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Tahrir Square turned into World Democracy Square in 2011

How many people sacrificed their lives in 2011 for democracy in Egypt! It is a big question over the world that how many were killed. Everyone knows one name “Tahrir Square”. It can be named as World Democracy Square where hundreds of democracy loving people sacrificed their lives to get free from dictatorship in the year 2011. Different sources said that though comparatively less number of people who embraced martyr in the fight for democracy but it touched at least 846 and 6,000 people were also injured. Democracy may be the only solution for salvation of a nation. The flows of bloods over the high ways of Tahrir Square reminisce the picture of fight for democracy over the world. It envisages that people can put their lives for free of thinking and free of speech. They gathered there defying military bullet for security of democracy. It will be a lesson for all democracy loving people over the world for hundreds of years. It was January 17, 2011. An young man set ablaze ...

In quest of a democratic world in 2012

Democratic state and society is precondition for total development of a country. Democracy is the thumb for sustainable development. Democracy is the motto for humanism and balanced society. Any decision would be taken showing honor to the opinion of maximum people of any society or state or organization which is called democracy.    Democracy only can ensure peace, progress, justice and achievement. It can also ensure right for all strata of human being. So it is necessary to ensure that the peoples verdict, support, opinion and expectation is presented correctly and impartially. What peoples are expecting through their opinion should be depicted correctly. There should not be any way or process that peoples support and verdict is showed after changes fully or partially. This is a great challenge for the developing and under developed countries to ensure that peoples verdict is representing any decision. Misled democracy: In most of the cases during forma...

Data transfer speed hits 186 Gbps, Scientists claim

Researchers are claiming a new world record for data transfers over long distances. Data was moved back and forth at a combined rate of 186 Gbps (gigabits per second), fast enough to transfer two million gigabytes of data or 100,000 full Blu-ray discs in one day. It could pave the way for networks with standard speeds of 100 Gbps. That would speed up the sharing of scientific research, such as that at the Large Hadron Collider.  The tests involved sending data between the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, and the Washington State Convention Centre in Seattle. The team achieved two-way data rates of 186 Gbps, breaking their previous record of 119 Gbps set in 2009. The data's fastest speed in a single direction was 98 Gbps. By contrast current fibre optic networks have a top speed of about 1 Gbps. The distances spanned nearly 131 miles (212km) and relied on the latest optical equipment, highly tuned servers and ran over a 100Gbps circuit, set u...

Paypal to enter discount coupon market

Online payment service Paypal plans to enter the discount coupon market. The eBay-owned business said it planned to launch the service in the US before April 2012.  Paypal's president, Scott Thompson, told the Bloomberg news agency that his firm would use its knowledge of its 103 million members' past purchases to tailor offers. The move poses a challenge to the sector's two biggest player, Groupon and Livingsocial.  Daily deal businesses offer their members the chance to buy goods or services - from spa treatments and sushi to cheap flights and theatre tickets - at a steep discount.  Buyers are usually limited to using the coupons within a restricted time span. The daily dealer business then splits the revenue with the organisation providing the goods. Companies may make a loss on the specific offer, but profit if customers return for repeat business. Discount deluge According to the daily deal data aggregator Yipit four of the biggest players sold ...

Signs of attacks still visible!

Signs of the attacks are still visible today in collapsed buildings and bullet holes in walls in Fallujah, a Iraqi city exploded against US invasion  in Iraq firstly. Two major offensives Fallujah, home to about a half a million people 60km west of Baghdad, was home to some of the first anti-US protests in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, in May of that year. When the protests began, residents were content to throw only their shoes at US soldiers, an Arab gesture that signifies anger and disrespect.  But in March 2004, four US employees of a US private security firm, Blackwater, since renamed Xe and later Academi, were killed in the city, leading to two major offensives by US troops against Fallujah. Widespread fighting in Fallujah against the occupation begun in 2003, after a controversial event known as the "pupil's" uprising.  The US military had turned a primary school into their city headquarters in April 2003. When 200 demonstrators ga...

Iraq happy on departure of US army

Peoples of Iraq are happy with the upcoming departure of US and NATO army from their beloved country.     Hundreds of people in the Iraqi city of Fallujah have taken to the streets to celebrate the impending withdrawal of US troops from the country.  Demonstrators rallied across the city on Wednesday, shouting slogans in support of the "resistance", a reference to the campaign by Iraqi fighters in the city that was a bastion of opposition against the US-led invasion. Some protesters burned US and Israeli flags while others held up banners and placards inscribed with phrases such as "Now we are free" and "Fallujah is the flame of the resistance". In the centre of the city surrounded by the Iraqi army, protesters carried posters bearing photos of apparent fighters, faces covered and carrying weapons. They also held up pictures of US soldiers killed and military vehicles destroyed in the two major offensives against the city in 2004. Th...

US, NATO to leave Iraq by December

US President Barack Obama has declared that American troops will leave Iraq this month "with honour and with their heads held high", while at the same time warning the country's neighbours not to interfere in its progress. In a press conference with Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, at the White House on Monday, Obama said: "This is a historic moment. A war is ending." The president also said that the US would leave behind a sovereign and self-reliant Iraq, and that the removal of troops after nearly nine years would begin a new chapter in the relationship between the two countries - warning neighbouring nations not to interfere. "Our strong presence in the Middle East endures," Obama said. "And the United States will never waver in the defence of our allies, our partners and our interests."  "That is the concern, that at the end of the day the Iraqi officials have much closer ties to the Iranians." Obama ...

Canada to depart from Kyoto Protocol

Canada will formally withdraw its stand from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the country's minister of the environment Peter Kent has said, making it the first nation to pull out of the global treaty.  The protocol "does not represent a way forward for Canada" and would have forced it to take "radical and irresponsible choices", Mr. Kent said in Toronto on Monday. He added that it was a mistake for Canada to have signed up for Kyoto: "As we have said, Kyoto for Canada is in the past ... We are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto." "The Kyoto protocol does not cover the world's two largest emitters, China and the US, and therefore cannot work," he said. China, which argues that it should be exempt from emissions reduction targets because it is a developing nation, said Canada's decision was "regrettable" and went against international efforts to tackle climate change. "We...

World Bank in brief

The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. Its mission is to fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results and to help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors. WB is not a bank in the common sense; it is made up of two unique development institutions owned by 187 member countries: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA).  Each institution plays a different but collaborative role in advancing the vision of inclusive and sustainable globalization. The IBRD aims to reduce poverty in middle-income and creditworthy poorer countries, while IDA focuses on the world's poorest countries. Their work is complemented by that of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Invest...

UN Development Motto: 8 MDGs by 2015

These are challenges to poor countries to demonstrate good governance and a commitment to poverty reduction. And these are challenges to wealthy countries to make good on their promise to support economic and social development of the world. The Millennium Development Goals have captured the world's attention, in part because they can be measured.   In September 2000, leaders from 189 nations agreed on a vision for the future: a world with less poverty, hunger, and disease; greater survival prospects for mothers and their infants; better-educated children; equal opportunities for women; and a healthier environment—a world in which developed and developing countries worked in partnership for the betterment of all.  This vision took the shape of eight Millennium Development Goals, which provide a framework for development planning for countries around the world, and time-bound targets by which progress can be measured.  To help track progress on the commi...

89 died in Indian Hospital fire

At least 89 killed so far in the massive fire at AMRI private hospital in Kolkata, at West Bengal of India.  Nearly, 160 patients were admitted in the Hopital, The Times Of India said quoting hospital sources.  Additional director general, Fire Services, D Biswas was quoted as saying that patients who died were admitted in the critical care and orthopaedic units and were unable to move.  The private nursing home said a "sudden fire was detected in the basement" of an annex around 3:30am. Among the dead, there are 70 patients and three staff of the multi-storeyed private hospital which turned into a towering inferno in the early morning. The bodies of the other victims are being identified. The fire spread fast from the basement of the hospital, engulfing one ward after the other and trapping hundreds of people. While many patients died of burns, several others died due to suffocation. Kolkata police said 60 patients were rescued and shifted to other ...

Samsung's legal victory on Apple in Australia

Samsung Electronics' tablet computer, the Galaxy Tab, will be available to consumers in Australia in the coming days, after the South Korean electronics giant scored a victory against Apple in a legal battle that had blocked the product from going on sale. Samsung welcomed the court's decision and said the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be ready for sale in Australia in time for the Christmas shopping season. The Australian High Court denied Apple's appeal to an earlier court ruling that overturned an injunction placed on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 citing violation of its patent.  The recent ruling is expected to give Samsung a stronger footing in a legal battle it is involved in with Apple in several countries across the world, including the United States.  "The Full Court of Australia decision on November 30 clearly affirmed our view that Apple's claims lack merit and that an injunction should not have been imposed on the Galaxy Tab 10.1," Samsun...

How NASA discovered second Earth

Researchers find planets by examining the brightness of stars as a function of time; brightness drops when a potential planet crosses the star. Three transits are required for a planet confirmation. The period of the transit of the newly discovered second earth 'Kepler 22-b' was 7.4 hours. It did not appear to give off its own light, indicating it is a planet and not a star. Scientists do not yet have a measurement of the mass of Kepler 22-b, which would tell them more about the composition of the planet. This summer, when the planet's star will be high in the sky, ground-based telescopes can attempt to get its mass. The planet is even more mysterious because its radius is between that of Earth and Uranus and Neptune, both of which have radii about four times the size of Earth's. So we don't know what a planet in this size range typically looks like. Is life restricted to Earth, or could it exist somewhere like Kepler 22-b? It may be that the char...

NASA discovers second habitable Earth !

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 'a new Earth' for the first time in the history of science of the world.  The newly discovered 'Kepler-22b' is the first confirmed planet in the "habitable zone," the area around a star where a planet could exist with liquid water on its surface. The planet's radius is about 2.4 times that of the Earth. It is located about 600 light years away. Its orbital period is shorter than that of the Earth: a "year" on Kepler-22b is 290 days instead of 365. There were two other planets confirmed this year by other projects in the habitable zone, but their stars are much cooler than our Sun, and their orbits are more like that of Venus or Mars, scientists say. Kepler-22b is 15% closer to its star and we are to the Sun. But since Kepler-22b's star is dimmer, lower in temperature and smaller than our Sun, researchers' modeling suggests it is a similar temperature to the Earth, said Bill Borucki, Ke...

32 died in Darjeeling Bridge collapse

At least 32 people have died and 132 injured after a bridge collapsed at a political event in India's tea-producing region of Darjeeling on Saturday night.  More than 150 villagers were standing on the bridge for talks by local separatist leaders on Saturday night when it collapsed.  Officials say the victims fell at least 70ft (21m) into the fast-flowing Rangeet Khola river. The army, fire brigade and police helped residents in the rescue effort. Up to 60 people were rescued on Saturday night, but the search on Sunday was mainly focused on areas down river, reports say.  Government help People had gathered in the village of Bijonbari, 30km (20miles) from Darjeeling, to listen to speeches by leaders of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) party. The GJM is fighting for a separate state for the tea-producing Darjeeling hills. "A cultural programme was being held on one side of the bridge, while a meeting was being held on the other," GJM General Secretary...

American war in Iraq ends, troops to back home by 2011: Obama

President Barack Obama on Friday (October 21, 2011) announced that virtually all U.S. troops will come home from Iraq by the end of the year -- at which point he can declare an end to America's long and costly war in that Middle Eastern nation. "After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over," Obama said. "The coming months will be a season of homecomings. Our troops in Iraq will definitely be home for the holidays."  Of the 39,000 troops in Iraq, about 150, a negligible force, will remain to assist in arms sales, a U.S. official told CNN. The rest will be out of Iraq by December 31.  The president said he was making good on his 2008 campaign pledge to end a war that has divided the nation since it began in 2003 and claimed more than 4,400 American lives.The announcement also came after talks that might have allowed a continued major military presence broke down amid disputes about whether U.S. troops would be immune to prosecution by...

Saudi Crown Prince Sultan dies in New York

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud died in New York due to illness, officials said Saturday (October 22, 2011), raising succession questions in the key oil-producing country of the world.  No other details about his death were immediately available, but arrangements are under way to transport his body back to Saudi Arabia, officials said.  Crown Prince Sultan, thought to be in his 80s, was Saudi Arabia's minister of defense, and was one of the top figures in the Saudi kingdom. He's had various medical issues in recent years. In 2009, he was in New York for surgery for an undisclosed illness and had also flown to Morocco for medical treatment over the years.  The country's royal court released a statement about the death Saturday. "King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud mourns the death of his brother and his Crown Prince ... Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud," the statement said.  The statement also said he died "outsi...

NATO feels proud of achievement in Libya War

"We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with the greatest of care," Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."  NATO also called an end to its air war in Libya. At an understated and sparsely-attended news conference late on Friday (October 21, 2011), NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decision to call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31.  Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital.  The NATO operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday with French warplanes blasting Gaddafi's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand in Sirte.  NTC officials have said Gaddafi later died of wo...

Gaddafi family wants dead bodies

The clan of Muammar Gaddafi demanded a chance to bury the body that lay on display in a meat locker after a death as brutal and chaotic as his 42-year rule.  In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gaddafi television station, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mo'tassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte. "We call on the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.  Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital. "We mounted a complex operation...

Gadhafi raised hands, begged for life and died after an hour

Dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe, a wounded Moammar Gadhafi raised his hands and begged revolutionary fighters: "Don't kill me, my sons." Within an hour, he was dead, but not before jubilant Libyans had vented decades of hatred by pulling the eccentric dictator's hair and parading his bloodied body on the hood of a truck. The death Thursday of Gadhafi, two months after he was driven from power and into hiding, decisively buries the nearly 42-year regime that had turned the oil-rich country into an international pariah and his own personal fiefdom. It also thrusts Libya into a new age in which its transitional leaders must overcome deep divisions and rebuild nearly all its institutions from scratch to achieve dreams of democracy. "We have been waiting for this historic moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed," Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said in the capital of Tripoli. "I would like to call on Libyans to put aside the g...

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi killed: instant views from world

Deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has been killed, interim Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told reporters in Tripoli on Thursday (October 20, 2011). There are conflicting reports surrounding the circumstances of his killing, which reportedly happened in or near Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte on Thursday. Libya's ambassador to the United Kingdom says that Gadhafi's body is in Misrata, Libya. A different source – a spokesman for a member of the Tripoli military council – says that one of Gadhafi's sons, Mutassim, and Moammar Gadhafi's chief of intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, also have been killed.  A grisly video that aired on the Al Jazeera Arabic network appears to show a lifeless Gadhafi with a wound to his head. A photograph distributed by the news agency Agence France-Presse also appeared to show the longtime dictator severely wounded.  CNN could not independently verify the authenticity of the images. In another major development, revo...