Junior Digest

Putin used the visit to officially open two new power stations on the Black Sea peninsula, which was almost wholly dependent on electricity from Ukraine before the annexation.

Moscow took over Crimea in March 2014 after months of tensions with Kiev following the ouster of a pro-Russian leader. The move resulted in a major boost to Putin’s popularity.

But the takeover was denounced by Kiev and the West as an annexation and, along with Moscow’s support for separatist forces in Ukraine’s east, has prompted wide-ranging sanctions against Russia.

“March 18 is a remarkable day for Sevastopol, for Crimea and for the whole country,” Putin said.

He said the plants’ opening in the port city Sevastopol represented “another important step to strengthen the energy security of Crimea”.

Kiev stopped supplying energy to Crimea in late 2015, leaving the peninsula reliant on an underwater cable running from Russia and facing frequent supply problems.

The plants were at the centre of a scandal last year, after the US sanctioned Russian officials who supplied them with turbines built by German engineering giant Siemens — a violation of European Union sanctions against Moscow.

On Monday evening Putin appeared on stage at an open-air concert in Simferopol, after a smaller meeting with selected representatives of civil society.

Activists have accused Russia of cracking down on civil society since the takeover. The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim-majority community that is largely opposed to the annexation, have faced pressure from Russian authorities.

In Russia, March 18 has been proclaimed the “Day of Crimea’s Reunification with Russia” and celebrated with events across the country. In Crimea, it is a public holiday.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s letter to EU President Donald Tusk will ask to push Brexit back in a bid to avoid the economic shock of a chaotic departure in just nine days time.

Exasperated by the deadlock in parliament over the terms of Britain’s divorce from the EU, May will send the letter before heading to a fraught Brussels summit on Thursday.

However, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said it was unlikely that the EU would reach any decision on the demand at the two-day gathering, without a clear signal from London on how British MPs wish to proceed.

A Downing Street source set out why May would not be seeking a lengthy delay to Brexit.

“PM won’t be asking for a long extension,” the source told AFP.

May and the EU hammered out a divorce agreement over the past two years but MPs have twice rejected the plan by heavy margins.

She had hoped to hold a third vote this week but was dramatically blocked by the speaker of the House of Commons, who said May could not keep bringing her deal back to MPs without changes.

She will face questions from MPs in parliament on Wednesday.

European leaders are now demanding Britain tells them clearly what it wants.

Juncker said another gathering in Brussels may be necessary next week to reach any decision on Brexit.

Pointing to the chaos in London, Juncker said the remaining 27 members states’ hands were tied until that was resolved.

Ahmedabad (Gujarat) Mar 20 : A Special SIT court on Wednesday awarded life imprisonment to convict Yakkub Patadiya in connection with 2002 Godhra train carnage incident.
Patadiya was awarded imprisonment for life for his role in the incident.
In August last year, the court had convicted two people and acquitted three others in the case in which 58 people lost their lives.
Special judge HC Vora convicted Farukh Bhana and Imran alias Sheru Batik, and acquitted Hussain Suleman Mohan, Kasam Bhamedi and Faruk Dhantiya.
The five accused, who were arrested by different investigation agencies between 2015-2016, were put on trial at the special court, set up at the Sabarmati Central Jail here.
Around 58 people lost their lives when some coaches of Sabarmati Express were torched at the Godhra Railway Station in Gujarat on February 27, 2002. The incident had triggered large scale riots in Gujarat.

Maputo [Mozambique], Mar 19 : Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi on Monday said that Cyclone Idai, which made landfall in Mozambique and other neighbouring countries, might have claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, as torrential rains showed no signs of abating.Scores were also killed and more than 200 are missing in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

The city of Beira in central Mozambique bore Cyclone Idai’s full wrath on Thursday before the storm barrelled on to neighbouring Zimbabwe, unleashing fierce winds and flash floods and washing away roads and houses.

“For the moment we have registered 84 deaths officially, but when we flew over the area… this morning to understand what’s going on, everything indicates that we could register more than 1,000 deaths,” Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said in a nationwide address.

“This is a real humanitarian disaster,” he said. “More than 100,000 people are in danger”.

Aerial photographs released by a Christian non-profit organisation, the Mission Aviation Fellowship, showed groups of people stuck on rooftops with flood waters up to window level.

“The scale of damage… (in) Beira is massive and horrifying”, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said.

Ninety percent of the city of some 530,000 people and its surrounding area has been “damaged or destroyed,” it said in a statement.

“The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous,” the IFRC’s Jamie LeSueur said.

“Almost everything is destroyed. Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed. Some affected communities are not accessible.”

A large dam burst on Sunday and cut off the last road to Beira, he said.

Sofala Province governor Alberto Mondlane warned that the “biggest threat we have now, even bigger than the cyclone, is floods because it’s raining more and more”.

Emma Beaty, coordinator of a grouping of NGOs known as Cosaco, said: “We’ve never had something of this magnitude before in Mozambique”.

“Some dams have broken, and others have reached full capacity, they’ll very soon open the flood gates. It’s a convergence of flooding, cyclones, dams breaking and making a potential wave: everything’s in place so we get a perfect storm.”

Nyusi said the Pungwe and Buzi rivers in central Mozambique “have burst their banks and engulfed entire villages.”

“Communities are isolated and bodies are floating” on the waters, he said.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, Idai left 98 dead and at least 217 more missing, according to the Information ministry.

Families started burying their dead on Monday in damp graves, according to an AFP photographer.

The storm swept away homes and ripped bridges to pieces, leaving destruction that the acting defence minister, Perrance Shiri, said “resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war”.

The eastern district of Chimanimani was worst-hit, with houses and most of the region’s bridges washed away by flash floods.

The most affected areas are not yet accessible, and high winds and dense clouds have hampered military rescue helicopter flights.

SAN FRANCISCO : Alphabet Inc’s Google announced on Tuesday that it would launch this year a browser-based video game streaming service dubbed Stadia that attempts to capitalize on the company’s cloud technology and global network of data centers.

The technology allows users to play games through their internet browser or YouTube without waiting for content to be downloaded to a device, making access to games potentially as easy as watching a video from YouTube.

But Google offered scant details on timing, pricing or available titles for the service, which faces potentially tough competition from game publishers and from rivals including Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp.

With Stadia, the “waiting game will be a thing of the past,” Phil Harrison, a Google vice president overseeing the new service, said during a keynote presentation on Tuesday in San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference, which is bringing together this week about 25,000 people who work in the video games industry.

Google declined to say how it would price its technology to consumers or game makers or specify supported games. It demonstrated titles from the Doom and Assassin’s Creed franchises on Tuesday and said that it would be developing some games in-house.

The streaming technology offers a fresh way for Google to pitch game publishers on its cloud computing and data storage services, which ultimately could generate more revenue for Google than game sales.

New Delhi, Mar 20: President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday appointed a nine member Lokpal with former Supreme Court judge Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose made its chairperson and four justices made its judicial members.

A communiqué from the Rashtrapati Bhawan said that ‘the President of India is pleased to appoint Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose as the chairperson of the Lokpal’.

The President also appointed four justices- Mr Justice Dilip B Bhosale, Mr Justice Pradip Kumar Mohanty, Mr Justice Abhilasha Kumari and Mr Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi as judicial members of the Lokpal.

He also appointed four others-Mr Dinesh Kumar Jain, Mrs Archana Ramasundaram, Mr Mahender Singh and Dr Indrajeet Prasad Gautam as the non judicial members of the Lokpal.

‘The above appointments will take effect from the dates they assume charge of their respective offices,’ the Rashtrapati Bhawan communiqué said.

Justice P C Ghose is India’s first Lokpal or anti-corruption ombudsman.

Justice Ghose was recommended to be the first Lokpal by the Selection Committee comprising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and eminent jurist Mukul Rohatgi.

Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, who was invited to be a part of the committee, did not attend the meeting.

The selection was made after the Supreme Court set the government a deadline.

Justice Ghose is the one who had convicted Sasikala, the live-in companion of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in a corruption case.

Justice Ghose, 67, who is a member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) since June 2017, retired from the Supreme Court on May 27, 2017.
He had assumed charge as Supreme Court judge on March 8, 2013.

Washington D.C. [USA] Mar 20 : A recent study has found that the temperature of hot tea is linked with elevated risk of oesophageal cancer. However, previous studies had already established a link between drinking hot tea and oesophageal cancer.
The study, which appeared in the International Journal of Cancer, has examined this association between hot tea and oesophageal cancer by prospectively and objectively measuring tea drinking temperature and following 50,045 individuals aged 40 to 75 years for a median of 10 years.
During follow-up, 317 new cases of oesophageal cancer were identified. Compared with drinking less than 700 ml of tea per day at less than 60°C, drinking 700 ml per day or more at a higher temperature (60°C or higher) was associated with a 90 per cent higher risk of oesophageal cancer.
A lot of people enjoy drinking tea, coffee, or other hot beverages. However, according to this study, drinking very hot tea can increase the risk of oesophagal cancer. It is, therefore, advisable to wait until the hot beverage has cooled down before drinking it.

His lawyers Aimee Wagstaff and Jennifer Moore said in a joint statement their client was “pleased” with the decision.

“Now we can focus on the evidence that Monsanto has not taken a responsible, objective approach to the safety of Roundup,” they added.

“Instead, it is clear from Monsanto’s actions that it does not particularly care whether its product is in fact giving people cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about the issue.”

Jurors had been asked to decide whether the ingredient glyphosate — the world’s most widely-used herbicide that has long been linked to cancer by environmentalists — was a “substantial factor” in Hardeman’s condition.

Hardeman and his lawyers hugged as the jury announced its decision, which came after a week of deliberations and follows a groundbreaking state-level trial last year brought by another plaintiff with the same condition as Hardeman.

The trial now moves to phase two — deciding whether Monsanto’s conduct makes it liable.

“We look forward to presenting this evidence to the jury and holding Monsanto accountable for its bad conduct,” Hardeman’s legal team added.

Monsanto, which has sold Roundup worldwide for more than 40 years, contends that scores of studies show the products are not dangerous if properly used.

The case is the first in US federal court on the alleged cancer risk posed by Roundup, and will be seen as a test case, with thousands of other similar lawsuits already underway in the United States.

‘Probably carcinogenic’ 

It follows the groundbreaking state trial last year brought by school groundskeeper Dewayne “Lee” Johnson.

In August, California jurors unanimously found that Monsanto acted with “malice” and that its glyphosate weedkillers Roundup and Ranger Pro substantially contributed to Johnson’s terminal illness.

Monsanto was initially ordered to pay $289 million to Johnson, who has two young sons and in the end stages of his cancer, before the damages were reduced to $78.5 million.

Germany’s Bayer, which bought Monsanto last year, filed an appeal.

Hardeman testified that he sprayed Roundup on his property on the outskirts of San Francisco to get rid of poison ivy, which causes an irritating, sometimes painful rash.

Monsanto has argued that Roundup was not to blame for Hardeman’s cancer, citing his age — 66 when he was diagnosed — and the complicating factor that he suffered from Hepatitis C.

Hardeman’s lawyers countered that as he had been cured of Hepatitis C, it could not have been a factor in his development of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

One of the experts called by Hardeman’s team suggested that Roundup is even more dangerous than glyphosate on its own, because of additives in the weed killer.

“Look at all the studies, all the data,” Hardeman’s lead attorney Aimee Wagstaff told the jury. “Studies are pieces of a puzzle you have to put together.”

Unlike the US Environmental Protection Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer — which is part of the World Health Organization — has listed glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic.”

Bayer expressed disappointment with the decision, but maintained that the science confirmed that glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer.

Washington DC , Mar 19 : The United States and North Korea are trying to get the “sequencing” right in negotiations to dismantle the communist country’s nuclear weapon programme and open a new future for Pyongyang, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said on Monday.
He made the comments in response to North Korea’s criticism of the US’ “gangster-like” demands on denuclearisation. North Korea also threatened to suspend talks with Washington and resume missile launches and nuclear tests.
Asked on the stalemate between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during their meeting in Hanoi last month, Yonhap News Agency quoted Pompeo saying: “I can’t say much about the details of the negotiation as those are important private conversations. But it’s clearly a range of issues around timing and sequencing and how it is we achieve this.”
He underlined that Trump’s commitment to a brighter future for the North Koreans is “very real.”
“But it must follow — it has to follow the verified denuclearization of North Korea. And getting that sequencing right and getting it laid out in a way that each of the parties can agree to and take down the tension level along the North and South Korean border. It matters to the people of Japan and South Korea, our important partners, and it matters to the whole world,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo’s remarks have reinforced the US’ stand of “complete and verifiable” denuclearisation of North Korea, if it wanted concessions, including the lifting of sanctions.
Ties between the US and North Korea have hit a roadblock over the ease of sanctions, where Pyongyang sought relief as a recognition of the steps taken towards denuclearisation.
Washington has, until now, reinforced that relief in sanctions would only be given after the communist country carries out “complete and verifiable” denuclearisation.
US’ National Security Advisor (NSA) John Bolton on Sunday hit out at North Korea, asserting that they were “unfortunately not willing” to take steps to finalise a deal with the US aimed at Pyongyang’s denuclearisation.
“The North Koreans were unfortunately not willing to do what they needed to do. Just last night they issued an unhelpful statement that they’re thinking of going back to nuclear and ballistic missile testing, which would not be a good idea on their part,” The Hill quoted Bolton as saying.
“President Trump wants this threat resolved through negotiations. He wants North Korea to be free of nuclear weapons, that’s for sure,” he added.
US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun is set to visit the UK today to meet with his British, French, and German counterparts to discuss coordinated efforts to advance North Korea’s denuclearisation progress, the State Department said.
Meanwhile, a Japan-based pro-North Korean newspaper, Choson Sinbo, has demanded that the US drop its “unilateral” and “unfair” demands in denuclearisation talks with North Korea, warning that the negotiations will not move forward.

Baku: Oil producer group OPEC on Monday scrapped its planned meeting in April and will decide instead whether to extend output cuts in June, once the market has assessed the impact of U.S. sanctions on Iran and the crisis in Venezuela.

A ministerial panel of OPEC and its allies recommended that they cancel the extraordinary meeting scheduled for April 17-18 and hold the next regular talks on June 25-26.

The energy minister of OPEC’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, said the market was looking oversupplied until the end of the year but that April would be too early for any decision on output policy.

Washington D.C. , Mar 20 : The United States Transport Department has directed its internal watchdog to conduct an inquiry into the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) approval of the Boeing 737 MAX 8.
The Boeing aircraft, which has been involved in two major crashes in the last five months, has been grounded by scores of governments and airlines citing safety concerns following the recent Ethiopian Airlines crash which claimed the lives of all 157 people on board.
The audit has been ordered by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao on Tuesday (local time), who stated, “Safety is the top priority of the department, and all of us are saddened by the fatalities resulting from the recent accidents involving two Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in Indonesia and Ethiopia.”
She further wrote that the inquiry will “help inform the department’s decision-making and the public’s understanding and to assist the FAA in ensuring that its safety procedures are implemented effectively,” according to The New York Times.
The FAA finds itself mired in controversy over its certification and approval of the Boeing 737 MAX 8.
“We are currently developing the scope and objectives of our review and expect to formally announce and begin our audit work as soon as possible,” the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General said. Boeing has since agreed to cooperate with the review.

Moscow , Mar 20 : Russia stated that it is open to discussing solutions aimed at preventing an arms race with the United States, batting for the extension of the new START treaty, due to expire in 2021.
This comes in the wake of both USA and Russia formally suspending their obligations under the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which has led to mounting fears of an arms race between the two nations.
“This fully applies to any potential agreements in the nuclear missile sphere,” Xinhua quoted the Russian foreign ministry as saying.
The new START or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed between Moscow and Washington in 2010 and came into force in 2011. It is a nuclear arms reduction treaty, which replaced the Treaty of Moscow. It established a new inspection and verification regime, replacing the previous mechanism, along with reducing the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers by half in both the United States and Russia.
Moscow outlined that the extension of the treaty would be in the interest of the entire world community and that the nation is interested in avoiding a new missile crisis in Europe and other regions.

Panjim (Goa), Mar 19 : In a late-night ceremony, BJP leader Pramod Sawant was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Goa.
In addition, 11 other leaders, who were part of erstwhile Goa Cabinet, including Sudhin Dhavalikar of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Vijay Sardesai of the Goa Forward Party (GFP), and BJP MLA Vishwajit Rane, to name a few, took oath as Cabinet ministers.
The oath was administered by Goa Governor Mridula Sinha at Raj Bhavan in the wee hours of Tuesday. Union Minister and BJP leader Nitin Gadkari was also present at the ceremony.
Speaking to ANI after taking oath as chief minister, Sawant said his aim is to complete the projects that were initiated under Parrikar’s leadership.
“I have taken oath as Chief Minister today. I feel we must proceed together with the support of the allies. The aim is to complete all the work that had begun under Manohar Parrikar’s government. I may not be able to perform as well as him (Parrikar), but I will try my best,” he said.
The Chief Minister’s post went vacant following the death of Parrikar on Sunday evening after a prolonged illness.
43-year-old Sawant represents Sanquelim assembly constituency. His wife, Sulakshana Sawant is the president of the women’s wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa.
Goa Assembly has a strength of 40 members with four seats lying vacant due to deaths of two legislators, including Parrikar and resignation of two others. The by-polls on the three seats are scheduled to take place on April 23.
BJP currently has 12 legislators and enjoys the support of legislators from GFP, MGP, and three independents. GFP and MGP each have three MLAs.
Congress, on the other hand, has 15 MLAs in the house and is also short of the majority mark without external support. However, it had also, for the third time in two days staked claim to form a government in Goa.

The UN, meanwhile, said that one of the worst storms to hit southern Africa in decades had also unleashed a humanitarian crisis in Malawi, affecting nearly a million people and forcing more than 80,000 from their homes.

Four days after Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall, emergency teams in central Mozambique fanned out in boats and helicopters, seeking to pluck survivors from roofs and treetops in an inland sea of floodwater, sometimes in the dead of night.

Air force personnel from Mozambique and South Africa were drafted in to fly rescue missions, while an NGO called Rescue South Africa said it had picked up 34 people since Friday night, using three helicopters.

“It is the only way to access the people that are stranded,” Rescue SA’s Abrie Senekal told AFP, saying the NGO was trying to hire more helicopters.

Ian Scher, who heads Rescue SA, said the helicopter teams were having to make difficult decisions.

In Nhamatanda, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Beira, 27-year-old Jose Batio and his wife and children survived by climbing onto a roof.

But a lot of their neighbours “were swept by the water,” he said.

“Water came like a tsunami and destroyed most things. We were prisoners on the roof,” he told AFP after they were rescued by boat.

The city of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city and a major port, was immediately cut off after the storm. According to the Red Cross, the cyclone damaged or destroyed 90 percent of the city of half a million people.

“We are in an extremely difficult situation,” Nyusi said, warning of high tides and waves of around eight metres (26 feet) in the coming days.

On Monday, Nyusi had said he feared more than 1,000 had died and more than 100,000 people were in danger.

Imphal (Manipur) , Mar 20: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday stated that Congress will not allow the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the North East if it is voted to power.
Addressing a Congress worker’s meet, he said, “It doesn’t matter what BJP president says. We are not going to allow the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the North East. No one should be allowed to choose the destiny of people.”
Claimed that there is an ideological fight going on in India, he said, “There is the view of the RSS, BJP on one side and they are aiming to impose one ideology on the entire country”.
Alleging that all institutions are under attack, he further added, “All our institutions, universities, colleges, the election commission, the Supreme Court- all are under attack because RSS is taking all people with their ideologies and inserting into these institutions.
“For the first time, four judges came out to press and said that they are not being allowed to work. For the first time, we have seen the judges of the Supreme Court asking for justice from the people of India.”
Congress president also assured citizens that as soon as Congress government comes to power it will give special status to Manipur.
Earlier in the day while addressing an election rally in Itanagar, he had reiterated his promise to introduce a new tax regime if his party is voted to power in the ensuing Lok Sabha polls, beginning April 11.

Panjim (Goa) [India], Mar 19 : In a late-night ceremony, BJP leader Pramod Sawant was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Goa.
In addition, 11 other leaders, who were part of erstwhile Goa Cabinet, including Sudhin Dhavalikar of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Vijay Sardesai of the Goa Forward Party (GFP), and BJP MLA Vishwajit Rane, to name a few, took oath as Cabinet ministers.
The oath was administered by Goa Governor Mridula Sinha at Raj Bhavan in the wee hours of Tuesday. Union Minister and BJP leader Nitin Gadkari was also present at the ceremony.
Speaking to ANI after taking oath as chief minister, Sawant said his aim is to complete the projects that were initiated under Parrikar’s leadership.
“I have taken oath as Chief Minister today. I feel we must proceed together with the support of the allies. The aim is to complete all the work that had begun under Manohar Parrikar’s government. I may not be able to perform as well as him (Parrikar), but I will try my best,” he said.
The Chief Minister’s post went vacant following the death of Parrikar on Sunday evening after a prolonged illness.
43-year-old Sawant represents Sanquelim assembly constituency. His wife, Sulakshana Sawant is the president of the women’s wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa.
Goa Assembly has a strength of 40 members with four seats lying vacant due to deaths of two legislators, including Parrikar and resignation of two others. The by-polls on the three seats are scheduled to take place on April 23.
BJP currently has 12 legislators and enjoys the support of legislators from GFP, MGP, and three independents. GFP and MGP each have three MLAs.
Congress, on the other hand, has 15 MLAs in the house and is also short of the majority mark without external support. However, it had also, for the third time in two days staked claim to form a government in Goa.

Washington D.C., Mar 18 : A recent research has unveiled that forgetting requires more brain efforts than trying to remember. The discovery was made through neuroimaging at the University of Texas, Austin.
The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest that in order to forget an unwanted experience, more attention should be focused on it.
“We may want to discard memories that trigger maladaptive responses, such as traumatic memories, so that we can respond to new experiences in more adaptive ways,” said Jarrod Lewis-Peacock, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of psychology at UT, Austin.
“Decades of research have shown that we have the ability to voluntarily forget something, but how our brains do that is still being questioned. Once we can figure out how memories are weakened and devise ways to control this, we can design treatment to help people rid themselves of unwanted memories,” he added.
Memories are not static. They are dynamic constructions of the brain that regularly get updated, modified and reorganised through experience. The brain is constantly remembering and forgetting information- and much of this happens automatically during sleep.
The latest study focuses on the sensory and perceptual areas of the brain, specifically the ventral temporal cortex, and the patterns of activity there that correspond to memory representations of complex visual stimuli.
“We’re looking not at the source of attention in the brain, but the sight of it,” said Lewis-Peacock, who is also affiliated with the UT Austin Department of Neuroscience and the Dell Medical School.
Using neuroimaging to track patterns of brain activity, the researchers showed a group of healthy adults’ images of scenes and faces, instructing them to either remember or forget each image.
Their findings not only confirmed that humans have the ability to control what they forget, but that successful intentional forgetting required ‘moderate levels’ of brain activity in these sensory and perceptual areas- more activity than what was required to remember.
“A moderate level of brain activity is critical to this forgetting mechanism. Too strong, and it will strengthen the memory; too weak, and you won’t modify it,” said Tracy Wang, lead author of the study and a psychology postdoctoral fellow at UT Austin. “Importantly, it’s the intention to forget that increases the activation of the memory, and when this activation hits the ‘moderate level’ sweet spot, that’s when it leads to later forgetting of that experience.”
The researchers also found that participants were more likely to forget scenes than faces, which can carry much more emotional information, the researchers said.
“We’re learning how these mechanisms in our brain respond to different types of information, and it will take a lot of further research and replication of this work before we understand how to harness our ability to forget,” said Lewis-Peacock, who has begun a new study using neurofeedback to track how much attention is given to certain types of memories.
“This will make way for future studies on how we process, and hopefully get rid of, those really strong, sticky emotional memories, which can have a powerful impact on our health and well-being,” Lewis-Peacock said.

London: Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plans were thrown into further turmoil on Monday when the speaker of parliament ruled that she could not put her divorce deal to a new vote unless it was re-submitted in fundamentally different form.

In comments that blindsided May’s office, Speaker John Bercow said the government could not bring forward proposals for a vote in parliament that were substantially the same as had been defeated twice before, in January and last week.

Brexiteers seeking a complete break from the European Union saw a “no-deal” exit as now more likely, but the government made clear it would seek to put off Brexit beyond the March 29 departure date, if the EU approves.

One of the government’s senior law officers, Solicitor General Robert Buckland, said: “We’re in a major constitutional crisis here.”

Bercow said his ruling should not be considered his last word and the government could bring forward a new proposition that was not the same as those already voted upon.

New Delhi, Mar 20: In a major decision Chhattisgarh BJP on Tuesday decided that all 11 sitting MPs from the state should be replaced.
A proposal to this effect was given by the party’s core committee for polls in Chhattisgarh to the BJP Central Election Committee which is holding its meeting here.
The BJP CEC meet is also being attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top BJP leaders including party chief Amit Shah.
“We will bring new 11 faces and will all 11 seats,” said Chhattisgarh BJP in charge Anil Jain.
The move is seen as party’s move to counter the anti incumbency mood against the sitting MPs.
The BJP had won 10 seats out of 11 in 2014 from Chhattisgarh.
Only the Durg parliamentary seat was won by the Congress. Tamradhwaj Sahu of Congress won the seat humbling BJP’s Saroj Pandey by a margin of 16,848 votes.
From Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency, BJP’s successful nominee was Abhishek Singh, son of former Chief Minister Raman Singh.
In last year’s assembly elections, the saffron party was handed over a convincing defeat by the Congress.