Wednesday, November 20, 2013

PHILIPPINES DISQUALIFIED FROM BEAUTY PAGEANTS FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS


Megan Young, 2013 Miss World
Megan Young, 2013 Miss World

Ariella Arida, 3rd runner-up, 2013 Miss Universe
Ariella Arida, 3rd runner-up, 2013 Miss Universe
Mutya Datul, 2013 Miss SupraNational
Mutya Datul, 2013 Miss SupraNational
Annalie Forbes, 3rd runner-up, Miss Grand International
Annalie Forbes, 3rd runner-up, Miss Grand International

Bangkok, Thailand – After today’s fourth-place finish of Annalie Forbes, the Philippines’ representative to the Miss Grand International Beauty Pageant in Bangkok, Thailand, the  Association of Beauty Pageant Franchise Holders (ABPFH) has banned the Philippines from future international beauty competitions, citing “enormous advantage” by Filipina candidates in practically all pageants this year.
The  disqualification will be in effect for two years.
The Philippines holds the distinction of having won the title in all major beauty competitions like Miss Universe, Miss World and Miss International.  Additionally, every new international beauty competition has seen a Filipina winning the title or placing in the top 5.  Earlier this year, Mutya Datul won the 2013 Miss SupraNational Pageant.
Forbes is the fourth Filipino to make it to the top 5 in competitions this year. Megan Young, of course, bagged the 2013 Miss World title this year, the first-ever for the Philippines.  Before Young, Evangeline Pascual reached the finals and was first runner-up in 1973 while Ruffa Gutierrez was second runner-up in 1993.
Ariella Arida, the country’s bet in the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, Russia, placed fourth.
Other Filipina beauties who have won international titles include Gloria Diaz and Margie Moran (Miss Universe) and Gemma Cruz, Mimilanie Marquez, Aurora Pijuan, and Precious Lara Quigaman (Miss International). Karla Henry won the Miss Earth title in 2008.
In 2010, 2011 and 2012, the Philippines’  Venus Raj, Shamcey Supsup and Janine Tugonon were all in the top 5 in the Miss Universe competition.
ABPFH said that it is time for the Philippines to give other countries the chance to win international beauty competitions, adding that “the world already knows how beautiful and talented Filipinas are.”

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

India mission to Mars blasts off successfully

 AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
NEW DELHI, India – India's first mission to Mars blasted off on Tuesday, November 5, as the country aims to become the only Asian nation to reach the Red Planet with a program showcasing its low-cost space technology.
"It's lift off," said a commentator on state television as the red-and-black rocket launched into a slightly overcast sky on schedule at 02:38pm (0908 GMT) from the southern spaceport in Sriharikota.
The 350-tonne launch vehicle carrying an unmanned probe was monitored by dozens of scientists in the control room who face their most daunting task since India began its space program in 1963.
The country has never before attempted inter-planetary travel and more than half of all missions to Mars have ended in failure, including China's in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.
The Mars Orbiter Mission, known as "Mangalyaan" in India, was announced only 15 months ago by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, shortly after China's attempt flopped when it failed to leave Earth's atmosphere.
The timing led to speculation that India was seeking to make a point to its militarily and economically superior neighbor, despite denials from the country's space agency.
"We are in competition with ourselves in the areas that we have charted for ourselves," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan told AFP last week.
The gold-coloured probe, the size of a small car, will aim to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere. It has been hurriedly assembled and is being carried by a rocket much smaller than US or Russian equivalents.
Lacking the power to fly directly, the launch vehicle will orbit Earth for nearly a month, building up the necessary velocity to break free from our planet's gravitational pull.
Only then will it begin the second stage of its 9-month journey which will test India's scientists to the full, 5 years after they sent a probe called Chandrayaan to the moon.
Costs lower than NASA's Mars probe
The cost of the Mars mission is 4.5 billion rupees ($73 million or P3.15 billion), less than a sixth of the 455 million dollars earmarked for a Mars probe by NASA which will launched later this month.
"We didn't believe they'd be able to launch this early," project scientist for the NASA Mars probe, Joe Grebowsky, told AFP. "If it's successful, it's fantastic."
He underlined that Mars, which has a complicated orbit meaning it is between 50-400 million kilometres from Earth, was a far more complex prospect compared with a moon mission.
"When you shoot a rocket at Mars, you have to take into account that Mars is going to move a good deal before you get there. The moon is fairly close," he said.
There have been recent setbacks for India too, including when Chandrayaan lost contact with its controllers in 2009. Another launch vehicle blew up after take-off in 2010.
The program also has to contend with critics who say a country that struggles to feed its people adequately and where more than half have no toilets should not be splurging on space travel.
ISRO counters that its technology has helped economic development through satellites which monitor weather and water resources, or enable communication in remote areas.
The Bangalore-based organisation and its 16,000 staff also share their rocket technology with the state-run defence body responsible for India's missile program.
The United States is the only nation that has successfully sent robotic explorers to land on Mars, the most recent being Curiosity which touched down in August 2012.
One of its discoveries appeared to undercut the purpose of the Indian mission which is to find evidence of methane which would lend credence to the idea of Mars supporting a primitive form of life.
A study of data from Curiosity published in September found the rover had detected only trace elements of methane in the atmosphere.
"Remember that it (Curiosity's methane reading) is for a single spot. One point doesn't make it a story for the whole planet," top Indian space scientist Jitendra Nath Goswami told AFP.
NASA, which will launch its Maven probe on November 18 to study why Mars lost its atmosphere, is helping ISRO with communications.
Clouds of methane have previously been identified by telescopes on Mars, but the gas has never been confirmed by a mission there.
Methane on Earth is mostly produced by micro-organisms, so a positive reading would suggest some form of life on a planet that scientists believe was once covered with water.
credits: Rappler.com

Jinggoy Estrada Arrested to US After Trying to Smuggle US Dollar






SAN FRANCISCO, California — Officials inside San Francisco International Airport detained and arrested Senator Jinggoy Estrada, after the lawmaker tried to get past customs while in possession of huge amounts of money.
Estrada, who came to San Francisco via a connecting flight from Hong Kong, was initially reported to accompany his wife to the United States, to seek a second opinion from US-based doctors for a lump in his wife’s breast.
But it turns out, his wife was not with him on the trip, and it was the senator instead who had a lump on his breast.
Airport authorities grew suspicious of the senator after they noticed him all sweaty, jumpy and saw a noticeable bulge on the upper-body-area of his clothes.
“We asked him what it was,” said SFIA Head of Security Trevor Philip Ogg. “The cocky son-of-a-bitch answered me by asking  ’don’t you know who I am?’”
“I said no, who the hell are you?” narrated Ogg.
Estrada apparently introduced himself as “THE sexy senator from the Philippines”, and that the bulge on his chest was the result of intense workout regimen he undertook months prior.
But when the senator sensed that Ogg was feeling sketchy with his response, Estrada flip-flopped and told him that he was seeking medical advice from US doctors for the said lumps.
Jinggoy-and-Loren-Legarda
File photo shows Estrada, asking Legarda if the money hidden inside his stomach looks suspicious.
That’s when airport officials decided to frisk him.
Ogg added, “When he took off his shirt, we saw rectangular lumps in-place of his muscles, an unusual sight that does not resemble the six-packs you see on TV.”
Upon closer inspection with the help of a scalpel, they discovered bundles of money hidden inside Estrada’s ‘muscles’ and skin, that the senator was trying to bring in to the country.
“We counted millions worth of Pesos that we suspect belongs to the Filipinos,” said Ogg.
He added, “Mr. Estrada is now visually far from sexy after we emptied his body of money after a full cavity search.