WTO discussions deadlocked

India has said that an instrument similar to SSM is already available to a select few countries (mostly the developed countries) for over two decades, and therefore, the demand for SSM was reasonable and pragmatic.

India has sought an SSM without it being conditional on market access, as the tool was to counter hugely subsidised farm goods from rich countries. India also wanted the rich nations to drastically reduce their 'trade distorting' farm subsidies.

According to the draft text, work on a SSM shall be pursued taking account of proposals by the WTO Member countries and in the “broader context of agricultural market access.” The text also says that the WTO's General Council (the highest decision making body at the global trade body's headquarters in Geneva) shall regularly review progress on SSM negotiations.

Food security

Regarding a permanent solution for the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes, the draft declaration has not mentioned a short deadline (of December 2015 or latest by December 2017) as demanded by the developing countries including India.

The draft has taken note that the 'peace clause' -- as agreed during the 2013 Bali Ministerial Declaration and later made clear by the WTO General Council decision in November 2014 -- shall remain in force until a permanent solution in this regard is agreed and adopted. Thanks to the indefinite peace clause, the WTO member countries cannot challenge the agriculture subsidies given by nations saying they violate the provisions of the WTO norms.

However, instead of giving any deadline to arrive at a permanent solution, the text only mentions that the negotiations on the issue shall continue to be pursued as a priority in the Committee on Agriculture in Special Session, in dedicated sessions and in an accelerated time-frame.

Source:- The Hindu, 18-Dec-2015

India-Palestine group to perform in 11 cities

Safdar Hashmi of Jana Natya Manch (Janam) was killed in 1989 while performing the famous street play Halla Bol . Juliano Mer-Khamis of The Freedom Theatre (TFT) in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank was gunned down in 2011 by a masked man outside the theatre.

The two groups share a similarity not just in the way their dynamic theatre-activist leaders died, but also in their broad understanding of the role of culture and theatre as potent weapons to bring about social and political change. Now, in a first-ever India-Palestine theatrical collaboration, the two groups are presenting a joint production in 11 cities across India, starting in Lucknow on Thursday.

The festival, titled ‘Freedom Jatha’ will travel between December 18 and January 25, and present shows in Bhopal, Delhi, Mumbai, Talassery, Mallapuram, Kozhikode, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Patna.

The programme will include the JNM-TFT play on the theme of occupation and resistance, a puppet performance on Palestine by internationally acclaimed puppeteer Anurupa Roy and her team Kat-katha, a photo exhibition on Palestine, the traditional Palestinian Dapke dance and poetry, songs and short performances by local artistes.

Janam describes this collaboration a result of “a direct, people-to-people contacts, unmediated by funding agencies or governments” at a point in time when the Indian government is more pro-Israel than ever before.

Mala Hashmi, a leading organiser of Janam, says the two groups have been in touch ever since the slaying of Juliano Mer-Khamis, who believed that oppression can be fought with plays, music, cinema.

Source: The Hindu, 18-Dec-2015

Watching horror films can actually curdle your blood

Love watching horror movies? Well, the fear or horror can curdle your blood for real, preparing the body for blood loss during life-threatening situations.

The results suggest that using the term “bloodcurdling” to describe feeling extreme fear while watching horror films is justified, say researchers, adding that scary movies result in an increase in the clotting protein — blood coagulant factor VIII.

Researchers in the Netherlands set out to assess whether acute fear can curdle blood. The study involved 24 healthy volunteers aged 30 years or younger recruited from Leiden University Medical Centre. Fourteen were assigned to watch a frightening (horror) movie followed by a non-threatening (educational) movie and 10 to watch the movies in reverse order. Before and after each movie (within 15 minutes), blood samples were taken and analysed for markers or “fear factors” of clotting activity.

The horror movie was perceived to be more frightening than the educational movie, with a 5.4 mean difference in fear rating scores. The difference in coagulant factor VIII levels before and after watching the movies was higher for the horror movie than for the educational movie.

“Levels increased in 12 (57 per cent) participants during the horror movie, but only in three (14 per cent) during the educational movie,” the authors noted.

Levels decreased in 18 (86 per cent) participants during the educational movie, but only in nine (43 per cent) during the horror movie.

However, the researchers found no effect of either movie on levels of other clot-forming proteins, suggesting that although coagulation is triggered by acute fear, this does not lead to actual clot formation. “Watching bloodcurdling movies is associated with an increase in blood coagulant factor VIII without actual thrombin formation,” the authors concluded in the journal The BMJ . — IANS

Source :- The Hindu, 18-Dec-2015

An app to detox you from smartphone addiction

Tired of WhatsApp messages and e-mail pings during a key client meet? Well, here comes an app that will lock the smartphone altogether and keep you from using it while engaged in activities such as meetings, conferences and discussions.

Called “Lock n’ LoL” (Lock Your Smartphone and Laugh Out Loud) and developed by researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea, the app helps people restrain themselves from using smartphones during meetings or social gatherings.

It allows users to create a new room or join an existing room. The users then invite meeting participants or friends to the room and share its ID with them to enact the Group Limit (lock) mode. When phones are in the lock mode, all alarms and notifications are automatically muted and users must ask permission to unlock their phones.

However, in an emergency, users can access their phones for five minutes in a temporary “unlimit” mode. “We conducted the ‘Lock n’ LoL’ campaign throughout the campus for one month this year with 1,000 students participating. We discovered that students accumulated more than 10,000 free hours from using the app on their smartphones,” said lead researcher professor Uichin Lee.

The students were able to focus more on their group activities.

“In an age of the ‘Internet of Things’, we expect that the adverse effects of mobile distractions and addictions will emerge as a social concern, and our Lock n’ LoL is a key effort to address this issue,” he noted.

In addition, the app’s “Co-location Reminder” detects and lists nearby users to encourage app users to limit their phone use.

The “Lock n’ LoL” also displays important statistics to monitor users’ behaviour such as the current week’s total limit time, the weekly average usage time, top friends ranked by time spent together and top activities in which the users participated.

“This app will certainly help family members to interact more with each other during the holiday season,” Prof. Lee added.

The “Lock n’ LoL” is available for free download on the App Store and Google Play

Brazilians shocked

Meanwhile, millions of Brazilians woke up shocked and cranky on Thursday after WhatsApp was shut down for two days on a judge’s order. The service is wildly popular in Brazil.

The measure, which is to last until midnight Friday, was roundly denounced by parent company Facebook.

It was ordered by a judge after WhatsApp failed to disclose information requested for a criminal investigation.

WhatsApp is causing headaches for Brazil’s telecoms companies because it offers a free alternative to the country’s high cell phone rates. — IANS, AFP

Source:- The Hindu, 18-Dec-2015

King Tutankhamun’s gold mask restored

Egypt put the restored gold mask of Tutankhamun back on display Wednesday after German experts removed glue applied in a botched repair when the priceless artefact’s beard fell off.

The restored mask — now back in its display case at the museum — was shown to journalists after more than two months’ work by a team.

“It is done,” Christian Eckmann, a German specialist in restoration work on antiquities in glass and metal, told reporters at a press conference.

Beard falls off

The beard fell off the boy pharaoh’s funerary mask in August 2014 at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and employees tried to reattach it with glue. The accident happened when the mask was removed from its display case to repair the lighting.

In a hurried attempt to fix it, museum workers applied too much epoxy glue, leaving a visible crust.

The restoration included a 3D scan of the mask and removing the beard once more.

“The most challenging process was to remove the beard. We did it by mechanical means... using wooden tools,” Mr. Eckmann said. The process included warming the mask to enable the adhesive to be removed.

Top attraction

The boy king’s death mask is a top attraction at the museum, which has hundreds of items from the tomb found in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter along with the pharaoh’s mummy in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings.

When Carter discovered the treasure, the ceremonial beard was already loose and he himself removed it for the first time, Mr. Eckmann said.

“Ninety years after Carter accomplished the first restoration of the mask in December 1925, we have the pleasure to present the mask in its original form,” he said.

Tutankhamun died aged 19 in 1324 BC after reigning for nine years. His 11-kg (24.2-pound) solid gold funerary mask is encrusted with lapis lazuli and semi-precious stones. — AFP

The artefact was back on display after a botched repair that took 8 weeks to rectify

Source :- The Hindu, 18-Dec-2015

Technology to the rescue

A wearable device that aims at automatically providing relief and summoning medical help for victims who are left unattended after serious automobile accidents has been developed by a student in Uttar Pradesh.

Seventeen-year-old Akshat Prakash, who studies in Class 12 in Delhi Public School, Indirapuram, on the outskirts of Delhi, has named his invention ‘HelixSafe’ and presented it at the Taiwan International Science Fair, 2015. The device uses heartbeat variance as the key indicator to auto-detect grave injury during automobile accidents and auto- injects medicine to prolong the victim’s survival while informing the nearest medical facility for help. It provides life-prolonging support to accident victims as they wait for help to reach them, he explained.

Akshat filed a patent in 2013 in India for ‘HelixSafe’ and the patent has been published in the Official Patent Journal , 2015.

“I am deeply interested in pursuing a life-long research career in Computer Science. I aspire to create a cleaner, healthier and safer society by applying Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Devices and Big Data Analytics to real-world solutions,” he said. The prototype has been created with Arduino Development Environment, Heart Rate Sensor and accessories and programmed in Embedded C and Visual Basic.

Akshat has won ‘India’s First Whiz Kid’ award for Best Innovation, 2013, for the device. The award is given by Nurture Talent & Computer Society of India.

“I presented HelixSafe at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and IIT-Mumbai,” a beaming Akshat said, adding that people from all walks of life have evinced an interest in his device wherever he has displayed it. — PTI

The wearable device provides life-prolonging support to fatal automobile accident victims as they wait for help to reach them

The wearable device provides life-prolonging support to automobile accident victims as they wait for help to reach them

Source :- The Hindu, 18-Dec-2015

Permission no longer needed to buy farm land

In a major move to boost industrial growth, the Maharashtra government on Thursday approved an amendment to the Rent Act, allowing non-farmers to buy agricultural land for industrial activities without government permission.

As per the amendment, permission to buy agricultural land that is shown as ‘not under farming’ in plans can be removed. But the buyer will have to use the land for the pre-stated purpose in five years (which can be increased to 10 years by paying an annual fee); failing to do so will result in the land being deposited back with the government with the intent of returning it to the original farmer. Buyers wanting to resell the land for other purposes will have to pay a 25 per cent transfer fee.

It is no longer necessary to seek permission from the Industry Commissioner to buy agriculture land more than 10 hectares for industrial use. “This decision will ensure industrial growth. However, while the process is being smoothened, strict implementation of all the amendments will have to be ensured,” said Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse .

Source:- The Hindu, 18-Dec-2015