Year: 2020

The seasoned diplomat TS Tirumurti, currently serving as Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs Ministry, was chaired as India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.   A 1985-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, Tirumurti will succeed Syed Akbaruddin, a prominent face in Indian diplomacy who is credited with successfully presenting the country’s position at the global body on a range of key issues for the last several years. Akbaruddin will step down from his chair shortly.   “Tirumurti has been appointed as the next Ambassador/Permanent Representative of India to the…

MP Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan via a video statement announced that the state government offices in Madhya Pradesh, including the secretariat, will resume work from Thursday with only 30 per cent staff every day.   He said the number of coronavirus positive cases in the state is coming down, while the tally of people recovering from the infection has been on the rise.   “We are gradually controlling the situation with people’s cooperation…Taking all the care, we have decided to resume the work in all the state-level offices, including…

IIT Guwahati in association with the experts from Hester Biosciences Ltd to work on vaccine development against COVID-19 are expecting the vaccine to be ready by the year-end to start animal studies.   The work is currently in its early stage of development. The vaccine will be based on a recombinant avian paramyxovirus based vector platform,” they said in a statement.   Rajiv Gandhi, Managing Director and CEO of Hester Biosciences said that in the current pandemic situation of COVID-19, the world is looking at developing preventive and curative measures to…

There are many new laws we are going to witness across the globe during this pandemic,COVID-19, which we have never expected . It is happening across the globe.   Even as the world reels under the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that China — where the virus originated, has controlled the virus and is now moving back on track towards an economic recovery.   All business establishments, irrespective of their strength and type of industry, have been already affected greatly by the coronavirus pandemic. With the entire education sector coming…

In 2019 the global telecommunications market continues its transformation and is underpinning the digital, sharing and interconnected economy. This evolution is mainly driven by the ongoing innovations and technological developments relating to M2M, Big Data Analytics, AI, Cloud Computing and the over-arching Internet of Things. The industry is working hard to keep up with these rapid changes. Telecom operators know, they have a problem controlling their capital expenditure (capex). According to a PwC survey telecoms operators indicated that they could be wasting up to 20% or $65 billion/year in capex.…

India is looking to deploy rapid test kits to speed up Covid-19 screening, amid a spike in cases and growing coronavirus hotspots in the country. At first, the antibody test will confirm if the person has been previously infected by the virus or not, as a move that will help understand the epidemiology of Covid-19 in the country.   The test, called as a serological test, looks for antibodies in the blood, it is different from the current diagnostic tests.   “This is not a confirmatory test. The serological test…

The Karnataka government announced some more relaxations for certain districts which have no or zero cases of coronavirus. The relaxations, which include opening of shops with 50% workforce, will come into effect from tomorrow. However, malls will continue to remain shut. In shops, employees will, however, have to wear masks and practice social distancing. Further, they will have to be transported to their place of work.   Other activities, which will be allowed in the ‘Green Zones’ include opening of industries in rural areas, manufacturing and other industrial establishments with…

Amid pandemic along with many other businesses, alcohol and weed supplies run dry across the country. Many people in desperation are trying different ways to score cannabis to get high. In one such similar incident, an unidentified drug smuggler sneaked some cannabis from the US to India, that too in a sleeping bag!   However, given the high levels of security these days, the Foreign Postal Office and Courier Terminal at Chennai noticed something suspicious after the bags emanated a strong ‘weedy’ smell.   On opening the sleeping bags, officials…