Indian rocket launch flops

BANGALORE: Indian space engineers lost contact with a rocket showcasing new indigenously built booster technology on Thursday soon after launch, in a major blow to the country”s space ambitions.

The launch of the first India-made rocket powered by cryogenic motors, a complex technology mastered by just five countries, failed soon after lift-off from India”s space centre at Sriharikota in southeast Andhra Pradesh state.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters that the rocket began tumbling soon after launch “indicating the controllability was lost.”

Cryogenic boosters use supercooled liquid fuel and the technology has only been successfully developed by the US, Russia, France, Japan and China.

India had previously imported seven cryogenic engines from Russia, using five of them to launch heavy satellites over the last decade.

The technology is intended to launch heavier satellites into high orbits, about 36,000 kilometres (22,000 miles) from the earth, ISRO has said.

Iran bars Khatami from leaving country: website

TEHRAN: Iran has barred former president Mohammad Khatami from leaving the country ahead of a trip he planned to make to Japan for a nuclear disarmament conference, a pro-reform website said Thursday.

The Parlemannews.ir website of the reformist bloc in parliament did not provide details of any reasons given for the travel ban.

Khatami, whose 1997-2005 presidency saw a thaw with the West under his “dialogue of civilisations”, had been invited to attend the annual nuclear disarmament conference in Hiroshima.

The former president has been the target of virulent criticism by regime hardliners since he backed former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi against incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in last June”s presidential election.

Car bomb targets hotel in Kandahar; 6 hurt

KABUL: Witnesses say a car bomb has targeted a hotel in the heart of the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar, injuring at least six people.

Police official Nidah Mohammed says at least two of those injured is in serious condition.

Witnesses say windows were shattered in the four-story Noor Jehan Hotel when the car bomb went off in the parking lot.

Hamas executes 2 Israeli spies

GAZA CITY: The head of the military court in Hamas-ruled Gaza says two informers for Israel have been executed.

The executions marked the first time in a decade — and the first time ever under Hamas rule — that the death penalty was carried out in Gaza.

It signaled an escalation in Hamas” ways of maintaining control over Gaza. The Islamic militants seized the territory in 2007.

The head of the military court, Ahmed Atallah, announced the executions in a statement on the Web site of Gaza”s Interior Ministry. He identified the two men as convicted collaborators Mohammed Ismail and Nasser Abu Freih.

Atallah did not say how they were executed. An employee at Gaza”s main hospital says their bullet-riddled bodies were dropped off there by armed men early Thursday.

Is The Fourth Kind Real

Is The Fourth Kind Real, I am a bubble burster, have always been. My first experience with the fourth type is written to the trailer SciFiSquad with the Bullet “Trailer for ‘The power of the fourth kind” be lying to you. “I have no innate rancor against the film, but I realize that we live in 2009, and I’m surrounded by Interweb magic enabled devices that can tell me whether or not I believe in a film that purports to be “based on actual case studies.” Immediately after seeing the trailer headed for confirmation the existence or otherwise of their claims about alien abductions in Nome, Alaska had no basis in this world. I found nothing.

However, I have seen since the fourth level, and I can tell it is most fascinating. Not because the film is, in fact, indeed, but by how willfully delusional is in focus. It is interesting that people assume I remember The Blair Witch Project and paranormal activity both sold themselves as “real images”, because none did. Both player, with the conventions of first person perspective to create an illusion of truth. The fourth type is not content with that ploy linear, however. It not only contains the same trick found footage “as the two films, but is intended that the material is real. It has its hottest stars, literally walk to the camera and tell us that the film is unadulterated truth.

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Is The Fourth Kind Real was first posted on November 7, 2009 at 3:59 pm.

PML-N Says Altaf Should Face Cases In Pakistan

LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) spokesman Siddiqul Farooq asked Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain to return to Pakistan to face cases, so that he could prove his weight.

Farooq urged Altaf Hussain to come to Punjab, saying, ‘We will provide him the bullet-proof vehicles and receive him in Lahore.’

PML-N mouthpiece said his party acknowledges the MQM and its mandate; but, we do not accede to the politics of ethnicity and bias.

‘We respect the immigrants and their offspring; but, we do not accept the All Pakistan Mohajir Qaumi Movement, which was based on the very ethnicity,’ he reiterated.

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PML-N Says Altaf Should Face Cases In Pakistan was first posted on August 25, 2009 at 5:29 pm.

17 Bullet Riddled Corpses Found In Swat

PAKISTAN, MINGORA: At least 17 bullet-riddled corpses supposedly of local Taliban militants were found Sunday from various areas of Swat.

The dead bodies were found in Islam Pur, Mingora, Kabal and Bari Kot areas. It was not yet ascertained who shot dead the suspected militants.

On Saturday, five security personnel were killed and four others injured in the first suicide attack in one-time tourist heaven turn violence-torn valley after it was declared clear from the militants later last month following months-long clearance operation.