Title: Save Our Tigers | Join the Roar
Link: Save Our Tigers

Let everyone know that our tigers are on the brink of extinction and that they need us. Now. You can start by joining the Save Our Tigers movement on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and spreading the word wherever you go – online or offline

Your time is the most important contribution for our tigers. If you think you have the skills or the commitment to help the tigers on-site, do contact an NGO working for tiger conservation to volunteer for our tigers.

Visit tiger sanctuaries and national parks and discover our country’s natural heritage. But please remember that the wilderness is to be experienced, not to be polluted by packets of chips, etc.

Disaster relief officials Saturday were faced with a daunting mission, trying to arrange assistance to victims of Chile’s massive earthquake while maintaining full-throttle operations in Haiti.

A man stands at the edge of a collapsed road. The quake hit 200 miles southwest of the capital and the epicenter was just 70 miles from Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city

That should not be a problem for large organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which have the resources to send emergency responders and humanitarian aid to a number of hot spots. But the same may not be true for smaller groups whose focus is on long-term rebuilding efforts.

“Organizations like ours are able to coordinate on multiple disasters,” said Red Cross spokesman Eric Porterfield, citing as an example the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China’s Sichuan province in May 2008.

In the month and a half since a magnitude 7 quake devastated Haiti, he said, the Red Cross has raised $322 million for its efforts there. A separate emergency fund could be directed for Chile, Porterfield said.

The medical relief group Doctors Without Borders already has dispatched a team to Chile. That organization too is heavily involved in its mission in Haiti, “but that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to respond to another natural disaster,” spokeswoman Emily Linendoll said.

And so Chile’s immediate needs after the quake are likely to be met.

Residents look at a destroyed road Saturday in Chile's second-largest city.

But this month, the U.S. Agency for International Development had alerted some relief groups that government funding for foreign disaster assistance could be affected by the cost of operations in Haiti.

“It’s going to be hard,” said Farshad Rastegar, head of Relief International, a Los Angeles-based humanitarian agency. “A lot of resources have been devoted to Haiti, and there has been a shrinkage of the capacity to respond.”

Many smaller aid organizations like Relief International focus on long-term issues such as infrastructure rebuilding. They also address international crises that don’t always make major headlines, such as the refugee problem in Pakistan. Those efforts have been affected by the huge amount of resources directed to Haiti, Rastegar said.

Another question weighing on relief organizations is whether Americans will open their checkbooks to help Chileans so soon after Haiti.

“The nongovernmental organizations have been tapped out and stretched by the tough economy,” said Thomas Tighe,

Several people walk by a destroyed road in Santiago, Chile, after a the 8.8-magnitude earthquake. The death toll has risen to more than 140 in Chile.

president and chief executive of Direct Relief International, a privately funded humanitarian health organization based in Goleta, Calif.

“I’m not sure if there was another Haiti next week that people could do the same,” he said. “But our assumption is that if there is a precise need and compelling case, people will step up.”

Original Article: LA Times (Chile earthquake a test for aid agencies)
By Shari Roan

As we all know, Every year in early August, we can observe the Perseid meteor shower (“the Perseids”). And it’s a fascinating sky event.

Here is something i found that will give you some basic idea what exactly it is and how to enjoy.

What are the Perseids and what is a meteor?

Every year in August, the Earth passes through rock and dust fragments left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle, last time it came near the Sun. As these small particles collide with the Earth’s atmosphere, they burn-up, often creating a startling streak of light across the sky.

Why is it called the Perseid meteor shower?

The term “Perseid”, refers to the star constellation of Perseus.

The meteors actually have nothing to do with the stars we see from Earth, as being part of Perseus. It just appears as though the meteors originate from Perseus. In fact, the rock fragments are close to the Earth – that’s why they burn in our atmosphere. They are very close, just a few hundred miles – not many, many light years distant like the stars. But, if you trace-back the bright trails of meteors we see, they appear to originate from the stars of Perseus.

The Perseid meteor shower actually starts in late July and runs to late August. However, the best time to view is around the peak.

It’s not precise, but the 2009 peak is expected on August 12th at around 15.00 hours UT. There is some uncertainty, so it’s very worthwhile to observe either side of this.

In particular for European observers, the hours of darkness either side the peak hours, may well prove more fruitful! So try the previous Tuesday night, as well as the night of Wednesday 12th.

And there is also a potentially prominent Moon to contend with. It will not set below the horizon until the early hours of the morning.

What equipment do you need to observe the meteor shower?

The good news is none! Just use your eyes.

It will help your observation if you give your eyes some time (say 15 minutes), to become adapted to the darkness.

Binoculars my also help, but on the other hand, they may restrict your view to a small part of the sky.

The meteors originate in the region of Perseus, but they may appear in view just about anywhere in the sky. Although, if you were to track-back their trails, you would get to Perseus.

Can they be measured, at all?

Yes. Keen astronomers count how many appear in a fixed period of time, in a certain area of the sky. This is expressed as a Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR).

We may expect around 100 streaks of meteor light across the sky per hour, at or near the shower peak.

Do watch out for them on Wednesday 12th August and during hours of darkness, before and after.

More info Here

Couples living together before their engagement are more likely to split than those who wait until their wedding, or at least wait until they are engaged, according to a recent study.

Besides, couples who cohabit before their engagement and then get married reported a lower satisfaction in their marriages.

The research was conducted by University of Denver (DU) researchers Galena Rhoades, Scott Stanley and Howard Markman.

“We think that some couples who move in together without a clear commitment to marriage may wind up sliding into marriage partly because they are already cohabiting,” Rhoades said.

“It seems wise to talk about commitment and what living together might mean for the future of the relationship before moving in together, especially because cohabiting makes it harder to break up compared to dating,” Stanley added.

The three researchers also found why couples decide to live together. They want to spend more time together. The second most popular reason is convenience, followed by testing the relationship.

“Cohabiting to test a relationship turns out to be associated with the most problems in relationships,” Rhoades said. “Perhaps if a person is feeling a need to test the relationship, he or she already knows some important information about how a relationship may go over time.”

These findings appeared in the Journal of Family Psychology.

The Indo-US civil nuclear deal will not be held “hostage” to India signing the CTBT, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear on Saturday.

File Photo

“No. not at all,” Clinton said in an interview to Times Now TV channel when asked if the deal would be held hostage to India signing the treaty.

“I worked very hard for the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. I am very committed to its full implementation,” she affirmed.

However, she said that during her discussions with Indian leadership in New Delhi starting on Sunday she would explore how India could help the US to ensure that nuclear material and knowledge is kept out of rogue states and non-state actors, Clinton said.

She said she would also like to find out “what is the appropriate non-proliferation programme for the future. India has the capacity to determine where it wants to go in this particular area.”

Ruling out any role for the US as a “broker” between India and Pakistan in resolving the Kashmir issue, she said “the decision has to be between India and Pakistan and it must take into account the feeling of people of Kashmir.”

If you’ve run your own web site or blog for any time at all then you’ve undoubtedly gone to your site at one point or another only to find it’s not online! Like most of us you probably called your web hosting company (you did get one with a technical support phone number didn’t you?) and they started working on the problem.

The only trouble is how long was your site down? How many visitors did you loose? How many sales were lost? The questions are endless.

But even if your site is online it may be too slow for people to use at times throughout the day. How would you know this? Well truthfully you wouldn’t but what you would see is a decrease in traffic. You might think you’re loosing visitors when really it’s just that your web site is too slow.

These questions plagued me for some time about my site. The good news is there are services that will send you an email (or text message to your cell phone) the minute your web site goes down. They will also measure how fast your site is throughout the day and give you nice graphical reports of how your site is performing hour-by-hour and day-by-day.

I recently came across such a service called InternetUptimeMonitor.com. They do all of the above and I’ve been pretty pleased with their service on my site. It gives me a lot of piece of mind knowing that throughout the day if my site goes down I’ll get an email.

If I have a day with low traffic do you know the first place I check? You got it—InternetUptimeMonitor.com. Why? Because maybe my site was really slow and that’s why my traffic was down!

InternetUptimeMonitor.com offers two flavors of their service Free and Paid (for Businesses). The differences between the two accounts are how often they check your site, if they watch it from around the world or just the USA, and if you get cell-phone text messages alerts or just email alerts.

If you’re a business that’s making any money at all online I’d recommend their business (Gold membership) because it costs you too much money to have your site down. If you’ve got a blog and use it for fun or aren’t making much money yet use the free membership.

Use this link below you’ll get 65% off their premium package when you’re ready to order. This is a special link I’ve been given for readers of my site and it’s not available to the general public:

Start Monitoring Your Website Now

Everyone should monitor his or her web site because you never know the next time your site will go down.

5 Killed in Metro Bridge Collapse

In a gruesome mishap on Sunday morning, part of the Delhi Metro segment under-construction collapsed in Zamroodpur, close to Kailash Colony, South Delhi, killing five labourers and injuring 15 others.

While the incident occurred at 5 am on a busy intersection close to Lady Shri Ram College, rescue operations to remove the bodies was still in the progress.

According to DMRC spokesperson Anuj Dayal, preliminary inquiry showed that the accident had occurred as a pier cap got displaced.

The pier cap on top of the pillar gives support both to the launcher and the segment. The launcher is used for erecting the segment.

This was the second incident involving a launcher, the first happened in Laxmi Nagar in October 2008.

DMRC chief Sreedharan was flying from Bangalore soon after hearing the incident, he added.

He said work was on at the Central Secretariat-Badarpur section of Metro Railway when the segment collapsed.

“Around 30 persons were working at the site at that time and 15 of the were injured who were taken to Moolchand hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Safdarjung. Three of them were suffering from major injuries, three were discharged after first aid,” Dayal added.

The entire site, which is on the busy intersection of East of Kailash-Amar Colony-Kailash Colony, has been cordoned off.

Large crowds and media thronged the area packed with police and fire brigade personnel to see the fallen segments on the ground and dangling gargantuan orange coloured launcher.

Speaking to HT at the site Additional DCP South East Sanjay Kumar Jain said, “Delhi Police, Fire Brigade, Disaster Management team all rushed here soon after call of the collapse came at 5 am. Three persons have been killed, two are still trapped, 12 injured have been taken to hospital.”

The whole structure was still hanging precariously and one had to work very slowly otherwise it could collapse, he added.

“The collapse of the heavy structure had broken the road and burst a pipeline. The water had been shut off,” he said.

“Fortunately at that time there was not much traffic on the busy intersection except those labourers who were working.”

He said police would be registering a case of death due to negligence.

Vijay Bahadur, Divisional Fire Officer, East Delhi said, “We have deployed ten Fire Brigade units including the Bronto Skylift which can go above 40 metres. We are trying to use to skylift to raise the fallen launcher after putting slings.”

He said the fire brigade had removed three casualties from the site.

DMRC chief Sreedharan quits after Metro accident

In a dramatic announcement that came on his birthday, Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan today said he was quitting from the post owning moral responsibility for an accident at its construction site which claimed five lives.

Sreedharan, who turned 77 on Sunday, announced his decision at a crowded press conference here this afternoon, soon after his visit to the site of the collapse of an under-construction bridge of Delhi Metro in Jamrudpur of south Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar.

“As the head of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, I take moral responsibility for the incident…So I have decided to resign and I have put in papers and I have sent it to Lt Governor Tejinder Khanna and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit,” he said.

Asked whether his decision will delay the Metro projects which are scheduled to be completed before the Commonwealth Games, he said, “The views you are making may be correct but my personal conviction in this matter cannot be compromised.”

Delhi government said it was not for taking any hasty decision on the resignation of Sreedharan.

“We are not to take any hasty decision on the resignation of Sreedharan,” said P K Tripathi, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister.

Delhi Government says it will not not take any “hasty decision” on resignation of Delhi Metro Chief Sreedharan.

“We know that the Metro is doing a good job. But we feel that the contractors are being pressurised to complete the
jobs ahead of the Commonwealth Games as many of the projects are well delayed,” a senior BJP leader said.

E Sreedharan, Managing Director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, also visited the site to get a first knowledge of
the accident. Sreedharan, who was in Bangalore in the morning, had cut short his visit and flew back to the capital.