With the Indian music scene undergoing a wave of experimentation, as unconventional melodies as well as fresh voices and musicians being introduced on a regular basis, Rohan Benjamin – an upcoming singer – whose debut single ‘Doorie’ had hit bulls eye, is all set to release his next song ‘Memories’, for which he has teamed up with renowned rapper and composer Giri G.
Benjamin, who had started out as a keyboard player at a tender age of 4, says that consistency and practice have made him what he is today. 
Right after his S.S.C, Rohan had decided to collaborate with Zee Music Company which resulted in his first single ‘Doorie’, music for which was composed by Zubin Sinha. 
20-years old Rohan has traveled to several cities for stage shows and says, “My family has supported a lot in my music career. I really feel so blessed  for such loving parents who always stood there when I was in trouble and was struggling hard to get to the list.”
Rohan also has his own independent YouTube channel ‘Benjamin Rohan’ which has garnered more than a million views in just a short span of time.
Apart from singing, Rohan is also a composer and songwriter. 
Rohan says that music has always been important in his life and gave him special recognition. In addition, he notes, “I never thought it (success) could happen this soon, as I’m just 20.”

India’s fashion industry is growing on a rapid scale and many models have come out and made their mark in the industry. Mohd Shafeeq Ur Rahman is the man who redefines multitasking and is the proprietor of Star Life Hyderabad, Editor-in-chief of City Hilife Magazine and the managing director of Silver Star Construction. With being a highly qualified person, he has done his B.Com from Osmania University and Bachelors of Event Management from the National Institute of Fashion Technology and holds an MBA degree from IIM. Rahman began his career in the field of construction but later moved into fashion as he wants to create a platform for the youth and motivate their inner urge of becoming a model.
Ever since he incorporated Star Life Hyderabad, the event company has organized some of the biggest beauty pageants on the national and international levels. He has done photoshoots with many well-known names from Bollywood, Tollywood, and Hollywood. His company has been associated with the top fashion houses for organizing fashion shows. Besides this, some of the major works of the company include bodybuilding championship, fitness modeling championship, print shoot, catalog shoot, creative event promotions and much more. Living by the motto of working hard, he is gradually achieving goals in his life which makes him the top name in the fashion industry today. Throwing light on the magazine, City Hilife is a popular name in Hyderabad which caters to the audience who are into fashion and lifestyle.
With having done more than 100 events, in Hyderabad and Telangana state, City Hilife has been a media partner for many big events in Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh. Apart from this, the magazine every year does the coverage of the biggest beauty pageants of the country including Mr. India, Miss India and Lakme Fashion Week to keep the audience updated about the event. Highlighting a few of his achievements, he was awarded the 3rd Business Leadership Award by Unified Brainz powered by Passion Vista. He also won the Beauty and Fashion Expo 2019 Award and the Asian Arab Award 2019. Mohd Shafeeq Ur Rahman’s goal for this decade is to bring the global fashion brands together under the same roof in India.

To give priority to India’s Neighbourhood First policy, newly appointed Foreign Secretary Harsh Bardhan Shringla will undertake his first foreign visit to Bangladesh where he served recently as High Commissioner for three years.

After his Dhaka visit, the Foreign Secretary will visit other neighboring countries as well. Main purpose of his visit this time will be to finalise the details of the programme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is scheduled to undertake an official visit to Dhaka on March 16 at the invitation of his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has invited Mr Modi along with other world leaders to join the opening ceremony of birth centenary celebrations of founder of Bangladesh Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibar Rahman which begins on  March 16. Sources confirmed that Mr Modi will deliver keynote address on during his visit underlining the fact that Bangladesh has become truly secular country under the leadership of Bangabandhu and the legacy carried on by his daughter and the present Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.  

Utterances of BJP, India’s ruling party, leaders notwithstanding about Bangladesh and its people, Mr Modi will definitely avoid all controversial comments about Bangladesh which has become a trusted friend of India over the years .

According to the sources, Mr Modi wants to take the bilateral relationship forward which has been recognized as beyond strategic relationship. This time main focus of the bilateral talks will be defence cooperation, trade-related issues and people to people contact. Already both countries are in negotiations on two new rail connections other than present two operating — Moitri and Bandhan Express between Dhaka –Kolkata and Khulna –Kolkata.

One passenger train route will be Rajshahi-Kolkata via Rohonpur (Bangladesh) –Singabad (Malda of West Bengal) and the other one will be Dhaka-Siliguri via Chilkabari and Haldibari of Coochbihar of West Bengal. The two neigbours have already agreed to increase the number of trips of present Moitri Express and Bandhan Express from four days a week to five days a week.

India and Bangladesh have signed a MoU of defence cooperation during the visit of Prime Minister Hasina in April 2017. Following that India had announced a line of credit of 500 million $ exclusively for purchasing defence equipment from India. For the last two years both the sides were discussing the modalities of utiilisation of funds.  Only recently a branch of EXIM Bank in Dhaka was identified through which the Line of Credit will be disbursed. Now Bangladesh will submit their wish list for the defence equipment. It is Learnt that Bangladesh Navy is interested about purchasing some vessels and equipment.  

India’s main concern is about greater involvement of China in Bangladesh’s defence sector and Bangladesh has procured two suubmarines from China which has created a lot of concern in the South Block. Now visit of PM Modi will definitely create a clear understanding about defence cooperation between two neighbours. Already Bangladesh has agreed to put coastal radar systems along the Bay Of Bengal shore. India and Bangladesh had signed a peace treaty during Sheikh Mujib’s tenure. Indian PM Indira Gandhi had signed that treaty. Though the treaty was valid for 25 years and it was not renewed. It remains to be seen if that treaty will be renewed this time around.

Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad claims to have found a molecule called ‘AIM4’ that shows promise in the treatment of a rare and debilitating neurodegenerative disease called ‘Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis’ (ALS), also known as ‘Lou Gehrig’s disease.’
ALS is a neurodegenerative disorder that severely affects the voluntary movement of muscles and can lead to paralysis and death. It occurs due to changes in specific genes, which may be triggered by factors such as smoking, exposure to toxins, metals, and pesticides. 
The results of this research, performed by a team lead by Dr. Basant Kumar Patel, Dr. Sandeep Singh and Dr. Rajakumara Eerappa, faculty from the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Hyderabad, and Prof. Ganesan Prabushankar, Department of Chemistry, IIT Hyderabad, has recently been published in the reputed peer-reviewed International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, according to a press release issued by the Institute.
The paper has been co-authored by these scientists along with research scholars – Mr. Amandeep Girdhar, Ms. Vidhya Bharathi, Mr. Vikas Ramyagya Tiwari, Mr. Suman Abhishek, Ms. Waghela Deeksha, Ms. Usha Saraswat Mahawar, and Mr. Gembali Raju.
There are no drugs available at present to cure ALS and treatment options are limited to two drugs only for the management of the condition.  Research is ongoing throughout the world to find better drugs that can arrest this disorder and not merely manage the symptoms. Such research must first identify the causes of the onset of ALS.
Elaborating on this research, Dr. Basant Kumar Patel, Associate Professor, Department of Biotechnology, IIT Hyderabad, said, “One of the causes of ALS is the alterations in the genes that code for a critical protein called TDP-43.  The gene alteration modifies the protein, which results in its liquid-liquid phase separation. This phase separation, in turn, causes the proteins to be deposited on nerve cells, resulting in neurodegeneration.”
The ‘ice bucket challenge,’ which went viral in the U.S. and the U.K. in 2014, created awareness about this disease among people. The disease is relatively unknown in India although Indians seem to have an earlier onset of this malady compared to people of the West and show longer-lasting symptoms and disease progression.
In 2016, Dr. Patel and Prof. G. Prabushankar found a small molecule called ‘AIM4,’ which seemed to be better than the other related molecules that have been studied all around the world, in its ability to inhibit abnormal aggregation of TDP-43 in vitro ALS disease model systems. Armed with this knowledge, the IITH scientists proceeded to analyze this molecule and study its action on TDP-43, to predict how it would potentially inhibit the deposition of the protein in nerve cells.  The results of this work have recently been published in the above journal.
Dr. Patel added, “We have shown that AIM4 prevents liquid-liquid phase separation of the modified protein, TDP-43-A315T. By this, AIM4 prevents aggregation of the protein and may potentially prevent the deposition of neurons.”
The research group compared the ability of AIM4 to prevent protein phase separation with that of other molecules such as Dimebon. Dimebon is an antihistamine that was studied for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders by an American pharmaceutical company but failed clinical trials.  The IIT Hyderabad Research team found that AIM4 was better than such earlier molecules in preventing protein phase separation.
The research team has also discovered through computational studies that AIM4 has specific binding sites on this protein and binding energy calculations have shown that the bond between AIM4 and the mutant protein is energetically favorable, which makes it a promising drug for the potential treatment of ALS.
“This work is an important step forward in the area of therapeutics of the neurodegenerative disease ALS as current options for ALS are minimal or even non-existent”, said Dr. Patel.
The work by the IITH researchers shows that AIM4 is a promising molecule that must be studied further for the development of drugs for ALS and perhaps even other neurodegenerative diseases.

Age is just a number. Defying all norms, we have Dr. Supratim Akaash Paul who himself is an icon himself. As a new age dermatologist and cosmetologist, fitness and wellness expert and seasoned entrepreneur; Dr. Paul has lead by example. He himself has a fitness of a teenager and good looks to die for. So needless to mention, his array of ardent followers are all aging backward and proving that 40 is the new 20. 
Malaika Arora is one such name in Bollywood which only makes us come up with one expression “WOW”. From Malaika Arora’s perfect figure to her sharp well-sculpted facial contours, to her diet; in a word she is simply stunning it post 40. Dr. Paul shares how the wellness and natural way of lifestyle medicine have made Maliaka Arora ooze the hotness we see. External beauty is a manifestation of inner wellbeing. The name of the game is to remain stress-free and balance the hormones, only then it will show on the face. Malaika has oily skin but still, it remains to break out free and flawless. Here diet has a big role to play. Malaika has a lot of superfoods in her diet starting from broccoli salad, to avocado toast, to zucchini noodles, spirulina smoothies and so on. All the food that she intakes attributes majorly towards getting her acne-free, wrinkle-free flawless skin. In a word, she is a superfood junkie. 
The varied form of exercise Malaika incorporates in her daily regime helps her to sweat it out and detoxify herself. It is a good mix of yoga to pilates, functional training and cardio. Dr. Paul further says, the natural glow that you see on Malaika’s skin is a sign of water therapy, keeping the skin both internally and externally hydrated, use of water-based customized sunscreens, use of minimum make-up, tailor-made organic serums containing vitamin c and vitamin e and wheat germ extract. 
Malaika Arora’s entire lifestyle is dependent on the wellness way which is a specialty of Dr. Paul. “Malaika’s health, fitness and beauty journey involves a lot of hard work and discipline and focus, but when the result is Malaika Arora at the end of it all, I’m sure you all will agree that the effort is worthwhile,” says Dr. Paul.

In order to further increase the digital collection of user fees via FASTag at NH fee plazas, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has decided to waive off the FASTag cost of Rs.100/- for NHAI FASTag between 15th and 29th February 2020. Road users can visit any authorized physical point-of-sale locations with a valid Registration Certificate (RC) of the vehicle and get an NHAI FASTag free of cost. NHAI FASTag may be purchased from all NH fee plazas, RTOs, Common Service Centres, transport hubs, petrol pumps, etc. To search for the nearest NHAI FASTag point-of-sale locations, one may download MyFASTag App, or visit www.ihmcl.com or Call 1033 NH Helpline number.
The applicable security deposit and minimum balance amount for the FASTag wallet shall, however, remain unchanged.
NHAI had earlier announced for Free NHAI FASTag from 22 Nov to 15 December 2019 to encourage people to adopt FASTag.

The Aam Aadmi Party of Arvind Kejriwal is all set to form the government in the national capital for the third time in a row, scoring a jumbo win in the 70-member Delhi Assembly as the counting of votes of February 8 polls was taken up on Tuesday.
Mr Kejriwal will head the government and his party is comfortably placed by bagging 63 seats, leaving seven seats for its nearest political rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Congress could not open its electoral account for the second successive time.
Mr Kejriwal’s victory can be easily compared to the last one in 2015 when it swept the polls in Delhi by winning 67 seats and conceding only three seats to the BJP. The Congress had drawn a blank last time too. Though the BJP’s vote share increased to 40.1 per cent, AAP’s share was a whopping 53.8 per cent and the Congress at a dismal 4.4 per cent.
In his victory speech, Mr Kejriwal blew a kiss at his supporters at the AAP office. With a beaming smile, he said: “You are amazing… I love you.”  He thanked the people for giving a third chance to his party for governing the Capital city.
“I want to thank the families of Delhi who treated me as your son and voted for us,” Mr Kejriwal said. He kept his remarks short and positive and did not make any reference to the barbs of the BJP against him.
The poll outcome in Delhi has given birth to a new kind of politics. “It is the politics of development. It is a message that Delhi will vote those who build schools, mohalla clinics, give cheap power, provide access to water and build roads… This is a new kind of politics and holds an auspicious message for the country,” he said in his victory speech. Neither he nor his senior party leaders, including Manish Sisodia and Raghav Chaddha, shied away from chants of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and “Vande Matram.”
There were some anxious moments during the day as AAP raced to a record win with Mr Sisodia from Patparganj and Atishi Marlena from Kalkaji being locked in close contests.

Over 1.47 crore voters people Saturday exercised their franchise to decide the fate of 672 candidates in the 70-member Assembly as exit polls have predicted the Aam Aadmi Party will retain power in Delhi leaving the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a distant second while the Congress appears to remain in the realm of political irrelevance in the capital’s political landscape.

North East Delhi registered the highest voter turnout with 62.75 percent, while New Delhi recorded the lowest turnout with  51.57 percent exercising their franchise.

North West Delhi recorded 54.35 percent turnout, South Delhi saw 53.15 percent, the Central Delhi 53.05 percent, the South West Delhi 54.69, East Delhi 56.08, West Delhi 54.88. The voter turnout in New Delhi constituency, which had the highest number of candidates–28- including the Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi National Convenor Arvind Kejriwal, was 51.57 percent compared to 64.72 percent during the 2015 polls when Kejriwal defeated three-time Chief Minister late Sheila Dikshit by a margin of more than 30,000 votes.

Exit polls on Saturday forecast a win for the Aam Aadmi Party again in Delhi for the third consecutive time leaving the BJP a distant second while Congress may not open its account.

The Times Now-IPSOS exit polls predicted that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will retain power with AAP winning 44 seats against 26 for the BJP.

The Republic-Janki Baat survey gave the AAP 46-61 seats and the BJP 9-21 seats. The ABP News C Voter gave AAP 49-63 seats and BJP 5-1.

TV9 Bharatvarsh Cicero predicted 52-64 for AAP and 6-16 to BJP. Counting of votes will be held on February 11. A party will need 36 seats to stake a claim to form the government in Delhi. 

There was a decline of more than nine percentage points over the 2015 assembly elections in Delhi when 67.12 percent of the voters came to vote. 

This is for the first time since 1998 when Delhi has witnessed a drop in voter turnout over previous assembly elections. In 1998, the capital had recorded a voter turnout of just 48.99 percent.

In 2003, 2008,2013 and 2015, the turnout was 53.42, 57.58, 65.63 and 67.12 percent respectively.

India is facing a tough challenge in skill development. A recent report has brought forward figures that are not surprising but hard-hitting for the youth, who are struggling with the problems surrounding the higher education system and subsequent job readiness. 

Employability of India’s youth is dwindling, with only 46% of participants deemed job-ready. The report clearly calls out that imparting practical-oriented knowledge and helping in cultivating the right attitude among students towards job and learning, beginning at the school level itself will result in effective influence over the individuals. Banking and Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) BPO, KPO and ITeS Internet business will be the top sectors for 2020, predicted the report by AICTE.*

In India 56% of employers are estimated to have a hard time finding appropriate talent. Globally India is the only country with a working age human surplus and it is going to be a huge segment of the population by 2025. We started AttainU to ensure that our demographic numbers convert into a dividend instead of a burden.

What do we do at AttainU:

AttainU provides high quality, online, college alternative education to help students beat the job blues by being technically sound, and employable.  Currently, we offer a 7 month-long software engineering course that helps students with career-oriented software engineering concepts, along with life skills required to succeed in the 21st century. We are heavily leveraging technology to, at scale, deliver a vertically integrated solution covering the below key areas –

1. Counseling – this is where we help the student understand what it means to be a Software Engineer as well as figure out if they would be able to benefit from our course which is based on their aptitude, inclination and most importantly ability to put in the required effort.
   
2. Skill Building – this is the central piece which allows us to deliver high-quality learning outcomes at scale. The crux here is maintaining high student engagement throughout the course. This is achieved through facilitating highly immersive interactions with instructors, mentors and peers focused around a centrally defined course path built-in line with industry partners and delivered by industry expert faculty. 
   
3. Placements – it’s unfair to talk about higher education without providing career support. This is where we prepare the students for placements, do the match-making and facilitate the interactions between our industry partners and students.
   
4. Income Share Agreement – this is a deferred fee payment model conditional to employment. This makes sure that we have skin in the game and aspirational students can afford this high-quality education irrespective of their financial background.
   

We are one of the very few companies working on a deferred payment model for students to enroll in our courses. 

What sets AttainU apart:

Zero to One Skilling – 

Our learning tracks provide a zero to one learning opportunity i.e. neither our industry partners nor we care about the degrees a person has. We take students from scratch all the way to expert entry-level software engineers in the industry. We have also had students, without any degree or with diplomas skilled through our programs and get placed in the end.

Online Model with 90% Completion Rate – 

Through our high-engaging managed marketplace approach we have been able to achieve 90% completion rates in an online education model. This makes it possible for everyone to benefit from our courses, without the need to move cities and take on additional living expenses. 

Being online, besides making our model infinitely scalable also allows us to, for the first time, collect a lot of granular data points around students and teaching staff interactions and progress. We use all of this data to preempt any student going off track, to iterate our teaching processes towards excellence, to better predict which students would be able to benefit most from our courses and to do a closer mapping between our placement partners and graduates.

We exist for the success of our students. Our goal is to not only prepare our students for their first interview, but also for financial success and intellectually fulfilling careers in future-proof domains. This is in line with our core value of creating a skills first college alternative.

Who is this course for:

Majority of our students are those who have been victims of the broken education system in India and either due to lack of finances or exposure did not get the right platform to evolve their skills. They come from varying educational backgrounds, some don’t even have any degree and a few others have multiple gap years due to family obligations in between. At this point, right after our first batch itself, we are seeing our graduates not only doing well for themselves, but also being amongst the best performers at their respective companies. As a result we have companies coming back to us keenly waiting for our next batches to graduate. These are strong signals of the future where degrees are losing their shine in front of skills.

Over the last 11 months we have received 70,000+ student applications, out of which we have been able to enroll 700+ students after our counselling and benchmarking. At this point we are starting batches of 150 every month. Our first batch recently graduated at a 90% completion rate and 70% students got pre-placement offers. We work with 150+ partners to meet their hiring requirements.

The problem solving:

We are living in a world of accelerated advancement. What this means for the tech industry is that as new technologies become available for use, the industry wants to apply these (hardware -> internet -> big data -> cloud computing, machine learning -> artificial intelligence -> data science) to more efficiently serve their business needs. Because of this, the industry needs the employed workforce to learn these new skills to be able to implement them. 

Above mentioned regular skill upgrade is only possible when the fundamental conceptual understanding is very solid and then an individual is able to build on top of those and pick up new skills as needed. A typical coding boot camp focuses on certain very specific technologies and hence it’s graduates suffer at the time when they are required to upgrade their skills. AttainU focuses on fundamental, conceptual understanding rather than teaching only particular technologies. In this regard, we are closer to a college preparing it’s graduates for a career in Software Engineering rather than only for the first job. AttainU’s curriculum and pedagogy are designed to teach the software engineering concepts in a technology (language/framework) agnostic way to ensure that our graduates are equally, if not better suited for a software engineering career as compared to CSE (Computer Science Engineering) college graduates. Due to this philosophy, we don’t need our students to have any background in software engineering before starting the course, all they need to have is a high growth potential including the will and wherewithal to put in the required effort.

By removing all the location and money barriers we are making high-quality, outcome-oriented education accessible for all. Through a scalable platform of the first approach to education, we want to get rid of this demand-supply gap and enable all to maximize their potential. 

*The report is a joint initiative of Wheebox (a Global Talent Assessment Company), Tagged by PeopleStrong and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in collaboration with UNDP, AICTE and Association of Indian Universities (AIU). 

The Author Is CEO and Co-Founder of AttainU

A direct flight between India and Vietnam is all set to be announced during the upcoming official visit of  Vice-President of Vietnam Ms. Dang Thai Ngoc Thinh.

The Vietnamese Vice-President will be on an official visit to India from February 11 to 13, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said here on Thursday.

She will hold bilateral delegation level talks with her Indian counterpart M. Venkaiah Naidu. There would also be a call-on the President Ram Nath Kovind.

During the visit Vice-President of Vietnam, the direct flight between India and Vietnam would be announced on February 12. The visiting Vice-President is also scheduled to visit Bodh Gaya on February 13.

India-Vietnam relations are built on the firm foundation of close cultural, historical, civilizational links and are marked by mutual trust and understanding as well as strong cooperation in regional and international fora. The visit of Vietnamese Vice-President would strengthen the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership established in 2016 between the two countries.