Australia rolls out nationwide swine flu vaccination

PERTH (Reuters) - Australia rolled out a nationwide vaccination drive for H1N1 influenza on Wednesday in a bid to arm itself against a possible outbreak of the disease.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said 5.5 million doses of the vaccine have been delivered across the country, enough to vaccinate about 30 percent of the population, and two million doses each month will be made available until January.

The campaign is Australia's biggest mass vaccination and is estimated to cost over A$100 million ($87.95 million). Vaccinations will start with those most at risk in the pandemic, including health care workers, pregnant women and the chronically ill.

More than 4,600 Australians have been hospitalized and 172 people have died from H1N1 flu.

Australia has ordered 21 million does of the flu vaccine from pharmaceutical company CSL Ltd

Roxon urged Australians to vaccinate themselves and stressed that the vaccine was safe, although some people could have minor side effects, including mild nausea.

"While the new H1N1 virus causes a mild illness in most people, it can have a devastating hard edge. It is important that people take this disease seriously and protect themselves and their families by getting vaccinated," Roxon said.

While the country is coming to the end of its regular flu season, Australia's chief medical officer has said that the virus was unpredictable, and could emerge throughout the summer with a possible second outbreak before the next flu season.

Amazing Car..cum flight

Crazy looking Car in the Petrol bunk 

Drive on the Road after filling…………... 

Go to the nearest Airport – Spread the wings 

And take off………………….. 

  

Same one also flies 

Land it in your home town airport…………… 

@ home and You can park it in your yard………………… 

Are you guessing why not a better place……………look below 

Put into your garage …………... 

  

Or push it/squeeze it like this 

Great Car to own and it would cost 100,00,000 INR ($200K). 

RBI to introduce 100 crore Rs 10 plastic notes

Soiled notes may soon be a thing of the past with the Reserve Bank planning to introduce Rs 10 polymer banknotes whose life span would be 4 times the normal currency notes and would be difficult to imitate.


The apex bank has initially decided to introduce 100 crore pieces of Rs 10 polymer notes, for which it has floated a global tender, a senior central bank official said.

Explaining the rationale for introduction of polymer notes, the official said, these notes would have an average life span of 5 years compared to one year for the currency notes.

Besides, the official said, these notes are cleaner than paper notes and it would be difficult to counterfeit the currency. The polymer notes were first introduced in Australia to safeguard against counterfeiting of currency.

Besides Australia, other countries which have introduced plastic notes include New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Bermuda, Brunei and Vietnam.

Bharti, RCom seek corridor through Bangladesh

Dhaka: Two Indian telecom majors have sought a corridor through Bangladesh to reach the isolated north-eastern region and in return offered a stand-by submarine cable.

Indian telecom giants - Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications (RCom) - have submitted a joint proposal in this regard to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), according to The Daily Star newspaper.

In return for allowing access to the north-eastern states, Bangladesh will get a wider link as the Indian companies have already connected with Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan and have offered to link with Myanmar, the daily quoted officials as saying.

If any deal is signed, Bangladesh can use the companies' undersea cable network as an alternative to the lone submarine cable it has from Southeast Asia.

Exclusive dependence on the submarine cable system linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Gulf has often caused snarl-ups, snapping Bangladesh's telecom and Internet ties with the outside world.

Experts think that such an initiative can relieve Bangladesh from repeated disruption of undersea cable, which inflicts a huge loss to the country's information and communication technology sector, said Sunday.

The two Indian companies are ready to link with any Bangladeshi fibre optic operator to provide telecom services to Indian states: Assam, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh.

Bharti and RCom want to build a fibre optic link to Assam from Meherpur on the Kolkata-Meherpur-Dhaka-Haflong route with an option of an alternative route through Kolkata-Meherpur-Dhaka-Comilla-Agartala.

They are also willing to bring Myanmar under their network, subject to approval of that nation.

The seven north-eastern states now get telecom services through VSAT (very small aperture terminal) at a high price.

The BTRC views the proposed network as an alternative to Bangladesh's lone submarine cable, but the Bangladesh government is yet to decide on the proposal.

"The link if developed by a local company between India's mainland and the seven sister states might work as an alternative network for us in case of disruptions to our lone submarine cable line," the daily Star quoted a BTRC official.

"The Indian companies have already brought Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan under their submarine cable network. If the proposal is implemented, we shall get connected with these countries and be benefited financially," he said.

Internet service providers have welcomed the initiative and said there is no reason to hesitate over the proposal if the Indian companies give Bangladesh some benefits.

"If Bangladesh can get connected with the U.S., there should be no problem with the seven sister states," said Akhtaruzzaman Manju, President of Internet Service Providers Association, Bangladesh.
RCom, which has a high-capacity, integrated and convergent digital network, began laying 60,000-km of a pan-India fibre optic backbone in December 2002.

Airtel Telemedia, a Bharti Airtel subsidiary, offers broadband and
telephone services in 95 cities and has recently launched direct-to-home service digital television service.

Now Pay per Call Not per Minute

Hey! Good News for Long Mobile caller.

Tata Indicom Announced 'Pay Per Call' plan for both local and STD calls.

in this offer, no need to see watch while talking over mobile.

The local call charges will be Rs 1 and Rs 3 for STD, which is regardless of call duration," Gujarat Circle, Chief Operating Officer Tata Indicom, Naveen Bhasin said.

Now This Plan introduced in Gujarat circle only.

"Our pre-paid subscribers will have to pay a fixed charge on per call basis after the national launch of this facility."
The existing subscribers can avail the offer by taking one time recharge of special tariff voucher of Rs 96, he said.

A similar tariff scheme is in the pipeline for our post paid customers too, Bhasin said.

so, Enjoy calling for hours.. But Telecom operator will track for misuse of this facilities.

for misusing this plan they will call you and mark as not a fair users.

India plans mission to Mars after 2015

ISRO might have lost Chandrayaan but they have not lost their spirit. Just two days after ISRO had to call off their maiden moon mission, they have already announced mission mars although no date has been announced yet.
Clarifying the statement made by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair at Panaji earlier in the day on the Mars mission, the space official said such a mission was not feasible before 2015 as the space agency will be pre-occupied with its second lunar mission (Chandrayaan-2) in 2013 and a manned mission to space by 2015.
'We plan to undertake missions to Mars and other planets as part of our long-term space expeditions. We will ask the scientific community to propose the experiments to be carried on the Martian surface. We may also invite international space agencies to participate in the mission, as in Chandryaan-1,' the official told IANS but declined to be named.

As the fourth planet from the sun in the solar system, the distance between earth and Mars varies from 36 million miles when nearest, to 250 million miles when farthest in its elliptical orbit around the sun.
Though the government Aug 13 sanctioned Rs.100 million (Rs.10 crore) as seed funding for the Mars mission, a lot of ground work has to be done for preparing the project report.

'The mission to Mars is being conceived as low-cost planetary missions. For instance, Chandrayaan-1 is the finest example of a low-cost mission, as we were able accomplish it at a cost of $80 million (Rs.380 crore) while such missions by other space agencies are considered low-cost at $500 million,' the official claimed.

To prepare a project report for government approval, the space agency will elicit the opinion of the scientific community on the viability of such a mission and evolve a concept paper.

'It is too early to estimate the cost of the mission to Mars. At current prices, it will be twice the cost incurred in the maiden moon mission, which was Rs.380 crore. We have to start from scratch to build a spacecraft, the launch vehicle and other support systems to operate the mission, which will last more than a year or two,' the official noted.

The space agency plans to use the powerful geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) Mark-III for the Mars mission, as the spacecraft had to be first put in the earth's orbit and raised up to Martian orbit, using ion thrusters and liquid engines.

'It is too early to talk about the mission's journey as we are yet to design the spacecraft and build the advanced version of the rocket (GSLV-3). We have a long way to go,' the space official added.

Incidentally, the maiden moon mission was aborted Sunday after the space agency's deep space network at Byalalu, about 40 km from here, failed to restore radio contact with the 514 kg spacecraft, which is orbiting about 200 km away from the lunar surface.

Though the US and Russia had launched missions to Mars, other space-faring nations such as China and Japan are planning to join the Martian race as part of their planetary expeditions. Even the European Space Agency (ESA) is mulling a joint mission to Mars in the coming decade.

The US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aug 29 proposed to Russia for a manned mission to Mars by 2030, using the International Space Station (ISS) as a launch-pad to the red planet.

Keep it up ISRO!