Voice of Asia Oct 25, 2013 by VoiceOf Asia

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NSA: America’s powerful electronic spy service WASHINGTON (AFP) America’s ultra-secret National Security Agency reluctantly finds itself in the headlines amid a wave of disclosures from exintelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has exposed the service’s vast electronic spying operation. France and Mexico both demanded explanations Monday after the latest revelations from Snowden alleged the NSA secretly monitored tens of millions of phone communications in France and hacked into former Mexican president Felipe Calderon’s email account. Hollywood directors and novelists have made the CIA famous for its undercover agents in the field, but in the digital era, the high-tech NSA may represent the most far-reaching arm of the country’s 16 spy agencies, with its intelligence at the center of decision-making and military planning. The agency uses super computers, linguists and code-breaking mathematicians to oversee what experts say is the world’s most powerful digital espionage organization, scooping up phone conversations and email traffic relevant to “foreign targets.” Created after World War II to avoid another Pearl Harborstyle surprise attack, the NSA “has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created,” wrote author James Bamford, whose books helped lift the lid on the agency’s work. With code-breaking services in a disorganized jumble, President Harry Truman set up the NSA through a secret directive in 1952, allowing the agency virtually free reign to snoop on the Soviet Union and to track communications entering and leaving the United States. Employees at the secrecyminded agency would say they worked at the Defense Department, earning the NSA nicknames such as “No Such Agency” and “Never Say Anything.” While the CIA may break into

a building to plant a bug, the NSA is in charge of information “in motion,” vacuuming up data transiting telecommunication cables or radio waves. Congress imposed more oversight and stricter legal guidelines in the 1970s after a Senate inquiry exposed a string of abuses, including the use of the NSA to spy on Americans involved in anti-war and other protests. Not only is the NSA in charge of all manner of “signals intelligence,” the agency’s chief also heads up the military’s new Cyber Command for digital warfare, and the service plays a crucial role in securing computer networks against a cyber attack. The NSA’s budget remains classiﬁed but it is believed to be the largest in the intelligence community. Funding doubled since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, according to the book “Top Secret America” by journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin. The agency, with its sprawling headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, northeast of Washington, has its own exit on the freeway for employees only. The number of NSA workers is also a secret, though one top ofﬁcial once joked the workforce was somewhere between 37,000 and a billion. Since the advent of the Internet and the demand for intelligence on Al-Qaeda after 9/11, the NSA has steadily grown in importance, hiring tens of thousands of contractors -- like Snowden -- to manage extensive operations that require cryptologists, linguists, electrical engineers and other technicians. In its early years, the NSA inherited a program called “Shamrock,” in which the agency intercepted up to 150,000 telegraph messages a month, with the help of American companies who agreed to the arrangement despite worries about its legality. Now, each day the NSA intercepts more than a billion emails, phone calls and other types of communications, according to “Top Secret America.”

Voice of Asia (USPS 010-215) (ISSN#10705058) is published every Friday (for a subscription rate of $30 per year) by Free Press LLC, 8303 SW Freeway, Suite # 325, Houston, TX 77074. Tel: 713-774-5140. Fax: 713774-5143. Periodical postage paid at Houston, Texas. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Voice of Asia, 8303 SW Freeway, Suite # 325, Houston, TX 77074 It is the policy of Voice of Asia to publish letters to the editor which evidence a variety of viewpoints. The opinions expressed in any particular letter to the editor are not necessarily those of the management. Voice of Asia welcomes letters in reply to issues raised in letters to editor. In as much letters to the editor are not articles written or researched by members of Voice of Asia, it is not the policy of the Voice of Asia to perform any investigation or conﬁrmation of any facts or allegations contained in letters to the editor. Moreover, Voice of Asia reserves the right to edit letters to the editor as necessary to correct errors of fact, punctuation, spelling and to comply with space constraints. - The Publisher

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October 20, 2013 HOUSTON, Texas — New and mounting evidence indicates that South Asia is now under siege from a group of six tropical infectious diseases. These tropical infections, all transmitted by insects, are ﬁnding a new “ground zero” on the subcontinent.

Why India and Pakistan must be united on health care Commentary: Not surprisingly, India and Pakistan have nuclear bombs but few vaccines for insect-borne tropical diseases.

Unless India and Pakistan can urgently establish an infrastructure for engaging in meaningful international scientiﬁc cooperation and redirect resources from nuclear weapons to tropical medicine, such diseases will continue to kill and disable hundreds of thousands in the region. Dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, chikungunya, elephantiasis, and visceral leishmaniasiss are not exactly household words. More of us have heard of malaria, but not as it relates to these diseases. Essentially, all of these diseases are tropical, either viral or parasitic diseases transmitted by mosquitoes or sandﬂies. Recent data from academic scientists and the World Health Organization have revealed some astonishing facts.

A laborer sleeps under a mosquito net in Kolkata, India. Mosquito-borne illnesses kill hundreds of thousands in India every year.

Malaria now kills more than 200,000 people every year in India alone. More than 150 million dengue fever cases occur annually in South Asia, representing almost 40 percent of the world’s cases.

Extreme poverty remains a key factor, and today almost 600 million people in South Asia — almost half of the world’s poorest — live below the poverty line set by the World Bank.

Dengue is a mosquito-transmitted viral illness associated with fever, headache, rash and joint and muscle pain; in its most severe forms, it can progress to shock and death.

Meaningful international cooperation will be required to treat and prevent South Asia’s killer tropical diseases. Nascent efforts are underway through an agreement among India, Bangladesh and Nepal to cooperate on kala-azar control, especially in the border regions of these countries. But we need much more.

South Asia also has half the world’s cases of Japanese encephalitis, a related viral infection transmitted by mosquitoes and also an important cause of death. Chikungunya, yet another mosquito-borne viral infection, has emerged in the region, too. Visceral leishmaniasis — also known as kala-azar — is a highly lethal disease that resembles leukemia. Three-quarters of all of the world’s cases also occur in South Asia. Together, these insect-transmitted tropical diseases kill more people in South Asia than HIV/AIDS, and yet few people have heard of them. The huge economic toll is just now being examined. The forces that promote the emergence of South Asia’s insect-transmitted tropical diseases include population growth, urbanization, lack of mosquito control and surveillance, air travel and possibly climate change.

The pipeline of new drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines for South Asia’s tropical diseases is basically empty. We cannot rely on multinational pharmaceutical companies, because South Asian markets are too modest for them, and disease targets such as leishmaniasis and other neglected tropical diseases are not a priority. A collaboration between the two neighboring countries could lead to the establishment of a joint Indo-Pakistani center for tropical infectious diseases that might be physically located on the border they share, or even in Kashmir. It would be charged with producing the pharmaceuticals needed to combat its six major diseases, possibly in partnership with industry, and for tracking their progression in South Asia. Operation costs for such a

ndia seems to have acquired the dubious distinction of being the leader of many demeaning trends, be it child labour, underage marriages and now we learn slavery. Although the practice had been abolished long ago, a new study shows that an estimated 29.8 million people live in slavery around the world. And nearly half this number is in India. Fourteen million Indians, the highest number in the world, live in conditions of slavery. This includes those trapped in debt, in forced marriages and those who have been trafficked, according to the Global Slavery Index 2013 compiled by the Walk Free Foundation, a human rights organisation based in Australia. However, India can take cold comfort in the fact that it ranks fourth in terms of the prevalence of slavery as a proportion of the population. Mauritania, Haiti and Pakistan are ranked above India in the 162-nation survey.

center would be about $100 million annually, based on the experience of running other adequately funded international product development partnerships. India and Pakistan each have the scientiﬁc talent and the funds needed to support an international center. Technical sophistication enables India to produce childhood vaccines for Africa. The scientiﬁc communities of both India and Pakistan have mastered the complicated process required to produce 200 or more nuclear weapons, according to the Ploughshares Fund. Adequate funding would be available if these countries would shift spending from nuclear weapons to combating tropical diseases. In 2011 alone, India and Pakistan invested the staggering amount of $7 billion on nuclear weapons. By comparison, $7 billion dollars is more than twice what the entire world invested in neglected disease research in 2011. India spent 100-fold more on producing nuclear weapons than on neglected tropical disease research. Not surprisingly, India and Pakistan have nuclear bombs but few vaccines for insect-borne tropical diseases. Neither India nor Pakistan can go on with what the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has provocatively deemed a “theft of public

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resources.” Both nations have a sophisticated and accomplished scientific infrastructure, and have produced scientists with global reputations. A shift in national priorities is in order. By one estimate, India urgently needs 15,000 infectious disease specialists to meet its population needs. An international Indo-Pakistan center for tropical disease research and development, biotechnology and training, possibly located in Kashmir or somewhere along the IndiaPakistan border, would create new technologies and experts in tropical infectious disease that could benefit South Asia’s 1.5 billion people affected by disease. Such a center could be established and maintained for only 10 percent of current nuclear weapons expenditures, and simultaneously create a new generation of scientific diplomacy for the region — by channeling R&D to actually promote IndoPakistani relations rather than the hostile status quo. Peter Hotez is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He is president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and a fellow in disease and poverty at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

It’s time to end human bondage in the country all forms of slavery are prevalent in India. While many remain trapped in debt bondage in their own villages, others are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation, begging and domestic servitude. The recent assault of a 15-yearold maid in the upscale Vasant Kunj area in Delhi was just the tip of the modern-day domestic slavery iceberg. Every year, thousands of women and children are trafficked from states

like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal primarily for sexual exploitation and also for domestic work. Despite a 2006 ban on child labour, children can still be found working in brick kilns, cracker factories and coal mines which are among the many hazardous industries with appalling working conditions. Bride-buying, though a non-labour form of slavery, is practised in Haryana and Punjab where the sex ratio

From inter-generational bonded labour to the worst forms of child labour, from commercial sexual exploitation to forced marriage, almost

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is highly skewed. There should be strict implementation of existing laws that will ensure that people who perpetuate modern-day slavery are severely punished. If India aspires to be a global power, its claims to such a status cannot be taken seriously if many of its own people continue to live in conditions of medieval drudgery. Courtesy: Hindustan Times

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Nishtha Sharma Awarded GS Gold Award by Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council

Nishtha Sharma

ishtha Sharma is a senior at Clear Horizons Early College High School (CHECHS) and she will be graduating this year not only with her High School diploma but also with her Associates degree in Life Sciences. She has been involved in Girl Scouts as a young Daisy, Brownie and Junior in Pittsburgh, PA. Six years ago she moved to Houston, TX with her parents and little sister and became a GS Senior and Ambassador of Ms. Rebecca Grime’s troop # 586. When Nishtha was a sophomore she watched an inspiring documentary called “The Science of Healing with Dr. Esther Sternberg”. This documentary studies the connection between the mind and body in order to understand how our brains, emotions and environment inﬂuence healing. After watching this documentary, Nishtha decided to apply learning’s from documentary to real life applications such as to improve the healthcare facilities

Guests who attend will also be entered to win three grand prizes, including iPhone dock, iPod Nano and Amazon Kindle. ABOUT BEST IN CLASS EDUCATION CENTER Based in Seattle, Best in Class ensures that it can “Give the Gift of a Lifetime,” and is dedicated to providing superior supplemental education to guarantee students’ individual success. The brand’s thoughtful methods, quality instructors and customizable approach have garnered great attention and traction in the educational market. Best in Class’ unique

canvas paintings were hung inside the patient recovery area of the Cancer Center, for the breast cancer patients, so they could feel confident about their inner beauty and embrace their natural body after their chemotherapy was completed. The strong, motivating, encouraging, positive and powerful quotes on one the paintings will also help these patients greatly. These famous quotes will remind them about their high level of confidence and desire to live and fulfill their life dream(s). Nishtha is confident that patients will feel better psychologically, and they can recover from their illness faster. She has received the notification of her Gold Award from Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council on August of 2013. Nishtha sincerely thanks her Gold Award Advisor Ms. Terri Castillo, project advisor Ms. Coleen White, her troop leader Ms. Rebecca Grimes and project team comprising several of Clear Horizons Early College High School Art Club members and Teachers. By completing this project, Nishtha has contributed significantly towards improving the Cancer Center’s settings and ultimately added towards speedy recovery of cancer patients at Memorial Hermann

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HCC and UT Tyler now producing engineers in West Houston HOUSTON (October 23, 2013) - Responding to the need for more engineers in the years to come, Houston Community College and The University of Texas at Tyler have partnered to provide a seamless educational pathway that will increase the number of engineers and reduce the cost of an engineering education.

Education Center To Open In Katy On Oct. 26 est in Class Education Center (Best in Class), a top-of-the-line education enrichment center focusing on math and English, is proud to announce its expansion to Texas with the opening of its newest center in Katy, led by local resident Ira Giri. The center located at 3750 S. Mason Rd. Suite 600 Katy, TX 77450, will warmly open its doors from 10 am to 4 pm on October 26, 2013 to parents and students. To celebrate, snacks and drinks will be served while parents take advantage of free registration, free placement tests and two free lessons for their children.

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environment. Nishtha’s Gold award project dealt with the interfacial area of art, environmental beautification, human p s y c h o l o g y, recovery from sickness and attitude toward physical settings. She tried to address an issue in healthcare sector which seems simple, therefor ignored sometime but it is extremely important to create highly refined, satisfying and pleasing background in hospital facilities and infrastructure. She picked up highly interesting, psychological and meaningful element of a hospital’s architecture i.e. interior design of a healthcare facility. Based on many statistical and factual data, Nishtha carefully reviewed and assessed the neighborhood healthcare facilities and hospitals. Based on her research she concluded that hospitals need to add more colors to their walls for a positive, patient friendly surrounding for the speedy recovery of their patients. After careful considerations of all of her explorations and assessments of the various hospitals in the community, she decided to innovate and design unique, pleasant, fitting and colorful multiple canvas paintings for the state of the art facility of Cancer Center at Memorial Hermann Hospital since its patient recovery area was lacking satiating and patient friendly surroundings. These multiple exceptional and high quality

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Hospitals Cancer Center. She very much enjoyed doing this Girl Scouts project. Upon the completion of this project, she considers that this project helped me greatly in the development of strong leadership and organization qualities and allowed her to grow her team player and interpersonal skills. Finally, she feels a sigh of satisfaction and honor while helping her own community and society. In recognition of this Gold Award Nishtha has also received multiple congratulatory letters from various Government ofﬁcials including President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Governor Rick Perry, Mayor Annise Parker, and Mayor Tim Pauilissen. About GS Gold Award: The Girl Scout Leadership Experience engages girls in discovering self, connecting with others, and taking action to make the world a better place. Discover, Connect, and Take Action are the three keys to Leadership. Since 1916, Girl Scouts’ highest award has stood for excellence and leadership for girls everywhere. The Girl Scout Gold Award is the highest and most prestigious award that Girl Scout Seniors and Ambassadors can earn.

This program allows HCC students the opportunity to complete an Associate of Science in Engineering Science (ASES) degree with a set graduation plan qualifying them to seamlessly transfer to the UT Tyler engineering program and complete a four-year degree. With the recent opening of the UT Tyler Houston Engineering Center, students now have the convenience of obtaining a bachelor’s degree in engineering while attending classes at HCC’s Alief Hayes Road campus in West Houston. The UT Tyler engineering program offers degrees in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. “At HCC, we are committed to providing programs that put our students to work in areas that Houston needs most. With the reduced costs and West Houston location, we are also attracting people who would not have been able to otherwise realize their dream of becoming an engineer,” said Dr. Zachary Hodges, Houston Community College Northwest President. This collaboration is saving students nearly 50 percent in tuition costs as they may obtain an HCC associates and UT Tyler bachelor’s degree for ap-

proximately $20,000. The program offers other significant advantages to HCC students when considering the cost to transfer to engineering schools nationwide. It is also designed to support the engineering field and the businesses that offer highly skilled job opportunities. “We are excited to be a part of the first collaboration to produce an accredited 2+2 engineering program in the country,” said UT Tyler President Rodney H. Mabry. “The need for highly effective workers in the engineering field exists not only in Houston, but around Texas and the nation. This partnership has a great potential for growth and we look forward to helping provide this area with the quality engineers it needs for years to come.” At HCC, approximately 400 students have declared the ASES major and are taking classes at many of the college’s 22 learning facilities this fall. UT Tyler has 54 students enrolled at the Engineering Center taking classes, which will increase in the spring 2014 semester as more HCC students are registering for their classes. In the partnership agreement, HCC provided facilities for UT Tyler to offer upper division engineering courses on the second floor at the Alief Hayes Road campus. UT Tyler provided upper division instruction, laboratory facilities and appropriate student and business office services for students enrolled in the UT Tyler completion programs.

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‘Waar’ beats ‘Chennai Express’ in Pakistan, sets record

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Sonam Kapoor reacts to father’s comment on future husband

Bollywood diva Sonam Kapoor looked her stylist best at the launch of Fall Holiday ‘13 collection. Tommy Hilﬁger hosted the high fashion event that was graced by the Bollywood beauty

Karachi: Pakistani film revolving around the theme of terrorism in the country has set new record openings at the box office, beating the takings of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan starrer ‘Chennai Express’ at Eid ul Fitr two months back. ‘Waar’ which stars Pakistani actor-director Shaan was released on Wednesday and raked in approximately 20 million rupees on its first two days, a record for any film released in the country. “On the first day it was released across 42 screens in the country and it took in around 11.4 million rupees which is even better than the nine million rupees mustered by ‘Chennai Express’ on its opening day at Eid,” film distributor and owner of the Atrium multiplex cinemas, Nadeem Mandviwalla told PTI. He said it is a healthy sign for Pakistani film industry that ‘Waar’ did good business with direct competition from Akshay Kumar’s ‘Boss’, which also did well on the opening day. “I would say going by the first two days ‘Waar’ should rake in around 50 million rupees in its first week of exhibition across the country,” he said. The film

is a debut for director Bilal Lashari and is said to be the most expensive Pakistani film made at a budget of 2.5 million. It has caught the imagination and interest of viewers with its catchy trailer and action sequences. Mandviwalla said the advance bookings for the film had also been helped by the unusually long Eid holidays and noted the year had been a good one for Pakistani film industry. “Films like ‘Main Hoon Shahid Afridi’ which took in 55 million rupees, ‘Zinda Bhaag’ which has also done well and now ‘Waar’ have given the Pakistani film industry a new credibility and distributors, exhibitors are willing to bank on them,” he said. As a result of the new wave of Pakistani cinema, ‘Boss’ was only released in seven cineplexes and cinemas in Karachi on Eid but industry insiders say it also did good business. ‘Waar’ which also stars TV actors like Shamoon Abbasi, Ayesha Khan and singer Ali Azmat has been given an adults-only certificate by the Sindh Board of Film Censors. According to Umer Khitab Khan, an SBFC member, this is because of obscene language and violent scenes in the movie.

I don’t need to starve to prove my love for Saif, says Kareena Kapoor

Sonam Kapoor by Prashant Singh

fter a series of duds in the last three years, Sonam Kapoor has managed to make a mark with back-to-back hits — Raanjhanaa and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag — this year. Even as she continues to make news for her fashion-conscious avatar, she is also making headlines for her marriage plans. Her father Anil Kapoor went on record saying how her mother has set the criteria for an ideal son-inlaw. He also added that Sonam is free to marry anyone of her choice. We talk to the 28-year-old actor about her marriage plans, father’s comments, new home, a possible clothing line and upcoming films. According to your father, your mother has set the criteria for what she wants in her son-in-law. I’m a little too young to marry or settle down. I am like, ‘Not right now, please’ (laughs). It’s so freaky. Interestingly, your father said that you can marry a Chinese or Japanese

man if you want to. (Laughs) I don’t think he meant that. I think my father wanted to say that I can marry anyone of any ethnicity as long as I am happy. He said that he isn’t judgmental about any religion, ethnicity or anything else. He is okay with me marrying anyone who will keep me happy. We hear that you have bought a new place for yourself and might move out soon. I am looking at buying something, but I haven’t done it (yet). I have had a very good year as far as work is concerned, but I am definitely not moving out of my parents’ place because I like the comfort of my home. I am finalising and looking at something (buying a house) very seriously as an option right now. But, I am not moving out. Is it true that you were supposed to do Homi Adajania’s next, which Deepika Padukone is doing now? I don’t talk about the films that I am not doing. But according to me, Arjun (Kapoor) and Deepika are the best choices for the film. I don’t have

anything to do with the film now. I really love Homi as a director and would definitely love to work with him in the future. Are you and your sister Rhea actually launching a clothing line? That is something I would like to do, but there’s nothing right now that I can discuss. Nothing has really taken shape at the moment (about the clothing line). But I would love to do that for sure. We spotted you at a fashion event (hosted by a fashion portal, farfetch. com) a couple of days ago. Is a new fashion tie-up on the cards? No. My designer Cecilia Morelli (Parikh), who owns the store Le Mill, is a really good friend of mine and she asked me to host a party for her because she has won an award. I just couldn’t say no since I love her a lot. What’s your next acting assignment? I am leaving for Rajasthan for a 20-day schedule to start work on the Khubsoorat (1980) remake. Courtesy: Hindustan Times

SONY MAX the Premium Bollywood Movie Channel to premiere “Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani” on October 27th at 3pm and 9pm New York, October 15, 2013 – Sony Entertainment Network is pleased to present a world television premiere of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani on SONY MAX. The movie will air Sunday, October 27th, at 3:00 PM & 9:00PM ET. Mumbai: Actress Kareena Kapoor will not observe fast on the occasion of Karwa Chauth tomorrow as she does not believe in going without food for her actor-husband Saif Ali Khan. “I dont need to starve to prove my love. I am not going to fast. I am a Kapoor... I can’t live without food. I would celebrate it by eating, working, by promoting my ﬁlm,” Kareena, who got married to Saif last year, said.

The actress, who is the brand ambassador of Malabar Gold and Diamond, launched a online store here. She said that online shopping saves her a lot of time. “Whatever jewellery I bought myself from my hard earned money is special to me. Gold and diamond are the best fashion statement in jewelry,” she said. Kareena says she does not follow any trend and prefers to wear light jewelry.

Big B, Sridevi might come together for ‘Khuda Gawah’ sequel Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan and Sridevi are likely to unite again on screen for the sequel of their hit 1992 film ‘Khuda Gawah’. “The script is being written for the sequel. It (film) was one of the most loved films and we thought of bringing it back. We have given a one liner brief idea to Mr Bachchan. We have got a positive feedback from him. Once the script is complete we will meet him again and approach him for this film,” producer Manoj Desai told PTI.

“Once Mr Bachchan gives his nod for the sequel we may go and talk to Sridevi as well about the film. There will be other actors also in the film from the younger generation,” he said. The original, produced by Desai, was about an Afghan lord caught between love and revenge. “We are working on the script so we can’t reveal about the story line,” he said. Shot in India and Afghanistan, Khuda Gawah was one of the biggest grossers of 1992 in both the countries.

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is a 2013 Indian coming-of-age romantic comedy film, directed by Ayan Mukerji and produced by Karan Johar. The film stars Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone in lead roles. Madhuri Dixit appears in an item number titled “Ghagra” with Ranbir Kapoor in the film. Initially set for a March 2013 opening, the film was released on 31 May 2013 and went on to be a huge box office success. Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani has become the fourth highest grossing Bollywood film of all time in India and worldwide. The film is also the seventh highest grossing Bollywood film in overseas markets. Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani is the story of the relationship between two characters, Bunny (Ranbir Kapoor) & Naina (Deepika Padukone), at two separate but defining periods of their lives. The first is when they are just out of college and standing on the crossroads of multiple decisions that will shape who and what they become. The next is in their

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Learn Medicare Basics Terminology Advance Beneﬁciary Notice (ABN) In Original Medicare, a notice that a doctor, supplier, or provider gives a Medicare beneﬁciary before furnishing an item or service if the doctor, supplier, or provider believes that Medicare may deny payment. In this situation, if you aren’t given an ABN before you get the item or service, and Medicare denies payment, then you may not have to pay for it. If you are given an ABN, and you sign it, you’ll probably have to pay for the item or service if Medicare denies payment. Advance coverage decision A notice you get from a Medicare Advantage Plan letting you know in advance whether it will cover a particular service. Advance directive

A person who has health care insurance through the Medicare or Medicaid programs. Benefit period The way that Original Medicare measures your use of hospital and skilled nursing facility (SNF) services. A benefit period begins the day you’re admitted as an inpatient in a hospital or SNF. The benefit period ends when you haven’t received any inpatient hospital care (or skilled care in a SNF) for 60 days in a row. If you go into a hospital or a SNF after one benefit period has ended, a new benefit period begins. You must pay the inpatient hospital deductible for each benefit period. There’s no limit to the number of benefit periods Call us to-day Medicare for enrollment.

A written document stating how you want medical decisions to be made if you lose the ability to make them for yourself. It may include a living will and a durable power of attorney for health care. A facility where simpler surgeries are performed for patients who aren’t expected to need more than 24 hours of care. Assignment An agreement by your doctor, provider, or supplier to be paid directly by Medicare, to accept the payment amount Medicare approves for the service, and not to bill you for any more than the Medicare deductible and coinsurance. Beneﬁciary

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UK watchdog restricts drugs from India’s Wockhardt MUMBAI, October 22, 2013 (AFP) - Britain’s health regulator has restricted exports from a factory of Indian pharmaceutical firm Wockhardt, the company said Tuesday, the third such plant to face restrictions. Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has cancelled Wockhardt’s “good manufacturing practices” certificate for a factory in Kadaiya (Daman) in western India for noncompliance with its manufacturing standards. The factory will however be allowed to test, make and supply to Britain certain drugs critical to public health, the statement to the stock exchanges said Tuesday. The fresh blow comes days after the MHRA recalled five drugs made by Wockhardt from a plant in Chikalthana in Maharashtra state. In recent months both the US and UK watchdogs issued import alerts on drugs made at another Wockhardt manufacturing unit in Waluj, Maharashtra in western India, citing quality concerns.

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The ﬁrm’s shares fell 4.29 percent to 458.2 rupees after Tuesday’s setback, and Wockhardt said the impact of the fresh export curbs “will only be known once it receives further communication from MHRA”. It said it did not make any products for the United States market from the Kadaiya plant. India’s government has defended its lucrative generic drug industry, which accounts for nearly $15 billion in annual exports, as safe and tightly regulated.

Delhi hospitals overﬂow with hidden dengue epidemic

by Annie BANERJI EW DELHI, October 20, 2013 (AFP) - Factory worker Mohammad Awwal is gripped by fever, sweats and the sort of agonising aches that mean his condition is sometimes called “breakbone disease”. It’s an annual plague in India and a hidden epidemic, say experts. Dengue fever is a mosquitoborne disease with no known cure or vaccination that strikes fear into the citizens of New Delhi when it arrives with the monsoon rains -- just as the scorching heat of the summer is subsiding. Hospital wards are overwhelmed and tales abound of deaths and cases while New Delhi

public authorities insist that only 3,500 have fallen sick so far this year -- with only five fatalities. “I took him first to a government hospital. I was shocked to see that it was packed with dengue patients. There was not even a single bed available,” said Awwal’s mother, Mehrunissa, sitting in her one-room shack in east Delhi. She is now treating him at their home, giving him multi-vitamins, paracetamol and water as he lies on the floor with two pillows and a bedsheet but no mattress. In a sign that this year’s outbreak could be as bad as recordbreaking 2010, the city’s largest public hospital, Hindu Rao, announced earlier this month that it

FRIDAY, October 25, 2013

had suspended all routine surgeries to make room for more dengue patients. The Delhi government has blamed prolonged monsoons for the hike in infections, but says it has added beds at hospitals and increased resources for spraying insecticides to tackle the mosquito menace. “It’s nothing to worry about, there is no crisis,” Charan Singh, additional director of Delhi health services, told AFP, dismissing allegations that the city of 17 million under-reports the problem. “It is a lot of hype going on... The government is in action and we report all cases according to international guidelines,” he added.

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Japan whitening creams spark 15,000 complaints

OKYO (AFP) - More than 15,000 people in Japan have been left with skin blotches caused by a chemical contained in popular skin-whitening creams, the maker of the products said Tuesday. Japanese cosmetics giant Kanebo said it had received 15,192 complaints from Japan from users of 54 products containing the whitening chemical “Rhododenol”, in what has become an escalating public relations nightmare for the company. A third of the complaints are from people with “serious” symptoms such as at least three blotches or a single patch of discolouration ﬁve centimetres (two inches) or more in diameter, the company said in a press

release. More than 70 people abroad had reported a similar reaction, 54 of them in Taiwan and the others in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, a Kanebo spokeswoman said, adding there had been no complaints from mainland China. “The number may rise somewhat hereafter but the pace is slowing down. We hope there will be no large increase,” she said. Kanebo in July recalled of millions of products from across the globe, including Britain, because of problems with a chemical whitening substance called 4-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-2 -butanone, which Kanebo has named “Rhododenol”.

Kanebo was forced to issue a humiliating apology last month after the revelation that it had continued shipping ﬂawed cosmetics for a week after deciding to recall them, possibly increasing the number of customers affected. The company has said it will pay medical costs for customers left with uneven skin colouring, which in some cases continued after they stopped using the products. Whitening creams are popular across Asia among women seeking lighter skin tones. Kanebo’s parent company Kao has seen its share price fall since the scandal broke, losing around six percent of its value in a market that has risen by more than four percent in the same period.

Child behavioral problems linked to bedtimes: study

ASHINGTON, (AFP) - Children who go to to bed at irregular hours are more likely to have behavioral problems, according to a study published Monday. The research, which appeared in the US journal Pediatrics, found that lifelong problems could result from erratic childhood bedtimes, but that the effects could be reversed with implementation of a schedule. “Not having ﬁxed bedtimes, accompanied by a constant sense of ﬂux, induces a state of body and mind akin to jet lag,” said Yvonne Kelly of the University College London.

cause sleep deprivation, impairing brain development and the ability to regulate some behaviors, the research showed. “We know that early child development has profound inﬂuences on health and wellbeing across the life course,” Kelly said. The British study analyzed the bedtime data of more than 10,000 children of ages three, ﬁve and seven, taking into account their behavioral problems as reported by teachers and mothers.

“One way to try and prevent this would be for health care providers to check for sleep disruptions as part of routine health care visits,” Kelly said. Problems, however, only became more severe as children progressed through childhood. And those who adopted a more stable bedtime schedule demonstrated clear improvements in behavior. Three-year-olds were the most likely to go to bed at irregular hours, with one in ﬁve going to sleep at erratic times.

Inconsistent bedtimes can disrupt natural body rhythms and

Hyperactivity, conduct issues, problems with peers and emotional difﬁculties were some of the conditions that were worse for children with irregular bedtimes.

Children with varying bedtimes or who went to bed after 9 pm were more likely to be from a socially disadvantaged background, a factor the study took into account.

Fear of a panic? The virus -- first detected in the 1950s in the Philippines and Thailand -- affects two million people across the globe annually, with the number of cases up 30 times in the last 50 years, according to the World Health Organisation. Transmitted to humans by the female Aedes aegypti mosquito, it causes high fever, headaches, itching and joint pains that last about a week. There are four strains, one of which can cause fatal internal bleeding. In India, cases have increased sharply over the last five years -- there have been 38,000 so far in 2013 -- but doctors say these numbers only capture part of the problem. At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), India’s most prestigious public hospital, doctors are overwhelmed by patients whose beds are squeezed together like Tetris tiles in the emergency ward with saline drips nailed to the walls. Medics, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they were seeing 60 new dengue patients a day -- an influx they suspected was not reflected in the official figures. “Maybe it’s because they don’t

want to create panic or because they don’t want to be blamed, but if they hide, people won’t know how bad the situation is,” said one doctor. The former health chief at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) said that only positive results from one of the two standard dengue tests -- known as ELISA test -- was registered. “There is gross under-reporting of these cases every year. I believe the real numbers are always three times higher than those projected by the MCD,” V.K. Monga told AFP. Sandeep Budhiraja, internal medicines director at private Max Healthcare hospital in Delhi, blamed city authorities for failing to be prepared and said cases would only decline with the onset of winter next month. “It’s an epidemic that hits the country every year, yet there is never any preparedness by ofﬁcials. It just keeps getting worse,” said Budhiraja, adding that Max had opened its fever wards to accommodate dengue patients. ‘No luck’ with treatments While dengue is painful and debilitating, death is usually rare but patients are vulnerable to other fatal viral infections during or shortly after the time of illness.

There is still no specific treatment, but last year French healthcare giant Sanofi Pasteur said it would begin tests for a dengue vaccine in India before making it available internationally by 2015. A leading Brazilian biomedical research institute, Butantan, also said last month it was working on a new dengue vaccine that they hoped would be ready by 2018. British firm Oxitec has also created genetically modified sterile male Aedes mosquitoes what they call “birth control for insects” - but met with severe criticism for releasing unnatural species into the environment. The only defence so far is preventive steps, like removing stagnant water near residential areas, spraying insecticide, applying mosquito repellent and wearing long sleeves and trousers. Many victims in India gulp down papaya-leaf juice believing it to boost blood platelet levels, which are decimated by the virus. “It is a largely preventive, selflimiting virus, but we still hardly invest in research for treatments,” said Budhiraja from Max Healthcare. “There are only some vaccines being tried out, but no luck yet.”

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Novel approach to Apparently This Matters: Wristhair growth employs watch counts down to your death infant foreskins WASHINGTON, October 21, 2013 (AFP) - A new experiment to regrow hair by cloning follicles and using discarded infant foreskins to graft them onto lab mice has shown some early success, researchers said Monday. The process generated new human hair in ﬁve of the seven animals on which it was tested, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The approach goes beyond the current strategies of transplanting hair from one part of the scalp to another, or of using medication to slow hair loss or stimulate the growth of existing hair. “Our method, in contrast, has the potential to actually grow new follicles using a patient’s own cells,” said Angela Christiano, professor of genetics and development at Columbia University Medical Center. Researchers hope the technique -- once it is tested more throughly and expanded into human trials -- could be useful for women with hair loss, men in the early stages of male pattern baldness, and burns victims who need both skin and follicles. The breakthrough came when researchers tried a new way to foster growth via the dermal papilla cells, which give rise to hair follicles. In the past, these papilla would not thrive in 2-D culby Kesha West (ABC) Geoscientists in Perth have discovered gold particles in the leaves, twigs and bark of eucalyptus trees, claiming a “eureka” moment that could revolutionise gold mining. CSIRO researchers believe the trees, sitting on top of gold deposits buried deep underground, suck up the gold in

go, I’d quickly drop everything, grab a shovel and plant a tree. Truth be told, I’d probably sit around the house, watch some Netflix and wallow in selfdoubt. You know. The usual. But the idea is that you might go out and be a better person if you had a bit more advance warning. Which is why Tikker hopes to inspire people by reminding them that “death is non-negotiable” and, as the days slip away, it’s important to “make the right decisions.” “Today I am not wearing pants!” Just be careful to make the “right decision” at home and not, say, Jamba Juice. Tikker comes from the mind of Fredrik Colting who, after his grandfather passed away several years ago, was inspired to create the “death watch” in his honor. Colting said: “It made me think about death and the transience of life, and I realized that nothing matters when you are dead. Instead what matters is what we do when we are alive.” I nap a lot. Carpe diem. However, if you’re even slightly more motivated than I am, and if knowing your expiration date is something you’re into, setting up the Tikker death watch will be fairly straightforward. You simply fill out a ques-

tionnaire with inquiries about smoking, exercise and general health. That creates a special number from which you then subtract your age. And there you have it: the exact number of years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds until you take a big dirt nap. With apologies to the word “exact.” Tikker is, perhaps, a bit odd, but it’ll definitely be a good conversation starter at the company holiday party. And that’s what Colting wants. “The occurrence of death is no surprise to anyone, but in our modern society we rarely talk about it,” he said. “I think that if we were more aware of our own expiration, I’m sure we’d make better choices while we are alive.” At the time of this writing, with two weeks to go, pledges for the Tikker death watch are at just more than $70,000. Their goal was $25,000. So, clearly, people are pretty excited about confronting their demise. Though hopefully not enough to test it out with a moving train. “I still have 30 years. Bring it, Amtrak!” SMACK! “I think Tim forgot to carry the one.” “Dibs on his football phone!”

Gold found growing in eucalyptus trees in world-ﬁrst CSIRO research

ding ring. The researchers said they have also found gold in the leaves of other trees, such as the Acacia mulga. “We’ve actually found gold not only in trees but in shrubs that are growing beneath the trees as well, so (it is) not restricted to any particular trees at all,” Dr Lintern said.

tures in a lab dish. So taking inspiration from experiments on lab rats, whose papillae can be readily transplanted, they cloned human papillae in a 3-D tissue culture. The tissue came from discarded infant foreskins obtained through circumcision procedures at Columbia University Medical Center. Infant foreskin was chosen “because it would challenge the human dermal papillae not just to contribute to hair follicles within the skin, but rather, to fully reprogram the recipient epidermis to a follicular fate.” When scientists grafted the newly grown human skin tissue complete with donated human papillae, they saw hair growth in ﬁve of seven lab animals. The hair matched the human donor DNA and lasted at least six weeks. Co-author Colin Jahoda, professor of stem cell sciences at Durham University, England, described the ﬁnding as “an important step” and said the team is hopeful that clinical trials could begin soon. “We have shown a proof of principle,” he told AFP, but noted there are plenty of “cosmetic aspects” that remain to be resolved. “Growing hair, the color, growing it in the right direction, exactly like people would require it... and this is far away.”

their search for moisture during times of drought. “We weren’t expecting this at all,” Dr Melvyn Lintern, a research geochemist at the CSIRO and the study’s lead author, said. “To actually see the gold particles in the leaves was quite a

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The Tikker watch counts down to your death. Happy days! Here are some other notable countdowns that are far less morbid.

by Jarrett Bellini, CNN Editor’s note: Each week in “Apparently This Matters,” CNN’s Jarrett Bellini applies his warped sensibilities to trending topics in social media and random items of interest on the Web. obody wants to underwhelm when it comes to their ﬁnal words on this planet. “Diane, toast me a bagel.” So if you knew the exact moment when you were going to die, you might put some serious thought into the matter and really nail it. Of course, you’d probably want to go out with something inspired and meaningful. Or perhaps a dark, secret confession. Maybe explain to your wife that, yes, you traded her stupid cat on Craigslist for a football phone. And, no, she can’t have it when you’re gone.

eureka moment for us.” Dr Lintern said the trees appear to be telling scientists what is happening under the earth’s surface. “The particular trees that we did the research on appear to be bringing up gold from a

The football phone goes in the casket. So does the dog. And whatever beer’s in the fridge. It’s all a little weird to consider, but if having this mortal information appeals to you, there’s a popular new Kickstarter campaign that delivers this gift of death. More specifically, a wristwatch that counts down to your very last moment. It also keeps regular time. Which is good. Because if you miss your appointment for erotic massage, there’s no refund. So I’ve heard. But its main job is still to remind you when you’ll die. The watch, appropriately called Tikker, “counts down your life, in order to make the world a better place.” And it’s a heartwarming sentiment if you’re into that kind of thing. Helping others and whatnot. I’m just not sure that if I suddenly knew I had 40 minutes to

remarkable 30 metres depth, which is about the equivalent of a 10-storey building.” The research group used the CSIRO’s Maia detector for xray elemental imaging at the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne to analyse extremely

small particles at high resolution. The portions of gold are about one-fifth the diameter of a human hair. Dr Lintern said even 500 trees growing over a gold deposit and would only yield enough gold for a wed-

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Congress probes costly ‘Obama- US private hiring slowed care’ web ﬁasco Thursday ahead of shutdown

ASHINGTON, October 23, 2013 (AFP) - Furious US lawmakers demanded answers Wednesday ahead of a hotly anticipated hearing to probe the troubled rollout of the “Obamacare” website, which they described as a half-billion-dollar debacle. President Barack Obama and his administration are on the back foot , enduring a barrage of criticism for failures stemming from this month’s debut of Healthcare.gov, through which millions of Americans are expected to sign up for insurance. The process has been overwhelmed by technical glitches, and the House of Representatives’ Republican leadership -- long opposed to the reform -- has seized the opportunity to schedule two hostile hearings, including Thursday’s panel. “The rollout of Obamacare is nothing short of a debacle and the American people are now fearful of their health care,” number two House Republican Eric Cantor told reporters. “What’s not helping is a lack of transparency on the part of this administration.” With many up in arms about the problems, staff from the Department of Health and Hu-

man Services (HHS) briefed top House Democrats about the problems and the ways forward -- but Republicans were left out. Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi emerged to say that while the online hiccups were “unacceptable,” the problems would be fixed in due course, and that there was no talk in the meeting of delaying the law’s so-called individual mandate, which compels most Americans to have health insurance by January 1 or pay a fine. “I have faith in technology,” Pelosi said. “And while there are glitches, there are solutions as well, so I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to go forward on schedule.” Some lawmakers have demanded that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lose her job over the fiasco, but she stood her ground Wednesday. “I think my job is to get this fully implemented and get the website working right. That’s really what I’m focused on,” she told CNN. While insisting top experts were now helping resolve the problems, she appeared at a loss to explain why contractors did not have their own best teams on the website work. “I can’t tell you,” Sebelius

said. “We hoped they had their ‘A’ team on the table.” Sebelius declined to testify at Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, but she is expected to appear before the committee next week. Congressman Tim Murphy, who chairs the panel’s oversight subcommittee, is demanding answers for why costs ballooned for the 55 contractors working on a project that has yielded such poor results. “All told, more than half a billion dollars was spent on a website that just doesn’t work,” he said. “Given all these questions, we should press ‘pause’ on this president’s tech surge, where he wants to spend untold more amounts of money to throw after a bad website when we don’t really know if this one is even salvageable.” To turn the website around, the White House has called on Jeff Zients, a management expert and the incoming chief of the National Economic Council. Murphy blasted Obama for the pick, saying “the president tapped an individual to ﬁx a technology problem without any technology problem experience.”

SEC offers rules for crowdfunding startup ﬁnance

by Paul HANDLEY ASHINGTON, (AFP) - Crowdfunding could become a hot new source of venture capital under new US rules proposed Wednesday to allow companies to make private share placements to micro-investors via the Internet. The new Securities and Exchange Commission regulations would allow companies to raise up to $1 million a year via crowdsourcing without registering the securities. They also would lower the bar for investors taking part in private placements, giving people with less than $200,000 a year in income the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of new ventures. Coupled with new guidelines in July that allow companies to openly advertise private placements, including via social media, the SEC’s crowdsourcing rules for finance herald a new model for financing small ventures. Chance Barnett, chief executive of Crowdfunder.com, which hopes to get a piece of the new business, said the rules will bring “an entirely new set of financing” into the market, potentially several times larger than the $30 billion annually invested by venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. After holding back on the rules for months, the SEC board in a hearing Wednesday cautiously endorsed the rules, which could come into effect after a 90-day period for public comment. “We want this market to thrive, in a safe manner for investors,” said SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White. Crowdfunding has mostly been used by artists and inventors to finance their work via microdonations, while they retain full ownership of their work. Five-year-old Kickstarter has funnelled some $830 million to 50,000 projects from some five million donors on this model. But other companies like Crowdfunder have sought to use the model for venture capital-like funding from thousands of small investors -- though up until now “small” has meant “accredited investors” with incomes above $200,000, or net worth over $1 million. The new rules would exempt companies raising no more than $1 million a year via crowdfunding from registering the issue with the SEC. The companies would be required to make disclosures about the owners, executives, and finances, and they could only place the shares through traditional broker-dealers or “crowdfunding platforms”, a new form of SEC-registered funding portal that would be banned from giving investors advice or promoting specific offerings.

Smaller investors would be able to take part, with restrictions. People with net incomes or net worth of below $100,000 could invest no more than five percent of their annual income or net worth in the issue over one year. For those with incomes or net worth above $100,000, the maximum would be 10 percent, with a total investment limit of $100,000 over 12 months. The investors would have to hold the shares for at least one year. Though limiting, the restrictions are aimed at protecting small investors from fraud or other scams frequently seen in small, littleregulated markets -- which SEC officials took note of Wednesday. SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar spoke Wednesday of “relatively high risks of fraud” in the market, as well as lack of liquidity in the shares and self-dealing by company officials.

“Even the strongest supporters of crowdfunding acknowledge that it carries substantial risk,” he warned. But Slava Rubin, co-founder of crowdsourced funding site Indiegogo.com, cheered the proposed rules as a “democratization” of ﬁnance, “allowing anyone, anywhere to participate in starting new businesses.” Crowdfunder’s Barnett acknowledged the concerns over the potential for scams to cheat unknowing investors. But so far, he argued, the fundraising done by his company has shown that crowdsourcing offers some protections: smaller investors following respected lead investors, and more informationsharing by investors who are more likely to know each other. Crowdfunding can generate more transparency, he said. “It’s a little more curated than people will think,” he said.

by Paul HANDLEY

ASHINGTON, (AFP) - US businesses hired at a tepid pace in September as the Washington battle over the budget and debt ceiling headed toward a government shutdown, Labor Department data showed Tuesday. The economy generated a less-than-expected 148,000 jobs during the last month, just barely above the average for the third quarter, and well below the 195,000 a month gain in the first half of the year. Of that only 126,000 jobs came from the private sector, expected to drive the recovery, while the expansion in hiring of teachers and other school officials at the state level -- where layoffs were intense during and after the recession -- made up much of the balance. Analysts said the data -- released more than two weeks late due to the shutdown -- confirmed a lull in growth in the third quarter and said that the fall in hiring numbers would likely continue due to the 16day government shutdown that ended last Thursday. That likely points to the Federal Reserve keeping its stimulus program in place for the rest of the year, they said. “We would be astonished now if the Fed were able to taper this year; even March looks like a struggle,” said Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Macroeconomics. September’s hiring and a modest upward revision to the numbers from the previous two months nevertheless helped push the unemployment rate down a notch to 7.2 percent, the lowest level since Novem-

ber 2008, just as the country was plunging into deep recession. Although the rate was down from 7.8 percent a year ago, analysts said that a very low and unbudging rate of participation in the jobs market underpinned the gains. With 11.25 million Americans still officially jobless, the data showed the employmentto-population ratio at 58.6 percent, where it has stayed for nearly two years and well below the 63 percent range of 2006-2007. Likewise, the labor force participation rate remained at an historical low of 63.2 percent. “This continues the pattern that we have seen throughout the recovery as the unemployment rate falls mainly because workers leave the labor market,” said Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The White House tied the disappointing numbers to Republican pressure to cut spending and the budget and debt ceiling showdown that intensified throughout September. Private sector job creation was “lower than we can be fully satisfied with, partially reflecting the effects of fiscal contraction,” said Jason Furman, chairman of the President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, in a statement. “This underscores the continued importance of taking steps that speed the recovery and boost job creation, while avoiding self-inflicted wounds like a government shutdown and debt ceiling brinksmanship that have the opposite effect.” The private sector job gains

were strongest in transportation, construction, wholesale and retailing, and temporary help services. There were some bright spots in the numbers. Government hiring expanded for the second straight month, with a net 22,000 new positions, mostly at the state and local level. Hourly earnings continued to rise slowly, and were up 2.1 percent year on year. The number of those unemployed for more than 27 weeks fell, as did the number of those who said they were forced to take only part-time jobs. The slow hiring by the private sector could have been inﬂuenced by fears rising throughout September that the government would be shut down at the beginning of the 2014 ﬁscal year on October 1 because Congress would not agree on a budget. The 16 day shutdown idled hundreds of thousands of federal workers for two weeks and took an estimated $24 billion out of the economy. Economists say that will result in skewed and likely poor jobs and economic growth data for October and November, preventing anyone from getting a clear picture of how the economy is doing. That then was likely to put on hold any action the Fed might have taken to begin tapering its $85 billion a month in bond purchases. Since April the Fed has pointed to reducing its stimulus beginning late this year as the economy was expected to gain speed. But most now see that only beginning early next year.

Microsoft unfazed by ‘lightweight’ Apple software

AN FRANCISCO, (AFP) - Microsoft on Wednesday brushed off Apple’s move to give away its software, claiming the iWork productivity suite from its rival was “lightweight” and “has never gotten much traction.” The reaction came a day after Apple unveiled its new line of iPads and announced much of its software and upgrades would be free, including iWork, which competes with Microsoft’s top-

selling Office suite. “Since iWork has never gotten much traction, and was already priced like an afterthought, it’s hardly that surprising or significant a move,” Microsoft corporate vice president Frank Shaw said on the company’s corporate blog. “So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don’t see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up. I think they, like others, are waking up to the fact that we’ve built a better solution for people everywhere ... People who want a single, simple, affordable device with the power and flexibility to enhance and support their whole day.” Shaw also defended Microsoft’s Surface, the tablet introduced a year ago which had little impact in the market and forced the Redmond, Washington, firm to take a huge writedown before revamping the device last month. “Surface and Surface 2 both include Office, the world’s most popular, most powerful productivity software for free and are priced below both the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively,” he said.

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FEATURE

VOICE OF ASIA 21

Exclusive world of private jets flies high to Las Vegas

FRIDAY, October 25, 2013

Your Horoscope (For week beginning Friday, October 25, 2013)

Hardik Vyas, Astrologer Cell : 832-298-9950

As per Indian Vedic Astrology the Moon sign is considered, in which every Rashi has control over certain letters, which are initials of your name. Whereas in Western system of Sun Sign, all the people born in one month belong to the same sign. For example, every year approximately around 21 of March to 20th April, the Sun is moving in the Aries Constellation. So all the people born in that month belong to the Sign of Aries. If you were born in between those two dates then you are a Aries born.

Aries (A,L,E) 21 March to 20 April All your hard work noticed by those in authority. Your interest in improving your lifestyle will help you to make some dreams come true. Free yourself from any negative energy. You may feel as if your head is about to burst. Focus on the tasks at hand and you will soon have a deeper understanding of what to do. Don’t be surprised by other’s reaction to your success. Some may have ‘high hopes/expectations’ built into a situation & only to ‘crash’ and then ﬁnd they may be feeling anxious, annoyed and ‘gathering up restless or aggressive energy’ because of it. Private business jets during an aerospace exhibition in Hong Kong on March 8, 2011 (AFP Photo/ Mike Clarke) by Delphine TOUITOU

he exclusive world of business jets associated with film stars and royalty is showing signs of being on the up as a vital tool for companies and executives. The Las Vegas business jet show opens in Las Vegas on Tuesday for three days until Thursday to showcase a sector which is a barometer of both the climate for glitz and the health of international business. Frustrated by the fixed schedules of regular aviation companies, international businesses are turning to luxury jets as a means of raising, not cutting, their profit margins. “More than ever private aviation allows company directors to be more competitive and closer to their clients,” said Check Suma, a vice-president for NetJets, the world leader in the sector. Although the economic crisis still hangs over manufacturers of private jets, after four dark years there are hopes the skies may be clearing. “Coming out of the crisis is a lengthy, slow process. It is happening but in a rational way,” said Eric Trappier, chief executive of the French group Dassault Aviation speaking before the show. The business aviation sector was hit badly by the economic

crisis in 2008. The market fell by 29.2 percent between 2008 and 2012, according to a study by US analysts Teal Group and it has barely managed to return to the prosperous 2005-2008 period. Last year the 672 plane orders for private jets in the world was a drop of 49 percent compared to the 2008 peak of 1,315 planes, the aviation organisation Gama said. In the ﬁrst quarter of 2013, global deliveries were down by 4.1 percent compared to the same period in 2012, while manufacturers avoided forecasting a date for an upturn. “Companies are more careful. Their order books have ﬁlled up and investment time is coming,” said Trappier, who did not want to estimate when this might happen in the business jet industry. Aviation equipment-maker Honeywell believes the private jet sector will grow by 3 to 4 percent in 2013. For Suma, there are reasons to be quietly hopeful. “We are observing a continuous improvement of the economy, slowly but surely, and as a result business aviation is getting better too. But... growth will depend on a sustainable economic recovery.” The main obstacle to this, according to aeronautics expert at Oddo Securities Yan Derocles, is the still sluggish macro-economic environment.

“In the next two years economists are not anticipating a strong recovery,” said Derocles, adding that the absorption of the used market is key. “It is a sine qua non condition of the recovery of new plane orders.” NetJets, ﬁnancially backed by US millionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is convinced the market has long-term growth potential. President of Executive Aviation Market at the Brazilian aerospace conglomerate Embraer, Ernest Edwards, said globalisation has opened up the market, with private aviation less limited now to its traditional pool of clients from the US, Britain, France, Switzerland and Germany. “Asia, the Middle East and Russia are examples of regions where the demand for private aviation is growing,” Edwards said. In China, India and Russia the number of millionaires increases each year. In China, according to the Teal Group study, 3,000 people own more than $500 million and there are 130 billionaires. Teal Group forecast an 11 percent growth this year, followed by four years at around 12 percent. Richard Aboulaﬁa, vice-president of the group, estimated any return to the peak number of orders from 2008 would not happen before 2015.

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Gemini (K,CHH,GH) 21 May to 20 June Feeling empowered to reach many goals. The nature of your studies will depend on your personal interests. Whatever you decide to pursue, you will do so with great intensity. Your concentration and focus is very strong. You may become so engrossed in your investigation that you won’t be able to do anything else until you ﬁnd the information that you seek. Several discussions may be required this week, especially near next week and some tend to be needed ‘before’ a decision is made, spending is done or discipline is handed out.

Cancer (D,H) 21 June to 22 July Realizing that you can be very effective right now. You may ﬁnd yourself in the position to rally others to your point of view. You’ll also be able to communicate with great conviction. Games or contests will provide you with an extra burst of energy. Excitement will reign, as your romantic urges will also run high. You could actively pursue the one you desire. Family issues have three stars, because you are totally prone to emotional upheavals, clashes and some sort of ‘sad news’ especially announcements of loss, terminal conditions or other upsetting, news.

Leo (M) 23 July to 22 August Your desire for harmony and beautiful surroundings stronger than usual. You’re more inclined to use your charm and persuasion than a more direct method to achieve your goals. A spontaneous inspiration may prove to be very beneﬁcial to your life. You may have an opportunity to directly pitch your ideas and beliefs to those who can make things happen. You may spend a lot of ‘thinking time’ going over old or current issues and feeling/being rather ‘fed up’ with an older system or ‘attitude’ that is ‘pervasive’ in/within the family and revamping is highly likely.

Virgo(P) 23 August to 22 September Have friends seeking some guidance in your area of expertise. Your counsel will prove to be very lucrative. Giving of yourself in this generous manner will prove that your motives are genuine. You might have some difﬁculty in situations which require you to rely on other’s resources. Your sensitive side will help you to recognize how judgmental people can be. Your fuse will be super short and you may not be able to even control or contain it as your ‘lag time’ is in micro seconds. Lashing out, foot in mouth and saying what you do NOT ‘really mean’ are all very typical.

Libra(R,T)23 Sept to 22 Oct

Scorpio(N,Y)23 Oct to 21 Nov

Experienced, Honest & Aggressive Email: uma@mantralaw.com

E-1 & E-2 Visas H-1B Visas H-1 Extensions L-1 Visas

Prove that good relationships can bring out your true self. Your energy level will soar high. All victims may not always be innocent. Be wary of those who try to hide their true nature. Your patience and understanding will enable you to grow greatly as a person. You may ﬁnd a new interest to lead, in your ﬁeld. You should branch yourself out to reach a larger audience. Financial ‘hits’ are likely near and may come from bring things ‘up to snuff’ with appliances, plumbing/electric or health care issues and vehicles, overdue bills and travel.

You are with an urge to decorate and beautify your immediate surroundings is a great way to express your creativity. Look past the immediate to find some old treasures to exhibit your style. You may be feeling very sensitive, even vulnerable. It may be time to think about a little rest and relaxation. You can be imaginative but you need to rejuvenate yourself first. Generous emotional contributions, especially to in-laws, spouse and youth of any sign, may include time, skill/talent, money and sacrifice of your own needs/wishes.

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Taurus(B,V,U)21 April to 20 May

Looking for want or need to take an opportunity to learn new ways to increase your income. Be sure to check everything thoroughly. Someone may be trying to confuse you. You may need to work a little harder to ﬁnd a compromise that pleases everyone. Take the time necessary to research some fascinating adventures far away from home. Emotional discussions MAY escalate out of control, especially IF other members are involved unless you ‘tone it down’ quickly should you ﬁnd yourself ‘too embroiled’ expressive or ‘loosened easily’ from the core issue being discussed.

Sagittarius(BH,F,DH,TH)22 Nov to 21 Dec

You may need to slow down your hectic pace to enjoy the company of friends & family. You really won’t have to push your ideas too hard to ﬁnd mutual agreements. You’ll be able to ﬁnd new way to share your daily duties and activities with loved ones. You always love a happy ending and this story should prove to be a real winner. Happy and contented energies are the ‘norm’ for this week and good news, a change for the better and visitors or invitations may be part of it.

Capricorn(KH,J)22 Dec to 20 Jan Finding you in a situation where you need to push your positive inﬂuence forward to those in authority. Your original proposal may start to fade but you can retain the essence of it by promoting your true values. Being yourself, as unique as you are, is what makes you a real treasure. You’ll feel empowered once you understand that. You’ll be able to trust other’s ability to help you ﬁnd answers.

Aquarius (G,S,SH) 21 Jan to 19 Feb Need to try hard to streamline your tasks to create more leisure time in the immediate future. Your perceptive touch will help find the best result by keeping your interest strong in others activities. You’ll be at the right place at the right time. Your ideas will fit in well with your peers. Your aura will lead you to those who will help you find answers. Your patience is low, your hopes are set HIGH and your expectations may be slightly ‘unreasonable’ especially with youth and those just ‘not equipped’ with the capacity necessary to be ‘trusted to do it right’

Pisces(D,CH,Z)20 Feb to 20 March Your natural drive for self-expression is high right now. You can push yourself into a competition with great energy and zeal. Play hard and you’ll win in your creative projects. Your mood to socialize is high. Your intellectual curiosity and mental restlessness may ﬂicker from one scene to another. Your sense of well-being may become quite fragile if you continue to dwell on the negative. Finding a more positive perspective will provide yourself with a real boost. Emotional clashes, short fuses and outright escalations are possible but appear to ﬁx fast.

COMMUNITY EVENTS

VOICE OF ASIA 22

FRIDAY, October 25, 2013

RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES & ORGANIZATIONS OF HOUSTON - call Voice of Asia 713-774-5140 VPSS Houston Prog: Health Fair 2013 on Sat. Oct 26, 7:30 AM -2:00PM Location VPSS Vallabh Hall, 11715 Belfort Village Dr. Houston 77031. Contact:713-530-2900 Website:www.vpsshaveli.org

Sri Meenakshi Temple Prog: Deepavali celebrations & Free Health fair on Sat. Oct. 26, 2013. All day festivities. Location: 17130 McLean Road Pearland, TX 77584 Contact: (281) 489-0358 Web: www.meenakshi.org

Hare Krishna Dham (ISKCON) Prog: Diwali Celebrations on Sun. Nov. 3rd, 5:30 PM Govardhan Puja - Mon. Nov 4th 6:30 PM Drama & Cultural Events: Sun. Nov 10th 5:00 PM Everyday, 7 Aratis and bhoga offerings daily. Sunday Festival: 5.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. Location: 1320 West 34th St, Houston, TX 77018. Contact:281-433-1635/E-mail harekrishnadham@gmail.com Website: www.iskconhouston. org

DAYA Daya in association withHouston Police Department present ONE VOICE 2013 on Oct 26, 2013 from 10.00 AM to 1.00PM. Human Chain: 11.30 AM to 12.30 PM at 5810 Hillcroft St , Houston, TX 77036

Shri Radha Krishna Temple Prog: Diwali Celebration will be on Sunday Evening November 3th 2013. Candle Light Maha Aarti at 7:00PM. Prasaad will be served after Maha Aarti. Location:11625 Beechnut, Houston, TX 77072 Phone: 281-933-8100 Website: www.SRKT.org.

Chinmaya Mission Prog:

Location:10353 Synott Road, Sugar Land, TX77498. Phone: 832.541.0059. Website:www.chinmayahouston.org.

Sri Saumyakasi Sivalaya

Temple Hrs: 9 am to noon and 5 to 9 pm. Sri Astalaksmi puja: 7 pm. Sri Laksmi Archana will be performed on request all day. Location:same as Chinmaya Mission. Website: www.saumyakasi.org;

Hindu Temple of The Woodlands Prog: Location: 7601 S. Forest Gate Drive at Woodlands Parkway, Spring, TX 77382. Contact: info@woodlandshindutemple.org, 832-585-0001 Website: www. woodlandshindutemple.org.

BAPS Prog: Diwali and New Year Celebrations on Sat. Nov 2, Diwali Nov. 3, Diwali , Nutan Varsh Nov. 4, Shakotsav Nov. 13 Location: 1150 Brand Rd. Stafford, TX. Contact: 281-765-2277 Web:

Arsha Vidya Bharati Prog.:Sanskrit classes and special worship sessions for all ages Location: 2918 Renoir, Sugar Land, TX 77479 Contact: 281-606-5607 or AVB.Houston@gmail.com Web-site: https://sites.google. com/site/avbtexas/classes

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Ashirwad - A Blessing Temple Prog: Regular prog :Sloka Classes for kids and teens. Location: Katy, Hwy 249 & Sugar Land. Contact: 281.995.0930/ 281.808.2159

Vedanta Society of Greater Houston Prog: Vedanta teachings Sundays at 10:30 AM Location: at 14809 Lindita Dr. Houston, TX -77083. Website: www.vedantahouston. org

ISSO Prog: Darshan daily from 7.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.; Aarti daily from 7.45 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Location: 10080 Synott Road, Sugar Land, TX 77478 Phone: 281-530-2565 Web:

Shri Satyanarayan Sai Puja Darshan Prog: Daily from 10:00 a.m. to 1:p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Every Thursday Abhishek Location: 16338 Kensington Dr, Ste 110, Sugar Land 77479. Phone: 713-933-8821 / 9359.

Gurdwara Sahib of SW Houston Prog: Sundays Dewan 10:00 11:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Langar Location:14811 Lindita Drive, Houston, TX 77083 Phone: 281-498-5200 Website: www.gurdwaraswh. com

Ahmadiyya Muslim Sri Ashtalakshmi Community Baitus Temple Samee Mosque Prog: Friday Prayer - 1:30 PM Children’s Classes | Interfaith meeting | Location: 1333 Spears Rd, Houston, TX 77067 Imam - Mohammed Zafarullah Contact : Work: 281-875-3400 | Cell: 713-874-4363 Zafarullah_Hanjra@hotmail. com

Prog: Sri Vishnu Sahasranama Stotra Parayanam: daily 6.30 p.m. Location:10098 Synott Road. Sugar Land, TX 77478 Phone: 281- 498-2344 Website: www.ashtalakshmi. org

Hindu Worship Society

Prog: Open all days except Thursdays (by appt). Regular Puja and Prasad. Sunday Service 11:30 AM to 1:30 Location: 2223 Wirtcrest Lane Houston TX 77055.

Barsana Dham Houston Chapter Prog: Satsang every Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Location: India House, 8888 West Belfort 77031 Phone: (713) 855-9818 for details Website: www.jkphouston.org Weekly Radio Program-1460 AM Saturdays 10-11 a.m.

Lakshmi Narayan Mandir Prog: Every Friday Satsangh from 7:30 pm to 9 pm. Bhajans and Devi Puja, Discourses. Location: 12530 Ann Louise Road, Houston, 77086. Phone: Contact Vishnu at (832) 309- 7181.

JVB Preksha Meditation Center Prog: Annual Family Camp “Understanding Joy & Sorrow” on March 29 - 31, 2013 (Good Friday Weekend) Bellville, TX. Location: 14102 Schiller Road, Houston TX 77082 Phone: 281.596.9642 Website: www.jvbhouston.org

Patanjali Yogpeeth Center Prog: Free Yoga Classes every Sat/Sun from 8 am to 9:30 am Location: Arya Samaj @Schiller Road. Contact: 281-579-9433. Websites: www.pyptusa.org

Jain Center of Houston Prog: Location: 3905 Arc St. Houston, TX 77063 Contact: 281-606-JAIN; Email: ecjsh@jain-houston.org Website:www.jain-houston.org

Durga Bari Society Prog: Sandhya Arati at 6:30 p.m.; Sunday: 9:00 a.m.- 7:00 p.m. Location: 13944 Schiller Road.

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Gayatri Pariwar of Houston Prog: Sundays Satsang, BalSanskar Shala, from 11am to 1pm. Location: 5645 Hillcroft, Suite # 307, Houston, TX 77036. Website: http://www.gayatripariwarhouston.org/ “

Sri Guruvayurappan Temple Prog: Bhajans: Sat.7:00 -8:00 p.m.; Sundays 9:00 a.m.-1:00 a.m.Location: 1620 Ormandy Street, Houston, TX 77035 Contact: 713-729-8994

Govindaji Gaudiya Math Prog:Satsang every Sunday evening from 5 - 7 p.m. Vedic heritage classes for kids 5-14. Location: 16628 Kieth Harrow blvd. Houston, TX 77084 Contact: 281-499-3347/281491-4114.

Sathya Sai Baba Centers Prog: Sundays from 3:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at two locations Locations: Contact: (North) 832-418-3842 or (South) 281-788-4786. Website:www.saicenterofhouston.org

Telugu Christian Fellowship Prog; Every third Saturday 6:30 PM. Worship is in English Location: The Triumph Church, 10555 West Airport Boulevard, Stafford, TX 77477. Contact:713-301-6444 Website:

Brahma Kumaris Meditation Center Prog: Daily classes in Raja Yoga Meditation To register call or email. Contact:832-379-8888/ Email: houston@bktexas.com Website: bktexas.com

Bethesda Houston

Prog: Prog: Sundays Tamil Worship: 5 – 7pm Sunday school : in English. Bethesda Family Fellowship: in English 10.30 am-12.30 pm Free Tutorial for all children Mondays & Wednesdays 5-6 pm. Ladies Bible Study: Thur 9 am. Location: 1092, Suite F&G, Stafford. Tex 77477 Tel:281-317-7331 Contact: 281-317-7331 Website:bethesdahoustontamil church.org

Our Redeemer Church Prog: Sundays worship at 4:30 pm, Location: All Saints Lutheran Church 1211 West Belfort Avenue, Stafford, TX 77477. Contact: 281-686-4135 / Email: pastorvj@linchouston. org

Trinity Mar Thoma Church Prog: Sundays Malyalam service at 9:45 a.m. Every alternate weeks in English at 10:30a.m. Sunday School at 9:15 a.m. Location: 5810 Almeda Genoa Road. Contact: 713-9771-1557/ 281261-4603.

Rekindle The Fire Ministries Prog: Houston Revival Meetings Every second Saturday of the Month. Location: New Song Christian Community Church near 59S and Wilcrest. Every fourth Saturday of the month join a lively youth revival meeting at Pasadena. Website:t www. rekindlethefire.org

Indian Catholics of Houston Location: Claridge Drive Houston, TX 77031 Contact:: (713) 995-6811

Islamic Society of Greater Houston Location: Eastside Drive Houston, TX 77098 Contact: (713) 524-6615

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VOICE OF ASIA 24

FRIDAY, October 25, 2013