Indian Mars Mission in November 2013 .. Mangalyaan ..

After NASA and European Space Agency's Mars landing probes, India's ISRO will be the third country in the world to send a probe to Mars .. China's Yinhuo launched in 2011, had to be destroyed in space due to malfunction in its firing/burning rockets..

The proud thing is it is being launched on board PSLV C 25 in Nov 2013, probably again with our own Kunhikrishnan in command of the launch at Srikarikotta.

Mangalyaan will reach Mars by Sept of 2014, crash land itself on Martian surface and in the process take some pictures and beam back to earth, how they did with chandrayaan ....

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Pioneer 10 .. First man made mission to leave solar system ..

 

First space craft to leave the solar system .. Launched in 1972, it crossed the Neptune orbit in 1983 , mission was officially called off in 1997, though signals were received from it till 2003, when it was at a distance of 12 billion kms from earth. It is presumed it is either still travelling at 1,32,000 kms/hour speed into the unknown limits of the universe or may have got caught in some planetary orbit and revolving around it.

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Pope Francis washes the feet of young juveniles.. great courage and love..

Pope Francis washing and kissing the feet of juvenile
prisoners cutting across race and religion in a Rome prison

Leading by example .. First he shuns the Vatican papal palace as his home  and goes for a modest room at the Vatican Guest House, now he is connecting with the people without the usual bullet proof limousine etc. 

Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UTo8Gpzv90

Another video .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vXOVe6nM_c

He is trying to bring true virtues of Christianity, humility, peace, love, sharing, happiness, concern back to Christendom .. He may be bringing sleepless nights and frustration to the coterie around the earlier popes, like the Secretary of State of Vatican State, Cardinal Bertone and others and truly to their exasperation.

The Vatican city and its splendour ..

The youth of the juvenile prison included two girls and Muslims .. The other popes may have done on other priests feet .. (including the other conventional Orthodox churchs' High Priests washing priests' feet). This is way different and goes out of the way and has stunned the whole world.

In one swift move he has shamed all disbelievers, made Muslims around the world to turn back and have a look .. He may the new Ambassador for world peace and may be able to bring Iran and the west see eye to eye ..

It is all about love for humanity .. It does not carry any religion's impact. Religion is just one way of serving people on earth and through that reaching a higher plane of living ..

Anyway, the new Pope is poised to shake up the Vatican establishment which has been the subject of much ridicule the past many years !!

His video of the Good Friday service . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07wau4iqFAE

News item on Good Friday sermon .. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/30/pope-francis-reaches-out-muslim-brothers-good-frid/?page=all

Reaching out to the Muslim world.. !!!!!!!! Great leadership and statesmanship ..!!

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BRICS Durban March 26, 2013..

Dr Manmohan Singh of India, Xi JinPing of China, Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Delma Rouseff of Brazil and Vladimir Putin of Russia ..

A $100 billion BRICS Development Bank is also coming ..??

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Alibaba story from Jack Ma, CEO ..

Alibaba the B2B site that connects your businesses to some of the best suppliers and manufacturers from one of the most vibrant places in the world, China..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Qkapdnpik  - the story ..

A beautiful writeup in pdf of the Alibaba story .. (from Financial Times..)

Some success stories ..

The cost of buying through Alibaba's suppliers is just one seventh of US suppliers ..

Video ..

Alibaba is also helping in the building of China Smart Logistics network at a cost of $ 16 billion which will ensure that Alibaba's customers get their product anywhere in China within 24 hours and are able to process roughly 72 million orders daily with a value of roughly $4.8 billion .. For Alibaba, logistics is a key bottle-neck for e-commerce growth.

When China does it , it does it in style and BIGGGGGG ....!! With inniovations like alipay and alifianance, it is able to expand its business network rapidly with confidence and trust.

If Alibaba is able to transform the Chinese retail marketplace, it is sure to catapult China to the forefront of world nations instead of by 2020, even by 2015 ..

Is the West listening ?? Walmart has a lot to learn from this ..  A day will come soon when Walmart will also be sourcing its products through aliababa.com's taobao.com ..

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www.alibaba.com .. scaring the world ..!!

Gone are the days of the oil sheikh and the yankees ..

The Chinese are here to stay .. I was surprised to read in The Economist of March 29 that at $170 billion e-commerce portal of www.alibaba.com (b-b), www.taobao.com (c-c) and www.tmall.com (b-c) are seven times as big as www.amazon.com and www.ebay combined. It is 1700 times the size of www.flipkart.com. It is presently two times the GDP of Dubai, an emirates in UAE.

By 2020, it is believed, just the e-commerce market in China will be combined markets of US, UK, Japan, Germany and France.

The figures coming out of China are mind boggling and it creates fear even among Indians, forget the puny West !! 

www.alibaba.com has 6 million registered vendors at its sites.. www.alipay.com ( offering an escrow service which allows customers to release payments to vendors only if they are satisfied with the products) and www.alifinance.com ( a micro lending site helping small vendors grow big offering micro finance) are the other fallouts which the world is very eagerly looking to ..

Value of Apple in 2009 was $ 80 billion and in 2013 it is $ 420 billion ..
Value of alibaba.com in 2013 is $ 120 billion and in 2017 ..??

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India and China over 2000 years..

The world Super Powers over the years .. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/the-economic-history-of-the-last-2-000-years-in-1-little-graph/258676/

The only fear the west has is whether the days of 2000 years back will dawn once again on the world horizon, given the way India and China are growing in spite of the recession hitting parts of the world.

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