NEW DELHI, Apr 4: Steady conditions prevailed at the wholesale market in the national capital today as prices continued to move in a tight range on scattered dealers and settled around previous levels.
Muzaffarnagar and Muradnagar gur markets also ended flat on some support.
Marketmen said increased arrivals from manufacturing areas along with sporadic demand mainly held gur prices on last levels.
Following are today’s rates (in Rs per quintal):
Gur chakku Rs 2,400-2,500, pedi Rs 2,450-2,500, dhayya Rs 2,600-2,700 and shakkar Rs 2,700-2,800.
Muzaffarnagar: Rasket Rs 2,000-2,100, chakku Rs 2,150-2,300, khurpa Rs 2,050-2,100 and Ladoo Rs 2,250-2,300.
Muradnagar: Pedi Rs 2,200-2,250 and dhayya Rs 2,250-2,300. (PTI)
Gur prices remain steady on subdued trading
Shakespeare’s Julies Caesar in Dogri
O P Sharma
The book under review entitled “Shakespeare Da Julius Caesar” is the translation of legendary English dramatist’s famous theatre play ” Julius Caesar” into Dogri by an eminent writer Madan Gopal Padha. This a creative translation work which has brought the classic work of William Shakespeare to the wide Dogri readership and it is also expected that now this play will be staged.
The book has been written by the author after a hard labour and research work and has been published on the eve of 450th Birth Anniversary of greatest English writer and playwright, William Shakespeare who was born on April 23, 1561 at village Stratford-on-Avon in England and since it is situated on the river Avon and so the village is having Avon with it just as Jammu city situated on bank of river Tawi is known as Jammu Tawi.
Classic Drama
William Shakespeare’s most outstanding dramas are: Julius Casesar (1599), As you like it (1600) Hamlet (1601), Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1606), The Tempest (1611) and many other outstanding works which are classics of the English literatures.
Mr. Padha had been student of English language under the able guidance of late Dr. Laxmi Narain Sharma who kindled in him deep interest in the English literature and particularly the famous dramas of tallest English writer William Shakespeare. It was in that period that Madan Gopal Padha had dreamed to translate Julius Caesar into the mother tongue, Dogri. It may be added that Dr. Laxmi Narain Sharma was highly knowledgeable of English literature and was equally versatile in Dogri language and its literature.
Creative Translation
In writing this book in Dogri, Mr. Padha told me that his dream of student days has been realised after retirement from the banking service, he has now completed this task. This book has added new dimensions to Dogri language. He felt proud that he has translated the most interesting and informative Shakespeare’s drama for wider Dogri readership and the audience. He has dedicated this work to Prof. Laxmi Narain Sharma and also to the Dogri language.
Shakespeare’s often-quoted words are:
All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players.
The play Julius Caesar is a classic drama of English literature which will be now available to the Dogri knowing people. It is a mirror to the social, political, cultural conditions in the Britain and revolves around a fascinating story with real-life characters. The language in the drama is superb and its themes are universal appeal. The stage and setting are unique and are characteristic of English life of that period. The book has the entire drama in the Dogri language which is absorbing and one likes to read it in a single sitting.
Universal Appeal
The translation work is of quality and its printing is also impressive. Mr. Padha has already brought out a book in Dogri titled Shisha having informative essays of interest for many readers. This book is a solid contribution of Madan Gopal Padha to the Dogri language and its literature. He was in the Banking service and after retirement is completely devoted to the promotion of sweet Dogri language. He is committed and prominent member of the Dogri Sanstha, the pioneer organisation for promotion and projection of Dogri language and Duggar’s culture. Mr. Padha is now having his hand on another publication which will be of essays in Dogri.
This 187-page book has already created an impact in the literary circles. This well-written book will be of much interest for the academician, students, theater groups and also the common citizens.
(Starline Syndicate Service)
UN Security Council to discuss pause in air strikes on Yemen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 4: The UN Security Council will meet today to discuss a Russian proposal for humanitarian pauses in the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen, diplomats said.
Russia called for the meeting of the 15-member council amid growing alarm over the rising civilian death toll from the fighting in Yemen.
UN aid chief Valerie Amos said Thursday she was “extremely concerned” about the fate of civilians trapped in fierce fighting after aid agencies reported that 519 people had been killed and nearly 1,700 injured in two weeks.
The UN children’s agency this week said at least 62 children had been killed and 30 injured over the past week in Yemen, and that more of them were being recruited as child soldiers.
Alexey Zaytsev, spokesman for the Russian mission at the United Nations, said the closed-door consultations would be about “possible humanitarian pauses in air strikes.”
The meeting is scheduled for 2030 IST.
Violence has sharply escalated in Yemen following a Saudi-led air campaign launched on March 26 to stop an advance by Shiite Huthi rebels that forced President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia.
UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has said that the country was “on the verge of total collapse.”
Aid groups have raised alarm over civilian casualties following an air strike on a camp for displaced people and the bombing of a dairy. Dozens were killed in both attacks.
The United Nations is backing Hadi as Yemen’s legitimate leader in the face of the Huthi uprising that has plunged the poor Arab state deeper into chaos.
The Huthis seized power in the capital Sanaa in February and last month advanced on the port city of Aden, Hadi’s stronghold, forcing him to go into exile.
Saudi-led air strikes yesterday pushed back the Huthis, which Riyadh maintains are backed by Iran.
Russia’s request to halt the air strikes came as Gulf countries were pushing for a UN resolution that would impose an arms embargo and sanctions on the Huthis.
But the draft text came up against strong opposition from Russia, which proposed amendments to apply the arms embargo to the entire country and to limit sanctions.
The UN’s peace envoy for Yemen, Jamal Benomar, flew to New York this week for meetings amid reports that Gulf countries were demanding that he be replaced. (AGENCIES)
Freight rates decline on easy availability of trucks
NEW DELHI, Apr 4: Freight rates for nine-tonne pay load section declined by Rs 1,000 in the local truck transport market today on easy availability of trucks against restricted cargo movements.
Transporters said besides restricted cargo movements, ample position of trucks in the markets mainly led to the fall in freight rates for select destinations.
Delhi to Hyderabad, Ludhiana and Chandigarh freight rates were down by Rs 100 each to Rs 54,000 Rs 17,000 and Rs 16,000, respectively.
Rates to Patna, Baroda and Gwalior also fell by Rs 1,000 each to Rs 23,000, Rs 21,000, Rs 14,000, respectively.
Following are today’s freights per nine-tonne load (in Rs):
Jaipur 16,000 Hyderabad 54,000 Chandigarh 16,000 Vijayawada 58,000 Ludhiana 17,000 Bangalore 63,000 Kanpur 17,000 Chennai 64,000 Indore 19,000 Mysore 65,000 Ahmedabad 20,000 Pondicherry 65,000 Baroda 21,000 Coimbatore 69,000 Patna 23,000 Kochi 73,000 Surat 24,000 Thiruvananthapuram 77,000 Mumbai 25,000 Goa 50,000 Pune 26,000 Gwalior 14,000 Kolkata 29,000 Guwahati 51,000. (PTI)
California man gets 18 years for US ‘revenge porn’ site
LOS ANGELES, Apr 4: A California man who posted thousands of sexually explicit photos of men and women on a “revenge porn” website was jailed for 18 years in what was described as the first case of its kind in US criminal history.
San Diego man Kevin Bollaert, 28, was convicted in February of running a website that hosted more than 10,000 explicit photographs.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris said it marked the first criminal prosecution of a cyber-exploitation website operator in the United States.
Bollaert’s website — ugotposted.Com — was launched in December 2012, enabling photographs to be posted without the subject’s permission.
Bollaert ran a parallel site that then extorted individuals up to USD 350 each to remove photographs from the revenge porn website.
Victims of the scam spoke in court in San Diego yesterday as they described the damage done to their reputations.
“My life has gone through a down-spiral,” one of Bollaert’s victims told Judge David Gill, adding that she had been ostracised by her mother because of the shame she brought on her family.
Another victim, Nicole, added: “I have a hard time acknowledging Mr Bollaert as a human being. I can’t get away from the devastation.”
Unlike other revenge porn websites where photos are anonymous, ugotposted.Com required the poster to include the subject’s full name, location, age and Facebook profile link.
Bollaert created a second website, changemyreputation.Com, which he used when individuals contacted ugotposted.Com asking for their photos to be removed from the site, earning thousands of dollars in the process.
Bollaert’s parents pleaded for leniency, insisting their son was remorseful. However judge Gill called Bollaert’s conduct “outrageous.”
California attorney general Harris said yesterday’s sentence “makes clear there will be severe consequences for those that profit from the exploitation of victims online.”
“We will continue to be vigilant and investigate and prosecute those who commit these deplorable acts,” she said. (AGENCIES)
Obama and Castro to ‘interact’ at Americas summit: US official
WASHINGTON, Apr 4: US President Barack Obama and Cuban counterpart Raul Castro will have an “interaction” when they attend next week’s Summit of the Americas in Panama, a US official has said.
It will be the first between the two leaders since the historic rapprochement between Havana and Washington.
“Clearly President Obama knew when he made the decision to go to the summit, and he knew that Cuba had been invited to the summit… That there would be an interaction,” US State Department official Roberta Jacobson said at the Brookings Institution yesterday.
“The leaders are together a lot of the time. And so there will be an interaction with Raul Castro,” she added, declining to speculate about the nature of any possible meeting between the two leaders.
But she added Obama’s only confirmed meeting was with Panama leader Juan Carlos Varela.
“None of the president’s meetings are scheduled other than his bilateral with President Varela as the host,” she said.
“So I don’t know exactly what kind of an interaction that will be. But they’ve obviously already spoken on the phone… and there’s been a lot of interaction since then at a lower level.”
In separate remarks, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf expressed scepticism that the thaw in US-Cuba relations may lead to the opening of embassies in Havana and Washington before next week’s summit, which takes place on April 10-11.
Asked to give an assessment of the likelihood of embassies being opened before the summit, Harf replied: “It’s not a lot of time, let’s put it that way.”
The United States and Cuba have already held three rounds of talks since January on restoration of diplomatic relations and the reopening of their embassies.
Washington had initially targeted a reopening of the embassies in time for the Summit of the Americas. (AGENCIES)
Kriya Yoga
Siddarth Dubey
The illumined sages of India discovered the spiritual science of Kriya Yoga in the long forgotten past. Lord Krishna extols it in the Bhagavad Gita. The sage Patanjali speaks of it in his Yoga Sutras. Paramahansa Yogananda has stated that this ancient meditation method was also known to Jesus Christ, as well as to disciples such as St. John, St. Paul, and others. Kriya Yoga was lost for centuries in the dark ages, and reintroduced in modern times by Mahavatar Babaji, whose disciple Lahiri Mahasaya (1828-1895) was the first to teach it openly in our era. Later, Babaji asked Lahiri Mahasaya’s disciple, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri (1855-1936), to train Paramahansa Yogananda and send him to the West to give this soul-revealing technique to the world. Experiencing the divinity within our own souls, claiming divine joy as our own joy – this is what the Kriya Yoga teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda offer to each of us. Formerly available only to a faithful few who renounced the world and lived solitary lives as ascetics, the great ones of India have now made the ancient Kriya science available to all sincere seekers worldwide through the instrumentality of Paramahansa Yogananda and the spiritual organization he established. Initially, students learn three basic techniques of meditation and Paramahansajis principles of balanced spiritual living. This gradual introduction has a purpose. A mountain climber seeking to scale the Himalayas must first acclimatize and condition himself before ascending the peaks. So the seeker needs this initial period to acclimatize his or her habits and thoughts, condition the mind with concentration and devotion, and practice directing the body’s life energy. Then the yogi is prepared to ascend the spinal highway of realization. The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, saccaral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment. Every time you meditate deeply on God, beneficial changes take place in the patterns of your brain. Suppose you are a financial failure or a moral failure or a spiritual failure. Through deep meditation, affirming, “I and my Father are one,” you will know that you are the child of God. Hold on to that ideal. Meditate until you feel a great joy. When joy strikes your heart, God has answered your broadcast to Him; He is responding to your prayers and positive thinking. Kriya Yoga has its basis in the breath and the chakras (energy centres in the spine). The system is developed and tested through thousands of years. We experience inner silence, which is the foundation for peace, happiness and self-realization. Prayer with devotion is a wonderful means of opening oneself to the freely flowing blessings of God, a necessary link of man’s life to the Infinite Source of all benefaction. Untying the cord of breath which binds the soul to the body, Kriya serves to prolong life and enlarge the consciousness to infinity. The yoga method overcomes the tug of war between the mind and the matter-bound senses, and frees the devotee to reinherit his eternal kingdom. He knows his real nature is bound neither by physical encasement nor by breath, symbol of the mortal enslavement to air, to nature’s elemental compulsions. Kriya, controlling the mind directly through the life force, is the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue of approach to the Infinite. In contrast to the slow, uncertain “bullock cart” theological path to God, Kriya may justly be called the “airplane” route.
Biosensing platform can help detect HIV, Ebola
LONDON, Apr 4: Researchers have developed a new biosensing platform that could be used to remotely detect and determine treatment options for HIV, E-coli, Staphylococcus aureas and other bacteria.
Using a drop of blood from a fingerprick, the biosensing platform provides clinically relevant specificity, sensitivity and detection of pathogens from whole blood and plasma.
The thin, lightweight and flexible materials developed by the researchers can be fabricated and operated without the need for expensive infrastructure and skilled personnel, potentially solving real-world healthcare problems for both developed and developing countries.
Using this technology, they also have developed a phone app that could detect bacteria and disease in the blood using images from a cellphone that could easily be analysed from anywhere in the world.
The researchers address the limitations of current paper and flexible material-based platforms and explain how they have integrated cellulose paper and flexible polyester films as new diagnostic tools to detect bioagents in whole blood, serum and peritoneal fluid.
They employed three different paper and flexible material-based platforms incorporated with electrical and optical sensing modalities.
They were able to demonstrate how these new materials can be widely applied to a variety of settings including medical diagnostic and biology laboratories.
Using paper and flexible substrates as materials for biosensors, Waseem Asghar, assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University, co-first author on the study, and his colleagues have identified a new rapid and cost-effective way to diagnose diseases and monitor treatment in point-of-care settings.
They have been able to show how their new platforms are uniquely able to isolate and detect multiple biotargets selectively, sensitively and repeatedly from diverse biological mediums using antibodies.
“There is a dire need for robust, portable, disposable and inexpensive biosensing platforms for clinical care, especially in developing countries with limited resources,” said Asghar.
Existing paper and flexible material-based platforms use colorimetric, fluorometric and electrochemical approaches that require complex labelling steps to amplify their signal, are very costly to fabricate and also require expensive equipment and infrastructure.
The finding was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. (PTI)
Depression and insomnia strongest risk factors for nightmares
WASHINGTON, Apr 4: Symptoms of depression and insomnia are the strongest predictors of having frequent nightmares, a new study has found.
Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland and the Finnish National Institute of Health and Welfare analysed data from two independent cross-sectional surveys of the Finnish general adult population conducted in 2007 and 2012.
Participants were 13,922 adults between 25 and 74 years of age.
Researchers found that 3.9 per cent of participants reported having frequent nightmares during the previous 30 days, including 4.8 per cent of women and 2.9 per cent of men.
Frequent nightmares were reported by 28.4 per cent of participants with severe depressive symptoms and 17.1 per cent of those with frequent insomnia.
Further analysis that adjusted for potential confounders found that the strongest independent risk factors for nightmares were insomnia, exhaustion and the depressive symptom of “negative attitude toward self.”
“Our study shows a clear connection between well-being and nightmares,” said lead author Nils Sandman, a researcher in the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Turku.
“This is most evident in the connection between nightmares and depression, but also apparent in many other analyses involving nightmares and questions measuring life satisfaction and health,” Sandman said.
Sandman noted that the cross-sectional study did not allow for an examination of causality.
“It might be possible that nightmares could function as early indicators of onset of depression and therefore have previously untapped diagnostic value,” he said.
“Also, because nightmares, insomnia and depression often appear together, would it be possible to treat all of these problems with an intervention directed solely toward nightmares?” Sandman said.
The results are published in the journal Sleep. (PTI)
Aurobindo Pharma gets USFDA nod for Sildenafil injection
NEW DELHI, Apr 4: Aurobindo Pharma has received approval from the US health regulator to manufacture and market Sildenafil injection, used for treating pulmonary arterial hypertension, in the American market.
The company has received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) to manufacture and market Sildenafil injection in the US market, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd said in a statement.
The company’s product is a generic version of pharma major Pfizer’s Revatio injection.
Sildenafil injection is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension who are temporarily unable to take oral therapy, but are otherwise clinically and haemodynamically stable.
“This is the 9th abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) to be approved out of Unit IV formulation facility in Hyderabad… And will be marketed and sold by Aurobindo’s wholly-owned subsidiary AuroMedics Pharma LLC,” the company said. (PTI)