The crimson and red rays of the setting sun spread across the infinite expanse of the sky as villagers wrap up the day's chores.

This quintessential scene pulled out from the daily life led in the Bengal countryside has been reproduced on canvas in one of artist Bikash Poddar's Untitled paintings.

The artist who hails from the hilly town of Kaliaganj in West Bengal has created a series of landscapes inspired from the rural milieu of the state.

The artworks are on display here as part of an exhibition titled, 'Kaleido-scapes: Nature in Vibrant Hues'.

In Poddar's works, which are best known for their typical touch of Bengal, one can find images of fishermen at work in the sea, boatmen anchoring their boats — scenes that are an everyday affair in the hinterlands.

In another of his Untitled works, he uses dominant shades of blue to showcase the "calmness" of suburbs.

"In most of my paintings the mood forged almost resembles the calm before a storm with the humans being precarious and caught between situations. The paintings are a symbiotic relationship that evokes the relation between man and his creations together," he says.

The 63-year-old artist's dexterity lies in his use of the washing technique to paint on paper that makes the colours blend effortlessly to give the final artwork an additional dimension, bringing the depiction closer to reality.

"I paint in layers and try to extemporise, while giving the technique a new dimension which is usually not practised by contemporary artists in India," claims Poddar.

Underway at Gallerie Ganesha here, the exhibition also has on display evocative paintings of ruined temples.

"His works are predominantly naturescapes but they also feature human figures in perfect harmony with nature. This calm dialogue between man and nature is what makes his works special," says Shobha Bhatia, gallery director and curator of the show.

The exhibition is set to continue till April 25.

State-owned power equipment maker Bhel on Wednesday said it has added 45,254 MW capacity during the 12th Five Year Plan period (2012-17) beating the targets set for the company.

"Renewing thrust on accelerated project execution, Bhel has achieved a capacity addition of 45,274 MW of utility sets during the 12th five year plan, surpassing the Government s capacity addition target by 9 per cent," Bhel said in a statement on Wednesday.

The government had set the target of 41,661 MW power generation capacity addition for Bhel.

Bhel said it continues to remain the single largest contributor to the country s installed capacity of utility sets, with a share of 46 per cent in the 12th Plan capacity addition. Its capacity addition was 78 per cent higher than in the 11th Plan (2007-12).

During 2016-17, Bhel has achieved a capacity addition of 6,317 MW in the utility segment, which is nearly four times of the next highest achievement by any other manufacturer.

Besides, 1,422 MW of industrial sets and 78 MW of overseas sets have also been commissioned by Bhel during the year, in addition to 61 MWp of Solar Power Plants, including 50 MWp at Ananthapur in Andhra Pradesh.

With the commissioning of 4 Roof Top Solar Plants, totalling to 403 kWp, during the year, Bhel has enhanced its presence in this emerging segment as well. With this, a total of 8,538 MW has been synchronised/commissioned in the year.

The company added another feather in its cap by foraying into the field of power generation as a co-developer, with the start of commercial operation of the first unit of its 2×800 MW project at Yeramarus, Karnataka.

Karnataka Power Corporation Limited (KPCL) and Bhel are the main equity partners of Raichur Power Corporation Ltd. – the owner and operator of this plant.

In fiscal 2016-17, Bhel has maintained its leadership position in the supercritical segment by commissioning another 4 units, enhancing its tally to 14 Supercritical Steam Generators (SGs) and 12 Supercritical Steam Turbine-Generators (TGs).

So far, Bhel has contracted 48 Supercritical SG and 41 Supercritical TG sets – the highest in the country for any power equipment manufacturer. Bhel s first 700 MW rating supercritical project at KPCL s Bellary Unit 3 has also commenced commercial operation.

Despite security concerns and substantial logistic challenges, Bhel said it has successfully commissioned all three units of the prestigious 3×14 MW Salma hydropower project. The project – renamed as Afghan-India friendship Dam – was inaugurated jointly by the Prime Minister and the President of Afghanistan.

The number of people killed in southern Colombia's massive mudslides climbed to 290 on Wednesday, as officials investigated how the horrific disaster might have been prevented.

In addition to the dead, 332 people were injured in landslides that buried the Colombian town of Mocoa after flooding caused by days of torrential rains.

The mudslides occurred Friday after heavy rains caused three rivers to overflow, strewing earth, rocks and tree debris over the area.

Mocoa was home to 70,000 people, about 45,000 of whom were affected by the disaster, according to the Red Cross.

Hardest-hit by the tragedy are impoverished neighborhoods populated with residents uprooted during Colombia's five-decade-long civil war.

Authorities have opened an investigation to determine what sort of "preventive and corrective action" ought to have been taken to prevent the disaster, prosecutors said.

Meanwhile, looting has become a problem in some areas.

Local officials urged the government to dispatch more police and troops to secure the region and prevent the looting of abandoned homes.

"What the mudslides didn't carry away, the thieves did," one survivor of the disaster, Juan Luis Hernandez, 33, told in the devastated San Miguel neighborhood of Mocoa. 

Amazon has decided to refund up to $70 million to its users, a move that comes a year after the company was found guilty of illegally billing users for unauthorised in-app purchases.

The in-app charges occurred from purchases made by kids when playing with freemium apps. 

A US federal court in 2016 ruled that Amazon had failed to "clearly inform parents that free apps may still include in-app purchases, and did not provide enough notice and password requirements to prevent unwanted charges."

According to a report in Verge on Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimated that parents were charged upwards of $70 million between November 2011 and May 2016.

According to the FTC, Amazon will begin is refund programme "shortly". 

In November 2016, Amazon had requested a US district court that it would make refunds in form of gift cards, but the request was rejected. 

It is, therefore, expected that the company will refund affected customers money back directly to their debit or credit card, or through paper checks.

Artificial pancreas may better control diabetes in kids

Researchers have developed a "smart" artificial pancreas that delivers insulin via an automated way and has shown to be effective in managing diabetes in children.

The wearable artificial pancreas can track the patient's blood sugar level and adjust the amount of insulin given to keep the blood sugar in a target range.

"Up until now, parents and doctors have had to decide how much insulin to give young children throughout the day to avoid dangerously low or high blood sugars," said lead investigator Mark DeBoer, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia. 

"Our study data show, for the first time, that among young children, five to eight years old, this artificial pancreas maintains blood sugars in the target range better than the usual home regimen," DeBoer added.

The artificial pancreas uses two available diabetes devices — an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor, which senses blood sugar levels on an ongoing basis. 

Although these devices typically do not "talk" to each other, the experimental system connects the devices using sophisticated computer algorithms, DeBoer explained.

For the study, presented at the Endocrine Society's 99th annual meeting in Orlando, the team tested the artificial pancreas and usual home care regimen for 68 hours in six boys and six girls with type 1 diabetes whose age ranged between five to eight years.

With the artificial pancreas, the children had a longer time in the target blood sugar range, which was 70 to 180 mg/dL: on average, 73 per cent of the time versus 47 per cent with their usual home care, DeBoer reported. 

They also had far less time with high blood sugar levels (above 180 mg/dL) and there was no increase in episodes of low blood sugar.

ExxonMobil and partner Qatar Petroleum have signed a deal with Cyprus to carry out exploratory drilling off the east Mediterranean island's southern coast.

Qatar Petroleum chief executive Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi told the AP there's "a strong possibility" that the geological structure in the area where the partnership is licensed to drill could potentially hold hydrocarbons.

Al-Kaabi said after signing ceremony on Wednesday that a first exploration well is scheduled to be drilled in the first half of 2018.

ExxonMobil Senior Vice President Andrew Swiger said three-dimensional seismic surveys will first be conducted to determine the best drilling locations.

It's the first time that ExxonMobil has looked for oil and gas in the eastern Mediterranean, where recent large finds in Egyptian and Israeli waters have raised hopes that more could be found

Forecasters expect severe thunderstorms to move across the Southeast on Wednesday, bringing a threat of tornadoes and large hail.

The National Weather Service predicts widespread, serious thunderstorms beginning early Wednesday across much of Alabama and Georgia and into the Florida Panhandle and southwestern South Carolina.

National Weather Service meteorologist John De Block says he expects storms to last into the evening in southern and eastern Alabama. He says tornadoes are likely and there's a strong chance of baseball-sized hail.

In Georgia, meteorologist Laura Belanger says about 75 per cent of the state could experience severe weather around sunrise and see it ramp up after 2 pm.

Belanger says affected cities could include Atlanta and Augusta the site of this week's Masters golf tournament.

The mischievous voice of Danny Morrison that had the potential to tickle your funniest bone in past seasons of the Indian Premier League is set to return on air as the tenth edition of the biggest T20 carnival starting Wednesday.

Besides, 51-year-old New Zealander Morrison there will be as many as 20 commentators, who would be travelling from across the globe to grace the IPL 2017.

Keeping both the entertainment and technical aspect in view, veterans like Michael Clarke, Kevin Pietersen, Brett Lee etc., who once played in the richest T20 league, will keep the spectators off their feet this time with their voice.

“It's always great to be in India and playing in or commentating on all of the explosive action that personifies the IPL. Coming back this time as a commentator is going to be an experience I will cherish for a long time,” former England batsman Kevin Pietersen said as quoted by IANS.

In the 2016 edition, Pietersen played for Rising Pune Supergiants, who finished the season on second-last position in final rankings. This year, the 36-year-old will appear in a new role and he is pretty happy to play this way.

“I always look forward to this tournament, but in my new role as commentator, I'm looking forward to it even more. I am sure my fellow commentators and I are going to have an absolute blast, calling all the action LIVE as it unfolds to the hundreds of millions of IPL fans,” he added.

Former Australia captain Michael Clarke, who recently tried his hands with the mic during Border-Gavaskar Trophy, is excited enough to join the IPL commentators’ team.

“I have been part of this tournament as a player and this year I am eager to get behind the microphone and have some fun. Love this place, love the tournament and it is great to be a part of this commentary team,” Clarke said.

It won’t be a masculine voice that you would hear throughout the season as female commentators such as Anjum Chopra, Isa Guha, Lisa Sthalekar and Melanie Jones would also be cheering the crowd up with their tuneful commentary.

The 47-day-long event would mark its beginning with defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) facing Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on Wednesday.

For more stories related to IPL 2017

A letter written by renowned German physicist Albert Einstein replying to the queries of a science teacher in 1953 has been sold for USD 53,503 at an auction.

Einstein penned the letter in reply to a two-page questionnaire submitted by Arthur Converse, a science teacher from Iowa, concerning electrostatic theory and special relativity.

The letter, with an opening price of USD 15,000, was bought by an unidentified person.

It had been in the Converse family's possession for many years, said Sam Heller, a spokesman for the Nate D Sanders Auctions auctions that sold the letter.

The envelope of the letter indicated that it was sent from 'Room 115' of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, on September 7, 1953.

The letter seems to answer questions about Einstein's theory of relativity and how to reconcile the theory with experiments, 'Live Science' reported.

Converse was a science teacher and had sent Einstein a questionnaire regarding experiments with electroscopes, which are charge-measuring instruments.

"It is clear to the reader that Einstein was interested in Converse's questions and generous in his considerate response," said Nate Sanders, owner of Nate D Sanders Auctions.

"These documents provide a rare glimpse into Einstein's generous nature and willingness to help teachers better understand and communicate his theories," Nate said.

All evidence points to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad being behind a suspected chemical weapons attack which left more than 70 dead in a rebel-held town, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.

"All the evidence I have seen suggests this was the Assad regime… using illegal weapons on their own people," Johnson said as he arrived for a Syria aid conference in Brussels.

"What it confirms to everybody is that this is a barbaric regime which has made it impossible for us to imagine them (having) authority over Syria after this conflict," he added.

The Brussels conference, co-chaired by the EU and UN, is a follow up to last year's London meeting which raised USD 11 billion (10 billion euros) for humanitarian aid programmes in the devastated country.

It is also meant to support UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva where mediator Staffan de Mistura has reported some very modest progress in solving a conflict which has claimed more than 320,000 lives and displaced most of the Syrian population.

Assad's future role is a key sticking point — the rebels and their international backers demand that he must step down.

But Assad refuses to budge and his key ally in Moscow has backed him to the hilt against the rebels and shows no sign of changing tack.

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini urged the international community to press ahead with the peace talks, which were made even more urgent after yesterday's suspected chemical weapons attack.

"We need to give a push, a strong push to the political talks in Geneva. We have to unite the international community behind these negotiations," Mogherini said.

The Ghana Football Association (GFA) has announced that James Kwesi Appiah will be the new head coach of the men's national team from May 1.

The decision to appoint Appiah, a former Ghana captain, was taken by the FA's executive committee after approving the report of the six-man coaching search committee, the GFA said on Tuesday, reports Xinhua news agency.

Appiah, who supervised Ghana's participation at the 2014 FIFA world cup in Brazil, is expected to sign a two-year contract.

He replaces Avram Grant who ended his term as Ghana coach at the end of last February after the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Gabon.

Appiah previously served as an assistant coach from 2008 to 2012.

He was first appointed Ghana coach in 2012 but mutually parted ways with the GFA following a disagreement.

Expressing concern over African envoys' statement on attacks on Africans, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday said that all the attacks on Africans are not racial.

"The attack cannot be called racist before the probe is completed. We are committed to African students' safety," the Union minister said in Lok Sabha while replying to opposition members.

Terming the African envoys' statement 'unfortunate, painful and surprising,' Sushma said that steps taken by India to ensure safety of Africans cannot be called 'inadequate'.

"You can't say our steps are inadequate. We are committed to ensuring security of all foreigners in India," she said.

African envoys on April 3 condemned the incident and expressed deep concern over India not doing enough post the attack.

Calling the incidents 'racial, xenophobic acts', they sought international inquiry into the matter.

The African envoys held a special meeting to review the attacks and agreed to call for an independent investigation by the Human Rights Council and also to report to the African Union Commission.

Three Nigerian students were attacked during a fight that broke out on March 28 when local residents were holding a candlelight march against the death of a class 12 student who died of drug overdose. The local residents have alleged that the student, Manish Khari, was drugged by the Nigerians, who lived nearby.

With an aim to familiarise farmers with digital payment platforms and make them aware about frauds associated with it, Madhya Pradesh Police Cyber Cell has launched a unique programme called "Kisaan Konnect", which will address problems faced by crop producers.

"We have been receiving reports of farmers being cheated by financial companies including chit funds causing lot of hardships to them as they are not aware of digital technology. To address the issue in an effective manner, the Cyber Cell has launched a unique Kisaan Konnect programme to keep them abreast with latest payment platforms," State Director General of Police (DGP) Rishi Kumar Shukla said.

The Kisaan Konnect programme will begin from April 15 in the state.

Under the programme, officials of Cyber Cell are visiting all 257 Mandis (markets) of the state and are holding sessions with farmers on the issue of how they are being duped by financial companies of their hard earned money.

"Because of lack of digital awareness, the hard earned money of farmers is being at risk because of criminal elements. They are not even aware that they are not supposed to reveal their passwords to unknown persons, but they do it out of ignorance and suffer losses," the DGP said.

"We have targeted Mandis as large number of farmers visit this place during March to June to sell their produce and they were made payments by Mandis through banks via RTGS and cheque," he said.

"Our teams visit these mandis and interact with farmers to make them aware on the issues of online cyber crimes, lottery fraud and offering fake jobs to them through internet," the DGP said.

Besides they are also distributing brochures, pamphlets and banners, exhibiting short films and spread audio messages against these crimes.

Police is also roping in star-campaigners to spread the message of how to prevent from cyber crimes using audio-video method among others, he said.

They have also coined slogans like "Cyber Saksharta – Aarthik Suraksha (Cyber Literacy-financial security), Surakshit Kisan-Sampanna Kisan (Secured farmer-Well-off farmer) and Surakshit Banking-Aarthik Kshati Se Bachav (Secured banking protects from financial losses) among others to spread awareness.

US-based Cloud infrastructure provider DigitalOcean on Wednesday launched a monitoring service that provides insight into the resource utilisation and operational health of every Droplet (Cloud server).

Developers can collect and visualise metrics in graphs, monitor Droplet performance and receive alerts in one intuitive interface, with no configuration required.

"In the coming year, we'll continue to move our Monitoring service forward and introduce new capabilities for high availability, data storage, security and networking to manage larger production workloads," said Julia Austin, CTO of DigitalOcean. 

The monitoring service measures each Droplet's CPU, memory, disk utilisation, disk reads and writes, network traffic and top processes.

Metrics are collected at one-minute intervals and the data is retained to enable users to view both up-to-the-minute and historical data. 

China said today that it will lodge a diplomatic protest to India for "obstinately" allowing the Dalai Lama to visit the "disputed" Arunachal Pradesh, causing "serious damage" to bilateral ties.

"India in disregard to China's concerns obstinately arranged the Dalai Lama's visit to the disputed part of the eastern part of China-India border causing serious damage to China's interests and China-India relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters.

Chinese firmly opposes this move and will lodge representations with the Indian side, she said.

On Tuesday, the 81-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader reached Bomdila in West Kameng district to start his nine-day visit to Arunachal Pradesh.

China claims parts of Arunachal Pradesh as southern Tibet and had previously warned that if India allowed the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh it would cause "serious damage" to ties.

 Rishi Kapoor says that Pakistani cricket players should be allowed to play in the Twenty20 matches of the Indian Premier League (IPL) as cricketers from all around the world are being given a chance to showcase their talent.

The 64-year-old actor took to Twitter on the eve of the opening ceremony of the tenth edition of the IPL, where he implored the authorities to consider the neighbour's case.

"IPL. You got world players. Afghanistan makes debut. My plea is please consider Pakistani players," tweeted Rishi.

In IPL 2017, two Afghanistan cricketers Mohammad Nabi and Rashid Khan will make their debut in the T20 league tournament for Sunrisers Hyderabad.

The "Kapoor and Sons" star added that keeping the differences aside, Indians should rise to the occasion as a kinder nation and let the games begin again.

"Phir match hoga! Hum bade log hain. (Match must be played again. We are a benevolent people.) Please!" continued Rishi.

The veteran actor's plea comes in after the ties between the two countries are going through a rough patch.

No Pakistani player has played in the IPL after 2008 (year of its inception).

The tenth edition of IPL is all set to begin on Wednesday where Royal Challengers Bangalore will take on Sunrisers Hyderabad at Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, Hyderabad.

Expressing deep concern over Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) tampering in the recently concluded assembly elections, the Congress on Wednesday demanded a ban on the machines.

The Congress raised the issue in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, two days after Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal questioned the BJP’s election win in Uttar Pradesh, asking the Election Commission (EC) to release the devices for investigation into tampering allegations.

During the debate hour in Rajya Sabha, leader of opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "There is doubt on fair elections. For the first time, EVMs are in the shadow of doubt."

"We are asked why the suspicion just in UP. It is because it was done smartly. If they had done so in all 5 states, there would have been doubts. I request EVMs not to be used in Gujarat and Himachal," he added.

Other political parties, including SP, BSP, had alleged manipulations in the EVMs in the recently concluded assembly elections.

Earlier the Election Commission has dismissed the allegations and said its systems were tamper-proof.