National Food Security Bill

India, our country, is the world’s second largest populated country. It is true that most of the people in our country are still below pverty line.  Here comes a ray of hope. The Central Government is all set to make a historic law that will assure food security to almost 70 % of the total population of nearly 1.2 billion.

According to country’s Food and consumer affairs minister K V Thomas, Indian government hoped to bring 75 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of the urban population in the country under the coverage of the comprehensive food security programme by next year. In short, bulk of India's population will get legal right to subsidised food if this bill become a reality. After analysing the recommendations of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) and Rangarajan Committee, the food ministry has prepared the draft bill. It would be a landmark legislation that would make food security the right of all citizens of the country.

The cost of subsidising foodgrain under the proposed law is expected to touch Rs1,00,000 annually, as against the current Rs80,000 crore, sources added. From the stage they were in the mother's womb to the age of 14, the children should have access to nutritious food. So, all pregnant mothers too would be covered by anti-malnutrition component of the programme. It also makes it compulsory for state governments to pay a cash allowance to targeted sections in case of failure to supply foodgrain. The ministry has also proposed to provide subsidised food grain on 'individual basis' instead of the current practice of allocating 35kg of wheat or rice to per family.

New Website Domain Suffixes Allowed!

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a global internet body has voted to allow the creation of new website domain suffixes, the biggest change for the online world in years!  ICANN plans to dramatically increase the number of domain endings from the current 22.
Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word, and be in any language. Icann will begin taking applications for the new domain names next year.
"Icann has opened the Internet's addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination," said Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer for Icann.
The organisation opens the floodgates to a nearly limitless selection of new website suffixes, including ones in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. That could usher in the most sweeping transformation of the Domain Name System since its creation in the 1980s.  The bulk of the suffixes available now include country-code domains, such as ".uk" for Britain, ".de" for Germany and “.in” for India.
Hundreds or even thousands more suffixes could be created, categorised by everything from industry to geography to ethnicity.
But businesses worry that they'll have to grab their brand names before others do. New suffixes could also create confusion as consumers navigate a Web with unfamiliar labels. It's also possible that the new names won't make much difference because many people these days rely on search engines and mobile applications to find what they are looking for online.

Here Comes the BlackBerry PlayBook

The BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) is all set to launch its PlayBook in India later this month. This will offer tough competiton to Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab.
The Canadian firm will launch PlayBook in Indian markets and some other countries, including the UK, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia, and UAE.

The BlackBerry PlayBook is a tablet computer by Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian telecommunications company best known for the BlackBerry smartphone. The company indicated that a new operating system, the BlackBerry Tablet OS, based on QNX Neutrino, will run on the tablet. The device was released for general purchase in the United States on April 19, 2011, and early sales figures note that approximately fifty thousand (50,000) were sold on launch day, and some analysts estimate RIM to sell 3 million during their first year!