NEW DELHI: Ram Nath Kovind was on Thursday declared elected as the next President of India. He will be sworn in on July 25 at a ceremony in the Central Hall of Parliament, taking over as the country’s 14th President from Pranab Mukherjee. 
Mr. Kovind, 71,  scored an easy win over the combined opposition-backed candidate Meira Kumar, former Lok Sabha Speaker. He will be the second Dalit President of the country after K. R. Narayanan. 
“I never aspired to be the president; my win is a message to those discharging their duties with integrity,’’ he said in first comments after his electoral victory. He won tw-third of the votes cast by an electoral college comprising MPs and state legislators. Mr. Kovind was the surprise choice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to run for the presidency. At the time of his nomination as the BJP-led NDA’s presidential candidate, he was occupying the Bihar Raj Bhawan as the State Governor. He has also served two terms as a member of the Rajya Sabha. 
Hailing from a humble background from rural area of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Kovind had taken up legal profession and appeared in a number of cases in Delhi High Court as well as the Supreme Court. He had joined the BJP and has well-entrenched background of the party’s ideological mentor, RSS. He belongs to a family of farmers and is known to be a low-profile person of simple lifestyle
“It is a great responsibility, my job will be to uphold and protect the Constitution. My election to this post is a sign of the greatness of India’s democracy,”  Mr Kovind said. 
While polling in the presidential elections had taken place in Parliament and State Assemblies, counting began at 11 a.m. when the ballot box of MPs was opened first, followed by those received from the States in alphabetical order. 
After the election of senior BJP leader and Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu as the country’s next Vice President on August 5, it would be for the first time in the past seven decades that three top posts in the country – President, Vice President and the Prime Minister – would have gone to persons with RSS-BJP background. The BJP never had it so good in the mainstream political life of the country. Mr. Kovind’s candidature was supported by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) which broke away from the ranks of the Opposition parties. 
The ruling BJP has not only tried to bolster its pro-poor image as a party devoted to the uplift of sections of Dalits, downtrodden, deprived and backward but also made an attempt to strike a balance between North and South by picking Mr. Naidu for the country’s second highest constitutional post. 

NEW DELHI : PM Modi today held a meeting with top scientific officials of the Government of India. These included Dr. V.K. Saraswat – Member, NITI Aayog; Dr. R. Chidambaram – Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of India; and Secretaries related to scientific departments in the Union Government.

Officials briefed Prime Minister on progress in various areas of scientific research.

The PM asserted that science, technology and innovation are the keys to progress and prosperity of India. He said that the Government’s priority in the science and technology sector is to apply science to solve our country’s problems.

Giving the example of talent spotting in sports, the Prime Minister said that mechanisms should be made to identify the brightest and best science talent among school students.

He said that a lot of innovation is happening at the grassroots level. Urging officials to break silos, the Prime Minister strongly emphasized that a mechanism should be formed to document and replicate successful innovations at the grassroots level. In this context, he also mentioned innovations being done by defence personnel.

In the agriculture sector, the Prime Minister identified high-protein pulses, fortified foods, and value addition in castor, as priority areas which needed to be speeded up.

In the energy sector, the Prime Minister said that the possibilities of solar energy should be pursued to the maximum, to reduce dependence on energy imports.

Expressing confidence in the abilities of Indian scientists to rise up to the challenges, and provide solutions to improve the lives of the common man in India, the Prime Minister asked the officials to draw up clear targets to be achieved by 2022, the 75^th year of independence.

Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu declared NDA’s vice-presidential candidate 

Senior BJP leader and Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu will be the NDA candidate for the post of Vice President. The announcement was made by BJP President Amit Shah in New Delhi this evening after the Party Parliamentary Board meeting.

Voting concludes to elect 14th President of India

Voting was held today to elect the 14th President of India as members of Parliament and legislative assemblies exercised their franchise at designated centers at Parliament House and state assemblies complex.

A total of 714 MPs voted in the Presidential polls in Parliament House. Briefing media in New Delhi, Secretary General, Lok Sabha and returning officer for Presidential elections, Anoop Mishra said, four MLAs also voted in Parliament house and 54 MPs exercised their franchise in their states.

GST Council decides to hike cess on cigarettes

GST Council has decided to hike cess on cigarettes in its meeting held in New Delhi this evening. The council took the decision after reviewing the compensation cess rates on cigarattes. 

The new rate will come into effect from midnight tonight. Briefing reporters after the meeting, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that Cess on cigarettes of up to 65 mm has been raised by 485 rupees per thousand sticks and on those exceeding 65 mm by 792 rupees per thousand sticks. 

The change in cess would fetch five thousand crore rupees additional revenue. He said, the next meeting will take place in first week of next month to review progress of new indirect tax regime GST.

Roger Federer lifts a record 8th Wimbledon title beating Marin Cilic in Men’s singles

Roger Federer won a record eighth Wimbledon title and became the tournament’s oldest champion today with a straight-sets victory over Marin Cilic. 

Federer claimed his 19th Grand Slam title beating Cilic 6-3, 6-1, 6-4. The 36-year old Federer is also Wimbledon’s oldest men’s winner of the modern era, succeeding Arthur Ashe, who was almost 32 when he won in 1976.

Monsoon session of Parliament begins; Both Houses adjourned

The Monsoon session of Parliament began today and both Houses paid tributes to the departed sitting and former members and the victims of Amarnath terror attack before adjourning till tomorrow.

As soon as the Lok Sabha met, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan read the condolence message over the death of sitting MP Vinod Khanna and some former members of the House.

MoU Signed between Department of Defence Production and BEL 

Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), a Navratna Schedule ‘A’ Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) under the Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the financial year 2017-18 with the Ministry. The annual MoU was signed between Secretary (Defence Production) Shri Ashok Kumar Gupta on behalf of the Ministry of Defence and Chairman and Managing Director, BEL Shri MV Gowtama. 

The revenue from operations has been targeted at Rs. 9000 crore. The Operating Profit to Revenue from Operations target has been set at 14 percent and PAT to Average Networth has been set at 15 percent. 

News Source – newsonair

NEW DELHI: It will be combined opposition’s Gopal Krishna Gandhi versus NDA’s M. Venkaiah Naidu in the direct contest to elect India’s 13^th Vice-President next month.

The BJP Parliamentary Board which met here on Monday evening put the seal of approval unanimously on the name of Venkaiah Naidu, Union Urban Development and Information and Broadcasting Minister and a senior party leader to be the NDA’s nominee for the election of the Vice President. The decision was announced by BJP President Amit Shah at the party headquarters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after the meeting, tweeted that he had known the 68-year-old politician for years and had always admired his tenacity and hard work. Mr. Naidu has also closely worked with former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and former Deputy PM and Home Minister L. K. Advani and to some extent has been cast in Vajpayee-Advani mould.

Hailing from Nellore in Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Naidu had begun his career in student politics and in 1980 served as BJP’s leader of the legislative party, headed party’s state unit before moving to the national capital to manage the party’s affairs as its general secretary and spokesperson during 1993-2000 period. He also headed the party as its national president between 2002 and 2004. He is currently in his fourth term in the Rajya Sabha, this time from Rajasthan.

Mr. Naidu had ruled himself out in May from the race for either the president or vice-president, saying he was “happy being Usha Pati’’, referring to his wife Usha.

He has honed himself as a good orator who never fails to come up quick, witty phrases and interventions in and outside Parliament. As the Vice-President is also Chairman of the Rajya Sabha where the BJP is still short of a majority, it would be Mr. Naidu’s managerial and oratorical skills that would come to his aid in running the House. His admirers, well-wishers and friends cut across party affiliations and so his goodwill.

With Mr. Naidu’s choice as the Vice Presidential candidate, the BJP has also given a broad hint about expanding its footprint in the Southern States. In choosing Mr. Ramnath Kovind as the President and Mr. Naidu as Vice-President candidates, the BJP has ensured that its core leaders get to occupy the top posts in the country. The opposition has claimed that it is contesting the two elections as ideological battle. Given the composition of both the Houses, it is almost certain that Mr. Naidu would succeed M. Hamid Ansari whose second term to the country’s second highest constitutional post comes to an end on August 10.

All members of the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, including nominated members, form the electoral college for electing the Vice President. 

The ruling BJP-led NDA coalition is confident of getting 500 to 550 votes in favour of its Vice Presidential candidate. While in the current Lok Sabha, the NDA has 335 members, making for 62 per cent of the total members, in the Rajya Sabha the ruling dispensation has about 59 per cent members. While Rajya Sabha has 233 elected and 12 nominated members, Lok Sabha has 543 elected and 2 nominated members, taking the total strength to 790.

While the JD (U) has supported the NDA’s  Presidential candidate, it has already announced that it would back UPA’s Vice-Presidential nominee Gopal Krishna Gandhi for election as the country’s 13th Vice President. Polling and counting of votes is scheduled to be held on August 5. 

The value of each vote in the Vice-Presidential election is one. Ballot paper, containing names of the contesting candidate, is used for the election. The ballot paper does not contain any party symbol. It has two columns — one containing the name of the candidate and the second for marking the order of preference.

As per the number of contesting candidates, the voters can mark as many preferences against the names of the candidates as they want. The winning candidate has to get a required quota of votes, which is 50% of the total valid votes +1. With three vacancies, the total strength of the electoral college this time would be 787.

NEW DELHI : Doctors have long been using biopsy to diagnose liver fibrosis. A new study says it may be possible to diagnose the liver disease with a blood test in future.

Researchers at the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), New Delhi, working in collaboration with Justus Liebig University, Giessen in Germany, have identified diagnostic markers for liver fibrosis. With these markers, it will be possible to diagnose liver fibrosis from blood samples. It will make diagnosis easier to perform, non-invasive, and less prone to sampling errors, researchers say in their study published in journal Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology. 

The new study has reported that patients of liver fibrosis have elevated levels of two proteins- Cathepsin L and Cathepsin B – in liver tissues as well as blood plasma, compared to healthy people. The increased levels of these two proteins open the possibility of designing a new and better diagnosis for liver disease. There is progressive increase in concentrations of the two proteins with advancement in the stages of liver cirrhosis, making them potential diagnostic tools. 

The observation was first made in animals and then humans. It was seen that the two proteins are elevated in kidney, heart, and lung fibrosis, which led to the idea of testing their diagnostic relevance in liver disorder. Since the findings are based on blood samples from 51 patients, researchers have recommended studies involving larger group of patients to further validate their work.

However, an expert working in the same field pointed out that “previous studies have also reported biomarkers for liver fibrosis. The challenge is to find a marker that can differentiate between mild and severe stages of the disease in addition to distinguishing between healthy and severely ill conditions.”

Liver fibrosis is caused by several factors including alcohol consumption, viral infection, and metabolic disorders. It is also congenital in some cases. It is marked by the formation of scars and nodules in the liver, which is due to accumulation of specific proteins.

The study team included Mansi Manchanda, Prasenjit Das, Gaurav Gahlot, Ratnakar Singh, Elke Roeb, Martin Roderfeld, Siddhartha Datta Gupta, Anoop Saraya, R M Pandey and Shyam S Chauhan. (India Science Wire) 

The opposition providing some food for thought for the Narendra Modi government having announced its Vice Presidential nominee well in advance. Opposition believes nominating Gopal Gandhi as its Vice Presidential nominee puts the Modi Government in a spot.

If Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent shock waves by choosing barrister and low key Dalit politician Ram Nath Kovind from Uttar Pradesh for the highest Constitutional office of President, the 18-party opposition has given some food for thought to the BJP led NDA by picking former West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi as its Vice Presidential nominee well in advance. 

On its part the NDA is not unduly concerned about the critical arithmetic required as it has the numbers in the electoral college to get its nominee elected as the Vice President despite being in a minority in the Rajya Sabha. 

The Lotus party is expected to enjoy the rare distinction of occupying the highest Constitutional office of President as well as that of the Vice President for the first time since the BJP was formed in 1980. This is on account of the numbers stacked in its favour. 

Going by precedent the ruling party at the Centre has its nominee as President and the opposition invariably occupies the office of Vice President, who is the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. 

These niceties are the least of Modi’s concerns keen as he is to snuff out the opposition in the country in pursuit of the rather difficult proposition of striving for a “Congress mukt Bharat” in the near future.  

Earlier, Gopal Gandhi was also considered by the Opposition for the office of President. However, that was not to be. The choice of Kovind for the office of the Head of State compelled the opposition to field former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, a Dalit and daughter of the late Babu Jagjivan Ram who had served as the Deputy Prime Minister. 

Gopal Gandhi has been described as a worthy successor to outgoing Vice President Hamid Ansari even though the Congress and other 17 parties do not have the required number of MPs in the electoral college to ensure his win.  

As Governor of West Bengal from 2004 to 2009, Gopal Gandhi had won many admirers with his bold criticism of the Left government’s handling of the Nandigram protests. He has spoken out whenever an occasion demanded — be it the partisan role of the CBI, which he has described as “a government hatchet”, or mob violence in the name of cow protection. 

The BJP is bound to be guarded about its Vice Presidential nominee. As the Vice President heads the Rajya Sabha, where the Lotus party still cannot push through crucial legislation in the absence of sufficient numbers, the party may take care not to field a lightweight who could upset political calculations. 

The BJP might be hard put to match the opposition choice. The Left backed Gopal Gandhi wholeheartedly for the post of Vice President. CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury “hoped he (Gopal Gandhi) will be elected unanimously”. 

The combined strength of elected members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha make up the electoral college for the office of Vice President and the Modi government enjoys a clear majority in the August five elections.   

On the other hand the opposition is essentially banking on Gopal Gandhi’s stature hoping that the fence sitters like BJD’s Naveen Patnaik who has backed the NDA candidate for President would find it difficult to openly oppose him. 

Accepting the nomination, Gopal Gandhi said “I accept the nomination and applaud the unity and conviction with which the opposition parties have asked me to be their candidate for the vice-presidentship.”  

He viewed himself as a citizen weighed down by anxieties and even fears about “out collective future in these violent and retributive times but who nevertheless refuses to give up hope, faith, trust in our Republican Constitution, independent judiciary, free press, the institutions of parliamentary democracy and above all the robust good sense of the people of India”. Interestingly, as the Tamil Nadu’s ruling party the AIADMK will find it difficult to oppose Gopal Gandhi as he is half Tamil and made Chennai his home after demitting public office. The opposition feels it has outsmarted the BJP by announcing Gopal Gandhi’s candidature well in advance besides denying the JD (U) the elbow room to rethink. 

( T R Ramachandran is senior journalist and commentator. The views are personal.) 

NEW DELHI: Indian kids have reasonable knowledge about lifestyle diseases and their risk factors, but this knowledge does not translate into preventive action, a new study has revealed.
For instance, adolescent children know that unhealthy food is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) yet they indulge in eating junk food and unhealthy snacks.
In spite of better awareness, there is huge knowledge-practice gap among teenagers, the study done among school children in Kolkata has found. Most of these teenagers (who are aware) showed poor and unhealthy eating lifestyles like more than three major meals a day, frequent snacking (more than four times in a day) and consumption of street food. The trend of poor eating habits was visible more in older students and those belonging to affluent families as compared to students from low or middle-class socio-economic status. 
The study, published in journal BMC Public Health recently, was conducted jointly by hospitals in Kolkata along with Mission Arogya Health and Information Technology Research Foundation and the University of California. It was led by Dr. Tanmay Mahapatra. It included over 1600 ninth grade students in urban Kolkata.
Researchers collected data on knowledge about lifestyle diseases, physical activity, and eating patterns from these adolescents. They found that about 20% of the participants reported a family history of CVDs while a majority had little information about heart disorders. Boys tended more to be involved in physical activity (adequate physical activity as one hour every day) along with those who had better knowledge about risk factors. 
About 82% of the adolescents did not perceive themselves to be at risk for future CVDs and even those who perceived the risk showed poor dietary practices. One of the probable explanations might be that adolescents considered CVDs to be problem of the aged, and underestimated their own future risks, researchers said. “Promotion of school-based cardiovascular health programs might be crucial in dispelling myths and misconceptions with eventual prevention of early onset atherosclerotic changes in arterial walls,” the study has suggested.
“Compared to the West, in India, the transition from predominantly infectious disease to non-communicable diseases has happened over a rather brief period of time. Solutions require strategies such as emphasis on prevention, early detection, treatment using both conventional and innovative techniques along with effective implementation of evidence-based policy” suggested Amjad Husain, professor of life sciences at Glocal University. He is not connected with the study.
“Healthy eating habits and lifestyle behaviour inculcated at adolescent age can prevent a lot of diseases like obesity, hypertension, early onset of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, metabolic syndrome, diseases of spine and joints etc.” says Dr. Vijay Malhotra, President, Delhi Medical Association. He suggests that relevant information and knowledge about lifestyle diseases should be made a part of the curriculum in secondary classes. (India Science Wire)

Centre needs to act fast in seizing control before it too late. Coordinated security and civil response needed for peace to return to the Valley. 
 The terrorist attack on unarmed Amarnath yatris in the Valley in Jammu and Kashmir last Monday might well be indicative of a bigger flare up in the country. It has shattered the deceptive calm in the wake of the first death anniversary of Kashmir’s poster boy Burhan Wani, a local militant leader killed last year. 
Shockingly this attack on Shiva bhakts has broken the unwritten rule followed over the last 15 years with terrorists steering clear of aiming their guns at unarmed pilgrims. That was the critical difference this time. 
There is no doubt a coordinated security and civil response is required to help peace return to the Valley. There are indications of 2017 being the deadliest year in the last decade in J&K. The latest attack specifically targets the innocent aimed at sparking a wider conflagration. 
Impartial observers believe Kashmir’s militancy appears to have taken on religious sentiments at least on this occasion by masterminds from across the border. It also showed an increasing desperation on the part of the militants amid indications that militancy in Kashmir might have taken a drastic turn. 
There has been an inexplicable and inevitable drift in the efforts by the Centre to find a solution to the protracted and complex Kashmir problem. At the same time there could not have been a bigger rebuff to the terrorist attack on the Amarnath yatris than the determination of the pilgrims to visit the shrine in the face of violence seeking to target them. 
The way ahead is to go by Kashmiriyat and its emphasis on social harmony. At the same time civil society played a positive role in checking the spillover of emotions. It was upfront in condemning the death of the innocent including women. 
Even as J&K chief minister Mehbooba Mufti rushed to Anantnag to meet the survivors of the ambush, she felt the attack was a blot on Kashmir. 
The unthinkable coming together of the PDP and the BJP in forming a coalition government in the only Muslim majority state in the country needs to live up to its promise when it assumed office in 2015 : to bridge the chasms in the sensitive border state among its regions, communities and aspirations. 
As the mentor of the BJP the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh has made some noises before its meeting in Jammu that the saffron brigade should break its alliance with the PDP. However, party general secretary incharge of J&K Ram Mahdav is hopeful of the BJP ironing out its differences with the PDP. 
The holy pilgrimage of the Amarnath yatra is not only related to the faith of the Hindu community but plays a key role in the survival of the local economy. From time immemorial Kashmir is linked with its Shaivite traditions and syncretic roots. 
The terrorists aided and abetted by neighbouring Pakistan are trying to provoke communal riots in this country by driving a wedge between Hindus and Muslims.   
The decision to continue the yatra till August four sends a significant message: the people will not give in to terror. The top most priority for the Centre is to ensure security for the pilgrims. This was not a spur of the moment attack as there were specific intelligence inputs and warning about such an assault. The bus from Gujarat that was attacked by terrorists had not followed proper security protocol. It was neither registeredwith the Amarnath Shrine Board not did it adhere to the security detail compulsory for pilgrims because of the security threat. 
With militants targetting Amarnath pilgrims, the entire paradigm has changed. They have given cause to the security forces to step up the fight. 
There is a strong section of opinion calling for Governor’s rule in J&K. It would serve two purposes of cooling frayed tempers in the Valley and lead to better coordination as well as tightening the administration.  
Maintaining status quo and a policy of merely reacting to events will have dangerous consequences in the Valley along with jeopardising peace across the country. This assumes importance with the terrorists signalling their intent to target Hindus. 
The Centre needs to act fast in a determined and effective manner for seizing control before it is too late. Neutralisation of a larger violent radical Islamic movement requires reaching out to the locals to reduce the support to insurgency in Kashmir. 
Meanwhile, Union Home minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj will be apprising opposition leaders today about the situation in J&K and the stand off in Doklam sector between India and China in an effort to soften the attack against the Modi government during the winter session of Parliament beginning Monday, July 17. 

( T R Ramachandran is senior journalist and commentator. The views are personal.) 

NEW DELHI: A team of Indian astronomers has identified a cosmic behemoth – a supercluster of galaxies – about 4 billion light-years away from us. The new discovery has been named Saraswati – which in Sanskrit literally means ‘ever-flowing stream with many pools’. 
The supercluster spans over 650 million light years in its expanse, containing over 10,000 galaxies in 42 clusters. Its total mass equals 20 million billion suns. The team of astronomers was led by Joydeep Bagchi of Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, which used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The discovery is forcing astronomers to rethink about early stages of the evolution of the universe and it provides vital clues about mysterious dark matter and dark energy. The results of the study were published in The Astrophysical Journal on Thursday. 
The megacluster has been named Saraswati – the goddess of knowledge, music and art. Saraswati, in Sanskrit also means ‘ever-flowing stream with many pools.’ “This supercluster located in the constellation of Pisces has many clusters and groups moving and merging like the mythological Saraswati river, which prompted us to give this name,” say the researchers. “There are hundreds of superclusters in size range of less than 100 million light years, Saraswati supercluster clearly stands out in the sky as an especially rare, and possibly among the mega superclusters exceeding 500 million light years in size,” said Somak Raychaudhury, one of the co-authors and the Director of IUCAA, Pune.
 Â“A large-scale structure this massive evolves very slowly, and therefore it may reflect the whole history of galaxy formation and the primordial initial conditions that have seeded it,” said Joydeep Bagchi. Our Sun is one among billion stars in a vast cosmic structure called Milky Way galaxy. However, Milky Way extending 120,000 light-years across is just a pin-head in cosmic scales. Gravitational interaction between galaxies results in a much larger structure called “galaxy clusters”. Our Milky Way is part of “Local Group”, a cluster containing around 50 galaxies and  measures more than 10 million light-years across. Recent surveys have shown even larger cosmological structure, ‘cluster of clusters’, superclusters.
Interestingly, Somak Raychaudhury, co-author of this study, discovered the first massive supercluster of galaxies of this scale during his PhD research at the University of Cambridge in 1989 and named it “Shapley Concentration” after an American astronomer, Harlow Shapley, in recognition of his pioneering survey of galaxies. 
The supercluster Laniakea – of which our sun, our Milky Way and “Local Group” are a part – consists of about 100,000 galaxies. Was the Universe built from the ‘bottom up’, with galaxies condensing first, then aggregating into clusters, superclusters and other large-scale cosmic structures? Or did it happen the other way round, with vast gas clouds that fragmented into smaller clouds; each of the smaller clouds then evolving into a galaxy. Which model is correct? Cosmologists are split. The long-popular “Cold dark matter” model of evolution of Universe predicts that small structures like galaxies form first, which congregate into larger structures. 
The existence of large structures such as the “Saraswati Supercluster” evolved as early as 10 billion years since the Big Bang is a challenge to this model. The time elapsed since the Big Bang is not adequate for the slow process of gravitational attraction to have created such a large scale structure. “The discovery of these extremely large structures thus forces astronomers into rethinking popular theories of how the Universe got its current form, starting from a more-or-less uniform distribution of energy after the Big Bang,” says Prof Raychaudhury. 
In the large-scale cosmos, gravity is not the only force to reckon with. While the mutual attraction of gravity tries to bind the ordinary and still elusive dark matter together creating lumps like galaxies, clusters and so on, the still unknown dark energy repulsive in nature causes expansion of the Universe to accelerate, hampering the growth of large-scale structures. 

“Our work will help to shed light on the perplexing question; how such extreme large scale, prominent matter-density enhancements had formed billions of years in the past when the mysterious Dark Energy had just started to dominate structure formation’’ said Bagchi. “This paper is unique because it is a direct product of IUCAA’s associateship programme, under which a faculty member of an Indian university or a post-graduate department in a college can visit IUCAA for periods of short and long durations over a span of three years to develop his or her interest and expertise in astronomy and astrophysics” added Prof Raychaudhury. 
The research was funded by the University Grants Commission and Indo-French CEFIPRA programme of the Department of Science and Technology (DST). While the lead author Bagchi and co-author Raychaudhury are from IUCAA, other researchers are Dr Prakash Sarkar (National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur postdoctoral fellow at IUCAA), Shishir Sankhyayan (undergraduate student at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune), Pratik Dabhade (Research Fellow at IUCAA) and Dr Joe Jacob (Newman College, Thodupuzha, Kerala). (India Science Wire) 

Expanding the basket of contraceptive choices, India launched a new injectable contraceptive under its public health system. To mark the World Population Day, India also launched a new programme Mission Parivar Vikas which will focus on 146 high fertility districts in 7 States with high Total Fertility Rates.

Speaking at the function, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister, J.P.Nadda said the injectable had been launched under the `Antara’ programme which also includes new software – Family Planning Logistics Management Information System designed to provide robust information on demand and distribution of contraceptives to health facilities and ASHAs to strengthen supply chain management.     

 
“Under Mission Parivar Vikas, specific targeted initiatives shall be taken for population stabilisation through better services delivery,” Mr Nadda said adding that the new initiative had been conceived by the Ministry with a strategic focus on improving access through provision of services, promotional schemes, commodity security, capacity building, enabling environment and intensive monitoring.

The Health Minister also advised the officials to undertake half yearly review of the programme and correlate the achievements with time to gauge whether the programme is moving in the right direction or not. He stated that “We have enhanced the basket of contraceptive choices to meet the changing needs of people and have taken steps to ensure quality assured services and commodities are delivered to the last-mile consumers in both rural and urban areas.” 

As part of the new communications campaign linked to the roll-out, the Minister also launched a new consumer friendly website on family planning and a 52-week radio show for couples to discuss issues related to marriage and family planning, which will be aired across the country. He stressed upon the life cycle approach of the Ministry and said that a continuum of care approach has been adopted with the articulation of `Strategic approach to Reproductive Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health.

Over at the Family Planning Summit in London, C.K. Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare announced that India will overarch FP2020 goals to drive access, choice and quality of Family Planning (FP) services so as to increase the modern contraceptive usage from 53.1% to 54.3% and ensure that 74% of the demand for modern contraceptives is satisfied by 2020. The country will be expanding range and reach of contraceptive options by 2020 through rolling out new contraceptives.

The country will increase FP awareness and generate demand through the 360-degree media campaign in all States and continue to provide FP services and supplies free of cost to all eligible couples and adolescents through the public health system, Non-Government organizations, and accredited private sector. The social marketing scheme will be revitalized, and social franchising schemes would be initiated to rope in the private sector, Mr Mishra said.

India’s commitment will go a long way in reaching thousands of women and girls with critical reproductive health information. For example, India has over 9.2 million married and sexually active adolescents (ages 15-19) of whom 26% have an unmet need for contraception. If India was to increase its focus on adolescents, enabling an additional 1.5 million adolescent girls to use modern contraception by 2020, then we would see a 17% reduction in its adolescent birth rate.

Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said access to contraceptives changes everything. “Women are freer to work outside the home, earn an income, and contribute to the economy. Mothers and fathers can devote more resources to their kids health and education—setting them up for a more productive future. Multiply that by millions of families, and you see why contraceptives are one of the greatest antipoverty innovations the world has ever known—and one of the smartest investments countries can make. Through the new commitments expected today at the Family Planning Summit, we have made a bold statement that investing in family planning is crucial to building the healthier and more prosperous future we are all working towards,’’ she said.