It's grabbed! Rivers continue to be encroached upon with law as mere spectator

The sign reads: “Beware. This land is grabbed by Matador Group”. Many “real estate developers” are in a frenzy trying to occupy the eastern channel of the Buriganga near Kamrangirchar, with some setting up huts and signboards, inset, to ward off other occupiers of the government land. Photo: Anisur Rahman

Tokyo Film Fest hopes to cheer disaster-hit Japan

The 24th Tokyo International Film Festival kicks off Saturday with a diverse slate of art house and mainstream fare, but the biggest theme at the annual event may be the country's real-life struggle to recover from the massive March earthquake and tsunami.
Organisers at one stage even pondered whether the Oct 22-30 show could go on after the devastating disaster threw the nation into a period of "jishuku," or self-restraint, which resulted in many events being cancelled. In addition, the Fukushima nuclear crisis scared away many foreign tourists.
But organisers decided to carry on, to send a message about Japanese strength to the world, festival chairman Tom Yoda told Reuters in an interview.
"We had some difficulty getting people to understand that Tokyo is safe, but I think we overcame that problem," he said.
In fact, entries totalled nearly 1,000 films from 76 countries, up 17 percent over the previous year, and participants at TIFFCOM, the contents market which runs alongside the main festival, are up 10 percent with all booths sold out, he said.
Director Paul W.S. Anderson's 3D swashbuckler "The Three Musketeers" and Jackie Chan's historical drama "1911" get the festivities started in a special double opening, with Chan, Anderson and "Musketeers" star Milla Jovovich set to walk the ecology-themed Green Carpet in central Tokyo's Roppongi Hills.
The festival will also hold a day of screenings in the north-eastern city of Sendai, in the coastal area that suffered major tsunami damage, as well as show films that were shot after the disaster such as "Tokyo Drifter" and "Women on the Edge."
In the main competition section, 15 films will vie for the $50,000 Sakura prize, before the festival wraps with baseball drama "Moneyball," starring Brad Pitt.
The festival used to lean more toward art films, but for the past few years has been trying to screen more mainstream movies with commercial possibilities, especially in its opening and closing selections, in a bid to reach younger audiences, said Yoda, who is also CEO of Japanese film company Gaga.
South Korea's booming Busan festival, which runs earlier in October, has also become one of the hottest venues for Asian filmmakers and has no doubt stolen some of Tokyo's thunder

Lucky Strikes Tête-à-tête with Mashiat Tasnim Rahman

After her first break in a talent hunt, Mashiat Tasnim Rahman seized the opportunity to put her skills to the test and gain confidence through experience. The emerging actress, although squeezed for time with a hectic schedule, loves to drench herself in rain-- whenever she gets the chance. Leisure time is also movie time for her; watching flicks and TV dramas fall among her favourite pastimes. Mashiat says there is a lot to learn from watching others act.
Born and brought up in Rangpur in a small family comprising her parents and a brother-- Mashiat passed her SSC exams from the Rangpur Cantonment Public School and College. She is currently studying BBA at the North South University. Mashiat says she has always been a good student, securing a golden A plus in her exam. The actress adds that she was only allowed to join the world of media after vowing to keep education at the top of her priorities.
The enthusiasm and encouragement of her friends, says Mashiat, is the only reason for her participation in the 2010 edition of Lux-Channel i Superstar -- in which she secured fourth place.
Mashiat's debut in TV play was in Salahuddin Lavlu's “Teen Purush” aired on Banglavision, where she acted opposite Chanchal Chowdhury. Her telefilm debut meanwhile was in Nahid Ahmed Piyal's “Punnyo Amar Desher Maati” aired on Channel i.
Currently, TV channels are airing three serials featuring Mashiat: Wahid Anam's “Varsity”, Shokal Ahmed's “Terminal” and 'Mohammad Mostafa Kamal Raj's “Chader Nijer Kono Alo Nei”.
Her busy appointment book also saw her performing recently in the serials “Priyo” by Chayanika Chowdhury; “Chup Adalot Cholchhe” by Jewel Mahmud”; “Generation Next Dot'” by Ezaz Munna, “Adhaar Periye” by Kaisar Ahmed, Masudur Rahman's “Khoy”, and another yet to be titled by Kaisar. She has also finished shooting for Iftekhar Ahmed Fahmi's “Foo”, Raihan Khan's “Jekhane Keu Nei”, Toukir Ahmed's “Chhayabrita” and another TV play by Himel Ashraf. Her other one-hour performances include “Hothat Dekha” and “'Na Bola Nishedh” by Anjan Aich and “Otol Jatra” by Nayeem Imtiaz Neyamul.
Mashiat has also tested her skills as a host, anchoring programmes on Desh TV, “Pepsi Change the Game” and “Style and Fashion”. Apart from that, she has modelled for the commercial of Confidence Soy Bean oil.

Did You Know? Who built very first motor car?

Jesuit priest Ferdinand Verbiest, who worked in China from 1659 until his death in 1688, left a description of a five-wheel steam car he had built as a toy for the young Chinese emperor Enkh Amgalan Khaan in 1672. That is the earliest record of an auto-mobile car thus Verbiest's vehicle possibly holds the very first land speed record. The vehicle was not meant for human transport and was only 2 ft (65cm) long. There is, however, no other record of the vehicle and it is not known if it was actually built. The graphic here is from an 18th century print.

Closer To Sun New Sun-bound probe

A NASA spacecraft set to launch in 2015 will come eight times closer to the Sun than any previous probe, operating within the star's scorching outer atmosphere, or corona. The $750 million Solar Probe will study the birthplace of the solar wind. During its expected seven-year lifetime, Solar Probe will make seven gravity slingshots around Venus, each time getting closer to the Sun. At its closest approach, it will orbit the Sun from within the outer part of the corona, at a distance of between 8 and 10 solar radii from the centre of the Sun. That is much closer than the previous record holder, the Helios spacecraft, which came within 67 solar radii of the star in the 1970s.Scientists hope the probe will help solve two enduring solar mysteries: Why is the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, so much hotter than its visible surface, which lies beneath it? And what accelerates the solar wind, a stream of charged particles from the Sun, to supersonic speeds? Heat shield: The idea of studying the Sun at close range was first proposed by the US National Academy of Science in 1958. But scientists have only recently been able to design heat shields for such a spacecraft within NASA's tight budgetary guidelines. The mini-bus sized Solar Probe will be protected from the Sun's fierce radiation by a disc-shaped, carbon-composite heat shield that will be 2.

The probe is 7 meters in diameter and about 15 centimeters thick. The heat shield technology is based on that used in Messenger, a NASA spacecraft that completed its first flyby of Mercury in January and that was also designed by engineers at APL. The side of the shield facing the Sun will heat up to 1400 °Celsius (2600 °F), while the instrument-carrying payload behind the shield will remain at room temperature.

Nuclear Davos Call for world nuclear forum

A "nuclear Davos", convening the nations and industries that are involved in nuclear power, could be the way to deal with problems arising from the worldwide growth in nuclear-derived energy, according to the UK's science academy.

A world nuclear forum would enable industry, academia and policymakers to meet, and would reflect and exploit the growing internationalisation of the nuclear industry, said the Royal Society in a report published today (13 October).

Such a gathering could explore, for example, how to deal with the cradle-to-grave care of nuclear fuel in a more internationalised way, which could lead to more sensible disposal options, said the report, 'Fuel cycle stewardship in a nuclear renaissance'.

Multinational companies are more likely to be transparent than national governments, because they "are answerable to different sets of people", said Roger Cashmore, chair of the working group that produced the report andchairman of the Ministry of Defence's Nuclear Research Advisory Council.

Cashmore added: "A number of countries worldwide, particularly China, Russia and South Korea, have looked at nuclear, digested Fukushima … and will be carrying on with the[ir] nuclear power programmes.

"There's no doubt that on the international scene there will be a lot more nuclear reactors."

The report lists 43 countries at various stages of nuclear power reactor construction, among them many developing and emerging economies, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.

Many of these countries are pursuing nuclear power for the first time, and the report urges them to formulate long-term research and development (R&D) programmes that could help safely manage the programme and the radioactive waste, as well as provide the technical capacity to respond to "unforeseen changes in policy".

A key recommendation is to not let waste management become an afterthought but include it in initial plans.

Spooky ! Blood-red bats take to the skies

We couldn't wait until Halloween to share this spooky thermal image of bats in flight. Provided by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, this image was taken by Boston University researchers trying to better understand how bats navigate the air in response to weather, bug activity and climate change .

According to the United State Geological Survey, bats save farmers at least $3 billion a year by scarfing down insects that would otherwise eat crops. But bats are threatened by white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that kills them, as well as by deadly collisions with wind turbines.

Researchers estimate that the loss of one million bats in the Northeast alone has probably resulted in between 660 and 1320 metric tons fewer insects being eaten by bats each year. Now that's scarier than blood-red bats any day.

New mystery on Mars

One of the supposedly best understood and least interesting landscapes on Mars is hiding something that could rewrite the planet's history. Or not. In fact, about all that is certain is that decades of assumptions regarding the wide, flat Hesperia Planum are not holding up very well under renewed scrutiny with higher-resolution, more recent spacecraft data.

"Most scientists don't want to work on the flat things," noted geologist Tracy Gregg of University at Buffalo, State University of New York. So after early Mars scientists decided Hesperia Planum looked like a lava-filled plain, no one really revisited the matter and the place was used to exemplify something rather important: The base of a major transitional period in the geologic time scale of Mars. The period is aptly called the Hesperian and it is thought to have run from 3.7 to 3.1 billion years ago.

But when Gregg and her student Carolyn Roberts started looking at this classic Martian lava plain with modern data sets, they ran into trouble.

"There's a volcano in Hesperia Planum that not many people pay attention to because it's very small," Gregg said. "As I started looking closer at the broader region -- I can't find any other volcanic vents, any flows. I just kept looking for evidence of lava flows. It's kind of frustrating. There is nothing like that in the Hesperia Planum."

"A likely cause of this trouble is the thick dust that blankets Hesperia Planum," she said. "It covers everywhere like a snowfall."

So she turned her attention to what could be discerned on Hesperia Planum: about a dozen narrow, sinuous channels, called rilles, just a few hundred meters wide and up to hundreds of kilometers long. These rilles have no obvious sources or destinations and it is not at all clear they are volcanic.

"The question I have is what made the channels," said Gregg. Was it water, lava, or something else? "There are some lavas that can be really, really runny. And both are liquids that run downhill." So either is a possibility.

To begin to sort the matter out, Gregg and Roberts are now looking for help on the Moon. Their preliminary findings are being presented at the Annual Meeting of The Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

"On the Moon we see these same kinds of features and we know that water couldn't have formed them there," Gregg said. So they are in the process of comparing channels on the Moon and Mars, using similar data sets from different spacecraft, to see if that sheds any light on the matter. She hopes to find evidence that will rule out water or lava on Hesperia Planum.

"Everybody assumed these were huge lava flows," said Gregg. "But if it turns out to be a lake deposit, it's a very different picture of what Mars was doing at that time." It would also make Hesperia Planum a good place to look for life, because water plus volcanic heat and minerals is widely believed to be a winning combination for getting life started.

"The 'volcanic' part is an interpretation that's beginning to fall apart," said Gregg. "What is holding up is that the Hesperian marks a transition between the Noachian (a time of liquid water on the surface and the formation of lots of impact craters) and the Amazonian (a drier, colder Mars)."

She has found that other scientists are interested in her work because of its possible implications on the Mars geological time scale. Gregg is not worried that Mars history will need to be rewritten, but she does suspect that Hesperia Planum is a lot more complicated than people has long thought.

Nokia N9 offer for Icons

Icon, the premium telecom brand of the country from the house of Orascom Telecom Bangladesh Ltd, has joined hands with Nokia Bangladesh in an exclusive promotion of Nokia's flagship smartphone N9 only for Icon subscribers, says a press release.

The promotion will start from November. The Icon subscribers will be the ones to own the Nokia N9, two weeks prior to everyone else, at only half the recommended retail price.

The first 50 Icon subscribers to preorder the device will be eligible for this concession. In addition, limited number of attractive genuine Nokia accessories will also be available for Icons.

Those who are Icon subscribers for at least two months are eligible for the offer.

The N9 smartphone is fully loaded with blazingly fast mobile browsing, the best free navigation out there and quick fire Carl Zeiss optics 8 megapixel camera.

The Nokia N9 introduces an innovative new design where the home key is replaced by a simple gesture: a swipe.

The phone has 3.9-inch AMOLED screen is made from scratchresistant curved glass.

The Humanist Bard Remembered

A four-day programme was launched on Sunday at the Lalon Akhra in Chheuria, Kushtia to mark Lalon's 121st death anniversary. The programme includes a 'Lalon Mela', rendition of Baul songs and discussion. Speakers at the inaugural programme stressed on the need to uphold the humanitarian and secular philosophy of Lalon by taking greater steps to popularise his songs at all levels of society.