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Kasanagottu Nageshwar
Five places where life may exist in solar system
- March 3, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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Life on Earth occupies some bizarre places from deep-sea hydrothermal vents to frigid and lightless lakes. While scientists hunt for hospitable planets circling other stars, the solar system has a few candidates. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the following are the five places where life may exist: Mars: Early in its history, the red planet had abundant surface water. [...]
Both brain halves vital for problem solving
- March 3, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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Whenever we are engaged in a task, one half of our brain is more active than the other — but some problems require both halves to work together to find a solution. Researchers in Germany are investigating how such specializations and cooperations arise. Based on a pigeon-model, Martina Manns and Juliane Romling of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, in Germany, are proving [...]
Faltering on polio, Pakistan looks at India lesson – Madhulika Sonkar
- March 3, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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Pakistan’s battle against polio has been marred by conflicts, natural disasters and lack of accountability over the past year and it is now looking at lessons from India, which has just been taken off the WHO list of polio-endemic countries. According to Unicef, Pakistan registered 198 cases of polio in 2011, rising from 144 cases in 2010. Over the last [...]
India major market for motor sports: GT1 boss -Bharat Sharma
- March 3, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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Formula One and GT1 are the ultimate in motor racing and India presents a great opportunity to become a major market for the sport, says founder and promoter of GT1 Series Stephane Ratel. “India was on our list of key destinations, particularly as it is a growing market for luxury cars,” Ratel told IANS in an online interview. After the [...]
Nigeria: New Threats to Unity – Yohannan Chemarapally
- March 2, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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NIGERIA, Africa’s most populous country seems to be veering dangerously into political and sectarian strife. The acts of terror in the north of the country by the radical Islamist group, Boko Haram, have dramatically escalated. The coordinated terror attacks in the city of Kano on January 20 which claimed more than 211 lives, is a clear indication that the organisation poses a clear [...]
India: Child Beedi Rollers: A Future Stubbed Out – Sarada Lahangir
- March 2, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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Compare the daily regimen of Kunti Majhi, 12, a student of Class Seven in Odisha’s Jharsuguda Girls’ High School, with that of other schoolgirls in the country. She gets up early in the morning to make sure that she puts in two hours of ‘beedi’ (local cigarettes) rolling before leaving for school. The moment she is back home, it’s ‘beedi’ [...]
India: Balaghat’s Sari-Clad Champions Of Change: Feminist Voices From Rural India – Pamela Philipose
- March 2, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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They came like a river down the road. Women holding banners marched in line as far as the eye could see. The morning air reverberated with a slogan that had first sounded in Mumbai’s streets in the 1980s: ‘Hum bharat ki nari hain/Phool nahi, chingari hain (We are women of India/Not flowers, but flames)’. They then poured into a tented [...]
India: Land Rights For Women Means Better Food For Families – Manipadma Jena
- March 2, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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It takes a walk of 20 minutes through fields of bleached paddy stubs left from the last harvest to reach Kharibandh hamlet. Comprising 13 Sabar tribal households, it lies in the Khalikote block of Odisha’s Ganjam district. As we approach the village, something unusual catches the eye: A row of bramble-barricaded plots, green with fruiting vegetable plants, lying at a [...]
India and AARDO in Search of New Horizons – Debajani Baxipatra
- March 2, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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India had played a leading role in struggle for political emancipation of many nations of Africa. The Mahatma once said “India’s heart pines for Africa”. Due to shared history, commonality of issues and challenges and geopolitical reasons India has been a strong votary and architect of solidarity and cooperation among Afro-Asian nations. From Bandung to hey days of Non-alignment and pinnacle of South-South Cooperation [...]
A Foreign Hand in Kudankulam or a Failure of Governance? – Prabir Purkayastha, Newsclick
- March 2, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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The Prime Minrster’s statement that the Kudankulam stir was due to a few foreign funded NGO’s has been followed by the Home Ministry giving notice to 4 NGO’s under FCRA and freezing their bank accounts. The high voltage campaign in the media, launched with the blessings of the Government makes clear that there is no intention of discussing the issue [...]
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Kasanagottu Nageshwar
India to expand science, tech cooperation with Africa
- March 5, 2012
Building upon growing political and economic ties, India and the 54-nation African continent are now poised to expand their cooperation in frontier areas of research, capacity building and knowledge industries. Empowerment through knowledge and technology was the buzzword at a two-day science and technology conclave here that brought together more than 100 scientists, diplomats and 31 science and technology (S&T) [...]
Rekha Goyal, 23, lost her sight due to chickenpox when she was just three. But the fighter that she is, she educated herself at one of the best institutions and found employment in a bank. With the help of her post-graduate education, and computer and English language skills learnt at the Venu Institute of Universal Education (VIUE), many visually impaired [...]
Indian youth can be made to appreciate classical music if it is served to them in the right manner, says music promoter Durga Jasraj, who disagrees with the notion that Bollywood tunes have spoilt the new generation’s taste in music. “People who feel youth don’t have a knack for listening to classical music should understand that that’s not the case. [...]
The word ‘sexy’ crept into the Indian lexicon a long time ago, but it continues to create ripples in a society where the conservative goes hand in hand with the modern. Some find it outrageous and derogatory while others say it is important to see how the term is used. The renewed debate comes after Mamta Sharma, chairperson of the [...]
World’s Five Hotspots Of Biodiversity
- March 4, 2012
Biodiversity is biological diversity – an area having a large number of varied life forms. Biologists and conservation groups are concerned with regions deemed ‘biodiversity hotspots,’ which are threatened. Hotspots require two main criteria: at least 1500 vascular plant species(that have a system to transport nutrients and water) with over half endemic to the region, or found only there. They [...]
The killing of two innocent fisherman by two marines aboard the Italian tanker Enrica Lexie, has resulted in nationalist sentiments being raised on both sides. What should have been a simple matter of who has legal jurisdiction to try the two, has now been escalated to a diplomatic issue. The latest is the Defence Minister Giampaolo Di Paola stating that India must [...]
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s inability to transform herself from a rabblerouser to a responsible politician cannot but have come as a huge disappointment to the people of West Bengal. Having lived through three decades of the Communist Party of India-Marxist’s (CPI-M) cadre raj, they expected that the ‘paribartan’ or change promised by the feisty Trinamool Congress leader would bring to [...]
UP may go to Samajwadi, blow to Rahul as vote ends
- March 4, 2012
The Samajwadi Party was most likely to take power in Uttar Pradesh amid a hung assembly, exit polls said Saturday as staggered balloting ended in India’s most populous state with a record voting by 60 percent of its 127 million voters. Three of four exit polls were unanimous that no one party would command a majority in the 403-member state [...]
Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is torn between two homes. More than half a century after he was forced along with some 80,000 Tibetans to flee his homeland March 17, 1959, the elderly monk still wishes to go back to Tibet before he dies. At the same time, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate says he considers himself a son [...]
- March 3, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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Hung assembly, Samajwadi Party to be largest party: Exit polls The Samajwadi Party will emerge as the single largest party in Uttar Pradesh but India’s most populous state will have a hung assembly, exit polls after the final round of voting in the seven-phase assembly elections in the state predicted Saturday. Star News-Nielsen Exit poll predicts a hung assembly in [...]
Kasanagottu Nageshwar
If you are wondering where to get natural colours to play Holi with, then here’s the home manual: Green – Mix pure mehendi powder with some flour to get a dry green colour. When mixed with water, the paste will leave a slight orange shade on the skin. Dried and crushed gulmohar tree leaves can also be used for green [...]
Women earning their livelihood through the central government’s rural employment guarantee scheme in this panchayat near Thiruvananthapuram have a simple wish list: reduced working hours, higher wages, uniforms, and more days of work. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), say the women, helps them cope up with poverty but does not take them beyond their hand-to-mouth existence. [...]
Kasanagottu Nageshwar
Even more than the assembly results, especially in Uttar Pradesh, being a disaster for the Congress, it represents a personal setback for Rahul Gandhi, who had invested so much political capital in the outcome by campaigning intensively. In fact, it is also a body blow to the dynasty since Priyanka Vadra-Gandhi had emerged out of her seclusion to join Congress [...]
Three young leaders put their heart and soul in the campaign in Uttar Pradesh, but it was Akhilesh Yadav who walked away with the honours. Yadav’s efforts helped the Samajwadi Party emerge triumphant, negating the efforts of Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader Jayant Chaudhary. The three young leaders have a lot in common. They [...]
- March 6, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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Sanitation target still lagging far behind The world has met the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, well in advance of the MDG 2015 deadline, according to a report issued by UNICEF and WHO. Between 1990 and 2010, over two billion people gained access to improved drinking water [...]
- March 6, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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She multitasks, balancing the pressures of work, children and home. But the modern superwoman who manages to do it all ends up neglecting her health, too busy to focus on her diet or an exercise regimen. A busy lifestyle often leads to an erratic diet and international research indicates that women who are too busy to focus on their food [...]
- March 6, 2012
- By India Current Affairs
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Why did the Congress do badly in Uttar Pradesh? The answer is simple: it had a weak organisation. A similar answer explains the BJP’s woes also. And why did the Samajwadi Party (SP) perform so well in Uttar Pradesh? Because it had a strong organisational structure. Popular leaders and big rallies attract the media glare but one requires an organisational [...]
Kasanagottu Nageshwar
Govt comes up with anti-punishment guidelines for schools
- March 12, 2012
A key government body has unveiled guidelines to eliminate physical punishment and discipline schools after a survey came up with shocking findings on students being subjected to corporal punishment. Special monitoring cells to take action in cases of physical punishment, undertakings by teachers against beatings and social audits of schools in areas of corporal punishment are among guidelines unveiled today [...]
An American organization that connects women-run businesses to multinational corporations around the world plans to help women business owners in India to sell their solutions, create economic prosperity and deliver jobs. “Our plan is to continue to work with our members and our partners to increase opportunities for women business owners in India,” Elizabeth A. Vazquez, CEO and Co-founder of [...]
GENERATION-M – Saurabh Sinha
- March 11, 2012
The rationale behind the slogan- ‘kar lo duniya mutthi mein’ of a well reputed telecom company a decade back when it made its foray into the telecom sector might have been to mark the beginning of telecom revolution and to make its presence felt in the world of communications. But this slogan in all its forms and manifestations cannot be [...]
When Akhilesh Yadav was Saturday chosen to be the next Uttar Pradesh chief minister, few knew that the formative steps of this 38-years-old political career were guided by a Communist. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, shedding light on this little known fact, told IANS that when Akhilesh was elected in a by-election from Kannauj, a seat vacated by his [...]
Maoists might not welcome roads – fearing these would provide access to their hideouts – but extend full “cooperation” to the government machinery when it comes to drinking water, say officials working in Jharkhand’s rural areas. “There are no problems from the Maoists, as everyone needs water…in fact, they help us,” a state government official told IANS on condition of [...]
Run for your health and happiness! – Ashis Roy
- March 11, 2012
Running is the most natural exercise for a human being. When a small infant starts walking, he tries to run as it is more natural for him. Due to the benefits of running, millions of people all over the world are running and the numbers are constantly increasing. The advantages of running are enumerated below: Heart: The maximum benefits occur [...]
Will government now hobble towards 2014? – Amulya Ganguli
- March 11, 2012
The assembly election results are not all good news for the country, the government that leads it and states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab. While the setbacks suffered by the Congress mean that the Manmohan Singh government will be unable to take any bold initiative on the reforms front, the scene will continue to be uncertain in Uttar Pradesh [...]
Rahul Dravid, a gentleman-cricketer to the core
- March 10, 2012
Rahul Dravid never believed in half measures. He tried to be perfect in everything he did both on and off the field. For 16 years, he played international cricket and outside of it in all forms of the game with dignity and humility. A gentleman-cricketer to the core. Spotted by coach Keki Tarapore, whose list of trainees include practically all [...]
Rahul Dravid, the ultimate team man – Anand Philar
- March 10, 2012
Sport and fairytales do not always go hand in hand, and for Rahul Dravid, an otherwise glorious international cricketing career did not end in a befitting manner. His retirement from international and first class cricket Friday comes on the back of a disastrous tour of Australia where he was bowled six times in eight innings of the four Tests, with [...]
The Minister of Railways, Shri Dinesh Trivedi today announced introduction of 26 new trains, extension of five existing trains, increase in frequency of two existing trains and introduction of new five sub-urban trains. Most of these new services announced were part of the Railway Budget 2011-12. The trains announced in the Railway Budget 2011-12 are implemented by the end of the financial [...]