News Snippets

>> Mexico’s Raramuri Indians used the Holy Week (last week of March) to pray for the expulsion of drug traffickers from their land in northern Mexico’s Chihuahua state. “These feast days are to tell them (drug traffickers operating in the Sierra Tarahumara region) that we will defend our land,” said Javier Avila, a defender of Indian rights. >> Apple Inc now runs its largest US data centre in Maiden, North Carolina on renewable energy, with majority power from solar panels and fuel cells, said its chief financial officer.

News Snippets

>> Harvard University administrators have said they searched emails of deans as part of an investigation into a leak of a student cheating scandal. Over 120 students were implicated for cheating on an exam in an introductory government class last spring.

Betel benefit

The Monarch’s ways

An art exhibit that opened in the second week of January tries to make a connection between the long southbound migrations of Monarch butterflies to their winter home in Mexico and the Mexican immigrants who travel to the US to find work, and thereby survive.

A worthy goal

When Ana Aguirre stepped onto the soccer field wearing her green Mexican uniform and scored goals against teams from Brazil and the US, she seemed to have forgotten her sorry life. There were no jobless parents, no addicts, no dead friends and no young men with pistols shoved into their acid-washed jeans. There was only a celebratory noise: fans, commentators, music and the sound of ball being kicked or teammates yelling.

Offline Independence Day

At least 10 government websites and a few others went offline on Mexico’s Independence Day. Hackers took over the sites on September 17 to protest misgovernance. The hackers—calling themselves Mexican Cyber Protest—targeted websites of political parties, media organisations and government agencies.

Science and Technology - Briefs

Zoology Thin yet tough

Universal health scare

Return of the headdress

A headdress said to have been worn by the last Aztec emperor of Mexico in the 16th century could temporarily go back home. It is currently displayed at a museum in Vienna, Austria.

New swine flu kit makes disease detection easier in India

With the threat of swine flu looming large over the country again, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has brought out a cheaper, more effective kit to diagnose the disease. The portable testing kit, Nu-Lamp H1N1, can give the results of the test within an hour. The currently used US government’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Realtime RT-PCR technique takes two to three hours.  The kit was launched on March 31 at the ongoing Defence Expo 2012 in New Delhi.