Hockey World Cup: Pakistan Beat Spain by 2-1

NEW DELHI: Pakistan defeated Spain 2-1in their second match in the FIH hockey World Cup here on Tuesday.  After being beaten by India in their first match, Pakistan showed good spirit this time despite a tense contest between the two countries.

Rehan Butt got Pakistan lead in the 30th minute and Pakistan were leading 1-0 when the first half ended.

However, Spain equalled the score in the second half when David Alegre netted in the 65th minute but just two minutes before the end, young Abdu Haseem Khan deflected the penalty-corner hit by Sohail Abbas and Pakistan emerged victorious in the end.

Pakistan will play their next match on Thursday against England who have so far won their both matches – against Australia and South Africa.

Ash Opts Out of the Film with Abhi

MUMBAI: Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s production Crooked is set to go on the floors from January 14 next year. However, the Abhishek Bachchan starrer has no lead actress as Aishwarya, who was supposed to do the film, opted out citing date problems.

Her dates for Crooked were colliding with Vipul Shah’s Action Replay. Since Action Replay is inching towards completion, Aishwarya had to give it priority, leaving her with no choice but to opt out of Crooked, directed by Abhinay Deo. It is a thriller which will be shot at different foreign locales.

Meanwhile, Farhan’s other production directed by Zoya Akhtar featuring Hrithik Roshan, Farhan and Abhay Deol is also stuck as it has no lead actress. The film’s shooting starts from April 5 in Spain. Ritesh says, “We are now looking for a completely new face in Crooked, which actually requires three new girls. We also need a fresh face either from London or New York for Hrithik in Zoya’s film.”

Farhan says, “Hrithik has been a true friend. I start directing Don 3 from September 2010, so Zoya’s film had to be completed before that. Hrithik adjusted his dates accordingly.”

Fidel Castro Dead

Fidel Castro Dead: On July 27, 2006, Fidel Castro nearly died during emergency intestinal surgery to stem internal bleeding caused by chronic diverticulitis. Since then, Cuba-watchers and obituary writers have been on high alert awaiting his demise.
Fidel Castro DeadYet, more than three years later, Castro soldiers on, approaching his mortal end with the same zeal he lavished on his life. The 83-year-old appears to have adjusted to his medically mandated retirement, enduring various surgeries and their attendant complications. A state-of-the art convalescent suite has been installed in his principal residence, Punto Cero, where he is surrounded by family and Cuba’s finest doctors. On his good days, he entertains well-wishers — among them, Harry Belafonte and Oliver Stone. And he continues to intervene in the thorny politics of Cuba.

In 2007, while still hospitalised, Castro began a transition from being Cuba’s commander in chief to its pundit in chief, penning columns he calls ‘Reflections’ in the state-run newspaper, Granma. Late last year, he offered some personal introspection. “I have had the rare privilege of observing events for a very long time,” he wrote. He then acknowledged the gravity of his illness. “I do not expect I shall enjoy such a privilege four years from now — when President [Barack] Obama’s first term has concluded.”

But until Castro is in the grave, we will be hearing from him. While his brother Raul and the Cuban army are running the day-to-day affairs of the country, Castro retains and exercises veto power. And Cubans continue to feel the strongman’s sting.

In March, more than a dozen of the most senior members of the Cuban regime were purged from the government. While Raul Castro had initiated the internal coup, Fidel was quick to weigh in and assail its casualties, all former members of his inner circle. The men had succumbed to “the honey of power,” he wrote in his column.

Castro’s reluctant leave-taking — with its periodic near-finales — fits into a long tradition of Hispanic caudillos or dictators. Consider, for example, the life — and death — of Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator of almost 40 years. Both Castro’s father and Franco hailed from the rugged northern countryside of Spain, a region renowned for its fierce and stubborn citizenry. And notwithstanding divergent political ideologies — Franco was a zealous anti-communist — the two men had a good deal in common. Both were willing to forge unpalatable and unpopular alliances with totalitarian states to shore up their power — Franco with Nazi Germany and Castro with the Soviet Union.

And Franco’s shrouded last days neatly foreshadowed Castro’s. Franco became grievously ill in 1974 and was forced to turn over his rule — “temporarily,” he insisted — to Prince Juan Carlos. Castro also initially ceded control to his brother only “temporarily”. Like Castro, Franco had an unexpected recovery, although his lasted only a year before he died at 82.

Although it is generally believed that Franco died days earlier, his death was announced on November 20, 1975, the same day on which Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Franco’s fascist Falange party, died 40 years earlier.

Some people assert doctors kept Franco alive under orders from the dictator that he would live until the ordained date.

Castro’s untidy leaving has kept the news media in an indefinite state of high alert, as they formulate and reformulate coverage and obituaries. The veteran Spanish Civil War reporter Martha Gellhorn found herself in a similar pickle three decades ago. In 1975, she accepted an assignment from New York magazine to write about post-Franco Spain. “This thrills me, the sort of journalism I love,” she wrote her son. “I am waiting for the old swine to die; but obviously he is being kept breathing [no more] while the right tightens its hold on the country.”

When I asked Castro in a 1994 interview when he would retire, he snapped: “My vocation is the revolution. I am a revolutionary, and revolutionaries do not retire.”

Bardach is the author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington and serves on the Brookings Institution’s Cuba Study Project. Thanks to gulfnews.com

Pak to Seek Final Win World Hockey Qualifiers

LILLE: Pakistan are looking forward to an emphatic win in the World Cup hockey qualifiers final on Sunday after winning four of its league matches convincingly.
Coach Shahid Ali Khan said that his boys were all charged up for the final and are high on confidence after crushing Japan 6-1 at the Lille Metropole Hockey Club to confirm a place in the final.

Pakistan also beat Italy (5-0), Russia (5-0) and hosts France (4-2) in its earlier matches in the six-nation tournament.

“We are here to win this tournament and qualify for the World Cup and now need one more win to do that,” said Shahid.

“The boys are very, very confident ahead of the final and I’m sure they will give their best in it,” he stressed.

Pakistan, record four-time World Champion, has to win the Lille event to make the cut for the 2010 World Cup to be played in New Delhi Feb 28-March 13.

Shahid said that his team has improved over the months and is now looking to lock horns with topsides of the world like defending world champions Germany, Australia, Holland and Spain.

“We are an improved team and I’m sure we will do well in India once we qualify for the World Cup,” he said.

Kareena Kapoor Star Agrees With Shahid Kapur

MUMBAI : Had Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor still been a couple, Kareena would have surely starred opposite him in his father Pankaj Kapur’s directorial debut, Mausam. After all, Pankaj had written the script of Mausam keeping Kareena in mind.
This, of course, was when Kareena and Shahid’s relationship was going strong. The former lovers last starred together in Jab We Met.

After the Shahid-Kareena break-up, Mausam got delayed to some extent since Pankaj Kapur had to drop his plan of casting Kareena and started considering other options for the lead actress. Also, Pankaj couldn’t get a producer for a long time before Religare Vistaar Entertainment came into the picture.

A source said, “Things are fine now but they can’t go back to Kareena saying that they want her to do the film. They are feeling quite awkward about asking her to star opposite Shahid and hence they have decided to launch a nationwide hunt to look for a girl who will be suitable for the film.”

When asked about him earlier wanting Kareena in his film, Pankaj said, “Who told you this? I am still writing the script. How can I think of casting actors before I have completed my script? I will further talk when we are ready to roll.”

Producer Sheetal Talwar said, “Well, Shahid and Kareena look fabulous together on screen. But we are now having a nationwide hunt for the lead actress for Mausam.”

Kareena had no idea about this till we contacted her to ask what she has to say about Pankaj Kapur writing a script keeping in mind her and Shahid’s jodi. Clear about not mixing her personal and professional life, Kareena said, “If they have a good script and a good role and ask me to do it, I see no reason why I shouldn’t.”

Now that Kareena has no problem starring opposite Shahid, we wonder if his father will drop his plans of a nationwide hunt for the lead actress and make the next call to Kareena.

Mausam is an out-and-out romantic film to be shot in five countries- UK, Spain, Italy, Austria and India. It is expected to start in January 2010.

Columbus Day 2009

Many countries in the New World and elsewhere celebrate the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, which occurred on October 12, 1492 in the Julian calendar and October 21, 1492 in the modern Gregorian calendar, as an official holiday. The day is celebrated as Columbus Day in the United States, as Día de la Raza (Day of the (Hispanic) race) in many countries in America, as Día de las Culturas (Day of the Cultures) in Costa Rica, as Discovery Day in The Bahamas, as Día de la Hispanidad and Fiesta Nacional in Spain, as Día de las Américas (Day of the Americas) in Uruguay and as Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance) in Venezuela. These holidays have been celebrated unofficially since the late 18th century, and officially in various countries since the early 20th century.
Columbus Day first became an official state holiday in Colorado in 1905, and became a federal holiday in 1934. But people have celebrated Columbus’ voyage since the colonial period. In 1792, New York City and other U.S. cities celebrated the 300th anniversary of his landing in the New World. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison called upon the people of the United States to celebrate Columbus Day on the 400th anniversary of the event. During the 400-year anniversary in 1892, teachers, preachers, poets and politicians used Columbus Day rituals to teach ideals of patriotism. These patriotic rituals were framed around themes such as support for war, citizenship boundaries, the importance of loyalty to the nation, and celebrating social progress.

Catholic immigration in the mid-nineteenth century induced discrimination from anti-immigrant activists such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Like many other struggling immigrant communities, Catholics developed organizations to fight discrimination and provide insurance for the struggling immigrants. One such organization, the Knights of Columbus, chose that name in part because it saw Christopher Columbus as a fitting symbol of Catholic immigrants’ right to citizenship: one of their own, a fellow Catholic, had discovered America.

Some Italian-Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage, the first occasion being in New York City on October 12, 1866. Columbus Day was first popularized as a holiday in the United States through the lobbying of Angelo Noce, a first generation Italian, in Denver. The first official, regular Columbus Day holiday was proclaimed by Colorado governor Jesse F. McDonald in 1905 and made a statutory holiday in 1907.

In April 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, Congress and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt October 12 was made a federal holiday under the name Columbus Day and a Federal holiday.

Since 1971, the holiday has been fixed to the second Monday in October, coincidentally the same day as Thanksgiving in neighboring Canada (which was fixed to that date in 1959).

It is generally observed today by banks, the bond market, the U.S. Postal Service and other federal agencies, most state government offices, and some school districts. Some businesses and stock exchanges remain open, however, and there is a trend among some states and municipalities away from observing the holiday.

Local observances

Actual observance varies in different parts of the United States, ranging from large-scale parades and events to complete non-observance.

Columbus Day remains a celebration in Florida, and government offices are closed. However, the stock markets and most public schools remain open. Not all universities in the state university system, SUNY, choose to observe the holiday.

Denver, Colorado hosts a parade each year, which has been protested by Native American groups and their supporters for nearly two decades. Virginia celebrates two legal holidays on the day, Columbus Day and Yorktown Victory Day, which honors the final victory at the Siege of Yorktown in the Revolutionary War.

As in the mainland U.S., Columbus Day is a legal holiday in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. In the United States Virgin Islands, however, the day is celebrated as “Puerto Rico-Virgin Islands Friendship Day.”

The state of Hawaii does not officially honor Columbus day and instead celebrates Discoverer’s Day, commemorating the Polynesian discoverers of Hawaii, on the second Monday of October. The state government does not treat either Columbus Day or Discoverer’s Day as a legal holiday; state, city and county government offices and schools are open for business, while federal government offices are closed.

Some advocacy groups, including those which meet at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace and the Chancery building of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu, propose an alternate celebration called Indigenous Peoples Day.

Similarly, South Dakota, the day is officially a state holiday known as “Native American Day”, not Columbus Day. Columbus Day is not a legal holiday in Nevada, but it is a day of observance; schools and state, city and county government offices are open.
Source: wikipedia.org

Boyzone singer Gately, 33, dies in Mallorca

Reuters – Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, 33, who caused a sensation in the pop world 10 years ago by announcing he was gay, died while on holiday in Mallorca, Spain, the Irish pop group’s official website said on Sunday.

See more here:
Boyzone singer Gately, 33, dies in Mallorca

Spanish Prime Ministers Daughters Picture

Spanish Prime Ministers Daughters Photo – Spanish prime minister’s daughters pictures with Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama/Spain’s first family with the Obamas picture can be viewed here.Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero ,his wife Sonsoles Espinosa,

Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama took a photo at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday in New York which is creating a bit of controversy.José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s 13-year-old Alba and 16-year-old Laura, daughters are rarely in the public eyes and now we know why.

Like most teenagers their age they are into the Gothic movement which consists of wearing too much black at once.The pictures have few people posing certain questions like should a world leader let his kids be goths? And if the Prime Minister can not run his household how can he govern his country?
Source: wisepolitics.com

Antipodes, Antipodes

In geography, the antipode (from Greek αντίποδες, from anti- “opposed” and pous “foot”; pronounced /ænˈtɪpəˌdiːz/) of any place on Earth is the point on the Earth’s surface which is diametrically opposite to it. Two points that are antipodal [ænˈtɪpədəl] to one another are connected by a straight line running through the centre of the Earth.

In the British Isles, “the Antipodes” is often used to refer to Australia and New Zealand, and occasionally South Africa and Zimbabwe, and “Antipodeans” to their inhabitants. Geographically the antipodes of the British Isles are in the Pacific Ocean, south of New Zealand. This gave rise to the name of the Antipodes Islands of New Zealand, which are close to the antipodes of London at about 50° S 179° E.

The antipodes of Australia are in the North Atlantic Ocean, while parts of Spain, Portugal, and Morocco are antipodal to New Zealand. The antipodes of South Africa and Zimbabwe are in the North Pacific Ocean, though as Southern Hemisphere ex-British colonies, they are sometimes included as antipodeans in colloquial English.
Geography

The antipodes of any place on the Earth is the place that is diametrically opposite it, so a line drawn from the one to the other passes through the centre of the Earth and forms a true diameter. For example, the antipodes of New Zealand’s lower North Island lies in Spain. Most of the Earth’s land surfaces have ocean at their antipodes, this being a consequence of most land being in the land hemisphere.

An antipodal point is sometimes called an antipode, a back-formation from the plural antipodes, which in Greek is the plural of the singular antipous.

The antipodes of any place on Earth are distant from it by 180° of longitude and as many degrees to the north of the equator as the original is to the south (or vice versa); in other words, the latitudes are numerically equal, but one is north and the other south.

The map shown above is based on this relationship; it shows a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection map of the Earth, in pink, overlaid on which is another map, in blue, shifted horizontally by 180° of longitude and inverted about the equator with respect to latitude.

Noon at the one place is midnight at the other (ignoring daylight saving and irregularly-shaped time zones) and, with the exception of the tropics, the longest day at one point corresponds to the shortest day at the other, and midwinter at one point is contemporaneous with midsummer at the other.
[edit] Mathematical description

If the coordinates (longitude and latitude) of a point on the Earth’s surface are (θ, φ), then the coordinates of the antipodal point are (θ ± 180°,−φ). This relation holds true whether the Earth is approximated as a perfect sphere or as a reference ellipsoid.
Source: wikipedia.org

Maria Martinez Patino Story

Excerpted, with minor changes, from ‘Eve’s Rib – Searching for the Biological Roots of Sex Differences’ by Robert Peel (Crown Publishers, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-517-59298-3).

ln l985, when she travelled to Kobe, Japan, to compete in the World University Games, Spanish hurdler Maria Patino [María José Martínez Patiño] got the shock of her life. Like other female competitors there, she had to take a sex test to prove she was not a man in disguise, but she wasn’t worried. She had passed a similar checkup once before, and anyway, she had no doubts that she was a woman.

That faith was about to be tested. Although most people outside the athletic world never hear about sex testing, world-class female athletes know it well. It began at the 1966 European Track and Field Championships in Budapest in response to consistent rumors that some of the best women athletes from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were actually men. That year the women at the meet had to parade naked in front of a panel of gynecologists. Although none were disqualified, several of the Communist competitors – including Tamara and Inira Press, who between them had won five gold medals and set twenty-six world records from 1959 to 1965 – failed to show up for the test. This convinced people that the sex test was a good idea. Two years later, to screen women athletes at the Summer Games in Mexico City, the International Olympic Committee settled on a more dignified method than the “nude parade” – a newly developed procedure called the buccal smear. A lab technician would scrape a few skin cells from the inside of a woman’s cheek, then stain the tissue sample and examine it under a high-powered microscope. If the cells had two X chromosomes – the mark of a genetic female – then the technician would see a dark spot inside the cell’s nucleus called a Barr body. If only one X was present, as is the case with genetic males, then no dark spot appeared.

It was this test that Maria Patino took in 1985 to prove she had no unfair advantage over the other women hurdlers. When her results came back, however, there were no Barr bodies in her cells – genetically she was a male, the test said. Meet officials told her she would not be allowed to compete, and advised her to fake an injury and leave. But convinced that she was just as female as the other competitors, she continued training and entered a meet in Spain several months later. Ignoring a warning not to compete from the president of the Spanish athletic federation, she won her event, but the following week she was kicked off the Spanish national team, stripped of her titles and barred from competition. Two and a half years later she was reinstated by the International Amateur Althetics Federation.

Is Maria Patino the woman she appears to be or the man that the buccal smear says she is? She is not a transsexual – that is, someone who has undergone surgery to change from one sex to another. She has been a female all her life. But neither was there a mistake with the buccal smear – she does not have two X chromosomes. So what is she (or he)? The answer takes us to the heart of what makes a male or female. Sex seemed so simple back in school biology class, when the teacher explained that it all depends on the twenty-third pair of chromosomes, the sex chromosomes. A woman has a matched set of two X chromosomes, which appear long and elegant when seen under a high-powered microscope. A man has only a single X escorted by a short, squat Y chromosome. But for Maria Patino the simple answer just won’t do. She has one X and one Y chromosome, not two X’s, yet to all appearances she is a female. To understand her sex, we must go past the chromosomes to see how a body develops in the womb.

A human embryo is neither male nor female for the first seven weeks after conception. It is essentially neuter, and it is impossible to tell an XX fetus from an XY fetus without peering deep into the individual cells and examining the sex chromosomes themselves. At seven weeks the fetus has an embryonic reproductive system consisting of a pair of gonads, which can grow into either ovaries or testes, plus a mass of tissue called the genital ridge, which can develop into either a clitoris and labia or a penis and scrotum. There are also two primordial systems of ducts, one female and one male, The female ducts, called Mullerian ducts, grow into the uterus, fallopian tubes and part of the vagina if the fetus heads down a female path, while the male, or Wolffian, ducts are the precursors of the usual male plumbing – the seminal vesicles, vas deferens and epididymis.

During the eighth week the fetus chooses between two paths: masculine or feminine. If the fetus is genetically male – if it has a Y chromosome – then a “master switch” on the Y chromosome clicks on at this time. This switch, which is a single gene called the testes-determining factor, triggers a whole series of events that will point the fetus in a male direction and culminate in a baby boy – if everything goes as planned. The flipping of this switch is the key step. The testis-determining factor signals the embryonic gonads to form into testes, which then begin to produce male hormones, and the hormones take it from there. The major hormone produced by the testes is testosterone, which stimulates the Wolffian ducts to start developing into the male duct system. At the same time, some of the testosterone is converted by the body into a second male hormone, dihydrotestosterone, which prompts the genital ridge to begin forming into male genitals. The testes also produce a substance called Mullerian inhibiting factor, which causes the (feminine) Mullerian ducts to atrophy and eventually be absorbed by the body.

A female fetus, on the other hand, doesn’t have a Y chromosome and so the master switch is never turned on. Nothing happens in the eighth week. Instead the fetus continues to grow and develop, and in the thirteenth week the gonads start to transform into ovaries. With no testes to churn out large amounts of male hormones, the rest of the sexual system, internal and external, develops in a female direction. The genital ridge evolves into the clitoris and labia, and the Mullerian ducts mature into the uterus, fallopian tubes and upper one-third of the vagina. The Wolffian ducts shrivel up. In other words, the “default” body plan is female, and a fetus will go down this path unless diverted. It is as if the God of the Bible, in a departure from the usual story, actually made Eve first, then took one of her ribs, added some testosterone and other male hormones, and presto: Adam.

So sex is much more a matter of hormones than of chromosomes. Indeed, the small Y chromosome, the root of all maleness, seems to do little besides turn on the “master male switch” to start the flow of hormones. The Y holds relatively few genes, and most of them are duplicates of genes that lie on the X chromosome – as far as researchers know, only a handful of genes are unique to the Y chromosome. These include the testis-determining factor, a gene involved with male fertility and making sperm, and a third called the H-Y antigen gene, which, as far as researchers can tell, has nothing to do with sexual differentiation. In short, the Y chromosome is little more than an abbreviated version of the X with the gene for the male switch tacked on. In practical terms, this arrangement means that it is the hormone environment of the womb, not the chromosomes, that directly determines the sex of the fetus.

In humans, approximately one of every twenty thousand genetic males has a defect in his “androgen receptors” – the large molecules that act as middlemen between male hormones (androgens) and the various tissues in the body that these hormones act on. And in essence, this is what happened to Maria Patino. When such receptors are working right, they grab hold of molecules of male hormones and then bind to the DNA in the cells, triggering a variety of biochemical events that eventually lead to such things as the growth of the penis and scrotum. The hormones cannot turn on these events by themselves – they need the receptors, and if the receptors are defective, the body will not respond to testosterone and the other male hormones. In such cases of “androgen insensitivity,” the XY fetus will develop testes around the eighth week of gestation, right on schedule, and soon afterward the testes start producing testosterone and sending it out into the body. But as far as the rest of the body is concerned, the testosterone isn’t there. Because the receptors are faulty, the body cannot detect any male hormones, so the genetically male fetus never hears its “male call” and instead heads down a mostly female track. The testes still do produce Mullerian inhibiting factor, however, so the Mullerian ducts atrophy and the fetus never develops a uterus, fallopian tubes or the upper part of the vagina.

At birth, the child looks like a girl. The only sign that something is different is the presence of the testes, either in the labia or in the lower part of the groin, but doctors will miss those without a close examination. At puberty, the girl develops breasts and a woman’s body. Although she has no ovaries to make female hormones, her body transforms some of the testosterone and androstenedione produced by the testes into the female hormone estradiol, and there is enough estradiol to trigger her maturation into a woman. Because she has no uterus, however, she does not menstruate. This may prompt her to go to a gynecologist, who will discover that she has no internal female organs, her vagina has a dead end, and she is carrying a pair of testes. The doctor will usually recommend removing the testes because they might turn cancerous, and then will prescribe estrogen replacement to substitute for the hormones that had been produced by the testes. If, as sometimes happens, the vagina is too short for comfortable intercourse, it can be stretched. Other than that – and the fact that she cannot have children – the XY woman is no different from an XX female. If anything, she’s more likely to match the Western male standards of a beautiful woman, with long legs, well-developed breasts and clear skin. She could have a height advantage in sports or may become a fashion model, an occupation that supposedly holds a number of XY women, or a movie actress. Indeed, there are at least two well-known American movie stars who are XY women, according to researchers in sex differences, although neither of the actresses wishes her condition to be made public.
Source: medhelp.org