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Wednesday,
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8, 2003,
Chandigarh, India  
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3 get Nobel for superconductivity
Drop trade barriers, says Vajpayee India 83rd on palm greasing
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Indian-origin women conned into ‘marriage
of convenience’
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3 get Nobel for superconductivity Stockholm, October 7 Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett, both now US citizens, and Russian Vitaly Ginzburg worked on superconductivity, which among other applications helped in the development of the magnetic imaging scanners whose designers were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine yesterday. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement it was recognising the trio’s theories concerning two phenomena in quantum physics - superconductivity and superfluidity. Ginzburg (87) was head of the theory group at the PN Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow and Abrikosov (75) now works at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Briton Leggett (65) is at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Abrikosov told Reuters he had begun his work over half a century ago in the Soviet Union in a scientific world that was almost unrecognisable and virtually without computers. “All three of us have something in common - our discoveries ...were done many years ago. We are pretty old people,” he said from at Lemont, Illinois, on learning of the award. “We worked mostly in a world without computers.” Scientists said superconductivity still had to this day potentially revolutionary applications. “Superconductivity holds the promise of a new class of electronics device which can save big energy and lead to levitating trains and improved medical imaging,” Phil Schewe, chief science writer at the American Institute of Physics, said. The theories developed by the Russian laureates had laid the groundwork for yesterday’s medical prize, which recognised discoveries on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the now familiar painless diagnostic method used by doctors to look inside the bodies of millions of patients every year. “They developed a theory which laid the groundwork for MRI techniques,” said academy member Professor Erik Karlsson. “The Nobel Prize yesterday was partly thanks to the development of this theoretical work. They made it possible to have excellent pictures of the human body.” Leggett formulated “a decisive theory” explaining how atoms interact and are ordered in the superfluid state, the academy said. The Nobel committee at the 264-year-old Swedish academy proposed the names which were endorsed this morning by the 350 academy members meeting in closed session in Stockholm. The prize includes a cheque for more than 10 million Swedish crowns ($ 1.3 million) to be shared among the three. The winners join alumni which includes Albert Einstein. The Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, were created in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. They are presented in glittering ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of his death. Total surprise MOSCOW: The prize came as a “total surprise”, Vitaly Ginzburg said on hearing of his award, according to the news agency Itar-Tass. “I am not the youngest any more and it is an honour that the academy selected me, together with Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett from the large number of deserving candidates,” he said after receiving the news. Ginzburg, who turned 87 three days ago, is regarded as one of Russia’s best-known scientists. He was a colleague of nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. His research on lithium was vital for the development of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, he says himself while rejecting the “ownership” of the bomb itself. Ginzburg did not expect the award for which he had been nominated at regular intervals for almost 30 years. “I sleep well and cannot get excited about Nobel Prize honours,” he said years ago. Ginzburg, said he would give the prize money to his great-grandchildren. “A tennis player can earn this amount for just one game. For me, of course, it’s a huge amount of money, as it is for anyone in Russia who isn’t a crook or a business tycoon,” he said by phone from Moscow’s Lebedev Physics Institute where he still does research. “I will get it in November and I will find a way to spend it. I have great-grandchildren and at least I can give it to them.” It is not the first time he has won an award for his work in the area. He received the Lenin Prize, the most prestigious award during the Soviet era, in 1966. Of the Nobel award, Ginzburg said “I think it’s a positive event, recognising our service and of course it is good for Russian science.”
— Reuters, DPA |
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Drop trade barriers, says Vajpayee Bali, October 7 Setting the stage for the crucial second India-Association of South East Asian Nations (India-ASEAN) summit on Wednesday, the Prime Minister in his keynote address to the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit said that by removing trade barriers, ASEAN could target a turnover of at least $ 30 billion in the next four years and work on a suitable Free Trade Area (FTA) agreement that would mutually benefit the 10-member grouping and its four dialogue partners. Admitting that the high tariff on several goods had slowed down India’s integration with the ASEAN economy, Mr Vajpayee said his government was addressing the ASEAN member nations’ concerns. “India is conscious of the concerns of the new ASEAN members. We are offering unilateral tariff concessions on items of export interest to CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) countries. We are also seeking to incorporate an Early Harvest scheme to provide the incentive for a long-term engagement.” “Investors have to understand that India’s continental size and diversity are unique. Marketing or investment strategies that may have worked well elsewhere may need to be tailored differently for India,’’ he added. Listing six strong points of the Indian economy, including a rich pool of English-speaking human resource and the Information Technology revolution for enhancing India-ASEAN Trade and Investment, the Prime Minister said he was hopeful about Asia emerging as the principal hub and provider of state of the art goods and services. In Mr Vajpayee’s view, there was no justifiable reason for trade to be limited below $ 10 billion between India and ASEAN members, when they had a combined population of 1.5 billion people and were already producing a trillion-and-a-half dollar worth of goods and services. The need of the hour, the Prime Minister said was a fair multilateral trading system. That not being the case now, every country or region should direct its efforts at putting the disappointing stalemate of last month’s Cancun WTO summit behind and work on the immediate advantages offered by regional trading arrangements particularly in sectors like agriculture and industry, he added. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun also addressed the summit. Meanwhile, leaders of 10 South-East Asian Nations ranging from fledgling democracies to an absolute monarchy signed a landmark accord today aimed at wrestling their disparate region into a European-style economic community by 2020. The blueprint, dubbed the Bali Concord II, envisions a single market eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers within an economic grouping encompassing 500 million people and annual trade totalling $ 720 billion.
— ANI, AP |
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India 83rd on palm greasing list Singapore, October 7 India recorded a score of 2.8 in the annual survey of the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International (TI) to rank equal 83rd in the world with Malawi and Romania. Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan were among the few leading lights for Asia, with the report placing them in the top 21 of least corrupt nations of the 133 polled. Bangladesh took out the inglorious title of the most corrupt nation in the world for a third successive year with a score of just 1.3 out of 10, just edging out the African nation of Nigeria. Myanmar, ranked 129, and Indonesia, 122, also had rankings of less than two out of 10, which TI said meant corruption was “pervasive” in those countries. A score of 10 means a country is perceived to be “highly clean” while zero equates to “highly corrupt”. Vietnam was next on the list of corrupt Asian nations, ranked equal 100 in the world with the likes of Guatamala, Kazakhstan and Moldova on a score of 2.4. Pakistan and the Philippines shared 92nd position with six other nations, including Gambia and Albania, with just 2.5 out of 10. Thailand may be enjoying a booming economy at the moment but TI said corruption was still a big problem in the Southeast Asian nation, giving it a score of three and a share of 70th position in the world. China and Sri Lanka were next on the list for Asia on equal 66th position in the world and a score of 3.4, followed by South Korea, 4.3 and equal 50th position, then Malaysia with a score of 5.2 and ranking of equal 37th. The survey is a compilation of 17 polls reflecting the perceptions of academics, risk analysts and business people. Singapore stood far above all other nations in Asia in the report as fifth in the world and one of the only six nations with a score of more than nine, which the watchdog said indicated “very low levels” of perceived corruption. Finland, Iceland and Denmark topped the world rankings. Hong Kong was equal 14th with Austria on a score of eight, while Japan was equal 21st with a score of seven. Mr Gale pointed to a host of elections scheduled to be held in Asia over the next 12 months, including in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. —
AFP |
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Indian-origin women conned into ‘marriage
of convenience’ Durban, October 7 The scam came to light this week when four young Indian women made a complaint with the police that they were nearly taken “for a ride” by the scamsters. Investigating officer, Inspector Sagie Govender, said they believed a local woman named Ayesha from the township of Phoenix in Durban was working with the Pakistanis. He said Ayesha had taken the four unemployed Indian women aged 20-21 from the township of Chatsworth to Pietermaritzburg recently to “marry” them to Pakistani illegal immigrants. “The plan backfired because the four unemployed women, who had been under the impression that they were going to the head office of a packaging company to process their job applications as packers, refused to have anything to do with the scamS after they found out the real reason for the trip”, said Mr Govender. The police officer said the women adopted the stance despite being promised money, cell phones, clothes and jewellery to go through the “marriage of convenience”. —
PTI |
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Day two of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s three-day visit to Indonesia was eventful from India’s viewpoint with Mr Vajpayee issuing an impassioned appeal to the international community in general and to Asian nations in particular to eliminate the existing trade and investment barriers.
