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October 15th, 2009
High Commissioner of India Mr. Nalin Surie presenting his credentials to the Queen
His Excellency Mr. Nalin Surie was received in audience by The Queen on October 8, and presented the Letters of Recall of his predecessor and his own Letters of Commission as High Commissioner for the Republic of India in London.
Mrs. Surie was also received by Her Majesty. Sir Peter Ricketts (Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) was also present during the ceremony.
Haryana, Maha, AP record heavy polling
The assembly elections held on October 13 in three states recorded heavy polling, varying from 60 percent in Maharashtra to 66 percent in Haryana and 72 percent in Arunachal Pradesh, India's Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla said.
Around 69 percent of Haryana's 13 million voters exercised their franchise for elections to the 90-member assembly. Voting began at 7 a.m. with women voters outnumbering men at many polling booths.
As many as 1,222 candidates, including 68 women, contested the elections. Counting takes place on October 22.
"The massive turnout is reiteration of people's faith in the policies of the government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It is a ringing endorsement of developmental, progressive, transparent and egalitarian governance, " Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said.
Voting in the assembly election in Arunachal Pradesh ended with a heavy turnout, officials said. "According to preliminary reports, an estimated 70 percent polling was recorded," an election official said. Voting was held for 57 seats. Three candidates were already declared elected unopposed.
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu and two more Congress members were declared elected unopposed. Khandu was elected unopposed from the Mukto constituency in Tawang district, bordering China, in the 1999 and 2004 assembly elections as well.
"The enthusiasm of voters was tremendous with both the young and the old casting their ballots," the official said.
A total of 154 candidates were in the fray with the ruling Congress party fielding candidates to all the 60 seats.
In Maharashtra, the electorate cast their votes in 84,136 polling stations across the state to elect 288 representatives from among 3,559 contenders, including 211 women. The ballot will be counted on October 22.
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India-born scientist gets Nobel
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, an India-born scientist, senior fellow at the Trinity College in Cambridge since 2008, was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Chemistry on October 7, 2009 along with two others, for showing the world exactly how information contained in the DNA is translated into life - a process that has benefited the fight against infectious diseases.
Ramakrishnan, who is now a U.S. citizen, was named for the $1.42-million award along with American Thomas A. Steitz and Israeli Ada E. Yonath for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome", which is found in cells with nuclei and translates the DNA code into life.
"An understanding of the ribosome's innermost workings is important for a scientific understanding of
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