Obama May Visit Russia In July

US President Barack Obama could pay his first visit to Russia in early July, the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant reported Wednesday, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.

The visit would include more in-depth talks than will be possible when Obama meets Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for the first time next month, the newspaper said, citing a source close to the Russian foreign ministry.

Obama and Medvedev are due to meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in London in early April.

The most likely dates for Obama's visit to Russia are just ahead of the G8 summit to be held in Italy from July 8 to 10, Kommersant said.

Citing sources in Washington, the newspaper said that former US secretary of state James Baker would arrive in Moscow this week to help lay the groundwork for Obama's visit.

Also this week, a group of prominent US foreign policy veterans including former secretary of state Henry Kissinger will visit Moscow for a series of meetings with Russian officials, including Medvedev, Kommersant said.

The tone of US-Russian relations has warmed since Obama's inauguration and officials from both sides have pledged to work closely on renegotiating START, a landmark Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty that expires in December.

Ties between the two countries deteriorated badly under the administration of former president George W. Bush due to disputes over a range of issues, including NATO expansion, last summer's war in Georgia and missile defence.

16 People Missing As Helicopter Ditches Off Newfoundland

Canadian rescuers are searching freezing Atlantic waters for 16 people missing after a helicopter heading to an oil platform ditched in the sea off Newfoundland.

Of the 18 people on board the Sikorsky-92 helicopter, one man was rescued and a body was recovered. The other 16 were missing 30 miles (48 km) out to sea, officials said.

Two empty life rafts were spotted in the water amid debris from the helicopter that was spread over a six mile area. Although there were no signs of survivors eight hours after the accident, which happened at 8 am local time on Thursday, rescuers said they still held out hope as the missing people were believed to be wearnig survival suits, which retain body warmth in frigid seas as well as acting as life vests.

"We'll continue to search until there is absolutely no chance that any survivors may be located," said Major Denis McGuire of Halifax's Rescue Coordination Center.

The survival window is about 24 hours with the suits and water-activated locator beacons, he said.

The heliocpter had reported mechanical problems and had turned around to return to its base in St Johns, Newfoundland, when it was forced to dtich, according to local media.Officials withCanada's Transportation Safety Board have begun an investigation into the incident.

Survivor Robert Dekcer was last night in critical but stable condition at St John's hospital.

Premier Danny Williams issued a statement today expressing condolences to the family and friends of the person who died in the tragic accident.

“I cannot begin to imagine the sorrow and despair of those who are left to mourn this incredible tragedy,” he said.

The crash came less than a month after a helicopter ferrying oil workers crashed into the North Sea off Scotland. All 18 on board were rescued after the aircraft landed upright a few hundred yards from the oil platform and was kept afloat by inflatable bags that deploy when the craft lands on water.

Barbie Returns To Her Roots

As though girls haven't drawn tattoo-like designs on their Barbies for years--in fact, one is famously decorated toward the end of Toy Story 2--parents are upset about a new version of the wasp-waisted doll that comes with tattoo stickers that can be attached to her plastic skin, and a tattoo gun that kids can use to put a temporary design on themselves as well.

"Barbie's going trampy!" is the cry from parents who think it's straight from here to an illicit visit to a parlor for a Hell's Angels design or worse. Actually, for a couple of decades now, temporary tattoos from colored stickers have been a popular party favor for even very nice children. Time to remember that parents are not actually forced to buy their children toys they think are inappropriate.

Besides, maybe Barbie's just going traditionalist--for her. She was modeled on a German doll for adults, and the earliest model featured hooded, come-hither eyes a la Marlene Dietrich along with her zebra-striped strapless swimsuit. It seems a little late to worry about her innocence.

Reason Behind the Crash

Gmail blackout that lasted a few hours sure irritated a bunch of us. More so for those who pay for a better version of the service.

Perhaps that's why, in order to ensure that the dark clouds of bad publicity garner the company, Google has declared 15 days of free service to businesses, government agencies and other subscribers who pay for an expanded version of the product and were affected by the service breakdown.

Along with the free Gmail for the common people, Google sells a more sophisticated version of Gmail as part of a software bundle that costs $50 (Rs. 2,519) annually, per user.

So, what was the reason behind the crash?

Google said that during a routine maintenance of one of its European data centres, it had directed the traffic to other servers, as reported by The Economic Times. However, the company was simultaneously trying a new code that "tries to keep data geographically close to its owner causing another data centre in Europe to become overloaded. This caused cascading problems from one data centre to another", said Gmail site reliability manager Acacio Cruz on early Wednesday morning.

Researchers for HIV work

Even as Connecticut considers reducing funding for AIDS programs, state public health researchers are winning accolades for their work with those living with HIV.

A program developed at the University of Connecticut's Center for Health, Intervention and Prevention is among a group of eight intervention programs commended recently by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Under the program, known as "Options," clinicians are trained to counsel HIV-positive patients during routine medical appointments to avoid risky behavior, such as unprotected sex and drug use, developing a list of behavioral prescriptions for patients to follow as they live with the virus.

"Most interventions focus on people not infected with HIV and not likely to become infected," said Jeffrey D. Fisher, a social psychology professor at UConn and director of the intervention center. "But we also need to help people who have HIV to practice safer sex and drug use."

Such precautions are necessary not just to protect the health of those living with HIV or AIDS, which make patients substantially more susceptible to infection and disease, but also to ensure that continued risky behavior doesn't spread HIV to those with whom diagnosed people share needles or have sex.

Fisher developed the program in the late 1990s with his brother, Bill Fisher, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, and three other researchers from CHIP and Yale University.

The Options program was developed from current behavioral theory and a process of collaboration with those struggling with HIV diagnosis and problems with substance abuse or risky sex, Fisher said. The intervention plan asks clinical workers to work with patients to develop strategies for reducing risk, and to evaluate each patient's willingness to change.

The program was included this year in "The 2008 Compendium of Evidence-based HIV Prevention Interventions," which is compiled annually by the CDC, and recognizes programs that have proven successful at reducing HIV infection and behavior that can increase the chance of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

The CDC estimates that 46,000 people were infected with HIV in the U.S. in 2006, the most recent year for which data was available.

Source: theday.com/re.aspx?re=76b88ed9-71a3-4510-a675-6361d367da02

Subject Object Verb

In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the proper "Sam ate oranges".
Among natural languages with a word order preference, SOV is the most common type (followed by Subject Verb Object; the two types account for more than 75% of natural languages with a preferred order). Languages that prefer SOV structure include Ainu, Akkadian, Amharic, Armenian, Aymara, Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Burushaski, Elamite, Hebrew, Hindi, Hittite, Hopi, Itelmen, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Kurdish, Manchu, Marathi, Mongolian, Navajo, Nepali, Nivkh, Nobiin, Pāli, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Quechua, Sanskrit, Sinhalese and most other Indo-Iranian languages, Somali and virtually all other Cushitic languages, Sumerian, Tamil, Tibetan, Telugu, Tigrinya, Turkic languages, Urdu, Yukaghir, and virtually all Caucasian languages.

Main physical parameters of the CD

• Scanning velocity: 1.2–1.4 m/s (constant linear velocity) – equivalent to approximately 500 rpm at the inside of the disc, and approximately 200 rpm at the outside edge. (A disc played from beginning to end slows down during playback.)

• pitch: 1.6 µm

• Disc diameter 120 mm

• Disc thickness: 1.2 mm

• Inner radius program area: 25 mm

• Outer radius program area: 58 mm

• Center spindle hole diameter: 15 mm

The program area is 86.05 cm² and the length of the recordable spiral is (86.05 cm² / 1.6 µm) = 5.38 km. With a scanning speed of 1.2 m/s, the playing time is 74 minutes, or around 650 MB of data on a CD-ROM. If the disc diameter were only 115 mm, the maximum playing time would have been 68 minutes, i.e., less six minutes. A disc with data packed slightly more densely is tolerated by most players (though some old ones fail). Using a linear velocity of 1.2 m/s and a track pitch of 1.5 µm leads to a playing time of 80 minutes, or a capacity of 700 MB. Even higher capacities on non-standard discs (up to 99 minutes) are available at least as recordables, but generally the tighter the tracks are squeezed, the worse the compatibility.