Dipika does India proud ~ India wins Gold in Archery Recurve at Medellin

Most unlikely that we might be reading of this city founded in 1616 ~ Medellín,  officially the Municipio de Medellín (Spanish for Municipality of Medellín), in Columbia, in the Aburrá Valley, one of the most northerly of the Andes Mountains in South America.  A couple of decades back it was one of the most dangerous cities with mention of Pablo Escobar…. Now there are symbols of defiance and resurgence; a place where several car bombs a day could explode as Escobar's cartel went to war with the state, its apparatus, elites and society at large.  Today. We are to read of this as Indian Women claimed GOLD in the third stage of the 2013 World Cup – Archery being held there.   Medellin is experiencing an economic, cultural and social fast-growing process. At the beginning of the year, Medellin was chosen as most innovative city in the world due to its advances in politics, education and social development.

The main architect is our good looking - Deepika Kumari currently ranked World No. 2 and is a former world number one. She disappointed us in Olympics but  won a gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth games in the women's individual recurve event. She also won a gold medal in the same competition in the women's team recurve event along with Dola Banerjee and Bombayala Devi. She was conferred with Arjuna Award, India's second highest sporting award in the year 2012 by President of India Pranab Mukherjee.

There are many different kinds of bow shapes. However, most fall into three main categories: straight, recurve and compound. Straight and recurve are considered traditional bows. In archery, the shape of the bow is usually taken to be the view from the side.  A recurve bow has tips that curve away from the archer when the bow is strung. By definition, the difference between recurve and other bows is that the string touches a section of the limb when the bow is strung.  It is a complex format – the World Cup Archery is in 4 stages being held for  recurve and compound divisions.  The first leg was in Shanghai, second in Antalya, Turkey, third now just concluded and fourth at Wroclaw, Poland in mid Aug 2013.  The finals will take  place at Paris in Sept 2013.

At Medellin, World number 3 Deepika Kumari came up with a stunning effort to lead India to a commanding 201-186 win over China in Women’s Recurve Team Final.  Deepika had crashed out of the singles competition at the quarterfinal stage but she showed her class by hitting four 10s in tricky conditions to allow India to reclaim the Women’s Recurve Team gold after a two-year gap. Bombayla Devi Laishram and Rimil Buriuly gave good support to Deepika as India beat China 201-186 to claim their second medal of this World Cup and their first World Cup Women’s team gold since Shanghai 2011. In extremely windy conditions, Bombayla Devi and Rimil Buriuly  struggled — scoring just 11 between them but Deepika stepped up and shot an 8.  As the wind died down a little, the scores started to go up. But a 10 from Deepika extended the lead to 13. The gold was in sight and there was going to be no turning back.

Yesterday, India’s men’s team had clinched a bronze medal in the compound men’s team event to open their account in the Archery World Cup Stage 3 being held in Medellin, Colombia.  Rajat Chouhan, Sandeep Kumar and Ratan Singh Khuraijam overcame a stiff resistance from the hosts to win 215-210 en route to the bronze medal.

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a wealthy Colombian drug lord and an elusive cocaine trafficker.  The war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993, amid another attempt to elude the Search Bloc. Using radio triangulation technology provided by the French, a Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martinez,  found him hiding in a middle-classbarrio in Medellín.  Escobar was eliminated though there are some versions that he committed suicide. Medellin is perhaps different from then on….

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.

22nd July 2013.

A new language ~ “Light Warlpir”… is born in Lajamanu, Australia

To a casual Q – which languages do you know…. pat came the reply : Basic, Cobol, C, C++, Java, Pascal, Python……… and to the Q – what is your mother tongue – ‘lengthy’……. !!!!!!!  ~ ‘mozhi’ in Tamil means language…. **

There are languages which have gone out of vogue as none speak them… some are feared that sooner they would cease to exist….. The communication amongst humans is through language – a complex system of communication. There are thousands of languages – not all are written as some are only spoken.  Our Nation has hundreds of languages with Hindi in Devanagari script  being the principal official language.  Indian languages belong to several linguistic families – Dravidian being an important one.   The Dravidian family includes 85 languages approx and is spoken by millions of people, predominantly in Southern India and parts of Sri Lanka and some other countries.  Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam, Kannada are the prominent ones.  The antiquity of the language is studied through epigraphs which is study of inscriptions on stones and on others forms dating back to centuries.

Tamil is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and the first Indian language to be declared as a classical language by Govt in 2004.  We proudly claim that Tamil literature is existent for over 2000 years with the earliest epigraphic records found on rock edicts.  The earliest period – Sangam literature is dated from 300  BCE. 

Here is something read in Daily Mail of the World's newest language discovered in remote Australian town (but only 350 people speak it and they're all under 35) ~ it is  “Light Warlpir”… used in Lajamanu, a tiny desert community in Australia…. It is stated that this language would have emerged by 1970s. 

The language, now known as Light Warlpir, is used in Lajamanu, a tiny desert community located half-way between Darwin and Alice Springs, on the edge of the Tanami Desert. The isolated village has a population of about 700 and is populated mostly by the descendants of Aborigines forcibly resettled by the Australian government. All residents speak traditional 'strong' Warlpiri and some speak Kriol, an English-based creole developed in the late 19th century, reported Australia's Daily Telegraph. Only about 350 young locals speak the Light Warlpir - and none of them are over 35.

Carmel O'Shannessy, a professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor documented the discovery of Light Warlpiri in a study published online in the journal Language reported LiveScience. O'Shannessy first discovered the language when she began working in a school in the Northern Territory where traditional Warlpiri was being taught to children. She noticed that some of the students appeared to switch between several languages in conversation. 'After a while, I realised this switching took place in every sentence, and I decided to investigate it," O'Shannessy said.  'Once I recorded children speaking, I looked at the patterns and I could see that there were very striking systematic patterns. It was then that I realised this was a system of its own,' she told the website.

'The striking thing about Light Warlpiri is that most of the verbs come from English or Kriol, but most of the other grammatical elements in the sentence come from Warlpiri,' O'Shannessy told the website. In the Warlpiri language words can be placed in any order, and grammatical interpretations are based on suffixes that are attached to the nouns. Another interesting facet is a word form that refers to both the present and past time, but not the future.

According to O'Shannessy it is likely Light Warlpiri emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. She believes it was when children went from switching between English, Kriol and Warlpiri to speaking the mixed Light Warlpiri language on a primary basis. The news, which has excited linguists across the world is not the first time the tiny town has hit the headlines. In 2010, residents were left speechless after fish began falling from the sky. Hundreds of spangled perch bombarded residents of Lajamanu, shocking local Christine Balmer, who was walking home when the strange 'weather' started. She said: 'These fish fell in their hundreds and hundreds all over the place. The locals were running around everywhere picking them up. Meterologists say the incident was probably caused by a tornado. It is common for tornados to suck up water and fish from rivers and drop them hundreds of miles away.

So on a land where once it rained fish, now there is a new language… some languages are feared to be dying, here is one born anew..

Tailpiece ** : Mozhi (Tamil: மொழி) is a 2007 Tamil film produced by Prakash Raj and directed by Radha Mohan. Jyothika portrayed the leading character in this movie along with Prithviraj , Prakash Raj and Swarnamalya in pivotal roles. The producers had tied up with optical disc maker Moser Baer for the release of video.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

19^th July 2013.

PS: the text in blue majorly reproduced from www.dailymail.co.uk.

direct shipping service from Chennai Port to East coast of US launched

Dear (s)  :  Landmark event in the port of Chennai

It is just over a half a century since the first container ship, the IDEAL X, sailed from Newark to Houston in the US on April 26, 1956. The ship carried 58 containers and 15,000 tonnes of bulk petroleum. Since that small beginning, a lot has changed in the global containerisation of cargo. From the US, where the action started, it has shifted towards Asia, AND something important happened in our own backyard, yes at CHENNAI.

Today, the size of container ships matters a lot, and global shipping lines are going for larger ships (> 5,000 TEUs  are becoming the rule than exception).   For some of you to whom the terminology TEU is new :  There are  common standard lengths & most common amongst thenm are  20-ft (6.1 m) & 40-ft (12.2 m). Container capacity is measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) A twenty-foot equivalent unit is a measure of containerized cargo capacity equal to one standard 20 ft (length) × 8 ft (width) × 8 ft 6 in (height) container. In metric units this is 6.10 m (length) × 2.44 m (width) × 2.59 m (height), or approximately 39 m³. One 40-foot container would be two TEUs.  Don’t get overawed to learn that  the world's largest sailing container ship, Emma Maersk, has a declared capacity of 11,000 TEUs of containers.

Most of the Indian ports are nowhere near being able to handle such large ships.  In India, except for Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNP) none of the other terminals can handle ships of around 5,000 TEUs and the industry depends a lot on feeder vessels, resulting in higher freight.  Shipping lines have pursued more fuel economy and economies of scale in vessel size to reduce cost, increase market share and take leading positions in the sector.

NOW THE NEWS ABOUT CHENNAI: Situated in the coromandel coast of South East India, Chennai Port os more than a century old artificial port., and located in Chennai, South India, is one of the major ports on the Coromandel coast of India. The initial piers were built in 1861, but the storms of 1868 and 1872 made them inoperative. The Chennai Port Trust has taken the year of rebuilding 1881 as the starting year and celebrated its 125th anniversary recently. It can be said without doubt that the Madras Port was the main reason for the booming industry in Madras and contributed in no small measure to the development of the City.

The Container Terminal in the Port of Chennai happens to be the oldest container terminal in the country. The terminal was formally taken over by P&O Ports and operations commenced on 30th November 2001.  Chennai Container Terminal (P) Ltd., was conceptualized the day P&O Ports decided to respond positively to the Chennai Port Trust invitation for EOI in respect of its proposal to hand over operations and redevelopment/ modernization of its Container Terminal through private participation. The license to develop, operate and manage the Chennai Port container terminal for a period of 30 Years was awarded by Chennai Port Trust to P & O Ports on 12th September 2000. In line with the conditionalities of the BOT Concession, CCTPL was incorporated as an Indian Company at Chennai and the take over and refurbishment of the Container Terminal commenced.

16th of March 2007 is a day when a mile stone event took place. On this day, a direct container shipping service from Chennai to the U.S. east coast was launched. It began with the 294-metre-long `Maersk Djibouti,' which has a capacity to carry 5,100 containers, calling at the Chennai port terminal operated by Chennai Container Terminal Limited (CCTL).   The ports of call of the weekly service would be Chennai, Colombo, Salalah in Oman, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Algeciras in Spain, and three ports on the U.S. east coast — Savannah, Norfolk and Newark.

With the launch, a long-felt need of the trade for a direct service had become a reality. It would be an alternative to the existing practice of shipping containers from Chennai on feeder vessels to either Colombo or Singapore, and from thereon to the final destination on mainline vessels. The service  would take 28 days from Chennai to reach the U.S. This would translate into around 10 days savings for the trade. It took anywhere between 35-40 days on the feeder route.   Maersk officials expect the weekly trade volume to be about 2,000 boxes.   While serving the hinterland of Chennai port the Maersk service would make Chennai a service hub for cargo from Visakhapatnam, Haldia and Chhittagong.

Further good news is that a direct service connecting Chennai with various ports in Europe is to be launched in May.

With regards - S Sampathkumar

PS: something shared with my group on 19^th Mar 2007

the automobile city 'Detroit' files for bankruptcy.... !!

Most of the cities which developed in earlier days were all settlements on river banks…. People were closely associated with rivers as it provided them the natural wealth in abundance….  In the last century, this city grew so rapidly and became the cradle of automobile industry ~ now it is a city in shambles ~ the emergency manager puts that the city’s debt is likely to be $18 billion and perhaps as much as $20 billion. A city of 1.8 million in 1950, it is now home to 700,000 people, as well as to tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, vacant lots and unlit streets.

From here, there is no road map for the city’s  recovery, not least of all because municipal bankruptcies are rare. State officials said ordinary city business would carry on as before, even as city leaders take their case to a judge, first to prove that the city is so financially troubled as to be eligible for bankruptcy, and later to argue that city’s creditors and representatives of city workers and municipal retirees ought to settle for less than they once expected.

Some bankruptcy experts and city leaders bemoaned the likely fallout from the filing, including the stigma. They anticipate further benefit cuts for city workers and retirees, more reductions in services for residents, and a detrimental effect on borrowing.

Insolvency is the inability of a debtor to pay their debt. Cash flow insolvency involves a lack of liquidity to pay debts as they fall due. Balance sheet insolvency involves having negative net assets—where liabilities exceed assets. Insolvency is not a synonym for bankruptcy, which is a determination of insolvency made by a court of law with resulting legal orders intended to resolve the insolvency.

The Detroit River is a 24-nautical-mile-long (44 km; 28 mi) river in the Great Lakes system. The name comes from the French Rivière du Détroit, which translates literally as River of the Strait.  This busy waterway carries the international border between Canada and the United States.  From the river originated the name of city Detroit, a settlement founded by the French in 1701. Detroit  is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The Detroit area emerged as a metropolitan region with construction of an extensive freeway system in the 1950s and 1960s.  It quickly became a metonym for the Americal automobile industry which supplied arsenal for allied powers in WW II.  

Not all is well here now…… the city, once a symbol of US industrial power, is seeking protection from creditors who include public-sector workers and their pension funds. Detroit has faced decades of problems linked to the decline of its industry. It is stated that the public services are in a state of near collapse and around 70,000 properties lie abandoned.  The Mayor of the city Dave Bing has vowed that public services will keep running and wages for public workers will be paid. On Thursday, Michigan state-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr asked a federal judge to place the city into bankruptcy protection.

If it is approved, he would be allowed to liquidate city assets to satisfy creditors and pensions. The city  stopped unsecured-debt payments last month to keep the city running as Mr Orr negotiated with creditors. A deal in which creditors would accept 10 cents for every dollar they were owed was also proposed. But two pension funds representing retired city workers resisted the plan. Thursday's bankruptcy filing comes days ahead of a hearing that would have tried to stop the city from making such a move.

BBC reports that Detroit's fall is complete. It is a depressing, if inevitable, end to a grotesque saga of decline, corruption and mismanagement. The irony is that the bankruptcy comes just as the private sector is picking up in Motor City. There is a buzz downtown, with commercial and residential occupancy at record levels.

But public services are in a state of near collapse. Around 70,000 properties lie abandoned. Great swathes of the city need to be written off. For some, the announcement will come as some kind of relief.  The problem now is not just image. Bankruptcy looks bad. But Detroit is already a poster child for urban failure. Nor is it just about being locked out of capital markets - few would lend to the city anyway. But bankruptcy could take years to sort out, when Detroit's real world problems need urgent remedies. Meanwhile, the White House said it was closely monitoring developments in Detroit.

Detroit has seen steady decline in the recent past ~ its population has shrunk; it has the  highest violent crime rate of any major US city, with 15,245 reported incidents in 2011 ~ it has more than 75000 abandoned buildings; reportedly 40% of street lights do not work; only a third of the city's ambulances are in service; only  53%.  Sad that a city which was once a blooming industrial town has no finance left…… it now has the dubious distinction of the very few cities which have resorted to this extreme measure ~ is this akin to individuals attempting to suicide unable to honour their commitments !!!

Unlike corporate bankruptcies, there have been relatively few Chapter 9 cases since the Bankruptcy Act was amended in 1934 to include municipalities. This means there is little precedent and the number of creditors means a complicated road ahead. General Motors, the only major U.S. automaker headquartered in Detroit, said in a statement that the company “is proud to call Detroit home and…(this is) a day that we and others hoped would not come. We believe, however, that today also can mark a clean start for the city.” Ford Motor Co, which is based in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, said it was “optimistic that governmental leaders will be successful in strengthening the community.”

So where to… from here….

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.

19^th July 2013.