India trims 2012/13 fuel demand forecast on slow growth

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India cut its forecast for fuel demand in the current fiscal year by nearly 1 percent to 155.6 million tonnes, government data showed, due to a slowdown in economic activity.

The economy, which grew at 6.5 percent in the year ended March 2012, is expected to grow 5.7 percent to 5.9 percent this fiscal year, the slowest since 2002/03.

Local fuel sales -- a proxy for oil demand in India -- are now expected to grow at 5.2 compared with 5 percent in the previous fiscal year, when India consumed 148.13 million tonnes of fuel, according to data released by the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC), a unit of the oil ministry.

PPAC had earlier projected India would consume 157.07 million tonnes of refined oil products this fiscal year, a growth of 6.1 percent over 2011/12.

PPAC has halved its projection for growth in demand of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in this fiscal year to 5.6 percent as the use of the fuel has decreased after India capped sale of subsidised cooking gas cylinders at six per household.

Diesel accounts for over 40 percent of refined fuel consumption in India and according to the latest PPAC estimate, demand for the fuel is set to rise 8.3 percent compared with a previous projection of 5.9 percent as it is considerably cheaper than petrol.

India, which imports more than 80 percent of its fuel needs, liberalised petrol prices in June 2010 but continues to regulate diesel prices to protect the poor.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently said India must gradually bring local fuel prices in line with global prices. He also called for creating public awareness on the need for curbing energy subsidies.

Wedding colors by sun sign

Imagine what would happen if you had to spend your life with only black, white and gray?  Colors play a huge role in our life and especially in weddings. In India, red is considered to be the all important color for the bride signifying fertility, purity, strength and auspiciousness while white is considered taboo as it’s worn by widows. On the other hand, Catholic brides insist on white to signify purity and fertility while black is inauspicious and used only for mourning and by widows. But traditions aside, some special colors that are indicated according to your sun sign that you can use for your wedding theme. Take a look at this simple list we’ve made to find out your wedding color according to your sun sign.

1. Aries men and women love the color red, rose and crimson as it enhances their health. But green is not good for them as it tends to aggravate their digestive system
 
2. Taureans should wear blue to suit their balanced nature. But a combination of blue and pink is preferred. Green and red is not a good color for Taureans as it increases expenses and saps their health

3. Gemini is the twin sign that loves green and pearl grey. White is not good for geminians as it disturbs the marital life and relationships.

4. Cancerians are very emotional and light shades are ideal for them. Light silver, yellow, and lavender are perfect for them. Colors to be avoided include green and blue.
 
5. Leos love the royal colors such as purple, gold and silver. Dark red is good for them too as it enhances domestic happiness. Avoid green and blue which can increase frustrations and tempers.

6. Virgos love gray, brown, white and green. But dark red is a serious deterrent to domestic happiness and it can even destroy lives.

 7. Librans use all shades of blue to enhance their life, love, relationships and career. Red and yellow can increase temper for them and cause domestic unhappiness
 
8. Scorpions are serious sun sign and they prefer any shades of red. But yellow seems to sap them of drive and strength. Avoid yellows at all costs
 
9. Sagitarians are bold and they prefer to use yellow and all shades of it. Reds on the other hand can remove their happiness and increase their struggle

10. Capricorns should wear sapphire blue, dark blue and grays to make one selves healthy and happy. Dark red and yellow are not good
 
11. Aquarians are sensitive and understanding and they like all the colors that Capricorn likes. But for them dark red and white can hinder relationships and marriages

12. Pisceans love all shades of yellow, white and pearl. Dark red however can obstruct life and love.

The Top Award-Winning Travel Photos

The Minch, Western Isles, Scotland. This is a series of images called ‘Dreich’ – an old Scottish word to describe the wet, grey, miserable, dank.
Craig Easton, UK,
Camera: Nikon D3X
Winner: the Cutty Sark Award for the Travel Photographer of the Year 2012
The Cutty Sark Award for the overall winner is presented by Cutty Sark Blended Scotch Whisky. They are rewarding Craig with £2,500 in cash, an expenses-paid international photography commission with £2,500 commission fee, and the chance to work with their master blender and blend his own whisky, design his own label, and bottle up to 50 bottles of the resulting unique blend. Though he lives in England, Craig is a Scotsman by birth, so this should be entirely appropriate for him!

Paris, France. French privacy laws now dictate that I had to ensure that no-one was recognisable in the images, which led me to the idea of silhouettes against an iconic background.
      Craig Easton, UK
      Camera: Nikon D3X 100
      Winner: the Cutty Sark Award for the Travel Photographer of the Year 2012

Siberia, Russia. Yamalo Nemets’ winter camp in the tundra. This young girl collects wood in the forest.
Alessandra Meniconzi, Switzerland
Camera: Canon EOS 1DS Mk3
Winner, New Talent award For her success in the New Talent category ‘Another World’,
Alessandra Meniconzi (Switzerland) – a graphic designer, teacher and semi-professional photographer, who is hoping to become a full-time photographer - wins a trip to the Gnaoua and World Music Festival in Essaouira, Morocco with sustainable travel specialists Tribes Travel, a Fujifilm FinePix X100 camera, Plastic Sandwich leather portfolio book or iFolio, plus a Digimarc for Images Professional Edition subscription and Adobe Photoshop CS6 software. 

Groundnut harvest near Bagan, Burma
Philip Lee Harvey, UK
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mk2
Winner, People Watching portfolio

Groundnut harvest near Bagan, Burma

Philip Lee Harvey, UK
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mk2
Winner, People Watching portfolio

 

Black sand beaches near the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon in Iceland.
Joshua Holko, Australia
Camera: Canon EOS 1DS MK3
Highly Commended, One Shot ’Water’ (single image category)

 

Kara tribe warrior, Omo River Valley, Ethiopia
Jan Schlegel, Germany
Camera: Ebony field SV45T1 4 x 5 inch camera
Runner-up, People Watching portfolio
The Runners-up in each portfolio category win a Digimarc for Images Professional subscription, a Plastic Sandwich leather portfolio or iFolio, and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 software.

Cocos Island, Costa-Rica Hammerhead sharks swim toward a ‘cleaning station’, where small fishes help them to get rid of parasites.
Dmitry Miroshnikov, Russia
Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
Commended, New Talent category

Brandseth Valley, Voss, Norway
Hilde Foss, Norway
Camera: Canon 7D
Winner, One Shot ’Water’ (single image category)
Norwegian amateur photographer Hilde Foss’s exhilarating image of a kayaker took the top prize, winning her a Fujifilm X10 digital camera, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 and a collection of Travel Photographer of the Year books.

Grand Gedeh, Liberia. Children watch an Oxfam team at work.
Timothy Allen, UK
Camera: Canon 5D Mark II.
Winner, Best Single Image in a People Watching portfolio
The winner in this category receives a Giclee exhibition print from Genesis Digital Imaging, a print of an historic image from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) archive, and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.

Spitsbergen, Norway: A fox about to scavenge the skeleton of a seal which had been caught by a polar bear.
Michal Jastrzebski, Poland
Camera: Nikon D3S
Commended, Wild Planet portfolio

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic
Uli Kunz, Germany
Camera: Canon 5D Mk2
   Runner-up, Wild Planet portfolio

Spitsbergen, Norway Glaucous gulls fight over scraps left by a polar bear
Michal Jastrzebski, Poland
Camera: Nikon D3S
  Winner, Best Single Image in the Wild Planet portfolio category
  Each individual winner in the Best Single Image category receives a Giclee exhibition  print from Genesis Digital Imaging, a print of an historic image from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) archive, and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4. 

Kiskunsagi National park, Hungary -
Grey heron
Sue Flood, UK
  Camera: Canon 1DS3
  Special Mention, Wild Planet

Namib desert, Namibia
Marsel van Oosten, Netherlands
Camera: Nikon D3S
Winner, Wild Planet portfolio
Marsel van Oosten’s stunning images of the Namibian night sky won the Dutch photographer the Wild Planet portfolio category, and a prize of a tailormade trip to Kenya with adventure travel experts Explore, plus Adobe Photoshop CS6 software.

Dust storm approaching Burning Man Festival, USA
Lung Liu, Canada
Camera: Pentax K20D
Winner, Journeys portfolio

Maciachini Centre, Via Carlo Imbonati, Milan, Italy
Tom McLaughlan, UK
Camera: CANON 5D MARK II
  Commended, Journeys portfolio

Siberut Island, West Sumatra, Indonesia
Andrew Newey, UK
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mk II
  Winner, Best Single Image in a Journeys portfolio

Masai Mara, Kenya
David Lazar, Australia
Camera: Nikon D700
   Special Mention, Journeys

Rapa das Bestas (Shearing of the Beasts) festival, Sabucedo, Galicia, Spain.
Enrique López-Tapia, Spain
Camera: Nikon D300
   Winner, Celebration portfolio category

Shoreditch, London, England
Anka Sliwa, UK
Camera: Nikon D80
  Winner, First Shot – Big City (beginners’ single image category)
  Anka Sliwa took home a Fujifilm FinePix XP150, a Photo Iconic photocourse, and         Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA
Samuel Fisch, USA (age 15)
Camera: Nikon D7000
  Winner – Young Travel Photographer of the Year 2012
  For his evocative portfolio of cowboys and horses,Samuel Fisch wins a Fujifilm X-S1 camera and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA
Samuel Fisch, USA (age 15), Camera: Nikon D7000
Winner – Young Travel Photographer of the Year 2012

 

Kilgoris, Trans Mara, Rift Valley Province, Kenya
Matthew Gillooley, USA (age 18)
Camera: Nikon D700
Winner, Young TPOTY 15-18

Ciocanesti, Dolj county, Romania
Felicia Simion, Romania (age 18)
Camera: Canon EOS 7D
Runner-up, Young TPOTY 15-18

Amish mud sale, Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania, USA
Chase Guttman, USA (age 16)
Camera: Nikon D7000
   Winner, Young Photographers Alliance Award

Amish mud sale, Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania, USA
Chase Guttman, USA (age 16)
Camera: Nikon D7000
  Winner, Young Photographers Alliance Award

Expert tips to get fair and glowing skin

Suffering from marks, pigmentation or dull skin? Every bride should look her best on her wedding day. Read our dermatologist recommended tips for brighter and less pigmented skin.

How to treat dull and pigmented skin?
Take control of your own skin! Pigmentation can take months to resolve with proper treatment, so, the earlier you start the better. There are many options to help fade those dark marks. But, you need to know what will be safe and what can cause undue damage.
Read below for some treatment methods for your skin and how to avoid any possible side effects.

Sun block and sun avoidance
The number one cause of pigmentation is the sun. UV rays from the sun stimulate melanocytes, the pigment producing cells of the skin, to create melanin, or dark pigment.The sun in India is very strong, making it even more important to avoid the sun.

Choose the right sunscreen
Make sure you stay out of the sun as much as possible and cover exposed areas. Also wear sun block or sunscreen. As both UVA and UVB rays cause pigmentation problems, it is important to use a sunscreen that contains protection against both these types of sunrays. Look for SPF 30 for UVB protection and ++ for UVA protection to ensure you get the optimal effect from your sun block. Also, make sure you reapply your sunscreen every 3-4 hours as they start to lose effect over time.

Tsunami bomb, a rival for nuclear weapons, was tested by U.S., New Zealand: archived secret files

During its search for the 'ultimate weapon' to end World War II, the United States apparently teamed up with New Zealand to test a 'tsunami bomb,' which could be used to destroy the enemy's coastal cities.

Ray Waru, an author, film maker and television producer in New Zealand, uncovered the top secret files of "Project Seal" from the national archive, which told how the two countries conducted tests of this 'tsunami bomb' in the waters around Auckland and New Caledonia in the 1940s.

"If you put it in a James Bond movie it would be viewed as fantasy but it was a real thing," Waru said, according to the Telegraph. "I only came across it because they were still vetting the report, so there it was sitting on somebody's desk [in the archives]."

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A total of 3,700 bombs were detonated underwater in these tests, and ultimately showed that exploding a line of 10 bombs (totaling about two million kilograms of explosive), roughly eight kilometres from shore, could generate a 10-meter-high wave when it reached land. For comparison, the tallest wave peaks from the tsunami that devastated Japan's west coast in 2011 were recorded at just over nine meters.

“It was absolutely astonishing,” said Waru. “First that anyone would come up with the idea of developing a weapon of mass destruction based on a tsunami — and also that New Zealand seems to have successfully developed it to the degree that it might have worked.”

"Presumably if the atomic bomb had not worked as well as it did, we might have been tsunami-ing people," he added, and he is likely right about that.

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Given that most of the world's major cities are coastal, it would have been a very effective weapon (and likely a lot more environmentally-friendly than nuclear war). The down-side of developing this and going public with it is that it wouldn't be hard to duplicate. You need specialized knowledge, materials and facilities to build nuclear weapons, thus only some nations have them. The relatively simple explosives required to produce one of these 'tactical tsunamis' would be far easier to produce (even for the large quantity required), putting this weapon into far more hands.

Since I'm sure that the environmental impacts of nuclear weapons contributed (at least in part) to our planet emerging from the Cold War without nuking ourselves into oblivion, I'm quite happy that they shelved this weapon, since governments may have been far more willing to use it.