Manuel Lanzarote scored a fine brace to end FC Goa’s three-match winless run as his side beat Jamshedpur FC 2-1 in an Indian Super League (ISL) game here on Thursday.

Lanzarote (45+1, 60th minute) opened the scoring with a penalty just before half-time before doubling the lead in the second half.

The win keeps Goa in the race for the play-off spots, two points ahead of Mumbai City FC, who are at the fifth spot with 14 points from nine matches.

Goa are fourth with 16 points from nine matches.

Andre Bikey fouled Brandon Fernandes to give away a penalty after the attacking midfielder had brilliantly combined with Lanzarote. The latter had to retake his shot and put it in the same spot as previously to give Goa the lead.

Jamshedpur came out all guns blazing at the start of the second half and the pressure told when Jerry Mawihmingthanga found Trindade Goncalves unmarked in the box for an easy header.

With 54 minutes on the clock, the game opened up for both teams. Ferran Corominas and Lanzarote both fired warning shots before producing an exceptional move to get back in the lead.

Brandon’s ball was perfectly weighted for Lanzarote and he beat Tiri with ease – did the same with the keeper – and wheeled away in celebration.

Substitutes Kervens Belfort and Farukh Choudhary almost made an immediate impact when they combined to create a close chance. Jamshedpur poured forward in numbers, and Belfort was at it again when he set up Izu Azuka who missed a golden chance from near the six yard box.

Goa could have finished the game off when Edu Bedia and Manvir Singh broke forward. They managed to even round the goalkeeper with clever play but still missed the goal.

It could have avoided a tricky finish for them, but they held on – Jamshedpur only troubling them with a last minute corner.

Coppell’s side started the game on the front foot, attacking with real purpose in the opening exchanges before Lanzarote reminded them of the quality FC Goa have up front.

His freekick nearly found Mohamed Ali. For all their positive intent, Jamshedpur could only manage to threaten from distance early on. Trindade Goncalves and Izu Azuka both attempted from outside the area – one was blocked, and the other just wide.

Lanzarote was culpable of wasting a great chance when excellent play from Corominas and Brandon set him free. But Lanzarote chose to shoot and blazed it over instead of looking for a pass.

Narayan Das then put it just over with a shot from distance. Just when it seemed like a half of few chances would end goalless, Brandon was brought down in the box by Andre Bikey and Goa had the telling penalty.

Actor Anand Tiwari, known for films like Udaan, Kites, Aisha and Go Goa Gone, says his appetite to grow and become a better artiste has increased tremendously over time.

“I have only learnt that there’s so much more to learn and over the years I am getting more and more hungry to be a better artiste,” Anand said.

“And I guess the most important thing I have realised is that to be a relevant artist, you have got to remain as open as a child and really keep exposing yourself to newer experiences and interactions to be and remain relevant,” he added.

Anand, who also founded a content house Still and Still Media Collective (SSMC) with Amritpal Bindra, says his biggest achievement “personally till now is that I have gained acceptance as an artiste in the eyes of my parents”.

“They wanted me to become a doctor like my father or at least have a more ‘conventional’ and ‘settled’ profession. Now as they see me run SSMC along with Amrit, do well as an actor-writer-director-producer, they are happy and less stressed about me.

“That pressure being off my shoulder has been a great relief. Now I am just enjoying my everyday doing exactly what I ever wanted to do,” he added.

Anand will make his debut as a director with Love Per Square Foot, which features Vicky Kaushal and Angira Dhar.

Love Per Square Foot is a quirky romantic comedy that chronicles a guy and girl who enter a marriage of convenience to buy a flat in Mumbai. Critically acclaimed actors Ratna Pathak, Supriya Pathak and Raghuvir Yadav also feature in prominent roles in the film.

The film will be available on Netflix in 2018 globally.

Film: Kaalakaandi

Director: Akshat Verma

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Sobhita Dhulipala, Akshay Oberoi, Isha Talwar, Deepak Dobriyal, Vijay Raaz, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Shenaz Treasurywala, Amyra Dastur, Neil Bhoopalam, Shivam Patil.

Rating: **1/2

The title is Marathi slang — Kaala-Kaandi. It means something that is not being done in the right manner or is horribly wrong. And as the title suggests, right from the first frame, we are reminded that nothing can go right for its characters.

What makes “Kaalakaandi” interesting, though, is its dark comedy, easy to relate situations and characters. It is one of the easiest films to love and one of the hardest to think of as a work of art. It approaches the notion of pure filmmaking as entertainment; it is a nearly flawless example of- itself. It lacks a lesson or message and is content to show three sets of people facing a series of interlocking challenges they face one night. Set in Mumbai, with a variety of quirky, pseudo characters awake after midnight, it reflects the unpredictable life in the city. But, they seldom find themselves intertwined in a bizarre series of coincidences.

Boldly told, what happens to the characters apart from the nightmarish and bizarre nature of their experiences can only be described as screwball logic. While the plot unravels like the pages of a thriller, the humor seems labored. You witness this in the first scene and in the climax. In the opening scene, Saif Ali Khan is in his doctor’s clinic where his doctor sugar coats his diagnosis with, “You do not suffer from ulcers, hence you don’t have perforating ulcers. Instead, you suffer from stomach cancer.”

For a person who never experienced the excesses of life, this unpleasant bit of news hits like a ton of bricks. So when he returns home, where the wedding preparation of his younger brother Angad (Akshay Oberoi) is under-way, he sips alcohol and tries a narcotic substance. This sets the ball rolling for a roller-coaster cinematic experience. In the second situation, Zubin (Kunal Roy Kapur) is in low spirits because his girlfriend is migrating to America. Just before her flight, as a farewell gesture and to celebrate the birthday of their friend Ann (Shenaz Treasurywala), they land up at a pub which predictably gets raided. How they escape from the clutches of the police and what fate has in store for them, forms the crux of their story.

In the third narrative, Vijay Raaz and Deepak Dobriyal, work as flunkies for the local gangster. After collecting the protection money from a film producer, how greed overcomes them, forms the crux of their fate. What keeps the quirky characters afloat are the spunky, rustic dialogues that gag by themselves. For instance, when Angad asks his older brother about his sexual preference, Saif in his typical style blurts out, “Madame Curie, curious,” he asks this after Saif’s escapades with a transgender. The dialogues between Saif and the transvestite also bear testimony to this.

On the performance front, all actors have put their heart and soul into their characters and they shine on screen. Unfortunately, the characters are two-dimensional and cardboard thin. Of the supporting cast, Sobhita Dhulipala as Zubin’s girlfriend, Amyra Dastur as Neha — Angad’s fiance, Isha Talwar as the wedding photographer and Saif’s love interest, Treasurywala as Ann along with Shivam Patil as her boyfriend Jason who calls himself “Jehangir Jehangir” have their moments of on-screen glory.

Overall with good production quality, debutant director Akshat Verma’s attempt at this noir comedy is engaging but it goes without saying that the script material tries to sell itself a little too hard.

It was a misty Friday morning here with the minimum temperature recorded at 8 degrees Celsius, one notch above the season’s average, the weather office said.

The Met Office has predicted a clear day ahead. “The morning was misty with shallow fog. The day will mainly be clear,” an India Meteorological Department (IMD) official said.

The maximum temperature is likely to hover around 23 degrees Celsius. Visibility stood at 1,500 metres and the humidity was recorded at 80 per cent at 8.30 a.m.

The Railways cancelled 23 trains while 41 trains were delayed and five rescheduled due to fog in several parts of northern India.

The maximum temperature on Thursday settled at 22.7 degrees Celsius, three notches above the season’s average while the minimum temperature was recorded at 8 degrees Celsius, one notch above season’s average.

India on Friday deployed a remote sensing Cartosat and 30 other satellites, including 28 from six nations into the earth’s orbit after a copybook launch from its spaceport here.

The 44.4-metre tall Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C40) roared into a clear sky after a perfect lift-off at 9.29 a.m. following a 28-hour countdown. The 320-tonne rocket would eject the satellites one-by-one and deploy them into the earth’s lower orbit 17 minutes and 18 seconds after the lift-off. The spaceport is about 80 km northeast of Chennai off the Bay of Bengal coast.

Of the 31 satellites, three are Indian and the rest are from Canada, Finland, France, South Korea, UK and the US. The Indian satellites include the 710 kg Cartosat-2 series for Earth observation as the primary satellite of the mission, along with co-passenger payloads, including 100 kg micro satellite and a 10 kg nano satellite.

Cartosat-2 series was the first to be separated from the rocket and injected into the sun synchronous orbit at 505km above the earth, followed by the 10 kg nano satellite and the 100 kg micro-sat in different orbits. The Cartosat-2 series would orbit around the Earth for five years. The micro satellite would be India’s 100th satellite in space around the earth’s orbit.

The first space mission in 2018 came four months after a similar rocket failed to deliver the country’s eighth navigation satellite in the earth’s lower orbit on August 31, 2017.

Crime in the national capital increased by 12 per cent in 2017, due to factors like high number of migrants and economic disparity, slack family control have a bearing on the rising figures, according to Delhi Police.

Though police records claimed that major crimes like rape and murder had declined, increase in motor vehicle thefts continued to be an area of concern.

According to the data shared by Delhi Police, 2,23,075 cases were registered in 2017 as compared to 1,99,110 in 2016. The total Indian Penal Code (IPC) crimes per lakh of population during 2017 was 1,263 in comparison to 1,137 in 2016.

The police said that the increase in the number of cases registered was due to “fair registration of crimes, online registration of FIRs pertaining to property thefts and motor vehicle robbery and registration of FIRs on all complaints of women.”

Delhi Police commissioner Amulya Patnaik said that “socio-economic disparities” were a significant criminogenic factor, coupled with other issues.

“Socio-economic disparities between the opulent and the less affluent are a significant criminogenic factor, and the resultant youth impatience, driven by a pronounced get-rich-quick penchant, gets discernibly reflected in delinquent street demeanour,” Patnaik said.

The Delhi Police chief said that issues of women’s safety and the menace of street crime demanded a focused strategy.

With incidents of terror occurring frequently across the globe, anti-terror measures were also on the top of their list, he stated.

Patnaik said that their focus last year was on preventive policing rather than reactive policing. “Beat-in-focus policing, identification of active criminals and effective surveillance on them and high visibility of police on streets led to a reduction in heinous crimes by 23.43 per cent last year. Street crimes like robberies and snatchings also declined by 21.05 per cent,” he remarked.

R P Upadhyaya, special commissioner of police (Crime), said that 6,057 heinous crimes were reported in 2017 as opposed to 7,910 in 2016, thereby showing a decline of 23.43 per cent.

The senior officer said that unplanned urbanisation, urban anonymity are some of the factors that impact crime in Delhi. “The large expansion of new colonies like Dwarka and Rohini and mushrooming of numerous unplanned colnies is important criminogenic factors. A substantial population is living in jhuggis and are facing lack of civic amenities,” he elaborated.

Statistics showed a minor decline of 0.73 per cent in rape cases. Murder cases also showed a decline by 7.78 per cent and dacoities showed a decline of 20 per cent.

The police claimed that insistence on focused investigation led to a high rate of detection of heinous cases which was 87.98 per cent in 2017 as opposed to 71.81 per cent in 2016.

A total of 60,10,772 challans were issued by the Delhi Traffic Police last year, with the police collecting Rs 94.25 crore.

Statistics also showed a minor decline of 0.9 per cent in the fatal accidents. That was attributed to the measures like suitable deployment of night checking-cum-patrolling parties by the traffic police and analysis of accidents.

Film: Mukkabaaz

Starring: Vineet Kumar, Zoya Hussain, Jimmy Sheirgill, Ravi Kissan, Directed by Anurag Kashyap

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Rating: ****

Really, we couldn’t hope for a better start to our movie-going spree in 2018. Mukkabaaz is many things at the same time. To begin with it, it is not just an ode to pugilism. It is an ode to that thing called love.

Mukkabaaz is Anurag Kashyap’s most romantic film to date. It’s about, believe it or not, love at first sight when Bareilly’s self-proclaimed Mike Tyson, aka Shravan Singh (Vineet Singh, startling in his transformation into a ferocious fighter) happens to see Sunaina (newcomer Zoya Hussain, expressive in her silences).

The sequence where Shravan falls in love brilliantly yokes violence and tenderness, and sets the pace for what is to follow. This is a film steeped in the ethos of ethnicity, immersed in the culture of caste and gender prejudices.

But it’s not as bereft of hope and humour as one would think Kashyap’s milieu of mofussil mayhem would be. This is a mellower more sensitive world, a world of love and compassion in a universe of corruption and debauchery.

The smalltown setting is chilling in its bold undertones of violence. Kashyap’s Bareilly (as we come to know the setting to be) is run by a glorified goon Bhagwan Das Mishra (Jimmy Sheirgill) a sadistic patron-saint, who early in the narrative asks the local Tyson to drink his urine from a bottle, “like holy water”.

We never know whether Shravan actually performs the offensive act of subservience. The film’s anxious editors (Arati Bajaj, Ankit Bidyadhar) cut away from the sordid sequence of subjugation.

But knowing Shravan we can easily conclude he would never eat shit, or drink pee. This is a boy-man on a mission to prove to the world and his disapproving father, that boxing is not a soft option but a hard career decision.

In the film’s most powerfully acted episode Shravan hits back hard at his father’s contemptuous reading of his son’s ambitions, taunting the older man for achieving so little in life. It’s a scene of abject filial cruelty performed with such guilt and hurt by Vineet Kumar, that a potentially stereotypical father-son confrontation scene acquires a towering personality denoting the entire gamut of conflicts that go into the aspirations of one generation as they are passed on to another.

Son says, father has no respect for his passion. Father thins son is talking about ‘fashion’. It’s a silly confusion, that hides the larger growing tensions simmering in small towns where youngsters want to make something of their lives. But what????

Linguistic confusion plays a major part in driving the plot forward. The actor Shree Dhar Dubey who plays the hero’s buddy insists on using smatterings of angrezi in his conversations. A conceit that infuriates our Shravan.

Elsewhere cow vigilantes are busy, for no particular reason, thrashing a suspect while someone films the brutality on a phone. In the smalltown fables of Kashyap and his ilk of directors mofussil directors, video recordings on phone are indicative of how roughly hewn technology is into everyday life.

Our hero roughs up his casteist senior at his workplace. When the man wets himself in fear Shravan gleefully films the man’s humiliation. It’s not just villains who expose their dirty subconscious.

The dialogues and situations are pronouncedly scatological, as they are wont to be in a Kashyap film. But the tone changes oh-so-delicately when Shravan is around the love of his life. Balancing between bouts of boxing brutality and episodes of unfettered tenderness Mukkabaaz is Anurag Kashyap’s most vividly written and fluidly executed film since the underrated Dev D.

The performances are so powerful you fear they would outdistance the director’s mastery over the patois of mayhem, and none more powerful than Vineet Kumar in a career-making role and performance that compares favourably with Robert de Niro’s boxer’s shots in Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull.

Not that Kashyap is Scorcese. Heavens, no! Kashyap is on a trip of his own, tripping cheekily over the live wires that are thrown all over the bleak brutal and wounded landscape of his films. And it’s not just Vineet Kumar who comes forward with a performance that defines the director’s quenchless thirst for searching out the violence that underlines life lived on the fringes. Ravi Kissan and Jimmy Sheirgill are equally superb in their roles as the coach and the ganglord. These are actors who know the culture of caste and gender politics. They feel the throbbing veins of violence.

As the narrative progresses it acquires the personality of a tightly-wound entity coiling and recoiling into shapes of tenderness and venom. Mukkabaaz is a different more balanced and less unsettled beast than any film Kashyap has made. While all his recent films portrayed the dark ugly sinister underbelly of mofussil existence this time, just this once, the Director has allowed himself to explore the tricky relationship between love and violence with gentle care.

This is the Director’s most sensitive film to date. It hits a hard punch. And not just in the boxing ring.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday said he was “proud” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “defeating” Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in an international survey of world’s top leaders.

“PM @narendramodi defeats Donald Trump, China’s Xi Jinping in popularity – Proud moment for every Indian,” tweeted Yogi.

Gallup International in its annual survey, Opinion of Global Leaders conducted across 50 nations, placed Modi on the third position behind German chancellor Angela Merkel, who took the top spot followed by French President Emmanuel Macron among world’s top leaders.

Modi, with a net score of 8, climbed up on the global rating and is now ranked third; the highest ever rank any Indian prime minister has got so far in the GIA Global polls.

While, Jinping with a net score of 5 was at the fifth spot, Trump who has been in office for just over a year polled miserably with 58 per cent of the respondents holding an unfavourable view of him.

According to Gallup, 53,769 persons were interviewed globally. In each country a representative sample of around 1,000 men and women was interviewed either face-to-face, or via phone, or through online mediums.

A 33-year-old PhD student of Indira Gandhi National Open University, Mukul Jain, who went missing from JNU campus on Monday, returned to his house in Ghaizabad on Thursdayaround 12.30 p.m.

Police quoted him as saying that after a recent break up in friendship he felt depressed and went Patna to take holy dip in river Ganga.

Mukul reprotedly told his neighbors that his disappearance was his mistake. “He came home alone and was looking very weak. Even his eyes were pale. He knocked on the door of his house but after no one opened it, he came to our house and asked about well being of his mother and sister,”  Mukul’s neighbor Kusum.

Ashok, one of few friends Mukul had in neighborhood, told The Statesman that people were relating Mukul’s disappearance with Najeeb, who had also disappeared from JNU more than a year ago. As police had recovered Mukul’s wallet and phone from JNU’s lab it made some people suspect foul play play in his disappearance, he said.

About 430 people were stuck on a train overnight in Japan because of heavy snow that blanketed much of the country’s Japan Sea coast, a railway official said on Friday.

The train started moving again shortly before 10:30 a.m., about 15 hours after it had been forced to stop the previous evening, said Shinichi Seki, a spokesman for the Niigata branch of JR East railway company.

The four-car train departed Niigata city in heavy snow Thursday at 4:25 p.m., more than an hour behind schedule, Seki said. As the snow accumulated, the train’s wheels couldn’t turn anymore, and it stopped between stations about 7 p.m. at a railway crossing.

Officials decided it was too risky to evacuate all the passengers because of the deep snow and darkness, Seki said.

The train had electricity and heat and toilets. Five passengers who said they did not feel well were taken off.

Some passengers were allowed to leave the train after sunrise with the help of railroad personnel, if family members had come to meet them.

Trains continued to be delayed or suspended on Friday.

Seki apologized for the major trouble caused to travelers.

Actress Natalie Portman is reportedly in negotiations to replace Reese Witherspoon as the lead in “Pale Blue Dot”, about a successful female astronaut. Fox Searchlight will now look to find Portman’s male co-star, reports variety.com.

Witherspoon had left the role in last November due to scheduling conflicts with season 2 of “Big Little Lies”. However, she will continue to produce the project with Bruna Papandrea. It will be directed by “Fargo” and “Legion” creator Noah Hawley.

“Pale Blue Dota follows a successful female astronaut who, after coming back home from a mission in space, starts to unravel when confronted by her seemingly perfect American dream life. The film explores the theory that astronauts who spend long periods of time in space begin to lose their sense of reality when they return home.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj helped an Indian woman in bringing back the mortal remains of her son, with whom she was travelling from Australia to India, after he died suddenly at the Kuala Lumpur international airport.

The minister’s response yesterday came after a netizen sought her help in the matter through a tweet.

“@SushmaSwaraj @MEAIndia – urgent and kind request – one of my close friends & his mom travelled from Australia to India. In Kuala Lumpur International Airport, my friend collapsed suddenly and passed away. My friend’s mom is alone in KLIA and don’t know much to get help,” he had tweeted.

Following his tweet, Swaraj assured help from the Indian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur and said the body would be flown to India at the government’s expense.

Later, she tweeted, “Indian High Commission official is escorting the mother and mortal remains of the deceased son from Malaysia to Chennai. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family”.

Film director Vishal Pandya’s fourth installment of the “Hate Story” franchise is now scheduled to release on March 9. The erotic thriller, which features Urvashi Rautela and Karan Wahi, was earlier slated to release on March 2.

Urvashi on Thursday tweeted: “‘Hate Story IV’ releases March 9, 2018. Vishal Pandya, T-Series.” Pandya wrote: “Walk a mile to avoid a fight, But when one starts, Don’t back down an inch… ‘Hate Story 4’ 9 March 2018.”

Actress Ihana Dhillon, known for Punjabi films like “Daddy Cool Munde Fool” and “Tiger”, will make her Bollywood debut with “Hate Story 4”. The shooting for the fourth installment took place in London. The film also features Sooraj Pancholi and Gurmeet Choudhary.

Title: Nevertheless: A Memoir

Author: Alec Bladwin

Publisher: Harper/Harper Collins Publishers

Pages: 288

Price: Rs 599

Unforgettable actors are renowned for the sheer variety of roles in their onscreen careers, though their normal lives beyond the limelight may not be as dramatic as these portrayals. Alec Baldwin could, however, well qualify — he may have learnt to operate a nuclear submarine for one of his roles but the way he rose to the heights where he is from his origins is the stuff of epics.

We know Baldwin, the eldest of the four acting brothers, as equally capable with action, romance but especially comic roles, which he plays with panache, or for his roles, leading or supporting, in films spanning “Beetlejuice”, “Pearl Harbor”, “The Marrying Man”, “Ghosts of Mississippi” to the “Mission Impossible” franchise. He was once married to Kim Bassinger. He is famous for his portrayals of Donald Trump, before and after he became President, in “Saturday Night Live”. What more could make him stand out?

Much more, as Baldwin tells us in this most disarmingly candid, introspectively insightful, totally unpretentious and quite moving account of his life before, during and beyond movies. It is rendered with no sense of self-pity — as far as his impoverished background was concerned — but redolent of his trademark wit and keen observation.

Beginning with a list of desired occupations spanning proprietorship of a bespoke stationery shop to prison warden to nightclub owner (like Rick Blaine of “Casablanca” whom “all men would envy” and “women, against their better judgment would throw themselves at me nightly”), he tells us he didn’t intend to become an actor.

“I didn’t end up choosing any of these careers and fell into a completely different line of work. I never imagined I would do what I’ve done for a living or see what I’ve seen,” he says, adding that, through acting, he could satisfy some of the desires of the imagined careers.

And he admits that he didn’t want what most people in the entertainment industry seek for his relationship to it was much simpler. “Acting was a way to ease, though never eliminate, the financial anxieties of the boy from South Shore Long Island who remains in me today,” he says, also revealing he wrote this book “not to discuss my work, my opinions or my life” but because he was “paid to write it”.

Frequently seen portraying powerful immoral men or narcissistic though inherently moral characters, Baldwin grew up in a small, not very fashionable, house on New York’s Long Island where he and his five siblings (three brothers and two sisters) shared one of its two rooms.

After an evocative — and fairly exhaustive — description of his surroundings, his struggles, his relationship with his parents (to whom he pays tribute for letting none of him and his siblings fall into bad ways), he moves to his entry into show business — via soap operas and then theatre. This was where he changed from Xander, as his parents had named him, and the biggest challenges were developing a liking for alcohol and fending off gay agents.

When it comes to his Hollywood career, Baldwin may disappoint by forsaking a “tell-all” account full of juicy gossip for a more nuanced approach of his perceptions and observations of top actors, directors and the whole business itself.

Interesting details are, however, not absent entirely — fans of Sean Connery will find his treatment by his wife at a party for “The Hunt for Red October” (1990), in which Baldwin played the key role of the hero — CIA analyst Jack Ryan — particularly hilarious, while admirers of Tom Clancy, on whose bestseller it was based, will find the author’s treatment on set and comments on the film version absorbing. The actor’s own fans will also come to know why he did not reprise the role of Jack Ryan in subsequent installments of the franchise.

There is much more about Baldwin’s take on movies he did (including less known ones and why he did them and what he liked about them), movies he wished he could have done and movies he is inspired by (“The Godfather”) and the people he has worked with — and those he admires (at the very last).

As said, it is not a conventional movie memoir — even for hardcore fans, but as an account of rising above straitened circumstances and the reality of showbiz, its unlikely to be bettered.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday congratulated ISRO and its scientists on the successful launch of 31 satellites in a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and said the achievement will benefit the nation’s citizens, farmers and fishermen.

Taking to Twitter shortly after the PSLV-C40 took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota, Modi said the launch signifies ISRO’s “glorious achievements” and “bright future of India’s space programme”.

“My heartiest congratulations to @isro and its scientists on the successful launch of PSLV today. This success in the New Year will bring benefits of the country’s rapid strides in space technology to our citizens, farmers, fishermen etc.,” he said.

Taking note of the fact that it was the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) 100th satellite launch, Modi said: “The launch of the 100th satellite by @isro signifies both its glorious achievements, and also the bright future of India’s space programme.”

“Benefits of India’s success are available to our partners! Out of the 31 Satellites, 28 belonging to 6 other countries are carried by today’s launch,” he added.

In the first space mission of 2018, ISRO successfully launched 31 satellites in a PSLV from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR at 9.29 am.

The 42nd flight of the 44.4-metre tall PSLV-C40 carrying the 710-kg Cartosat-2 series satellite took off from SDSC in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh which is about 80 km northeast of Chennai off the Bay of Bengal coast.

The countdown to launch the PSLV-C40/Cartosat-2, India’s 100th satellite with the primary objective of providing high-resolution, scene-specific spot imagery, started on Thursday morning.

The 31 satellites with a combined weight of 1,323 kg have been integrated with the PSLV for deploying them in the earth’s lower orbit after lift off.

Of the 31 satellites, three are Indian and 28 are from six countries: Canada, Finland, France, South Korea, UK and the US.

The Indian satellites are 710 kg Cartosat-2 series for Earth observation as the primary satellite of the mission, along with co-passenger payloads, including 100 kg micro satellite and a 10 kg nano satellite.

About 17 minutes 18 seconds after the lift off, the Cartosat-2 series will be separated and injected into its 505 km sun synchronous orbit. The Cartosat-2 has been designed to stay in its orbit for five years.

Among the 28 international co-passenger satellites, 19 belong to the US, five from South Korea and one each from Canada, France, UK and Finland.

ISRO would be adopting an optimum separation sequence of all its satellites so as to avoid any collisions.

The space mission comes four months after a similar rocket failed to deliver the country’s eighth navigation satellite in the earth’s lower orbit on August 31, 2017.

ISRO was holding all kinds of system tests to ensure that the problem does not recur in this mission, he added.

As an observational satellite, Cartosat will beam high-quality images for cartographic, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and regulation and utility management like road network monitoring.

hroughout the valley and Ladakh region temperatures were sub-zero on Friday although a nightlong partial cloud cover marginally broke the cold wave sweeping Jammu and Kashmir.

“At minus 14.8 Kargil town recorded the lowest night temperature in the state while it was minus 7.7 in Leh town,” an official of the Met Department said.

It was minus 3.2 in Srinagar, minus 3.5 in Pahalgam and minus 5.4 in Gulmarg.

The Kashmir Valley is passing through the 40-day long period of harsh winter called the ‘Chillai Kalan’ that will end on January 30.

There has so far been scant snowfall in the valley this Chillai Kalan. The Met has forecast rain or snow between Saturday and Monday.

Jammu city recorded 6.6, Katra 8, Batote 5.6, Banihal 0.8, Bhaderwah 3.8 and Udhampur 4.9 degrees Celsius as minimum temperatures.

Filmmaker-choreographer and actor Prabhudheva says success gives happiness but also brings a lot of pressure for doing better. Prabhudheva on Friday treated his fans to question and answer session, where a user asked him how he feels when he has accomplished a task and gains appreciation for it.

“Success always gives happiness but it also brings the pressure of doing better… So I try to keep a cool, take success and failure with equal spirit,” Prabhudheva replied. Asked about his next “Mercury”, he said: “‘Mercury’ will be an interesting and exciting pan-India release.”

Prabhudheva will be seen playing an antagonist for the first time in his career in the Tamil silent film “Mercury”. Directed by Karthik Subbaraj, the film stars Sananth, Deepak, and Remya Nambeesan. A user asked Prabhudheva who is his all-time inspiration? “My father,” he replied. Asked when will he direct a Tamil film next, Prabhudehva said: “Very soon.”

A fan asked what would he choose — acting, dancing, direction or producing films. “I’m greedy, I want it all,” he said.