The Athletics Federation of India has been adjudged as the best member federation in Asia by the Asian Athletics Association.
Olympian Adille Sumariwalla, the AFI president, received the award at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Asian Athletics Association in Bangkok on Monday.
source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)
Four Indian-origin women, including Jayshree Ullal and Indra Nooyi, have made it to Forbes’ list of America’s 100 most successful self-made women.
Four Indian-origin women, including Jayshree Ullal and Indra Nooyi, have made it to the Forbes list of America’s 100 most successful self-made women, with a combined net worth of a whopping USD 4.06 billion. Building supply distributor Diane Hendricks, with a $15 billion net worth, retained the top spot for the sixth year in a row. This year’s list has eight entrants, including television producer Shonda Rhimes and Insitro CEO Daphne Koller.
“Bolstered in part by a rebound in the stock market, they are cumulatively worth a record USD 124 billion, up nearly 12 per cent from a year ago,” Forbes said last month at the release of its ninth annual list.
Jayshree Ullal, president and CEO of computer networking firm Arista Networks, ranked 15th on the list, the highest among Indian-origin business leaders. Arista Networks, a publicly-traded company, recorded revenue of nearly $4.4 billion in 2022. Ullal, 62, owns about 2.4% of Arista’s stock, some of which is earmarked for her two children, niece and nephew, according to Forbes. She is also on the board of directors of Snowflake, a cloud computing company that went public in September 2020. She studied electrical engineering at San Francisco State University and engineering management at Santa Clara University.
Neerja Sethi, with a net worth of USD 990 million, has been ranked 25th on the list. Sethi, 68, along with her husband Bharat Desai, co-founded IT consulting and outsourcing firm Syntel in 1980. French IT firm Atos SE for $3.4 billion in October 2018 bought Syntel in 2018 and Sethi got an estimated $510 million for her stake.
She did her Bachelor of Arts/Science and Master of Business Administration from Delhi University and Master of Science from Oakland University. Sethi met her husband, Desai, in the US while working for the pioneering IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and attempted to emulate it. They started the business with an initial investment of just $2,000.
Narkehe, co-founder and former chief technology officer (CTO) of cloud company Confluent, is ranked 50th on the list with a net worth of USD 520 million. The 38-year-old software engineer-turned-entrepreneur helped develop the open-source messaging system Apache Kafka to help develop LinkedIn’s massive influx of data. In 2014, she and two LinkedIn colleagues left to found Confluent, which helps organisations process large amounts of data on Apache Kafka.
The USD 586 million (2022 revenues) company went public in June 2021 at a USD 9.1 billion valuation; Narkhede owns around 6 per cent, Forbes said. In March 2023, Narkhede announced her new company, fraud detection firm Oscilar, where she is co-founder and CEO.
Nooyi, the former chair and CEO of PepsiCo, retired in 2019 after 24 years with the company, half of which she spent in the top job. The 67-year-old has a net worth of USD 350 million and is ranked 77th on the Forbes list. Her fortune stems from stock she was granted while working at PepsiCo.
Nooyi, who grew up in India, received an MBA from Yale before becoming one of corporate America’s few female CEOs in 2006.
source/content: hindustantimes.com (headline edited)
As per the report, India is a better story now in terms of business and political stability.
India has overtaken China as the most attractive emerging market for investing for sovereign wealth funds in 2023 due to its solid demographics, political stability and proactive regulation, a report said on Monday.
The Invesco Global Sovereign Asset Management report has captured the views of 142 chief investment officers, heads of asset classes, and senior portfolio strategists from 85 sovereign wealth funds and 57 central banks. Collectively, these institutions manage about $21 trillion in assets.
As per the report, India is a better story now in terms of business and political stability. In addition, fast-growing demographics, good regulation initiatives, and a very friendly environment for sovereign investors are the positives for the country.
“India has now overtaken China as the most attractive emerging market for investing in emerging market debt,” the report stated.
The report noted that India is among a number of countries, including Mexico and Brazil, that are benefitting from increased foreign corporate investment aimed at both domestic and international demand. This was seen as helping fund current account deficits as well as support currencies and domestic assets including debt.
In addition, India and South Korea continue to be the most attractive destinations for increasing exposure, the report noted. Going by the report, emerging markets offer a range of attractive investment opportunities in both public and private markets.
The report found inflation as the most significant short-term risk to global economic growth. This was followed by rising geopolitical risk, tight monetary policy, supply chain disruptions and impact of climate change on environment as other risks.
Central banks looking to combat yield volatility and inflation risk see gold as a safe-haven asset. This spurred record gold purchases in 2022, a trend prevailing into the first quarter of 2023, it added.
source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)
G20 Space Economy Leaders’ Meeting begins in Bengaluru.
The 4th edition of G20 Space Economy Leaders’ Meeting (SELM) commenced in Bengaluru on Thursday July 6.
This is the first face-to-face meeting under the G20 umbrella, with the previous meetings organised in virtual and hybrid formats. Heads of national space agencies from 18 of the G20 countries and nine of the 11 invited members are participating in the two-day meet whose theme is ‘Towards a New Space ERA (Economy, Responsibility, Alliance)’.
Senior representatives from 32 global industries, and 53 local industries, are also participating in the meet.
During the inauguration, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Minister of State, PMO; MoES; S&T; Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievance & Pensions; Dep. Of Space; Dept. of Atomic Energy, said that this gathering (G20 countries along with partner countries) represents nearly two-thirds of the world’s population, the best brains across the world in the space sector, 85% of the global GDP, and 75% of the world trade.
“You are not only spearheaders, torchbearers but also opinion-makers, and I am glad that India is in a position to share its inputs with other member countries as well. The new chapter of public-private participation is going to make it a value for all of us to learn the virtues of an integrated approach. An era of partnership is in the offing. Our concerns are common and our efforts have to be common. Therefore, the time has come to carry forward the collaboration to discover wider horizons in the times to come,” Dr Singh said.
“I hardly need to reiterate the importance that space technology has gained of late across the world. Rather, I would put it in a single sentence saying that space technology has virtually entered every household in one way or the other.”
He added that every aspect of human life, be it disaster management, agriculture, education, health, navigation, defence, is connected to space technology.
G20 Sherpa, Amitabh Kant, said the space economy is experiencing rapid growth with increasing revenues and more commercial actors entering the industry. “Studies project that space could become a trillion dollar sector in the coming decades. This exponential growth necessitates support from governments worldwide. That is why, we are discussing space as a formal element in the G20,” Mr Kanth said.
Round-table meetings for the heads of space agencies, panel discussions, bilateral meetings and a plenary session are a part of the first day of the event.
source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)
The article titled ‘The Surprising Striver in the World’s Space Business’ notes that India has become home to at least 140 registered space-tech start-ups.
Lauding India’s ambitious space programme, The New York Times has said the country, currently witnessing an “explosive” growth in space-tech start-ups, is set to “transform the planet’s connection to the final frontier” and can emerge as a “counterweight” to China.
“When it launched its first rocket in 1963, India was a poor country pursuing the world’s most cutting-edge technology. That projectile, its nose cone wheeled to the launchpad by a bicycle, put a small payload 124 miles above the Earth. India was barely pretending to keep up with the US and the Soviet Union. In today’s space race, India has found much surer footing,” the leading US newspaper said.
The article titled ‘The Surprising Striver in the World’s Space Business’ notes that India has become home to at least 140 registered space-tech start-ups, “comprising a local research field that stands to transform the planet’s connection to the final frontier.” “The start-ups’ growth has been explosive, leaping from five when the pandemic started. And they see a big market to serve,” the paper said.
Underscoring that India’s “importance as a scientific power” is taking centre stage, the NYT report referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s State Visit to Washington last month at the invitation of President Joe Biden and the joint statement issued by the two sides said that said the two leaders “set a course to reach new frontiers across all sectors of space cooperation.” In the joint statement, “the leaders called for enhanced commercial collaboration between the US and Indian private sectors in the entire value chain of the space economy and to address export controls and facilitate technology transfer.” The NYT report added that both the US and India “see space as an arena in which India can emerge as a counterweight to their mutual rival: China.” “One of India’s advantages is geopolitical,” the paper said as it added that Russia and China had historically offered lower-cost options for launches.
“But the war in Ukraine has all but ended Russia’s role as a competitor,” it said as it cited the USD 230 million hit British satellite start-up OneWeb took after Russia impounded 36 of its spacecraft in September. OneWeb’s next constellation of satellites was sent into orbit by India’s Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
“Likewise, the US government would be more likely to approve any American company’s sending military-grade technology through India than through China,” the NYT said.
It added that “Since June 2020, when Mr Modi announced a push for the space sector, opening it up to all kinds of private enterprise, India has launched a network of businesses, each driven by original research and homegrown talent. Last year, the space start-ups raked in USD 120 million in new investment, at a rate that is doubling or tripling annually.” The NYT report mentions Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace and aerospace manufacturer Dhruva Space.
“Skyroot and Dhruva work in the relatively sexy sectors of launch and satellite delivery, but together those account for only 8 per cent of India’s space business pie.
“A much bigger slice comes from companies that specialise in collecting data beamed by satellite,” the report said and cited the example of Bengaluru-headquartered start-up Pixxel, co-founded by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal and which has a “contract with a secretive agency within the Pentagon.” Pixxel has developed an imaging system to detect patterns on the Earth’s surface that lie outside the range of ordinary colour vision.
Describing India as a “thriving centre of innovation” and “one of the most competitive launch sites in the world”, the NYT article said space-tech start-ups are one of India’s “most sought-after sectors” for venture capital investors and their growth “has been explosive, leaping from five when the pandemic started.” Terming India’s vendor ecosystem as “staggering in size”, the NYT said years of conducting business with ISRO has created “about 400 private companies in clusters around Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and elsewhere, each devoted to building special screws, sealants and other products fit for space.” India has an abundance of affordable engineers, but their smaller salaries alone cannot beat the competition. That leaves an Indian company like Skyroot concentrating on more specialised services, the newspaper said.
Pawan Kumar Chandana, 32, Co-Founder and CEO, Skyroot Aerospace, anticipates a global need for 30,000 satellites to be launched this decade.
“We are more like a cab,” said Chandana, whose company charges higher rates for smaller-payload launches, while Elon Musk-owned SpaceX “is more like a bus or a train, where they take all their passengers and put them in one destination.” Dhruva Space, which deploys satellites, was India’s first space start-up. In any given month, Kranthi Chand, its head of strategy, is hardly in Hyderabad, as he spends about one week in Europe and another in the US, rounding up clients and investors, the article said.
In May, Dhruva Space announced the successful test and Space-qualification of its 3U and 6U Satellite Orbital Deployers and Orbital Link onboard ISRO’S PSLV-C55 mission.
Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.
source/content: telegraphindia.com (headline edited)
Discus thrower Seema Punia opened her international season with a season-best 57.35m for a silver medal at the 33rd Qosanov memorial athletics meet in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Saturday.
That saw the 2014 Asian Games gold medallist, who will be 40 later this month, achieve the Athletics Federation of India’s qualification mark (57m) for this September’s Asian Games in China.
Thailand’s Subenrat Insaeng, a bronze medallist at the 2019 Asian Championship in Doha, took the gold with 59.57m.
Iran’s Farzaneh Fasihi surprised Kazakhstan’s Asian champion Olga Safronova and emerged the meet’s fastest woman, winning the 100m in a personal best 11.41s.
source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)
Chopra who started with a foul, had to wait till his fifth throw to lead the field with a distance of 87.66m.
Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra clinched the prestigious Diamond League title for the second consecutive time by throwing his spear to 87.66m on Friday.
But the coveted 90m mark eluded the star Indian javelin thrower yet again.
Coming back from a one-month injury lay-off, Chopra’s title-winning performance at the Lausanne leg in challenging conditions was below his own top-10 efforts but he still stamped his authority in the prestigious One-day meet.
The 25-year-old Chopra, who had skipped three top events due to a muscle strain he sustained last month, had won the season-opening Diamond League in Doha on May 5 with his fourth career-best throw of 88.67m.
“I was feeling a bit nervous coming back from an injury. It was a bit cold here tonight. I am still far from my best, but I feel it is getting better,” Chopra said after his win.
It was a cloudy day with the temperature during the men’s javelin throw event recording 17 degree Celsius and humidity at 78 per cent.
“I am relieved it is coming together well for me. A win is a win and I will take that happily.”
Chopra began with a foul and then had 83.52m and 85.04m throws.
He had another foul in the fourth round before coming up with his title-winning throw of 87.66m next.
His sixth and last throw was 84.15m.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to congratulate the champion athlete on his latest achievement.
“Congratulations to @Neeraj_chopra1 for shining at the Lausanne Diamond League. Thanks to his extraordinary performances, he has finished at the top of the table. His talent, dedication and relentless pursuit of excellence is commendable,” PM Modi tweeted.
Germany’s Julian Weber was second with a best throw of 87.03m, while Tokyo Olympics silver medallist and season-leader Jakub Vadlejch (SB: 89.51m) of the Czech Republic was third with an 86.13m effort.
Reigning world champion Anderson Peters of Grenada, who has been struggling for form, was fifth with a best throw of 82.23m.
Chopra had won the Lausanne leg in August last year also for his maiden Diamond League title.
A month later, he became the first Indian Diamond League champion after winning the 2022 grand finale in Zurich.
The Indian superstar, who has a personal best of 89.94m, cemented his top spot in the Diamond League standings with 16 points, followed by Vadlejch (13 points) and Weber (12 points).
Following the Lausanne event, men’s javelin throw will also be a part of the roster in the Monaco and Zurich legs on July 21 and August 31 respectively before the Diamond League grand finale in Eugene, USA, on September 16-17.
On May 29, Chopra issued a statement, informing about his injury.
He pulled out of the FBK Games on June 4 at Hengelo (the Netherlands), Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland on June 13 and Ostrava Golden Spike meet in the Czech Republic on June 27.
All three meets were World Athletics Continental Tour gold events.
But he did not miss any Diamond League competition as the subsequent legs in Rabat, Rome, Paris and Oslo did not have men’s javelin events on the roster.
In the men’s long jump, India’s Murali Sreeshankar finished fifth with a below-par jump of 7.
88m which he achieved in the third round.
The 24-year-old Sreeshankar, who had clinched the third spot in the Paris leg on June 9 for his maiden Diamond League podium finish, had produced a career-best 8.
41m during the National Inter-State Championships in Bhubaneswar earlier this month.
LaQuan Nairn of Bahamas, who beat Sreeshankar for the gold in the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, took the top spot with a third-round jump of 8.11m.
Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece was second with an 8.07m effort while Yuki Hashioka of Japan was third with a jump of 7.98m.
source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)
Baltej Singh Dhillon had a distinguished career as a police officer for more than three decades, working in critical investigations, including the 1985 Kanishka Air India bombing task force.
Baltej Singh Dhillon, a veteran Canadian Sikh police officer who was a part of the team that probed the 1985 Kanishka Air India terror attack, has become the first South Asian chair of an agency that promotes safe and healthy workplaces in British Columbia province.
Dhillon, the country’s first Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer to wear a turban as part of the uniform, was appointed to chair the WorkSafeBC’s board of directors for a three-year term, effective June 30, the British Columbia government has announced.
WorkSafeBC is a provincial agency promoting safe and healthy workplaces across British Columbia, a province of Canada, and Dhillon has been a member of its board of directors since 2017.
A recipient of Queen Elizabeth II Golden and Diamond Jubilee medals for community service, the veteran officer “made history by being the first RCMP member to wear a turban as part of the uniform,” an official release said on Friday.
Dhillon had a distinguished career as a police officer for more than three decades, working in intelligence, special enforcement, protective services, and critical investigations, including the 1985 Kanishka Air India bombing task force.
On June 23, 1985, a bomb exploded on Air India Flight 182 en route from Toronto to London and then to its final destination Bombay, England killing all 329 people aboard, most of them Canadians.
To this day, the Air India bombing is still the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history blamed on pro-Khalistan elements.
“Baltej was a veteran police officer who brings expertise in law enforcement and six years of experience as a director at WorkSafeBC. He will be committed to WorkSafeBC’s role in investigating serious workplace incidents to prevent similar incidents from happening again,” said Harry Bains, Minister of Labour.
Dhillon takes over the role from Jeff Parr, who served as Board chair from August 2020 to June 2023.
“We look forward to working with him in this new role, alongside our Board members and our stakeholders, to help achieve our vision of a province free from workplace injury or illness,” Anne Naser, president and CEO of WorkSafeBC, said in a statement.
“I look forward to taking on the role as chair of WorkSafeBC’s board of directors,” Dhillon was quoted as saying in the press release.
“I am committed to working with our key stakeholders to improve workplace health and safety and help ensure that workers get home safely at the end of the day. I am excited to begin working as chair with my fellow board members and WorkSafeBC staff to continue making progress in improving the workers’ compensation system to meet the needs of workers, employers and others throughout the province,” he said.
According to WorkSafeBC’s website, the agency serves more than 2.6 million workers and close to 270,000 registered employers in BC and partners with workers and employers to save lives and prevent work-related injury, disease, and disability.
source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will witness the event as the Chief Guest; India and France are celebrating the 25th anniversary of a strategic partnership that was launched in 1998.
Marching contingents of the three Services and a military band, making up a total of 242 personnel, will take part in the French Bastille Day parade on July 14 in Paris, while three Rafale fighter jets of Indian Air Force (IAF) will be part of the flypast as Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnesses it as the Chief Guest.
Each Service contingent will have 68 personnel while the military band will have 38 personnel, adding up to 242 personnel, the parade plan released by France shows.
Mr. Modi has accepted the invitation from French President Emmanuel Macron to be the Guest of Honour at the Bastille Day Parade. An official press release from the Ministry of External Affairs had said that a contingent of the Indian Armed Forces will participate in the parade which marks “liberty, equality and fraternity”.
Mr. Modi’s visit to France also comes as India and France are celebrating the 25th anniversary of a strategic partnership that was launched in 1998. Earlier, in 2009, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh participated in the July 14 celebrations.
The visit comes amid a hectic diplomatic calendar for India and international travel for Mr. Modi as India hosts the G20 and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summits, the G7 outreach and Quad summit in May, as well as several other bilateral visits, both incoming and outgoing
In another instance, the IAF is planning to host a multilateral air exercise Tarang Shakti at the end of this year and approval from the Defence Ministry is awaited. “The plan is to invite 12 friendly foreign countries with whom we interact regularly and have a certain degree of interoperability,” a senior defence official said, adding that, of these, six countries will be with a fighter compliment while the other six would be present as observers.
source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)
A team of scientists from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Mangaluru, has facilitated successful cultivation of Indian Pompano (Trachinotus mookalee) for the first time in Karnataka in the Swarna estuary at Padhthonse village, Udupi district, and its harvest was done from June 2 to June 26.
The pilot project began last November under the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan Programme, wherein the beneficiaries got hands-on training in various aspects of cage culture.
Indian Pompano fingerlings, measuring 2-3 cm, were procured from the marine finfish hatchery of the Vishakhapatnam Regional Centre of ICAR-CMFRI.
About 4,000 fingerlings, each weighing 3-4 gm, were released into cages at a density of 40-50 fishes per cubic metre after acclimatising them to the local condition.
The fingerlings were fed pelleted floating feed twice a day, amounting to 5% of their body weight, said a release from CMFRI-Mangaluru.
After a five-month grow-out period, the Indian Pompano was harvested in batches between June 2 and 26. The average growth observed during this period was 400-450 gm, resulting in a total harvest of 1,300 kg with survival rate of 90%.
The beneficiaries sold the harvested fish locally, fetching prices ranging from ₹450 to ₹490 per kg generating ₹6.1 lakh revenue. With expenses at ₹3.75 lakh, the net profit earned was ₹2.35 lakh in six months.
Success of the pilot would not only provide alternative livelihood for SC families, but also help other local communities. The success has demonstrated the rapid growth rate of Indian Pompano to reach the preferred table-size in six months and the favourable market demand for the same.
Cage cultivation of fish in coastal Karnataka began in 2009-10 in coastal rivers with over 900 cages being installed in estuaries till now.
The Fisheries Department, the National Fisheries Development Corporation etc., extended financial support to over 500 families. Seabass, Red Snapper and Snubnose Pompano were among the species grown in cages.
The research programme was led by A.P. Dineshbabu and his team of scientists comprising Sujitha Thomas, Geetha Sasikumar, Rajesh K. M., and Divya Viswambharan.
source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)