112 items in this section. Displaying page 5 of 12
Where: Tokyo, Japan April 11, 2009 : The recession has prompted many governments to inject ‘stimulus packages’ to boost their countries’ economies. Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso announced a package with a green focus. His government will encourage the start of mass production of electric cars in three years. It also has plans to boost solar power generation to 20 times the current level of 1.42m kilowatts. Then there is a car scrappage scheme, under which motorists who trade in cars that are more than 13 years old for environment-friendly vehicles will receive subsidies....
Where: Reykjavik, Iceland February 16, 2009 : In a letter signed by senior diplomats in Reykjavik, the governments of six countries appealed to Iceland to rethink its decision to permit the hunting of 150 fin and 100 minke whales in a year. The countries are the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Finland and Sweden. The former Iceland government took the decision before stepping down in the face of the country’s economic collapse. The letter expressed “extreme disappointment” and asked the new government to consider the long-term interests of the whaling industry....
Where: Tehran, Iran June 19, 2009 : The Iranian Presidential election results were announced on June 13, 2009, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner for a second term. The popular reformist leader Mirhossein Mousavi was declared defeated. Ever since then, the country has been rocked by widespread demonstrations. Tens of thousands of angry voters took out protest rallies. They claimed the results were fake, and that their leader Mousavi had won. In 1979, after the Islamic revolution, Iran’s government was taken over by clerics (religious authorities)....
Where: New Delhi, India March 16, 2009 : Ragging was at one time considered to be a fun way for seniors to interact with freshers in college. It has now become nothing less than systematic torture by bullying groups of seniors. Three shocking ragging incidents occurred in the past week. Aman Kachroo, a student of Dr. Rajendra Prasad Medical College in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, died of head injuries on March 8, 2009. He had complained to the authorities earlier that he was being assaulted by a group of seniors from the time he joined college....
Where: Singapore February 6, 2009 : Lim Ding Wen, a fourth grade student in Singapore, is an expert at six programming languages. He first used a computer when he was aged two! His ‘Doodle Kids’ is a painting program for Apple’s iPhone. The program’s users can draw with their fingers on the touchscreen. And all it takes to clear the screen is a little shake. ‘Doodle Kids’ has been downloaded over 4000 times from the iTunes store in two weeks....
Where: Nazareth, Israel May 15, 2009 : Pope Benedict XVI, head of the worldwide Catholic Church, made a weeklong trip to the Middle East, touring the Holy Land in a bid to promote peace and unity in the region. The pope prayed at some of Christianity’s most sacred destinations and visited Muslim and Jewish holy sites. He also visited Israel’s Holocaust* memorial and saw the conditions in which Palestinian refugees live. In the birthplace of Jesus Christ, Bethlehem (in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory) the pope appealed for a separate state for Palestinians....
Where: Sarnath, India December 11, 2008 : Passengers at the Sarnath Railway Station noticed that a paper box, left abandoned near a railway track, was behaving a little oddly. They alerted the railway authorities, who found that the box carried the inscription, “It is a rare animal, please send it to the zoo”. It was a Flying Lemur, a species native to China and the Philippines. The forest department sent a team that recovered the animal, identified it, and moved it to the local zoo....
Where: New Delhi, India May 16, 2009 : The results of India’s general elections, the largest democratic elections in the world, were announced on May 16, 2009.The Indian National Congress party won 205 of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha (the House of the People, or the lower house of the Indian Parliament). This was its best performance in the last 25 years. The party and its coalition partners, who make up the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won a total of 261 seats, only 12 short of an absolute majority....
Where: London, United Kingdom January 10, 2009 : An interesting story by BBC News tells how a team of London doctors, including five anesthetists, two general practitioners and a vascular surgeon climbed Mt. Everest. They then treated themselves as guinea pigs to measure oxygen levels present in their blood at the summit. The readings confirmed that high-altitude climbers have extremely low levels of oxygen in their blood. At sea-level these would only be seen in patients who were close to death....
Where: Manado, Indonesia May 14, 2009 : The World Ocean’s Conference, a two-day meeting of ministers and officials from more than 80 countries was held in Manado, Indonesia. Rising sea levels, warming waters and increased acidity caused by global warming were some of the major issues discussed here. A World Wildlife Fund report released to coincide with the conference reveals that the coral reefs stretching across south-east Asia will disappear by the end of the century....
Source: https://www.pitara.com/authors/gowri-mohanakrishnan/
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