** IKEA India appoints Susanne Pulverer as its new CEO, CSO

Peter Betzel to take up next assignment within the IKEA Group

IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings retailer, has appointed Susanne Pulverer as its new and first woman chief executive officer (CEO) and chief sustainability officer (CSO), for its India business.

Ms. Pulverer took over from the outgoing India CEO Peter Betzel, who moved on to the next assignment within the IKEA Group. Prior to the new responsibility, Ms. Pulverer held the position of Group Business Risk and Compliance Manager at the Ingka Group, of which IKEA is part.

Ms. Pulverer joined IKEA in 1997 and has worked across different roles within IKEA. This is her third stint in India. She started her IKEA journey as Environmental Manager for the IKEA Group and moved on to IKEA of Sweden, where she held various roles in different business categories. She then moved to India in 2007 to head the purchasing function for IKEA South Asia during which she developed a strong connection and passion for India and its people.

** Andhra Pradesh: 8-year-old girl’s skating feat wins MLA Roja’s appreciation

Vensika Siri skates all the way from Nangili check-post to Nagari MLA’s residence covering a distance of 250 km

An 8-year-old girl of Puttur municipality in Chittoor district on Saturday performed an impressive feat of skating from the Nangili check-post on the Chittoor-Bengaluru NH in Karnataka to the residence of Nagari MLA R.K. Roja, covering a distance of about 250 kilometers. 

** As scholar, critic, translator Gayatri Spivak turns 80, an extract from an exhilarating 1998 speech

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor, and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University.

Spivak, well known for her translation of Derrida as also some works of Mahasweta Devi, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation in 1997

I am deeply honoured that the Sahitya Akademi have decided to acknowledge my efforts to translate the fiction of Mahasweta Devi.

I want to begin by thanking Mahasweta Devi for writing such spectacular prose. I want to thank my parents, Pares Chandra Chakravorty and Sivani Chakravorty for bringing me up in a household that was acutely conscious of the riches of Bangla. My father was a doctor. But we children were always reminded that my father’s Bangla essay for his matriculation examination had been praised by Tagore himself.

** Telangana Governor flags off first all-women offshore sailing expedition

Expedition route is from Chennai to Vizag and back

Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan flagged off the first-ever all-women Army officers’ offshore sailing expedition under the aegis of the Army Adventure Wing Southern Command Sailing Node and the EME Sailing Association in Chennai on Tuesday.

Major Mukta S. Gautam from the Corps of EME is leading the momentous expedition with the elite team comprising Majors Priya Semwal, Priya Das, Rashmil Sangwan, Arpita Dwivedi and Sanjana Mittal and Captains Jyoti Singh, Malvika Rawat, Shubham Solanki and Sonal Goyal.

** Mithali Raj stays at number 2 spot in ICC ODI women’s rankings

Raj made 59 off 73 balls in India’s 62-run defeat in the first ODI of the five-match series in Queenstown.

India skipper Mithali Raj maintained her second spot in the ICC Women’s ODI player rankings even as New Zealand batter Amy Satterthwaite moved up to number three after a splendid show in the series-opener against India.

** Junior World No 1 Tasnim Mir wins Iran Fajr International Challenge

The 16-year-old from Gujarat, who became the first Indian woman shuttler to claim the world no. 1 status in u-19 singles, beat second seed Susato 21-11, 11-21, 21-7 in 51 minutes.

 Junior World No 1 Indian shuttler Tasnim Mir on Friday notched a three-game win over Yulia Yosephine Susanto of Indonesia in the final to claim the women’s singles title at the Iran Fajr International Challenge here.

* NRI teen girl invents problem-based learning to helps kids

“I saw my parents testing lead levels in water at home and the process was tedious, unreliable and expensive,” she said.

 Gitanjali Rao, a child prodigy and inventor, said the cause of her success was her community, a supportive environment as well as the focus on problem-based learning in schools.

Speaking at the Diaspora Diplomacy speaker series, organised by the US Mission in India, the 16-year-old talked about her experiences, her thought processes as well as her upcoming inventions. Gitanjali, an Indian-origin student from the US, is an accomplished inventor, having come to the forefront with Tethys, a device that detects lead levels in water and transmits the information over Bluetooth.

** Winners Of World Online Karate Championship

The Karatekas of IKA Karate Academy, Mysuru and Kali Warriors Academy, Karnataka, under Pekiti Tirsia Kali India, have bagged various medals in the World Online Karate Championship-2022 organised by Dynamic Shotokan Karate Do Association, World Union of Martial Arts Federations, World Karate Alliance and Evolution of Karate between Jan. 20 and Jan. 25, 2022.