India Wants to Ban Birth Surrogacy for Foreigners

Surrogate mothers rest inside a temporary home for surrogates, provided by Akanksha IVF centre, in Anand town, about 70 km (44 miles) south of the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, in August 2013. 

NEW DELHI — The Indian government says it wants to prevent Indian women from becoming surrogate birth mothers for foreigners, according to an affidavit filed Wednesday with the Supreme Court.

The filing represented the latest development in a recent push to regulate an industry that has been booming in India. Estimates of the size of the surrogacy trade in India vary, with one study by Sama, an advocacy group in New Delhi, measuring it at more than $400 million.

Critics say that foreigners can find surrogates in India relatively easily, especially among impoverished women, and that this creates great potential for exploitation. Some experts, however, are concerned that banning surrogacy for foreigners would do more harm than good. “Our apprehension and fear is that the whole business will go underground,” said Manasi Mishra, who heads the research division at the New Delhi-based Center for Social Research, an organization that has published studies on surrogacy in India. “The bargaining capacity of the surrogate mother will further go down.”

In the affidavit, the Department of Health Research of the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said, “The Government of India does not support commercial surrogacy.” The department also said that surrogacy should be available “to Indian married infertile couples only and not to foreigners.”

The new restrictions sought by the government would require approval of Parliament. The draft of a bill posted online mentions that foreigners would be excluded from the practice, but it allows exceptions for foreign passport holders of Indian origin and foreigners married to Indians. The affidavit does not mention these exceptions. The bill will be open to public comment until Nov. 15.

India has long tried to get approval of legislation to standardize surrogacy, which is run through thousands of clinics throughout the country. The cost of surrogacy in India can be a third of the cost in wealthier countries. In an interview with The New York Times in 2008, an Israeli couple said the cost of their surrogacy in India had been about $30,000, of which about $7,500 went to the surrogate mother.

Stories of abuses by foreign couples in India have weighed heavily on the national debate about surrogacy, including reports of an Australian couple having left a twin in India, said Ms. Mishra.

Jayshree Wad, a lawyer who filed a petition in the Supreme Court to ban commercial surrogacy, said that the practice had harmed India’s image abroad. “There is a common opinion about India which hurts very badly — that because there is poverty they sacrifice their womb by renting it for their family,” she said.

While she welcomed the government’s affidavit, she noted that a bill that would regulate surrogacy has been pending since 2008.

“As a lawyer, I need some law — not only saying ‘I will do this and I will do that,’ ” she said. “So let them put it before the Parliament, then we will see.”  –  nytimes

Obama to Send Special Operations Forces to Syria to Help Fight ISIS

WASHINGTON — President Obama will deploy a small number of American Special Operations forces to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria, a United States official said.

The White House is expected to make the announcement on Friday, the official said.

The team will advise and assist opposition forces who are fighting the Islamic State in Syria, providing smoother and quicker access to equipment and logistical help, the official said.

While administration officials plan to characterize the deployment as an enhancement of current strategy, it is actually a huge shift for a president who has said repeatedly that he will not put American combat boots on the ground in Syria.

The decision adds a new level of risk to the Syrian enterprise, as the presence of American forces, even if they are in Kurdish territory, could bring the special operations troops into closer contact with the Islamic State. - nytimes

Report: NASA Needs Grip on Mars Health Hazards

NASA needs to get cracking if it wants to keep its astronauts alive and well on missions to Mars, according to a new in-house report.

In an extensive audit, NASA's inspector general office looked at the space agency's overall effort to keep astronauts safe during lengthy space missions — especially trips to Mars, currently targeted for the 2030s.

Among the top health hazards for three-year, round-trip Mars missions: space radiation that could cause cancer, central nervous system damage, cataracts or infertility; extreme isolation, which could lead to psychological problems; and prolonged weightlessness, already known to weaken bones, muscles and vision.

There's also the issue of limited amounts and types of medicine and food, the latter potentially leading to weight loss and malnutrition.

Inspector General Paul Martin acknowledged that NASA is making progress in identifying and managing these health risks. NASA's first yearlong mission is underway at the International Space Station.

But Martin pointed out that the space agency is optimistic in thinking it can resolve all the issues by the 2030s.

"The agency still faces significant challenges to ensuring the safety of crew members on a human mission to Mars or deep space," the report concluded.

As such, the first astronauts who fly to Mars may need to accept even more risk than subsequent crews, according to the report.

Stalling the health-risk effort, in part, is the continuing uncertainty over the type of vehicles and habitats that will be used to carry astronauts into deep space, the report stated. NASA also needs to consolidate its expertise; right now, there's a lack of organization to manage crew health risks, the report noted.

NASA agreed with the conclusions.

To date, no American has spent more than seven months in space at a time. The Russians are the world's space endurance champions, but even they haven't ventured beyond 14 months for a mission.

By coincidence, the watchdog's 54-page report came out the same day NASA astronaut Scott Kelly broke the U.S. record for the longest single spaceflight.

Kelly is more than halfway through a one-year station stint, as is Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. They won't be back on Earth until March.

On Thursday, Kelly told a TV interviewer that while it definitely feels like he's been up there a long time, "I'm pretty sure I'm going to get through it without much of an issue." He said he hopes his mission will help get astronauts to Mars.

Medical researchers expect to learn much from Kelly's flight. As a bonus, Kelly's identical twin, Mark, a retired astronaut, is submitting to testing so doctors can compare the results of the space and ground-based brothers. - AP

Skype brings first ‘talking pictures’ to instant messaging

New Delhi, Oct 29 (IANS) Microsoft's instant messaging, voice and video calling platform Skype on Thursday launched new interactive videos and moving emoticons specifically designed for India.

The new interactive videos or talking pictures, named Mojis by Skype, are the first-of-a-kind very small clips of video (both Bollywood and Hollywood) that the company claims will revolutionise chat platforms.

For the new feature, Skype has partnered with Indian studios Yash Raj Films and ErosNow, the on-demand entertainment platform of Eros International, to develop custom Mojis for Skype users.

"We identified that these clips might be heavy on data usage for users and hence we have cached them on the app itself reducing the need for the user to download them everytime while sending them over the platform," Gurdeep Pall, corporate vice president, Skype told IANS when asked about the success of the new feature keeping in mind the high data tarrifs in the country.

"There are about 100 Mojis now and we will keep adding them on the app. We are also thinking about including several features which may allows users in the future to send custom Mojis via the instant chat," Pall said.

The company also emphasised the importance of India as a market.

"Our goal is to provide the best possible messaging experience on Skype, and tapping into India's extremely active and vibrant film culture is a perfect way to do that," Pall said alluding that Skype has 300 million subscribers globally.

"The app has seen at least 500 million downloads from the Google Play Store," Pall added.

Currently, India is home to a lot of chat or instant messaging platforms like WhatsApp, hike messenger and Viber who have a user base of 900 million, 70 million and over 40 million

The new Bollywood Mojis and emoticons will be available in the features tab of the emoticon picker on Skype for Windows desktop, Mac, iOS, Android and Skype for Web.

China Says First Moon Rover Has Set Record for Longest Stay

Beijing: China’s first lunar rover, Yutu, has been operating on the moon for almost two years, setting a record for the longest stay by a rover, officials said on Thursday.

Yutu was deployed and landed on the moon via China’s Chang’e-3 lunar probe in 2013, staying longer than the Soviet Union’s 1970 moon rover Lunokhod 1, which spent 11 months on the moon, Xinhua news agency reported.

Reports of its operations have streamed live through Sina Weibo, Chinese microblogging site, and its Weibo account has nearly 600,000 followers.

Yutu experienced a mechanical control abnormality in 2014, but it was revived within a month and, though it is unable to move, it continues to collect data, send and receive signals, and record images and video.

The launch of Dongfanghong-1, China’s first satellite, in 1970 made China the fifth country to launch a domestic satellite using a domestic rocket, following the Soviet Union, the US, France and Japan.

China launched its manned space programme in the 1990s and successfully sent Yang Liwei, the country’s first astronaut, into orbit on the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft in 2003.

Meanwhile, China is planning to be the first country to land a lunar probe on the far side of the moon, or “dark side of the moon” which is never visible to Earth.

The mission will be carried out by Chang’e-4, a backup probe for Chang’e-3. -  IANS

Watching too much TV can kill you!

Washington D.C, Oct 29: Couch potatoes, you may want to lessen your TV-time as a team of researchers has linked prolonged TV viewing to 8 leading causes of death in the US. On average, 80 percent of American adults watch 3.5 hours of television per day and multiple observational studies have demonstrated a link between TV viewing and poorer health.

The investigators reported an association between increasing hours of television viewing per day and increasing risk of death from most of the major causes of death in the United States. Previous studies had reported a relationship between TV viewing and elevated risk of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease. In this study, researchers at the National Cancer Institute looked at more than 221,000 individuals aged 50-71 years old who were free of chronic disease at study entry.

They confirmed the association for higher mortality risk from cancer and heart disease. In addition, they identified new associations with higher risk of death from most of the leading causes of death in the U.S., such as, diabetes, influenza/pneumonia, Parkinson’s disease, and liver disease. The results fit within a growing body of research, indicating that too much sitting can have many different adverse health effects, explained lead investigator Sarah K. Keadle.

Keadle cautioned that although each of the associations observed have plausible biological mechanisms, several associations are being reported for the first time and additional research is needed to replicate these findings and to understand the associations more completely.

The study appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. - ANI

Watching TV for long may shorten your life, warns new study

Do you also have a habit of watching TV for too long? Then it is possible that you might be at a risk of mortality or even cancer, according to a new study.

                                Watching TV for too long? Picture courtesy: Reuters

New York: Viewing television for over three-four hours daily is associated with increased risk of mortality from most of the major causes of death including cancer and heart diseases, warns a new study.

“We know that television viewing is the most prevalent leisure time sedentary behaviour and our working hypothesis is that it is an indicator of overall physical inactivity,” explained lead investigator Sarah Keadle from the US National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.

“In this context, our results fit within a growing body of research indicating that too much sitting can have many different adverse health effects,” Keadle noted.

In this study, the researchers looked at more than 221,000 individuals aged 50-71 years old who were free of chronic disease at study entry.

They confirmed the association between excessive TV viewing and higher mortality risk from cancer and heart disease.

In addition, they identified new associations with higher risk of death from most of the leading causes of death in the US, such as diabetes, influenza/pneumonia, Parkinson’s disease and liver disease.

After an average follow-up of 14.1 years, the study found that compared to those who watched less than one hour per day, individuals who reported watching three-four hours of television per day were 15 percent more likely to die from any cause.

Those who watched seven or more hours were 47 percent more likely to die over the study period.

Risk began to increase at three-four hours per day for most causes they examined.

The investigators took a number of other factors into consideration that might explain the associations observed, such as caloric and alcohol intake, smoking, and the health status of the population, but when they controlled for these factors in statistical models, the associations remained.

Another important finding of the study is that the detrimental effects of TV viewing extended to both active and inactive individuals.

The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. - IANS