Culture “It is a great privilege to be featured on a coin, and I hope my father would be pleased to be alongside Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin as scientists who have made it on to money,” Lucy Hawking said in a statement. In a video taken at the Mint, she comments on the design. “It’s a 2D surface that seems to have a 3D image on it,” Hawking notes. “It’s as though you could fall into the black hole.”Coin collector site Change Checker says Hawking will be one of only three people commemorated on a British coin within a year of dying, along with Winston Churchill and the Queen Mother.When Hawking was just 21, he was diagnosed with a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis known as Lou Gehrig’s disease that gradually paralyzed him. He used a wheelchair and spoke through a computer system operated with his cheek.Hawking is also in the running to appear on the British 50 pound note. £50 translates to about $64 US and AU$92. Comment The Mint revealed the coin late Monday. It features Hawking’s name and an image of a black hole, with Queen Elizabeth II on the reverse side.
The Hawking coin as shown on the Royal Mint’s site. Royal Mint “Stephen Hawking made difficult subjects accessible, engaging and relatable and this is what I wanted to portray in my design,” coin designer Edwina Ellis said on the Royal Mint’s site. “I wanted to fit a big black hole on the tiny coin and wish he was still here chortling at the thought. I am sure he would have thought of ways to harness the shiny table of the coin too.”Those of us who don’t have a regular opportunity to handle British money can buy the coin online, but it’s not cheap. According to the Daily Mirror, the Mint is selling the coin for £10 ($13 US, AU$18) for a simple uncirculated version of the coin to £795 ($1,050 US, AU$1,485) for a gold version of the coin. (Or just find a British friend to get you one.)The coin’s release came two days before the one-year anniversary of Hawking’s death on March 14. The acclaimed scientist was 76 when he died in 2018.Hawking’s daughter, Lucy, and son Tim visited the Royal Mint to see the coin. Stephen Hawking Space More on Stephen Hawking Tags Share your voice
Star Trek to Simpsons, Hawking was a pop culture physicist Hawking’s ashes to rest near graves of Newton, Darwin ‘There is no God,’ Stephen Hawking writes in final book 1 The Stephen Hawking coin is pretty stunning. The Royal Mint Ever feel like your money just falls into a black hole? You might find it fitting to pick up a 50 pence coin (about 65 cents US, 95 cents Australian) honoring late British physicist Stephen Hawking. The Royal Mint began issuing the coin March 12 at 7 a.m. GMT (3 a.m. Eastern time/midnight Pacific). 9 Photos Originally published March 8.Update, March 12: Adds image of the coin and new details. Stephen Hawking’s brilliance in 9 quotes
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Kingfisher Airlines Pilots Stay Away from Work Over 40 Flights Cancelled
Kingfisher Airlines hit an all time low Monday with over 40 of its flights being cancelled after the pilots stayed away from work over non-payment of their salaries.Pilots of the cash-strapped Airlines have been complaining about the management’s indifferent attitude and delay in the payment of their salaries for over three months. Several flights from Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata were cancelled after pilots didn’t report for work.”The flight loads have reduced because of our limited distribution ability caused by IATA suspension. We are therefore combining some of our flights. Also, some of the flights are being cancelled as a result of employee agitation on account of delayed salaries. This situation has arisen as a consequence of our bank accounts having been frozen by the tax authorities. We are making all possible efforts to remedy this temporary situation,” CNN IBN quoted a statement from the Airlines.”We will operate approximately 80 per cent of our planned schedule. We expect to return to our full schedule shortly. Those guests whose flights are affected are being notified. They are either being accommodated on other airlines or offered a full refund,” added the airline.Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Aggarwal had earlier met the pilots and requested them not to stay away from flying duties, assuring them that they would do all they could to unfreeze the bank accounts and pay the salaries.
Suu Kyi follows Israels Begin in turning away from peace
Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi delivers a speech to the nation over the Rakhine and Rohingya situation, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar September 19, 2017. Reuters File PhotoMyanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi is the latest in a long line of Nobel Peace Prize laureates to disappoint many of those who once applauded her, and probably won’t be the last, a cautionary tale for the 2017 laureate who will be named next week.Suu Kyi is facing international criticism, including from fellow peace prize winner Desmond Tutu, for not doing more to stop what the U.N. says are mass killings, rapes and the burning of villages taking place in Rakhine state. The violence has forced 421,000 Rohingya Muslims into neighbouring Bangladesh.That is a turnaround from 1991, when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded her the prize and praised “her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”. Once awarded, the prize cannot be withdrawn.“This has happened many times before that laureates have been criticised,” said Professor Geir Lundestad, who was the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 1990 to 2014.Lundestad said the prize remains a force for good, even if some winners later fall short of its ideals: “Aung Sang Suu Kyi was a very important spokeswoman for human rights in Burma and much of Asia. You cannot take that away from her.”The Nobel prizes were established by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, whose fortune came in part from making and selling arms. The peace prize, worth 9 million Swedish Krona ($1.1 million) will be announced on Oct. 6 and can go to one or more individuals or organisations.A number of winners of the peace prize have gone on to launch wars or escalate them.Israeli leader Menachem Begin ordered the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, four years after sharing the Nobel with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat for their Camp David peace accord. Sadat was assassinated by an Islamist army officer in 1981.Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat shared the 1994 prize with Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for the Oslo accords, which have not brought a lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Rabin was assassinated by a far-right nationalist in 1995 and Peres was voted out of office eight months later. Arafat later presided over the Palestinians during the second intifada, a violent uprising against Israeli occupation.Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, awarded the prize in 1990 for his role in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end, sent tanks in 1991 to try to stop the independence of the Baltic countries, though he later let them become independent.U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shared the 1973 prize with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho for what turned out to be failed efforts to end the Vietnam War. Tho declined the award, the only laureate ever to do so, accusing Washington of violating the truce. The war ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese.When U.S. president Barack Obama won in 2009 just months after taking office, even he said he was surprised. By the time he came to Oslo to collect the prize at the end of the year, he had ordered the tripling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.“I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated,” he said in his speech. “I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict.”PRICE TOO STEEPAmong Suu Kyi’s critics is Tutu who, in a Sept. 7 letter to his “dearly beloved younger sister” writes: “If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep.”On 19 September, Suu Kyi condemned rights abuses in Rakhine state and said violators would be punished. While Western diplomats and aid officials welcomed the tone of her message, some doubted if she had done enough to deflect global criticism.Dan Smith, the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize might even have harmed the Rohingya.“She has an aura,” he said of Suu Kyi, adding that maybe her stellar international reputation “masked the true awfulness” of abuses over many years of the Rohingya.“When she responded to questions about the Rohingya by saying ‘why are you focusing on them, not on other issues?, people were inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.”Suu Kyi was the rare winner, like Nelson Mandela, to rise from political prisoner to national leader. Mandela stepped down after five years as South Africa’s first black president with his reputation largely unblemished, but some of his allies from the apartheid-era liberation movement faced scandals in office.“Maybe it’s this move from the image of the bold, heroic defender of human rights and ordinary people … into what is inevitably a more grubby world of politics where compromises are made” that tarnishes reputations, said Smith.SAINTS AND SINNERSEven saints face criticism. Mother Teresa, the 1979 Nobel winner canonised by Pope Francis last year, was faulted in 1994 by British medical journal The Lancet for offering neither diagnoses nor strong pain killers to dying patients in her Calcutta hospice.The decision to give the award in 2012 to the European Union was criticised at the time. Brussels was then imposing tough financial bailout conditions on member Greece that many economists said destroyed livelihoods. Tutu, among others, also faulted the EU as an organisation that uses military force.The risk of disappointment arises because Nobel committees pick laureates for the hope they carry or a recent achievement, rather than the sum of a career, said Asle Sveen, a historian of the Nobel Peace Prize.“It is always a risk when they promote somebody, because they are getting involved in politics,” he told Reuters. “And they cannot predict what is going to happen in the future.”“That is what makes the Nobel Peace Prize different from all the other peace prizes,” said Sveen. “Otherwise you would give the prize to very old people just before they die.”Among the favourites are parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, such as Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini and John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time.The deal, which saw Iran agree to curbs on its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of international sanctions, has been criticised by hardliners in both Tehran and Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump called it “an embarrassment to the United States” in a speech at the United Nations this month, and has suggested Washington could repudiate it.Experts on the prize say it is precisely the sort of breakthrough among foes that the committee tends to recognise.“This is the first time that a country subjected to Chapter VII (of the U.N. Charter) has seen its situation resolved peacefully,” said Henrik Urdal, Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, referring to how Iran’s nuclear programme is no longer labelled a threat by the U.N. Security Council.“Focusing on the EU and Iran would also be a signal to the United States that the Iran nuclear deal has a broad support base,” Urdal told reporters.Other possible contenders are Pope Francis, Syria’s “White Helmet” rescue crews, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and its high commissioner Filippo Grandi. UNHCR has already won twice.Last year’s prize went to Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos for his efforts to end half a century of war that killed a quarter of million people.
Poetic sensibilities
Combining the dexterity of a lensman and sensibility of a poet, a leading Indian writer-photographer is set to crackle the art scene in the national capital by holding a solo photography show Ephemera that takes the audience into the deep recesses of the mountains and life of the people through a tapestry of haunting images. Delhi-based artist-author Kishore Thukral’s week-long exhibition, beginning January 14 at India Habitat Centre, features 73 sparkling photos, focusing on the transient nature of life shot through diverse geographies – from Ladakh to Nepal, from Mauritius to Japan, from Spiti to Cambodia. Also Read – ‘Playing Jojo was emotionally exhausting’So there are pictures of brooding mountains, expansive deserts and gurgling rivers on the one hand and of urban chaos expressed through images of fishing nets (Cambodia) and the rail transit line (Tokyo), on the other. The uniqueness of the exhibition lies in Thukral’s pioneering attempt to probe the timeless bond of man-mountain-water and beyond through two different mediums — camera and poetry. For Ephemera is the title not only of the photo exhibition but also first book of his that combines pictures with verse. Also Read – Leslie doing new comedy special with Netflix“This relationship (man, mountain and water) commenced millennia ago. It will endure till our planet survives. Their Survival will be our Survival,” says the artist, who has trekked, photographed and researched extensively in the western Himalayas, especially in the Spiti Valley.The pictures – all in colour — focus on the entrancing nature on the one hand and the toil and turmoil of human beings in an urban milieu – with an underlying message that they are all ‘ephemera’. “In this Cosmos of Eternity, what am I but mere Ephemera!” observes the poet-artist. Celebrated art historian, curator and cultural theorist Alka Pande has curated the exhibition, which will be opened by well-known music composer Shantanu Moitra.On the occasion, renowned actress-writer-painter-photographer Deepti Naval will release the book, Ephemera, which sums up Thukral’s belief, imbibed through the Buddhist philosophy, that impermanence is the only permanent thing in life. We may yearn for immortality, but ‘ephemera’ is our unalterable destiny. In her foreword to the book, Deepti Naval writes: “His (Kishore) journey has taken him to remote niches in the mountains, and to a whole new universe en route…the camera has become an inseparable part of Kishore. I have seen him use it instinctually, like an artist handling his brush. Understandably, his photography is intuitive, not laboured…. Going through his book it becomes difficult to say whether it is his image or his words that are more evocative.” The 198-page book has 171 photos in total, capturing the various moods of the mountains and life of the people. “My poetry reflects the frustration and longing of inhabitants of the ersatz world of our cities,” he says. Thukral has to his credit a number of photography exhibitions and illustrated lectures on Spiti, Dangkhar and Vajrayana Buddhist art. His photographs have appeared in books, magazines and calendars, including the 2011 calendar on Buddha brought out by India Post, Government of India. He has also the credit of compiling and editing Sharanam Gachhami: an Album of Awakening (Full Circle) in 2011, a coffee-table book of photographic interpretation on Buddhist principles, shot by 20 photographers from different parts of the world, including Richard Gere, Steve McCurry, Raghu Rai and Deepti Naval. His other works include The Chronicler’s Daughter (2002), a novel. He is currently working on a handbook on Himalayan and Tibetan Buddhist iconography. He has also translated and written several songs, including the theme song for the award winning film I am Kalam.When: January 14 to 20 Where: India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road
Relish Navaratra special
Navaratra is about to come to an end and if one wishes to not miss out on the delicacies of this festival, they can taste it at The Imperial’s Daniell’s Tavern and Shangri La’s Tamra in the national Capital. Navratra special dish, which will be available on six-eight hours of prior request, will bring in flavours of Satvik cuisine in a traditional thali at Daniell’s Tavern. A delicious Navaratra buffet will be available which will comprise of Executive Chef Neeraj Tyagi’s special dishes such as Sabudana ki tikki, Tarboos ka ras, Paneer kesari tikka, Shakarkandi tawa chaat, Khasta aloo chaat, Sitaphal ki sabji, Aloo ka halwa and Lauki ki kheer amongst others. Chef Prem Pogakula- Executive Sous Chef, The Imperial New Delh, has shared the recipes if going out is a hard task for food lovers. Also Read – ‘Playing Jojo was emotionally exhausting’Kheere ke pakodaIngredients· Kuttu ka atta-60gms· Kaloungi-5gms· Sendha Namak –to taste· Grated boiled potato-80gms· Grated cucumber-80gms· Shredded Spinach-60gms· Water-80ml· Oil to deep fry· Dahi Aur Kheerre ke chutney· Thick curd-100gms· Grated cucumber-40gms· Sendha Namak-to taste· A pinch of turmeric tempered in a tea spoon of hot gheeMethod for chutney· Mix all the ingredients and check for seasoningMethod for pakoda· Mix all the above ingredients and make thick batter consistence and check for seasoning Also Read – Leslie doing new comedy special with Netflix· Heat oil in a pan and make small dumpling from the mixture· Now Deep fry the dumpling till golden brown and till cooked from inside· Serve hot with dahi chutneyTamra @Shangri La’s- Eros hotelLunch Buffet: 12 pm – 3:30 pm Dinner Buffet: 7 pm-11:30 pm Price: 1200 plus taxes per person for Navratra buffet
BJP trying to negatively influence Bengals rich culture Mamata
Agarpara: Rebutting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tall claims that BJP alone will get 300 seats in the Lok Sabha, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee said it is certain that the saffron party is not coming to power in Delhi. She also added that the saffron party was trying to destroy Bengal’s rich cultural heritage.While addressing a mammoth rally at Agarpara in North 24-Parganas on Wednesday afternoon, she said: “From where will they get so many seats? In Uttar Pradesh, BJP will not get more than 13 to 17 seats, while in Maharashtra and Rajasthan the number of seats will be equally less. In Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha they will not get seats and in Bengal, they will get a big zero. So, from where will the seats come Modi babu.” Also Read – Rs 13,000 crore investment to provide 2 lakh jobs: MamataIt may be recalled that while addressing a rally at Taki, the Prime Minister had said: “BJP alone will get 300 seats and the NDA partners will increase their seats.” Banerjee said in a few days, the general elections will come to an end, but Modi has not uttered a single word on note ban, the suicide of farmers or why he has failed to give jobs to the people. “In 2014, he had said he would bring back black money deposited in banks outside India and deposit Rs 15 lakh in the bank account of everyone. It is a big hoax. He had announced that two crore people will get jobs which amount to 10 crore people in five years. Not only has that not happened, but around 12,000 farmers have committed suicide in the past five years. He has not said a word on his failure and has come in Bengal to incite one religion against the other,” she said. Also Read – Lightning kills 8, injures 16 in stateThe Trinamool supremo also alleged that BJP is trying to negatively impact Bengal’s great tradition and culture. “BJP is trying to force us to forget Rabindranath. This is their game plan,” she said, adding that CPI(M) had tried this many years ago. “They imported Marx and Lenin and dropped ‘Sahaj Path’ of Tagore from the syllabus,” Banerjee added. She had earlier garlanded a portrait of Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar kept on the dais. Coming down heavily on Amit Shah, she said: “In Delhi, Shah had alleged that Trinamool supporters had planned to malign him. Who is he? Why would Trinamool try to malign him? They have destroyed the statue of Vidyasagar and are so shameless that they are now putting the blame on us.” Alleging that BJP supporters had vandalised the half-bust of Vidyasagar at Vidyasagar College on Tuesday, Banerjee said: “They have brought goons from Rajasthan, Jharkhand and different districts in Bengal. They have been put up in different hotels and lodges in and around the city.” Urging people to vote for party candidate Saugata Roy, she said: “Saugata da is a veteran Parliamentarian. He raises all important issues on the floor of the House.”