Asteroid to Make Closest Flyby in History

Talk about too close for comfort. In a rare cosmic encounter, an asteroid will barnstorm Earth next week, missing our planet by a mere 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers).

Designated 2012 DA14, the space rock is approximately 150 feet (45 meters) across, and astronomers are certain it will zip harmlessly past our planet on February 15—but not before making history. It will pass within the orbits of many communications satellites, making it the closest flyby on record. (Read about one of the largest asteroids to fly by Earth.)

"This is indeed a remarkably close approach for an asteroid this size," said Paul Chodas, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near Earth Object (NEO) program office in Pasadena, California.

"We estimate that an asteroid of this size passes this close to the Earth only once every few decades."

The giant rock—half a football field wide—was first spotted by observers at the La Sagra Observatory in southern Spain a year ago, soon after it had just finished making a much more distant pass of the Earth at 2.6 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) away.

This time around however, on February15 at 2:24 pm EST, the asteroid will be passing uncomfortably close—ten times closer than the orbit of the moon—flying over the eastern Indian Ocean near Sumatra (map). (Watch: "Moon 101.")

Future Impact?

Chodas and his team have been keeping a close eye on the cosmic intruder, and orbital calculations of its trajectory show that there is no chance for impact.

But the researchers have not yet ruled out future chances of a collision. This is because asteroids of this size are too faint to be detected until they come quite close to the Earth, said Chodas.

"There is still a tiny chance that it might hit us on some future passage by the Earth; for example there is [a] 1-in-200,000 chance that it could hit us in the year 2080," he said.

"But even that tiny chance will probably go away within the week, as the asteroid's orbit gets tracked with greater and greater accuracy and we can eliminate that possibility."

Earth collision with an object of this size is expected to occur every 1,200 years on average, said Donald Yeomans, NEO program manager, at a NASA news conference this week.

DA14 has been getting closer and closer to Earth for quite a while—but this is the asteroid's closest approach in the past hundred years. And it probably won't get this close again for at least another century, added Yeomans.

While no Earth impact is possible next week, DA14 will pass 5,000 miles inside the ring of orbiting geosynchronous weather and communications satellites; so all eyes are watching the space rock's exact trajectory. (Learn about the history of satellites.)

"It's highly unlikely they will be threatened, but NASA is working with satellite providers, making them aware of the asteroid's pass," said Yeomans.

Packing a Punch

Experts say an impact from an object this size would have the explosive power of a few megatons of TNT, causing localized destruction—similar to what occurred in Siberia in 1908.

In what's known as the "Tunguska event," an asteroid is thought to have created an airburst explosion which flattened about 750 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of a remote forested region in what is now northern Russia (map).

In comparison, an impact from an asteroid with a diameter of about half a mile (one kilometer) could temporarily change global climate and kill millions of people if it hit a populated area.

Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center at Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that while small objects like DA14 could hit Earth once a millennia or so, the largest and most destructive impacts have already been catalogued.

"Objects of the size that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs have all been discovered," said Spahr. (Learn about what really happened to the dinosaurs.)

A survey of nearly 9,500 near-Earth objects half a mile (one kilometer) in diameter is nearly complete. Asteroid hunters expect to complete nearly half of a survey of asteroids several hundred feet in diameter in the coming years.

"With the existing assets we have, discovering asteroids rapidly and routinely, I continue to expect the world to be safe from impacts in the future," added Spahr.

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Door-to-Door Search for Suspected Cop Killer

More than 100 police officers were going door-to-door and searching for new tracks in the snow in the hopes of catching suspected cop killer Christopher Dorner overnight in Big Bear Lake, Calif., before he strikes again as laid out in his chilling online manifesto.

Police held a news conference late Thursday, alerting the residents near Big Bear Lake that Dorner was still on the loose after finding his truck burning around 12:45 p.m. local time.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said the authorities can't say for certain he's not in the area. More than half of the 400 homes in the area have been searched by police, who are traveling in two-man teams. Bachman urged people in the area to not answer the door, unless you know the person or law enforcement in uniform.

After discovering Dorner's burning truck near a Bear Mountain ski resort, police discovered tracks in the snow leading away from the vehicle. The truck has been taken to the San Bernardino County Sheriffs' crime lab.

Read More About Chris Dorner's Allegations Against the LAPD

Bachman would not comment on Dorner's motive for leaving the car or its contents, citing the ongoing investigation. Police are no aware of Dorner having any ties to others in the area.

Former LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner Sought: 'Armed and Dangerous' Watch Video

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Engaged California Couple Found Dead in Car Watch Video

She added that the search in the area would continue as long as the weather cooperates. However, a snowstorm was forecast for the area. About three choppers were being used overnight, but weather conditions were deteriorating, according to Bachman.

Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and Navy reservist, is suspected of killing one police officer and injured two others Thursday morning in Riverside, Calif. He was also accused of killing two civilians on Sunday. And he allegedly released an angry "manifesto" airing grievances against police and warning of coming violence toward cops.

In the manifesto Dorner published online, he threatened at least 12 people by name, along with their families.
"Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over. Suppressing the truth will leave to deadly consequences for you and your family," Dorner wrote in his manifesto.

One passage from the manifesto read, "I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty."

"I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own," it read. "I'm terminating yours."

Hours after the extensive manhunt dragged police to Big Bear Lake, CNN's Anderson Cooper said Dorner had sent him a package at his New York office that arrived on Feb. 1, though Cooper said he never knew about the package until Thursday. It contained a DVD of court testimony, with a Post-It note signed by Dorner claiming, "I never lied! Here is my vindication."

PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings

It also contained a keepsake coin bearing the name of former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton that came wrapped in duct tape, Cooper said. The duct tape bore the note, "Thanks, but no thanks Will Bratton."

Bratton told Cooper on his program, "Anderson Cooper 360," that he believed he gave Dorner the coin as he was headed overseas for the Navy, Bratton's practice when officers got deployed abroad. Though a picture has surfaced of Bratton, in uniform, and Dorner, in fatigues, shaking hands, Bratton told Cooper he didn't recall Dorner or the meeting.

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In the Loop: Interior pick could watch, but not deliver, a State of the Union address

The nomination announcement Wednesday afternoon of Sally Jewell, chief executive of outdoor company REI, to be secretary of the interior would put her eighth in the line of presidential succession should anything happen to President Obama, Vice President Biden, House and Senate leaders and the top four Cabinet officials at State, Treasury, Defense and Justice.

Except for one problem: She was born in England — came here when she was 3 — and thus doesn’t qualify. She would hardly be the first Cabinet member in this situation.

Others affected by this in recent years include Bush II Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, born in Taiwan, and Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, born in Prague. Ditto Nixon’s German-born secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.

What this means is that, if confirmed, Jewell will be forced to attend every State of the Union address, because she’ll never be the “designated successor.”

On another note, if she gets the job, she’ll be overseeing some places with a history of sweatshops that could compete with REI. REI says that it manufactures gear and apparel around the world, including China, Taiwan and El Salvador, but that it prides itself as being quite scrupulous in monitoring working conditions at its suppliers.

But as head of the Interior Department, Jewell would have jurisdiction over a few U.S. territories — especially the Northern Marianas — that were criticized for years as havens for immigrant smuggling, prostitution and sweatshops. (Because they’re U.S. territories, the clothing made there can be labeled “Made in U.S.A.” and come in duty-free.)

An Interior official assured us, however, that congressionally mandated minimum-wage increases and “new global trade rules embraced by the U.S.” have taken care of the problem.

So, no sweat.

Straying pols, beware

Philandering politicos around town, start quaking in your wingtips. And maybe call your lawyer.

Fair warning:L.A.-based
Gloria Allred
, attorney to many a woman involved in a high-profile controversy, was sworn in this week as a member of the D.C. bar. Which means . . . well, not much, for the moment.

Allred tells us that she’s not working on any particular case that would bring her to our fair city. But she frequently does business here, she says, and rather than operate on a “pro hac vice” basis (meaning each time she comes before a D.C. judge, she gets a one-time waiver), she decided to go all in.

She didn’t have to take the D.C. bar exam but instead used a waiver process designed for lawyers already practicing in other states.

Allred cheered the fact that there were three women on the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where she was sworn in during a Monday ceremony, along with plenty of fellow female lawyers. “That’s something you wouldn’t have seen when I was sworn in to the California bar 38 years ago,” she said.

Allred’s storied career has included going up against powerful men on behalf of the women who say they’ve been wronged. Clients have included
Sharon Bialek
, who accused former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain of sexual harassment, and
Natalie Khawam
, the sister of the woman who blew the whistle on CIA Director David Petraeus’s affair.

Should ne’er-do-well men around town worry now that Allred is poised to take on a local case at a moment’s notice? The typically bombastic lawyer’s unusually coy reply: “I’ll leave that to them to decide.”

Friendly fire

Seems no one is playing their position these days. On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Wyden
hinted that he might, maybe, possibly filibuster the nomination of White House counterterrorism adviser
John Brennan
to be CIA director for Wyden’s pal President Obama.

Apparently the Oregon Democrat is mighty upset about a new white paper from the Justice Department and wants more information about the legal justification for drone strikes against U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism. He’s promised to “pull out all the stops” to get what he’s looking for, Roll Call reports.

And for days there’s been will-they-or-won’t-they speculation that Republicans could potentially, perhaps filibuster the nomination of one of their own, former senator Chuck Hagel (Neb.) to be secretary of defense.

Which puts us in the topsy-turvy position of having a Democrat threaten a Democratic president’s nominee with filibuster, while Republicans warn they could do the same to a fellow Republican.

Never mind that it’s all posturing — filibusters of Cabinet nominees on either side are unlikely, or at least they’re unprecedented.

Which is good to remember before you pop something to relieve the vertigo.

With Emily Heil

The blog: washingtonpost.com/
intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.

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Japan's Suzuki sees April-December net profit rise 19%

TOKYO: Japan's Suzuki Motor said Thursday its net profit in the nine months to December jumped 19.2 per cent to US$517.8 million, thanks to strong Asian and domestic sales that offset a slump in Europe.

The small-car maker earned 48.42 billion yen (US$517.8 million), while operating profit rose 5.9 per cent to 92.87 billion yen on sales of 1.82 trillion yen, up 1.4 per cent from a year earlier.

The firm also said it expected to earn a net profit of 70 billion yen in the year to March on estimated revenue of 2.6 trillion yen.

On Wednesday, Suzuki said it will resume production at its small unit in Myanmar, the latest in a push by Japanese firms to tap the once-isolated state as it embarks on a programme of social and economic reforms.

The firm withdrew from its money-losing US business late last year and has said it plans to renew its focus on fast-growing markets in Asia, including India, where it has seen huge success with its Maruti Suzuki unit.

Japan's automakers have been posting strong results in the latest earnings season, underscoring a recovery from the quake-tsunami disaster in 2011 and the surging value of the yen, which has sharply declined recent months.

- AFP/jc

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Karnataka may delay release of Cauvery water despite SC order

BANGALORE: Karnataka is unlikely to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu immediately though the Supreme Court on Thursday directed it to do so "forthwith", chief minister Jagadish Shettar indicated.

"It (directive to release water forthwith) is a matter of serious concern," Shettar told the state assembly soon after the apex court ordered Karnataka to release 2.44 tmc (thousand million cubic feet) of Cauvery river water to Tamil Nadu for irrigating standing crops in that state.

"Myself and water resources minister Basavaraj Bommai will fly to Delhi in a special plane later today (Thursday) to consult our legal experts on what needs to be done (to protect Karnataka's interests)," he said, replying to a brief discussion on the apex court order.

Shettar and earlier Bommai had told the House that in the past the Supreme Court directives were accompanied by a schedule to release the water over a period of time.

"This time the order is for forthwith release and this is of grave concern," Bommai said as opposition Congress and Janata Dal-Secular members demanded that the state government take all steps to get the directive rescinded.

Both Shettar and Bommai refuted the opposition attack that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government had failed to provide to the Supreme Court full details of the grave shortage of water Karnataka was facing following failure of monsoon.

On Thursday, the apex court bench headed by Justice RM Lodha said Karnataka would release the water forthwith. The court passed its order after receiving the report of the expert committee that had visited the Tamil Nadu part in the delta region and recommended that 2.44 tmc water be released for the standing crop.

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Humans Swap DNA More Readily Than They Swap Stories

Jane J. Lee

Once upon a time, someone in 14th-century Europe told a tale of two girls—a kind one who was rewarded for her manners and willingness to work hard, and an unkind girl who was punished for her greed and selfishness.

This version was part of a long line of variations that eventually spread throughout Europe, finding their way into the Brothers Grimm fairytales as Frau Holle, and even into Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. (Watch a video of the Frau Holle fairytale.)

In a new study, evolutionary psychologist Quentin Atkinson is using the popular tale of the kind and unkind girls to study how human culture differs within and between groups, and how easily the story moved from one group to another.

Atkinson, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and his co-authors employed tools normally used to study genetic variation within a species, such as people, to look at variations in this folktale throughout Europe.

The researchers found that there were significant differences in the folktale between ethnolinguistic groups—or groups bound together by language and ethnicity. From this, the scientists concluded that it's much harder for cultural information to move between groups than it is for genes.

The study, published February 5 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that about 9 percent of the variation in the tale of the two girls occurred between ethnolinguistic groups. Previous studies looking at the genetic diversity across groups in Europe found levels of variation less than one percent.

For example, there's a part of the story in which the girls meet a witch who asks them to perform some chores. In different renditions of the tale, the meeting took place by a river, at the bottom of a well, or in a cave. Other versions had the girls meeting with three old men or the Virgin Mary, said Atkinson.

Conformity

Researchers have viewed human culture through the lens of genetics for decades, said Atkinson. "It's a fair comparison in the sense that it's just variation across human groups."

But unlike genes, which move into a population relatively easily and can propagate randomly, it's harder for new ideas to take hold in a group, he said. Even if a tale can bridge the "ethnolinguistic boundary," there are still forces that might work against a new cultural variation that wouldn't necessarily affect genes.

"Humans don't copy the ideas they hear randomly," Atkinson said. "We don't just choose ... the first story we hear and pass it on.

"We show what's called a conformist bias—we'll tend to aggregate across what we think everyone else in the population is doing," he explained. If someone comes along and tells a story a little differently, most likely, people will ignore those differences and tell the story like everyone else is telling it.

"That makes it more difficult for new ideas to come in," Atkinson said.

Cultural Boundaries

Atkinson and his colleagues found that if two versions of the folktale were found only six miles (ten kilometers) away from each other but came from different ethnolinguistic groups, such as the French and the Germans, then those versions were as different from each other as two versions taken from within the same group—say just the Germans—located 62 miles (100 kilometers) away from each other.

"To me, the take-home message is that cultural groups strongly constrain the flow of information, and this enables them to develop highly local cultural traditions and norms," said Mark Pagel, of the University of Reading in the U.K., who wasn't involved in the new study.

Pagel, who studies the evolution of human behavior, said by email that he views cultural groups almost like biological species. But these groups, which he calls "cultural survival vehicles," are more powerful in some ways than our genes.

That's because when immigrants from a particular cultural group move into a new one, they bring genetic diversity that, if the immigrants have children, get mixed around, changing the new population's gene pool. But the new population's culture doesn't necessarily change.

Atkinson plans to keep using the tools of the population-genetics trade to see if the patterns he found in the variations of the kind and unkind girls hold true for other folktale variants in Europe and around the world.

Humans do a lot of interesting things, Atkinson said. "[And] the most interesting things aren't coded in our DNA."

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Armstrong May Testify Under Oath on Doping

Facing a federal criminal investigation and a deadline that originally was tonight to tell all under oath to anti-doping authorities or lose his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban, Lance Armstrong now may cooperate.

His apparent 11th-hour about-face, according to the U.S. Anti Doping Agency (USADA), suggests he might testify under oath and give full details to USADA of how he cheated for so long.

"We have been in communication with Mr. Armstrong and his representatives and we understand that he does want to be part of the solution and assist in the effort to clean up the sport of cycling," USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart said in a written statement this evening. "We have agreed to his request for an additional two weeks to work on details to hopefully allow for this to happen."

Neither Armstrong nor his attorney responded to emails seeking comment on the USADA announcement.

The news of Armstrong's possible and unexpected cooperation came a day after ABC News reported he was in the crosshairs of federal criminal investigators. According to a high-level source, "agents are actively investigating Armstrong for obstruction, witness tampering and intimidation" for allegedly threatening people who dared tell the truth about his cheating.

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The case was re-ignited by Armstrong's confession last month to Oprah Winfrey that he doped his way to all seven of his Tour de France titles, telling Winfrey he used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career and then lied about it. He made the confession after years of vehement denials that he cheated.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

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WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

If charges are ultimately filed, the consequences of "serious potential crimes" could be severe, ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams said -- including "possible sentences up to five, 10 years."

Investigators are not concerned with the drug use, but Armstrong's behavior in trying to maintain his secret by allegedly threatening and interfering with potential witnesses.

Armstrong was previously under a separate federal investigation that reportedly looked at drug distribution, conspiracy and fraud allegations -- but that case was dropped without explanation a year ago. Sources at the time said that agents had recommended an indictment and could not understand why the case was suddenly dropped.

"There were plenty of people, even within federal law enforcement, who felt like he was getting preferential treatment," said T.J. Quinn, an investigative reporter with ESPN.

The pressures against Armstrong today are immense and include civil claims that could cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Armstrong is currently serving a lifetime ban in sport handed down by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and today was the deadline he was given to cooperate under oath if he ever wanted the ban lifted.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012

ABC News' Michael S. James contributed to this report.

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Strengthening security at the nation’s airports

Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks.

In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.

As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.

“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”

Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.

Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”

Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.

Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”

When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”

Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”

In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.

If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.

“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”

This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.

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Cities can be great, given good planning & infrastructure: Khaw

SINGAPORE: National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan says a major shift in planning and development strategy to invest ahead of demand will ensure Singapore remains a liveable city for future generations.

He was speaking in Parliament on Wednesday as debate continues on the Population White Paper and Land Use Plan.

Mr Khaw gave the assurance that there will be enough affordable homes for Singaporeans and an even better quality living environment.

He also responded to the opposition Workers' Party proposal to freeze the foreign worker population immediately and for eight years.

Mr Khaw said that will affect plans to build the 200,000 homes over the next four years.

He added the Workers' Party's hope that Singaporeans will jump in to augment the pool of construction workers is also not realistic.

In the long term, the government plans to build another 500,000 homes.

Mr Khaw reiterated that he will continue de-linking the prices of new HDB flats from the resale market to keep prices stable.

On concerns about the quality of life and living space, with a projected increase in population, Mr Khaw painted a picture of what the future living environment in the country could look like.

He cited the example of Punggol South, where green, open spaces and recreational facilities are integrated into the estate.

Mr Khaw said Singapore's future will not be a concrete-jungle, but Punggol "multiplied many times" and even better.

For example, improved estate layout, common spaces, with air flow, landscaping and connectivity between spaces.

Mr Khaw added the 6.9 million projected population is a stretched scenario, and it is hoped that Singapore will never reach this level.

But the minister stressed that it is safer to prepare enough land and infrastructure for a larger number.

He said: "That is why we plan long term, anticipate problems and try to nip them in the bud. That is why we put out these two reports, because we know if our demographic challenges are not dealt with properly, our children will suffer.
"We cannot simply pretend these challenges do not exist. We cannot simply pass them to future generations to deal with. That will be irresponsible, and that is not our style."

In the long term, new technology such as going underground is also being explored.

Mr Khaw said he is chairing an inter-ministerial committee to study and coordinate underground developments to ensure authorities can seize opportunities and create the most optimal outcome for Singaporeans.

Mr Khaw said: "This government is and will always be on the side of Singaporeans. The scenarios sketched in the Population White Paper are not blindly pro-business or pro-growth.

"It is you - Singaporeans - who are at the centre of our planning and policies: your well-being, your security, the quality of your lives. People first, not growth first - that is the key thread which runs consistently through the Population White Paper and the Land Use Plan. Please read them closely and see for yourself."

- CNA/ir

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Shanti Asiatic, Udgam students take top honours at Spell Bee contest

AHMEDABAD: The city hosted season five of the city finals of Radio Mirchi and HDFC Life's 'Spell Bee - India Spells 2013'.

In what can be termed as India's biggest and only spelling contest, standard VIII student Kartikey Sharma of Shanti Asiatic School, Ahmedabad emerged as the winner along with the 1st runner-up, standard IX student Dia Majumder from Udgam School. They will now proceed to compete in the semi-finals of the competition. HDFC Life Spell Bee India Spells 2013 is the Indian counterpart of the highly acclaimed Scripps National Spelling Bee, USA.

The initial round of this spelling competition received an outstanding response.

Ahmedabad is one of the 35 cities in which such city-finals were held over the month. The top two spellers from each city will then compete with each other in the next round. Of these, the top 16 scorers across India will battle it out in the grand finals of HDFC Life Spell Bee to be held in Mumbai in February 2013.

As many as 434 spelling enthusiasts from across the city participated in the fifth edition, a remarkable surge in the number of participants. This reiterates the popularity of Spell Bee not only among the school students, but parents as well.

In the initial phase, an on-ground exercise was conducted across 20 schools in Ahmedabad where children were given spelling tests. Top 20 scorers from each school then competed in the city finals round. The culmination of Spell Bee 2013 will see a grueling competition between the top 16 scorers of India to win the title of India's Spelling Champion.

The winner will be felicitated with cash prize of Rs 2 lakh and a trip to Washington DC along with a parent to witness the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee live.

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