Today is Mother Earth Day!

Everything and everyone under the Sun seems to be having an internationally recognised day dedicated to them so why not Mother Earth? After all if not for Mother Earth where would we be? So , on this day dedicated to our beloved Earth ,the only home we humans have , let's focus on the negative impact our careless actions have had on the environment and look into ways of protecting her like our very own life; because she is our life! The air that we breathe, the water that quenches our thirst and the food that sustains us all come from Mother Earth.

By polluting and destroying Earth we are only wreaking havoc in our own lives.

Life as it were pivots around Mother Earth.So , we need to act now to create an awareness of the urgent need to stop destroying Earth and its ecosystems. Otherwise doomsday will not be far away.

It is with the objective of “raising an awareness of the challenges to the wellbeing of our planet and the life it supports " that International Mother Earth Day which is also known as Earth Day was established on April 22 by the UN General Assembly in 2009. Let's strive to make this day special by pledging to act with more responsibility when it comes to protecting Mother Earth and all her precious resources that we depend on.

If we accept Mother Earth as the planet that sustains and nurtures us, then we must live in harmony with nature .

Listen to me please!

Awake all you children who blissfully slumber
And listen to the groanings of your beloved Mother Earth
I am gasping for breath choked by toxic gases
I am thirsting for a drop of unpolluted water.
The canopy of green that once nourished me
And the cool waters which failed not to refresh me
Along with the rich soil that always sustained me
Are now all shrouded in a blanket of deadly poison
That you, humankind has brazenly wrapped around me
Pushing all life I sustained and nurtured
Over the millenia to the brink of extinction
Come, my sweet children let me weep no more
Listen to my pleadings and keep all lifeforms alive!

- Miru

National Flower of Sri Lanka:

Correct flower identified

There has been much confusion about the true identity of the national flower of Sri Lanka with many referring to it as the Nil Manel or Blue lotus following pictures of the wrong species of the flower being published in various books, including school textbooks. Over the years many experts have highlighted the fact and called for an official publication of the right flower.

On a directive by the Government, the Minister of Environment, Anura Priyadarshana Yapa took the initiative recently to appoint a committee of experts to correct the misconceptions by identifying the correct species as the national flower . Accordingly, the committee has declared the Manel (not Nil manel ) the scientific name of which is Nymphaea nouchali as the National flower of Sri Lanka.

The cabinet decided to declare the ‘Manel’ flower as the National Flower on February 26, 1986 based on the recommendation of a committee (panel of judges) that reviewed the entries received from the public as the result of a request made by the government through the media. Even though the committee had decided not to name a flower that already was used as a symbol in any other country, they had been unaware that the Nymphaea nouchali had been adopted as the National Flower of

Bangladesh in 1971 perhaps because the species is known as ‘Shapla’ in Bangladesh.Following the declaration made by the recently appointed committee, steps will be taken to print the correct picture of the National flower, the Manel or Nymphaea nouchali in all school text rbooks in the near future after an official announcement.

According to experts there are many species of the flowers now in the country due to hybridization following the introduction of numerous ornamental plants into the country illegally . 

Twelve -year- old skateboarder makes history

Skateboarder Tom Schaar, aged 12, makes history with first-ever 1080.Tom Schaar has shown remarkable promise as a skateboarder but few expected a 12-year-old to become the first in the sport to land a 1080. Recently, he made history by soaring above a 27-foot quarterpipe wall, spinning three full rotations and landing with his board still underfoot.

News quickly spread via social media and the legendary Tony Hawk, who in 1999 became the first to land a 900, was among those to chime in. “I've seen Shaun White try 1080s and Mitchie Brusco crash-land a few,” Hawk Tweeted. “Tom Schaar nailed it.”

Schaar, who lives in Malibu, is among only a handful of skaters to have landed a 900. But many believed he lacked the size and strength necessary to achieve enough speed to land a 1080 on the MegaRamp.

The MegaRamp at Woodward West in Tehachapi, California features a 70-foot roll-in ramp that leads to a 50-foot gap and ultimately the quarterpipe ramp. The ramp was customised by Schaar's sponsor, Red Bull, before he began to skate. He nailed the trick on his fifth try.

“I'm pretty stoked,” Schaar said afterward. “I thought it'd take three days of trying it 40 times. I was definitely high enough and I could tell I was spinning fast enough, and right at about 720 I saw the coping and I was 2-3 feet above the coping and I got around that last 360, and I was just amazed.” he said.

“Tom Schaar is a little giant and a spinning machine. Amazing. Look forward to learning a lot from him in the future,”said skateboarding icon and MegaRamp specialist Bob Burnquist.

Courtesy: GRINDTV

'Super-Earth’ found in habitable zone

The Milky Way abounds with low-mass planets, including small, rocky ones such as Earth. That's the main conclusion of a team of European astronomers, based on their latest haul of extrasolar planets. The new discoveries—55 new planets, including 19 “super-Earths “—were presented here recently at the Extreme Solar Systems II conference by team leader Michel Mayor of the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

“We find that 40 per cent of all Sun-like stars are accompanied by at least one planet smaller than Saturn,” he says.

The number of Earth-like planets is expected to be even higher.

The new planets were found with HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), an extremely sensitive instrument used to analyze starlight, mounted on the 3.6-metre telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at Cerro La Silla in northern Chile. “We're entering an incredibly exciting period in history.”