MISS WORLD 2011 is VENEZUELA

London: A 21-year-old human resources graduate from Venezuela won the 2011 Miss World beauty pageant even as India's hope Kanishtha Dhankhar failed to make it to the top 15 at the star-studded event held at London's Earls Court.

Ivian Lunasol Sarcos Colmenares currently works for a broadcasting company. The second place went to Philippines while Puerto Rico grabbed the third spot.

The top seven finalists were from Korea, Venezuela, England, Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Africa and Scotland. India's disappointment came early as Dhankhar failed to grab a spot in the top 15. Actor Priyanka Chopra won the Miss World crown in 2000. Since then no Indian contestant could get the title.

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MISS WORLD -VENEZUELA

Personal Information Name: Ivian Lunasol SARCOS COLMENARES Age: 21 Height: 179 Languages: Spanish

BIOGRAPHY

Ivian has a degree in human resources and currently works for a broadcasting company. Her future ambition is to promote and work with children. Hobbies include: volleyball, mountaineering and trekking. Ivian was born into a very large family – she has 12 siblings in total.

Interview

Tell us a little something about your Country ?
I come from a very religious country and the place I live is devout to the Virgin Patron of Venezuela, the Coromoto Virgin.

Future ambitions ?
Promote NGOs and work with children.

Describe yourself?
Graceful and perseverant.

Personal Motto?
Everything arrives when it should.

Favourite food ?
My favourite food is chicken soup and the traditional pabellon of my country.

Favourite Music / Books ?
I love Alejandro Sanz and Ricardo Arjona. My favourite book is ‘The Secret’ because it talks about the laws of attraction and how to be in tune with your life goals.

What is the proudest moment of your life or most memorable day?
My proudest moment was when I did my Communion. All of my family were together that day so it is a moment I cherish deeply.

Any other interesting facts ?
I have created my own foundation to help children.

 

~missworld.com & ibnlive

Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Three Activist Women

Oslo, Norway: The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen for their work on women's rights.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured the three women "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."

"We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society," the prize committee said.

Karman is a 32-year-old mother of three who heads the human rights group Women Journalists without Chains. She has been a leading figure in organizing protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh that kicked off in late January as part of a wave of anti-authoritarian revolts that have convulsed the Arab world.

"I am very very happy about this prize," Karman told The Associated Press. "I give the prize to the youth of revolution in Yemen and the Yemeni people."

By citing Karman, the committee appeared to be acknowleding the effects of the Arab Spring, which has challenged authoritarian regimes across the region. But citing the Arab Spring alone could have been problematic for the committee. The unrest toppled authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. But Libya descended into civil war that led to NATO military intervention.

Egypt and Tunisia are still in turmoil. Hardliners are holding onto power in Yemen and Syria and a Saudi-led force crushed the uprising in Bahrain, leaving an uncertain record for the Arab protest movement.

Prize committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland noted that Kamran's work started before the Arab uprisings.

"Many years before the revolutions started she stood up against one of the most authoritarian and autocratic regimes in the world," he told reporters.

Johnson Sirleaf, 72, is a Harvard-trained economist who became Africa's first democratically elected female president in 2005.

Liberia was ravaged by civil wars for years until 2003 and is still struggling to maintain a fragile peace with the help of U.N. peacekeepers.

Sirleaf was seen as a reformer and peacemaker in Liberia when she took office. She is running for re-election this month and opponents in the presidential campaign have accused her of buying votes and using government funds to campaign. Her camp denies the charges.

The committee cited Johnson Sirleaf's efforts to secure peace in her country, promote economic and social development and strengthen the position of women.

Gbowee, who organized a group of Christian and Muslim women to challenge Liberia's warlords, was honored for mobilizing women "across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia, and to ensure women's participation in elections."

In 2009 she won a Profile in Courage Award, an honor named for a 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book written by John F. Kennedy, for her work in emboldening women in Liberia.

Yemen is an extremely conservative society but a feature of the Arab Spring uprising there has been a prominent role for women who turned out for protests in large numbers.

A resident of Taiz, a city in southern Yemen that is a hotbed of resistance against Saleh's regime, Karman is a journalist and member of Islah, an Islamic party. Her father is a former legal affairs minister under Saleh.

She was briefly detained in January, for a few hours, for leading anti-Saleh protests and was released after protesters rallied to pressure authorities for her release.

During a February rally in Sanaa, she told the AP: "We will retain the dignity of the people and their rights by bringing down the regime."

~ndtv.com

Nobel Prize in Physics 2011

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBCNews

The three researchers' work has led to an expanding knowledge of our Universe

Three researchers behind the discovery that our Universe's expansion is accelerating have been awarded this year's Nobel prize for physics.

Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess of the US and Brian Schmidt of Australia will divide the prize.

The trio studied what are called Type 1a supernovae, determining that more distant objects seem to move faster.

Their observations suggest that not only is the Universe expanding, its expansion is relentlessly speeding up.

Prof Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded half the 10m Swedish krona (£940,000) prize, with Prof Schmidt of the Australian National University and Prof Riess of Johns Hopkins University's Space Telescope Science Institute sharing the other half.

'Weak knees'

Prof Schmidt spoke to the Nobel commitee from Australia during the ceremony.

"It feels like when my children were born," he said.

"I feel weak at the knees, very excited and somewhat amazed by the situation. It's been a pretty exciting last half hour."

The trio's findings form the basis of our current understanding of the Universe's origins, but raises a number of difficult questions.

In order to explain the rising expansion, cosmologists have suggested the existence of what is known as dark energy. Although its properties and nature remain mysterious, the predominant theory holds that dark energy makes up some three-quarters of the Universe.

But at the time the work was first being considered, no such exotic explanations were yet needed.

"It seemed like my favourite kind of job - a wonderful chance to ask something absolutely fundamental: the fate of the Universe and whether the Universe was infinite or not," Prof Perlmutter told BBC News.

He led the Supernova Cosmology Project beginning in 1988, and Prof Schmidt and Prof Riess began work in 1994 on a similar project known as the High-z Supernova Search Team.

Their goal was to measure distant Type 1a supernovae - the brilliant ends of a particular kind of dense star known as a white dwarf.

Because their explosive ends are of roughly the same brightness, the amount of light observed from the supernovae on Earth should be an indication of their distance; slight shifts in their colour indicate how fast they are moving.

At the time, the competing teams expected to find that the more distant supernovae were slowing down, relative to those nearer - a decline of the expansion of the Universe that began with the Big Bang.

Instead, both teams found the same thing: distant supernovae were in fact speeding up, suggesting that the Universe is destined for an ever-increasing expansion.

Prof Perlmutter said the fact that the two teams were rivals was probably best to set the scene for a surprising outcome.

"It was fierce competition in those last four or five years of the work," he said.

"The two groups announced their results within just weeks of each other and they agreed so closely; that's one of the things that made it possible for the scientific community to accept the result so quickly."

That result in the end sparked a new epoch in cosmology, seeking to understand what is driving the expansion, and Prof Perlmutter is enthusiastic that such fundamental problems have been highlighted by the Nobel committee.

"It's an unusual opportunity, a chance for so many people to share in the excitement and the fun of the fact that we may be on to hints as to what the Universe is made out of. I guess the whole point of a prize like this is to be able to get that out into the community."

Commenting on the prize, Prof Sir Peter Knight, head of the UK's Institute of Physics, said: "The recipients of today's award are at the frontier of modern astrophysics and have triggered an enormous amount of research on dark energy."

"These researchers have opened our eyes to the true nature of our Universe," he added. "They are very well-deserved recipients."

The Nobel prizes have been given out annually since 1901, covering the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

Monday's award of the 2011 prize for physiology or medicine went to Bruce Beutler of the US, Jules Hoffmann from France and Ralph Steinman from Canada for their work on immunology.

This year's chemistry prize will be announced on Wednesday.

 

~BBC