Karachi: ECP’s scheduled meeting postponed

KARACHI: The meeting of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), scheduled for Friday (tomorrow), has been postponed due to some unknown reasons, Geo News reported.
The ECP was set to meet on Friday to discuss delimitations, voters’ lists and issues arising out of the recent by-polls in Sindh and Punjab besides dual nationality.
The sources said they could not say anything about the new date of the meeting.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan had earlier issued directions to complete voters’ verification in Karachi. Separately, the apex court, during its proceedings on the implementation of its suo moto notice on targeted killings in Karachi, directed the Election Commission to conduct delimitations in the metropolis to avoid what it called political polarization.

Nepal woman aged 105 finally granted citizenship

KATHMANDU: A pensioner has been granted Nepalese citizenship more than a century after she was born in a remote village of the Himalayan nation, an official said Wednesday.

Krishna Kumari Gharti, a 105-year-old widow who lives in Pakhapani village in the mountainous district of Parbat, one day's walk from the nearest road, was among a group of residents to be given identity cards for the first time.

"Our officials travelled to the village after hearing complaints that many were deprived of citizenship," Tek Bahadur KC, district administrative officer told AFP by telephone.

"Her name was registered in our list of elderly who were receiving the monthly allowance. So we granted her the citizenship card. She was very happy," he said.

"Most of these people living in the villages generally don't venture out of the place. They are also hardly involved in any businesses. That's why they spend their lives without citizenship."

When Gharti was born, Nepal was largely closed to the outside world and maintained a subsistence economy under the autocratic Rana dynasty of hereditary prime ministers.

Although it modernised over the 20th century, Nepal's rugged topography and lack of roads mean it is still difficult for villagers in isolated districts to visit local government offices to obtain citizenship cards.

According to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, 800,000 people in Nepal are "stateless persons" without the rights and benefits of Nepalese citizens, although the government disputes this figure. 

NASA to send new rover to Mars in 2020

CHICAGO: NASA plans to send a new rover to Mars in 2020 as it prepares for a manned mission to the Red Planet, the US space agency said Tuesday.
The announcement came a day after NASA released the results of the first soil tested by the Curiosity rover, which found traces of some of the compounds like water and oxygen that are necessary for life.
President Barack Obama's administration "is committed to a robust Mars exploration program," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.
"With this next mission, we're ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s."
NASA was forced to pull out of some joint missions with the European Space Agency after its budget was slashed earlier this year.
It hopes to save money on the next rover -- currently estimated to cost $1.5 billion -- by using spare parts leftover from Curiosity and sticking to the same successful design.
The new rover brings the number of NASA missions currently operating or being planned for Mars to seven.
The Opportunity rover has been exploring the Martian surface since 2004. The much more sophisticated Curiosity rover landed in Gale Crater on August 6. Two other spacecraft are currently orbiting Mars to study the planet from above and help relay signals from the rovers.
A new craft -- the Maven -- is set to launch next year to study the Martian upper atmosphere.
NASA also plans to send a craft dubbed InSight to dig the planet's depths in 2016 to determine whether the planet's core is solid or liquid like Earth's.
"The challenge to restructure the Mars Exploration Program has turned from the seven minutes of terror for the Curiosity landing to the start of seven years of innovation," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science.
"This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity."
While the rover's name and actual mission must still be worked out, Grunsfeld said he hoped it improve on Curiosity with the addition of a 3D camera.
"I'm a huge fan of vicarious exploration," he told a press conference.
Grunsfeld also hopes it will have the ability to collect samples to bring back to Earth instead of discarding them after they've been tested.
As for finally once again openly looking for signs of life? Say tough microbes able to withstand the harsh Martian environment?
"It would be very exciting to send a new mission to a place where there could be current extant life," Grunsfeld said.
"All of those things are on the table."
The first spacecraft reached Mars in 1965. Mariner 4 sent back 22 close-up photos of the planet's cratered surface and won the United States the honor of the first successful mission to Mars.
The Soviet Union was the first to successfully land on Mars in 1971, but the Mars 2 failed after relaying 20 seconds of video to an orbiter.
Five years later, the United States managed to land the Viking 1 and 2 crafts, which sent back thousands of images and reams of data before they were deactivated.
Most missions to Mars have failed, although there have been a handful of successful projects, including the Pathfinder, which landed in 1997 and the Spirit, which landed in 2004 and roamed the surface for six years before contact was lost.
The $2.5 billion nuclear-powered Curiosity is designed to hunt for soil-based signatures of life on the Earth's nearest neighbor and send back data to prepare for a future human mission.
It is the biggest robot ever built for planetary exploration -- weighing in at a ton, about the size of a small car -- and carries a complex chemistry kit to zap rocks, drill soil and test for radiation.
Scientists do not expect Curiosity to find aliens or living creatures but they hope to use it to analyze soil and rocks for signs the building blocks of life are present and may have supported life in the past.

Smartphones to light up Sydney's New Year show

SYDNEY: Sydney's world-famous New Year's Eve fireworks will go interactive with a smartphone-powered light show, officials announced Thursday, with ambassador Kylie Minogue calling on the city to embrace.

The light show, described by City of Sydney officials as a "world-first", will run through an app on iPhone and Android smartphones that will illuminate the screens with colour at scheduled intervals leading up to midnight.

The city is hoping to attract more than one million people to the harbour foreshore to witness the fireworks, and organisers want the crowds to hold their phones aloft to form a synchronised wave of colour.

"In a city of great diversity we come together at New Year's Eve to embrace the future and celebrate all that we are and the potential that tomorrow holds," Minogue, the event's creative ambassador, said in a video message for Thursday's official launch.

Minogue said the theme for the 2012 celebrations, Embrace, was about "acceptance, tolerance, fun and above all love".

"This year I want everyone to embrace during the 9pm family fireworks and the midnight fireworks," she said.

"Whether it's embracing new ideas, change and opportunities, or just giving a big hug to your family and friends, it's something everyone can get involved in."

App users will also be able to submit a word to be projected onto the pylons of the Harbour Bridge, which is typically the centrepiece of an evening's pyrotechnics.

The Sydney fireworks kick off global New Year's celebrations and are seen by billions of people worldwide. 

Japan woman arrested over 160 dogs living in own waste

TOKYO: A woman who kept 160 starving dogs in her house among tons of their own waste has been arrested by Japanese police, an official said Wednesday.

Ten tons of animal waste and other rubbish were removed from Noriko Ishii's house after the dogs were taken away, he said.

One Bernese Mountain Dog kept by Ishii, 43, weighed just seven kilograms (15 pounds) -- a sixth of what it should have, said the official in Osaka, adding all the animals were "very scrawny".

Jobless Ishii could face a fine of up to 500,000 yen ($6,000) if convicted under Japan's animal protection laws.

Moon's battered crust reveals tumultuous past

WASHINGTON: New images of the Moon's battered crust point to a violent past in which it was battered by comets and asteroids during its first billion years, US scientists say.
The new findings come from the GRAIL mission, a pair of spacecraft named Ebb and Flow that are orbiting the Moon and measuring its gravitational field.
"It was known that planets were battered by impacts, but nobody had envisioned that the (Moon's) crust was so beaten up," said Maria Zuber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist leading the mission.
"This is a really big surprise, and is going to cause a lot of people to think about what this means for planetary evolution," she said in a statement about the findings, to be published this week in the journal Science.
Unlike the Earth's crust, which is repeatedly recycled through the process of plate tectonics, the Moon's hard crust dates back billions of years, offering clues to the formation of the solar system, including Earth.
The GRAIL mission has allowed scientists to stitch together a high-resolution map of the Moon's gravity, reflecting surface structures like mountains and craters as well as subterranean features.
The images suggest the Moon's crust is 21-27 miles (34-43 kilometers) thick, considerably thinner than was previously thought, according to Mark Wieczorek, another GRAIL scientist.
"This supports models where the moon is derived from Earth materials that were ejected during a giant impact event early in solar system history," he said.
Around 98 percent of the crust is deeply fragmented, porous material, the result, scientists say, of very early, massive impacts.
"This is interesting for the Moon," Zuber said. "But what it also means is that every other planet was being bombarded like this.

CNG stations reopen in Sindh after 48 hours

KARACHI: Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) pumps resumed supply of commodity after 48-hour closure in Sindh including commercial hub Karachi, Geo News reported.
Long queues of vehicles were witnessed at the pumps before reopening at 12:00 AM Thursday.
CNG stations were closed for 48 hours under load management plan.