Russia for engagement with India, China to check fin crisis

Russia is ready for close cooperation with India and China in coping with the ongoing global financial turmoil ahead of next month's G-20 ministerial meeting and summit, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today said.

Russia is ready to coordinate its further steps with the leading emerging economies, such as India and China, in various formats," Lavrov told state-run Vesti FM radio.

The G-20 ministerial meeting is slated to take place in Sao Paolo, ahead of Washington summit of November 15, he said.

Earlier this week Lavrov had discussed the global financial turmoil rooted in the US sub prime crisis with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi.

The Russian leadership is also expected to discuss the possibility of close interaction with the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who is arriving here on Monday on a two-day visit, shortly after Asia-Europe Meeting in Chinese capital, at which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also been invited.

Lavrov said that finance ministers of the G-20 nations will meet in the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo early next month, ahead of a Washington summit of the most developed and emerging economies of the world on November 15.

Ahead of the Washington summit President Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia must actively participate in formulating new rules of the game in the global economy, in order to maximise benefits and to promote a new ideology.

It will ensure the democracy and stability of the global financial architecture based on more financial centres, more reserve currencies and more mechanisms for collective decision-making, Medvedev added.
Source: http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?tp=on&autono=48483

India's manned mission not before 2012: Madhavan Nair

BANGALORE: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair has said that India's manned mission would take atleast another three years.

India's space programme took a leap on Wednesday when the ISRO undertook a flawless lift off of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) carrying Chandrayaan-I, a cuboid spacecraft which includes a Moon Impactor Probe gadget.

India hopes to send an astronaut into space by 2012 and a manned mission to the moon by 2020. The Indian Government has approved the launch of Chandrayaan-2, which is expected to take off between 2010 and 2012, and will include a rover that will land on the moon.

Nair revealed that the ISRO has indeed planned the logical, complex and ultimate manned mission next in the pipeline. "Looking at the global scenario and also our own priorities, we believe that undertaking a manned mission is very important and for that we are now conducting a basic study as to what technologies needs to be developed, what facilities needs to be established and how the reliability of launch system has to be improved and so on," Nair told Asian News International (ANI) in an interview.

"So this programme, once it is launched, of course it is very complex. We have to understand many fundamentals. The information available from the literature is very few. So, with that our estimate is that it may take up to 2012, before we can have man around earth and back," Nair added.

India had sent an Air Force pilot, Rakesh Sharma in space aboard the Russian Soyuz rocket way back in 1984 when the then Soviet Union sent cosmonauts from a number of Eastern bloc to space, but New Delhi did not follow up that programme.

Two other Indian origin astronauts have been to space aboard NASA's space shuttle but ISRO still lacks a manned mission.

The Chandrayaan-I project cost 79 million dollars, considerably less than the Chinese and Japanese probe in 2007. ISRO says the moon mission will pave the way for India to claim a bigger chunk of the global space business.

"We have launched almost 16 satellites for other countries. It will show the reliability and confidence of PSLV system. I am sure more and more opportunities will come in the near future," Nair said.

India started its space programme in 1963, developing its own satellites and launch vehicles to reduce dependence on overseas agencies

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News