Terrorist attacked: NSG storms Oberoi, Taj Hotel in Mumbai

Gunbattles raged between terrorists and commandoes and fresh explosions rocked two luxury hotels -Taj and Trident (Oberoi)- after a night of Terror targeting ten places in the country's financial capital killed over 100 people and injuring almost 600 people.

Sharp shooters of army, NSG and other security forces moved into Mumbai's landmark hotels to overwhelm an unspecified number of terrorists still holed out there after several residents were rescued in the wee hours.

Police believe that the number of terrorists could be three or four. Raging fire and plumes of black smoke were seen billowing from the central dome of the century-old heritage Taj hotel opposite the Gateway of India this morning as firemen struggled to douse them.

A guest stranded in one of the rooms said two explosions shook the building. Another luxury hotel Trident was under siege with some terrorists holding some foreigners hostage. A tourist guide was worried about the fate of five Canadians he had put up in that hotel. Earlier in the night, explosions were heard in the hotel.

Exchange of fire intensified at Nariman House, a residential complex with a Jewish prayer hall, where also a hostage situation was prevailing. There were unconfirmed reports of a similar situation in Cama hospital.

As Wednesday night's terror incidents spread a sense of panic and fear in the metropolis, schools and colleges were ordered closed and the Bombay Stock Exchange will not function on Thursday.

Suburban trains and city buses operated normally but without usual rush.

Except for cancellation of three international flights, domestic air services to Mumbai were maintained.

As gun fights raged, security personnel were seen summoning ambulances, an indication perhaps that some injured could be rushed to hospitals. A grenade explosion was also heard in the Trident Hotel.

One foreigner and several employees of the Taj Hotel were among those killed in the terror incidents, something unprecedented the country has witnessed for the indiscriminate firing indulged in by the terrorists who also took hostages singling out American and British passport holders.

Little known Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for the terror strikes in e-mails sent to some media organisations.

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said the situation was "grave". He remarked that the terrorists could have come by boats.

Maharashtra deputy chief minister R R Patil said nine suspected terrorists have been detained. Five police officers, including Anti Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare, were killed in the terror strikes that in all claimed the lives.

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Cloud and Climate Changes: CERES Flight Model Moves toward Launch

NASA’s Langley Research Center’s Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments have been observing clouds and the radiation budget for nearly a decade now. Key questions remain about how a warming climate will affect clouds, which play an important role in what scientists call the planet's "radiation budget."

Since its inception, CERES, which measures all wavelength radiation, has gathered that important data, building on the prior observations of NASA’s Earth's Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) data to create a 30-year record of radiative flux at the top of Earth's atmosphere.

A new sensor, the CERES Flight Model (FM) 5, that will continue the 30-year climate data record of the Earth's radiant energy, has been delivered ahead of schedule and on budget, by Northrop Grumman Space Technologies. The CERES FM 5 instrument will fly as part of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) in 2010. Four CERES sensors currently operate on NASA's Terra and Aqua Earth Observing System spacecraft.

"We were given authority to proceed in January '08, and we delivered in Nov. '08," said CERES co-Principal Investigator Norman Loeb. "That, to me, is a really spectacular success story."

The "radiation budget" is an ever-changing exchange of incoming solar radiation and outgoing radiation that is either emitted by Earth or reflected by the Earth's surface, clouds and aerosols. The amount of energy fluctuates, but the "budget" is always in near-balance, meaning incoming and outgoing radiative fluxes are approximately equal. Changes in this budget largely determine the Earth's temperature and climate.

The CERES instruments detect the amount of outgoing heat and reflected sunlight leaving the planet. An example of CERES data from CERES Aqua show measurements over the United States from June 22, 2002. CERES detects the amount of outgoing heat and reflected sunlight leaving the planet.

Clouds play a significant, but still not completely understood, role in the Earth's radiation budget. Low, thick clouds can reflect the sun's energy back into space before solar radiation reaches the surface, while high clouds trap the radiation emitted by the Earth from escaping into space. The total effect of high and low clouds determines the amount of greenhouse warming.

When scientists build computer models that predict how Earth's climate will change over time, figuring out what role clouds play in the radiation budget and how cloud behavior might change due to a warming planet is an important task toward accuracy.

"The Earth's radiation balance is in many ways the most critical part of the climate system and is directly influenced by changes in atmospheric composition, such as greenhouse gases and aerosols, cloud properties, and surface and atmospheric temperature," said Loeb. CERES co-Principal Investigator Bruce Wielicki noted "The long climate record from CERES will ultimately answer a longstanding question in science concerning the role of clouds in amplifying or damping the sensitivity of the Earth's climate system."

Data indicate that clouds have an overall cooling effect on the planet. But many other questions remain about what a changing climate will do to cloud behavior, and how exactly clouds affect climate and seasonal weather. The role of clouds remains the largest source of discrepancy among climate models, underscoring the importance of both continuing to observe clouds and their relationship to the radiation budget, and using CERES data to refine the role of clouds in climate models.

My School photos and school staffs & friends

I did finished my school life in this school. My school name is punitha arulappar higher secondary school avudayanoor. It is located 15Km away from tenkasi. It is tirunelveli district. It is a good school in around this area.

Backyard Pool Safety - Everyone Can Be a Lifesaver

This summer, the Royal Life Saving Society Australia is asking everyone with a backyard pool to follow a simple checklist to make sure their fence is safe before tragedy can occur.

According to the Society, on average 35 Australian children under the age of five drown each year. Half of those children will drown in a backyard pool, and that is where you can take action to save a life.

“An increasing number of children are drowning by getting through, under or over existing pool gates and fencing that their parents believed was secure,” said Royal Life Saving CEO, Rob Bradley. “We are asking every pool owner to get out into their backyard this weekend and make sure it is safe and secure.”

“Pool Fencing legislation has now been in place for 10 to 15 years and many fences and gates have badly deteriorated,” said Bradley. “Recent local government surveys have shown that up to 85 per cent of home pools do not comply with the safety standards. That’s a frightening statistic.”

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Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College Terrific Incident

Barack Obama elected to President and President Bush Meet at White House

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain and became the first African American to be elected President of the United States.

Obama will be the first U.S. President born outside the contiguous United States. He also will be fifth youngest President at a date of accession and the second since Lincoln whose primary political base is Illinois.

President-elect Obama is scheduled to be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009.

President-Elect Barack Obama delivered the final speech of a presidential campaign that promised change in Washington:

Now the work begins to deliver on this promise by planning the agenda and priorities for the Obama Administration. As the President-Elect reminded the country:

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush warmly welcomed President-elect Barack Obama and Michelle Obama to the White House yesterday for a visit that lasted several hours.

In a private meeting in the Oval Office, President-elect Obama thanked President Bush for his commitment to a smooth transition in light of the nation's many critical economic and security challenges.

The First Lady led Mrs. Obama on a tour of the historic home - with a focus on the private residence - before meeting in the West Sitting Hall, where they discussed raising daughters in the White House.

Obama taking office is January 20, 2009

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How to improve your Children’s Health?

A fundamental goal of NICHD's research is to improve children's health and development. This year, NICHD research provided clinicians and health professionals with several new practical tools to help keep children healthy and well: Doctors have better guidance on the use of pain medication for infants; they have new warning signs for later cognitive problems; and they can identify early markers of future disease among the growing number of overweight children and adolescents.

Using morphine to control pain in premature newborns on mechanical ventilation should be limited. A large clinical trial found that continuous morphine infusions to relieve pain in premature newborns on mechanical ventilation did not reduce the frequencies of severe neurological (brain) injuries or deaths in these infants, contrary to results of an earlier pilot study. Rates of the adverse events were even higher in infants who received additional "bolus" doses of morphine to control pain. These results have important implications for clinical practice because routinely starting continuous infusion of morphine for pain associated with mechanical ventilation is a common practice in neonatal intensive care units. The severity of adverse events associated with this practice prompted the researchers to recommend that continuous morphine infusion be used sparingly, to reduce severe or repetitive pain in these infants. The research, however, also highlighted urgent needs to develop both less hazardous pain medications for the infants and better, standardized methods for assessing their pain.

Prolonged crying in infants may signal late cognitive problems. Infants who cry a lot after the first three months of life, without any obvious cause, may later experience cognitive problems, according to new study. The researchers distinguished between colic - extended, unexplained crying that typically stops after the first 12 weeks of life - and the "prolonged" crying of older infants. Prolonged crying is generally considered to be crying more than three hours a day. The research affirmed earlier findings that colic does not affect cognitive development. By contrast, the researchers found that approximately 5 percent of children experiencing prolonged crying as infants had lower IQ scores, poorer fine motor abilities, hyperactivity, and discipline problems at age five. The implications for clinical practice are that children with a history of prolonged, unexplained crying after the age of three months should be followed more intensively to detect emerging developmental problems that might respond to early intervention.

Heavy alcohol drinking during pregnancy causes persistent nerve damage in infants that escape fetal alcohol syndrome. A small, observational study by scientists at the NICHD and the University of Chile found significant damage in the peripheral nervous system of infants whose mothers drank large amounts of alcohol during pregnancy, even though the infants did not show symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome. This is the first study to find peripheral neuropathy - a condition well-recognized in alcoholic adults - in children exposed to alcohol in utero. Neurological evaluations of these infants at ages six and twelve months showed damage both to the part of the nerve that carries signals to muscles and other tissue and to the part that insulates the nerve. The persistence of the damage at one year suggests that the alcohol exposure interfered with neural development. As the researchers continue to follow the children, they will look for emerging clinical symptoms that could not be measured in infancy. For instance, in adults, alcoholic peripheral neuropathy is associated with muscle weakness, impaired fine motor functioning, and other symptoms.

Overweight, obesity and the metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents. At a time when more U.S. teens are overweight than those in most other industrialized nations, researchers are also reporting high rates of a cluster of metabolic disorders (metabolic syndrome) in obese adolescents as well as in children as young as four years old. Metabolic syndrome - which includes high blood pressure, high insulin levels, abnormal cholesterol levels, and overweight or obesity - the likelihood of developing diabetes, heart disease, or stroke. The researchers studying the syndrome in children and adolescents found that the prevalence of the syndrome increased with the severity of obesity, reaching 50 percent in severely obese youngsters. They also found that the more obese the children and adolescents were, the more severe were each of the disorders that make up the syndrome. And, in a relatively short period (a year) between the initial testing and follow up, the researchers found a dramatic increase in the development of type 2 diabetes in the research subjects diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. They warned this increase could precede an epidemic of advanced cardiovascular disease as obese adolescents become obese adults.

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