Olympics closing ceremony organisers describe event as disco at end of wedding

London, Aug. 12
The man given the challenge of organizing the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, has described the event as a 'disco at the end of the wedding'. "The show we are putting on is very shiny, it's very colourful. We don't want to bang on about our culture. We just want to have fun at this moment," The Telegraph quoted Kim Gavin, who is a former ballet dancer, as saying. Gavin made his name as a creative director with the Circus and Progress tours for the band Take That. "Let's have a party. I don't want anyone to say, 'I don't understand this,'" Gavin said. According to the report, Gavin is not Danny Boyle, who had created an eccentric celebration of Britishness for the opening ceremony two weeks ago. "If I had been doing the opening ceremony, I would have had a different approach," Gavin admitted. Gavin's creative team for the closing ceremony includes designer Es Devlin, music director David Arnold and lighting director Patrick Woodroffe, along with executive producer Stephen Daldry. According to the report, together they have prepared a two-and-a-half hour show that celebrates the best of British music, incorporating all the ritual that goes with the closing of the Games. Arnold has put together a seamless soundtrack that will incorporate remixes, new recordings of old tracks, live vocals and a few surging moments when bands such as The Who or Muse play. Calling it the disco at the end of the wedding conveys the sense of familiarity and fun they are after, but it does not do justice to the spectacle that will be on offer, the report added.

Sushil Kumar assures sixth medal for India in Wrestling

London, Aug 12
Sushil Kumar assured India of a sixth medal at the London Olympics by powering into the men's 66 kg freestyle wrestling final at the ExCel Arena here Sunday. Sushil, bronze medallist in Beijing four years ago, edged out Kazakhstan's Akzhurek Tanatarov 3-1 in a thrilling semifinal, his third fight of the day. He faces Japanese Tatsuhiro Yonemitsu in the gold medal play-off later Sunday. Tanatarov seemed the likely winner in the third and final period before Sushil fought back through grit and experience. With the Kazakh leading 3-0, Sushil came up with brilliant moves to leave Tanatarov reeling on the mat. The contest ended with the Indian winning the period 6-3 and his opponent bleeding from the right ear. Sushil had won the first period 3-0 and Kazakh levelled the fight in the second. Earlier, the 2010 World Champion muscled his way into the last four beating Ikhtiyor Navruzov of Uzbekistan 3-1. The Indian could have wrapped up the fight in period 2 but Navruzov turned the tables on him with six seconds remaining. Sushil got the measure of his opponent in period 3, winning it 2-0 to seal the contest. The 29-year-old started the day in a scintillating fashion, dismissing the Beijing gold medallist, Ramazan Sahin, in the opening round.

After Curiosity, uncertainty lingers on NASA's Mars program

Pasadena, Ca.
This week's arrival of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity set the stage for a potentially game-changing quest to learn whether the planet most like Earth ever had a shot at developing life, but follow-up missions exist only on drawing boards. The United States had planned to team up with Europe on a trio of missions beginning in 2016 that would culminate in the return of Mars soil and rock samples to Earth, an endeavor the National Research Council considers its top priority in planetary science for the next decade. Citing budget concerns, the Obama administration terminated NASA's participation in Europe's ExoMars programme earlier this year, spurring the U.S. space agency to re-examine its options before another flight opportunity comes and goes. Earth and Mars favorably align for launches about every 26 months. The situation is complicated by massive budget overruns in the $2.5-billion Curiosity mission, intended to determine if Mars could now or ever have supported microbial life, and in the $8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, a successor to the Hubble observatory. Those overruns are partly to blame for leaving Mars exploration short of the multibillion-dollar commitment needed for another "flagship" mission of the scale it would take to fetch rocks and soil from the Red Planet and bring them home. A NASA report due for release this month is expected to outline lower-cost alternatives for Mars missions that could launch in 2018 and 2020. A second rover mission to follow up on Curiosity's findings or to explore one of three other candidate landing sites originally identified for Curiosity would be "the next logical step," said NASA's Mars exploration program chief, Doug McCuistion. But he doubts he will have the money for it. Although unlikely to draw a crowd to New York's Times Square like Curiosity's spectacular landing did, a new orbiting satellite to detect and analyze minerals or peer beneath the planet's surface with infrared eyes would help scientists zero in on the best place for an eventual sample-return mission. It also would provide a welcome backup communications link for Curiosity and any future landers and rovers, scientists say. PLAN B "We have to address the overall goal that the (National Research Council) decadal survey set for Mars exploration, which is sample return," NASA's chief Mars scientist, Michael Meyer, told Reuters. "I suspect there are other things that we may do on Mars, but if they don't help sample return they may be viewed as a non-starter." Searching for evidence of life or its key ingredients on Mars, believed to have once been warmer and covered with water like Earth, is not the only rationale for a sample-return mission. Detailed analysis of Martian minerals also could tell the story of what happened to the planet itself and why it ended up the cold, dry and acidic desert that exists today. "Finding life is not why most of the science community is interested in sample return. There's a reasonable proportion who figure, 'Well, we don't see life on Mars now, so it's probably not there, and that if the only payoff is finding life you're wasting your time.' That's some of the science community," Meyer said. "The fact that you could look at all the information that's in your samples, determine what environments it saw, is tremendous. There's a lot of things that would really boost our understanding that have nothing to do with life," he said. VIKING Fresh off the heady days of its Apollo moon missions, NASA took a stab at a direct search for life on Mars with its Viking probes in the 1970s. Most scientists chalked up the results as a big negative, and exploration of the fourth planet closest to the sun slipped into a 20-year hiatus. Later, encouraged by discoveries of life in extreme environments on Earth, scientists returned to Mars with orbiters and a pair of small surface rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, to consider a tangential question: Since life on Earth depends on water, where did Mars' water go? Rather than focus on direct detection of living organisms or fossilized remnants, NASA's strategy has been to "follow the water," by looking for particular rocks and features that form when water is present. Curiosity's landing site in Gale Crater, located in the southern hemisphere near the planet's equator, was selected in part because it is one of the lowest places on the planet. "Water flows downhill, so we chose to go to a low place," said John Grotzinger, a California Institute of Technology geologist who is the mission's lead scientist. At the center of the crater is a 3-mile- (5-kilometer-) high tower of layered rock, named Mount Sharp, which is believed to have formed from the remains of sediment that once filled the impact basin. During its planned two-year mission, the rover is expected to ascend Mount Sharp, analyzing and dating its rocks and soil and looking for niches that may once have supported, and perhaps still host, life. That information, in turn, will sharpen planet-wide analysis of Mars that is obtained from orbital imagery and sensors. "We're going to get some ground truth to figure out the most interesting places to do sample return," said NASA's associate administrator for science, John Grunsfeld, a former astronaut. The only other Mars mission in NASA's pipeline at the moment is an atmospheric probe scheduled to launch at the end of next year. The agency plans to submit its follow-up Mars proposals to the White House in September, in time for the fiscal year that begins in October 2013.

SP leader's son shot dead in Ghaziabad

Ghaziabad, Aug 12 The son of a Samajwadi Party (SP) leader was Sunday shot dead in Ghaziabad by his own uncle in a dispute over buying a luxury car, police said. Prashant Kaushik alias Sachin, son of Samajwadi Party leader Sudhir Kaushik, sustained six bullet injuries on his chest and head when his uncle Hari Mohan Kaushik, also a party leader, opened fire from his licensed 9mm pistol in Shastri Nagar residential locality here, police said. "Hari Mohan Kaushik, a former councillor of Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation, opened indiscriminate firing on his nephew after a dispute arose between them over withdrawal of Rs.28 lakh to buy a luxury car from their real estate company," said sub-inspector Sudhir Tyagi of Kavi Nagar police station. "After pumping six bullet into Prashant, Hari Mohan alias Tinku fled the spot. We have found six empty cartridges from the spot," said Tyagi. Prashant's elder brother, Anurag Kaushik said that around 1.30 a.m. Sunday Prashant and Hari Mohan were drinking whisky in Hari Mohan's Terricona SUV car. They quarelled over Prashant withdrawing Rs.28 lakh from the company's account for an expensive car. Hari Mohan also insisted buying a new car from company's joint account. When Prashant opposed, a heated discussion took place and Hari Mohan pumped six bullets into Prashant from his licensed revolver and fled away from the scene. Hari Mohan had already withdrwan Rs.18 lakh three months ago for his Hyundai SUV Terricona car. "We are trying to arrest Hari Mohan Kaushik. Raids are being conducted at his possible hideouts in Ghaziabad and other places in the adjoining districts," Tyagi added. Sudhir Kaushik was a former treasurer of the Congress party. Recently he joined Samajwadi Party along with his brother Hari Mohan Kaushik.