Patel promises to convert AAI into a company by 2010

Airports Authority of India would be turned into a company by amending laws to enable the body raise funds from market for carrying out modernization of a large number of major airports across the country, Civil Aviation Minister Pratfall Patel said on Wednesday."We are looking at corporatizing the AAI, turning it into a company from an authority which it is now... our objective is to list AAI (in the stock market)," he told reporters.

This, he said, would be carried out by amending the AAI Act that governs the airports' body to "help them in their financial future". "Funding will become easier if it becomes a company," Patel said. The amendment would be placed before Parliament "latest by March 2010.

Replying to a spate of questions he said, private infrastructure firms, including those involved in airport modernization, were listed companies and had good standing in the market. The AAI is currently modernizing major airports in and Chennai and 35 non-metro airports. It has huge properties including land and other assets across the country.

On upgrading non-metro airports, Patel said, the AAI had already started upgrading the terminal buildings. Private parties under the private-public partnership model are developing the city-side in these airports. The AAI is also making efforts to increase the non-traffic revenues at airports by better exploitation of the commercial opportunities, he said, adding that the terminal building was decided to be privatized.

In Parliament earlier, he had said the authority is planning to spend Rs 12,434 core for modernizing airports and air traffic services across the country during the Eleventh Plan period.These development projects would be financed through internal resources and borrowings by the AAI.

Of the 125 airports managed by the AAI, 86 are operational. As many as 15 of them made profit during 2007-08, the Minister said.The number of profit-making airports during the last three years was 13 in 2005-06, 14 in 2006-07 and 15 in 2007-08, he said.

Also, the minister had pointed out that major domestic airlines owed around Rs 250 core to the AAI for using various facilities, including air traffic control, parking space and landing facilities. These include Kingfisher Airlines, Jet Airways and Air India

India will achieve uranium self-sufficiency by 2013

India is expected to achieve self-sufficiency in uranium production to feed its existing nuclear power projects and proposed plants by 2013, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar said today.With the Jadugoda Uranium mill in Jharkhand expanded and the proposed expansion of Turamdih mill expected to be over next year, uranium production would go up.

Besides, exploration of uranium is underway at Tummalapalle in Andhra Pradesh and it is expected to go on stream by 2013, he told reporters here.Kakodkar was here on the occasion of five years of the propellant reaction project at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research attaining criticality.

We are also working to explore uranium at Gogi near Gulbarga in Karnataka," he said and expressed the hope that a proposed project at Meghalaya would also be cleared soon.With the completion of proposed projects, the country would overcome shortage of uranium by 2013.

Stating that the existing reactors were of world class, Kakodkar said, "We will also put in continuous efforts to further improve their performance through our research and development team.Centre had given approval, in principle, for setting up a 4X700 MW nuclear power reactor unit.

We want to quickly get (final) approval and start constructing these projects. There are also plans to set up another 4x700 MW power unit, he said but did not divulge details.

Nokia 6600i introduced in India

The Nokia 6600i has just been launched in India and it establishes itself as the smallest 5-megapixel phone in the market. The 6600i has a slider form factor with an extremely impressive design and style.

The camera being the phones USP promises to deliver crystal clear imaging with its 8x zoom and auto focus functionality. It also comes with a dual LED flash for enhancing image quality.

Other features include FM radio, playback for all kinds of media files/formats, stereo headsets and bluetooth v2.0. A microSD card slot capable of holding a 16GB card fits perfect for this phone.

Sea Creatures

For information about deep sea animals see futurecamping.com

Top 10 most Dangerous Jobs

1. Fisherman. (118 deaths per 100,000)

2. Military Serviceman. (111 deaths per 100,000)

3. Logging and Timber Workers. (93 deaths per 100,000)

4. Aircraft Pilots. (67 deaths per 100,000)

5. Structural Iron and Steel Workers. (56 deaths per 100,000)

6. Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors. (44 deaths per 100,000)

7. Farmers and Ranchers. (41 deaths per 100,000)

8. Electrical Power Installers and Repairers. (33 deaths per 100,000)

9. Truck Drivers. (29 deaths per 100,000)

10. Construction Workers. (23 deaths per 100,000)

Mobile technology and digital TV can make public services more convenient for all

Customers will be able to access essential public services via mobile technology and interactive digital television, under plans to make government services more accessible and convenient .Launching a major cross–government strategy to use technology more effectively, John Hutton promised a "step change" in approach to ensure the Government starts to make full use of the technological advances that are becoming increasingly common in people's lives – whether at home or on the move.
Government departments today published visions of how services could be made easier within the next decade – including enabling parents to support their child's learning and check attendance online and allowing businesses dealing with regulators to submit information once only.

The Government will produce plans by the end of the financial year on how it intends to take forward the strategy.
Cabinet Office Minister John Hutton said:
"In 1997, fewer than 16% of households had a mobile phone and fewer than one in ten used the internet. Private companies have been swift to shape their services around people's needs and lifestyles – now public services need to raise their game and offer people the levels of convenience, choice and efficiency they rightly demand.
"That is why I am publishing a cross–government strategy today to ensure government uses technology more effectively to deliver better services that are focussed on the needs of the customer." "We will also increase value for money for taxpayers by transforming the way public services join up back office services such as HR, IT and Finance. Through innovative use of technology we can save money and deliver faster and better services for people."

Tips to remember at eating Out

Eating out can be lots of fun .so makes it an enjoyable experience by following some simple guidelines to avoid foodborne illness. Remember to observe your food when it is served, and don’t ever hesitate to ask questions before you order. Waiters and waitresses can be quite helpful if you ask how a food is prepared. Also, let them know you don’t want any food item containing raw meat, poultry, fish, or eggs.

Basic Rules for Ordering
• Ask whether the food contains uncooked ingredients such as eggs, meat,
poultry, or fish. If so, choose something else.
• Ask how these foods have been cooked. If the server does not know
the answer, ask to speak to the chef to be sure your food has been
cooked to a safe minimum internal temperature.
• Avoid buffets, which may contain undercooked foods or foods that
have been at room temperature too long. Order from a menu to
minimize your risk.
• If you plan to get a “doggy bag” or save leftovers to eat at a later time,
refrigerate perishable foods as soon as possible — and always within
2 hours after purchase or delivery. If the leftover food is in air
temperatures above 90 °F, refrigerate it within 1 hour.

Taking care of eyes: Common eye problems

Have you ever wondered whether there's any truth in some of the stuff you may have been told about how to treat your eyes?For example, you may have been concern that sitting too close to the TV or computer can ruin your eyes. But actually that's wrong. You may also have heard that using a night-light (instead of bright light) to read will cause shortsightedness, but there's no clear scientific evidence to support this idea. You can't strain your eyes in low light when you read.
So what's the reason of many common vision harms?Often, eye shape is the culprit. Someone with perfect 20/20 vision has eyes that are principally round like a baseball. Someone who needs corrective lenses to see usually has eyes that are shaped in a different way.

Myopia or nearsightedness is one of the most common troubles teens have with their eyes. When a teen has myopia, he or she is powerless to focus correctly on things that are far away. People with myopia have eyes that are a little longer than normal, measuring from the front of the eyeball to the back. This extra length earnings that light focuses in front of the retina instead of on it, and that affects vision. Glasses or contacts can easily correct this problem.

Hyperopia or farsightedness, is another problem. People with hyperopia have difficulty focusing on things close up because their eyes are too "short"from front to back. In people with hyperopia, light focuses behind the retina instead of on it, causing shadowy vision. Someone with momentous foresight will need glasses to correct his or her vision. But here's an interesting fact: Many babies are born farsighted! Their eyeballs get longer as they grow, and most of them outgrow the condition.

Another condition where the eye is differently shaped is astigmatism. Here, the cornea isn't perfectly round. To be able to see well — either close up or far away — the person needs contact lenses or glasses.

Blackberry

The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager. The more usually known smartphone BlackBerry, which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services, was released in 2002. It is an case of a convergent device. Developed by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM), it delivers information over the wireless data networks of mobile phone service companies. BlackBerry first made development in the marketplace by intent on e-mail. RIM currently offers BlackBerry e-mail service to non-BlackBerry devices, such as the Palm Treo, during the BlackBerry Connect software. The original BlackBerry device had a monochrome display, but all current models contain color displays.

Botanic fruit and Culinary fruit

Many true fruits, in a botanical sense, are treated as vegetables in cooking and food preparation since they are not sweet. These botanical fruits comprise cucurbits (e.g., squash, pumpkin, and cucumber), tomato, peas, beans, corn, eggplant, and sweet pepper, spices, such as allspice and chillies. Infrequently, though hardly ever, a culinary "fruit" is branded as a true fruit in the botanical sense. For example, rhubarb is frequently referred to as a fruit, because it is used to make sweet desserts such as pies, although only the petiole of the rhubarb plant is edible. In the culinary sense, a fruit is frequently any sweet tasting plant product associated with seed(s), a vegetable is any savoury or less sweet plant product, and a nut any hard, oily, and shelled plant product.

Although a nut is a type of fruit, it is also a well-liked term for edible seeds, such as peanuts (which are actually a legume) and pistachios. Technically, a cereal grain is a fruit termed a caryopsis. However, the fruit wall is extremely thin and fused to the seed coat so almost all of the edible grain is in fact a seed. Therefore, cereal grains, such as corn, wheat and rice are better considered edible seeds, though some references list them as fruits. Edible gymnosperm seeds are often misleadingly given fruit names, e.g. pine nuts, ginkgo nuts, and juniper berries. A Folk taxonomy is a vernacular naming system which describes how non-scientists categorize items.