Happy New Year

Obama family arrives in Hawaii for holiday season vacation

Yes, You’d be hard-pressed to find a better place to spend the holidays than Hawaii — especially with the severe winter weather hitting parts of the Mainland. It’s no wonder President Barack Obama and his family will be spending Christmas and New Year’s in the Islands for the third year in a row.

Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha — along with Bo, their family dog — arrived Saturday evening on Oahu, where the president was born and mostly raised. The president plans to join his family here after Congress adjourns, possibly Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. Obamas will again be staying in the windward Oahu neighborhood of Kailua, in the same 7,000-square-foot beachfront home on Kailuana Place the family has rented for the last three Christmases. (The family has rented more homes along the cul-de-sac, for friends and family.)

Last year Christmas the president famously body-surfed at Sandy Beach in East Honolulu and ate shave ice with his family at Island Snow in Kailua. His plans for the holidays this year are to golf and hang out on the beach. His itinerary is devoid of fundraisers or anything political .They plan to stay here until Jan. 1.

Knowledge In a point - 3

• Name of the Army of Vatican = The Swiss Guard.

• The name of the second atom bomb? = Fat Man.

• Who invented Plywood? = Immanuel nobel [Father of Alfred Nobel].

• Who invented the Electrons? = JJ Thomson.

• Name the country which has no Cinema Theatres = Saudi Arabia.

• The word ‘Pakistan’ was invented by a Cambridge Student namely? = Rahmat Ali.

• The gas responsible for Bhopal Gas Tragedy was Methyl Isocynate Chemical name of washing soda is Sodium carbonate ”Black Gold” = Petroleum.

• What is the strongest force in the universe? = Nuclear Force.

• Who invented diesel engine? = Rudolf Diesel.

• Who invented Stethoscope?=Rene Laenac.

• Air consist of 78% Nitrogen , only 21% consists of oxygen. Remaining 1% consists of carbon Dioxide, Argon, Neon, Helium, Krypton, Hydrogen, Xenon & Ozone.

• Why is Nagpur called the zero mile centre? Nagpur is precisely at the Geographical centre – point of India & the zero mile marker located here.

• First person to sail round the world = Ferdinand Magellan.

• First woman to win Olympic gold = Charlotte Cooper.

• First test tube baby = Louise Joy Brown.

Human brain fully matures in middle age

New study has suggested that brain does not stop developing until late 40s. Earlier scientists used to believe that brain stop physically evolving in early childhood but new research has shown that keeps changing well into middle age. Brain scans have shown that prefrontal cortex - the area just behind your forehead - continues to change shape in your 30s and 40s, reports the Telegraph .


It is an important discovery as the prefrontal cortex is a key area of the brain and is often thought said to be key to what makes us human. This area is involved with decision-making, social interaction and many other personality traits. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, of the University College London, said, "Until about 10 years ago we pretty much assumed that the human brain stopped developing in early childhood."


"But we now understand from brain imaging that that is far from the truth and that many human brains keep on developing for many decades. The area of the brain that goes through the most protracted development is the prefrontal cortex right at the front of the brain. "It is the part of the brain that is involved in high cognitive function such as decision making, planning and social behaviour. It is also to do with understanding other people. "It starts develop in early childhood, is reorganised in late adolescence and continues developing well into the 30s and 40s. It is the part of the brain that makes us human," she said.

The new findings were presented at the British Neuroscience Christmas symposium in London.

Knowlegde In a Point - 2

• Banana’s are the world popular fruit after tomato.

• Orange city = Nagpur.

• Pink city = Jaipur.

• Karnataka Khadi Gramodyoga Samyukhtha sangha in Hubli is the only organization authorized to produce Indian national flags.

• Lighting strike the earth 100 times every second & there are on average 35 earthquakes per day.

• Longest tunnel = Jawahar Tunnel (J&K).

• Which is the largest man made lake in India = Indira Sagar Lake.

• The cells used in mobile phone are = Lithium ion cells.

• Who coined the word ‘gas’? = J.Van Helmont.

• Biggest star in our galaxy? = Proxima Centauri.

• Who designed the national flag of Italy? = Napoleon Bonapar.

• England’s first great industry was wool.

• Worker ant’s live only for 45-60 days, but queenants have been known to live as long as 29 years.

• Which is the largest Post Office in Asia? = Mumbai.

• Father of Indian Budget = Mahalanobis.

US president OBAMA to meet with top CEOs about economy

WASHINGTON :

US President Barack Obama is sitting down with 20 top CEOs on Wednesday to talk about ways to spark the economy. The gathering at Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, will include a who's-who of American business.

All among the CEOs expected to attend are those from American Express, General Electric, DuPont, Eli Lilly, Dow Chemical, Boeing, PepsiCo, Comcast and Google. Before the meeting, Obama will make a statement in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. In the afternoon, the president meets in the Oval Office with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Knowlegde In a Point - 1

• An elephant's trunk contains 40000 muscles.

• Nauru is the world's smallest independent republic.

• Oldest national flag in the world = Denmark's national flag.

• The highest waterfall in India = Gersoppa(Karnataka.

• City of cycles = Beijing.

• Your heart beat 101,000 times a day. During your lifetime it will beat about 3 million times and pump about 400 million litres of blood.

• Pieces of bread were used to erase pencil marks before rubber was invented.

• Human brain uses approximately as much energy as a 20 watt.

• Oldest almost complete manuscript of the Bible still existing is the Codex Vaticanus ,dating from the 1st half of the 4Th Century, now in Vatican.

• Earth Hour is observed all over the world on March 27.

President Obama's visit and the great expectations

This week the country will play host to US President Barack Obama on what will be his first visit to India and, in fact, South Asia. He will be the third serving US president to visit India in a decade. That is significant considering that an equal number of US presidential visits had been spaced out over the first five decades of India’s independence, and also if we keep in mind a single factoid: The US is still the most powerful country in the world, both militarily and economically. The Obama visit should, in the normal course, have bowled us over. However, it has not. It may not be such a bad thing as it tamps down expectations, but the context in which this has emerged has the potential to play spoiler.

Year except for the paranoid security arrangements and a visibly upset Pakistani establishment (miffed at having been left out of the presidential itinerary, but content that its sulking enabled it to tap another generous US sop, $2 billion (Rs. 8,900 crore today), even though a
section of the government continues to abet and foster terror networks), a sense of excitement is missing from the Obama visit.

Also, When Bill Clinton visited the country, India fell in love with him, before and after; this was despite the fact that he was a lame duck president then. Even when George W. Bush, the president everyone loved to loathe, came visiting, there was considerable excitement—the Indian Communists spewed vitriol, forcing a diplomatic slight upon Bush by denying him a joint address to Parliament, while the government was excited about how the relationship was being taken to an entirely new level with the inking of an agreement to take forward Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s pet project: the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.

Hazard that pre-set visits pose is that often the context in which they are ordained is never what it actually turns out to be. Not only has the global economy worsened, so have unemployment levels in the US. Faced with plunging personal popularity ahead of a crucial mid-term election and with a wary eye on his own re-election, Obama’s actions have reflected self-preservation.

The decision to retreat from Afghanistan under the guise of an “Af-Pak” policy, steady attacks on outsourcing of US jobs and increasing belligerence on China. All of them, except the last, have contributed to spoiling the context of the US president’s visit. The setting of a deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan sent out two signals, neither of which would be appreciated by the Indian establishment. One, it signalled that the US was throwing in the towel in a battle that it had initiated nearly 10 years ago. Second, the US withdrawal means that the Taliban and its original co-sponsor, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), were guaranteed a second shot at spreading anarchy in a country ravaged by war for three decades. Worse, it meant that India, which had a tenuous hold in a strategically important country (considering it has the longest border with Pakistan) by funding big-ticket development projects, will, as a consequence of the US action, be inevitably ejected.

Verbal attacks on outsourcing ahead of the mid-term polls due on Tuesday, 2 November, although addressed at US citizens battling rising unemployment, have also made India uneasy. After all, what kind of friend is Obama if he has to target India’s most iconic export, especially since his predecessor had the courage to stand up against such political attacks. One fallout of this has been on the totalization agreement between the two countries that would have ensured repatriation of social security benefits contributed by Indian workers in the US. At the moment, they forfeit this sum, which some estimate runs into several billion dollars. (Imagine discussing a payout for the very same workforce that allegedly took away American jobs.)

This was not enough, the handlers on both sides have, by publicly discussing Obama’s schedule, worsened the visit’s context. Now we know that the US President dropped India’s software capital from his itinerary to avoid being “Bangalored” and similarly opted out of Amritsar as he didn’t want his actions mistaken (stemming from the killer combination of blatant ignorance and bias) back home from having to cover his head while entering the Golden Temple.

There is one common ground between India and the US that is apparent, it is the antipathy towards an increasingly belligerent China. Unfortunately, it is for all the wrong reasons: India’s problems with China are not the same as that of the US.

From the last month or so, the world has been trying to force a very unlikely match-up between the two Asian adversaries. The upping of the ante in recent weeks by India has only lent this perception greater credibility. So far, India has been wise to step away from any direct confrontation; it is, despite what some sections may claim, just not in China’s league. More importantly, let the West and the US fight their own battles; India’s domestic challenges are too compelling and cannot afford any external distractions.

Expectations at rock bottom, it only follows that the two countries will end up sharing some good news with the rest of the world.

Twitter redesigns

Twitter Inc. has redesigned its website for the first time in its four-year history to draw more users and get them to stay longer as it competes for advertising dollars with Internet rivals Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. The redesign, which will roll out to the website's 160 million users over the next several weeks, is intended to make the site easier and faster to use and to serve up more relevant content to users, executives said at a news conference at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters. Company Chief Executive Evan Williams said that the changes would allow users to get "more out of Twitter in a lot less time." As Twitter's popularity has spread since its 2006 introduction, the website has gotten a reputation for being difficult to use and for crashing too frequently. Twitter has been a victim of its own popularity — 370,000 new users sign up each day.

Twitter has lagged in finding ways to boost revenue. It recently launched new advertising formats and ramped up its sales force. Executives hope the redesign, which will make ads easier to view, will help Twitter better compete with Google and Facebook for advertisers. Users of the redesigned site will be able to see more information about the authors of Tweets — the Twitter messages that can be no more than 140 characters in length. Also, conversations between users will be able to be viewed, as will photos and videos referenced in updates. One of the biggest changes to the Twitter site is that users will be able to see two panes instead of a single timeline of updates. They will be able to scroll through the timeline in the left pane without clicking back and forth to see more information about updates or their authors. Twitter executives said deals had been crafted with 16 photo and video sites, including YouTube and Flickr, to have their visual content embedded on Twitter.com.

Flush with venture capital funding that valued the 250-employee company at $1 billion, top executives have been focusing their efforts on making the Twitter experience simpler and better. Williams said he has spent much of his time over the last five months on the redesign. "This is a complete revamp," he said. Twitter's audience growth in the United States has tapered off in the last year, but internationally has continued to grow at a rapid clip, ComScore Inc. analyst Andrew Lipsman said. Twitter also continues to show strong user engagement, Lipsman said. Forrester Research social media analyst Augie Ray called the announcement a "significant evolution." "The long-term effects could be substantial as Twitter focuses on powering growth by improving Twitter consumption," Ray said.

U.S President Barack Obama Sends Best Wishes to Muslims for Eid-al-Fitr

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent best wishes to Muslims worldwide on the occasion of Eid-al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. In a statement Thursday, President Obama said the holiday is a time of self-reflection, focusing on values that Muslims and people of all faiths share.

Mr. Obama said this year's Eid is also an occasion to reflect on the importance of religious tolerance. President Obama said that this year, those affected by the devastated floods in Pakistan will be on the minds of many around the world. He said all Americans can participate in the relief, recovery and reconstruction efforts by donating to the Pakistan Relief Fund at www.state.gov.

The holiday comes as plans to build an Islamic community center and mosque near the site of New York City's former World Trade Center have sparked intense opposition in the United States. Also, a minister in the state of Florida is threatening to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Most Gulf Arab states have announced they will celebrate the Muslim holiday Friday. Like most major Islamic events, the start of the Eid festival depends on a lunar sighting. Muslims look for a new moon to proclaim the start of the month in Islam's lunar calendar.

The timing of Eid can vary in different countries accordingly. Eid al-Fitr celebrates the purification achieved by a month of sunrise-to-sunset fasting, one of the five pillars of Islam, and is marked by several days of festivities. The timing of Eid can vary in different countries accordingly.

Eid al-Fitr celebrates the purification achieved by a month of sunrise-to-sunset fasting, one of the five pillars of Islam, and is marked by several days of festivities.