Malala Yousafzai wins 2014 Liberty Medal

NEW YORK: Young Pakistani education advocate Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt in Mingora, Swat (Pakistan), some two years ago, has won the 2014 Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia, the largest city in the US State of Pennsylvania.

Malala, 17, will be honoured for “her continued demonstration of courage and resilience in the face of adversity and for serving as a powerful voice for those who have been denied their basic human rights and liberties,” the National Constitution Centre said in a statement. “It’s an honour to be awarded the Liberty Medal,” she said on Sunday. “I accept this award on behalf of all the children around the world who are struggling to get an education.”

The prestigious medal has been awarded annually since 1989, when Polish Solidarity founder Lech Walesa received it first. Since then, recipients have included legendry boxer Muhammad Ali, former President Jimmy Carter, South African leader Nelson Mandela, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and, last year, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Malala, the youngest recipient in the medal’s 25-year history, will receive the award at a ceremony at the centre in Philadelphia, on October 21. After surviving the Taliban attack, Malala continued to be an outspoken advocate on education, prompting Gordon Brown, the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, to petition the agency to recommit to a goal of universal primary education for children around the world. The petition gained more than three million signatures and helped lead Pakistan to pass a Right to Education bill, a first in the country.

Malala is also the youngest person ever nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and was one of four runners-up for Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2013. Addressing the UN on her 16th birthday, she told the audience that “one child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” She was awarded the 2013 United Nations Human Rights Prize, which is given every five years and has previously been bestowed on such notable recipients as Nelson Mandela, former US President Jimmy Carter, and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

She continues to champion universal access to education through the Malala Fund (malalafund.org), a non-profit organization that empowers girls through education to achieve their potential and change their communities.

Maria Sharapova wins French Open in second longest final

PARIS: Maria Sharapova won her second French Open and fifth career major on Saturday with a 6-4, 6-7 (5/7), 6-4 win over Romania´s Simona Halep in the tournament´s second longest final.

At 3hr 02min, it was just two minutes shy of the 1996 final between Steffi Graf and Aranxta Sanchez.

Sharapova, the seventh seed, won her first Roland Garros title in 2012 and was runner-up last year to Serena Williams.

Halep, the fourth seed, was playing in her maiden final at a Grand Slam and was hoping to become the first Romanian champion since Virginia Ruzici in 1978.

Saturday´s win took Sharapova, 27, level with Martina Hingis as a five-time Grand Slam title champion. (AFP)

Pakistani visual effects artist wins third Oscar

HOLLYWOOD: Pakistan national visual effects artist Mir Zafar Ali won Oscar for third time.

Zafar’s latest work in Frozen, extremely liked by audience, especially the scenes in which Princes Elsa build her own ice palace. All visual presentations behind these scenes are done by Zafar Ali.

The movie Frozen broke all previous records by obtaining optimum business on Box Office.

38 year old visual artist Zafar said while taking Oscar award that he finds himself very blessed that Almighty Allah has given him such fame and his efforts got supreme reward in the form of Oscar.

Mir Zafar Ali got his first Oscar in 2008 for working in the movie named as The Golden Compass. Life of pie was the second film which led Zafar wins second

Bubba Watson wins another green jacket at Augusta

AUGUSTA: One of golf´s most exciting players squeezed most of the drama out of the Masters on Sunday. That´s just fine with Bubba Watson. All he cared about was slipping into that green jacket.

Instead of hitting a 40-yard hook out of a forest of Georgia pines — the signature shot in his playoff victory two years ago — the final act Sunday at Augusta National took place on the 18th green.

Watson had a three-shot lead and consulted with his caddie on a 15-foot birdie putt. "I went over to him and I said, ´I´m not very good at math, but we´ve got four putts, right?" Watson said. This was more about great golf than Bubba golf.

Watson kept his poise during an early burst of birdies from 20-year-old Jordan Spieth, turned the tournament in his favor with consecutive two-shot swings to close out the front nine, and coasted to a 3-under 69 to win the Masters by three shots over Spieth and Jonas Blixt of Sweden. "Small-town guy named Bubba now has two green jackets," Watson said. "It´s pretty wild."

Watson made it look routine over the final hour. On a Sunday when Spieth was trying to become the youngest winner in Masters history and 50-year-old Miguel Angel Jimenez had a chance to become the oldest major champion, Watson turned in another masterpiece and joined an elite group as the 17th player to win multiple Masters.

Surprisingly for Augusta, the most compelling action was on the front nine. His only nervous moment was a drive so mammoth around the corner on the 13th hole that it clipped a few trees and still went some 360 yards, leaving just a sand wedge into the par 5.

That was his lone birdie on the back nine. No one got closer than three shots the rest of the way. "The shot out of the woods made me famous," Watson said. "But this one was a lot better for me and my nerves."

This was nothing like the Masters he won two years ago, especially when it was over. His wife and newly adopted son were home in Florida in 2012 when Watson made four straight birdies on the back nine and won on the second playoff hole with his great escape out of the trees.

When he tapped in for par on 18, there was 2-year-old Caleb — decked out in a green-and-white striped Masters shirt and green tennis shoes — walking toward him. Watson had tears streaming down his face when he scooped him up, a prize as great as the green jacket. "Seeing him back there ... what an amazing feeling as a parent," he said. "And then throw on the green jacket on top of it just changes everything."

After high-fiving the crowd on his way to sign his card, Watson returned to Butler Cabin to take back that green jacket after slipping it on Adam Scott a year ago. "After giving it away last year, I wanted it back," Watson said. "I told Adam we could just swap it back and forth every year."

Spieth could only watch from the side of the green. He dazzled the massive crowd early by holing out for birdie from the front bunker on No. 4, and making back-to-back birdies to build a two-shot lead through seven holes.

Bidding to become the first player in 35 years to win a green jacket in his first try, Spieth looked to be well on his way. But he three-putted for bogey on No. 8 — the first 6 on his card all week — as Watson got up-and-down for birdie to tie for the lead.

Spieth then made a rookie mistake, leaving his approach below the flagstick on No. 9 and watching it roll back into the fairway, setting up another bogey and two-shot swing.

Whatever prayer he had might have ended at Amen Corner. His tee shot on No. 12 found Rae´s Creek. He missed a short birdie attempt on the 13th.Watson was too powerful, too experienced, too tough to beat. Spieth closed with six pars for a 72 and tied for second with Blixt, who never went away but never really threatened.

Blixt shot a 71. "Obviously, I´ve worked my whole life to lead Augusta on Sunday. And although I feel like it´s very early in my career, and I´ll have more chances, it´s a stinger," Spieth said.

Watson finished at 8-under 280 and goes to a career-best No. 4 in the world. Jimenez, the ageless wonder from Spain, shot 71 and finished alone in fourth. Matt Kuchar lost a share of the lead with a four-putt double bogey on the fourth hole and never challenged again.

He closed with a 74 and tied for fifth with Rickie Fowler (73). Nine players were separated by three shots at the start of the final round only for this to turn into a two-man show. For the opening two hours, it was anything but dull. After trading pars on the opening hole, either Watson or Spieth — sometimes both — made birdie or bogey over the next nine holes.

Spieth holed out from a bunker for birdie on the tough par-3 fourth. He made back-to-back birdies with a 12-foot putt on the seventh for a two-shot lead. Two holes to close out the back nine changed everything.

Amen Corner swung the Masters in Watson´s favor for good.Watson won for the second time this year, and his second major puts him at the top of the Ryder Cup standings.He was guided all week by a simple game plan of hitting fairways and greens, and he was calmed by knowing that regardless of how it turned out, he still had a green jacket. Now he has two of them. (AP)

IBM physicist wins tech 'Nobel' for 'big data' discoveries

HELSINKI: British physicist Stuart Parkin, one of the brains behind the global "big data" revolution, on Wednesday won Finland's answer to the Nobel Prize, which is awarded by Technology Academy Finland.

"Prof. Parkin receives the 2014 Millennium Technology Prize in recognition of his discoveries, which have enabled a thousand-fold increase in the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives," the independent foundation said in a statement, adding that his innovations paved the way for streaming movies and other media via the Internet.

"Our contemporary online world is largely possible because of these atomically-thin magnetic structures."

Parkin, 58, is an IBM research fellow, a consulting professor at Stanford University and director of the experimental department of Germany's Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics.

His work on spintronics -- which uses the magnetic spin of electrons to save data -- has contributed to an explosion in memory capacity around the world allowing information to be stored in magnetic disk drives accessed online via the "cloud".

"I am extremely happy and excited to have won the Millennium Technology Prize because of course it’s one of the most important prizes in the scientific community," Parkin said in a statement.

"I am very humbled and proud to have been awarded the prize, which is a tremendous validation by the scientific community of my work and its impact on the world as a whole."

The prize -- worth one million euros ($1.38 million) -- was founded in 2004 and aims to be a technological equivalent of Sweden's Nobel Prizes for the sciences (worth $1.22 million each) which have been criticised for focusing too much on traditional, decades-old scientific research.

The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every second year and singles out recent innovations that have already been applied in practice and which "enhance the quality of people's lives in a sustainable manner".

Previous laureates include the creator of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and ethical stem cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka.

Technology Academy Finland, which will award the prize on May 7, 2014, is a foundation formed by the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in Finland and the national Industry Council.

Pakistani student wins distinction from top UK university

LONDON: A Pakistani student has gained top position in Bachelor’s of Business and Finance at the Heriot-Watt University by gaining 14 As.

Ahmer Baloch, aged 26, originally from Haveli Naseer Khan, a small village in the district of Lodhran, started his studies at the UK university in 2012 after qualifying for the American High School Diploma from Pakistan’s American School of International Academics (ASIA) in Lahore.

Heriot-Watt University is ranked within the top 20 universities of the UK i.e. 9th on the Sunday Times Top 100 Universities and 18th on The Guardian University Rankings, 2nd in Scotland and has the top ranking for many degree disciplines in the UK. Heriot Watt has three campuses in Scotland, one campus in London and one each in Dubai and Malaysia with combined student strength of over 30,000 students.

Although the graduation ceremony will be held on 27th of June 2014, the results have been published and it has been confirmed to Ahmer Baloch that he has topped the university.

Speaking to The News, Ahmer Baloch said he felt very proud at achieving the distinction: “It’s a proud moment for me as a Pakistani student from a highly ranked overseas university. I want this to be an inspiring and motivating factor for all the Pakistani students out there and want to let them know that if they work hard and persevere then only sky is the limit. From all the students combined, less than 5 percent achieved a distinction (highest possible mark for a degree). Among those that did achieve a distinction, I was the highest achiever (top graduate) around the world.” Ahmer Baloch, who now has offers of jobs from leading European financial firms, wants to make his achievement a special note for all the youngsters in Pakistan who lose their way in high school and come to a point where they think all hope is lost for them. It’s because Ahmer Baloch had given up on studying himself when he was 18. After finishing high school, he thought studying was a waste of time and he would be better off working on the lands of his father in Lodhran.

That all changed when he met his future wife Umme Rubab, a Briton of Pakistan origin who is a broker at a London firm, in Lahore and she went on to change Baloch’s whole perception.

“She taught me how to remain positive in the most negative of situations and never give up. I also learnt from her the joy of being self made and independent. I moved to London after my marriage and started my bachelor’s once again but this time, with absolute determination and drive to achieve success. I worked extremely hard preparing for the exams and after the finals, I could easily say that I was expecting to be the top in my class. Little did I know how strongly Allah helps those who help themselves. Two weeks after the results were posted, I received a letter from my university informing me that not only had I achieved a distinction, I had achieved a higher distinction among all of the university’s students around the globe! To make it even better, the degree helped me land a job at Ernst & Young, one of the ‘Big 4’ Professional Services firms in the UK and one of the best around the world.”

Ahmer paid tribute to his father Muhammad Iqbal Khan Baloch who never gave up on him “and found a way to see past all my previous mistakes and persisted with supporting me financially no matter what”.

Geo Tez’s 'Burka Avenger' wins Peabody Award

KARACHI: Geo Tez's Burka Avenger has won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award which honours achievements in electronic media.

Burka Avenger is a cartoon series about a mild mannered teacher with secret martial arts skills who uses a flowing black burka to hide her identity as she fights local criminals seeking to shut down the girls’ school where she works.

The Urdu language show is the brainchild of one of Pakistan's biggest pop stars, Aaron Haroon Rashid — known to many as simply Haroon — who conceived of it as a way to emphasiase the importance of girls' education and teach children other lessons, such as protecting the environment and not discriminating against others.

Other prominent winners of the Peabody Award are Breaking Bad, House of Cards and CNN’s ‘Parts Unknown.’

The awards ceremony will be held in New York on March 19.

Abhishek Sinha wins ‘Boogie Woogie’

 

 

Amitabh Bachchan gave away the trophy to Abhishek Sinha.

Eleven-year-old Abhishek Sinha won the dance reality show ‘Boogie Woogie’ here today.

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who had come to promote his upcoming film ‘Bhootnath Returns’ gave away the trophy to Abhishek Sinha.

Abhishek, who is from Jamshedpur, was awarded with the prize money of Rs 10 lakh and in addition to this he got Rs one lakh sponsored by Horlicks.

The show had started in early December last year with 16 children from across the country. Apart from Abhishek, Aryan Patra, Sachin Sharma, Priyanka Tapaddar and Mohd Mumtaz were the finalists.

The top five contestants paid a tribute to Big B by performing a medley of his hit songs. Later, even Bachchan joined them on stage and performed his signature steps.

Actors Varun Dhawan, Ileana D’Cruz, Nargis Fakhri, Jaccky Bhagnani, Shreyas Talpade, along with Anu Malik, too came for the finale.

Matthew McConaughey wins best actor Oscar for ’Dallas Buyers Club’

HOLLYWOOD: Matthew McConaughey won the best actor Oscar on Sunday for his role in true-life AIDS activist drama "Dallas Buyers Club."
McConaughey beat fellow nominees Christian Bale ("American Hustle"), Bruce Dern ("Nebraska"), Leonardo DiCaprio ("The Wolf of Wall Street") and Chiwetel Ejiofor ("12 Years a Slave").
His turn as a homophobe who begins smuggling experimental medicine in Texas when he learns he is HIV-positive earned him his first nomination and Oscar, after a series of star performances in an increasingly serious series of films.
He quickly praised his rivals for the award, saying "all these performances were impeccable, in my opinion. I didn't see a false note anywhere."
After a nod to his late father -- "He's probably up there with a cold can of Miller Lite" -- McConaughey offered some straightforward advice for the 0crowd: "Just keep living."