army sergeant in Iraq under George W. Bush.
Joe Biden takes in $227,300 as the vice president of the United States, while Obama earns $400,000 a year, far less than the $2.6 million he earned in 2008 as a presidential candidate and author.
Yahoo for more
For Official Use Only
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS ON WHITE HOUSE OFFICE STAFF
WHITE HOUSE OFFICE and OFFICE OF POLICY DEVELOPMENT
As of: Wednesday July 1, 2009
http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/July1Report-Draft12.pdf
by B. R. Gowani
Indian Railways refuse to change
neither do they increase the general coach room sufficiently,
nor check the conduct of its TCs
some of these Ticket Collectors act deplorably
(but then, we met a few TCs who were perfect gentlemen)
general compartments are always overflowing:
limitless tickets are issued that can be used on any train
heading towards their destination
those scared of hanging by the door-side
or squatting on the rooftop
slip into the reserved cars
by paying the difference/bribes
they get the empty seats
but the seats come with advisement:
“get off before the final station –
buying the train ticket
board the local train there,
to finally reach your intended destination”
we did the same
many times over
mostly with kickbacks
and sometimes with half-bribes and half-official payment
and on a rare occasion,
we only paid the official ticket-difference
many poor people, sitting on the floors,
by the doors of reserved compartments
got kicked by the TCs, in front of everyone
most of the time, we and many others
articulated our dilemma with money
and thus kicked back the TCs, in front of everyone
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
(Via South Asia Citizens Wire)
Is the End of Men Imminent?
By Radha Chitale. ABC News Medical Unit
What makes a man a man? Socially, that is a complicated question. Genetically, however, it is as simple as a single Y chromosome.
But guys, that chromosome is in trouble.
In a new study, researchers say there is a dramatic loss of genes from the human Y chromosome that eventually could lead to its complete disappearance — in the next few millennia. While the Y chromosome’s degeneration has been known to geneticists and evolutionary biologists for decades, the study sheds new light on some of the evolutionary processes that may have contributed to its demise and posits that, as the degeneration continues, the Y chromosome could disappear from our genetic repertoire entirely.
“It’s certainly possible, but it’s difficult to predict when it will happen,” said Kateryna Makova, an associate professor of biology at Penn State University, who led the study, which was published Thursday in the journal PLoS Genetics.
Although geneticists and evolutionary biologists agree that the Y chromosome is degenerating — and far more rapidly than its X counterpart — they reject the idea of a world far in the future where men are obsolete.
