Tag: China

Top 10 World Leaders 2021 according to Fortune Mag

According to Fortune Magazine. Many of these are the personalities belonging to different fields which rendered unique contribution in fight against Covid-19.

1. Jacinda Ardern:

Prime Minister of Newzealand. She tops the list for the role she played to tackle COVID-19 from spreading in New Zealand. In a nation of 5 million only 2700 cases and 26 deaths. For 6 months she and her cabinet took 20% pay cut.

Jacinda Ardern

2. mRNA Pioneers:

COVID-19 vaccines which are largely administered today rely on mRNA. Although mRNA was discovered in 1960, it was in mid 2000 that researchers figured out how to modify the building blocks of those molecules for therapeutic purposes so that mRNA strands could safely interact with the body. Moderna and BioNTech, collaborated with the mRNA Pioneers made it to the list.

mRNA pioneers

3. Daniel H Schulman:

He is an American business executive and president and CEO of PayPal. He was named the third Greatest Leader on the list. He saw to it that his employees get at least 20% more than their earnings after paying all the taxes. Only few employers think so much about their employees.

Daniel H. Schulman

4.Dr John Nkengasong:

He currently serves as the first Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). He is a leading virologist with nearly 30 years of work experience in public health. Fortune praised him for his role in his fight against spread of COVID-19 in African countries.

John Nkengasong, Africa’s Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

5. NBA Rescuers:

Adam Silver NBA commissioner; Michele Roberts, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA); and Chris Paul, a longtime star point guard and the president of the NBPA, were the key players who saved the NBA. They created a bubble plan to successfully conduct 172 games without a single player contracting the disease.

6. Jessica Tan:

She is the co-CEO of the Chinese finance insurance giant. During COVID-19, among the Chinese private sector it was the technology companies that were able to cushion the blow faced by China and none was better positioned to help than Ping An Group, an insurance giant whose “technology plus finance” strategy reflects the vision of co-CEO Jessica Tan. Ping An Good Doctor company’s telehealth app which received 1.11 billion visits at the peak of the pandemic, serving as a vital first line of defense.

Jessica Tan

7. Justin Welby:

Since 2013, he is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior bishop in the Church of England. He is quite outspoken and supports causes that are critical to society. He is an former oil executive. He has encouraged Church’s investment arm to push major emitters on their emission policies.

Justin Welby

8. Stacey Abrams:

She is an American politician, lawyer, and voting rights activist. A member of the Democratic Party, Abrams founded Fair Fight Action, an organisation to address voter suppression in 2018.

9. Reshorna Fitzpatrick:

She is the founder and Pastor of Proceeding Word Church in Chicago, Illinois. She had been feeding the hunger in her Chicago neighborhood for years. Three years ago, she helped start a community garden in a vacant lot near the North Lawndale church on the city’s West Side. During pandemic, when many people lost their livelihoods, she along with her community would prepare hot meals every Monday for anyone who stopped by.

10. Adar Poonawalla:

He is recognised for taking the task of bringing an end to the global pandemic by supplying COVID-19 vaccines. Poonawalla heads the Serum Institute of India (SII) which is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. Poonawalla’s company has been providing global vaccine equity, providing low-cost vaccines to fight diseases like influenza, measles, and tetanus. Now, the SII has pledged to deliver up to 2 billion vaccine doses in the coming years to COVAX, a global initiative to provide vaccines to lower- and middle-income countries.

Adaar Poonawala

Steppe Eagle: Endangered Bird

Steppe Eagle is also known as Aquila nipalensis in the scientific language is a scavenger. This species breeds in Eastern European Russia from across Kazakhstan into Kyrgyzstan, China and Mongolia. Birds spend winter mainly in south and south-east Asia.

The bird is placed in the Red List by IUCN in the endangered category. There are many reasons attributed to the decline in population to such an extent. Some are like loss of habitat and exposure to radioactive radiations in its basic habitat.

Bird winters in South and South East Asia. It has suffered in Pakistan and India due to the presence of a drug Declofenac in the carrion of the dead animals which these birds feed on. This drug is used extensively in the treatment of cattle in these countries.

Thus these birds suffer both at the original residence as well as their temporary stay in Asia.

I chanced upon a ditch amidst the bushes where the carrion are being dumped. One can observe the eagles flying over the area. Earlier there were mostly Egyptian Vultures but now a group of these Steppe Eagles have landed here.

Tobacco and Slavery

When America was in the process of colonization by European powers who began settling their people there, they required large numbers of labors to work on their farms. Most of the people who were enslaved and sold in America were Africans.

The transatlantic slave trade involved many millions of people, and its history and legacy have had an impact all over the world. There were European slave traders, ships’captains and sailors as well as African traders and the African people captured and enslaved.

They cultivated the land which were highly fertile and produced crops in vast quantities. Colonizers saw that these crops were commercial in nature. The produce were shipped to Europe and earned huge profits. One of these was Tobacco.

Dunhill Early Morning Pipe Tobacco,

Tobacco is called Nicotiana tabacum in scientific language and English were to make huge profits by selling it just as they did by selling illegally opium produced in Bihar India to Chinese people.

The opium trade had two effects which favored English to defeat the Chinese and dictate the terms in future trade of Silk. These were making the Chinese people addicts and siphoning of the money from China. Anyway we are talking about tobacco.

Original people of the Americas were already growing it when the colonizers got foothold there. It originated in the Andes mountains in South America. It was not only smoked but also used in ceremonies and as a medicine. They smoked it through pipes.

It was Mr. John Rolfe who was one of the first English colonists in Jamestown, Virginia which was founded in 1607. He introduced the sweeter Caribbean tobacco to Virginia. Heavily forested island of Barbados were cleared for cultivating the tobacco. Tobacco was the most profitable export from mainland North America before cotton was established, and from the Caribbean before sugar took over.

Tobacco cultivation requires lots of hard work. Many diseases which were unknown to Americans came along with Europeans and reduced the local population. This made the English to capture the Africans and sell them as farmhands in America.

Tobacco became very popular throughout Europe. Francis Drake first introduced it to England in 1585, and Walter Raleigh made it fashionable. It was seen as a miracle medicine, curing anything from stomach ache to gunshot wounds, and snakebites to bad breath.

Opium poppy: Seeds of Trade

Britain ruled India not for nothing. They exploited the abundant natural resources as well its simple folks. They earned huge profits by exporting tea, opium and cotton to Europe. They employed the Indians like Africans as labors in many of their colonies overseas where there was a shortage of labor for cultivation.

Poppy pods

Opium obtained from poppies grown in the fertile valley of Ganges in Bihar was considered of high quality because of its high alkaloid morphine. It was traditionally grown in this region since the times of Mughals who were heavy users of it and many of their princes are known to become addicts.

Opium poppies yield valuable alkaloids used as medicines. Medicines produced from opium poppies include morphine and codeine. Its cultivation and production is strictly controlled because opium poppies are also used to make illegal and highly addictive drugs such as heroin.

It has many names such as Opium poppy, common poppy, garden poppy, chessbolls in English, Kas-kas, kashkash, aphim, afim, afyun in Hindi, Ahiphenam, aphukam, ahifen, chosa, khasa in Sanskrit, Posto in Bengal, Aphina, khuskhus, posta in Gujarat, Abini, gashagasha, kasakasa in Tamil. Its botanical name is Papaver somniferum Family: Papaveraceae, the poppy family.

The plant has flowers with papery petals that can vary in colour from white to red or lilac with a darker purple base. Fruits – a rounded capsule topped with the disc-like stigma remains. The liquid that is obtained from the fruit capsule by making cuts with a knife contains morphine alkaloids which are dried to produce raw opium.

Opium is used to manufacture medicinal drugs like codeine and morphine, and for illegal drugs such as heroin. Seeds – small and black, dark blue or yellow-white. The seeds are edible and tasty and are used in bakery products such as poppy-seeded bread.

Opium flourished in the Arab world, as in Islam opiates were not prohibited in the same way as alcohol. In the 7th century, the Islamic cultures of western Asia had discovered that the most powerful narcotic and medicinal effects could be obtained by igniting and smoking the poppy’s congealed juices.

The history of opium poppy use is relatively recent in South Asia. Arab trade and the expanding world of Islam are assumed to have introduced knowledge of the opium drug to the Indian subcontinent by the 12th century.

The first records of its cultivation appear in the 15th century and refer to Malwa as a centre of production. The Sanskrit words ahiphena and the Hindi afin are derived from the Arabic word ofyun to denote opium.

The advent of the Europeans had a significant impact on the future of the opium poppy in India. The Dutch now introduced smoking opium in a tobacco pipe to the Chinese.

As the decline of the Mughals began, the State lost its hold on the monopoly and the production and sale of opium was controlled by merchants in Patna. In 1757, the British East India Company which had by that time assumed the responsibility for the collection of revenues in Bengal and Bihar, took over this monopoly.

In 1773 the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, brought the whole of the opium trade under the control of the Government.

In the late 18th century the British East India Company was expanding its sphere of influence in India. East India Company began sending large quantities of opium to China through Hongkong. The profits were very high.

The Chinese had become addicted to opium consumption and country began to weaken both in terms of moral and economics. The Imperial court tried to ban the use and import, but British would not heed. Also they were not directly in the picture. It was the ships owned by rich Indians which carried out this trade.

They reached near Chinese shores and moored in the sea and speed boats owned by smugglers unloaded the opium for taking illegally to the shores. The poppy growing was mostly confined to three centres: Patna Opium from Bihar, Benaras Opium from Uttar Pradesh and Malwa Opium from central India.

The Chinese authorities attempted to suppress the smuggling of opium which was debilitating the country and reversing its formerly favourable balance of trade. Their confiscation and destruction of illegal opium sparked the First Opium War in 1839.

British warships defeated the Chinese who signed the Treaty of Nanking paying a huge indemnity and ceding Hong Kong to the British. A second Opium War was fought in 1856 when the French and British combined to bring the Chinese to heel and opium import in China was thus legalised. Not until 1910 did the opium trade between China and India cease.

The unripe seed pods of the opium poppy contain a group of alkaloids known as opiates that are often used as sedatives. The alkaloids can reduce pain, alter mood and behaviour, and induce sleep or stupor. It is a narcotic and potentially highly addictive.

In traditional medicine opium was made from the air-dried milky latex or juice from the unripe seeds from poppies. The quality of opium would vary depending on whether black or white seeds were used.

Opium from India contained not only high levels of the alkaloid morphine but also the alkaloid codeine. This could explain why it was traditionally used to relieve pain and to suppress coughs. The presence of another alkaloid called papaverine in the seeds could explain why the extracts relaxed muscles and reduced stomach and respiratory spasms.

The seeds were also used in Ayurveda and Siddha medicine. They were cooked and ground with sugar and cardamom seeds and used to treat diarrhoea, coughs and asthma. Extracts of poppies were used to treat fevers, tuberculosis, liver and kidney problems as well as diseases of the urinary tract.

Unlike the unripe seed capsules of opium poppies, the ripe seeds do not contain narcotic chemicals. They are used in many forms of cooking. The seeds can be cooked in water with oil and salt and served with rice where they provide a nutty flavour. They are also blended with tamarind into a curry paste. In confectionery they are sprinkled on sweets and are added to baked goods like breads and cakes.

Greater Cormorants: Fishing Experts

During the winter months, a number of migratory birds visit India from the countries where winter is very severe and food availability becomes low. These annual visitors add colour to the season.

Many of the migratory birds are water waders and land in the lakes , big pools and other water bodies. Amongst these are greater Cormorants. They are huge birds and expert fishers. They hunt in groups and there is great jostling and fighting for the catch snatching.

In older days the trained Cormorants were used for river fishing in Japan and China. A snare was tied at the end of the neck which in addition to keeping the cormorant under leash also prevented the Cormorants from eating the fish except for smaller ones. As soon as the bird caught a fish, it was taken out from water and made to spit out the fish.

Nowadays, it is only a tourist attraction.

During December a number of these big birds descend on Sulkhna Lake in Chandigarh. I took some pictures.

A group fishing
Sun soaking on a tree

Smallest Koran

Some people in India can write on a rice. It is a very painstaking work. Similarly there are copies of Holy books which are miniatures. One such smallest copy of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, is kept at Ningxia Museum in Northwest China’s. It has been identified as the smallest Koran in the world.

The copy weighs just 1.10 grams. Its dimensions are 19.6 mm length, 13.2 mm width, and 6.1 mm thickness. It is covered with mauve Kraft paper with ethnic designs, the Egyptian National Emblem and Arabic text which reads .

“This is a worshipful Alcoran, only people with clean mind and body can carry it, Islamic Calendar 1312 (1892 A.D.)“

Despite its small size it has clear print. It is preserved in a small iron box. According to a researcher, He Xinyu, mini Koran was carried by a Chinese Muslim pilgrim from Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia to Ningxia. But no solid proof exists.

All signs indicate that the book came to Ningxia before 1949. It was excavated in 1959 and has since then stayed in the Ningxia Museum except when it has been on exhibition tours.

The Koran was appraised as a State-level cultural relic in 1996 by the State Bureau of Cultural Relics.

He said that the Ningxia Koran was much smaller in size and weight than the Koran discovered in Zhengzhou in central China’s Henan Province, which was listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest in the world.

This is taken from the following page

http://english.people.com.cn/200205/17/eng20020517_95885.shtml

Mr. Hanif Choudhary, who lives in Silchar district of Assam India also claims to be in possession of the smallest copy of Koran, smaller than the one in Iran. The copy was brought to India by his uncle while he was serving in British Army in the Iran. He wants the copy to be registered for Guinness book.

Carotenoid Rich Cucumbers

Cucumber along with raw carrots, radish, and tomatoes has been a part of salad for the time immemorial. Cucumber is also consumed in cooked and pickled form in many parts of the world. People on diet for weight control eats this vegetable as it is often regarded as a health food because of its low calories and its high vitamins and minerals content.

Common cucumber varieties are white to greenish inside and are of low nutritional quality. On the other hand, orange fleshed cucumber is rich in carotenoids. India, being the center of origin for cucumbers, is known to be the treasure-house of cucumber diversity. Mostly the first variety is used as it is abundantly grown. caroteinoids are part of many fruits and vegetables like carrots, papaya, mangoes and autumn leaves.

But in the Mamit district of Mizoram, two varieties are found which are very rich in carotenoids as high as 6.5 μg/100 g as compared to 1.17 μg/100 g in the best check variety Himangi.. They have yellow to orange mesocarp and endocarp; an extremely rare trait.

Previously orange-flesh cucumber was reported to be derived from a land race named Xishuangbanna Gourd from a Prefecture Xishuangbanna of the Yunnan Province in the South-west China, which is closer to north-eastern part of the India. Studies indicate that orange fleshed cucumber of China (Xishuangbanna Gourd) is closely related to Indian cucumber found in Mizoram. This suggests that orange-fleshed Indian cucumber might have migrated to China from northeastern parts of the country; which is the primary centre of its origin.

All this information is from ICAR.

Goji Berries

Goji, goji berry, or wolfberry, are popular as super fruit for dieting celebrities. Like many other fruits which are considered as super, claims by sellers are surrounded in controversies.

It has become popular since 2000. It was mainly produced in China and exported to the other countries. It is native to Asia and have been long used in traditional Asian cuisine.

To add as a proof of its magical properties is the story of a chinese man named  Li Qing Yuen, who was said to have consumed wolfberries daily, lived to the age of 256 years (1677–1933) some say 190 years.

This claim apparently originated in a 2003 booklet by Earl Mindell, who claimed also that goji had anti-cancer properties. The booklet contained false and unverified claims.

Goji berries are a good source of vitamins and minerals. They contain vitamin C, fibre, iron, Vitamin A, Zinc and antioxidants. These berries are part of cuisine in Asia.

Spying on the leaders

It was when Russia was USSR and soviet state was pushing hard to become at par with US. A top erstwhile spy told that Russian Soviet dictator Stalin, used to spy on the visiting world leaders like Mao to know their hidden personality traits. They even used scientific methods for this. Soviets used to analyze the excreta for Potassium and Amino acid tryptophan to know the state of mind of the leaders. Tryptophan is used by animals for synthesis of proteins essential for growth. Studies indicate that it acts as an antidepressant.

For example, if they detected high levels of amino acid Tryptophan,“ he explained, “they concluded that person was calm and approachable”. On the other hand, potassium ion regulate the blood pressure. The diets rich in Potassium help reduce the high blood pressure. But a lack of potassium in poo was seen as a sign of a nervous disposition and someone with insomnia.

A Comparison of Economics Indicators

India and China are the most populous countries of the world. Since China has arrested its population growth it seems that their populations will match one another in a few years. In India many of us tend to compare the two and say that India will beat China in a few years. This may be day dreaming.

China has been relentlessly progressing and has become number two economically in the world just behind US although disparities are huge. How do China and India compare in some economic indicators??

China vs India

2019 data

Population (million):

India: 1361

China: 1418

Adult population (million)

India: 866

China: 1090

GDP($/adult)

India: 3282

China: 12663

Total Wealth ($ trillion)

India: 12.6

China: 63.8

Dollar millionaires (in thousands)

India: 759

China: 4447

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