Month: March 2022

** SCARF Media for Mental Health Awards presented

The winners are Riddhi Dastidar for her article on the impact of COVID-19 on service-users in India Spend; Sudipta Das for his article on queer affirmative therapy in Feminism in India; and Vinod Kumar Menon of Mid Day for his articles that followed up on the rights of a woman with mental illness who struggled to gain custody of her child.

Among the regional language articles, Sindhuvasini’s article in BBC Hindi on the rights of people with mental illness to insurance benefits and Sijo Pynadath’s article on mental health of children and their care-givers in Deepika Daily, a Malayalam magazine, won the award.

Tamil Nadu

** AI-based cath lab inaugurated in Chennai

Kumaran Hospitals and Rela Institute on Friday launched the facility jointly

Kumaran Hospitals and Rela Institute on Friday launched an Artificial Intelligence-based cath lab in the city on Friday.

The facility will help healthcare providers in a variety of procedures such as cardiovascular, electrophysiology, oncology and neuro interventional procedures.

Tamil Nadu

** Documentary on hockey Olympian Grahnandan Singh explores a Partition-era friendship

Bani Singh’s documentary ‘Taangh/Longing’ explores the life of her hockey champion father and the camaraderie he shared with his teammates on both sides of the Radcliffe Line

A frail old man leans heavily on his cane as he makes his way to a garden chair under a spreading tamarind tree. Those gnarled hands once held a hockey stick, those stooped shoulders once wore the rank of Commander in the Indian Navy. Grahnandan Singh or Nandy Singh was an old boy of Government College, Lahore, champion hockey player from the Punjab province of undivided India, Partition survivor, two-time Olympian, and keeper of a friendship that survived in the deep recesses of his heart for nearly 60 years.

“My father was a member of the Indian hockey team that won the gold in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. But I missed out on knowing him when he was a champion. It was only when he was fighting to stay afloat after a stroke that I met the champion,” says Bani Singh, Nandy’s daughter and the director of Taangh that was recently screened at Periyar Thidal as part of the 10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival.

Punjab

** R. Sundari elected first mayor of Cuddalore

The election followed high drama as 11 rebel councillors were whisked away to a beach resort

Amid high drama, R. Sundari of the ruling DMK was elected the first mayor of the newly formed Cuddalore Corporation in the indirect elections held on Friday.

Of the 45 councillors, 19 cast their votes in support of the DMK nominee, while 12 others voted for the DMK’s rebel candidate, G. Geetha. One vote was declared invalid.

The AIADMK’s six councillors abstained from voting, while seven out of 11 others who were whisked away to a beach resort near Puducherry by the rebel camp failed to turn up for voting. Four of them managed to reach Cuddalore and participated in the voting.

Tamil Nadu

** Now, a library of French books in Kochi

Collection includes translations of Tagore and Basheer

Want to read Rabindranath Tagore or Vaikom Muhammed Basheer in French?

It is possible now, thanks to an initiative by 43-year-old Dominic Shyju.

This resident of Vadathula has opened a one-cupboard library that contains a host of French books from his home.

Literature, non-fiction and dictionaries are available for “students, teachers and lovers of the French language,” says Dominic, who plans to add more books and shift the library to a more central venue in the city.

The books are from the private collection of Claire Mathey, a French fashion designer who lived in Kochi for nearly four years. When she left during the COVID-19 crisis, she gifted her books to Dominic, who had been a guide in the Fort Kochi area.

France / Kochi

** Sanmina, Reliance ink pact to form manufacturing JV

The joint venture will create an electronic manufacturing hub in India and will prioritise high technology infrastructure hardware, for growth markets, and across industries

Sanmina Corporation, a leading integrated manufacturing solutions company, and Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Ltd. (RSBVL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), have entered into an agreement to create a joint venture through investment in Sanmina’s existing Indian entity Sanmina SCI India Private Ltd. (SIPL). The day-to-day business will continue to be managed by Sanmina’s existing management team in Chennai, which will be seamless from an employee and customer perspective. The joint venture will create an electronic manufacturing hub in India and will prioritise high technology infrastructure hardware, for growth markets, and across industries such as communications networking (5G, cloud infrastructure, hyperscale datacenters), medical and healthcare systems, industrial and cleantech, and defence and aerospace.  In addition to supporting Sanmina’s current customer base, the joint venture will create a ‘Manufacturing Technology Center of Excellence that will serve as an incubation centre to support the product development and hardware start-up ecosystem in India, as well as promote research and innovation of leading-edge technologies

USA / India

** ‘India is natural leader of Quad in Indo-Pacific region,’ says Australian High Commissioner

Australian High Commissioner Barry O’Farrell says defence exercise MILAN demonstrates cooperation across countries in the region

India is clearly the natural leader in the region in terms of the vision the Quad signs up to in the Indo-Pacific region, and the multi-nation defence exercise, MILAN, held in Vishakapatnam demonstrates the cooperation across countries in the Indo-Pacific, Australian High Commissioner to India, Barry O’Farrell said.

“The exercise Milan where 14 countries, including Australia, took part, demonstrates the co-operation across countries in the Indo-Pacific to secure a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific. In terms of the vision the Quad signs up to with relation to the Indo-Pacific, India is clearly the natural leader in the region. The good news is that all four countries [India, Australia, USA and Japan] are working together, whether it is on vaccine rollout, disaster relief and other issues like climate change,” Mr. O’Farrell told The Hindu.

** UP doctor sets record with 107 eye surgeries in 16 hrs

 Dr S.P. Singh, Director of the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology and principal of the MLN Medical College (MLNMC) in Prayagraj, has set a new record by conducting 107 phacoemulsification surgeries with intraocular lens (IOL) implant free of cost within a span of 16-and-a-half-hours.

“The surgeries were performed between 6 a.m and 10.30 p.m. continuously for 16-and-a-half hours on February 25. All the patients are doing fine now after a week of observation,” he told reporters.

Uttar Pradesh

** IIT-B’s hydrophobic coating for face shields helps limit Covid spread

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, have developed a technique for coating face shields with a hydrophobic layer to improve their efficiency.

Face shields act as primary barriers to airborne disease-carrying droplets. But these simple face shields are made from plexiglass plastic or polyethylene terephthalate.

Plastic is hydrophilic; and tiny water droplets tend to stick to its surface. Studies have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 laden respiratory droplets can survive on different surfaces for a few hours to a few days.

Maharashtra