Thursday, January 13, 2011

“Onions at Rs 32 to Rs 15 per kg sold in Nashik” plus 7 more

“Onions at Rs 32 to Rs 15 per kg sold in Nashik” plus 7 more

Onions at Rs 32 to Rs 15 per kg sold in Nashik

Posted: 13 Jan 2011 02:37 AM PST


With prices of onions soaring in the country, an initiative was taken by the Lasalgaon Agriculture Produce Marketting committee in Nashik, Maharashtra to distribute onions at much cheaper rates. On Wednesday the APMC, sold onions at Rs 15 to Rs 32 per kg.

The scheme inaugurated by the MP Sameer Bhujbal had brought relief to the consumers in Nashik. "The exercise should be replicated for other vegetables as well and by all APMCs in the district as it helps both farmers and consumers," Bhujbal said.

The onions were made available in three categories according to their sizes. The bigger onions were sold at Rs 32 per kg, the medium ones at Rs. 25 per kg and the smallest ones at Rs. 15 per kg.

Mukund Holkar, the director of Lasalgaon APMC said that, the onions were sold on a no-profit and no-loss basis and were purchased directly from the onion farmers. In this way the middlemen were avoided and just the cost of transport was added to the prices.

Wikipedia’s first overseas office in India

Posted: 13 Jan 2011 02:05 AM PST


The online encyclopedia giant Wikipedia, will soon be opening its first overseas office in India. With its first step outside US, It has plans to develop the data in Hindi as well as many other regional languages.

Chief of Wikimedia, a non profit organization behind Wikipedia, Sue Gardner, while talking about the reason of choosing India for its first over seas office said that, the choice was made due its huge population and the growing number of people using internet. She also mentioned about how the number of users having internet on mobile is also increasing. “India is really high potential for us,” Gardner said.

Gardner also added that India was picked due to the fruitful environment, which includes value education, free speech and a culture of intellectual debate. For now the encyclopedia does have data in Indian language, but in small scale.

The Indian office will help the data grow and also attract more people to edit the data, Gardner said.

Pongal 2011: the harvest festival in Tamil Nadu begins

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 11:22 PM PST


The Tamil festival Pongal, specially observed by the Tamilians has begun on 12the January and will continue till 18th January. The season marks the harvest festival in the state of Tamil Nadu as well as in Sri Lanka.

Pongal if literally translated means, 'boiling over'. People, as a tradition, boil the milk in clay pot and boil it to make it spill. This marks the material abundance in the house.

The festival is celebrated by the farmers to thank the Sun God and the house hold material that has helped them to progress economically. While the state of Tamil Nadu celebrates Pongal, the rest of the nation will observe Makara Sankranthi.

Along with the other reasons of the festival the day also denotes the beginning of Uttarayana or the shifting of the Sun towards the north. After the commencement of Uttarayana, the days become longer. During the festival, sweets made of Sesame are prepared and shared with friends and family.

Apple iPhone 4 CDMA will be in India soon

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 09:55 PM PST


Recently Verizon, the largest telecom service provider in U.S. officially announced the availability of Apple iPhone4 CDMA on its carrier from 10th Feb, 2011. After this announcement, it is expected that the CDMA carrier Reliance in India would utilize the CDMA iPhone4 for CDMA connections in India.

As per Wall Street Journal reports, Indian CDMA carriers, Reliance and Tata Teleservices have already started negotiating talks with Apple to carry the CDMA iPhone in India.

“Apple’s multi-year, non-exclusive agreement with Verizon opens up the possibility of Apple adding other carriers in the U.S. including T-Mobile and Sprint. What’s more, we expect CDMA carrier announcements including China Telecom and Reliance in India over time.” – Katy Hubert, Analyst, Apple Inc.

Apple might have huge growth opportunities if the CDMA iPhone4 reaches India because 20 percent of the 670 million subscribers are CDMA users.

New Beijing traffic rules and subway lines ease congestion

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 07:44 PM PST


Authorities in Beijing report that the new traffic rules and the opening of  new subway lines have made obvious improvements in traffic congestion.

Five new subway lines opened in December, up from 11.  The length of subway lines went increased by 108 km to a total of 336 km, a 32 percent increase.

The increased subway lines along with implementing an odd-even license plate number system have led to the improvements.   This system allows to be driven every other day in peak hours in some congested areas.

“On average, the duration of traffic jams has been reduced by more than two hours per day, from 3 hours and 55 minutes before the new year to the current 1 hour 45 minutes since Jan. 1,” said Li Xiaosong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communications.

Li’s committee has also established a rating system for traffic.

“Smooth” traffic is rated 0-2 , “generally smooth”  2-4 “generally smooth,” , 4-6 is “slight congestion”, “moderate congestion” 6-8  and  “heavy congestion” 8-10″.

Li said prior to the New Year, the traffic congestion index was typically 8.2, but the implementation of new policies  have improved to  a 6.

Beijing will be restricting the number of new cars to be registered in 2011 to one-third the number of 2010 by implementing a lottery system.

Chinese tourism to Taiwan up 127%

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 06:15 PM PST



Taipei 101, a natural tourist destination. Source: Reuters.

Improved relations between China and Taiwan have led to a 127% increase in tourism over 2009.

Theses mainland visitors helped boost tourism to Taiwan  to a record 5.57 million last year, up by 1.17 million or 26.7 per cent from 2009, the Taiwan Tourism Bureau said Tuesday.

For decades Japan has had the greatest number of tourists, but now tourists from China are coming in larger numbers.

Mainland tour groups accounted for 1.63 million visits in 2010, the largest share of last year’s 5.56 million cross-border visits to the island, Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau said.   Japan made up about 1 million visitors.

A significant factor in the growth of mainland tourism was the opening of a tourism promotion bureau, a quasi-official office in Beijing last year and direct flights between Taipei and Shanghai.

Mainland tourists currently may only come to Taiwan as part of a tour group, but Beijing and Taipei have agreed to open up tourism to individuals by Tomb Sweeping Day.

Heritage Foundation report: Hong Kong worlds’ freest economy 17th year in a row

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 04:32 PM PST


The Heritage Foundation, a conservative free-market think-tank based in Washington D.C., rated Hong Kong

Hong Kong world's freest economy.

the world’s freest economy for the 17th year in a row.

Heritage Foundation has published the Index of Economic Freedom since  1995 and Hong Kong has always come out on top.

The world average is 59.7 whereas Hong Kong’s score was 89.7.  Singapore and Australia followed at 87.2 and 82.5 respectively.

Hong Kong declined in government spending and labor freedom and Singapore’s rating increased 1.1 points from last year.  Singapore is posed to pass Hong Kong next year if it continues to make improvements in banking.

The United States slipped one notch from eighth to ninth because of massive government spending and the passing of Obama-care.

“Hong Kong, one of the world’s most competitive financial and business centers, demonstrated a high degree of resilience during the global financial crisis,” the report said.

Ten factors play into the Heritages’s evaluation of economic freedom.  These factors are: business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption and labor freedom.

Will “Buy American” Solar provision anger Chinese?

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 12:32 PM PST


Will Chinese President Hu Jintao express displeasure over the "Buy American" solar panel law to Obama?

During its lame-duck session last month, Congress put a “Buy America” provision in a law mandating that the US military buy only solar cells that are made in America.  President Obama signed the law.

Since China has emerged in the last two years as world’s largest supplier of solar panels, they view this action as protectionism.   It is speculated that Chinese President Hu Jintao will raise the issue with President Obama when he visits the US next week because it has raised the Chinese’ ire.

The US military is leading the effort to “go green” largely for security reasons.    Transporting fossil fuels to installations in places such as Afghanistan can be a security risk, so having solar photovoltaics on base would be a plus.

However, Eric Wesoff asks a very pertinent question about this protectionist move by the US:

“What if it turns out that the materials that go into those Chinese solar panels are American-made?  The United States is actually a net exporter of solar energy products, with total net exports of $723 million in 2009″.

Westoff points out that by making it illegal to buy Chinese solar panels, Congress may very well be harming the people they want to protect:  Americans.

What do you think?  Do you think the Chinese have cause to be angry about this bill?

Posted by Suresh at 4:12 AM

0 comments:

Post a Comment