Source : BBC News : Officials told state media that the wreckage had been found, but an aviation spokesman said he could not confirm this. The Aseman Airlines passenger plane came down in the Zagros mountains on Sunday, and all 66 people on board are feared to have been killed. Hundreds of mountaineers with dogs and drones are trying to reach the site.

The searchers face bad weather conditions. Due to fog and strong winds, helicopters that were deployed for the search at dawn on Monday have had to be grounded, a Red Crescent official told local media.

And on Sunday, teams had to stop work altogether due to winds and snow. The ATR 72-500 twin-engine turboprop was travelling from Tehran to the south-western city of Yasuj. Flight EP3704 left Tehran at 04:30 GMT on Sunday, and crashed about an hour later in the Mount Dena area, about 22km (14 miles) from its destination.

Image copyrightREUTERS

On Monday officials from the region told news channels rescuers had reached the site.

But both channels – IRINN and English-language Press TV – said they could not confirm the reports independently, and a civil aviation spokesman told Reuters news agency the reports could not be confirmed. The crashed plane was 25 years old, Iran’s civil aviation organisation said. Sixty passengers, two security guards, two flight attendants and the pilot and co-pilot were on board. Following the crash, the airline initially said that all on board had died, but later on Sunday said that it could not confirm this as no-one had reached the site.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani expressed sympathy for all involved, saying in a statement that the incident brought “great grief and sorrow”. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the accident “saddened the hearts”.  Iran has suffered several aviation accidents in recent years and has an ageing aircraft fleet. The country has struggled to obtain spare parts to maintain its planes in the face of international sanctions imposed to curb its nuclear programme. Those sanctions have been mostly lifted under a 2015 deal between Iran and the US alongside several other powers.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand recently released a new campaign worldwide, focused on the next generation of travellers.  Its slogan, “Open to the new shades”, aims to show the diversity of travellers to the southeast Asian country, but has left a few people scratching their heads as to its meaning. Here, we take a look at other tourism slogans which may seem a little strange.

You have to take your hat off to El Salvador‘s tourist board; they are an honest bunch. However, emphasising the sheer size of your country, or lack thereof, seems a little counterproductive –unless your aim is for visitors to leave as quickly as they arrived.  Ukraine is a delight, with its stunning capital Kiev, cultural hub Odessa, and Lviv, with its Unesco-recognised city centre. As such, the text speak is a bit much. There was no beating around the bush in that marketing department meeting, as Slovakia went for a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin approach to promoting itself.  In fairness, it is a good idea to head to Slovakia, with its stunning Tatra Mountains and wildlife, pocket-sized but picturesque capital Bratislava, and Košice, an underrated historical city and once one of the biggest in Czechoslovakia.

The controversial Bollywood epic, Padmaavat, has prompted months of protests across India.  The film tells the story of a 14th Century Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler. The BBC explains why Hindu right-wing and caste groups believe it distorts history.

What is the dispute about?

Bollywood stars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh play the lead roles. The film tells the story of 14th Century Muslim emperor Alauddin Khilji‘s attack on a kingdom after he was smitten by the beauty of its queen, Padmavati, who belonged to the Hindu Rajput caste. Hindu groups and a Rajput caste organisation allege that the movie includes an intimate scene in which the Muslim king dreams of becoming intimate with the Hindu queen. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali has said the film does not feature such a “dream sequence” at all. But rumours of such a scene were enough to enrage right-wing Hindu groups who called for the film to be banned.

Is the film historically accurate?

While Khilji is a historical figure, historians believe that Padmavati is fictional.

The name of the queen, and the plot of the film, are believed to be based on an epic poem, Padmaavat, by 16th-Century poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42048512

nasa Report :The color-enhanced image was taken on Feb. 7 at 5:42 a.m. PST (8:42 a.m. EST), as Juno performed its eleventh close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 5,086 miles (8,186 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of 39.9 degrees.

That’s the story behind “America’s Musical Journey,” the new feature-length, documentary from Brand USA, which debuts Thursday, February 15 with a massive gala at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The movie is a star-studded affair, featuring singer/songwriter Aloe Blacc as he travels around the country exploring the rich heritage of American music. Blacc doesn’t do all the storytelling, however, as Morgan Freeman narrates.  TravelPulse spoke with Tom Garzilli, Chief Marketing Officer for BrandUSA to get his thoughts on the movie. “People came from around the world,” Garzilli said, “and they brought their music and their culture with them. That is what, over time, became American music. Now, American music is part of the world. It’s that connection that connects them with our country. “That fact speaks to the breadth of different cultures that makes people want to come here.” Blacc told Billboard.com much the same: “The film company was interested in working with me, and I thought it was a great idea to lend my voice to the story. As a singer and an artist, I represent the country as well, so this film in a lot of ways was created for that purpose as being a representation of what America has contributed to the world.”

The movie follows Blacc as he interacts with musicians and musical groups around the country such as: Gloria and Emilio Estefan, Jon Batiste, Ramsey Lewis, Dr. John, Irma Thomas and The Detroit Youth Choir. The movie also spends a lot of time tracing the path of Louis Armstrong, who had a big personal impact on Blacc’s life and career. It is through conversations with those people that Brand USA hopes to showcase everything that is amazing about America. “Our core mission,” Garzilli continued, “is to invite, inspire and welcome visitors to America. I know this movie is going to touch people and inspire them; and it very much tells the story we want to tell of a diverse, big country with a lot to offer. It’s just a fun, emotional way of getting that message to people.” Brand USA had previously spoken with TravelPulse’s Mia Taylor on how confident the organization is about the country’s travel outlook. “America’s Musical Journey” was produced in a partnership with Expedia and Air Canada. It is the second Brand USA documentary, following “National Parks Adventure,” which was the highest-grossing documentary of 2016.

“What we offer in the U.S. is breadth of experience, diversity of experience and the welcoming nature of our people,” said Garzilli. “What we offer is tremendous value because you can do so much within a single trip. And, you can come back again and again and do different things.” “America’s Musical Journey” will be available in IMAX and 3D at select theaters worldwide. “They’re taking this film,” Garzillii said about the theaters who are showing the film, “because they know people want to be reminded of why they love the U.S.A. so much, and they want to learn more and more about it.” Brand USA has been on a role from a newsmaking standpoint as of late, launching a new streaming television product and hiring former Mexico Tourism Board CEO Lourdes Berho to head their efforts in Mexico.

In 1990, Gary Erickson was running a struggling bakery in Emeryville, California. He enjoyed baking—many of his recipes came from his mother—but had a hard time keeping his business afloat. He wanted to do right by his customers and employees and make a positive dent in the world, but he didn’t know how to create a strategic plan that would get him there—while allowing him to follow his twin passions: climbing and cycling. His philosophy on bike touring was similarly amorphous. Instead of burdening himself with gear and a careful plan, Erickson preferred to set out, often with his buddy Jay, with just a seat bag packed with essentials and an open mind. The two traveled all over the European Alps this way, exploring remote sections of road—pedaling and, in some case, even shouldering their bikes over Alpine passes. “We didn’t know where we were going to sleep at night or eat each day,” Erickson says. “But traveling light gave us freedom and exposed us to new people and experiences.”

One morning, back in California, the duo embarked on what they thought would be a 125-mile bike ride through the mountains east of San Francisco. The ride turned out to be 175 miles long, and all Erickson had for fuel was 6 energy bars. He had eaten five of them, but couldn’t stomach the thought of a sixth. “I was starving, and I knew I desperately needed to eat something,” recalls Erickson, “but I couldn’t bring myself to eat another bar,” he says. “It was a taste issue. I knew I could solve it, that I could make something that tasted—and worked—better.”

THE FOLLOWING YEAR, in 1991, Erickson moved into a crummy $300-a-month garage and got to work in his mom’s kitchen. “I got my mom involved because, first, she was the person who taught me how to bake and, second, I trusted her sense of taste to balance out my desire to make an all-natural energy bar with no butter, sugar, or oil,” Erickson says. Painstakingly tracking each recipe, he subjected his friends to new batches for the next six months. “For a while, the recipes kept getting further and further away from what you’d call food. Finally, after one failed batch, I decided to start over. I got out my mom’s classic oatmeal/chocolate-chip cookie recipe and used that as the foundation. My friends loved it.” That recipe would eventually become the basis for the original Clif Bar. A few months later, after a year and a half of trying to crack the all-natural, and still-tastes-good code, Erickson made his first sale to a bike shop. More bike shops signed on, and before long, his bakery had evolved into an energy bar company.

SO WHY DOES AN ENERGY BAR COMPANY inspired by an epic bike ride have climbing-themed branding? The answer: Erickson’s father, Clifford. “My dad turned me on to nature with trips to Yosemite, where we’d hike or ski,” Erickson says. “As a kid, we took these wonderful road trips with my uncle and cousins where we’d pack up the Pontiac and drive from national park to national park, camping for two days before moving on.”

Those camping trips as a child turned into climbing adventures as a young man. In 1982, he and a buddy scaled the face of Half Dome, in Yosemite Valley—a climb that ultimately inspired the now iconic packaging. “My friend Doug Gilmour, who designed the packaging, always saw me as a self-reliant climber,” Erickson says. “Part of my personality comes from those early trips with my dad.” On his father’s 66th birthday, Erickson told his dad that he was naming his new energy bar after him.

ERICKSON NOW HAD AN ENERGY BAR people liked and a company full of potential, but he still needed one more ingredient to make it a success: a business-savvy partner who shared his vision. He found that—and more—in Kit Crawford, a jazz dancer and performing artist. Crawford’s parents had raised her on homegrown, organic foods, which instilled in her a deep connection between the earth and what we eat. In an effort to get her attention, Erickson took modern dance lessons. “We were friends, and I wanted to be more than that,” he admits. “Then she married someone else.”

Fourteen years later, after Crawford’s first marriage ended, their romance finally blossomed. Together—their desks are now ten feet apart—they’ve slowly turned Clif into the company it is today. “When I developed Clif, I never thought of making a ton of money or an exit strategy,” he says. “I always took the long view.” As the company has grown, so has Crawford’s influence. “From how we took care of our employees to the organic ingredients we use, all those decisions came from Kit,” he says. Erickson credits Crawford’s direction for their decision to make employee health and happiness a priority, and create a workplace with an employee cafeteria that serves sustainably sourced foods and an on-site gym, yoga studio, and climbing wall. Ten years ago, Erickson and Crawford went one step further and created an employee stock ownership program. “Everyone thought Kit and I were nuts, but we quadrupled the size of Clif together,” says Erickson. Clif has ridden the energy bar boom to become one of the biggest independent players in the business. As the energy foods universe has expanded, so has Clif. Over the past two decades, they’ve launched the successful LUNA bars for women and a wide range of other products, including nut-butter filled bars, whey protein bars, and Z bars, a line of organic energy snacks for kids.

But until 2016, there was a missing piece. “We had deep relationships with the people who grew our ingredients. We shared our values with the employees at our headquarters, in Emeryville, California, but the bars were baked by someone else,” Erickson says.

That changed when Clif built its own commercial bakery from scratch, in Twin Falls, Idaho, employing nearly 300 people. Like Clif’s LEED Platinum headquarters in Emeryville, the new $90 million Twin Falls facility is a special building, designed around connecting people with nature through windows, skylights, stone walls, and indoor plants.

It’s all part of Clif Bar’s values of advocating for organic agriculture and doing what it can to improve our current food system and the lives of its employees. “Over the last ten years, Kit and I have set out to build a company and a culture that holds itself responsible to five bottom lines: our business, brands, employees,  communities, and planet.”

A journey to Rara lake is one of the most incredible and fascinating  in all the Himalayan range lie northwest of Kathmandu in the remote area of Karnali. Lovely Place in the world  – Rara Lake  If you are looking of wilderness and solitude travel, this visiting is an ideal choice. The route is very much ‘off the beaten track’ and affords glimpses of cultures and scenery very different from the rest of Nepal. The clear, high altitude lake of Rara, which mirrors the snow capped Himalayas is ringed with blue pine, black juniper forest and Himalayan cypress Lake Rara is a popular serenity pilgrimage for Nepalese.  Rara Lake is five kilometers long and two kilometers wide and is the largest lake in Nepal. The national Park is one of the best places in Nepal to see wildlife: musk deer, leopards, ghorals, tahr, Himalayan black beer, and the rare red panda are all native. In summer rainfall is low, and ideal for trekking. In the winter there is often snow on the ridge surrounding the lake, in the autumn season trekkers are rewarded with a profusion of alpine flowers.  The park is also a bird watcher’s delight, especially during November and April when many species of birds visit during their seasonal migration.

Deepak Neupane : Dolpa is one the five districts of Karnali zone. It is the largest and least populated district of Nepal

covering 5.36% of the total area of the country. It lies completely in the Trans-Himalayan region of Nepal and its headquarters is Dunai. Dolpa boasts for its natural beauty and cultural wealth. Up until 1996 foreigners were not allowed access to this region so the culture has largely been unaffected by tourism. Trekking in Upper Dolpa offers you the remarkable and breathtaking experience of a lifetime. The notable features seen here are snowy peaks, ancient and remote villages, rich wildlife, lovely Buddhist monasteries and wonderful lakes.

Upper Dolpa presents an exposure to the high and remote Himalayan valleys, resembling the Tibetan highlands. The main highlight of Dolpa trekking includes “Shey Phoksundo National Park” which is one of the major National Parks of Nepal. “Shey Phoksundo Lake” is another famous feature of this region. The lake is totally free of aquatic life, which the crystal waters clearly demonstrate. Surrounded by rocks, forests, and snow-capped peaks, the area has been described as one of the world’s “Natural Hidden Wonders”. The hardy highlanders of Dolpa are traders, exchanging barley for Tibetan rock salt and they take their yaks onto the Tibetan plateau during the summer for grazing.

Dolpa is located at the head of the Bheri river to the north of the Dhaulagiri ranges and to the south of the Tibetan Plateau. Dolpos live at the altitude of 13-14000 ft.and they have 40 settlements in all. Their physical features and habits largely resemble those of the Lhopas.they are farmers, but their chief occupation is also animal husbandry. They practice both bon-po and Buddhism. Their language and dress choices are similar to the Lhopas similar like Tibetans. upper Dolpo area called Dho and Trap. regulations to trek in Upper Dolpo, the Government of Nepal has required to get special permits from the Department of Immigration office in Kathmandu.

Upper Dolpa was first written about by David Snelgrove in his book titled “Himalayan Pilgrimmage” and after that by Peter Matthiessen in “The Snow Leopard“. This region was used as the location for Eric Valli’s superb movie “Caravan (Himalaya)”, Nepal first English subtitle movie which was a huge success and was nominated for the Oscar Award in the best foreign language film category. The book and movie help to promote the spectacular and mesmerizing places of Nepal and Dolpa region in foreign land.

Some of the attractions of this trekking route are Dho Tarap, a human settlement at the highest altitude in the world, Shey Gumba, religiously the most important Gumba in Nepal. Dolpa is rich in flora and fauna too. The rugged landscape and its remoteness of Dolpa offer stark and unspoilt natural beauty.