Twitter to shower users with balloons on birthdays

If it is your birthday, Twitter will not only make sure that you get happy birthday messages but also animated balloons in your Twitter handle.
The micro-blogging site has introduced an option to set your date of birth in its settings menu that will appear on your profile page.
“Starting today (July 6), you will be able to show your birthday on your Twitter profile,” a Twitter blog post read.
To add your birth date to your Twitter profile, choose the “Edit profile” option on Twitter.com.
Your birth date will be a completely optional part of your profile and you will have full control over who can see it.
“The visibility setting for your birth year is separate from the setting for your birth month and day, giving you the flexibility to share as much (or as little) as you want,” the post continued.
By filling out your date of birth, you will get a screen full of balloons and more timely congratulatory tweets.
According to The Verge, the move will help Twitter work out which ads it thinks you want to see.
“No matter the privacy level you set, Twitter will use the information for marketing purposes: a note in its support database confirms that the social network will use your birthday “to show you more relevant content, including ads,” it reported.

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Poor sleep may make you more impulsive

Sleep deprivation may put you at increased risk for succumbing to impulsive desires, inattentiveness and questionable decision-making, says a study.
The researchers found that poor sleep habits can have a negative effect on self-control, which presents risks to individuals’ personal and professional lives.
“Our study explored how sleep habits and self-control are interwoven and sleep habits and self-control may work together to affect a person’s daily functioning,” said one of the study authors June Pilcher, professor at Clemson University in the US.
“Exercising self-control allows one to make better choices when presented with conflicting desires and opportunities. That has far-reaching implications to a person’s career and personal life.”
Poor sleep habits, which include inconsistent sleep times and not enough hours of sleep, can also lead to health problems, including weight gain, hypertension and illness.
Studies have found that sleep deprivation decreases self-control but increases hostility in people, which can create problems in the workplace and at home,” Pilcher said.
“Many aspects of our daily lives can be affected by better-managed sleep and self-control capacity.”
“Improved health and worker performance are two potential benefits, but societal issues such as addictions, excessive gambling and over spending could also be more controllable when sleep deficiencies are not interfering with one’s decision making,” Pilcher said.
The study appeared in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

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Solar Impulse lands in Hawaii, completing historic flight

The Solar Impulse 2 aircraft completed a historic flight in its quest to circle the globe without consuming a drop of fuel, touching down gracefully in Hawaii on Friday after the most arduous leg of its journey.
The sun-powered plane, piloted by veteran Swiss aviator Andre Borschberg, took 118 hours—about five days—to make the voyage from Japan to Hawaii and landed shortly after dawn at Kalaeloa Airport on the main Hawaiian island of Oahu.
“Just landed in #Hawaii with @solarimpulse! For @bertrandpiccard and I, it’s a dream coming true,” Borschberg tweeted triumphantly after completing the most perilous part of the around-the-world odyssey.
Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard have been alternating the long solo flights and Japan to Hawaii—where it was Borschberg in sole control—was the eighth of 13 legs.
“Difficult to believe what I see: #Si2 in Hawaii! But I never had doubts that @andreborschberg could make it!” tag-team copilot Piccard wrote on Twitter.
“This flight to Hawaii is not only an aviation historic first, but also a historic first for energy and cleantechs.”
The experimental plane landed a little after 1600 GMT, and Borschberg, all smiles, emerged a short time later from the cockpit, later adorning a traditional Hawaiian flower lei and holding a celebratory bottle of champagne.
Sunlight glimmered on the horizon as the Solar Impulse ground crew burst into cheers and applause upon completion of the groundbreaking flight.
The 4,000-mile leg (6,500 kilometers) from Nagoya, Japan to Hawaii was not only the world’s longest solar-powered flight both in terms of flying time and distance, it also set the record for longest solo flight by time.
The whole trip from Japan to Hawaii took four days and 22 hours, with the Swiss aviator taking catnaps of only 20 minutes at a time to maintain control of the pioneering plane.
Borschberg easily beat the previous longest solo endurance flight, by Steve Fossett, who flew for 76 hours and 45 minutes in 2006 in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer.
Fellow pioneering aviator and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson tweeted his congratulations to Borschberg and his team.
“Congrats @SolarImpulse, beating @Virgin GlobalFlyer record non-stop solo flight without refuelling. Huge step forward,” Branson wrote.
Yoga in the sky
The flight tested its exhausted pilot to the maximum, in what his team described as “difficult” conditions.
Traveling at altitudes of more than 9,000 meters (29,500 feet), Borschberg at times had to use oxygen tanks to breathe and experienced huge swings in temperature throughout.
Alone throughout the entire flight and utterly self-reliant in the unpressurized cockpit, Borschberg was equipped with a parachute and life raft, in case he needed to ditch in the Pacific.
Mission organizers described the journey as having taken “pilot and aircraft to the limits” of their endurance.
Borschberg, born in Zurich, is no stranger to adventure -- 15 years ago, he narrowly escaped an avalanche, and then in 2013 he was involved in a helicopter crash that left him with minor injuries.
The pilot, who is also a yoga enthusiast, has worked as an army pilot and supervised the construction of the first Solar Impulse plane.
In 2010, for the first time in history, he flew 26 hours straight using only solar energy.
Borschberg didn’t let the tiny cockpit of the Solar Impulse 2 plane stop him from practising yoga, transforming his tiny bench into a yoga mat and using specialized postures custom-tailored for him by his personal yogi.
“Yoga is a great support for this flight above the Pacific: it positively affects my mood and mindset,” Borschberg tweeted Thursday with a photo of himself in a pose.
Next stop: Phoenix
The plane will now be flown across the United States and eventually, if all goes according to plan, land back in Abu Dhabi next March, where it started its journey earlier this year.
The next leg will be piloted by Piccard and will fly 2,920 miles from Hawaii to Phoenix.
Solar Impusle 2 has 17,000 solar cells and on-board rechargeable lithium batteries, allowing it to fly through the night.
Its wingspan is longer than that of a jumbo jet but it weighs only 2.3 tonnes—about the same as a car.

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12 Al-Qaeda suspects put on 3-day remand

Twelve Al-Qaeda militant suspects who were detained by Rapid Action Battalion on Thursday were put on a three-day police remand.
The twelve militants, including the Bangladesh chief coordinator and an adviser to the global militant outfit, are said to be members of the AQIS (Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent).
Dhaka Metropolitan magistrate Molla Saiful Alam gave the order.
Earlier, investigative officer and Darussalam police sub-inspector Jalal Uddin sought the remand in Saiful Alam’s court.
The detained are Mowlana Mainul Islam alias Mahim alias Bodiul, 35, Mufti Zafar Amin alias Salman, 34, Mohammad Saidul Islam alias Said Tamim, 20, Mosharraf, 19, Abdur Rahman Bepari, 25, Al-Amin alias Ibrahim, 28, Mozahidul Islam, alias Nokib alias Sharif alias Ismail, 31, Ashraful Islam alias Abul Hashem, 20, Rabiul Islam alias Hasan alias Rabiul, 28, Mohammad Habib Ullah, 26, Shahidul Islam alias Shagar, 29, Altab Al-Mamun, 26.
Of them, Mowlana Mainul Islam is the chief coordinator of the AQIS.
The arrested are sued under terrorism and explosives control act.
RAB claimed the arrested are members of AQIS Bangladesh. They are members of Harkatul Jihad as well. RAB said they were trying to regroup under different tag to join AQIS.
RAB said in press conference that HuJi-B leader Mufti Moin Uddin alias Abul Jandal was communicating with the leaders and activists of the militant outfit by SMS and mobile phone from jail. 
The elite force also claimed recovery of explosives, materials for making bombs, different types of sharp weapons, and books on training and Jihad from the possession of the arrested men.

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Hema Malini ‘fine’, driver held for child’s death

Film actor and BJP MP Hema Malini, injured in a car crash in Rajasthan that killed a child, is doing “fine”, doctors said on Friday, even as police arrested her driver for rash driving.

Hema Malini was injured near Dausa, over 50 km from here, when her car rammed into another car coming from the opposite direction, leaving a five-year-old child in that vehicle dead.

“She is fine and conscious. She is on liquid diet now,” said Prateem Tamboli of Fortis Escorts Hospital here where she was admitted after the Thursday night accident.
“She is presently under our post operative intensive care unit,” a hospital statement said. If her health continues to show improvement, she may be discharged on Friday, Tamboli said.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje visited her at the hospital on Friday.
Earlier, Hema Malini’s car driver, Mahesh Thakur, was arrested on charges of rash driving and causing death by negligence besides other offences, police said.
“We have arrested the driver, a resident of Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh,” a police officer at Dausa told IANS over phone.
Besides the child who was killed, four other occupants in the other car were admitted in a government hospital here.
Their condition was “normal”, said a doctor of the SMS Hospital here where they were referred to late Thursday night.
The Fortis Hospital said Hema Malini, after she was brought at around 9.35 p.m., underwent urgent detailed investigations, including X-Ray and CT scan.
“It was confirmed she had laceration in paranasal area and on the forehead near the right eyebrow,” a hospital statement said.
“A surgery of debridement and repair of lacerated wounds surgery was done post midnight. The two-hour surgery was done under general anaesthesia.”
Meanwhile, her daughter Esha Deol and son-in-law Bharat Takhtani reached the Fortis hospital.
Her younger daughter Ahana, who gave birth to a baby boy in June, won’t be able to visit her mother, said Hema Malini’s spokesperson.

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UN issues first-ever heatwave warning guidelines

Two United Nations agencies have unveiled a series of new guidelines focusing on health risks posed by the increasing number and intensity of climate change-related heatwaves affecting the planet, reports UN News Centre.
Warm weather alerts spread across Europe following soaring temperatures that killed hundreds of people in India and Pakistan last month.
The set of guidelines, jointly produced by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and titled Heatwaves and Health: Guidance on Warning-System Development, will seek to alert decision-makers, health services and the general public.
Through the systematic development of so-called heatwave early warning systems which, in turn, will hope to trigger timely action in reducing the effects of hot-weather extremes on health, the reports added.
“Heatwaves are a dangerous natural hazard, and one that requires increased attention,” said Maxx Dilley, Director of the WMO’s Climate Prediction and Adaptation Branch quoted to have said.
“They lack the spectacular and sudden violence of other hazards, such as tropical cyclones or flash floods, but the consequences can be severe,” he also added.
It said, according to the two agencies, heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense on a global scale, largely due to the acceleration of climate change.
The publication’s launch also follows the WMO’s recent revelation that 14 of the 15 hottest years recorded have all been in the 21st century, confirming a dangerous trend in global warming amid devastating weather patterns and increasing temperatures.
The guidance provided by the WHO and WMO takes into consideration a number of factors, including who is most at risk from heat, outlines approaches to assessing heat stress and surveys heat-intervention strategies, all the while building upon the “lessons learned” from the implementation of the first-ever Heat-Health Warning System, rolled out in the United States city of Philadelphia in 1995.

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Chile defender banned over backside assault

Chile defender Gonzalo Jara was thrown out of the Copa America on Sunday over his attempt to shove his finger into the backside of Uruguay striker Edinson Cavani, the Chilean Football Federation confirmed.
A statement said Jara had been suspended for three matches following a disciplinary hearing by South American football’s ruling body CONMEBOL into the lurid flashpoint during last week’s quarter-final.
“The Chilean Football Federation has been informed of the suspension for three matches of Gonzalo Jara by the disciplinary committee of CONMEBOL,” the statement said.
“We regret this sanction but we will accept it,” the federation added in the statement on its website.
The ban rules Jara out of Chile’s semi-final with Peru on Monday as well as the final if the hosts progress that far.
CONMEBOL opened disciplinary proceedings against Jara on Saturday, saying the body was obliged to do so after receiving a formal complaint about the player’s conduct by Uruguayan officials.
However Chile coach Jorge Sampaoli criticised the suspension on Sunday, saying it set a dangerous precedent.
“If you start acting on allegations outside of the referees report, things are going to get very complicated,” Sampaoli said.
“If people start getting suspended on the basis of allegations from one side, then everyone will start trying to do it,” he added.
Jara triggered a wave of revulsion and condemnation over his bizarre assault on Cavani, who was sent off for retaliating as a result.
Reverse angle television footage and photos of the incident showed Jara appearing to jab a finger into Cavani’s backside.
It was the latest controversial incident involving Jara and an Uruguayan opponent. In 2013, Uruguay striker Luis Suarez punched him after the Chilean appeared to grab his testicles during a World Cup qualifier.
Jara’s suspension gives Sampaoli a major headache, meaning he will have to field a relatively untested central defensive partnership against Peru in Santiago on Monday.
Jara had formed an effective unit alongside Inter Milan’s Gary Medel in the heart of the Chilean defence but his suspension means Sampaoli will now look to either Francisco Silva, Miiko Albornoz or Jose Rojas.
Peru coach Ricardo Gareca played down the significance of Jara’s absence however. “Chile has good strength in depth in that position, I don’t think it will affect them that much,” Gareca said.

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