84th Oscars-

The 84th Academy Awards ceremony/Oscars was hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The Artist'  directed by Michel Hazanavicius swept the Academy Awards by winning five Oscars including those for Best Picture, Director and Actor. The Artist is a silent French romantic comedy drama directed by Michel Hazanavicius, starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo.

Hugo which also won five Oscars dominated the technical awards. Christopher Plummer  at 82 became the oldest actor ever to win an Academy Award, picking up the Best Supporting Actor trophy for his role as a senior citizen coming out of the closet in The Beginners.

Pakistan got its first Oscar as Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy received the Oscar for Saving face (Best documentary -short subject)  along with Daniel Junge.

Rango - staring Johnny Depp as the voice of a chameleon won Best Animated Feature Film.
The Best Documentary Oscar went to Undefeated, about a underdog high school football team, while Iranian-made A Separation took the Best Foreign Language Film.

List of Awardees in the different categories

Best Picture - The Artist
Best Actor - Jean Dujardin for The Artist
Best Actress - Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady
Best Director - Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Best Supporting Actor - Christopher Plummer for Beginners
Best Supporting Actress - Octavia Spencer for The Help
Best Adapted Screenplay - The Descendants ( Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)
Best Original Screenplay - Midnight in Paris ( Woody Allen)
Best Animated feature film - Rango
Best foreign language film - A Separation ( Iran)
Best documentary (feature) - Undefeated
Best documentary (short subject) - Saving Face (Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy)
Best short film (animated) - The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Best short film (live action) - The Shore
Best art direction - Hugo
Best cinematography - Robert Richardson for Hugo
Best costume design - Mark Bridges for The Artist
Best film editing - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Best makeup - The Iron Lady ( Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland)
Best music (original score) - The Artist
Best music (original song) - Man or Muppet from The Muppets
Best sound editing - Hugo (Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty)
Best sound mixing - Hugo (Tom Fleischman and John Midgley)
Best visual effects - Hugo (Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning)

Meogate Scandal in Pakistan

Memogate scandal: The scandal in Pakistan related to a memo (memorandum) asking for US help to thwart military coup

The memogate scandal is related to a memo delivered by Pakistani-American businessman, Mansoor Ijaz to the Pentagon asking for U.S. help to thwart a feared military coup from Pakistan army.Mansoor Ijaz wrote in financial times on 10 October 2011 that Pakistan President Asif Zardari feared the Pakistan army might overthrow his government.  Ijaz accused   the former Pakistani envoy to USA, Hussain Haqqani of crafting the memo with the President's support. The Pakistan army was outraged by the memo, which was allegedly sent by the government.Husain Haqqani, was forced to resign over the issue.

India’s First Woman Photo-journalist Homai Vyarawala died

India’s first woman photo-journalist Homai Vyarawala died on 15 January 2012 in Vadodara, Gujarat. She was the only professional woman photojournalist between 1939 and 1970. Homai Vyarawalla was commonly known by her pseudonym Dalda 13.Born at Navsari in south Gujarat in a Parsi family in December 1913, Vyarawala had her education in Mumbai and moved to Delhi in 1942. She had studied at the Mumbai University and the J J School of Arts.

She shot to national fame as a woman photo-journalist who photographed events leading to Independence as an employee of the British Information Services. Vyarawala was in the profession for nearly four decades before retiring soon after her husband's death and settled down in Vadodara since 1973.

Some of the most momentous political events in India were captured by her camera in Delhi during 1941-1970, which include unique image of the Dalai Lama crossing over into the Indian territory in 1959, captured by her lens, are of immense historical significance.

She also captured the first flag-hoisting ceremony at the Red Fort on August 16 1947, the departure of Lord Mountbatten from India and the funerals of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

The former Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of her favourite subjects.

She was awarded Padma Vibhushan during the Republic day felicitations in 2011 in recognition of her contribution as a photo-journalist.

69th Annual Golden Globes Awards

69th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on  January 15 2012. The award ceremony was hosted by British comedian, Ricky Gervais, who hosted the show for te second consecutive year. The Golden Globe Awards are sponsored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to recognise excellence in film, television both domestic and foreign.

The Artist, the French-made black-and-white silent movie about Hollywood in the '20s, directed by  Michel Hazanavicius  won three awards at the 69th annual Golden Globes Awards including statues for best comedy or musical and best actor comedy or musical for Jean Dujardin.

The Descendants directed by  Alexander Payne won for best drama. George Clooney won the Golden Globe in the category of Best actor-drama for his performance in the film- The Descendants. Meryl Streep's turn as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady earned her the best actress drama award and her eighth Golden Globe.

Other acting winners were Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer and Octavia Spencer, and Martin Scorsese earned the directing honor for Hugo. Michelle Williams won for actress in a musical or comedy as Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn, 52 years after Monroe's win for the same prize at the Globes for Some Like It Hot.

Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin won for best animated film, and the Iranian tale A Separation was named the foreign-language winner.

List of Winners of the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards is as follows:

Best Picture: Drama- The Descendants
Best Actor: Drama- George Clooney (The Descendants)
Best Actress: Drama- Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
Best supporting Actor- Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
Best Supporting Actress- Octavia Spencer (The Help)
Best Screenplay- Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
Best Picture: Comedy or Musical- The Artist
Best Actor: Comedy or Musical- Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
Best Actress: Comedy or Musical- Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn)
Best Director- Martin Scorsese (Hugo)
Best Foreign Language Film- A Separation (Iran)
Best Animated Film- The Adventures of Tintin
Best Original Score- Ludovic Bource, The Artist

List of Winners in Television:

Best Comedy Series- Modern Family
Best Drama Series- Homeland
Best Actor, Comedy- Matt LeBlanc (Episodes)
Best Actress, Comedy- Laura Dern (Enlightened)
Best Actor, Drama- Kelsey Grammer (Boss)
Best Actress, Drama- Claire Danes (Homeland

Argentina’s Lionel Messi voted World's Outstanding Footballer for Third Consecutive Year

Argentina’s Lionel Messi was awarded the 2011 FIFA Ballon d'Or on 9 january 2012 in Zurich. He won the award for the third consecutive year for the world's outstanding footballer. Messi who plays for club Barcelona won 47.88 per cent votes and finished ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo (21.6)%) and Xavi (9.23%).

Messi becomes only the second player, after current UEFA president Michel Platini, to win the award for three consecutive years. He joined Platini, Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten as the only men to have won the prize thrice.

Japanese midfielder Homare Sawa claimed the 2011 FIFA Ballon d'Or in the women’s category. Japan’s women’s team, known as the Nadeshiko had memorably claimed their maiden FIFA Women’s World Cup with a thrilling performance by defeating the USA on penalties after extra time.

Barcelona’s coach Pep Guardiola was named FIFA Coach of the Year. Pep Guardiola was former midfielder of Spain

The winners in other categories are as follows: Coach of the Year (women): Norio Sasaki (Jpn); FIFA Puskas Award: Neymar (Bra); FIFA Presidential Award: Sir Alex Ferguson (Sco); FIFPro XI: Iker Casillas; Daniel Alves, Gerard Pique, Sergio Ramos, Nemanja Vidic; Andres Iniesta, Xabi Alonso, Xavi; Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney.

FIFA Award

The FIFA Ballon d’Or was awarded for the second time in January 2012.

The award was formed when the Ballon d'Or merged with the FIFA World Player-of-the-Year award in 2010 and is voted for by national team coaches and captains, as well as a panel of football journalists selected by France Football magazine.

These awards were decided after a poll in which the captains and head coaches of the men’s (for the two men’s football awards) and women’s (for the two women’s football awards) national teams, as well as international media representatives selected by French football magazine France Football, voted for candidates in each of the four categories. Each group’s votes represented one third of the final result.

10 Indian's in Forbes 30

10 Indian's in Forbes 30 Under 30 List of "tomorrow's brightest stars" who are "reinventing the world

From a 29-year-old Goldman Sachs director to a graduate student developing energy conserving sensors, about 10 Indian-origin young turks have been named in a Forbes list of "tomorrow's brightest stars" who are "reinventing the world".

The Forbes' '30 under 30' list profiles about 360young "ultra impressive up-and-comers" that the companies should either "hire today" or would be working for them in the future as they are the young people of today "who matter".

The magazine has selected the young turks from 12diverse fields including energy, finance, media, law, entertainment, science,design and technology.Among the Indian-origin people on the list is 17year old Param Jaggi, a student and inventor at Austin College.An "award-winning high schooler", Jaggi created algae-filled device that fits over a car's tailpipe and turns carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Next is 23-year-old Vivek Nair, Chief Executive of Damascus Fortune, who is developing a technology that transforms industrial carbon emissions into carbon nano tubes.

In the finance sector is featured Vikas Mohindra,Financial Advisor at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The 25-year-old broker gathered $38 million in three years from scratch, including a $5 million retirement savings plan.

Next is Manvir Nijhar, Co-Head of European Equity Derivatives Sales at Citigroup. The 28-year-old London School of Economics graduate left BNP Paribas after a four-year stint to give "Citi's derivatives business a jolt."

Following him is Kunal Shah, a 29-year-old Managing Director at Goldman Sachs. The youngest managing director the global financial giant has ever seen, Shah was promoted at 27 and is the "Cambridge math grad turned rock star emerging markets trader," Forbes writes.

Making a mark in the field of science is29-year-old Raj Krishnan, Chief Executive of Biological Dynamics who is developing blood tests that use electric fields to detect key signals that apatient has cancer from the blood.

At 27, Sidhant Gupta, a graduate student at the University of Washington, is developing new sensors and software for the home that conserve electricity, heat and gas.

Others featured in the list are 24-year-old Nikhil Arora, co-Founder of a business that sells 'grow-your-own- mushroom' kits using1 million lbs of recycled coffee grounds and 27-year-old Maneet Ahuja, a producer at CNBC and a hedge fund expert who has been on Wall Street since shewas 17.

Glitch halts test-launch of Prithvi missiles

Plans to launch two nuclear-capable Prithvi-II missiles in a salvo mode within a few minutes of each other were aborted at the last minute on Wednesday after a technical glitch developed in one of them.

The missiles which were to be launched by the Strategic Force Command (SFC) of the Armed Forces from the Integrated Test Range, Balasore, were held back, after the problem was detected during the countdown, a top official of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) told The Hindu.

The problem was being looked into and it was not yet known when the rescheduled test-firing would take place.

The 350-km range Prithvi-II is a single stage, liquid propelled strategic missile and can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. It has already been inducted into the armed forces and was tested several times as part of regular user trials. The missile is equipped with an advanced inertial navigation system and can carry payloads ranging from 500 kg to 1,000 kg to a distance of 350 km.

Learn the debt crisis in an analogous way !

For anyone who cannot understand the present financial crisis of the UK, the EU and indeed the whole western world economies. 
Mary is the proprietor of a bar in Dublin. She realises that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronise her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

"Word gets around about Mary's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Mary's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Dublin .

"By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Mary gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.

"Consequently, Mary's gross sales volume increases massively. A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognises that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Mary's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

"At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into Drinkbonds and Alkibonds. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naïve investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as 'AAA' secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

"One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Mary's bar. He so informs Mary. Mary then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Mary cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.

"Overnight, Drinkbonds and Alkibonds drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank's liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Mary's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various Bond securities. They find they are now faced with having to write-off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

"Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion euro no-strings-attached cash infusion from their cronies in government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Mary's bar.

"Now, do you understand economics in 2011?"

French Senate Passed Burqa Ban Bill

The French Senate on 14 Sept 2010 passed a Bill banning the burqa-style Islamic veil on public streets and other places with an overwhelming majority. Islamic veil though effects less than 2000 women was seen as a symbolic defence of French values. The French Senate voted 246 to 1 in favour the bill the ban became a law in France. The Bill was passed in July 2010 in the Lower House of France- the National Assembly. It only remains for the France’s constitutional watchdog to pass the bill before the ban becomes a law in France. The proponents of the ban made effective by the law would preserve the nation’s values, including its secular foundations and a notion of fraternity that is contrary to those who hide their faces.

Nobel Prizes, 2011

For Peace: Declaring women’s rights vital for world peace, the Nobel Committee awarded its annual Peace Prize to three indomitable campaigners against war and oppression. Africa’s first freely elected female head of State Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf shares the prize with compatriot Leymah Gbowee, who led a “sex strike” among her efforts against Liberia’s civil war and Arab activist Tawakul Karman, who hailed the award as a victory for democracy in Yemen.

For Literature: Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II. His works have been translated into more than 50 languages and influenced poets around the globe, particularly in North America. Born in Stockholm in 1931, Transtromer started writing poetry while studying at the Sodra Latin school in Stockholm.

For Medicine: American Bruce Beutler and French biologist Jules Hoffmann, who studied the first stages of immune responses to attack, share the award with Canadian-born Ralph Steinman, whose discovery of dendritic cells in the 1970s is key to understanding the body’s next line of defence against disease. Their work has opened up new avenues for the development of prevention and therapy against infections, cancer and inflammatory diseases

However, Steinman was not lucky enough to taste the fruit of his success. He won the Nobel for medicine for work on fighting cancer, but died of the disease himself just three days before he could be told of his award.

For Physics: American Saul Perlmutter shares the award with US-Australian Brian Schmidt and US scientist Adam Riess, for their studies of exploding stars that revealed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Working in two separate research teams during the 1990s, Perlmutter in one and Schmidt and Riess in the other, the scientists raced to map the universe’s expansion by analysing a particular type of supernovas, or exploding stars. They found that the light emitted by more than 50 distant supernovas was weaker than expected, a sign that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate.

For Chemistry: Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman, for his discovery of quasicrystals, a mosaic-like chemical structure that researchers previously thought was impossible. Shechtman’s discovery in 1982 fundamentally changed the way chemists look at solid matter. Contrary to the previous belief that atoms were packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns, Shechtman showed that the atoms in a crystal could be packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Since then, quasicrystals have been produced in laboratories and a Swedish company found them in one of the most durable kinds of steel, which is now used in products such as razor blades and thin needles made specifically for eye surgery.

For Literature: Americans Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims share the prize for work that helps governments and central banks weigh up responses to crises, though it offers no immediate answer to current global problems.

For Economics: Americans Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims shared the Nobel prize in economics, for work that helps governments and central banks weigh up responses to crises, though it offers no immediate answer to current global problems.

The economics prize is the only one of the six Nobels that was not originally included in the 1895 will of the creator of the prize, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel. It was created by the Swedish central bank, the Riksbank, in 1968, to commemorate its tercentenary and was first handed out in the year 1969.

Man Booker Prize, 2011
Julian Barnes has won the award for his latest novel “The Sense of an Ending”, which is a tale of childhood friendship and the imperfections of memory.

November 2011

APPOINTED-

Mariano Rajoy: He has been elected as the Prime Minister of Spain. He inherits a stagnant economy with a 23 per cent unemployment rate and borrowing costs back to levels Spain was paying before it joined the euro.
Mario Monti: He has been appointed as the Prime Minister of Italy.
Lucas Papademos: He has been appointed as the Prime Minister of Greece.
Nabam Tuki: He has been elected as the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh.

RESIGNED

Silvio Berlusconi: Prime Minister of Italy.

DIED

Bhupen Hazarika: Noted singer, songwriter, composer and film maker from Assam. He was 85. He was not just a singer but a social reformer who brought the north-east closer to rest of India. A Dada Saheb Phalke award winner, his music echoed beyond borders.
Indira Goswami: Celebrated poet and writer from Assam. She had been conferred with Sahitya Akademi and Jnanpith awards. She also became India’s first Principal Prince Claus Laureate in 2008. Among her popular publications are: “The Moth Eaten Howdah of a Tusker”, “Pages Stained with Blood”, and “The Man from Chinnamasta”. In “The Blue Naked Braja”, she gave her own experiences as a widow, as well as that of Radhaswamis of Vrindavan.
Sultan Khan: Noted sarangi maestro. He was 75.
Peter Roebuck: Noted 55-year-old British cricket writer. He was 55.
Hargobind Khorana: Pioneering Indian-American biochemist who won the 1968 Nobel Prize for medicine. He was 89.
Joe Frazier: Former world heavyweight champion. He was 67.

EVENTS

November
1—Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt and pace bowler Mohammad Asif become the first cricketers ever to be convicted for fixing a part of a match. A 12-member jury at London’s Southwark Crown Court finds them guilty of conspiracy to cheat and conspiring to accept corrupt payments during a Pakistan-England Test match at Lord’s in 2010.
2—A landmark deal, signed between Nepal’s political parties to integrate about one-third of the 19,000 former Maoist guerrillas into the national army, sets the stage for reinvigorating the stalled peace process and formation of a national unity government after years of wrangling.
21—The Uttar Pradesh Assembly votes to re-organise the State into four parts—Purvanchal, Bundlekhand, Awadh Pradesh and Paschim Pradesh.
26—NATO  raid on two border posts of Pakistan, on Pak-Afghan border, kills 28 Pakistani soldiers.

MILESTONES

Rana Kapoor: Founder, managing director and chief executive of Yes Bank, he has been chosen as the Banker of the Year 2010-12 by Business Standard newspaper.
Ivian Sarcos: Miss Venezuela, she has been crowned Mis World 2011.
Niranjan V.: A Rhodes scholar and alumnus of National Law School of India University, Bangalore, he has topped in Oxford University’s postgraduate programme, dubbed as one of the most “demanding programmes in the world”.