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US military's 'Iron Man' armor will be ready for testing by June, says admiral

US military's Iron Man armor
The first prototypes for the US military's Iron Man armor will be ready for testing by this summer, said the head of US Special Operations Command today. At a special conference in Washington DC today, Defense Tech reports, Navy Adm. William McRaven stated that three unpowered prototypes of the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS, are currently being assembled, with an expected delivery by June. The suit will undergo an evaluation period and hopefully be field-ready by August 2018.
During the conference, McRaven emphasized the suit's potential to save lives. "That suit," he said, "if done correctly, will yield a revolutionary improvement in survivability and capability for special operators." The TALOS was commissioned last October, and may one day be armed with its own on-board computer, health monitors, and MIT-developed liquid armor that can harden in a matter of milliseconds. The hope is to allow the wearer to walk through a stream of bullets — not unlike the Marvel superhero.
Presently, 56 corporations, 16 government agencies, 13 universities, and 10 national laboratories are working together to develop the armor. McRaven wants to up involvement to include mechanics and craftsmen on the project, and may seek the authority to approach the Pentagon to distribute prize money for interested experts.

Why South Korea is really an internet dinosaur

South Korea is really an internet dinosaur

SOUTH KOREA likes to think of itself as a world leader when it comes to the internet. It boasts the world’s swiftest average broadband speeds (of around 22 megabits per second). Last month the government announced that it will upgrade the country's wireless network to 5G by 2020, making downloads about 1,000 times speedier than they are now. Rates of internet penetration are among the highest in the world. There is a thriving startup community (Cyworld, rolled out five years before Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, was the most popular social network in South Korea for a decade) and the country leads the world in video games as spectator sports. Yet in other ways the futuristic country is stuck in the dark ages. Last year Freedom House, an American NGO, ranked South Korea’s internet as only “partly free”. Reporters without Borders has placed it on a list of countries “under surveillance”, alongside Egypt, Thailand and Russia, in its report on “Enemies of the Internet”. Is forward-looking South Korea actually rather backward?
Every week portions of the Korean web are taken down by government censors. Last year about 23,000 Korean webpages were deleted, and another 63,000 blocked, at the request of the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), a nominally independent (but mainly government-appointed) public body. In 2009 the KCSC had made just 4,500 requests for deletion. Its filtering chiefly targets pornography, prostitution and gambling, all of which are illegal in South Korea. But more wholesome pursuits are also restricted: online gaming is banned between midnight and 6am for under-16s (users must input their government-issued ID numbers to prove their age). Sites from North Korea, including its state newspaper, news agency and Twitter feed, are blocked, as are those of North Korea's sympathisers. A law dating back to the Korean war forbids South Korean maps from being taken out of the country. Because North and South are technically still at war, the law has been expanded to include electronic mapping data—which means that Google, for instance, cannot process South Korean mapping data on its servers and therefore cannot offer driving directions inside the country. In 2010 the UN determined that the KCSC “essentially operates as a censorship body”.
Some Koreans are resisting. In 2011 Park Kyung-sin, a dissenting commissioner, posted a picture of Gustave Courbet’s “L’Origine du monde” on his blog, in protest at the KCSC’s order to block a picture of a man’s genitals—like that found in a science textbook—that he had previously posted on the same blog. He was convicted and fined, though the charges were later lifted. In 2012 a 15-year-old Korean cyber-game champion was locked out of a game of "Starcraft II" while playing after midnight in a competition that was taking place during the day in France. (By the time he reconnected, by entering the details of a parent’s ID card, he had lost the match.) The watchdog has no sense of humour: in 2012 a photographer received a suspended ten-month prison term for retweeting a series of North Korean propaganda posts, likening his inheritance of his father's studio to the North’s leadership transition. Park Dae-sung, a blogger who posted prophecies on the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the crash of the won in 2008 under the pen name of Minerva, spent 104 days in prison for “spreading false rumours”.
Critics spy political interference. In 2004 internet users were required to input their names and ID numbers on political comments in the run-up to an election. In 2009 those posting any comments on websites with over 100,000 daily visitors were required to do the same. That law has since been rescinded. But although the government is beginning to ease some restrictions, it is stepping up its monitoring of social media. The KCSC set up a special sub-committee on social media in 2011, and the following year asked for 4,500 comments on Twitter, Facebook and the like to be removed—13 times more than in 2010. Last year the number of comments deleted increased again, to 6,400. Some officials seem to enjoy posting rogue comments as well as deleting genuine ones. A group of intelligence agents are now under investigation for allegedly posting thousands of messages under false identities in support of Park Geun-hye, now South Korea’s president, in the run-up to the 2012 election. (There is no evidence that Ms Park had ordered this.) In December she said that the government needed to “correct the wild rumours spreading through social network services”, referring to public outcry at the privatisation of railways and health care. South Koreans may enjoy unusually speedy internet connections, but they are not allowed to use them freely.

AMD reveals its first ARM processor: 8-core Opteron A1100

Calls itself the first server CPU company with an ARM chip.

AMD announces first ARM-based 64-bit Server CPU and development platform

AMD's 64-bit ARM-based Server CPUs will be out for sampling soon

AMD announced plans to build ARM server CPUs back in 2012. Today the company took a big step towards making those chips a reality, announcing that an 8-core ARM System-on-Chip would begin sampling in March.
Codenamed "Seattle," the processors will be branded Opteron A-series and built on a 28 nm process. The first of these will be the A1100. This will have 4 or 8 cores based on ARM's Cortex-A57 design. This is a high performance, 64-bit ARM core, and it will run at clock speeds of at least 2 GHz. The chips will have up to 4MB of level 2 cache and 8MB of level 3 cache, with both caches shared across all the cores. They'll support dual channel DDR3 or DDR4, with up to 128GB RAM. The chips will also include a bunch of connectivity: eight PCIe 3 lanes, eight SATA 3 ports, and two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Rounding out the SoCs, they'll also include dedicated engines for cryptography and compression. The whole thing has an expected power usage of 25W.
While these chips are aimed at high density, low power servers, AMD is also putting together a micro-ATX development kit built around the A1100. This will include a Fedora-based Linux environment with development tools, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Java 7 and 8.  This software stack is consistent with the goals of these low power servers: running Web applications is likely to be their primary role.
AMD has grand ambitions for ARM in the server room. The company estimates that by 2019, 25 percent of the server market will use ARM processors with widespread use of custom designs in large datacenters. AMD believes that it will be the leader of this ARM Server market, as it brings its existing server processor expertise to bear.
However, it can't be taken for granted that ARM will make itself a big force in the server room. Calxeda, an early pioneer of ultra high density, low power ARM servers, announced that it was closing down late last year in spite of tens of millions of funding and a partnership with HP.

3D Printing Goes Multi-Color, Multi-Material

The company behind the MakerBot 3D printer has launched a model that can handle multiple colors and materials in one print run. Stratasys’s new machine costs $330,000 and is very much aimed at making practical objects rather than novelty items.
stratasyshelmet
3D Printing Goes Multi-Color, Multi-Material
Where normal 3D printers use a single stream of material, Objet500 Connex3 uses jets that can deliver three different liquefied resins. These can be combined in different proportions to create a range of rubbers and plastics with different levels of rigidity and flexibility.
The proportions can be altered mid-print, in effect creating a single printed object made up of different materials. According to Stratasys, the materials will “simulate high performance thermoplastics.”
The company gives the real example of a bicycle manufacturer that has been using the new printer to try out designs for handlebar grips, not just to gauge appearance but for practical testing. Stratasys also demonstrated prototype cycle helmets (pictured).
The printer can also deliver different colors, using the same mix of cyan, magenta and yellow that’s the basis of two-dimensional color printers. Previous multi-material 3D printers have been restricted to shades of black and white.
With particular combinations of base materials, the printer can even print a transparent plastic, meaning for example it’s possible to print a pair of spectacles as one item. Of course, the set-up doesn’t allow for prescription lenses, so it only really works for safety spectacles (in which case colors and designs aren’t usually a major issue) or novelty wear.
Indeed, the real question right now is whether the printer really does have practical uses or if it’s more a case of an impressive solution to a technical challenge.
glasses1
3D Printing Multi-color
Given the price, it’s most likely the Object500 Connex3 will be used for making prototypes at a stage of the design process that’s advanced enough for manufacturers to need to know how a product would not only look but also feel and behave, but still not advanced enough to make it financially sensible to be setting up customized production equipment such as injection molds.
The BBC makes the point that some manufacturers at this stage may be happy to use a black-and-white printer and simply use their imagination as to how the finished product will look in color.
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Google announces $2.7 million bounty for hacking Chrome OS

Google has reportedly announced a whopping 2.7 million dollars bounty if security experts are able to hack its Chrome browser-based OS at the Pwnium 4 hacking contest.
Hacking Chrome OS
This year at the Pwnium 4, researchers would be allowed to choose between Intel- or ARM-powered laptops, while last year, they had to try to crack a Chromebook with an Intel processor. According to PC World, hackers would be paid prizes of 110,000 dollars and 150,000 dollars for exploiting the Chrome OS, and the highest bounty would be rewarded to those who deliver an exploit able to persistently compromise a Hewlett-Packard or Acer Chromebook.
Last year Google put 3.14159 million dollars in the contest, but paid out just 40,000 dollars to a prolific hacker who goes by “Pinkie Pie,” the contest’s sole participant, for what Google later called a partial exploit. Google said that it would consider larger bonuses to researchers who demonstrated a “particularly impressive or surprising exploit,” like one that could circumvent kASLR, a new variant of the better-known ASLR anti-exploit technology used by Apple, Microsoft and Chrome OS.
The report said that for hackers to qualify for the prizes or bonuses, they must provide functional exploit code and details on all the vulnerabilities put into play. Pwnium 4 is scheduled to take place on March 12 at the Canadian Security conference.
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China may spray water from skyscrapers to clean smog from the air in cities

Nextbigfuture covered the concept of spraying water from skyscrapers to reduce air pollution in cities in China.
Spraying water from skyscrapers could help to reduce the concentration of PM2.5 pollution - tiny particles in the air which are especially hazardous to health - efficiently to a safer level of 35 micrograms per cubic metre, and in as quick as 30 minutes. Air pollution is a big problem in China and this is approach to pollution mitigation is being developed there.

In addition, the process is natural, technologically feasible, efficient and low cost. All the necessary technologies and materials required to make it work are already available, Yu says, from high buildings, towers and aircraft, to weather modification technology and automatic sprinkler heads.

Tests will be performed at Zhejiang University campus first and then Hangzhou city if everything goes well. If we are successful, our work can be followed by the other cities in China and around the world."

Air pollution in China has progressively worsened over the past 30 years, particularly in its megacities, due to rapid economic growth and expansion of industrial activity. According to a Greenpeace report released last week, in 2013, 92 per cent of Chinese cities failed to reach the national standard of a PM2.5 density of no greater than 35 micrograms per cubic metre. Thirty-two cities were double the standard, while the top 10 cities were three times the standard.

The six most polluted cities are in Hebei province, led by the industrial cities of Xingtai and Shijiazhuang. Among China's international business centres, Beijing was the worst at No 13, with an average PM2.5 index of 89.5 micrograms per cubic metre, followed by Qingdao (No 47) and Shanghai (No 48).

Natural precipitation is effective at cleaning air pollution - just think how much clearer the Hong Kong skyline is after a rainy day. In Beijing, an urban atmospheric environmental monitoring station showed that PM2.5 concentrations decreased from about 220 to 30 micrograms per cubic metre on September 26, 2011 because of heavy rain. Precipitation can also efficiently reduce gaseous air pollutants such and nitric acid and sulphur dioxide.

Yu's system is designed to spray raindrops of specific sizes and rain intensity, and at different heights, for the most efficient pollution reduction depending on the conditions.

Water should be sprayed into the atmosphere from at least 100 metres high, he says, because most air pollution is below this height. For areas with no tall buildings, towers of 100 to 200 metres high can be built.

The spraying would need to be done daily to avoid the accumulation of air pollution. Ideally, the water will be obtained from rivers and lakes to keep costs low, he says, and can be collected and reused, thereby preventing any exacerbation of existing water shortages. Although there are potential problems - such as flooding, humidification of the low atmosphere, and slippery grounds - Yu says these are outweighed by the benefits.

Dr Chan Chak-keung, a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's division of environment, says Yu's proposal is "interesting" but is concerned about the scheme's water usage.

"Where will we find that much water? You could recycle the water, but that itself is a challenging task," says Chan. "If I spray water from the roof, what about pollution above the roof? Assuming his team can find a system that works, and they've done enough economic analysis and considered the handling of water resources, this could be a viable option.

"I would also recommend he considers spraying water right at the street level, especially along heavy traffic roads."

Background

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Water spray geoengineering to clean air pollution for mitigating haze in China’s cities

All 74 of China's big cities fail to meet air quality standards. It will take decades to radically improve the emissions of China's factories, powerplants and cars. 

China produces 55 billion tons of rain per year from massive cloud seeding programs. China plans to increase this to 280 billion tons of rain per year from cloud seeding.

China is predicted to reach 4.8 billion metric tons per year by 2020, up from 3.65 billion tons in 2013. The prediction was made by China National Coal Association vice president Liang Jiakun. China uses about half of the world total in coal. 1 billion tonnes is used in Europe and another 1 billion tons in the United States.

How much is 4.8 billion tons ? That is 600,000 110 car trains full of coal. The 110 cars each hold 100 tons of coal but about 25% of it is water weight. So only 8000 tons of coal per train which coal plants need every 1 to 3 days. Coal is burnable dirt. The world is burning a literal mountain of it every year.

China can achieve rapid improvement in lower particulate emissions by increasing the fines and turning on the emission control systems at coal plants. The coal plant operators follow what the central government orders. The central government had given a wink to turning off the emissions control equipment in order to get lower electricity prices. The cost benefit has clearly changed. The central government needs to improve the air for the people in urban centers. The emission control systems are being turned on. However, a lot of the emissions are construction dust and pollution from cars. It will take a lot more to make the air in the cities better. This is why the water spraying systems will help bridge the 2-4 decade gap to better air quality.

The US geological service has some information on rainfall. The water spraying system would be creating about 30 minutes of artificial rain on days that have no rain and high pollution levels. China has another large water project that quoted 1 kilowatt hour of energy to raise one ton of water by 200 meters. If there was 100 hours of artificial rain needed per year, then we would just need to know the rate or amount of artificial rain for the air pollution cleaning effect. The energy times about 0.05 dollars per kilowatt hour would approximate the operating cost.

Could this electric beast be the fastest Supercar

At full speed, the Rimac Concept_One is little more than a cherry red blur, flashing from one corner of the horizon to the other in the blink of an eye.
A new generation of cars are coming. <strong>Take a look what's lurking under the hood...</strong>
Electric Beast
If its projected performance figures prove to be true, this radical electric concept car -- the brainchild of an award-winning young Croatian designer -- could accelerate faster than all but two of the fastest supercars on earth.

The Rimac Concept_One's figures are impressive. Not just for an electric car, but for traditional petrol-engine cars as well.

For years electric vehicles have been regarded as the frumpy inner-city siblings of their hardier countryside 4x4 brethren or zippier track-friendly supercar sisters. Electric vehicles have tended to have names like Leaf, Buddy or Spark as opposed to Vanquish, Venom or Phantom.

All this may be set to change when Rimac goes into production. First unveiled at Frankfurt Motor Show in September, 2011, the Concept One is an electric vehicle that aims to be even faster than the Bugatti Veyron. Its precocious 25-year-old inventor, Mate Rimac, says that the car produces 1018 horsepower, can accelerate from 0 to 100 kph (62 mph) in just 2.8 seconds, has a top speed of 305 kph (190 mph), and can travel 600 kilometers (372 miles) on a single charge.

Mate Rimac says that he has always been motivated by the desire to demonstrate the superiority of electric over petrol-powered cars: "I have two passions; cars and technology," Rimac says. "Technology because Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia, and he invented the electric motor that is used in so many applications today. And I knew simply by theory that this motor is so much better to drive a car -- even a sports car.

"I decided to combine my two passions, technology and cars and make an electric car that can prove the electric motor is much better even on the racetrack. Not just city cars for boring stuff, but to show people that the future will be interesting -- that one day when petrol is gone and you only have electric cars in the world, you won't have to compromise in terms of performance, speed or (how) far (it can go)."

While he was still in high school, Rimac bought a lime green BMW for less than €1000 and began modifying it with new parts. "I couldn't wait to pull out (the motor) and put batteries and electric motors inside instead of the gas engine," Rimac says. After several years of rebuilding and alteration, Rimac set a world record with his car, which became the fastest accelerating electric car in the world. The car is still recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest quarter mile by an electric vehicle.
After setting five separate world records with his modified BMW, Rimac began to work towards building his very own car from scratch. He enlisted the help of the highly-regarded young car designer Adriano Mudri, and began work on the Concept_One.

Now Rimac is turning his dream car into a reality on a shoestring budget: "In the car industry, it's common to design a new car with 1 billion to 5 billion dollars. But, most of those cars carry over components from previous versions -- engines, gear boxes and stuff. We had to design a car (including) the whole technology under the skin, (while) the company itself didn't have a desk to put a computer on. And we did all that with less than 0.1% of the budget which is usual in the car industry," Rimac says.

Preliminary impressions from the automotive press have been generally positive, although many, such as GTspirit.com, said that they approached the concept of a vehicle that has "no sound, no downshift and no smell of burnt petrol" with trepidation. Some also disputed the figures Rimac has released, suggesting that their projected performance statistics may be ambitious.
Still, the notion that an electric car might soon not just match, but outperform the best petrol vehicles on the planet is certainly a captivating one. When Rimac releases a production car into the wild in the not-too-distant future, the eyes of the world will certainly be watching.

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Gina Gershon: 10 steps to becoming Donatella Versace for Lifetime's 'House of Versace'

By 
This Saturday marks the premiere of Lifetime’s latest film, House of Versace. Based on Deborah Ball’s book,House of Versace: The Untold Story of Genius, Murder, and Survival, the film gives an in-depth look at Donatella Versace’s life in the years after her brother and renowned designer Gianni Versace was shot and killed at the height of the brand’s success. It follows Donatella, played by Gina Gershon, as she falls into a world of drugs, disorder, and chaos. And even though Versace recently told WWD, “Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is based, the movie should only be seen as a work of fiction,” actress Gina Gershon still had a very large task in front of her when she took on the part: Playing a well-known public figure with a very distinct look.

The body:
 “You have to lose weight and start working out like a fiend, especially your arms because she has those amazing arms, which was good because I needed to do that anyway so that forced me into doing it. It was right before summer so it was like, ‘Alright, I’ll do this.’”We caught up with Gershon to talk about her amazing transformation into the iconic fashionista. Here’s your checklist for the long road to becoming Donatella Versace:
The voice: “Start smoking a lot of cigarettes, which I wasn’t really used to, but I had to learn because she smokes quite a bit and it also helps with the voice. I can’t do her voice unless I have that sort of thing going on.”
The face: “You gotta have some tape to flatten out the face when you need to. You pull it a little bit. That helps with the lips. Her lips get kind of wider as she gets older.”
The shoes/walk: “High, high heels! You have to wear super high heels at all times even when you’re going to the gym. She’s a little thing and she likes to be big, and she wears those heels like nobody’s business. But it also helped with the walk. The tighter the skirt and the tighter I made my waist — sometimes a corset — and the higher the heels, I felt like I could fall into her walk and her stance a little bit easier. She kind of walks with her hips more, her hips are jutted forward and her shoulders are a little bit caved in, which is completely the exact opposite, I’m usually more swayback-y. So I had to really really concentrate on that probably the most of anything.”
The accent: “I listened to her non-stop. I would listen to her as I was going to sleep; I was listening to her in my trailer. Luckily for me, she’s done a lot of interviews, and I’ve done Italian accents before, but hers is very different. Not only is it Southern Italian, she comes from Calabria. The more Southern you get, the lazier the sound becomes and the wider it becomes. But then on top of it she has a very specific Donatella-esque accent. And she’s really funny, so she’s got a very dry sense of humor. I really started totally going for her accent, but then I guess, with TV, they want to understand what I’m saying. [Laughs] The truth is, if I was really doing Donatella, she’s tough to understand sometimes. I kept requesting we use subtitles, but no one really went for that suggestion. But I was kind of being serious. But that was one thing: I had to pull back on her accent, which kind of bummed me out a little bit, but I also understood why people want to hear what I’m saying.”
The make-up: “I had a zillion pictures of her … It’s like painting your face looking at someone else’s. You’re just putting the shadows and the highlights in a different area. She has a bit of a longer, wider forehead than I do, so I would lighten it up as much as possible. I love makeup, and I love lighting, and I love changing my face. It’s like painting. It’s all an optical illusion, an then hopefully if the lighting’s right then you really can create that illusion.”
The hair: “It was a really nice wig which was important. When I first got the gig I said, ‘Listen, the wig’s gotta be great,’ because I hate when you watch these sort of movies where it’s supposed to be someone and the wig is wrong. I find it so distracting. Her hair is part of her look. She’s got this iconic look, and she’s had that hair since she was 11 years old. If you saw an invisible face with that hair you’d be like, ‘Oh that’s Donatella Versace,’ so it was really important to me that we got the wig just right in different periods of her life.”
The eyebrows: “I can’t say I looked great after I’d leave the set because then I had to dye my eyebrows white as well, and I dyed the front of my hair white just so it looked. I wanted the illusion of my hair being further back, like a longer forehead. I looked like a crazy alien once the alien came off. I put my hat on, went home, and didn’t look in the mirror because it was too scary.”
The clothes: “She’s like a little teeny tiny thing; she’s like a little Barbie doll. She’s always had a great body, so the clothes, I found a couple vintage pieces from that time period that I was really happy with and the costume lady was happy with, and then some of the stuff we just had to try to recreate, which is tough. Versace’s Versace for a reason because they build those dresses so you look incredible, but unless you have the time to do the corsets and the pulling the way they do it, it’s not quite as fabulous. [The movie's] an illusion, so hopefully it shows up. Some of the clothes I thought were amazing; some of them I thought were not great. When it’s not really Versace, it’s not really Versace.”
The presence: “The most important thing after you get the look together, and even before you get the look together, hopefully you capture the essence of the person. That’s the most important job you have as an actress playing someone.  I was really interested in how shy she was. I know she seems so flamboyant but there’s an actual real shyness that she has, and there’s a softness and a vulnerability, but then there’s that absolute protection that she has. Her sense of humor I thought was really important; she kind of has a very dry wit. And who she trusts and who she feels comfortable with and who she doesn’t, I found that informed how I played certain parts.”
And although Gerson has never met Donatella, she didn’t have a problem taking on the role. She actually preferred it. “At a certain point, I didn’t want to [meet her]. If I had met her before I probably wouldn’t have done it because you feel very protective over people. Although I feel like it’s ultimately a very flattering portrayal of her. I only have super respect for her,” Gershon said. “But I’ve done projects where I’ve been in touch and worked with the living person of who I was playing, and I think what happens psychologically or subconsciously, you start protecting them in weird ways, so you don’t play certain scenes as intensely as you would had you not known them.”
So how then did she prepare? “I read anything I could on her. I read all of her interviews; I watched every single piece of video tape that she had. There was a really great French documentary when they were getting ready for a show, which I thought really was pretty helpful. It showed her personality and what she was like and how she dealt with people, the rhythm of how she spoke.”
All in all, Gershon calls the role “one of the most challenging parts I’ve ever done” due to the film’s large amount of “emotionally trying” scenes, but that doesn’t mean Donatella never smiled. “There’s a couple scenes that were certainly fun before everything started going wrong and she was just sort of fabulous and in her element. There’s something really fun about her,” Gershon said.

'Gravity' Film Trailer Reveals George Clooney, Sandra Bullock as Astronauts

by Robert Z. PearlmancollectSPACE.com
Like the pull from a looming planet, the first trailer for director Alfonso Cuarón's "Gravity," starring actors George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts, draws in moviegoers.
The one-and-a-half minute teaser, which Warner Brothers Pictures released online Thursday (May 9), provides a first glimpse at the highly-anticipated film, which has been in development since 2010. "Gravity" is scheduled to launch into theaters on Oct. 4, on the anniversary of the launch of the world's first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957.
In the film, Clooney plays Matt Kowalsky, an experienced astronaut commanding his last mission aboard the space shuttle. His crew includes first-time mission specialist Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock), a medical engineer. According to a synopsis, the two astronauts are out performing a routine spacewalk when the shuttle is destroyed and they are left stranded, with no way of communicating with Earth. [Watch: "Gravity" official teaser trailer]
The trailer opens with an astronaut's view of Earth as seen from space. "Beautiful, don't you think?" Clooney remarks from off-screen.
The seemingly-peaceful moment, now showing Clooney and Bullock in spacesuits, tethered together, floating over the limb of the planet, is quickly replaced with a torrent of violent shots, alternating between a space shuttle being torn apart, what looks to be the Hubble Space Telescope being significantly damaged and a Russian Soyuz capsule tearing through an exploding International Space Station.
The sound of an ever-increasing heart beat serves as the backdrop to the next scenes of Bullock being thrown into open space. "What do I do? What do I do!" she yells, as Clooney replies over radio, "Grab a hold. Grab anything!"
As the preview comes to an end, it is Bullock whispering "Anybody, please copy..." as she tumbles head over feet into the black void of space.
A similar theme, underlined by the tagline "Don't Let Go," appears on the movie's first official poster, also released this week. The blue and black poster depicts an astronaut flailing backwards, his (or her) tether having snapped, as he or she falls away from the space shuttle amid a cloud of space debris.
Despite it featuring NASA spacecraft and spacesuits, the film sought little assistance from the U.S. space agency. According to NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs, the agency's only involvement was to arrange a phone call between the filmmakers and astronaut Catherine "Cady" Coleman.
"Gravity" is Cuarón's first feature film since the Academy Award-nominated science fiction drama "Children of Men" in 2006. The son of a nuclear physicist, Cuarón has said in interviews that he always wanted to be an astronaut, as well as a director.
This is Bullock's first "trip" into space. Clooney previously strapped on a spacesuit as astronaut Chris Kelvin in the 2002 sci-fi movie "Solaris" by director Steven Soderbergh.

'Grand Theft Auto V' hits streets in brash debut

SAN FRANCISCO: Unabashedly brutal "Grand Theft Auto V" hits the streets Tuesday in a sequel that promises to enthrall fans of the blockbuster videogame franchise.
Rockstar Games spent five years crafting the new installment and the time has paid off for gamers, according to a slew of reviews giving the title top marks.
"GTA V has been worth the five-year wait," said computerandvideogames.com digital manager John Houlihan.
"You can really see the maturity in this version, the graphics look sensational -- it really is like being in a virtual copy of LA."
GTA V is set in a fictional city of Los Santos based on real-world Los Angeles and its nearby hills and beaches.
The videogame franchise has won legions of fans and cadres of critics with game play in which triumph depends on acts such as carjacking, gambling and killing.
Play in Grand Theft Auto games has included simulated sex with prostitutes and drunken driving. The latest version is said by reviewers to be rife with more of the same, along with profanity-packed dialog.
"GTA is essentially the 'Sopranos' of videogames," Tech Savvy analyst Scott Steinberg said, making a reference to a hugely popular US cable television series centered on Mafia characters.
"Everyone talks about the series as violent, but compared to what you are seeing in the movies and on television GTA is relatively tame. Certainly, it is a mature game for mature audiences, and should be consumed accordingly."
GTA V is billed by the New York City-based videogame publisher as the "largest and most ambitious" title to date in the franchise that has sold more than 114 million copies since its debut in 1997.
"Grand Theft Auto V builds on everything we've learned about open world gaming," said Rockstar founder Sam Houser.
Versions of "GTA V" for play on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 videogame consoles or personal computers powered by Windows software will launch worldwide Tuesday in respective time zones.
There were reports on Monday that Amazon accidentally delivered copies of the videogame to lucky gamers in Britain who had placed early orders online.
Midnight release events were planned at shops in an array of countries to let GTA lovers snap up the game the instant Tuesday arrives.
"This really is a blockbuster that almost dwarfs the movies in some way," Houlihan told AFP.
"GTA V is really a cultural phenomenon. You'll find people tonight queueing around the block to play it, people taking days if not the whole week off work to explore this vast virtual world."
Houlihan said it was rumored that the production budget for the game was in the vicinity of $270 million.
The franchise's appeal is fueled by captivating story lines and an open-world format that lets players go wherever they wish in game worlds.
"It gives you a complete virtual playground to go and explore," Houlihan said.
"You can rob banks or you can do a yoga lesson or you can fly a plane or you can play tennis or you can do what I sometimes do which is just wander round the world in a really flashy car and listen to some of the hilarious radio stations -- so there really is everything for you to explore, it's a world of possibility."
The game will also let people play with or against one another online.
Rockstar, which is owned by Take-Two Interactive, said that GTA V "focuses on the pursuit of the almighty dollar" in a re-imagined Southern California.
Grand Theft Auto IV blew away videogame and Hollywood records by raking in an unprecedented $500 million in the week after its release in April 2008.
"GTA is the 10-ton gorilla of videogame franchises," Steinberg said. "Obviously, this is going to help kickstart the holiday season for the videogame industry, which has taken a beating."

While console videogames have faced mounting pressure from free-to-play titles tailored for smartphones or tablets, there is "still room for blockbuster Hollywood-style games," according to the analyst.

Woman (Chanchal Rathore) sentenced for levelling false charge of rape against man

INDORE: A woman was awarded a sentence of four years and a fine of Rs 11,000 for levelling false rape charges against her landlord, after a dispute over the payment of rent due to which the landlord committed suicide. 


The sentence was awarded by Additional Session Judge Indira Singh to Chanchal Rathore (35) under Section 211 (levelling false allegations with an intention to cause hurt) and Section 182 of the Indian Penal Code (giving false information to a public servant) after a complaint by another woman judge. 

Chanchal had filed a complaint of rape against her landlord Roopkishore Agrawal (53) in the Palasia police station on December 26, 2012, but later turned hostile in front of Additional Session Judge Savita Dube while her statement was recorded in the matter on March 13 this year. 

Additional Public Prosecutor Hemant Mungi said that after Chanchal backtracked on her original statement, the court declared her hostile and then the woman judge Savita Dube herself filed a case against Chanchal in the court of fellow judge Indira Singh. 

The case was registered for filing a false report and recording false statements in the court, Mungi said. 

The woman judge also recorded her statement against Chanchal in the court of her fellow judge, after which she was awarded a four-years jail sentence and a fine of Rs 11,000. 

Chanchal's landlord Roopkishore Agrawal had to spend nearly two-and-a-half months in jail under judicial custody, after which he was released on bail on March 8, Mungi said. 

Since Agarwal was extremely upset due to Chanchal's false rape charge against him which damaged his reputation, he committed suicide after leaving a suicide note blaming her for his misery. 

A separate case under Section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the Indian Penal Code is also on against Chanchal Rathore in the matter, Mungi said.


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