12 January 2011

Mizoram Observes Missionary Day

stock-vector-march-french-polynesia-missionary-day-26046487Aizawl, Jan 12 : ''Chanchintha thlen ni'' or Missionary day, to commemorate the arrival of the first two British missionaries in Mizoram was observed today.

All the government offices, banks and educational institutions remained closed as the state government declared the day as a public holiday.

Church services were held all over the state, giving thanks to God for spreading his word and salvation to the tribals, earlier primitive and animists.

On this day in 1894, the two Missionaries - Rev. J.H. Lorrain, fondly called by the Mizos as Pu Buanga and Rev. F.W. Savidge, known to the Mizos as Sap Upa arrived at Sairang village, about 30 km west from Aizawl, by boat.

The missionaries not only imparted education to the Mizos, but also converted them to Christianity and Mizoram has become a Christian dominated state and the second most literate state in the country.

Windows Phone 7- Powered HTC HD 7

htc_hd7_620x350.jpg

HTC HD 7

A responsive touchscreen, a relatively cool camera and a decent interface, but can Windows 7-powered HTC HD 7 really help Microsoft gain a foot in the smartphone market already crowded by the likes of iPhone and numerous Android-powered devices?

One look at this device and I can confidently say NO! In fact, the biggest letdown of HD7 is ironically the feature that should have been its weapon of choice to help it take its fight to the enemy camp some distance. The smartphone that carries a rather expensive price tag of Rs 30,000 is hugely dependent on Microsoft Windows Marketplace, which is yet to make its India debut and is only expected to be launched after two to three months.

This means that to download even a basic app like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, you will be left stranded by the seller despite having paid a bomb to acquire this dud. What were you thinking HTC and Airtel? People don't buy dud phones at Rs 30K, do they?

To start with, HD 7 is a solid, neat-looking black-coloured device -- albeit a tad too big to hold unlike an average smartphone -- and thin compared to its build. The smartphone measures 4.8 inches tall by 2.7 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick and weighs 162 gram. It sports a 4.3-inch touchscreen (480 X 800 WVGA), largest in the current breed of Windows Phone 7 smartphones, with two speakers spanning the entire display at the top and bottom. It has a metallic band running through the circumference of the phone with volume rocker, a two-stage camera button and a handy lock button at the top.

At the bottom, the phone houses a micro-USB port and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Just below the display is the back, start, and search buttons powered by Microsoft Bing.
The phone's build quality seems rock solid except for a rather flimsy quality plastic back cover which does not inspire confidence about how long it may last. HD7 has a kickstand covering the camera at back which when opened can help you take pictures and enjoy hands-free videos and music. Removal of battery and SIM is quite easy compared to many phones.

One of its biggest plus USP is its large built-in keypad which makes it ideal for browsing and using the Microsoft Office programmes. For messaging too, the touch sensitivity is quite good and auto correction gives closest results. The phone's Home button takes you to a list of tiles and apps list that has rather large, but reading-friendly icons. Which also means you may end up scrolling down and down to locate your favourite app. Especially, with no Folders around.
From the Home button you land at the Windows Phone 7 interface that takes you to a list of tiles and apps. Swiping right on the screen shows up a list of apps that are either built-in or the ones you have downloaded. Folders would have made life much nicer.

Coming to the phone's 5-megapixel shooter, the camera has an auto-focus, dual LED flash and can record 720p HD video. The camera makes up for good pictures that can be further jazzed up with the effects, scenes, resolutions and flicker adjustment. However, the camera interface came out to be pretty simple and flat. There is a built-in Photo Enhancer app that lets you play around with effects, found in any other basic phone.

The phone also bundles HTC Hub that houses apps like Sound Enhancer, YouTube, Notes, Flashlight and Xbox Live games, but be warned you would be unable to download many of the apps which is a pity indeed.

Microsoft has bundled Bing Maps in the HTC HD7, which comes out to be a surprise winner. It can be easy crowned as one of the best mobile mapping applications, giving accurate and clear results. The double tap on the screen to center lets you zoom in on a spot. You can also add a push pin to Maps if in case you want to remember a place or mark your location.

Another app that gets a complete thumbs up is Microsoft Office programme that offers Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and OneNote. Microsoft's OneNote lets you track your shopping list, meeting notes and your to-dos. To jazz it up, you can add audio and pictures. With OneNote you can virtually record your entire meeting or an interview. All this particularly helps if you are used to working in a Windows environment on the computer.

Xbox Live coming to HTC HD7 is another to-die-for feature in the Windows-powered device. But with no Windows Marketplace in India around, this feature too won't excite you.

HTC HD7 also comes pre-installed with Microsoft's very own Internet Explorer sitting right on the Home Screen. The browsing experience seems to be satisfactory with pinch and tap for zoom functions.Also, the large display makes up for easy reading and watching videos.
I found the phone's battery to be impressive after a good session of Internet browsing and calling. But, the real battery test remains as the phone hasn't opened up to the real battery-hogging applications that could have come from the Windows Marketplace.

On connectivity front, the phone offers 3G, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and GPS. HD 7 comes with 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 512MB ROM/576MB RAM and 16GB memory capacity. However, there is no card slot to further boost the memory count which is quite strange in this age.

Coming to the most important part, is it worth a buy at Rs 30,000? With Microsoft saying it is still three months away from the Marketplace launch, HD7 is a complete no no until then. Especially when you have Android hitting the market with dozens of capable and cheaper devices and boasting of over two lakh.

Me, Myself, and Myanmar

By Razib Khan

I have spoken of my somewhat atypical, for a South Asian, genetic results before. Recently Dienekes performed some cluster analysis which confirmed the initial findings, while adding a little detail:

I am DOD075. The Southeast Asian component is modal in Malays, while the East Asian component is modal in the North Chinese. Vietnamese and Cambodians are mixed, with the former biased toward East Asian, and the latter Southeast Asian. My own proportions are more balanced, but there might be some noise in there. That being said, from what I have read of Southeast Asia it is highly likely that Burmese ethnicities will be between the Cambodians and Vietnamese in proportions. The Burmans were more shaped by the indigenous Mon-Khmer people than the Vietnamese were, though like the Vietnamese they seem to hail from southern China. My family is traditionally from eastern Bengal, and has been at various points the subjects of the kingdom of Tripura.

Here’s the Dodecad Indians, HapMap Gujaratis, and Behar et al. North Kannadans. The orange is Asian. Can you tell which one I am?

I’m pretty sure I’m second from the left. Not only am I atypically Asian, but I often show trace levels of other ancestral components in Dienekes’ ADMIXTURE results (I suspect this is due a rather cosmopolitan great-grandfather who was from Delhi). In any case, so far I’ve had pretty general pointers of what’s going on here. Unlike most people who get this stuff done, I found something interesting, though not too surprising (more on this later). But I ran into something which makes the case for specific Burmese origin even stronger.

I got involved in BGA thanks to the urging of my friend Paul. Recently David of BGA sent me matches for various HGDP and other populations, as well as his own project samples, for extended haplotype blocks on the first 3 chromosomes. These are long stretches of correlated markers which haven’t been broken apart by recombination. They may be indications of recent common ancestry between two individuals who share regions of genomic affinity. I decided to look at my matches. Also, there are several other South Asian individuals in the project. I don’t know who they are, but it’s clear they’re South Asian. I was curious to compare myself to them in terms of my matches.

First, I removed all the project samples. So basically I limited it to populations whose names I could perceive easily. Then I limited it to blocks of at least 100 bases. Below are the number of hits in the populations ordered. I matched some Pathans more than others, but I threw them all into a big pool. You can see some of the Genomes Unzipped guys, and Ilana Fisher & Kate Morely too.


Group
Razib # hits

Pathan
72

Burusho
58

Hazara
47

Han
26

Naxi
19

North Russian
18

She
18

Yizu
16

Buryat
15

Miaozu
14

Chuvash
13

Adygei
12

Altai
12

Uygur
12

Tuva
11

Tujia
9

Mongol
8

Xibo
8

Daur
7

Yakut
7

Athabask
5

Evenk
5

Oroqen
5

Hezhen
4

Ilana Fisher
4

Maya
3

Chukchi
2

Ket
2

Nganassan
2

Vincent Plagnol
2

Daniel MacArthur
1

Joe Pickrell
1

Kate Morley
1

Komi
1

Luke Jostins
1


The raw number of hits isn’t really that informative. But obviously I’m going to be more open about my data than other peoples’. So here’s what I did: I took the # of hits that I had for these populations, and calculated the ratio with the mean for all other South Asians. For example, the mean South Asian # of hits for Pathans without me was 75. I was 72. So my ratio was 0.96. Here’s a table of the higher hit # groups for me, and my ratio with the South Asian mean:


Group
Me vs. Mean

Pathan
0.96

Burusho
0.69

Hazara
1.77

Han
2.04

Naxi
10.86

North Russian
0.77

She
5.4

Yizu
4.27

Buryat
3

Miaozu
2.8

Chuvash
0.85

Adygei
0.52

Altai
1.71

Uygur
1.09

Tuva
2.2

Tujia
2.4

Mongol
2.13


I bolded what I noticed to be way out of the norm. The mean number of hits for South Asians with the Naxi, aside from me, was 1.75. I had 19. The She and Yizu were also atypical. These are three HGDP populations. The Naxi and Yizu reside predominantly in Yunnan. The She are based further east in southern China. The connection with my East Asian ancestry seems pretty straightforward then. Here’s a section on the origins of the Bamars in Wikipedia, the dominant group in Burma: “They migrated from the present day Yunnan in China into the Ayeyarwady river valley in Upper Burma about 1200–1500 years ago. Over the last millennium, they have largely replaced/absorbed the Mon and the earlier Pyu, ethnic groups that originally dominated the Ayeyarwady valley.” I believe that ~1/6th of my ancestry had something to do with the massive Völkerwanderung which brought the various ethnic groups dominant in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam to their current locations. Only Cambodia managed to maintain a native elite culture, though the modern Khmer polity was being crushed between Thailand and Vietnam when the French colonial authorities froze the current borders roughly in place.

~1/6th is not trivial, but it isn’t quite one grandparent either. So how did I come by this? It could just be a natural component of the eastern Bengali genetic landscape. I wasn’t too surprised by the results because so many of my extended family members do resemble people from Southeast Asia. I myself have a few characteristics which are not typical for South Asians (e.g., very little body hair). But I have reason to suspect that there might be some recent admixture. All my grandparents were Muslim, but I know the original Hindu caste origins of two of them (one of them was from a family who converted when she was an infant). They were unlikely to have had recent admixture. My maternal grandmother was only half-Bengali in terms of recent ancestry. But her father was from Delhi, from that city’s Muslim elite. That leaves my paternal grandfather, who died just before I was born. No photos of him were ever taken, but I was always told that his physical appearance was not typical for a Bengali. He was tall and relatively light in complexion. His title as a Khan came down through his paternal lineage, and was a legacy of the late Mughal (really, de facto post-Mughal by then from what I can gather) period. My paternal Y chromosomal lineage is R1a1a*, not an eastern haplogroup at all. I had always assumed that like my great-grandfather on my mother’s side my paternal grandfather was from the mixed heritage Muslim upper class family. I now strongly suspect that his background was more exotic than my family has let on, or at least more than they suspected.

It turns out that his family may have come to Bengal from Assam, to the northeast. Assam has an even stronger Tibeto-Burman presence that eastern Bengal. My paternal grandfather may have been from a family which mixed with the Tibeto-Burman tribal people in Assam, some of whom converted to Islam and assimilated to a Bengali identity. I find this rather interesting, and am curious as to the omission. My own personal experience discussing the eastern element of my ancestry is that many South Asians are just confused by the whole idea. Persian or Scythian ancestors they can grok. Burmese, not so much.

I will know more soon. I have had my parents typed, and will be able to ascertain if the eastern element is more from my father as I suspect, or whether it is from both parents. If the latter is the case, then there need be no exotic story. Rather, eastern Bengal is simply on the clinal continuum of allele frequencies which differentiate South Asia from Southeast Asia.

via Discover Magazine

Gouramangi is AIFF Player of the Year

Gouramangi_Singh_300New Delhi, Jan 12 : Thanks to his consistent performance with the national team, India stopper Gouramangi Singh was on Tuesday declared the AIFF Player of the Year 2010.

The lad from Manipur, who had bagged the I-League best defender award in the 2008-09 season, had a long stint with the national team and his club Churchill Brothers during which he matured as a player.

He has made 48 international appearances and has scored three goals, and his four-year association with Churchill Brothers as centre-back also turned out to be very productive.
Gouramangi was a part of the victorious Indian team that lifted the Nehru Cup (2007, 2009) and AFC Challenger Cup in 2008.

He won the award on the recommendation of national team coach Bob Houghton, which was endorsed by the AIFF technical committee.

"It is a great feeling to know that I have been selected for this prestigious award," said Gouramangi.

"I sincerely want to thank All India Football Federation, coach Bob Houghton, all the coaching staff and my fellow teammates for their support. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my entire Churchill Brothers colleagues and the management for their love and support throughout the years," said the defender.

Houghton also heaped praise on the talented defender. "He rightly deserves this award. He has been one the most consistent performers over the years."

Ethnic Clashes in Northeast Redefine a Border Blurred by Years of Friendship

NAT

Garo refugees at a camp in Meghalaya.

Halesh Rabha, 56, of Noksarpara in East Garo Hills district of Meghalaya does not want to go back to his ancestral village, which he left a week ago. Neither does Hajan Singh Sangma of Puthimari in Assam.

One is a Rabha tribal from Meghalaya, the other a Garo from Assam. And both have been rendered homeless in the ethnic violence that has gripped both sides of the border.

Over 34,000 people, both Garo and Rabha tribals, have left their homes and taken shelter in relief camps where living conditions are pathetic, especially in winter. A number of these people have no houses to go back to, while those who do have homes have fled for fear of being attacked.

“They burnt our houses in front of our eyes. The granary, the cattle-shed, all have perished. My children’s books have been destroyed,” said Dhiren Rabha of Noksarpara in Meghalaya. Dhiren is now taking shelter in a relief camp at Jira Primary School, six kilometres from the inter-state border.

“I have been reduced to a beggar. I lost all my belongings, including the new house that I had constructed just two years ago,” wept Marcos Marak. Marcos’s home at Bardiki village in Assam was among 50-odd houses of Garo tribals reduced to ashes five days earlier.

“People had a feeling something was going to happen. The administration was prepared, but for not this scale (of violence),” said Shambhu Singh, joint secretary (Northeast) in the Union Home Ministry, who visited the area on Tuesday for a spot assessment .

Tension had grown between the two communities over several issues, the most important being the demand for an autonomous council by the Rabhas in Assam.

Garos are a majority in Meghalaya but a minority in Assam; Rabhas are a majority in Assam and a minority in Meghalaya.

On Christmas Day, a bandh called by the Rabhas saw the first incident. A vehicle from the other side was stoned as it passed through a Rabha area. The next incident followed five days later, when a few Rabha youths went to join their Garo friends in New Year’s Day celebrations.

The government, however, smells a rat. “What triggered such a big violence is yet to be probed. But there is always a likelihood of a design. We don’t know what that design is. Given the long-standing problems, it could be from both sides,” said the joint secretary.

Security presence was high on the Meghalaya side but not as much on the other side of the border in Assam’s Goalpara district.

“It takes time to mobilise forces. But four companies of para-military forces have already moved in and four more are on the way,” said Singh, who visited about half-a-dozen camps in the two strife-torn districts.

And, meanwhile, houses continue to burn. On Monday morning, at least 24 houses were set on fire at Belpara, a village in Assam.

Fresh clashes broke out in Mendipathar on Tuesday morning. The East Garo Hills administration had relaxed curfew in the are but revoked the decision after the clashes.

Magical Mayhem in Manipur Polls

By K Sarojkumar Sharma

black-magic-sorcererImphal, Jan 12
: The closest tryst black magic has ever had with the administration was the Salem witch trials of the 17th century, which prosecuted and convicted people accused of witchcraft, even hanging 19 of them.

Now, dark magic's rendezvous with politics gets a modern twist in Manipur, where candidates contesting the civic polls are accusing their rivals of resorting to witchcraft to win the election.

The air in Lamlai nagar panchayat ward no 9 in Imphal East district is rife with spells and counter-spells.

The supporters of defeated Congress nominee I Ibemcha alleged that CPI candidate T Ibeyaima collected urine from seven bachelors and seven maidens and sprinkled it at Ibemcha's house. The parents of some of the bachelors corroborated the allegation that Ibeyaima collected the urine, but no witnesses have come forward to affirm that she sprinkled it at her rival's residence.

In retaliation, Ibemcha prepared small effigies of seven bachelors and as many maidens and burnt them as per sorcery rituals to counter Ibeyaima's spell.

CPI candidate T Ibeyaima defeated Congress nominee I Ibemcha in a keen contest in the ward. Tension gripped Lamlai and Wangoi villages here after the workers of the two candidates clashed, accusing each other of practising sorcery to ensure their victory. A scuffle broke out at Lamlai between the two parties.

Irate villagers, meanwhile, convened a meeting on Monday and decided to ostracize Ibeyaima and her family from the locality if they do not tender an apology by Wednesday.

Election to eight municipal councils and 18 nagar panchayats in the four valley districts were held on January 3 and the poll process, including counting, ended on Monday.

The Purnimashi, who is a neighbour of the defeated Congress candidate K Robindro in Wangoi nagar panchayat ward no 5 in Imphal West district, was humiliated before the public by the latter's supporters on charges of practising black magic against Robindro at his flag-hoisting ceremony on December 25 last.

Robindro lost the election to Longjam Babita Chanu, an independent candidate. Purnimashi (55), who flatly denied the charge, said although she has lodged a complaint with the police against the miscreants for humiliating her, no action has been taken as yet. She was paraded and caned at Wangoi bazaar by some people, mostly Congress workers, on Saturday, Purnimashi said, while urging the people and authorities concerned to punish the guilty.

In protest against the cops' failure to arrest the miscreants who disgraced Purnimashi socially, a large number of people, mostly women, stormed Wangoi police station on Tuesday. The irate locals also formed a Joint Action Committee (JAC) against the incident. Police sources said the miscreants would be arrested soon.

Assam Launches e-Udyog For Transparency

corruptionGuwahati, Jan 12 : Doing business in Assam is expected get simpler now as the state today launched an initiative called ‘e-Udyog’ “to create transparency, promptness and increased efficiency in governance with the support of Information Technology”.

The objective of “e- Udyog” is to create a system that is easily accessible by the entrepreneurs, besides streamlining and simplifying the procedures for various applications and subsidy claims under North-East Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy (NEIIPP) 2007 and Assam Industrial Policy 2008.

“Time has changed and we cannot keep on carrying functioning in old fashion, especially when we want the private sector to come and invest in the state. We have to create a system that would ensure transparency and time bound clearances of industrial proposals,” said Assam’s industry minister Pradyut Bordoloi, while speaking to journalists.

Bordoloi admitted that though implementation of ‘single window clearance’ for industrial proposals was made in successive state industrial policies in the past, they did not exactly materialise on the ground and remained rather “bookish”.

However, he said that India being a democratic country, it would never be possible to implement ‘single window clearance’ in classic form as “various agencies need to be roped in to give clearance to a particular project”.

Govt. to Set up Joint Control Rooms in Violence-Hit Northeastern States

assam violence
In a desperate move to curb incidents of violence, the government has decided to set up joint control rooms in Assam and Meghalaya, which have witnessed major ethnic clashes in the past few days.

The decision was made after the inspection of Ministry of Home Affairs Joint Secretary Shambhu Singh, who is in charge of the northeast.

After a meeting of law enforcement bodies from both the states, Singh told reporters on Tuesday that the decision would help in controlling the situation and bring back normalcy in the strife torn region.

"Both sides of the border will be secured. We have made arrangements for having a joint control room of Assam and Meghalaya police. They will be coordinating each other's actions, and the deployment, etc. The details will be known to each other and they will be helping each other out," he said.

The ongoing ethnic clash between the Rabha and Garo tribal communities on the Assam-Meghalaya border led to the killing of nine persons on Sunday.

Following this, both states rushed in more forces, while the army has also sent in forces to help the civil administration control the situation.

Singh revealed the ethnic clashes were planned and not spontaneous in nature.

"I won't be able to name anybody but given the kind of movement which has taken place, given the way the security forces have been attacked, and given the way a kind of simultaneous movement has happened, it is a well organized move," he said.

According to media reports, miscreants in the trouble-torn Gendabari, Baralibari, and Mandipathar regions located on the border of both the states have burnt down houses.

Scores of locals have now moved to relief camps in safer areas.

Singh warned that some groups might be using violence for their own benefits.

"Things have been complicated for the last so many years. The Rabhas are demanding a council in Assam and also wanting to have a majority there and that has led to various other things, including strikes and shutdowns, frustrating the people in general. That could be said to be one of the reasons," said Singh.

"This frustration seems to have been exploited by a group of people who seem to be using this case and opportunity for their own benefits," he added.

Meanwhile, more than 2,000 people are taking refuge at the Goalpara camp, which is providing shelter and food to those displaced due to the violence.

Sukharam K. Sangma, a member of the municipal district council told reporters that local schools are being converted into relief camps to house the displaced people.

"Actually, for the accommodation we are arranging from almost every schools, whatever space we are getting. The facilities mean rice, all other essentials things are given by the government, and volunteers and communities are formed to supervise all these things," he said.

The area has been witnessing tension and clashes since past five days between Garos and Rabhas after Garos attacked Rabha villages, allegedly in retaliation of an attack on the former.