Horrible Traffic Jam

Barbie Dolls: Timeless Beauty

Katrina Kaif had this to say about Barbie, "I am grateful to be bestowed with this honour of being the first ever Indian Celebrity for whom a doll will be made in my likeness. This is a very special moment for me personally as I have always loved Barbie ever since I was a little girl. Barbie is the ultimate fashion icon and is the most popular doll in the world, I am very excited about this association since it’s the ideal fashion statement for any Fashionista.

She is every young girl’s fashion icon, what with that blonde ponytail, sleek clothes and snappy heels. She came on the scene and took the toy world by storm. Now years later, she is still going strong. Books have been written about her, films were made with her as the star, cars and motor homes have her name on them, in fact, she even has a painting by Andy Warhol to boot, and that’s the story of the inscrutable Barbie doll.

In her five decades, Barbie and her many friends have pioneered career choices. And it’s not just kids, who love Barbie. Her audience has grown to include adults, both men and women, particularly in the past two decades.

So what is it about Barbie that has captured the hearts of girls and collectors the world over?

Source: http://www.merinews.com/

Candid Camera In The Museum

Key Implications Of The New Strategy

President Barack Obama plans to send thousands of troops to train Afghan security forces as part of a new war strategy that will focus U.S. efforts on destroying safe havens for al Qaeda militants and rolling back the Taliban insurgency.

Here are some key implications of the new strategy:

• By stating that the main mission is to target al Qaeda, Obama is playing down more ambitious goals embraced by his predecessor, George W. Bush, and other NATO leaders.
• They declared at a summit in April last year that their aim in Afghanistan was to help "build an enduring stable, secure, prosperous and democratic state, respectful of human rights and free from the threat of terrorism."
• Although the administration appears to be aiming for less, its new strategy accepts it will have to devote more troops, money and resources to achieve even that goal.
• Obama will send 4,000 troops by this autumn to train Afghan forces, on top of 17,000 troops whose deployments he approved in February. That will bring the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to about 60,000, in addition to more than 30,000 troops from U.S. allies, mainly NATO nations.
• The cost of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan is expected to rise 60 percent from the current $2 billion a month.
• The extra deployments will add to strains on the U.S. military, at least in the short term.
• Although Obama has ordered about 100,000 troops to withdraw from Iraq by August next year, the bulk of that pullout is not expected until after Iraqi elections at the end of this year.
• Many of the ideas presented in the strategy are not new. The administration says the Afghan war was neglected under Bush and is betting that an increase in resources and focus will make existing ideas more effective.
• An expansion of the Afghan security forces is already under way and the administration does not appear to be increasing the target size for the Afghan army and police for the moment.
• Similarly, officials have long spoken of trying to exploit fractures in the Taliban movement and peeling off "foot soldiers" motivated by money rather than ideology.
• The administration's plans to engage Russia, China, Iran and India are bold but far from guaranteed to be successful. Cooperation on Afghanistan risks becoming a bargaining chip in debates with Russia over European missile defense or with Tehran over Iran's nuclear program.
• If the administration stresses its focus on combating al Qaeda too much, it risks exacerbating Afghans' fears that the West is not interested in their welfare and will abandon them. That could play into the hands of the Taliban.
• The administration's pledge to send "hundreds" more civilians to help build the capacity of Afghan authorities to provide essential services for their citizens will be widely welcomed but the details will be important.
• Analysts say such services -- everything from running water to a functioning justice system -- are vital to get Afghans to side with their government rather than the Taliban.
• But it is open to question whether an increase of only a few hundred civilians will give those efforts a major boost.
• Initial descriptions of the new strategy leave many questions about Pakistan unanswered.
• Many experts believe the nuclear-armed country's instability and its al Qaeda safe havens present a far greater threat to U.S. national security than Afghanistan.
• U.S. officials have yet to prove they can persuade the Pakistani military to fully embrace counter-insurgency operations against militants.
• Officials have not said whether attacks on suspected militants by CIA drones will be stepped up. The administration never officially acknowledges the strikes and they are unpopular in Pakistan. U.S. officials say they have played a key role in weakening al Qaeda. (Editing by Peter Cooney)

For More Info: http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSN26268096

Arrest Varun Gandhi: Congress

Minutes after Varun Gandhi came out before the media to clarify his ‘communal remarks’, the Congress slammed the BJP candidate for Lok Sabha polls in Pilibhit for refusing to apologise.

Senior party leader Kapil Sibal called for Varun Gandhi’s arrest, saying he had committed a crime by targeting the minority community in his speech.

There is no place for people like Varun in politics, Sibal said, adding the BJP would be a con-conspirator if it failed to act against him.

The BJP, meanwhile, refused to react on Varun’s statement.

Oil Coming Ashore For Weeks

The massive oil slick coating beaches around south-east Queensland will get worse before it gets better, the Queensland Government says.

Moreton and Bribie Island and southern parts of the Sunshine Coast have been declared disaster zones and today Queensland's Sustainability Minister Andrew McNamara warned the worst is yet to come.

"There's going to be oil floating around out there coming ashore over a period of a couple of weeks," he said.

Yesterday the Government said it believed the slick would be cleaned up within seven days, but now it is thought that up to 100,000 litres of oil may have spilled into the sea from a stricken cargo ship on Wednesday.

About 130 people are involved in the clean-up and preventing the oil from spreading further into rivers.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has defended the Government's response so far amid accusations that it has failed to act quickly enough.

"You don't walk in on day one and take all of the sand off the beach only to have more oil overnight coming in on the tide necessitating more sand be taken off on the second and the third day," she said.

"These are sensitive environments and you need to be systematic and clear it with almost military precision."

Vaughan Nash from Maroochy Waterwatch says oil has now reached the Maroochy Bridge, about two kilometres upstream from the mouth of the Maroochy River.

Mr Nash says it is now threatening mangroves.

"We're still seeing wildlife out on the river," he said.

"We saw a few pelicans only about 50 metres behind a few of the slicks and a fish actually jumping through the slicks as well.

"[That was] pretty amazing; we didn't expect a mullet to jump out through an oil slick like that, particularly a thick one as it was."

Up to 100,000 litres of oil leaked into Moreton Bay after the Pacific Adventurer cargo ship was holed on Wednesday morning, and the slicks are now blanketing 60 kilometres of Queensland's coastline.

Unemployment Rate Spikes

The unemployment rate for the Longview area jumped to 5.8 percent in January – the highest it has been for that month in five years, according to figures released Thursday by the Texas Workforce Commission.

The three-county metropolitan statistical area of Gregg, Rusk and Upshur counties had an estimated 6,300 people reported unemployed in January. That number jumped from 4,800 unemployed residents in the three counties in December when the Longview metro area had an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent.

The rate also was up substantially from January 2008 when TWC reported 4,400 people were unemployed with a three-county unemployment rate of 4.2 percent.

Workers at Longview-area businesses like Trinity Industries, Dana Corp. and U.S. Steel were hit hard by layoff notices in January as the impact of the global and national recessions deepened.

The Longview metro area still fared better than the state and nation as a whole in the unemployment picture, according to Texas Workforce officials. Texas had a January unemployment rate of 6.8 percent in January while nationally, the rate was 8.5 percent, representing more than 13 million people qualified as being unemployed.

Longview Partnership President Kelly Hall said the news is of concern to the group's members.

"Many of our companies are feeling the slowdown, and they are positioning their companies strategically to ride out the roller coaster ride we are on," Hall said. "Unfortunately, that means running leaner from an employee standpoint and cutting back on expenses."

Hall said on the flip side, Longview and East Texas are not being hit as hard as the East and West coasts.

"Beginning the first week of January, the Partnership staff has been contacting our chamber members on a daily basis," Hall said. "We have connected with over 50 percent of our members to date in order to gain a better understanding of what challenges they are dealing with from a regulation standpoint and what is happening within their specific industry."

The Longview area also had a lower unemployment rate than nearby Tyler where 6.9 percent of the workforce was off the job in January, according to state figures.

The Longview area unemployment rate in January jumped from 4.5 percent in December, the state reported. The one-month jump in the number of unemployed workers went from 4,800 in December to 6,300 in January, an increase of 1,500 people.

John Stroud, executive director of Longview Economic Development Corp., said about 500 of those jobs were in the retail trade area and represent seasonal changes from the Christmas shopping season.

Elsewhere in Texas, the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission area had the state's highest unemployment rate in January at 10.1 percent. The Midland area, with a rate of 3.8 percent, was the lowest in Texas for January, according to the state.

"The national economic crisis is beginning to have a serious negative impact on our Texas economy," Tom Pauken, chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, said in a prepared statement.

Investigation On Mumbai Attack

The 11,000 page chargesheet into the 26/11 Mumbai attacks which was presented in a Mumbai court on Wednesday has thrown up some interesting findings.

Investigations have revealed that the VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) calls made by the 26/11 terrorists to their handlers have been traced to a serving colonel of the Pakistani army.

However, the Pakistan army downplayed its link to the Mumbai terror carnage and said that the chargesheet filed on Wednesday is very vague on the link.

Speaking to TIMES NOW, Brigadier Azmat Ali, Pak army spokesperson said, "Chargesheet does not accurately identify armyman allegedly linked to 26/11. There are many Colonel Sadatullahs in the Pakistan army. We are trying to find out if this is true or it is all a media speculation."

Though the chargesheet filed does not spell out the Pakistan army link explicitly, it does name the officer as Colonel R Sadatullah from the SCO.

The SCO, army sources say, stands for Special Communications Organization, a telecommunications agency of the Pakistani government which is run by officers from the army's signals corps.

Another name mentioned in the chargesheet is that of 'Major General sahab' whose name crops up repeatedly in the taped conversation between the terrorists and their handlers.

Standardized Charger To Power Them

The aim is to make a standard charging solution for mobile phones

If the GSM Association has its way, by 2012 most phones will use a standardized charger to power them. The association has announced a plan to standardize chargers across a spectrum of manufacturers.

Major manufacturers, including Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have joined the Universal Charging Solution (UCS) consortium. The list also includes major telecom companies like Vodafone, Orange, Qualcomm and Telefonica.
The aim is to make a standard charging solution implemented, probably using micro USB chargers. While some phones already have this feature, other manufacturers too are likely to join in, so that the standardization is achieved.

Apart from various benefits, this move could bring a reduction in the number of chargers produced, as old chargers will not become useless.
The move will also bring a considerable reduction in emission of greenhouse gases during manufacturing and transportation of replacement chargers.
The chargers, while remaining standard, will also be customized for "local" versions as some countries use proprietary plug points like the three pin plug used in the UK.

Verb Object Subject

In linguistic typology, Verb Object Subject or Verb Object Agent - commonly used in its abbreviated form VOS or VOA - represents the language-classification type of which the following sequence of the three constituents, in neutral expressions, is an example: "Eat oranges Sam."

Examples include Austronesian languages such as Malagasy, Old Javanese, Toba Batak and Fijian, as well as Mayan languages like Tzotzil, which are ergative languages. During the 1970s, arguments were put forward by Paul Schachter and others that many Austronesian languages (e.g. Tagalog) lack a well defined notion of subject. While this view has not been entirely rejected, work by Nikolaus Himmelmann and others suggests that the objections of the 1970s were overstated, and there are, in fact, subjects in these languages.

Professional modular digital camera systems

This category includes very high end professional equipment that can be assembled from modular components (winders, grips, lenses, etc.) to suit particular purposes. Common brands include Hasselblad and Mamiya. They were developed for medium or large format film sizes, as these captured greater detail and could be enlarged more than 35 mm.

Typically these cameras are used in studios for commercial production; being bulky and awkward to carry they are rarely used in action or nature photography. They can often be converted into either film or digital use by changing out the back part of the unit, hence the use of terms such as a "digital back" or "film back". These cameras are very expensive (up to $40,000) and are typically not used by consumers.

Abiotic stress In Plants

A plant’s first line of defense against abiotic stress is in its roots. If the soil holding the plant is healthy and biologically diverse, the plant will have a higher chance of surviving stressful conditions.Facilitation, or the positive interactions between different species of plants, is an intricate web of association in a natural environment. It is how plants work together. In areas of high stress, the level of facilitation is especially high as well. This could possibly be because the plants need a stronger network to survive in a harsher environment, so their interactions between species, such as cross-pollination or mutualistic actions, become more common to cope with the severity of their habitat. This facilitation will not go so far as to protect an entire species, however. For example, cold weather crops like rye, oats, wheat, and apples are expected to decline by about 15% in the next fifty years and strawberries will drop as much as 32% simply because of projected climate changes of a few degrees. Plants are extremely sensitive to such changes, and do not generally adapt quickly. Plants also adapt very differently from one another, even from a plant living in the same area. When a group of different plant species was prompted by a variety of different stress signals, such as drought or cold, each plant responded uniquely. Hardly any of the responses were similar, even though the plants had become accustomed to the exact same home environment.

Dromedary

The Dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) is a large even-toed ungulate. It is often referred to as the one-humped camel, Arabian camel, or simply as the "dromedary". Its native range is unclear, but it was probably the Arabian Peninsula. The domesticated form occurs widely in northern Africa and the Middle East; the world's only population of dromedaries exhibiting wild behaviour is an introduced feral population in Australia.

The dromedary camel is one of the better-known members of the camel family. Other members of the camel family include the llama and the alpaca in South America. The Dromedary has one hump on its back, in contrast to the Bactrian camel which has two. A good mnemonic for remembering which way around these terms apply is this: "Bactrian" begins with "B", and "Dromedary" begins with "D"; "B" on its side has two humps, while "D" on its side has only one hump.

Tylopoda

Tylopoda is a suborder of the mammalian order Artiodactyla, containing the camel family. In the past, this family was much more diverse, containing the families Xiphodontidae, Oromerycidae, and the two families of oreodonts, Agriochoeridae and Merycoidodontidae. However, now it contains only the camels, llamas and alpacas.

Atlantic Ocean

• Adriatic Sea
• Aegean Sea
• Alboran Sea
• Argentine Sea
• Bay of Biscay
• Bay of Bothnia
• Bay of Campeche
• Bay of Fundy
• Baltic Sea
• Black Sea
• Bothnian Sea
• Caribbean Sea
• Celtic Sea
• Central Baltic Sea
• Chesapeake Bay
• English Channel
• Gulf of Bothnia
• Gulf of Guinea
• Gulf of Finland
• Gulf of Mexico
• Gulf of Sidra
• Gulf of St. Lawrence
• Gulf of Venezuela
• Ionian Sea
• Ligurian Sea
• Irish Sea
• Marmara Sea
• Mediterranean Sea
• Mirtoon Sea
• North Sea
• Sea of Azov
• Sea of Crete
• Sea of the Hebrides
• Sargasso Sea
• Thracian Sea
• Tyrrhenian Sea

Wool

Wool is the fiber derived from the specialized skin cells, called follicles, of animals in the Caprinae family, principally sheep, but the hair of certain species of other mammals such as goats, llamas, rabbits and keeshonds[citation needed] may also be called wool. Wool has several qualities that distinguish it from hair or fur: it is crimped; it has a different texture or handle; it is elastic; and it grows in staples (clusters).

Sudbury Basin

The Sudbury Basin, also known as Sudbury Structure or the Sudbury Nickel Irruptive, is the second largest known impact crater or astrobleme on Earth, and a major geologic structure in Ontario, Canada.[

The basin is located on the Canadian Shield in the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The former municipalities of Rayside-Balfour and Valley East lie within the Sudbury Basin, which is referred to locally as "The Valley". The urban core of the former city of Sudbury lies on the southern outskirts of the Basin.

The Sudbury Basin is located near a number of other geological structures, including the Temagami Magnetic Anomaly, the Lake Wanapitei impact crater and the western end of the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben, although none of the structures are directly related to each other in the sense of resulting from the same geophysical processes.

Written languages

In a sense, written language should be distinguished from natural language. Until recently in the developed world, it was common for many people to be fluent in spoken or signed languages and yet remain illiterate; this is still the case in poor countries today. Furthermore, natural language acquisition during childhood is largely spontaneous, while literacy must usually be intentionally acquired.

Benign tumor

A benign tumor is a tumor that lacks all three of the malignant properties of a cancer. Thus, by definition, a benign tumor does not grow in an unlimited, aggressive manner, does not invade surrounding tissues, and does not metastasize. Common examples of benign tumors include moles and uterine fibroids.

The term "benign" implies a mild and nonprogressive disease, and indeed, many kinds of benign tumor are harmless to the health. However, some neoplasms which are defined as 'benign tumors' because they lack the invasive properties of a cancer, may still produce negative health effects. Examples of this include tumors which produce a "mass effect" (compression of vital organs such as blood vessels), or "functional" tumors of endocrine tissues, which may overproduce certain hormones (examples include thyroid adenomas, adrenocortical adenomas, and pituitary adenomas).

Benign tumors typically are encapsulated, which inhibits their ability to behave in a malignant manner. Nonetheless, many types of benign tumors have the potential to become malignant and some types, such as teratoma, are notorious for this.

Rice

Rice is a cereal foodstuff which forms an important part of the diet of many people worldwide and as such it is a staple food for many.

Domesticated rice comprises two species of food crops in the Oryza genus of the Poaceae ("true grass") family: Asian rice, Oryza sativa is native to tropical and subtropical southern Asia; African rice, Oryza glaberrima, is native to West Africa.

The name wild rice is usually used for species of the different but related genus Zizania, both wild and domesticated, although the term may be used for primitive or uncultivated varieties of Oryza.

Rice is grown as a monocarpic annual plant, although in tropical areas it can survive as a perennial and can produce a ratoon crop and survive for up to 20 years.Rice can grow to 1–1.8 m tall, occasionally more depending on the variety and soil fertility. The grass has long, slender leaves 50–100 cm long and 2–2.5 cm broad. The small wind-pollinated flowers are produced in a branched arching to pendulous inflorescence 30–50 cm long. The edible seed is a grain (caryopsis) 5–12 mm long and 2–3 mm thick.

Rice is a staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in tropical Latin America, and East, South and Southeast Asia, making it the second-most consumed cereal grain. A traditional food plant in Africa, Rice has the potential to improve nutrition, boost food security, foster rural development and support sustainable landcare. Rice provides more than one fifth of the calories consumed worldwide by humans.In early 2008, some governments and retailers began rationing supplies of the grain due to fears of a global rice shortage.