A new series starting today with two news items…
“The central government will be sending a package for orphans of the slain militants. Scholarships and pension will be provided to them similar to the relief being provided to other orphans,” Nirupama Kaul, chairperson of the All India Centre for Urban and Rural Development told media-persons in Srinagar on Wednesday (30th July ’08).
Kaul claimed she met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 25 and presented a charter of demands to him on behalf of nearly one lakh families of militants killed in the …

About two weeks ago,�the Royal Society of Arts in UK, together with�Tehelka, organised a Summit on India and Pakistan in London. It had a stellar line up of speakers and panelists (Jaswant Singh, Farooq Abduallh, Arun Jaitley, Mushahid Husain, Imran Khan, Asma Jehangir, Ram Jethmalani…et al) and I am sure it generated a lot of animated discussions…
I am delighted to present a guest post by my dear friend Ashutosh who attended the summit and graciously agreed to pen down his thoughts to share with everyone on this blog…Ashutosh has a …

From a Sify report on a seminar held last Friday at IIC on ’1914 Shimla Convention Agreement and Consequences’ (emphasis mine):
The fact that the Chinese refused to ink the 1914 Shimla Convention agreement between India and Tibet puts question mark over the legality or morality of China’s claim of sovereignty over Tibet, a group of India’s top jurists, scholars and security experts feel.
…The participants – who included senior Supreme Court Advocate Rajeev Dhavan, Arunachal MP Khiren Rijuju, Lt Gen. (Rtd.) F.R. J. Jacob, veteran diplomat Dalip Mehta, and writer Dr …

Dear Friends,
Over the next 4 days (right through the weekend), I will be moving my blog and contents to a hosted-server. What this means is I will have more control over the appearance and features on my blog.� I am doing this for a number of reasons – some minor and some more important. I will be sharing all this information with you over the coming weeks.
In the meantime, expect some glitches in service (and possibly broken links) over the next 2-3 days (I am hoping to keep disruption to …

Came across this yesterday: Armed forces fail to woo; 108 NDA seats vacant
“…Even as the Indian Army is grappling with acute shortage of middle rung officers due to their mass exodus to the corporate sector, the National Defence Academy…has fallen short of 108 quality cadets for its latest batch.
This year only 192 cadets turned up to join NDA, a premier joint services institution to train cadets for the three defence forces, as against the sanctioned strength of 300 for the batch.
…Commenting on the shortage of officers, Defence Minister A …

A recent BBC report suggests that, “…some computer keyboards harbour more harmful bacteria than a toilet seat”
“…Out of 33 keyboards swabbed, four were regarded as a potential health hazard and one harboured five times more germs than one of the office’s toilet seats.  Microbiologist Dr Peter Wilson said a keyboard was often “a reflection of what is in your nose and in your gut”.
During the Which? tests in January this year, a microbiologist deemed one of the office’s keyboards to be so dirty he ordered it to be removed, quarantined …

Many of you may have come across this information about “Ancient Indian Scientists” before. I received it in a chain email but I shall be most grateful if any reader(s) have links or references to the original source(s).
There are many assertions and statements here that have not been verified or explained (see e.g. the entry on Acharya Bharadwaj who is credited with advances in aviation technology*). We need to source and evidence these it to make it more credible.
Some excerpts below (statements on which I need help are marked …

I discovered earlier today that I am on Alltop’s India page.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Alltop, here is a little bit about them.�
Alltop helps “you explore your passions by collecting stories from �all the top� sites on the web.”
These collections are grouped “into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion…”etc and each of them “display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page” in what is called “single-page aggregation.�
“…You can think of an …

Some of you probably read a recent report which suggested that a handshake can apparently be more infectious than a kiss!
If you think this is some kind of a new year’s joke, read this feature from Oct ’04 in which Dr. Philip Tierno (Director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University Medical Center) has been quoted as saying:
“If you eat or drink something without washing your hands, or if you touch your own nose, mouth, or eyes after shaking someone’s hand, you can introduce whatever germ was on …

Some of you may have read a recent news report�in which Union Aviation Minister Shri Praful Patel was�quoted as saying:
“The men who guard our borders should not have to be frisked. There are already 11 people who are exempt. They (Chiefs of Defence Services) come in at number 12.”
I wonder who are these 11 people? Or did Shri Patel mean 11 categories? or 11 posts?
Aviation Secretary Ashok Chawla has been quoted in the same report as saying that “Exemption goes on a warrant of precedence…” but the list has now …