27.09.2007

• October 2 to be World Non-violence day
• The UN General Assembly will declare so on October 2, 2007. It had adopted an Indian resolution to this effect, as a tribute to the Satyagraha movement launched by the Father of the Nation.
• Para IV filings
• This is an application (made by any pharma company in the US) to make a generic version of an approved drug when a generic drug maker believes it is not infringing on the patent or that the patent is not valid. A successful challenge wins the first company which made the para IV filing the right to exclusively market the generic version of the drug for 180 days during the patent period.
• Doing business with India
• It has become easier, says the World Bank.
• India moved up 12 notches to 120 in the index of 178 nations in the World Bank’s 2008 edition of “Doing Business”.
• Hyderabad is the easiest to conduct business, followed by Bangalore and Jaipur.
• It takes 18 days to meet all administrative requirements to export, down from 27.
• Closing business in India is woefully slow, taking 6 to 10 years as against OECD average of less than two years.
• Theory of decoupling
• It is an economic theory of the current times. It says that countries like China and India are now less dependent on US growth.
• Pension reform and financial inclusion
• In a very good article TK Arun argues that financial inclusion does not merely mean giving access to bank accounts. It is about giving a wider choice to the people to authorize investments of their hard earned savings in a variety of instruments.
• Capital Account Convertibility
• It is allowing anyone to convert rupee assets into any foreign currency assets and vice-versa without any limits.
• Indrajatra of Nepal
• It is a very important religious festival of Nepal.
• It sees a Kumari – a young girl worshipped as living goddess – emerging out of her palace and being driven around in her chariot. The Kumari is regarded as the protective deity of the royal family. An earlier King from a different dynasty Jayprakash Malla, is believed to have lost his kingdom after he displeased an incarnation of Kumari. Originally a festival of the Malla dynasty, it was however retained by king Gyanendra’s ancestor, Prithvi Narayan Shah, who founded the current dynasty over two centuries ago.
• Khalistan movement
• Let’s recap a bit about this militant movement of Punjab which fought for a separate nation – “Khalistan” for the Sikhs.
• Lasted from 1981 to 1993. Claimed the lives of 21,043 people in all including civilians, terrorists and security forces.
• Cold fusion
• There are two methods in which nuclear energy can be produced. One is the nuclear fission. The other is nuclear fusion. The latter one is usually the thermo nuclear fusion that is widely known. But there is a third method called cold fusion.
• When deuterium atoms are inserted inside a metal such as palladium, titanium, nickel, etc., in sufficiently large numbers and if the right Nuclear Active Environment is created, a variety of nuclear reactions are found to occur involving not only the deuterium nuclei but also the host metal atoms. In this process, excess energy is often found to be produced and in some cases nuclear particles such as neutrons, X-rays or even charged particles are released. This is called cold fusion.