According to a letter released on July 14th, 2010, Catherene Ashton, foreign affairs chief of EU who also represents the six world powers (US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany) in negotiation with Iran said she was glad on hearing Iran's decision to resume talks. In the reply she had asked them to fix a meeting date.


Observing the progress in Iran's nuclear program which may be directed towards Israel. US and other powers decided to impose all kind of economical blockage and isolate Iran from the globalized world. US considers Iran's nuclear program a threat to itself and so it took various steps for installing an anti ballistic missile system in Europe which can shoot down any incoming missile towards US.

Many websites also followed suites of blocking Iran. Hotmail and Yahoo were some of them who blocked Iran from accessing their webmail in 2007, recently few months back news were coming of Iran thinking of blocking Gmail. Iran was the country which blocked facebook before elections and lifted the ban when the elections were over, this was to prevent opposition party becoming popular among the citizen.

US had shown its concern over the Iran-Pakistan-India Gas pipeline, US had also made India vote against Iran in IAEA which was something against the old friendship of India and Iran. In the reward India got a nuclear deal.

Iran expects that it will be ready to resume talks from September 1st with some conditions. They said the six - (the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany) - must answer whether the talks are aimed at "engagement and cooperation or continued confrontation and hostility towards Iranians." 

The question is solid and obvious, due to blockage Iran has suffered a lot. Israel is supposed to be developing nuclear weapons secretly as well, as they believe in Iran's case, but Israel never received such treatments by the world community. The concept of nuclear disarmament is good, but it is not being applied properly. If you think only you can keep nuclear warheads and no other countries can, then there is something wrong in the policy. Those who developed first should destroy first and then the others must follow.

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Image from The Hindu

After the Mumbai attacks, first time a high level ministry talks were initiated yesterday on 15th July between India and Pakistan led by the foreign minister of Pakistan and External affairs Minister of India. India had earlier suspended all diplomatic channels with Pakistan and placed a condition on Pakistan that it will only resume talks when Pakistan government will take action on the perpetrators of Mumbai attacks which involved some top Pakistan based terrorists. Though David Headley who is under the custody of FBI had also named officers serving in Pak Army and ISI (Pakistan's Intelligence Agency).

On India's this attitude Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that he was disappointed with India's selective talks approach. His remarks came even before his counterpart and guest SM Krishna had left Pakistan which doesn't look like a normal diplomatic behaviour. Pakistan once again wants to discuss on other issues including the issue of Kashmir and Balochistan where for past one or two years Pakistan has been blaming Indian intelligence agency (RAW) for the involvement in their age old problem of Islamic extremism directed against Pakistan. Though Pakistan has never shown any proof yet.

Qureshi also disparaged S.M Krishna for attending calls from the New Delhi office. "Not once did I leave to take a phone call," Qureshi added. S.M Krishna surprisingly denied Qureshi remarks saying he didn't attend any call during talks. Though India has a six decade old culture of democracy and knows the importance of suggestions by others before coming to any solid conclusion. But Pakistan outraged India, asking, "who is the actual foreign policy adviser for India?" and blamed SM Krishna, calling him unprepared and unwilling to continue the dialogue.

The blame game was not over yet, the two countries which met to sort out their differences and initiate a peace call actually ended up widening the gaps between them as the remarks from Pakistan ministry became personal attacks on the Indian team.

It all started with a comment by India's Home secretary G.K. Pillai, on ISI's role in Mumbai attacks when asked what Pakistan is doing to curb the mastermind of Mumbai attack and Hafiz Saeed from making hate speech against India. Qureshi blamed G.K Pillai and equated his remarks with Hafiz Saeed hate speech against India even when G.K Pillai was saying something which came out from the separate interrogation of David Coleman Headley by India and FBI.

Indian side was surprised to see Qureshi comparing an International Terrorist's words with the words of India's Home secretary supported by strong, reliable references.

At the end of the day talks failed, but at least they tried. Whose fault was it let us not think about that, if we start analyzing this, new and new differences will be created. Hence let us avoid this and start again. Indian side is so stiff for talks because it cannot tolerate any other such attacks which if Pakistan wants can be stopped, and if Pakistan is also the victim of the same terrorism India is ready to help.

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Indian Rupee got a new face when on July 15th, 2010 Union govt. of India approved a new design selected from 3000 entries submitted by the common people of India. This symbol will give Indian currency a new look and will distinguish Indian Rupee form the Rupee/Rupiah/Rufiyaa of Pakistan, Srilanka, Nepal, Seychelles, Maldives and Indonesia.

The news has a global impact as Indian Rupee joins the elite currency club until now only US Dollar, Great Britain Pound, Euro and Japanese Yen had a currency symbol.


The symbol has given an identity or a distinct character to the currency highlighting the strength and global face of the Indian economy which had carried a mission to the moon worth 1 billion USD at the time when the world was experiencing recession and loss.

Some news sources have wrongly mentioned the appearance of the new symbol on currency note. Final status is that the Indian govt has said no to printing or embossing of the symbol on currency notes (confirmed from NDTV) though it will have a unique Unicode to display it on screen and to make it type-able using keyboards. Soon Indian keyboards will come inbuilt/dedicated key for the symbol. Among currencies with distinctive identities, only the pound sterling has its symbol printed on the notes.

The request for the special symbol for Indian Rupee was called last year observing the increasing strength of the Indian Rupee in the international market. Since then India has taken many quick steps in this direction and asked for the general public support to submit their design ideas. India will be adopting the new symbol within a span of six months in the country and within a span of two years internationally.

"It is a perfect blend of Indian and Roman letters -- capital 'R' and Devanagri 'Ra' which represents rupaiah, to appeal to international and Indian audiences... My design is based on the tricolour, with two lines at the top and white space in between," said Kumar, alumni of IIT Delhi - the designer of the symbol who also received a cash prize of  2.5 lakhs INR (~$5210).

Update: Indians can't wait to have it on their keyboard. How will we type it now? This is the question being asked. Do you want to type the new rupee symbol? vinubuzz.com (manual) has come with a solution. Here's the direct link to download the font http://rs792.rapidshare.com/files/407551940/Rupee.ttf

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Recently few months back FBI raised concern over the misuse of internet facility by terrorists to hack websites or databases of target countries and its government. Speaking at an Internet security conference on Mar 4, 2010, FBI director Robert Mueller warned about the growing threat of cyber crime and explained how a cyber attack could be as detrimental as a 'well-placed bomb'. He further added that how could they hack or hire others to do their job.

Today terrorism is not limited to the poor tribes of Afghan-Pak, even educated young man filled with passion are joining in as in the case of New York car bomb, the guy was well educated from Pakistan. When Education, science and technology falls into wrong hands miscreants becomes even more powerful.

In December 2009, terrorists in Iraq hacked American spy predator drones using a Russian software which costs mere $26. They intercepted the live video feeds from the drones to monitor US operation and prepare a plan to counter or take shelter. US military came to know about this incident later when they saw those videos in laptop seized  from a Shiite militant.



In another case last year a study by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) found that terrorists could potentially hack nuclear missile silos. As now in the era or modern wars nuclear missiles are linked through internet to give a fast response from a remote location. Thought government spends lots of attention and funds in its security but terrorists are also not behind they modernizing at the same speed. The study said though they cannot completely hack and gain control of the nuclear weapons but then can efficiently influence those who have the controls by generating fake signals and creating enough panic within them, to shoot the nuclear weapon.

Not only this, how many of you remember the news of terrorists hacking Obama's blackberry last year? All these capabilities are possessed by our modern terrorists, projecting a threat to the western civilization as well as to the peace and sovereignty of India and Israel. 

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When the world had just stepped on the path of development we started experiencing the shortage of resources specially energy resource like oil, which is very important for the growth of an economy. Considering the ill effects and various accidents in nuclear fission plants, world was looking for a more possible cleaner fuel. And nuclear fusion was the solution.

ITER (originally the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international tokamak (magnetic confinement fusion) research/engineering project that could help to make the transition from today's studies of plasma physics to future electricity-producing fusion power plants. It is the body responsible for all the research and development required on processing fusion energy. ITER has seven participating members who are responsible for research and funding of the program. EU, India, Japan, People's Republic of China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States of America (USA), with China being the last one to join.



In a meeting at Moscow on June 28, 2005 the participating parties agreed on the site for the reactor in Cadarache in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur, France. The total price of constructing the experiment is expected to be in excess of € 10 billion, As of 17 June 2009. Prior to that, the proposed costs for ITER were € 5 billion for the construction and € 5 billion for maintenance and the research connected with it during its 35 year lifetime.

The EU's executive body, the Commission, had asked member states to inject fresh funds into the project. The Commission and the European Parliament will have further input before the matter is finally resolved.
Iter itself is holding a special Council meeting on 27-28 July. This will define the latest scope and schedule for the project. Says BBC on 13th July, 2010.

The reactor is designed to produce 500MW of fusion power during pulses of at least 400 seconds.

Nuclear fusion is different than nuclear fission. In Nuclear fission heavy metals like Uranium and Plutonium splits into lighter elements releasing a  huge amount of energy. In nuclear fusion lighter elements fuses into a comparatively heavier. Fusion requires high energy to begin but once it is started it generates much more energy for use. One of the best example of fusion reaction in our daily life is SUN.

Fusion has many potential attractions:

• Abundant fuel
• Intrinsically safe
• No production of CO₂ or atmospheric pollutants
• "Clean nuclear stove" producing relatively short-lived waste.

Related articles

• EU agrees fusion shortfall funds (news.bbc.co.uk)

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The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in April killed 11 people. The accident also damaged the oil well and daily gallons of oil is spilling in the gulf of Mexico. Which has put the aquatic life in danger disturbing the ecosystem. American President Barack Obama has declared the leak the biggest environmental disaster in US history.


An example of what a little carelessness can do, It is believed that to speed up the process, regular safety and maintenance procedures were ignored. Negligence of even a small crack developed may prove to be a disaster. Being a Mechanical Engineer I can say this regular inspection is must if such a huge structure is surrounded by saline sea water which has lots of corrosive elements and salts. Corrosion with other forces and loads (weight, tides, waves) initiates crack in the structure which exposes a new inside surface which is no more protected with paints, chemicals to avoid corrosion. The metal then corrodes gradually and mixes with sea water chemically. As the metal is eaten up, its area or say its dimension starts reducing thus loosing strength against the forces and loads mentioned above hence a failure occurs. Here, also the casings were inefficient to prevent the damage due to the sudden pressure developed. This is a design error, while designing considering all the forces dimensions are given to a structure, generally designs are made to tolerate 1.5 times of maximum load it will be in. All the parameters should be considered must, failing to do that wil result in such failures

BP is putting all its effort in a new attempt  to plug the oil leak fitting a tighter cap over the blown out oil well. BBC which has been continuous monitoring the incident says this operation may take another four to seven days thus some more oil wastage in this mineral hungry world. So far repairing, maintaining and cleaning has cost BP around a total of 3.12bn USD, with a loss of around half of its share values.

BP is one of the biggest company in Britain. It plays one of the major part in its Britain's economy. It has large number of employees in UK and In US, hence the stability of the company is very important for both the economies at the time when unemployment has become a major problem both in US and UK.

US is the worst affected country from this disaster, the spill has reached the beaches of Florida and oil cleaning is been on halt as there is a possibility of hurricane Alex passing through the region of spill. Following this incident in a response US is now planning to issue order for new gulf (gulf of Mexico, not the oil rich Islamic gulf region in middle east) oil drilling ban

Meanwhile Russia has come forward offering help to BP in cleaning up the oil from the sea. Russia is planning to use its highly advanced submarines which can dive upto 6KM under the sea. The submarines started their third season of exploration in Lake Baikal on 1 July. Over the last two expeditions, they found reserves of gas hydrates on the lake bed - which some consider a possible alternative fuel source of the future, says BBC.



Till now there has been no official reply from the UK and US side. The submersible's pilot also said that the Russians were very surprised that BP and the US government had not asked them for help from the beginning.

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A wonderful discussion started by a Pakistani man recently on Pakistani Defence Forum caught my attention, Why will China chose India over Pakistan or Which ties will be more favourable for the stability in the region.

Pakistan and China considers each other all weather friend. When China was in need of expanding its influence, Russia, America, Europe, Japan, and India had differences with it. India giving shelter to Tibetan peaceful leader Dalai Lama angered China. Pakistan and China, both anti India, became allies.

But today the situation is little different. Pakistan,  though it receives daily billions of dollars from US, Europe, gulf and other friendly countries as military and economic aid, it is unable to tackle the terrorism and insurgency, which it once used and nourished as an strategical asset against India.

Pakistan/China cooperation is strictly limited to military and governmental levels. There is very little people-to-people contact and almost no cultural exchange. The relationship is one of 'colleagues, not friends'.

Pakistan and China virtually share any culture, hardly people in Pakistan watch Chinese shows and hardly Chinese people care about Pakistan's. Often Chinese fail to differentiate between Indians and Pakistani and think they are Indians. Chinese are familiar with Indian movies, A huge population in India in its northern border along the Himalayas to the north east shares Buddhist culture with Chinese and Tibetans. And the trade value between India and China is the largest in the region.

India is using its soft power to build a positive image amongst the Chinese masses. As China becomes more democratic, it will tilt more and more towards India. As what happened with US. While the Pakistan military government enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Pentagon, India was busy buying politicians and working on a grass-roots campaign within the US.

Yes India-Chinese ties may become fruitful but still one can not think of high level cooperation and mutual understanding between the two nations. Russia, China, India may become a powerful group whose policies will affect the world as it does at minor level now.

The problem always arises when two giants stand up side by side with one trying to press another. China and India will hopefully learn to live side by side as Russia and China.

Future wars will be fought for resources and not for borders, in that case again China and India will be rivals as they will be scanning Africa and resourceful places. In that case more possible ties can be between India and Pakistan. Same people, same food, same language and same religion, One day will come when they will realize they were unnecessarily fighting.

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Often called the king of the jungle, tigers had no fear from anyone. But today humans have become their only predators killing and poaching this beautiful creature to its extinction. Now only 1411 left in this world.

Earlier in India tiger hunting used to be taken as the act of bravery, they used to kill them if a tiger enters a human village or they used to go to the jungle to kill them, they usually used to kill them on foot or on horse. It used be one on one match it used to be a difficult task as tiger used to be stronger and heavier compared to a man. The condition of tigers was not that bad in that era.

The Bengal Tiger is the most common subspecies of tiger, constituting approximately 80% of the entire tiger population, and is found mainly in Bangladesh and India. During the British rule the population of tigers started declining. Englishmen used to kill tigers from a large distance using fire arms and guns being out from their sight. They called this their bravery. To show their superiority to Indians they used to kill 8 to 10 in one single outing. Later the demand of tiger's fur increased in the fashion world of London and America. Women were often seen wearing tiger fur in high profile parties or movies. A tiger fur was generating huge cash. This worsen the situation in India. Now they were killing 15 to 20 tigers in a single outing and they included some poor local Indians as well in their work.  Bringing total population of tigers in the Indian subcontinent from 10 million to 50 thousand in hundred years.

Though English people had left but they didn't take the culture of hunting tigers with them. local people were still killing tigers freely until the Indian government made it illegal after independence. Killing of tigers also reduced as the ban was imposed internationally on wearing animal furs. But till today in many parts of the world including China, tiger's body parts are being used to make medicines. Their encouragement and local people's greed of hard cash has brought the survival of King of the jungle in doubt.

Project Tiger, started in 1972, is a major effort to conserve the tiger and its habitats in India. An Indian tiger census conducted in 1972 revealed the existence of only 1827 tigers. Various pressures in the later part of the 20th century as described above led to the progressive decline of wilderness resulting in the disturbance of viable tiger habitats. In 1970, a national ban on tiger hunting was imposed, and in 1972 the Wildlife Protection Act came into force. The framework was then set to formulate a project for tiger conservation with an ecological approach.

Launched on April 1, 1973, Project Tiger has become one of the most successful conservation ventures in modern history. The project aims at tiger conservation in specially-constituted 'tiger reserves', which are representative of various bio-geographical regions falling within India. It strives to maintain viable tiger populations in their natural environment.





Today, there are 27 Project Tiger wildlife reserves in India, covering an area of 37,761 km².

It is an appeal to international community, apart from the efforts made by Indian government and citizens lots more attention, care and support from you people is needed to save the tigers. Tigers belong to this world not just India. As the world community hunted tigers in different times for different purposes, today we need the same world community to save them. Remember only 1411 left. Spread the word, share this post, or donate the authorities.

Visit the site Save Our Tigers | What can I do? to support in various manner

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