Moscow, August 14: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday described the situation in Ukraine as "bloody chaos", pledging that Moscow will spare no efforts to facilitate an earliest end of the conflict in southeastern Ukraine.

"The country has fallen in bloody chaos, fratricidal conflict," ITAR-TASS quoted Putin as saying at a meeting with Russian lawmakers in the Black Sea resort city of Yalta.

He said that the situation is deteriorating. "A major humanitarian catastrophe has broken out in the southeast (of Ukraine)."

The Russian president also said he believed that Crimea may play a unifying role for healing historical scars and cementing Russian society.

"I believe that Crimea today may be a unique yardstick. It is capable of playing a unique unifying role for Russia, the role of a historical and spiritual source and another line of reconciliation of the Reds and the Whites."

Putin will be visiting Crimea later  on Thursday, where he is due to make a speech and meet local people.

Meanwhile, heavy shelling was reported in the centre of Donetsk, a stronghold of insurgents in eastern Ukraine, as more than 100 lorries carrying Russian aid into the region were approaching a rebel-controlled border crossing in the Luhansk region.

Ukraine has said the convoy must be inspected by international monitors before it can be let in.

Toronto, August 13: Canada has said it will donate to the World Health Organisation (WHO) up to 1,000 doses of an experimental vaccine against the Ebola virus, to be used in the African countries most affected by the outbreak of the disease.

"I am pleased to offer the experimental vaccine developed by Canadian researchers as a global resource to help fight this outbreak," Canadian Health Minister Rona Ambrose said in a statement Tuesday.

Ambrose said Canada would donate between 800 and 1,000 doses of the vaccine, from a total of about 1,500 that it possessed.

The health minister added that the vaccine, known as VSV-EBOV, has so far not been tested on humans, although results have been promising during animal trials.

"Canada feels this experimental vaccine is a global resource, so in response we are sharing it with the international community, while keeping a small supply in Canada", Ambrose said.

The WHO Tuesday reported that the toll in Ebola virus disease in western Africa - Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria - had risen to 1,013, and approved the use of experimental drugs to fight the disease.

In a statement, the WHO's Ethics Committee said that in the light of the scale of the outbreak and the high number of deaths, it was ethical to use untested drugs against the virus, which causes haemorrhagic fever and has a 90 percent mortality rate.

The disease is transmitted by direct contact with infected blood or body fluids, and is considered a threat to world health.

Seoul, August 13: Two Indian-origin mathematicians have won prestigious global prizes in the field of mathematics with one of them being awarded the Fields Medal - known as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics".

Manjul Bhargava, a professor of mathematics at Princeton University, was on Wednesday conferred the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians 2014 hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in Seoul, a press release issued by the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences said.

Also on the same occasion, another Indian-origin mathematician Subhash Khot won the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize, awarded by the IMU), for his "prescient definition of the 'Unique Games' problem, and leading the effort to understand its complexity and its pivotal role in the study of efficient approximation of optimisation problems".

Bhargava, born in 1974 in Canada, was awarded the Fields Medal for developing powerful new methods in the geometry of numbers, which he applied to count rings of small rank and to bound the average rank of elliptic curves.

He is the recipient of the Mathematical Association of America prize in 2003, the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize in 2005, the Cole Prize in Number Theory of the American Mathematical Society in 2008 and the Infosys Prize in 2012.

Other three winners of the Fields Medal are Maryam Mirzakhani, the first Iranian and the first woman to win the medal, and Artur Avila, the first Brazilian, and Martin Hairer, the first Austrian to win a Fields Medal.

Mirzakhani, a mathematics professor at Stanford University, was awarded the prize for her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.

Avila, a professor at the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicadab in Brazil, was awarded the prize for his profound contributions to dynamical systems theory, which have changed the face of the field, using the powerful idea of renormalisation as a unifying principle.

Hairer, a mathematics professor at the University of Warwick, was awarded the prize for his outstanding contributions to the theory of stochastic partial differential equations, and in particular for the creation of a theory of regularity structures for such equations.

The Fields Medals are awarded once every four years by the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in order to recognise outstanding mathematical achievements.

John Charles Fields was a Canadian mathematician who had a major impact on national and international mathematical studies and research.

Khot is a professor in the Computer Science Department at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He has a PhD from Princeton.

His work has led to breakthroughs in algorithmic design and approximation hardness and to new exciting interactions between computational complexity, analysis and geometry.

The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize is awarded once every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians, for outstanding contributions in Mathematical Aspects of Information Sciences, including all mathematical aspects of computer science.

The Fields Medals were started in 1936 and the Nevanlinna Prize in 1982.

New Delhi, August 13: India on Wednesday clarified that its decision not to ratify WTO's Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) is aimed at ensuring that the country's efforts to ensure food security remain consistent with its international obligations.

"The stand taken by India is aimed at achieving a permanent solution on the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes so that the country's efforts to ensure food security remain consistent with its international obligations," Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

India's stand is that without such a permanent solution, public stockholding measures in developing countries will be hampered by the current ceiling on domestic support at 10 percent of the value of production. Such support is considered as a trade-distorting subsidy to farmers under existing WTO rules.

During the Ninth Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Bali, Indonesia in December 2013, WTO members, including India, agreed on a Bali Package comprising an agreement on Trade Facilitation and on issues relating to agriculture and development.
"While there was progress on the Trade Facilitation Agreement, other decisions including one on public stockholding for food security purposes and other development issues were sidelined," Sitharaman said.

Since its decision not to ratify the TFA, India has followed up with suggestions on how to ensure time-bound delivery of an outcome on public stockholding for food security, she added.

Washington, August 13:  Voted to power with an absolute majority for the first time in nearly three decades, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, considered as an able administrator, promises "a fresh engagement" with the US, a latest Congressional report has said, news agency PTI reported. 

Ahead of his maiden visit to the US as India's Prime Minister, the top American leadership including President Barack Obama have expressed an interest in revitalizing bilateral relations.

It is to further boost trade and investment flows, deepen security cooperation, and otherwise solidify the geopolitical alignment with India, said latest Congressional report on the new Indian Government which was sent to US lawmakers for private circulation last week.

"Prime Minister Modi is known as an able administrator, having overseen impressive economic development in 15 years as chief minister of India's Gujarat state," said author K Alan Kronstadt, Specialist in South Asian Affairs, at the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

CRS is an independent research wing of the Congress which prepares reports on various issues for US lawmakers so that they can take informed decisions.

A copy of the 14-page report "India's New Government and Implications for US Interests", has been obtained by PTI. "The new Indian leader is known as a strong-willed and effective, if perhaps autocratic, administrator.

His reputation has been burnished by Gujarat's impressive economic performance during his 15-year tenure the state accounts for more than 20 per cent of all Indian exports while being home to only five per cent of the population," said the CRS report.

"Garnering an outright majority in Parliament for the first time in 30 years, Modi's new government promises fresh US engagement with an Indian leader reputed to be more pro-trade and pro-business than the socialist-oriented ones of the past, and who vows to implement a more assertive Indian foreign policy that could see the country shift away from its traditional "non-alignment" approach to global politics," the report said.

He writes that in the policy circles, there is no unanimity on India's new government beyond a general agreement that PM Modi must confront a multitude of difficult problems and choices, and that the domestic Indian expectations of their new leader are so broad and so high that they are very unlikely to be met.

William Schabas

Tel Aviv, Aug 13: Israel dismissed the Monday appointment of the three members of a UN human rights’ investigative committee to review the recent military operation in Gaza, saying the identity of the three proved that the results of the probe were a foregone conclusion.

The committee will be headed by Canadian Prof. William Schabas, and was to include British-Lebanese rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, best known for her recent engagement to actor George Clooney, and Doudou Dienne of Senegal, who has previously served as the UN’s watchdog on racism and on post-conflict Ivory Coast.

Meanwhile, the professor appointed to lead a United Nations inquiry into possible war crimes during the recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip defended his record to Israeli media Tuesday and said past statements that paint him as anti-Israel would have no bearing on his probe of the Gaza conflict.

Willam Schabas told Army Radio in an interview on Tuesday that he is not anti-Israel, has visited Israel in the past to give university presentations and is a member of the editorial board of a legal publication.

Schabas was named Monday to lead a commission ordered by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes.

However, Alamuddin later released a statement saying that she was too busy with eight other cases and could not take on the UN position. “I wish my colleagues who will serve on the commission courage and strength in their endeavours,” she wrote. “I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian causalities that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed,” she stressed.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry was bitterly critical of the probe and the panel. “Already at the time that the decision to establish the committee was adopted, on July 23, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister announced that the Human Rights Council long ago became the Terrorists Rights Council and a ‘kangaroo court,’ and that the findings of its “investigations” are predetermined,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“If further proof is needed, the appointment of the chairman of the committee, whose opinions and positions against Israel are well known, proves beyond any doubt that Israel cannot expect justice from such a body.”

The statement concluded that “the committee’s report has already been written and at the moment it has only been defined who will sign on it.”

Schabas, a professor of International Law at London’s Middlesex University, has called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former president Shimon Peres to stand trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes.

He also supported the 2010 Goldstone Report into Israel’s last ground offensive in Gaza, though he said in a later interview that the scale of destruction in Gaza did not compare to other atrocities in the world.

UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog with ties to Israel, slammed the appointment and called on Schabas to recuse himself.

“You can’t spend several years calling for the prosecution of someone, and then suddenly act as his judge,” UN Watch head Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “It’s absurd — and a violation of the minimal rules of due process applicable to UN fact-finding missions.”

UN Watch also accused the UN of trying to score publicity points by naming Alamuddin.

The 36-year-old, who is fluent in Arabic, French and English, studied at a French school in London and holds degrees from Oxford and New York University.

She worked with the international tribunal examining the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and assisted ex-UN head Kofi Annan in efforts to make peace in Syria.

In the face of fierce opposition from Israel and the United States, the 47-member UN Human Rights Council voted on July 23 to create the commission of inquiry.

The decision came after a marathon seven-hour emergency session of the top UN human rights body, where the Israelis and the Palestinians traded accusations over war crimes.

The probe team has been tasked with reporting back to the council by March 2015.

Almost 2,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the past month’s fighting, according to officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Israel says 750-1,000 of the dead are combatants, while Gaza has not broken down the deaths.

Israel also blames Hamas for all civilian fatalities, since Hamas set up its rocket launchers, tunnel openings and other elements of its war machine in Gaza neighborhoods and uses Gazans as “human shields.”

Israel lost 64 soldiers and three civilians in the fighting, which is on hold as the sides attempt to negotiate a ceasefire in Cairo.

Eleven of the Israeli soldiers were killed by Hamas gunmen emerging from cross-border tunnels dug under the Israeli border. Hamas fired over 3,000 rockets at Israel, including some 600 from areas close to schools, mosques and other civilian facilities, the Israeli army says.

The report is likely to be seen by many as a new iteration of the 2010 Goldstone Report, the result of a UNHRC investigation, led by South African former judge Richard Goldstone, which accused Israel of a policy of deliberately targeting civilians during the 2009 Operation Cast Lead, a previous military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel, which had refused to cooperate with the investigation at the time, sharply rejected the claim. In 2011, Goldstone retracted the accusation of a deliberate policy to target civilians.

Jerusalem has not yet indicated whether it will cooperate with the new probe.

New York, August 12: Secure website connections will now get a priority in Google search results. In a blog post, the search engine has explained that websites that use secure connections (like https over http) will get a boost in rank.

"For now it is only a very lightweight signal" affecting fewer than 1 percent of global queries and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content "while we give webmasters time to switch to https", Google said.

But over time, "we may decide to strengthen it because we would like to encourage all website owners to switch from http to https to keep everyone safe on the web", it posted.

Google uses indicators to decide ranking of websites.

Being useful and informative, credible, engaging, high quality and finally more useful than other sites are some of the signals Google uses to rank pages.

Gmail was designed secure by default and google search went the https way in 2010.

"We hope to see more websites using https in the future. Let's all make the web more secure!" the Google post added.

New York, Aug 12: A US legislation that empowers smartphone users with a 'kill switch' in case their device is stolen is now with California Governor Jerry Brown to become a law.

According to the bill, all smartphones manufactured after July 1, 2015 to be sold in California come equipped with the means to “render the essential features of the smartphone inoperable when not in the possession of the authorised user”.

If this happens, all smartphones sold in California would prompt the user to enable the wiping feature upon initial setup, media reports said.

If the smartphone is stolen, “kill-switch” will prevent the phone from being re-activated on any network without the owner's approval.

The legislation also says that smartphone makers will reactivate the phone once back with the owner.

It also envisages a civil penalty of $500-$2,500 be levied per smartphone if someone is found to be selling stolen phones.

Berlin, Aug 12: German airline Lufthansa has said that the suspension of its flights to the northern Iraqi city of Erbil will continue due to security reasons.

The latest decision taken Monday affects twice-weekly services operated by Lufthansa from Frankfurt as well as daily flights by Austrian Airlines between Erbil and Vienna, Lufthansa said in a statement.

On flights to Asia and the Middle East, the Lufthansa airlines will continue to make a detour around Iraqi airspace, Xinhua reported.

US military forces have conducted multiple airstrikes against militants of the Islamic State (IS), previously known as Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), in northern Iraq over the weekend to defend Kurdish forces near Erbil.

Lufthansa Friday announced that it was suspending flights to Erbil, the only destination in Iraq that the airline serves.

New York, August 12: Oscar winning US actor Robin Williams was found dead Monday in his home in California, authorities said. It is said to be a case of suicide.

The mayor's office of California State's Marin county has been investigating what it said is a possible suicide of the 63-year-old Oscar winning actor-comedian.

According to his publicist, Williams had been "battling severe depression" in the period before his death.

The Marin County Sheriff's office, however, said that it had tentatively concluded that Williams died by suicide, specifically "asphyxia", although it provided no further details.

The star of many Hollywood comedies was found unconscious at his home near San Francisco, by paramedics called to the house and he was pronounced dead at the scene at 12.02 p.m.

Williams starred in numerous Hollywood films, including "Good Morning, Vietnam", "Dead Poets Society", "Jumanji", "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Good Will Hunting", winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the latter in 1997.

He also received two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards in addition to pursuing a successful decades-long and highly acclaimed standup comedy career.

Over the years, he had battled cocaine and alcohol addiction, as well as depression.

Authorities have opened an investigation into the actor's sudden death and an autopsy will be conducted Tuesday.

Tokyo, August 11: A new 'nano' coating technology promises to dress burn wounds not only on the flat and broad part of human body but also at curves, wrinkles and ridges to heal and control bacterial infections.

The ultrathin coatings called "nanosheets" can cling to the body's most difficult-to-protect contours and keep bacteria at bay, Japanese researchers reported.

The team led by Yosuke Okamura from Tokyo-based Tokai University developed a novel biomaterial out of tiny pieces of nanosheets that are super-flexible and sticky.

"The nanosheets can adhere not only to flat surfaces, but also to uneven and irregular surfaces without adding any adhesives," he added.

When researchers tested the nanosheets on burns, the dressing effectively kept out the common bacteria called pseudomonas aeruginosa that causes deadly skin infections.

The dressing protected wounds from infection for three continuous days. With an additional coating, the nanosheets kept bacteria out for a total of six days.

"Burn wounds are vulnerable to infection and keeping them sealed off from bacteria is essential for a successful recovery," Okamura noted.

The team made "nanosheets" out of a biodegradable polyester called poly(L-lactic acid) or PLLA.

They put the material into a test tube with water and spin it, which broke up the sheets into even smaller pieces.

When they poured the liquid onto a flat surface, the tiny fragments overlapped in a patchwork and got dried as a single "nanosheet".

The findings were recently presented at the 248th meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

Bangkok, August 11: Former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who is facing legal allegations in her country, has returned to Thailand from her vacation, media reported Monday.

Yingluck arrived at Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport Sunday night from Singapore, the Bangkok Post reported.

Yingluck left Thailand for a holiday in Europe and the US after she was granted permission to leave the country between July 23 and Aug 10.

She was required to request permission because of pending legal allegations against her.

During her trip, she attended the 65th birthday celebrations July 26 of her brother Thaksin in Paris.

Yingluck will have to fight a high-profile case in which the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has accused her of negligence of duty in overseeing a controversial rice-pledging scheme.

The NACC has forwarded the case to the Office of the Attorney-General (OAG) for indictment.

The OAG is yet to examine the evidence and witnesses to decide if there was sufficient grounds for pressing charges against Yingluck in the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions.

If found guilty, Yingluck could face a jail term as well as a five-year ban from politics.

In the meantime, an investigative panel of the Election Commission (EC) has alleged that Yingluck, along with eight other former cabinet ministers and national police chief, had abused power by using public funds to campaign for the already-nullified Feb 2 general election.

All involved in the case will be called to defend themselves before the panel.

The EC will have to decide whether to take the case to the Supreme Court's Election Cases Division for ruling.

If found guilty, those involved could face up to 10 years in prison, a maximum fine of 200,000 baht (about $6,186) and a 10-year ban from elections.

Washington, August 11: Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview published Sunday, blamed President Barack Obama's faulty foreign policy for the rise of Islamic militants in both Syria and Iraq.

Talking to the Atlantic monthly, Clinton used harsh words to describe the failure that resulted from Obama's decision to stay on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian conflict, where the opposition has been trying to topple President Bashar al- Assad, xinhua reported.

"The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad -- there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle -- the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled," she said.

Serving as the top American envoy during Obama's first term, Clinton is widely expected to make another run for the presidency and is seen as trying to distance herself from the president, whose foreign policy has been under sharp attack in recent months.

The US fighters and drones have launched air raids on targets of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in northern Iraq for three consecutive days since Obama authorised the move Thursday to protect Americans as well as to conduct humanitarian missions.

Echoing some Republicans, Clinton said Obama lacked a strategy for confronting the threats posed by Islamic militants.

"Great nations need organising principles, and 'don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle," she said, referring to a slogan coined by the president recently to describe his foreign-policy doctrine.

London, August 11: Britain's Prince Harry recounted for the first time the "horrendous" images he saw during the US-led coalition war in Afghanistan, a media report said Sunday.

Writing for "The Sunday Times", the 29-year-old Prince Harry shared how unprepared he was for the reality of war after witnessing young men "wrapped in plastic and missing limbs" as well as children dying from roadside bombs, The Independent reported.

The fourth in line to the British throne served in Afghanistan's Helmand province in 2007-2008 and then again briefly in 2012-13 with the Army Air Corps.

Harry, who is a Captain in the Army, said he was horrified on his return to Britain in February 2008 from the battlefield in Afghanistan.

"Loss of life is as tragic and devastating as it gets, but to see young lads -- much younger than me -- wrapped in plastic and missing limbs, with hundreds of tubes coming out of them, was something I never prepared myself for. For me, this is where it all started," the prince said.

In his second tour of Afghanistan, Harry served as an Apache helicopter pilot often flying injured personnel and civilians to Camp Bastion military base hospital.

"I saw some horrendous things: the tragic injuries and deaths of local people from roadside bombs, some of whom were children and coalition forces lying on the battlefield," the Royal said.

Harry, who has now taken an office-based managerial Army role, said it was hard to fathom how anyone could get over the loss of body parts or witness the death of a friend.

Washington, August 11: A NASA 'vintage' spacecraft that was launched 36 years ago and is now being handled by a team of retired and active aerospace engineers has successfully completed a return visit to the earth-moon system.

The ISEE-3 spacecraft made its closest approach to the earth Aug 9 and flyby of the moon Aug 10.

The closest approach was 15,600 km from the moon's surface.

After a lunar flyby, the unmanned probe has now been hurled back into deep space.

With the lunar flyby, California-based Skycorp Inc and Google Creative Labs have announced a revised mission for ISEE-3, Universe Today reported.

ISEE-3 is currently over 20,000 km from the moon and over 370,000 km from earth.

Launched in 1978 and originally tasked with studying the outer reaches of the earth's magnetosphere, the probe was given a second mission in the 1980s to chase comets before NASA decided to shut it down in 1997.

In April this year, the private "ISEE-3 Reboot Project" started a crowdfunding project that raised $159,502 for the goal of re-establishing contact with the probe.

In an unprecedented move, NASA formally handed over control of ISEE-3 to the group in May.

In the same month, contact was re-established with the abandoned spacecraft and the group carried out a series of tests after ordering the craft to broadcast telemetry back to earth.

The group has established the ISEE-3 Interplanetary Citizen Science Mission that will allow the public access to the data still being transmitted by the craft as it speeds away from earth, reports added.

This colorful 18th century Vishnu temple reportedly folds and unfolds revealing many stories of Vishnu and is made of wood, mirror, paper, pigments and glass paste.

Vatican City, August 11: A Vishnu temple in Vatican City? Impossible, you would say. But this is a fact. The Tourism Travel Vacation News paper of Turkey has broken this startling news.

The Internet newspaper is the most widely read online all around the world. In its latest article captioned “Vatican has a Vishnu Temple”, the newspaper has given a detail report about the Hindu temple in land of World’s highly revered Christian Religious Headquarters where the highest spiritual and temporal leader of world Christians –the Pope dwells.

According to the report Vatican Museums include a portable temple of Hindu deity Lord Vishnu considered as ‘Sustainer’ of the universe and one amongst the popular trinity of ‘Brahma (creator), Vishnu (Sustainer) and Mahesh (Destroyer) of the Hindu faith.

This colorful 18th century Vishnu temple reportedly folds and unfolds revealing many stories of Vishnu and is made of wood, mirror, paper, pigments and glass paste. Collections of Vatican Museums also include bronze statues of Hindu divinities dating from 8th to 14th century.

Vatican Library carries extensive collection of ancient Hindu scriptures and various other Hinduism related texts; including books on Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad-Gita, Panchatantra, Krishna, Brahma, yoga, Shakti, Hindu theology, Hindu pantheon, etc. This Hindu collection is in various languages and some of the editions are as old as 1819.

Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, commending Holy See and His Holiness Pope Francis, said that it was a remarkable gesture and a step in the right direction to understand each other. Zed invited Pope Francis for a deeper study of ancient Hindu scriptures, which were very rich in philosophical thought, and offered to provide help if asked.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also lauded Vatican for including well-known verse from Brhadaranyaka-Upanishad (“Lead me from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to immortality.”), line from Tagore’s Gitanjali (“Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.”), and reference to Mahatma Gandhi in “Way of the Cross at the Colesseum” Meditations and Prayers on Good Friday 2009 led by Pope and put together by Vatican Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.

Rajan Zed further said that in 200-page “Verbum Domini” (The Word of the Lord) apostolic exhortation released on November 11, 2010, Pope Benedict wrote about “the sense of the sacred, sacrifice and fasting…” in Hinduism.

Zed argues that in our shared pursuit for the truth, we can learn from one another and thus can arrive nearer to the truth. Dialogue may help us vanquish the stereotypes, prejudices, caricatures, etc., passed on to us from previous generations. As dialogue brings us reciprocal enrichment, we shall be spiritually richer than before the contact.

Over six million people reportedly visit Vatican Museums annually, which originated as a group of sculptures collected by Pope Julius II (1503-1513). It includes works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Giotto, Leonardo, Caravaggio, van Gogh, Matisse and Moore. Vatican Library (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), library of the Holy See, whose traces go back to fourth century, has manuscripts, printed books, prints, photographs, drawings and engravings, coins and medals. It is said to hold over 180,000 manuscripts and over 1.6 million books, which includes Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, the oldest known nearly complete manuscript of the Bible.

Pope Francis is the ex-officio head of state of Vatican City, a sovereign city-state within the city of Rome (Italy). Pope also heads the Roman Catholic Church, which is the largest of the Christian denominations with about 1.2 billion members. Hinduism is the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about a billion adherents and moksh (liberation) is its ultimate goal.

Georgia, Aug 10: Vandals attacked a Hindu temple in Monroe, Georgia earlier this week, spray-painting profanities and phrases like “ha ha” and “LOL” on the walls.

The perpetrators also broke into the small outbuilding that held the temple’s sacred relics, tore out the icon of the deity Shiva and painted it completely black.

MyFoxAtlanta.com reported that this was the second time vandals struck the Vishwa Bhavan Mandir temple. In 2013, they sabotaged the building’s air conditioners. Police believe the same offenders may have been behind both attacks.

“As soon as I saw it I was just devastated,” said temple member Kelly Dammar to Atlanta’s Channel 5. “I was in tears because this is like another home for me.”

The vandals also struck a group of trailer homes and a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall located nearby. At the Kingdom Hall, parishioner David Lemon was installing cameras when he spoke to Channel 5.

“I think it’s just young kids messing around,” he said.

The Hindu American Seva Communities (HSC) advocacy group has taken up the case, saying in a statement that the attacks are “heartbreaking.”

“The desecration of the Lord Shiva statue was significantly heartbreaking for the Hindu community in Georgia, as it is the main deity of worship. Across the country, we find, many mandirs [temples] do not actively voice their concerns other than file a police report,” said the group.

New Zealand, Aug 10: A dramatic supermoon is set to accompany this year's Perseid meteor shower, one of the most anticipated events on the skywatcher's calendar.

Given a dark, clear sky in a normal year, it is common to see more than 100 of the meteors an hour during the second week in August. But this year the Perseids have a bright shining rival. On Sunday, two days before the meteor shower reaches its peak, the moon will become full.

Coincidentally, it will also have reached the point in its orbit that is closest to the Earth, known as perigee. The supermoon will be up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons during the year.

On one level, this is bad news, according to Dr Bill Cooke from Nasa's meteoroid environment office. "Lunar glare wipes out the black, velvety backdrop required to see faint meteors, and sharply reduces counts."

But all is not lost. The debris stream left by comet Swift-Tuttle, which produces the Perseids, is wide, so the shooting stars could make an appearance well before the moon becomes full. Cooke added that the Perseids were also "rich in fireballs as bright as Jupiter or Venus" that would remain visible despite the moon's glare.

A study conducted by his team since 2008 has shown the Perseids to be the undisputed "fireball champion" of meteor showers. "We see more fireballs from Swift-Tuttle than any other parent comet."

Tony Markham, director of the Society for Popular Astronomy's meteor section, also urged skywatchers to stay optimistic.

"The Perseids are rich in bright meteors and so many Perseids will still be seen despite the moonlit sky background," he wrote on the SPA's website. "You can minimise the effect of the moonlight by observing with your back to the moon – possibly viewing the Cassiopeia/Cepheus/Ursa Minor area. If possible, keep the moon hidden behind trees or a nearby building."

He pointed out that at this time of year the moon is relatively close to the horizon, leaving much of the sky dark. Markham also suggested looking at an area of sky 20 to 30 degrees away from the Perseid radiant – the spot near the constellation of Perseus that the meteors appear to fly out from.

Every 133 years, comet Swift-Tuttle swings through the inner solar system, leaving behind a trail of dust. When the Earth passes through, the dust cloud particles hit the atmosphere at 140,000mph and burn up in streaking flashes of light, creating the spectacle known as the Perseids.

The best time to see the meteors is between Saturday and Wednesday, with activity peaking on Tuesday. An unusually bright full supermoon was also seen on 12 July, and another is due to appear on 9 September. But the supermoon of Sunday promises to be the most dramatic, since this is when the moon will be at its closest point to the Earth all year.

At perigee, the moon is around 31,000 miles closer than when it is furthest away from the Earth. Supermoons occur relatively often, every 13 months and 18 days, but are not always noticed because of clouds or poor weather.

Tehran, August 10: All 48 people on board an Iranian plane were killed Sunday when it crashed shortly after take off at the Tehran airport. An official said the crash occurred due to engine failure.

Forty 40 passengers and eight crew members were on the Antonov-140 plane which was headed to Tabas city in Khorassan province, IRNA news agency reported.

The Taban Airlines plane crashed at 9.18 a.m, Xinhua reported.

Failure in one of the plane's engines caused the plane to crash on the northern side of Tehran-Karaj highway, Fars news agency quoted Mohammad Ilkhani, the head of Iran Airports Company, as saying.

Iran has seen several air disasters involving both civil and military aircraft in recent years.

In January 2011, an air crash near the airport of the northwestern Urmia city killed 77 people including four foreigners.