*Damascus:* A car bomb went off in the predominantly Kurdish city of Al Qamishli in northeastern Syria on Saturday, killing at least five people, pro-government Sama TV reported.The car bomb hit a checkpoint of the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, at the al-Hilaliyeh roundabout in Al Qamishli in the northeastern province of al-Hasakah.
The state news agency SANA reported the explosion, without giving a death toll, according to Xinhua.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a powerful explosion was heard in the Hilaliyeh district west of Al Qamishli, adding that the preliminary information indicated the presence of several causalities.
The Kurds, who make up 15 percent of Syria's 23 million inhabitants with most living in the north of the embattled country, have been trying to keep their areas away from military operations.
In 2012, Syrian troops withdrew from most of the Kurdish areas, and Kurdish militia took over local security. The government, however, is still in control of vital areas in the city of Qamishli and the al-Hasakah province.
Following the surge of the IS militants in July 2014 and their capture of Kurdish areas in northern Syria, the US-led coalition begun to help the Kurds in their battles against the extremists.
http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/may/Susannah-Jones-s.jpg*Susannah Mushatt Jones (right) now, Emma Morano, becomes the oldest person in the world at 116. Pics/AFP*
Jones became Guinness World Records’ official oldest person when 117-year-old Misao Okawa of Japan died last year.
Following the death of Jones, the oldest person in the world is now believed to be 116-year old Emma Morano, who lives in Verbena in Italy. She was born in November 1899.
Jones was one of 11 children. Her grandparents were slaves, her parents crop pickers. She graduated from high school in 1922. She moved to New York to work as a nanny, where she helped start a scholarship fund for young African-American women.
Jones remained active until the end of her life, serving as a member of the tenant patrol of her nursing home until she was 106. As one of the last few remaining human links with the 19th Century, Jones has lived through more history than anyone else in the world.
*Tricks of the trade*
Jones always maintained that lots of sleep and no smoking or drinking were the main reasons she lived to celebrate her 116th birthday last year.
http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/may/Indian-couple-s.jpg*Representation pic*
The two women have been living together since they arrived from New Delhi on student visas in September 2007. Their decision to leave India was prompted by its conservative attitude to homosexuality, and they enrolled as students at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. Calling the UK their home, both work with an energy provider.
In 2008, the two entered a civil partnership in the UK, which allowed them the same rights and responsibilities as a legal marriage. After same-sex marriages were legalised in 2014, the couple took their marriage vows in Glasgow.
While one of the partners said she would not give in to family pressure to enter a heterosexual marriage in India, the other was afraid that she might succumb to similar pressures. They raised concerns that they would not be able to open a joint bank account, own property together, adopt children or undergo an IVF treatment. The court did not see any merit in these arguments.
“They are legally married but when they return to India, they will have no access to any legal protection or recognition of their genuine and subsisting relationship,” argued Barrister S Chelvan, who represented the couple.
*A long journey*
The couple has been petitioning immigration authorities since 2011, after their post-study work visa expired. They were skeptical of returning to New Delhi, and alleged that they had suffered “verbal abuse and jokes from the general workforce because our close friendship was noticed.” They also alleged that they were “ostracised and discredited in a way that heterosexual couples who work together are not.”
The couple approached the Secretary of State for the Home Department in July 2011, and invoked Articles 8 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the basis that their family life would face threats in India. When their appeals were turned down that September, they approached the First Tier Tribunal (FTT). The FTT used a 2001 report — Human rights violations against sexuality minorities in India — to dismiss the appeal, citing that most persecutions using Section 377 of the IPC were related to sodomy, not same-sex relationships.
*Right concerns*
The FTT, however, agreed that the evidence “paints a very poor picture for lesbians in India. However, without a doubt it paints a picture of an improving situation.” It suggested that the couple could return home.
“Delhi is where penal codes were altered two years ago to decriminalise homosexuality,” it said. LGBT activists in the UK are hesitant to show much support. An activist told mid-day that India is “not as nightmarish” as some African and Middle Eastern countries.
http://images.mid-day.com/images/2014/jun/mars-s.jpg
NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover, which has completed its second Martian year since landing inside Gale Crater nearly four years ago, recorded environmental patterns through two full cycles of Martian seasons, scientists said.
The other seasonal patterns measured by Curiosity and repeated in the Rover's second Martian year are that the local atmosphere is clear in winter, dustier in spring and summer, and windy in autumn, they said.
The repetition helps distinguish seasonal effects from sporadic events. For example, a large spike in methane in the local atmosphere during the first southern-hemisphere autumn in Gale Crater was not repeated the second autumn, they added. "Curiosity's weather station has made measurements nearly every hour of every day, more than 34 million so far," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
"The duration is important, because it is the second time through the seasons that lets us see repeated patterns," he said.
It was an episodic release, still unexplained. However, the Rover's measurements do suggest that much subtler changes in the background methane concentration - amounts much less than during the spike - may follow a seasonal pattern, the scientists said.
Measurements of temperature, pressure, ultraviolet light reaching the surface and the scant water vapour in the air at Gale Crater show strong, repeated seasonal changes, they said.
Curiosity's Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) has measured air temperatures from 15.9 degrees Celsius on a summer afternoon to minus 100 degrees Celsius on a winter night.
"Mars is much drier than our planet, and in particular Gale Crater, near the equator, is a very dry place on Mars," said German Martinez from University of Michigan.
"The water vapour content is a thousand to 10 thousand times less than on Earth," said Martinez.
Each Martian year - the time it takes the Red Planet to orbit the sun once - lasts 687 Earth days. Curiosity landed on August 5, 2012.
It began its third Martian year on May 11 this year during the mission's 1,337th Martian day, or "sol" since landing. Each Martian sol lasts about 39.6 minutes longer than an Earth day, and a Martian year lasts 668.6 sols, scientists said.
Relative humidity is a function of both temperature and water-vapour content. During winter nights, Curiosity has measured relative humidity of up to 70 per cent, high enough to prompt researchers to check for frost forming on the ground, they added. Reported by Mid-Day 16 hours ago.