Posts by Neena Bhandari

Australia an ideal home for leading U.S. ICT companies

0 Comments read Business and Trade, Features, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 01.06.2011 (AMCHAM Australia): With growth in Internet and Globalisation, American Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies have been quick to clinch business, trade and investment opportunities that Australia offers.

A significant research infrastructure, highly skilled and experienced workforce, technology-hungry and solutions-driven customer base, strategic geographical position offering proximity to Asia-Pacific, and an English-language base with multi-lingual capability make Australia an attractive destination for U.S. ICT companies.

Major Fortune 500 companies including Microsoft, Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Dell, AT&T and Google, amongst others, have set up offices and built research and product development facilities in Australia.

Continue reading →

Indigenous Say It on Film

0 Comments read Features, Indigenous

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 24.05.2011 (IPS): From the Australian bush to Alaska’s Arctic wilderness, indigenous peoples’ stories and perspectives take centre stage at the Message Sticks Film Festival, the only annual event of its kind in Australia.

Message Sticks opened at the Sydney Opera House on May 13 and tours nationally until August 24, through remote Aboriginal communities in the towns of Broome, Townsville, Cairns, Alice Springs and Yirrkala, besides screening to mainstream audiences in state and territory capitals.

“The festival has grown in terms of audience and the quality of works,” said Australian indigenous film and documentary director Rachel Perkins.

“The pool of indigenous filmmakers has also grown with more access to targeted programmes for skills development. This, coupled with the means of production becoming more economically viable, has meant that there is more content to draw from,” Perkins, who has been the festival curator for the past 12 years, told IPS.

Continue reading →

India, Australia must build thorium based N-reactors: Dr Kalam

0 Comments read Diaspora, Nuclear Disarmament

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 20.05.2011 (IANS): India and Australia should work together in building Thorium-based nuclear reactors to meet the growing energy needs, said former Indian President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, during his recently concluded four-day (May 17-20) visit to Sydney.

He said, “Thorium-fuelled reactors are supposed to be much safer than uranium-powered ones, use far less material (1 metric ton of thorium gets as much energy as 200 metric tons of uranium, or 3.5 million metric tons of coal), produce waste that is toxic for a shorter period of time (300 years as against uranium’s tens of thousands of years), and is hard to weaponize. In fact, thorium can even feed off of toxic plutonium waste to produce energy. And because the biggest cost in nuclear power is safety, and thorium reactors can’t melt down, they will eventually be much cheaper, too”.

Continue reading →