Mobile app for clicking selfie with Isro's Mangalyaan

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to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com]

HYDERABAD: City-based start-up Smartur has developed a mobile application (app) built on augmented reality that allows users of Android phone users and iOS mobile devices to click a selfie with Indian spaceship Mangalyaan that is due to land on Mars next week.

The Smartur app will provide the mobile users a platform to experience and participate in India's most important space programme milestone - the historic arrival of Mangalyaan on Mars on September 24, according to a release here today.

The Smartur app is an augmented reality app that has been developed using a 3D model and provides the user with an almost 'real' experience of seeing the object (in this case Mangalyaan) in their living environment, the release said.

The app allows the participants to click and upload/ share innovative pictures that can look like Mangalyaan is lifting off from their hands or out of their car or any other idea that comes to their mind, it said.

A participant would be required to download the app for free on their mobile device and take a print out of the 'Marker' (a marker is a design that helps the model the Mangalyaan to be placed in reality). The combination of the app and marker would give users an actual feel of being right there with the Mangalyaan, it said.

 Get a selfie with ISRO's Mangalyaan using this mobile app

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad-based start-up Smartur has developed a mobile application (app) built on augmented reality that allows users of Android phone users and iOS mobile devices to click a selfie with Indian spaceship Mangalyaan that is due to land on Mars.

The Smartur app will provide the mobile users a platform to experience and participate in India's most important space programme milestone - the historic arrival of Mangalyaan on Mars on September 24, according to a release.

The Smartur app is an augmented reality app that has been developed using a 3D model and provides the user with an almost 'real' experience of seeing the object (in this case Mangalyaan) in their living environment, the release said.

The app allows the participants to click and upload/share innovative pictures that can look like Mangalyaan is lifting off from their hands or out of their car or any other idea that comes to their mind, it said.

A participant would be required to download the app for free on their mobile device and take a print out of the 'Marker' (a marker is a design that helps the model the Mangalyaan to be placed in reality). The combination of the app and marker would give users an actual feel of being right there with the Mangalyaan, it said.

Indian author sentenced for US campaign laws violation

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NEW YORK: Conservative Indian-American author and Obama-critic Dinesh D'Souza, who had pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign laws, has been spared a prison term but sentenced to five years of probation, mandatory community service and fined USD 30,000.

D'Souza, 53, of California was sentenced on Tuesday before US District Judge Richard Berman for violating the federal campaign election law by making illegal contributions to a United States Senate campaign in the names of others.

He was sentenced in a Manhattan federal court to five years of probation, with eight months during the first year to be served in a community confinement center.

In addition to the probationary term, Berman sentenced D'Souza to a mandatory eight-hour day of community service every week of his five-year term of probation, weekly counseling sessions and a USD 30,000 fine.

Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said D'Souza attempted to illegally contribute over USD 10,000 to a Senate campaign, "willfully undermining the integrity of the campaign finance process. Like many others before him, of all political stripes, he has had to answer for this crime ?- here with a felony conviction."

Berman had previously denied D'Souza's pre-trial motion to dismiss the indictment for selective prosecution, ruling that there was "no evidence" to support his allegation.

In sentencing D'Souza, Berman referred to his prior ruling and remarked that "the defendant's claim of selective prosecution, legally speaking, is all hat, no cattle'."

D'Souza had earlier this month asked the judge to sentence him to probation and community service instead of a prison term, saying he is "disgraced and  humiliated" by his actions and is paying a "heavy price for his lapse of judgment."

The Mumbai-native had pleaded guilty on May 20 of attempting to donate USD 20,000 to a Senate campaign through straw donors.

D'Souza, who is also a best-selling conservative author, had come in for severe criticism for his 2012 documentary "2016: Obama's America", with Barack Obama's campaign accusing him of launching a smear campaign against the President and alleging that the movie was a deliberate distortion of Obama's record and world view.

The documentary had equated re-election of Obama with the death and dismemberment of the US. Bharara had sought a 16 months prison sentence for D'Souza saying that he had committed a "serious" crime that "strikes at the heart" of the US election system.

According to the indictment, D'Souza contributed USD 10,000 to the senate campaign of Republican Wendy Long in 2012 on behalf of himself and his wife, agreeing in writing to attribute that contribution as USD 5,000 from his wife and USD 5,000 from him.

According to the Election Act, campaign contributions from any individual to any one candidate were limted to 5,000 dollars.

In August 2012, he directed straw donors, who included his assistant and a woman with whom he was romantically involved, to make contributions to Long's campaign for the US Senate on behalf of themselves and their spouses that totaled USD 20,000 with the promise that he would reimburse them for the contributions.

Later, D'Souza reimbursed the straw donors in cash for the contributions. When confronted by Long, D'Souza initially misled her before admitting what he had done.

During the plea proceeding, D'Souza admitted before the court that he caused two close associates to contribute USD 10,000 each to the Long Campaign with the understanding that he would reimburse them for their contributions and that he did reimburse them.

D'Souza also admitted that he knew that what he was doing was wrong and something the law forbids. The Election Campaign Act is designed to limit financial influence in the election of candidates for federal office, including the Office of United States Senator.

It specifically prohibits any person from making any contribution in the name of another, including reimbursing a third person.

According to D'Souza's profile on his website, he was formerly a policy analyst in President Ronald Reagan's White House and served as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute as well as at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

He served as the president of The King's College in New York City from 2010 to 2012.

Auto, taxi fares hiked in Kerala

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The auto and taxi fares have been hiked in the state. The minimum fare for auto for a travelling distance of one and a half kilometres is Rs 20 and for cars Rs 150 for a distance of five kilometres. For autos, an additional Rs 10 has to be paid for each kilometre after the minimum charge.

An additional fare of 50% has been permitted for autos during night time coming under the corporation limits. Addressing the media, Transport Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan said the fares have been hiked as per the recommendation of Justice Ramachandran Committee after a study was conducted on it.

The new fares will come into effect from October 1^st onwards.

The auto employees wanted Rs 20 to be charged for 1.25 kilometres. Thiruvanchoor requested to withdraw from the indefinite strike to be staged from tomorrow in the wake of the execution of Ramachandran Committee’s recommendation. Meantime, the leaders of samara samithi said though the fares have been hiked, they will not withdraw from the strike.

Petrol price increases by 40ps

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The petrol price in the State has gone up by 40 ps as the government has reinstated the tax that was withdrawn earlier.   The new pricing has come into effect from Tuesday midnight.There will be slight difference in the price in different districts. When the diesel price will remain the same, the petrol price will be between Rs 70.76 and 72.   The decision to avoid tax concession on petrol was taken to generate revenue for the State, which is going through hard times. But the government has not given publicity to this hike.

Mangalyaan starts sending back pictures

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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: India’s Mars satellite Mangalyaan, which got successfully inducted into the Mars orbit on Wednesday morning, has started sending back photos of the red planet. Informing this, VSSC director M C Dathan said the photos would be released soon.   Expressing his happiness over the Isro’s achievement,  he said that the success was the result of a concerted effort.

Mangalyaan on course to enter Mars' orbit

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 NEW DELHI: With home-grown technology and a remarkably low budget of about $75 million, India was on course to become the first nation to conduct a successful Mars mission on its first try.

If the Mars Orbiter Mission, affectionately nicknamed MOM, settles into orbit on Wednesday morning as planned, the country will join the U.S., European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union in the elite club of Martian explorers.

The next few hours will be crucial as the Indian Space and Research Organisation commands a series of maneuvers to position the spacecraft in its designated orbit around Mars.

'We have to excel,' space agency chief K. Radhakrishnan said, adding that the mission would 'establish the capabilities of India to orbit a spacecraft around Mars.'

If India can pull it off, it would be a major feat for the developing country of 1.2 billion people, most of which are poor. At the same time, India has a robust scientific and technical education system that has produced millions of software programmers, engineers and doctors.

It would also be the first-ever success on a maiden attempt. More than half the world's previous attempts — 23 out of 41 missions — have failed, including attempts by Japan in 1999 and China in 2011.

Scientists were giddy when the orbiter reached the outer sphere of Mars' gravitational pull on Monday, after the main liquid engine successfully fired after being dormant for 300 days as the satellite traveled 666 million kilometers (413 million miles) since breaking away from Earth's gravitational sphere on Dec. 1.

'The spacecraft is healthy. It has completed 98 percent of its journey to Mars,' Radhakrishnan said. The Indian space agency confirmed that MOM had a 'perfect burn for 4 seconds as programmed' that adjusted the spaceship's trajectory.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to join scientists at the agency's command center in Bangalore to monitor the satellite's final insertion into orbit on Wednesday morning.

The 1,350-kilogram (nearly 3,000-pound) orbiter would join NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or Maven, which reached its position around the Red Planet on Sunday for a price tag of $671 million — nearly 10 times that of MOM's.

Maven's chief investigator, Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado, said the U.S. team was rooting for the Indian mission. 'We're hoping for their success,' he said Monday. 'We're sending them the best wishes from the entire Maven team.'

There are three more satellites already circling the planet — NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, and the ESA's Mars Express. On the Martian surface, NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers are rolling across rocky terrain.

India has said the spacecraft — also called Mangalyaan, meaning 'Mars craft' in Hindi — is chiefly meant to showcase the country's high-tech space abilities. Already, India has successfully launched a lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, which discovered key evidence of water on the Moon in 2008.

MOM's scientific goals including using five solar-powered instruments to gather data that will help determine how Martian weather systems work and what happened to the water that is believed to have once existed on Mars in large quantities. It also will search Mars for methane, a key chemical in life processes on Earth that could also come from geological processes.

None of the instruments will send back enough data to answer these questions definitively, but experts say the data will help them better understand how planets form, what conditions might make life possible and where else in the universe it might exist. Some of the data will complement research expected to be conducted by Maven.

The spacecraft is expected to circle the planet for at least six months, following an elliptical orbit that gets within 365 kilometers (227 miles) of the planet's surface at its closest and 80,000 kilometers (49,700 miles) at its farthest.

Radhakrishnan said that while the space agency hopes to soon put a rover on the Moon and to launch another space mission to study the Sun, its main focus will remain developing technologies for commercial and navigational satellite applications.

India enters Martian orbit, makes history

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Bangalore: India Wednesday made history by becoming the first country in the world to enter the Martian orbit in its maiden attempt.

'The spacecraft (Orbiter) was successfully inserted into the Martian orbit at 515 km away from the red planet's surface and 215 million km away from the earth in radio distance,' a senior space official told IANS at the mission's control centre.

India's Mars mission historic: Modi

Bangalore : The success of India's successful mission to Mars 'will go down as landmark in history', said Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday after Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) entered the orbit of the red planet.

'These are all accomplishments that will go down as landmarks in history,' said a visibly happy Modi.

The prime minister said that the MOM was built 'indigenously, in a pan-Indian effort, stretching from Bangalore to Bhubhaneshwar, and Faridabad to Rajkot'.

He said: 'India is the only country, to have succeeded in its very first attempt.'

'With today's spectacular success, ISRO joins an elite group, of only three other agencies worldwide to have successfully reached red planet,' he added amidst applause.

Modi, wearing a red coloured jacket, said that the 'odds, were stacked against us'.

'Of the 51 missions, attempted across the world so far, a mere 21 had succeeded. But we have prevailed,' he said.

The prime minister said: 'Travelling an incredible distance, of over 650 million or 65 crore kms,we have gone beyond boundaries, of human enterprise and imagination.'

18th Indian man jailed in Singapore riots case

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Singapore: An Indian man was on Tuesday sentenced to 31 months in jail for his involvement in the Dec 8, 2013, riots in this city state, media reported.

Prabakaran Chinnappa, 24, a construction worker, became the 18th person to be punished for the riots that occurred in the Little India locality, the Straits Times reported.

He was sentenced to 31 months in jail and three strokes of the cane after pleading guilty to rioting, and abetting others to set fire to an ambulance.

The court heard that Chinnappa had hit an empty police car repeatedly with a stick, and helped flip the vehicle on to its side.

He also threw pieces of paper into the car after it was set on fire to feed the flames, and later threw a glass bottle at police.

Prabakaran also repeatedly hit an empty ambulance with a stick and threw a beer carton into it. He then shouted for others to 'hit, hit, burn, burn' and told some rioters to pour petrol on the vehicle, the court heard.

The riots were sparked off in the locality after an Indian, Sakthivel Kumaravel, was run over by a bus. This was the worst outbreak of violence in the country in more than four decades.

White House beefs up security after intruder incident

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Washington: The US Secret Service has ordered stronger White House security after a man climbed over the fence and entered the North Portico door of the executive mansion before being caught, the presidential spokesman said Monday. Washington was shocked by the incident.

Once in a while agents have had to detain people who scale the fence around the White House, but for an intruder to get inside the building is virtually unknown.

The Secret Service Director Julia Pierson has launched a comprehensive review of what happened last Friday, Efe quoted the White House spokesman Josh Earnest as saying.

The spokesman said he had discussed the incident with President Barack Obama, who at the time of the incursion was not at the White House, having gone with his family to Camp David for the weekend.

'His family lives in the White House, so he is obviously concerned about the incident that happened on Friday evening' but at the same time the president said he has complete confidence in the professionals in the Secret Service, the spokesman said.

Earnest noted that 'providing security at the White House is a complicated business' because it is a 'very popular tourist destination' where there are always many government officials and journalists.

'The Secret Service has the challenging task of balancing the need to ensure the safety and security of the first family, while also ensuring that the White House continues to be the people's house,' Earnest said.

The intruder was identified as Omar Gonzalez, a 42-year-old Iraq War veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to his family. 

Mathrubhumi Palakkad manager K Sethumadhavan Nair no more

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Palakkad: Sethumadhavan Nair (76), the printer and publisher of Mathrubhumi Palakkad edition and unit manager, passed away at cooperative hospital here on Tuesday morning.

Sethumadhavan, who served as paperboy in his younger days, started his official career in Mathrubhumi with the opening of its office in Palakkad in 1957. When Palakkad unit was launched in August 2004, he served as the unit manager. He had been serving as the printer and publisher of Palakkad edition since February 23, 2013.

He maintained close relationship with top honchos of Mathrubhumi such as founder editor K P Kesava Menon, managing director M P Veerendra Kumar, managing editor P V Chandran and also the eminent personalities from various fields.

He is survived by wife Kamalam and children R P Mohandas, R P Geetha, R P Ramadas and R P Hema.