On Wednesday, Singh and his Vietnamese counterpart, Gen. Phan Van Giang, agreed for early finalisation of the $ 500 million Defence Line of Credit extended to Vietnam.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday handed over 12 high-speed guard boats to Vietnam during his visit to Hong Ha Shipyard in Hai Phong. The boats have been constructed under the India’s $ 100 million Defence Line of Credit to Vietnam.
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Having studied at AIISH Mysuru, Dr. Bopanna Ballachanda becomes the first Indian-American to occupy the top post.
Dr. Bopanna Ballachanda is a Professor (Adjunct) at Texas Tech Health Sciences and Chief Audiology Officer at National Hearing and Balance centres in Albuquerque, New Mexico. With more than 30 years of experience, he is now the President-Elect of the American Academy of Audiology (AAA) and he will have a three-year term from October 1, 2022.
Hailing from Kodagu and coming from a humble background, he did his B.Sc. in Speech and Hearing from the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing (AIISH – 1970 batch), then under the University of Mysore. By becoming the first person of colour to head AAA, Dr. Bopanna has become a role model for many.
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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday appointed former Indian diplomat Amandeep Singh Gill as his envoy on technology to coordinate programmes for international digital cooperation.
Guterres’ spokesperson Stephane Dujarric announced the appointment calling Gill a “thought leader on digital technology”.
Gill, who graduated from the Panjab University in Chandigarh in BTech in electronics, has a doctorate in nuclear learning in multilateral forums from the King’s College in London.
According to the UN, the envoy on technology “coordinates the implementation of the Secretary-General’s roadmap on digital cooperation and will advance work towards the global digital compact proposed in the common agenda, in close consultation with the member states, technology industry, private companies, civil society, and other stakeholders”.
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India is moving from women-specific to women-led projects in the biotech start-ups sector, Union Minister of State for Science & Technology Jitendra Singh said on Saturday.
“India is looking at a growth of the Biotech sector from $70 billion to $150 billion in the next 4 years and added that this cannot be accomplished without the active participation of women,” Singh said after releasing a book ‘Compendium of 75 Women Biotech Entrepreneurs’ at the ongoing Biotech Start-up Expo at Pragati Maidan here.
Stating that the women scientists have carved a niche for themselves in space, nuclear science, drone and nano-technology, the Minister said: “Many of the big scientific projects including the most ambitious manned mission to the moon, Gaganyaan, are being led by women scientists.”
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) launched the BioCARe programme to enhance the participation of women scientists in biotech research and for building capacities, he said, and added, BIRAC launched the Women in Entrepreneurial Research (WinER Award) in association with TiE Delhi, a non-profit, global community welcoming entrepreneurs from all over the world, to reward women in biotech entrepreneurship.
He also released another book, “75 Biotech products developed during the 75th year of Independence,” and “Compendium of 75 Women Biotech Entrepreneurs” on the occasion.
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India has decided to display a relic of the Buddha in Mongolia from June 14 for a period of 11 days. The initiative was at the request of the Mongolian government earlier this year when they sought display of the Buddha’s relic in Mongolia. The relics, which are kept in the national museum and have very special significance, are usually not taken out of the country. However, as a special gesture it was decided to send the relic of the Buddha to Mongolia.
Mongolia is considered as a Buddhist nation with 53 per cent of the population being Buddhists. Large number of Buddhist monks, who have been keen on higher learning in Buddhism, have traditionally been travelling to India for pursuing Buddhist studies in different institutions. These individuals have formed the bulwark of Buddhist diplomacy between India and Mongolia. One of the most prominent Rinpoches from India who has also contributed significantly towards spread of Buddhism in Mongolia is Bakula Rinpoche, who was posted as the Ambassador of India to Mongolia from 1990 to 2000.
These were crucial years when the communist party’s hold on the state had come to an end in the Soviet Union with fall out effect on Mongolia too. As the country became free and people were keen to learn about different religions, Bakula Rinpoche’s presence in Mongolia was timely. He became so popular in Mongolia that large number of people visited him from different parts of the country to take his blessings. Bakula Rinpoche is revered in Mongolia till this day and his impressions would remain etched in the minds of the Buddhists of Mongolia for years to come.
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The Overseas Friends of India (OFI) has also recognised the Sahara India Media’s Executive Director, CEO and Editor-in-Chief Upendra Rai’s fearless journalism in a ceremony hosted in London.
In a moment of pride for Indian journalism, the Sahara News Network CEO and Editor-in-Chief Upendra Rai got felicitated for his committed and courageous journalism in the British House of Lords. The House of Lords member Lord John Beckett Taylor (Lord Taylor of Warwick) felicitated Rai in the Cholmondeley Room of the upper house of the British Parliament. Handing over the citation letter, Taylor lauded Rai’s stellar achievements in the field of journalism. The World Book of Records had also awarded Rai’s fearless work in 2019.
The group is affiliated with the House of Lords. Addressing the ceremony, Rai emphasized the importance of Hindi in reaching out to the Indian masses at the ground level. He began his speech with “Jai Hind, Jai Bharat” and shared his experiences in promoting Hindi as a language of mass media in India.
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India and Vietnam on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on mutual logistics support in presence of the two Defence Ministers during the ongoing visit of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to the Southeast Asian nation.
“In these times of increasing cooperative engagements between the defence forces of the two countries, this is a major step towards simplifying procedures for mutually beneficial logistic support and is the first such major agreement which Vietnam has signed with any country,” the statement said on the logistics agreement.
India has signed several logistics agreements including all Quad countries, France, Singapore and South Korea beginning with the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement with the U.S. in 2016.
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Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore have designed a new class of artificial peptides or miniproteins that they say can render viruses like SARS-CoV-2 inactive.
According to the study, published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, the miniproteins can not only block virus entry into our cells but also clump virus particles together, reducing their ability to infect.
The researchers noted that a protein-protein interaction is often like that of a lock and a key.
The team used this approach to design miniproteins that can bind to, and block the spike protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which helps it to enter and infect the human cells.
This binding was further characterised extensively by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and other biophysical methods.
These miniproteins are helical, hairpin-shaped peptides, each capable of pairing up with another of its kind, forming what is known as a dimer. Each dimeric ‘bundle’ presents two ‘faces’ to interact with two target molecules.
The researchers hypothesised that the two faces would bind to two separate target proteins locking all four in a complex and blocking the targets’ action.
“But we needed proof of principle,” said Jayanta Chatterjee, Associate Professor in the Molecular Biophysics Unit (MBU), IISc, and the lead author of the study.
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State-owned NHAI has created a Guinness World Record for the longest continuously laid bituminous lane of 75 kilometres in 105 hours and 33 minutes on the national highway between Amravati and Akola districts in Maharashtra.
Mentioning about the record, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday said the project was implemented by 720 workers including a team of independent consultants who worked day and night.
The total length of the 75 kilometres of single lane continuous bituminous concrete road is equivalent to 37.5 kilometres of two-lane paved shoulder road and the work started on June 3, at 7:27 am and was completed on June 7, at 5 pm, the minister said in a video message.
The previous Guinness World Record for the longest continuously laid bituminous was for building 25.275 kilometres of road that was achieved in Doha, Qatar in February 2019 and that task was completed in 10 days, Mr. Gadkari said.
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Noted artist P. Sharath Chandran (79) passed away at his residence at Eranhipalam here on Friday morning. Though a designer of more than 800 cigarette packets sold across the world, he is best known for his poster design for Richard Attenborough’s epic movie ‘Gandhi’. Ironically it is the only movie poster he had ever designed.
Born in Kozhikode, Sharath Chandran moved to Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1964, after completing his art education at the Thalassery School of Arts. He was employed as a designer at ‘Golden Tobacco’ there for which he designed the cigarette covers. He got the offer to design the ‘Gandhi Poster’ through an advertising agency. The poster, which depicts a side profile of Gandhi and a boy crying over the body of his dead mother after the Jalianwalah Bagh massacre, was used across the country for the movie’s promotion and Sharath Chandran’s work was much appreciated.
However, the artist went back to design cigarette covers. After 18 years of service, he quit his job and launched ‘Orbit’, an advertising agency, along with his friends and later on, became a freelance designer.
Call it fate, but all the posters and promotional materials Sharath Chandran had designed for ‘Gandhi’, besides a few of his paintings, were destroyed due to a leakage in his roof years ago, leaving no keepsakes for the artist.
The artist returned to Kozhikode in 2016 and his first come-back exhibition held at Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Art gallery in the same year was notable for the realism and attention to details in his works that made them life-like. He was a master at close up portraits of people, especially old people, monks, with detailed wrinkles and bright eyes. He went on to conduct 9 more exhibitions later.
The funeral of the artist will be held at Mavoor Road Crematorium in the city at 4 p.m. on Friday.
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