Top Stories of the Week
Tata Steel bids for Corus acquisition
Jan 31 2007 :
Tata Steel is set to become the world's fifth-biggest steelmaker after winning a bid battle for Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus Group by agreeing to pay 6.2 billion pounds ($12 billion).
Britain's Takeover Panel said in an e-mailed statement that after an auction Tata Steel had agreed to offer Corus investors 608 pence per share in cash, topping a final bid of 603 pence from Brazilian Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (CSN).
Both offers were right at the top end of what analysts had thought possible and will now be put to Corus investors, who have no reason not to accept the higher price.
Corus was not immediately available for comment.
The auction process, following a takeover tussle that began in earnest when Tata Steel offered 455 pence per share on Oct.
20, started at the close of trading in London on Tuesday when Corus shares ended 0.5 percent higher at 563 pence. CSN and Tata Steel were keen to buy Corus to become significant players in the consolidating steel industry, where Dutch-based Mittal Steel last year bought Luxembourg's Arcelor to create the world's biggest steelmaker, Arcelor Mittal.
The 608 pence Tata Steel is set to pay values Corus at around seven times its forecast earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for 2006, well above the multiple Mittal Steel paid for Arcelor which was 4.6 times historic EBITDA.
Ahead of the auction, called last week by the Takeover Panel to bring the bid battle to an end, CSN had the upper hand after it had made a bid worth 4.9 billion pounds ($9.6 billion) or 515 pence per share, accepted by Corus on Dec. 11, hours after it had accepted a 500 pence offer from Tata Steel.
The battle pushed Corus's share price to seven-year highs and pitted 70-year-old Tata group chairman Ratan Tata, from one of India's best-known business families, against Benjamin Steinbruch who at 52 is one of Brazil's most famous executives as chief executive and main owner of CSN.
Ratan Tata has transformed the once-staid Tata group since taking over as chairman in 1991. He has cut the number of companies in the group from over 300, and acquired new businesses with growth potential.
Tata Steel has spent more than $400 million in recent years to buy Singapore's NatSteel and Thailand's Millennium Steel, and other group companies have also made acquisitions outside India.
On Oct 17 2006 Tata Steel announced that it had made a ten billion dollars acquisition offer to Corus Group Plc, the largest steel maker of the UK.
In a statement, the company said it had made an ''indicative non -binding offer to acquire 100 per cent equity'' in Corus Group Plc and discussions in this regard were on with the Borad and Management of the UK company.
Labels: breaking news, international, others
Huge mudflow inevitable from volcano lake
A crater lake on a New Zealand volcano used as a backdrop in the ''Lord of the Rings'' films is on the verge of collapsing and could send a torrent of muddy water down the mountain in coming weeks, media reported today.
Melting snow on Mount Ruapehu has filled the lake to within 1.5 metres of its lip, according to the New Zealand Herald newspaper.
The 2,797-metre volcano is the highest mountain in the North Island and home to two commercial ski fields.
Scientists say a lahar, or mudflow composed of volcanic material and water, is inevitable as warm summer weather causes the snow to melt and fill the lake.
''It is still expected the earliest the dam might start collapsing to create a lahar down the Whangaehu River is February/March,'' the Herald quoted a Department of Conservation official as saying.
On December 24, 1953, a lahar rushing down the Whangaehu River destroyed a railway bridge, causing a packed passenger train to plunge into the river, killing 151 people on board.
Since then, a barrier of boulders and gravel has been built to divert any lahar flowing into the river. No major towns would be in its path.
Mount Ruapehu, which last erupted in 1995 and 1996, creating the present crater dam, is in Tongariro National Park, where Peter Jackson filmed some scenes for his ''Lord of the Rings''.
Labels: enviornment, others
Monica Lewinsky hunting job in London
Monica Lewinsky, the lady who landed former US President Bill Clinton in a famous political sex scandal in 1998, is now hunting for a job in London.
33-years-old Lewinsky graduated from the London School of Economics last month.
In 1998, the US House of Representatives impeached Clinton on charges of lying to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice to conceal his affair with Lewinsky.
Labels: others, politics, terror attack
Honda Motor to produce small car
Honda Motor Company today said it would introduce a small-size vehicle in India and construct a second automobile plant with an aim to produce and sell more than 150,000 units of automobiles in India by the end of 2010.
Mr Takeo Fukui, President & CEO, Honda Motor Company, in his year-end address in Tokyo today, announced a series of initiatives and expansion plans for Honda operations in Japan and across the world.
With reference to the Indian automobile operations, Mr Fukui also said, ''Annual automobile production capacity in India will be doubled to 100,000 units by the end of 2007'', said a Honda press release. The expansion to 100,000 units at Honda Siel Cars India's Greater Noida plant has already begun and is progressing as per schedule.
In his speech he said, Honda would further accelerate its effort to strengthen the core characteristics that make Honda unique in each business area in order to continue creating new value and providing products and services which are beyond customers' expectations.
Dwelling on Honda's estimated worldwide sales for the year 2006, he said, Honda globally expects to achieve all-time record sales in all three product areas. Motorcycles at 12.7 million units (up 3 per cent from 2005), while Automobiles at 3.55 million units (up 5 per cent from 2005) and Power Products at 6.4 million units (up 15 per cent from 2005).
Asia region's -- excluding Japan & China operations -- 2006 automobile sales forecast was 320,000 units (up 4 per cent from 2005, an all-time record for the 4th consecutive year) Asia's 2007 automobile sales plan: 360,000 units (up 13 per cent from 2006). For the motorcycle business, Honda expanded motorcycle production capacity in India, the Philippines and Pakistan in 2006, and also announced further capacity expansion in India and Vietnam in 2007, the release said.
Labels: automotive, international, others
Virtual space travel by Google
Web surfers may soon be able to explore the canyons of Mars and experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon thanks to a deal announced yesterday between Web search company Google Inc and the NASA Ames Research Centre.
The Space Act Agreement is the first in a series of collaborations between the Mountain View, California-based Internet company and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
NASA and Google said they will work together on a wide range of technical problems and will make NASA's space exploration work, much of which is currently scattered across the Web, more accessible to the public.
One project would let viewers see details of Mars and Earth's moon in a format similar to satellite picture views of the world made popular by applications such as Google Earth.
Eventually, they aim to offer real-time weather visualisation and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars and real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle from the screen of any computer with Internet access, they said in a statement.
Google and NASA first partnered last year to build a new campus at NASA's research centre in Silicon Valley. The deal called for Google to develop up to 1 million square feet (93,000 square metre) of real estate within the Moffett Field research park.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Labels: international, others
Manu Sharma convicted for Jessica murder case
Setting aside his acquittal by the trial court, the Delhi High court today convicted
Manu Sharma for murdering model
Jessica Lall more than seven and a half years ago.
Besides, co-accused Vikas Yadav and Amardeep Singh were held guilty of destroying evidence.
All the three were directed to be taken into custody forthwith.
A Division Bench headed by Justice R S Sodhi and Justice P K Bhasin called ''positively perverse'' the judgment of the trial court acquitting Manu Sharma on February 21 this year.
They severely criticised the judge of the trial court for making an immature assessment of the material on record, which is self-contradictory, based on misreading of material.
The judges agreed with CBI counsel Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium that the trial court wrongly believed a case of the prosecution that two shots had been fired by two people from as many different pistols even as it was never the case of the prosecution.
The court disdainfully dismissed the two-gun theory, bolstered by senior counsel 
Ram Jethmalani trying to make Jessica, the victim, look like an accused provoking a tall Sikh man into firing a shot.
''Much was sought to be made of the report of the ballistic expert, Roop Singh, saying the empty cartridges recovered from the place of occurrence appear to have been fired from two weapons. His report cannot be relied upon, not evidenced under the law laid down by Code of Criminal Procedure,'' the judges said.
Second opinion of another ballistic expert, Prem Sagar Manocha, categorically stating it impossible to say whether the cartridges have been fired from two different weapons was also doubted by the judges, calling him unreliable.
''The two-weapon theory appears to be concoction of the defence and a manipulation of evidence, in particular of Shyan Munshi who for the first time in court introduced such a theory,'' the judgement said.
The Bench said the trial court had also erred in holding the three witnesses hostile. The trial court grossly erred in manner of appreciation of testimonies of the witnesses, the judges added.
The trial court arrived at a factually wrong finding, not borne out from the evidence on record to the effect that she thought that he had fired a shot at Jessica Lall and that she was not an eye witness, said the judges.
The court set aside the defence argument that Bina Ramani, owner of the Tamarind Cafe, where Jessica was killed on April 29, 1999, and a prime witness, had been under constant pressure from the police to toe their version.
The judges further showered praise on Ms Ramani, calling her, ''the only brave person present in that party to muster courage to face the shooter while others claiming to be socialites did not have the courage to raise a little finger to apprehend the culprit whom Bina was chasing and shouting that he had shot Jessica.'' The recovery of a Tata Safari from Noida further helped the court hold Manu guilty. Manu's allegation of being falsely implicated under a political design didn't convince the court wondering as to why on earth every body would conspire against him. More so, when Manu had not been able to name the politican he considered to be behind the scheme.
Another nailing evidence against Manu was the recovery of two empty cartridges from the place of crime that matched with the mutilated lead bullet recovered from the skull of Jessica. The court said Manu could not produce either a licensed pistol or 25 rounds to prove the prosecution wrong.
A hearing on the quantum of sentence has been posted for December 20.
December 20th, 2006 (Wednesday): Delhi high court sentenced manu sharma to life imprisonment in jessica lall murder case.
Delhi high court also sentenced vikas yadav and tony gill to four years rigorous imprisonment.
Labels: breaking news, national, others
Oceans may rise upto 140 cms by 2100 for warming
The world's oceans may rise up to 140 cms by 2100 due to global warming, a faster than expected increase that could threaten low-lying coasts from Florida to Bangladesh, a researcher said.
''The possibility of a faster sea level rise needs to be considered when planning adaptation measures such as coastal defences,'' Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research wrote in the journal Science.
His study, based on air temperatures and past sea level changes rather than computer models, suggested seas could rise by 50-140 cms by 2100, well above the 9-88 cms projected by the scientific panel that advises the United Nations. A rise of one metre might swamp low-lying Pacific islands such as Tuvalu, flood large areas of Bangladesh or Florida and threaten cities from New York to Buenos Aires.
''The computer models underestimate the sea level rise that has already occurred,'' Rahmstorf told Reuters of a rise of about 20 cms since 1900. ''There are aspects of the physics we don't understand very well.'' Sea level changes hinge on poorly understood factors such as the pace of the melt of glaciers and of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Water also expands as it gets warmer but the rate of penetration of heat to the depths is uncertain.
''My main conclusion is not that my forecast is better but that the uncertainty is much larger because of the different results you get with reasonable methods,'' he said.
Almost all climate scientists reckon the world is warming because of emissions of greenhouse gases from human use of fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars. Rising temperatures could bring more droughts, floods and heatwaves. Tides Rahmstorf likened his approach to predicting the height of tides along a coast, largely based on past observations.
He said seas were 120 metres below present levels during the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago and 25-35 metres higher than the present in the Pliocene epoch 3 million years ago. In the Ice Age temperatures were 4-7 Celsius cooler than today and 2-3 C warmer in the Pliocene. That suggested sea levels change 10-30 metres per rise or fall per degree Celsius over thousands of years.
The UN climate panel has projected temperatures will rise by 1.4-5.8C by 2100, mainly because of human influences. ''Sea level is a very slow component of the climate system so what we see by the year 2100 is just a small percentage of the total we are causing,'' Rahmstorf said.
There was still time for the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions but he said the slow pace of U.N. talks on extending the UN's Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 ''gives you the impression that governments are not very well aware of how urgent the whole problem has become''. Coastal cities in the North Atlantic -- from New York to London -- could be especially vulnerable because a possible slowdown of ocean currents could also raise sea levels in the North Atlantic and lower them in the southern hemisphere.
''Any time you change ocean currents you change the sea surface...if you slow down the North Atlantic current you get a rise in the North Atlantic,'' Rahmstorf said.
Labels: enviornment, others
Five killed in Infosys campus
Five labourers were killed and five others injured in a mishap in the campus of Information Technology bellwether Infosys while they were working on a repair of a portion of building here this morning.
City Police Commissioner N Achuta Rao, who visited the spot, talking to newsmen, said the mishap occured when the centring structures and huge glass panes came down on the workers engaged in building work below. The deceased belonged to Raichur district, he added.
He said five labourers, who sustained injured, were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment immediately.
Labels: accidents, national, others
Second Indian origin girl in space
Houston, May 4 Nasa has picked Indian-American
Sunita Williams nee Pandya as part of the 14th international space station crew, Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams has been appointed along with two others as part of the replacement crew for the six-month-long International Space Station Expedition to be carried out in September this year.
Sunita's selection caps the prospects, which began in 2003 when she was selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Agency as a backup crew member for one of its missions to the space station orbiting about 240 miles above Earth.
She is the second astronaut of Indian origin after Kalpana Chawla, whose space odyssey had a tragic end on February 1, 2003, when space shuttle Columbia exploded over Texas during re-entry. The US-born Sunita Williams will serve as a flight engineer for the six-month mission, Nasa announced on Tuesday.
Her colleagues on the expedition will be Nasa astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who will be the commander and the station science officer, and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, who will serve as flight engineer and Soyuz commander.
Nasa's long expected announcement concerning Sunita Williams comes just ahead of the visit to India this week of Nasa administrator Michael Griffin to finalise American participation on India's unmanned Chandrayaan moon mission.
Griffin is expected to sign a MoU with ISRO for placing American scientific instruments in Chadrayaan-I on its scheduled 2008 launch. According to Nasa's biography of Sunita, she has a US Navy background. A graduate of
Florida Institute of Technology, she received her commission as an Ensign in the US Navy from the US Naval Academy in May 1987. She was designated a Naval Aviator in 1989, and graduated from the Naval Test Pilot School in 1993.
She was later assigned to Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 8 in Norfolk, Virginia, and made overseas deployments to the Mediterranean, Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Desert Shield.
She was selected for the astronaut programme by Nasa in June 1998, in part because of her extensive experience on more than 30 different aircraft. She has since been an "Astronaut Candidate" under training waiting for her space flight assignment which Nasa announced on Tuesday. Sunita, who was born in Ohio (Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal, Haryana), is married to physicist-turned-US deputy marshall, Michael J Williams.
She is the daughter of Deepak Pandya, an India-born physician who migrated to US in the 1960s and now works at a veterans hospital. Her mother Ursaline, a home-maker, is an American of Slavic descent.
In a previously published interview, she described her father as a traditional Hindu and therefore a vegetarian. "My mother would cook two different meals each day one Indian and one meat and potatoes so I got to eat a little bit of both and a good variety.
I still like spicier food," she recalled, speaking of her fondness for samosas. About her father, she said, "He was orphaned and so is very accepting of others' goals and trying new things."
Labels: international, national, others
NASA calls off space shuttle launch
NASA postponed space shuttle Discovery's liftoff on Thursday night because of thick, low clouds at the Florida launch site.
The next opportunity for flight is at 9:13 p.m. on Friday (0213 GMT on Saturday), but meteorologists were forecasting a 90 percent chance of another delay due to high winds stirred by a cold front pushing through central Florida.
"We gave it the best shot and did not get clear," said NASA launch director Mike Leinbach.
Replied Discovery commander Mark Polansky, "Try not to be too disappointed and we will be ready to support the next time we get a chance."
NASA is hoping to launch its third mission in six months and get a jump on the looming deadline to finish International Space Station assembly before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010. The launch will be NASA's first in darkness since before the 2003 Columbia disaster. Managers recently lifted the ban on night launches, imposed to ensure cameras had good lighting to spot any debris falling off the shuttle's fuel tank.
Debris damaged Columbia, triggering the breakup of the ship and the death of its seven astronauts as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere.
On the last flight, astronauts delivered new solar arrays to provide power for additional modules scheduled to be installed next year. The tricky task of wiring the arrays into the station's power grid falls to Discovery's crew. At least 14 more missions are needed to finish the $100 billion outpost. Discovery's flight is scheduled to last 12 days.
In addition to Polansky, the five-man, two-woman crew consists of
Sweden's first astronaut,
Christer Fuglesang, pilot William Oefelein, flight engineer Robert Curbeam and mission specialists Nicholas Patrick, Joan Higginbotham and
Sunita Williams.
Only Polansky and Curbeam have made previous spaceflights.
from yahoo news
Labels: international, others
News Updates from India
Kolkata : West Bengal Assembly has passed a Bill banning handpulled rickshaws.The decision, as in the past, has raised fears of unemployment for the poorest of the poor.The Bill is likely to affect the migrant labourers in Kolkata, who survived on the rickshaws - a century old transport.There are 5,937 hand pulled rickshaws in the city. The government has promised alternative livelihood for the rickshaw pullers.
Delhi : An Indian Airlines flight IC 402 overshot the tarmac at Delhi airport Sunday night, eyewitness Rakesh Vaid told NDTV. All the 320 passengers on the flight from Kolkata disembarked safely. Emergency services including fire fighting trucks and ambulances scrambled to the aircraft as the incident took place at 11 pm.
source
NDTVLabels: national, others
Life loss in US Winter storm
Temperatures stayed below freezing as hundreds of thousands waited for their electricity to be restored after a devastating winter storm that has been blamed for at least 19 deaths across the US.
In the latest incidents, icy weather contributed to the deaths of four St. Louis residents. Two men died of suspected carbon monoxide poisoning after they tried to keep warm by burning coal on their stove.
One man was found dead in his yard from possible hypothermia and an elderly man was found dead at the bottom of his home's stairs. "This is not over. As long as the power is still out, there are still people at risk," said St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.
Temperatures barely rose to minus-6 Celsius on Sunday. City officials encouraged people to stay at temporary shelters, rather than try to tough it out in residences without power.
The storm was blamed for at least 15 other deaths as it spread ice and deep snow from Texas to Michigan and then blew through the Northeast.
Thousands of travelers were stranded by canceled flights, highways clogged by abandoned vehicles and stalled trains.
source
NDTVLabels: enviornment, international, others
Former Indian Cricketer Hanumant Singh died
Former Test player Hanumant Singh passed away this morning in Breach Candy hospital here, after battling with dengue for over a month.
He was 67 and is survived by his wife and son.
He had scored a century on debut for India and had represented the country in 14 Test matches. After retirement Singh was the National Selector as well as a Coach at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore. He also became a respected ICC Match Referee.
Labels: national, others, sports
South Korea suspected second bird flu case
South Korea farm ministry said today it had found a second suspected case of highly pathogenic bird flu at a poultry farm, after confirming on Saturday it had its first outbreak in three years of the H5N1 strain.
The ministry said the second suspected case was at a poultry farm near where the first case had been found and they are checking to see if the virus has spread through the country.
South Korea has nearly completed culling all 236,000 poultry within a 500 metre (1,640-ft) radius of a farm in North Cholla province about 170 km (100 miles) south from Seoul where officials said the H5N1 avian influenza strain had been detected.
Labels: enviornment, international, others
Netaji case
In a new twist to the enduring enigma of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s “disappearance’’, one of the witnesses appearing before the one-man Mukherjee Commission investigating the mystery today claimed that Netaji and monk Bhagwanji, he met in the seventies in Uttar Pradesh, were the same person.
Appearing before Justice M.K. Mukherjee’s single Bench here, Bijoy Kumar Nag claimed that he had met Bhagwanji between 1970 and 1975 at Raja Maidan in Purani Basti and between 1976 and 1977 at Brahmakunda in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. Justice Mukherjee said that the witness claimed that whatever Bhagwanji uttered about his early life to Mr Nag and his associates complied with Netaji’s life.
Further, Bhagwanji spoke about issues regarding certain people which were exclusively known and confirmed by those people only, claimed the witness, who is the publisher of “Jayshri”, which had brought out several books on Netaji’s life.
Labels: national, others
Gold hallmarking to be made mandatory
Hallmarking on gold jewellery shall be made mandatory from January 1, 2008 by the government, Mr Y P Singh, Additional Director General, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) said today.
Addressing a seminar on hallmarking of gold/silver jewellery, organized by BIS here, he informed that in order to promote gold hallmarking among consumers and bring more jewellers under assaying ambit, BIS is planning to spread its network of assaying and hallmarking centres in the country. Thirty five additional assaying centres will be set up by March next year, he added.
The government shall be giving one time financial incentive of 15 per cent of the cost of machinery and equipments subject to maximum of Rs 15 lakhs per centre for hallmarking, he added.
Mr Singh informed that according to an estimate there are more than three lakh jewellery retailers, manufacturers and over 100 large-scale units manufacturing jewellery in the country. He informed that BIS had conducted a market survey on 120 samples drawn from eight cities, which revealed failure of 88 per cent samples with average purity shortage of 11 per cent.
Another market survey revealed that more than 90 per cent samples failed against the purity declared as wide as 44.66 per cent and average shortage of 13.5 per cent . In Chandigarh, all the 10 samples drawn failed with maximum shortage in purity of 18.71 per cent and average shortage of 10.4 per cent.
Mr Singh said that uptil October 31 this year, 2,708 gold hallmarking licenses had been issued by BIS in the country. About 162 lakh pieces of gold, silver and artefacts had been hallmarked uptil October this year.
Labels: others
Katara case: Bharti Yadav back in India
The trial in the four-and-a-half- year-old Nitish Katara murder case is set to take a decisive turn with the arrival of prime witness Bharti Yadav back in India after a protracted legal wrangle.
However, mystery shrouded the return of Bharti, daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav, from London on Friday with her family and the police maintaining a complete silence about her whereabouts.
"I can confirm that she is in India. But I would not be able to tell you where exactly she is. I have not spoken to her so far. She will depose on November 29 as scheduled," her advocate S C Buttan told.
Speculation is rife that she is putting up in a farmhouse in Chattarpur locality of South Delhi, but Delhi Police have refused to confirm or deny.
Meanwhile, Nitish's mother Neelam Katara said Bharti's deposition was "important to take the case to its logical conclusion as she can throw useful light into the happenings of that fateful day."
"I expect her to speak the truth. She saw Nitish going with her brothers," Neelam told here when asked whether she expected her to speak against her family in the controversial case.
Neelam said she had met Bharti twice and spoke to her over phone before the murder of her son. "Even after Nitish went missing, she was the person who told me to file a complaint against her brothers."
Bharti is set to depose before a court here on November 29 and media have been barred from the hearing of her testimony.
The court had allowed her plea for in-camera proceedings of her testimony, but rejected the demand that main complainant Neelam Katara should not be allowed to be present during her deposition.
from
Time of IndiaLabels: national, others, politics
Katara case : Bharati on November 27
Bharati Yadav, sister of Vikas Yadav who is accused in the Nitish Katara murder case, has moved the trial court to arrange for video-conferencing to testify from London where she is studying.
In an application moved before additional sessions judge J. M. Malik, Bharati said her university had denied her leave as examinations were starting in December and studies are in full swing. "The university has declined to grant leave. Therefore, realising the importance of the matter, I may be permitted to depose through video-conferencing," she said.
The court listed the application for hearing on November 27.
Earlier, Bharati had requested the court to send her to-and-fro airfare so that she could come to Delhi to depose before it. The court had then said she could collect the fare from the Uttar Pradesh government after she turned up at the court to testify.
Bharati is a key witness in the case, as Katara was murdered on February 16 2002.
Katara was a Delhi-based businessman and studied in the same college as Bharati.
On the fateful day, Katara, who was sitting with Bharati at a friend's wedding in Ghaziabad, was allegedly taken out from the banquet hall by Vikas and Vishal on some pretext.
From there, he was kidnapped and then killed. His charred body was found a few days later on the roadside at Khurja in Uttar Pradesh.
from yahoo news Labels: national, others
Jordanian King and Queen to visit India
Jordanian King Abdullah II Bin El Hussein will visit India from November 30 to December one, an External Affairs Ministry spokesman said.
The King, accompanied by Queen Rania El Abdullah, will be on their first State visit to India.
The visit is taking place at the invitation of President
A P J Abdul Kalam.
Labels: international, national, others
HIV infection on rise in all regions
HIV infection is rising in every region of the world and most worryingly in countries like Uganda and Thailand, which had been heralded as success stories in the fight against AIDS, the United Nations has said.
Nearly 40 million adults and children are infected worldwide.
The most striking increases in new cases are in east Asia and in eastern Europe/central Asia, mainly due to drug use and unsafe sex, UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation said yesterday.
Somebody is infected with the deadly HIV virus every 8 seconds, equivalent to 11,000 infections worldwide every day, while another 8,000 infected people die, the two agencies said in a joint annual report ''2006 AIDS Epidemic Update''.
''Evidence shows again that the global epidemic is growing in all areas,'' Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, told a news conference.
''Perhaps of even greater concern to me is the fact that in some countries that had known real results in the fight against AIDS -- Uganda and some western countries -- we see an increase in infection rates.'' Some 4.3 million people across the globe became infected with HIV this year, with a heavy concentration among young people, bringing the total number to an estimated 39.5 million.
Sub-Saharan Africa, which recorded 2.8 million new infections, still bears the brunt of the AIDS scourge, with 24.7 million people living with HIV, according to the report.
Of the 2.9 million global deaths from AIDS last year -- which Piot said was the highest number recorded -- 2.1 million occurred in Africa, the core area of the 25-year-old epidemic.
Labels: health, international, others
System insensitive, says rape victim
Open Letter to Shayan Munshi from IBNlive
2007 will be world's warmest year
Satyajit Ray - A Visualizer and His Films
"I desire to kill again"
