China's next space mission to carry 3 astronauts

China's next space mission will carry three astronauts who will dock with and live inside an experimental orbiting module launched last year, state media said Friday.

The Shenzhou 9 spacecraft will be launched aboard its Long March 2F rocket sometime between June and August, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing an unidentified spokesman for the manned space program, known as Shenzhou, or "Sacred Vessel."
The astronauts will manually dock with the Tiangong 1 module that was launched last year and conduct scientific experiments while aboard, Xinhua said. It didn't say how long the mission was supposed to last.
China completed its first such space rendezvous last year when the unmanned Shenzhou 8 docked with the Tiangong 1 by remote control. That was considered something of a breakthrough since early U.S. astronauts did so manually.
China has scheduled two space docking missions for this year and plans to complete a manned space station around 2020 to replace Tiangong 1. At about 60 tons, the Chinese station will be considerably smaller than the 16-nation International Space Station.
China's space program has made steady progress since a 2003 launch that made it only the third nation to put a man in space. Two more manned missions have followed — one including a space walk — and China separately seeks to launch a lunar rover next year.
The country launched its independent space station program after being turned away from the International Space Station, largely on objections from the United States. The U.S. is wary of the Chinese program's military links and the sharing of technology with its chief economic and political rival.

BSNL launches new tablet

BSNL has launched three tablets including two 7 inch resistive screen based tabs with Android 2.3 operating system while the third tablet comes with an 8 inch capacitive touchscreen.

Made by Noida based company - Pantel, the tablets will be sold with discounted data plans from BSNL. The three tablets are priced at Rs 3,250, Rs 10,999 and Rs 13,500.

The cheapest model is Panta Tpad IS 701r which is priced at Rs 3,250. Notably, Aakash is priced at just Rs 2500. However, Tpad has better specification than the Datawind's low cost tablet.

Panta Tpad is a WiFi only tablet with Android 2.3 operating system, it has a 1 GHz processor (ARM11 IMAP210) clubbed with 256 MB RAM. The tablet also offers HDMI port through which it can be connected to a TV. Its 7 inch resistive touch screen comes with 800x600 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio.
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The tablet has a 3000 mAh battery and 2 GB internal memory which can be expanded through micro SD card. The tablet also has a VGA front facing camera for video calling. While Panta Tpad IS 701r has the BSNL branding, the other two tablets images do not have.
The second tablet is named 'Panta Tpad_ws704c'. It has the same specification as its cheapest cousin (701r) but offers added 3G connectivity which supports both CDMA/EVDO and GSM, inbuilt A-GPS, Accelerometer and Bluetooth. It also comes with a 2 megapixel rear camera and also has bigger 512 MB RAM for faster performance.

The costliest amongst the three is the Tpad WS802C which has an 8 inch capacitive screen. It comes with a faster 1.2 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM. The internal memory is also bigger at 4 GB. Rest of the features like GPS, camera and Bluetooth are same as the 704C.

nokia's 41-MP camera smartphone

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia announced the 808 Pureview, a flagship Symbian device with a 41-megapixel camera. In addition to superior still imaging technology, the Nokia 808 PureView, also includes full HD 1080p video recording and playback with 4X loss less zoom and the world's first use of Nokia Rich Recording.

Govt cuts subsidy on most fertilizers for 2012/13

 India will cut by a fifth the subsidy it gives to phosphate and potash-based fertilisers in 2012/13, the government said in a statement on Thursday, its latest step aimed at patching up its widening fiscal deficit.

Subsides to diammonium phosphate (DAP) and muriate of potash (MoP) fertilisers will be slashed by 27.4 percent and 10 percent respectively. But it left out urea, the most used crop nutrient that accounts for the bulk of the government's spending on fertilisers.
The subsidy for DAP will stand at 14,350 rupees per tonne in next financial year beginning from April compared to 19,763 rupees for the current year. For MoP, the same has been fixed at 14,440 rupees per tonne against 16,054 this year.
Subsidy rates for nitrogen, phosphate and potash nutrients are also being cut by 11.6 percent, 32.6 percent, and 10.3 percent respectively. It kept the sulphur subsidy steady at 1.677 rupees per kg.
Indian farmers have complained over a sharp rise in retail prices of fertilisers, especially of DAP and MoP in the past year. Analysts said with the subsidy cut, retail prices of fertilisers were unlikely to go down.
"This is negative for complex fertilisers as reduction in subsidy will limited industry's ability to reduce maximum retail price for farmers," Tarun Surana, analyst at Sunidhi Securities & Finance in Mumbai, said in a research note.
"Reduction in maximum retail price would have been helpful to avoid strong resistance in accepting higher prices among farming community."
India imports all its potash and also buys about 90 percent of its phosphate from abroad. Potash Corp , Mosaic Co , Agrium Inc , Uralkali , Arab Potash Co , ICL Israel Chemicals and K+S are among the major potash suppliers to India.
Moroccan phosphate producer Office Cherifien des Phosphates (OCP), PhosChem and Russian fertiliser group Phosagro are key DAP supplier to India.
The country's biggest importer, Indian Farmers Fertiliser Co-operative Ltd (IFFCO), said it was not planning to raise prices despite the proposed subsidy cuts.
"We will not raise retail prices of DAP and MoP due to lower subsidy," U.S. Awasthi, IFFCO managing director, told Reuters.
"Instead we will try to secure imported raw material supplies at lower price."
New Delhi is widely expected to miss by a long chalk its deficit target of 4.6 percent of GDP for 2011/12. It approved this week a plan to sell some of the government's shareholdings in state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp through a share auction.
The fertiliser subsidy bill for 2011/12 is likely to hit 900 billion rupees, more than double the budget estimate, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said last year.
The government began providing fertiliser companies subsidy for potash, phosphate and complex fertilisers based on content of the nutrient in the fertilisers in 2010.

paan singh tomar

Irrfan Khan on his 10-year long wait for the film and how Paan Singh’s character has shades of his father

Irrfan Khan had to wait 10 years for ‘Paan Singh Tomar’. The actor was told about the idea by Tigmanshu Dhulia when they were working on ‘Haasil’. “Tigmanshu summerised the film in two lines and I was hooked,” says Irrfan who plays the dacoit in the film. Based on a true story, the film tells the tale of a steeplechase champion who turns into a dacoit due to circumstances. With no official records on the national athelete, it took Tigmanshu Dhulia and his team months of travelling and scouring through newspaper clippings to turn Irrfan into the once revered ‘daku’.  In a free-wheeling chat, the actor tells us why he waited for the film and how Paan Singh’s character has shades of his father.

Excerpts from the interview:
What made you wait for 10 years for this script?
It was a long wait because there were no records on the steeplechase champion. When we were shooting for ‘Haasil’, Tigmanshu Dhulia told me a two-liner story. It wasn’t a regular dacoit or an action story; it was the story of a national athlete who became a dacoit. For years, I kept on reasoning about Paan Singh’s transformation and what made him take up arms. I also see shades of my father in him.

Shades of your father? Please elaborate…
My father was the man of the jungle and loved open spaces. When I was shooting for the film, I used to be very overwhelmed while acting out a few scenes. That’s when I realized that Paan Singh was very similar to my father. The way Paan Singh dealt with the situations with dignity reminded me of him. 

Paan Singh had shades of negative and positive in him. How difficult is it to strike a balance so that the pendulum doesn’t swing to one side?
Frankly, there’s no set formula to approach roles. For ‘7 Khoon Maaf’, I was apprehensive as to how to approach the role of poetry sprouting Wasiullah Khan till I found Abida Parveen. For ‘Paan Singh Tomar’, I liked his non-compromising attitude, bravery, courage and simplicity and once, I started relating to the character, everything else was easy. 

There is not much is the archives about Paan Singh. How did you approach the role?
Actually, there are no records about Paan Singh Tomar. Although he was a national athlete, he wasn’t worldly wise. Today’s sportsmen know how to market themselves, Paan Singh Tomar was very naïve. It was very difficult initially to find people who knew him. We went to Milka Singh, who was his contemporary but he wasn’t interested. Slowly, we started getting clues and finally, we found a person who had fought the last battle with him. I like running but steeplechase is too technical and I had to learn it from scratch. I also had to learn Bundeli, the local dialect. The easiest part was picking up the gun as I already knew how to do it.