Daw Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar visited India
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Chairperson of the National League of Democracy of Myanmar visited India from 13 November 2012 to 18 November 2012. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi spent several years in India during her early days when her mother Daw Khin Yi was Ambassador to India. She also spent some time as a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla in 1987. Besides her engagements in Delhi, travelled to Bangalore where she visited the Indian Institute of Science and the Infosys Campus. She also toured rural areas in Andhra Pradesh to gain a firsthand impression of the rural development and women’s empowerment programmes being undertaken in India.The close and friendly relations between India and Myanmar were strengthened in the recent past through exchanges of high level visits, including the State visits of the President of Myanmar to India in October 2011 and the Prime Minister of India to Myanmar in May 2012. The visit of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was the part of India’s ongoing engagement with the democratic and multi-party polity in Myanmar. It provided an opportunity to exchange views on all matters of mutual interest with a view to building upon the positive momentum in India-Myanmar relations.
India and Japan Signed Two Agreements in Tokyo
The Governments of India and Japan signed the two agreements on 16 November 2012 in Tokyo: The agreements are as following: 1) Agreement between India and Japan on Social Security 2) Memorandum between the Department of Atomic Energy of India and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan on Cooperation in the Rare Earths Industry in India.The conclusion and signing of these agreements will further enhance and strengthen the India-Japan Strategic and Global Partnership.
Passport Seva Project won CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Award for Excellence
The Computer Society of India (CSI) on 22 November 2012 adjudged Ministry of External Affairs’ Passport Seva Project as the most significant e-Governance initiative of the Government of India undertaken during 2011-12. The final selection for the award was done after a multi-stage evaluation, which included field visits to Passport Seva Kendras. The Computer Society of India is the largest association of IT professionals in India. It joined hands with Nihilent Technologies in the year 2002 to institute CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards for recognising successful efforts in application of ICT for good governance.
The Ministry of External Affairs is improving governance in Passport Offices by focusing on citizen-centricity, service orientation and transparency. The intended benefits to common man are service provisioning in a transparent manner within defined service levels, closer and larger number of access points for services, easy availability of a portfolio of on-line services with real-time status tracking and enquiry, availability of good public facilities at PSKs and an effective system of grievance redressal. The award is a clear recognition that enhanced usage of ICT as envisioned in the Passport Seva Project has brought about transformation in the functioning of the Passport Offices and delivery of public service to citizens.
AstraZeneca’s petition plea on cancer drug dismissed by IPAB
British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s petition in which it challenged the initial ruling, where it was refused patent protection in context with the cancer-fighting drug, was dismissed by the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) on 26 November 2012. Back in the year 2007, the Indian patents office had refused patent protection to the quinazoline molecule of AstraZeneca referring to lack of any invention. The decision is a huge blow for AstraZeneca that is already struggling for turning itself around as its main drugs lost the patent protection.Almost all the global companies selling drug suffered high-profile reversal in the month of March when India decided to grant the first of its kind compulsory licence to the domestic company Natco Pharma. Natco Pharma was given the licence so that it could sell the cheap replicas of cancer drug of Bayer called Nexavar. Bayer had also appealed this order.Earlier, IPAB retracted the 6-year old Indian patent which was offered to Roche’s hepatitis C drug Pegasys on the grounds that there were no evidences that supported the betterment of this drug than any other existing treatments.
Multinational drug manufacturers consider the 13 billion US Dollar drug market of India as a gigantic opportunity. However, they were suspicious about the lax protection for intellectual property in India, where the generic medicines account for over 90 percent of sales.The generic companies of India that do not require to invest in the future research are free to produce the drugs at an amount which is much less than the originator firms such as Bayer or Roche. Natco as well as G. M. Pharma had also opposed earlier application of patent for the derivative of AstraZeneca quinazoline. The company eventually filed the review petition which was dismissed by the patent office of India in 2011.Challenge to review petition is not under purview of IPAB and the petition has failed on the merit as well.
India and Sweden Signed Social Security Agreement in New Delhi
India and Sweden signed a social security agreement in New Delhi on 26 November 2012. This agreement will help both the countries in more investment and work opportunities for nationals of India and Sweden. It will also encourage more and more Indians to go to Sweden for employment opportunities and vice versa. Approximately, 156 Swedish companies are operating in India and expressed the hope that this agreement will encourage Swedish people to come in large numbers to India. In fact, India is the first Asian country with which Sweden has signed this type of agreement. The Social Security Agreement will enhance cooperation on social security between the two countries. The Agreement will provide following benefits to Indian nationals working in Sweden:
a) For short term contract up to two years, no social contribution would need to be paid under the Swedish law by the detached workers provided they continue to make social security payment in India.
b) The above benefits shall be available even when the Indian company sends its employees to Sweden from a third country.
c) Indian workers shall be entitled to the export of the social security benefit if they relocate to India after the completion of their service in Sweden.
d) The self-employed Indians in Sweden would also be entitled to export of social security benefit of their relocation to India.
e) The period of contribution in one contracting state will be added to the period of contribution in the second contracting state for determining the eligibility of social security benefits.
There are about 18000 Overseas Indians in Sweden, most of whom are working as professional and self-employed. However, there is a huge potential for Indian workers to take employment in Sweden owing to the huge labour supply gap in the market. As such, a bilateral Social Security Agreement with Sweden is a significant requirement from the futuristic point of view to take advantage of the emerging employment opportunities and to strengthen the trade and investment between the two countries. India has singed similar agreements with Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Hungary, Denmark, Czech Republic, the Republic of Korea, Norway, Finland, Canada and Japan.
UN (United Nations) Panel passed N Korea Resolution by Consensus
The Social, Humanitarian Cultural Affairs Committee (Commonly referred as third committee of the UN General assembly) of United Nations on 27 November 2012, overseeing human rights issues, unanimously passed a resolution on North Korea. The committee asked North Korea to solve the abduction issue and address human rights abuses.The resolution came before the Third Committee of the General Assembly for the eighth year in a row, but the first time no vote was taken.
New Kind of Matter Might Be Produced In Large Hadron Collider
Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believed that collisions taking place in Large Hadron Collider (LHC) might have formed new matters which are known as colour-glass condensate. Collisions taking place between the lead ions and protons at LHC near Geneva, Switzerland have caused a different kind of behaviour in certain particles which were created due to collisions. When the beams of the particles collided with each other at very high speeds, the crash caused formation of new particles. Most of these particles flew away from point of collision at the speed of light approximately. However, the team of Compact Muon Solenoid at LHC discovered that in the sample of 2 million lead-protons collisions, some of the particles’ pairs went apart with the respective directions correlated. When scientists of MIT along with Rice University analysed the collision of data they found that somehow the particles flew at similar directions despite the fact that it was not clear about how communication about direction took place between them. The heavy-ion group of MIT observed similar kind of distinctive pattern in the proton-proton collisions some two years ago. Flight pattern of similar kind is observed when the ions of lead or certain other heavy metals like copper or gold bumped into each other. The collision between the heavy ions produced quark gluon plasma wave, which is actually the hot soup of the particles which existed for initial few millionths of a second after Big Bang. In collision, the wave swept some resulting particles in similar directions and this in turn accounted for correlation of the flight paths. It was also found that proton-proton collisions could produce liquid-like wave of the gluons which are known as colour-glass condensate. A senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory involved in this research observed that the dense cloud of the gluons could produce certain unusual patterns in -lead collisions. In the research, they theorised the presence of colour-glass condensate just before the particle direction correlation observation in proton-proton collisions. This correlation is very minute effect but it indicates towards very fundamental things about the arrangement of quarks and gluons within a proton.
What is Large Hadron Collider?
Large Hadron Collider is the huge scientific instrument which is found near Geneva. It is basically the particle accelerator which is used by the physicists for observing and studying about the smallest particles which form the basis of all the things in the world. The instrument apparently helps the physicists understand everything ranging from minute world within the atoms to the gigantic universe.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Chairperson of the National League of Democracy of Myanmar visited India from 13 November 2012 to 18 November 2012. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi spent several years in India during her early days when her mother Daw Khin Yi was Ambassador to India. She also spent some time as a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla in 1987. Besides her engagements in Delhi, travelled to Bangalore where she visited the Indian Institute of Science and the Infosys Campus. She also toured rural areas in Andhra Pradesh to gain a firsthand impression of the rural development and women’s empowerment programmes being undertaken in India.The close and friendly relations between India and Myanmar were strengthened in the recent past through exchanges of high level visits, including the State visits of the President of Myanmar to India in October 2011 and the Prime Minister of India to Myanmar in May 2012. The visit of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was the part of India’s ongoing engagement with the democratic and multi-party polity in Myanmar. It provided an opportunity to exchange views on all matters of mutual interest with a view to building upon the positive momentum in India-Myanmar relations.
India and Japan Signed Two Agreements in Tokyo
The Governments of India and Japan signed the two agreements on 16 November 2012 in Tokyo: The agreements are as following: 1) Agreement between India and Japan on Social Security 2) Memorandum between the Department of Atomic Energy of India and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan on Cooperation in the Rare Earths Industry in India.The conclusion and signing of these agreements will further enhance and strengthen the India-Japan Strategic and Global Partnership.
Passport Seva Project won CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Award for Excellence
The Computer Society of India (CSI) on 22 November 2012 adjudged Ministry of External Affairs’ Passport Seva Project as the most significant e-Governance initiative of the Government of India undertaken during 2011-12. The final selection for the award was done after a multi-stage evaluation, which included field visits to Passport Seva Kendras. The Computer Society of India is the largest association of IT professionals in India. It joined hands with Nihilent Technologies in the year 2002 to institute CSI-Nihilent e-Governance Awards for recognising successful efforts in application of ICT for good governance.
The Ministry of External Affairs is improving governance in Passport Offices by focusing on citizen-centricity, service orientation and transparency. The intended benefits to common man are service provisioning in a transparent manner within defined service levels, closer and larger number of access points for services, easy availability of a portfolio of on-line services with real-time status tracking and enquiry, availability of good public facilities at PSKs and an effective system of grievance redressal. The award is a clear recognition that enhanced usage of ICT as envisioned in the Passport Seva Project has brought about transformation in the functioning of the Passport Offices and delivery of public service to citizens.
AstraZeneca’s petition plea on cancer drug dismissed by IPAB
British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s petition in which it challenged the initial ruling, where it was refused patent protection in context with the cancer-fighting drug, was dismissed by the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) on 26 November 2012. Back in the year 2007, the Indian patents office had refused patent protection to the quinazoline molecule of AstraZeneca referring to lack of any invention. The decision is a huge blow for AstraZeneca that is already struggling for turning itself around as its main drugs lost the patent protection.Almost all the global companies selling drug suffered high-profile reversal in the month of March when India decided to grant the first of its kind compulsory licence to the domestic company Natco Pharma. Natco Pharma was given the licence so that it could sell the cheap replicas of cancer drug of Bayer called Nexavar. Bayer had also appealed this order.Earlier, IPAB retracted the 6-year old Indian patent which was offered to Roche’s hepatitis C drug Pegasys on the grounds that there were no evidences that supported the betterment of this drug than any other existing treatments.
Multinational drug manufacturers consider the 13 billion US Dollar drug market of India as a gigantic opportunity. However, they were suspicious about the lax protection for intellectual property in India, where the generic medicines account for over 90 percent of sales.The generic companies of India that do not require to invest in the future research are free to produce the drugs at an amount which is much less than the originator firms such as Bayer or Roche. Natco as well as G. M. Pharma had also opposed earlier application of patent for the derivative of AstraZeneca quinazoline. The company eventually filed the review petition which was dismissed by the patent office of India in 2011.Challenge to review petition is not under purview of IPAB and the petition has failed on the merit as well.
India and Sweden Signed Social Security Agreement in New Delhi
India and Sweden signed a social security agreement in New Delhi on 26 November 2012. This agreement will help both the countries in more investment and work opportunities for nationals of India and Sweden. It will also encourage more and more Indians to go to Sweden for employment opportunities and vice versa. Approximately, 156 Swedish companies are operating in India and expressed the hope that this agreement will encourage Swedish people to come in large numbers to India. In fact, India is the first Asian country with which Sweden has signed this type of agreement. The Social Security Agreement will enhance cooperation on social security between the two countries. The Agreement will provide following benefits to Indian nationals working in Sweden:
a) For short term contract up to two years, no social contribution would need to be paid under the Swedish law by the detached workers provided they continue to make social security payment in India.
b) The above benefits shall be available even when the Indian company sends its employees to Sweden from a third country.
c) Indian workers shall be entitled to the export of the social security benefit if they relocate to India after the completion of their service in Sweden.
d) The self-employed Indians in Sweden would also be entitled to export of social security benefit of their relocation to India.
e) The period of contribution in one contracting state will be added to the period of contribution in the second contracting state for determining the eligibility of social security benefits.
There are about 18000 Overseas Indians in Sweden, most of whom are working as professional and self-employed. However, there is a huge potential for Indian workers to take employment in Sweden owing to the huge labour supply gap in the market. As such, a bilateral Social Security Agreement with Sweden is a significant requirement from the futuristic point of view to take advantage of the emerging employment opportunities and to strengthen the trade and investment between the two countries. India has singed similar agreements with Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Hungary, Denmark, Czech Republic, the Republic of Korea, Norway, Finland, Canada and Japan.
UN (United Nations) Panel passed N Korea Resolution by Consensus
The Social, Humanitarian Cultural Affairs Committee (Commonly referred as third committee of the UN General assembly) of United Nations on 27 November 2012, overseeing human rights issues, unanimously passed a resolution on North Korea. The committee asked North Korea to solve the abduction issue and address human rights abuses.The resolution came before the Third Committee of the General Assembly for the eighth year in a row, but the first time no vote was taken.
New Kind of Matter Might Be Produced In Large Hadron Collider
Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believed that collisions taking place in Large Hadron Collider (LHC) might have formed new matters which are known as colour-glass condensate. Collisions taking place between the lead ions and protons at LHC near Geneva, Switzerland have caused a different kind of behaviour in certain particles which were created due to collisions. When the beams of the particles collided with each other at very high speeds, the crash caused formation of new particles. Most of these particles flew away from point of collision at the speed of light approximately. However, the team of Compact Muon Solenoid at LHC discovered that in the sample of 2 million lead-protons collisions, some of the particles’ pairs went apart with the respective directions correlated. When scientists of MIT along with Rice University analysed the collision of data they found that somehow the particles flew at similar directions despite the fact that it was not clear about how communication about direction took place between them. The heavy-ion group of MIT observed similar kind of distinctive pattern in the proton-proton collisions some two years ago. Flight pattern of similar kind is observed when the ions of lead or certain other heavy metals like copper or gold bumped into each other. The collision between the heavy ions produced quark gluon plasma wave, which is actually the hot soup of the particles which existed for initial few millionths of a second after Big Bang. In collision, the wave swept some resulting particles in similar directions and this in turn accounted for correlation of the flight paths. It was also found that proton-proton collisions could produce liquid-like wave of the gluons which are known as colour-glass condensate. A senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory involved in this research observed that the dense cloud of the gluons could produce certain unusual patterns in -lead collisions. In the research, they theorised the presence of colour-glass condensate just before the particle direction correlation observation in proton-proton collisions. This correlation is very minute effect but it indicates towards very fundamental things about the arrangement of quarks and gluons within a proton.
What is Large Hadron Collider?
Large Hadron Collider is the huge scientific instrument which is found near Geneva. It is basically the particle accelerator which is used by the physicists for observing and studying about the smallest particles which form the basis of all the things in the world. The instrument apparently helps the physicists understand everything ranging from minute world within the atoms to the gigantic universe.
Former Editor of Oxford English Dictionary Erased Many Indian Words Secretly
Oxford Dictionary’s former editor Robert Burchfield attempted rewriting the dictionary by deleting a lot of words that had foreign origin and this included Indian-origin words, revealed a new book 'Words of the World' written by Sarah Ogilvie. Words such as balisaur (the badger kind of animal found in India), Danchi (the Bengali plant) as well as boviander (name given in the British Guyana to someone who has living that of mixed race on river banks) were found deleted. Now, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is re-examining the words which were deleted by the former editor during 70s and 80s scenarios. Robert Burchfield is the known editor who opened up this respected dictionary to the whole world. The irony of this story is that initially the editors of the dictionary were carped for including a lot of words from the foreign language in dictionary which in turn was decaying the essence of language. Later, they were condemned for only including the British words and not any foreign words. OED dictionaries which were published from the time period of 1972 and 1986 till the 1933 edition were compared and it was found that Robert Burchfield had deleted as many as 17 percent of the foreign words.
IOC to Upgrade its Refineries and Increase Production Capacity to 100 million tonnes
The Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on 27 November 2012 declared that it would upgrade refineries at Panipat, Mathura and Gujarat. The IOC would make an investment of up to 70,000 crore rupees so that it can double its capacity of refining to 100 million tonnes per year by 2021-2022. The corporation also announced about its plans to develop a new refinery at Gujarat that will have a capacity of 15 million tonnes.The corporation also announced its plan of setting-up new green field refinery in the West Coast for integration of maximum of its refineries with the with petrochemical complexes, according to the 13th Five Year Plan period. Engineers India Limited is the authorized body selected for submission of the feasibility report for setting up of the refinery plant in the West Coast. To carry on with the plan of expansion, the corporation would pitch forward for compensation from the Government to recover the sale of products below cost. The Corporation has a total capacity of 54.2 million tonnes per annum from the existing seven refineries in different parts of India and according to the expansion plan; it would increase its capacity to 100 million tonnes per annum in the 12th and 13th Five Year Plans.
The 15 million tonnes refinery at Paradip that is under development stage would be functional by 2013 end and in times to come it will be expanded into a unit with capacity of 20 million tonnes.
Oxford Dictionary’s former editor Robert Burchfield attempted rewriting the dictionary by deleting a lot of words that had foreign origin and this included Indian-origin words, revealed a new book 'Words of the World' written by Sarah Ogilvie. Words such as balisaur (the badger kind of animal found in India), Danchi (the Bengali plant) as well as boviander (name given in the British Guyana to someone who has living that of mixed race on river banks) were found deleted. Now, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is re-examining the words which were deleted by the former editor during 70s and 80s scenarios. Robert Burchfield is the known editor who opened up this respected dictionary to the whole world. The irony of this story is that initially the editors of the dictionary were carped for including a lot of words from the foreign language in dictionary which in turn was decaying the essence of language. Later, they were condemned for only including the British words and not any foreign words. OED dictionaries which were published from the time period of 1972 and 1986 till the 1933 edition were compared and it was found that Robert Burchfield had deleted as many as 17 percent of the foreign words.
IOC to Upgrade its Refineries and Increase Production Capacity to 100 million tonnes
The Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on 27 November 2012 declared that it would upgrade refineries at Panipat, Mathura and Gujarat. The IOC would make an investment of up to 70,000 crore rupees so that it can double its capacity of refining to 100 million tonnes per year by 2021-2022. The corporation also announced about its plans to develop a new refinery at Gujarat that will have a capacity of 15 million tonnes.The corporation also announced its plan of setting-up new green field refinery in the West Coast for integration of maximum of its refineries with the with petrochemical complexes, according to the 13th Five Year Plan period. Engineers India Limited is the authorized body selected for submission of the feasibility report for setting up of the refinery plant in the West Coast. To carry on with the plan of expansion, the corporation would pitch forward for compensation from the Government to recover the sale of products below cost. The Corporation has a total capacity of 54.2 million tonnes per annum from the existing seven refineries in different parts of India and according to the expansion plan; it would increase its capacity to 100 million tonnes per annum in the 12th and 13th Five Year Plans.
The 15 million tonnes refinery at Paradip that is under development stage would be functional by 2013 end and in times to come it will be expanded into a unit with capacity of 20 million tonnes.
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