UTTAR PRADESH

United States

AN INTERNATIONAL team of scientists, including two NRI researchers, have identified a revolutionary technique that may suppress HIV's spread. Using a method called RNA interference the researchers worked with mice to knock down three genes in T cells to protect them from the virus.
Co-author Premlata Shankar who worked on the project as a investigator at Harvard Medical School-affiliated Immune Disease Institute and assistant professor at Harvard Med School said this was the first time they had used the technique, which raises the possibility of treatment for HIV that does not involve potentially toxic anti viral drugs.
Shankar's lab delivered the RNAs in collaboration with Sang Kyung Lee of Hanyang University, that are molecules that silence genes by disrupting protein templates they produce. A single chain antibody developed by Georg Fey of the University of Erlangen Germany was involved in the ground breaking research. 
Priti Kumar a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School participated in the research. In her words both prophylactic and therapeutic regimens proved successful and kept HIV from entering most T cells keeping it from replicating.

KASHMIRI

United States

TARIQ TAPA is the only movie director with Indian links to have a film screened at the 65th Venice International Film Festival in August.
The 93 minute Indo US coproduction called 'Zero Bridge' was shot entirely in Srinagar.
"Zero Bridge" narrates the moral dilemma a teenage pickpocket, Dilawar, faces when he forms a strange relationship with a bright young woman, Bani. The plot may not be unusually novel, but probably its treatment is, a reason perhaps why it was picked by Venice. 
Tapa has been making short films in the US since he graduated from Rice University and later obtained a degree in filmmaking from the California Institute for Arts.
He went to India on a Fulbright scholarship in 2006 to make a movie on Kashmir, and did so almost single handedly. Tapa wrote, produced, directed and co-edited 'Zero Bridge' about a Kashmiri teenager.
All his actors were novices and first timers from Kashmir. He chose Kashmir because he has the same roots and could understand the aspirations of the state whose social structure has become fragile after years of unrest.

BIHARI

United Kingdom

DERBY-BASED S&A Foods started by Indian home maker Perween Warsi wants to enter the international market with her chilled Indian meals.
Perween Warsi went to the UK with her doctor husband in the mid 1970s and was content to be a homemaker till she tried some Indian food sold in the supermarket that did not taste good and was of poor quality. She then decided to start supplying her home cooked samosas to local delis in Derby.
She then formed S&A Foods, named for her sons Sadiq and Abid, and persuaded ASDA to stock her ready foods. Business expanded and in 1998 she accepted an offer by Hughes Food Group to buy shares in her company. Sales exceeded £5 million but the parent company went into administration. With the support of venture capital backer 3i Warsi bought back her company in 2004, diversified its product range and became ASDA's largest supplier of chilled foods.
Now entirely family owned, it makes 1.25 million ready meals each week, employs 600 staff and turns over more than £60 million a year.

GENERAL

India

VAYALAR RAVI, Minister for Overseas Indians, announced in Delhi that the country's first university for children of NRIs is to open in Bangalore soon. The name of the privately run varsity is yet to be finalised, but Ravi said the institution will reserve 50 per cent of its seats for NRIs and PIOs and will start admissions from the next academic year 2009-2010.
Ravi stated that Karnataka-based Manipal Academy of Higher Education will set up the varsity which will have deemed status but will be governed by guidelines of the University Grants Commission.

INDIA’S OVERSEAS India's citizens are soon to reach 300,000 allowing them a facility that gives them life long visa free travel to India and certain economic, educational and cultural benefits.
Of the OCIs over 120,000 are from the USA followed by other countries where a sizeable number have been given the status, including the UK, Canada, Australia and Sri Lanka.
The scheme started in 2005 after persistent demands for 'dual citizenship' from overseas Indians in North America and the western world. Overseas Indians can apply for the OCI card but it’s not construed as 'dual citizenship' since it does not confer political rights.