Andrea Colaco who earned a doctorate seat at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has won the MIT $100,000 entrepreneurship contest for her innovation that provides real-time millimetre accurate 3D gesture sensing on devices like cell phones.

A native of Velim in South Goa, Andrea's creation will make touchscreen technology passe and move on to allow users to interact with their devices through just gestures. The '3dim' solution set up by Andrea with co-founder Ahmed Kirmani employs patented signal processing methods invented at MIT by the co-founders. Andrea says with the prize money, 3dim will progress rapidly and they will develop the technology for customers-smart-device manufacturers who have already expressed an interest in the product.

Andrea's parents are currently based in Doha, Qatar where her father Aldavid Silverio is an assistant finance manager with a French company. Her older sibling Gresner is an IT engineer based in Cincinnati USA.

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Eesha Khare, 18, from Saratoga, California has invented a super capacitor device that can charge a cellphone in less than 20 seconds.

She received the Young Scientist Award by the Intel Foundation after developing her tiny device that fits inside mobile phone batteries. She has been awarded $50,000 for her super-capacitor and has also attracted the attention of Google for her potentially revolutionary invention.

Khare says her device is flexible and can be used in rollup displays and clothing and fabric. It has a lot of different applications and advantages over common batteries.

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At an alumni meet of Global Xaverians in London, NRI steel baron Lakshmi Mittal said he proved his principal wrong when he topped St Xavier's College in Calcutta even though he was earlier denied admission for not being fluent in English as he came from a Hindi medium school and the principal felt he would not fit into an English medium college.

Mittal, 62, who was conferred the Global Xaverian Award at the alumni meet is chairman and CEO of the Luxembourg headquartered world's largest steelmaker and mining company ArcelorMittal.

Mittal reflected that he dedicated himself to accepting the challenge and continued to work hard. He called this a lesson in business life that first of all you need to have commitment, dedication and passion for what you do.

Mittal also ranks among the world's top 100 wealthiest people on the Forbes list. He founded Mittal Steel in 1976 which merged with Arcelor to form Arcelor Mittal.

He is a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan and a Forbes Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Srinath Srinivasan is the first South Asian judge after a Senate committee confirmed his nomination the to DC Circuit Court, America's second highest Court after the Supreme Court..

President Barack Obama described Chandigarh-born Srinivasan as a 'trailblazer', as he was unanimously approved by the 18 member Senate Judiciary Committee. He was first nominated to the post by Obama nearly a year ago.

Srinivasan, 46, has now to be confirmed by the Senate before he becomes the first Indian American to be appointed to the American court. He is currently principal US deputy solicitor general and is a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Srinivasan successfully worked for both Republican and Democratic Administrations and has bipartisan support from the legal community.

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Three Punjabi NRIs have won the elections to the British Columbia legislative assembly. These include two sitting members of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Hary Bains and Raj Chouhan. Amrit VIrk an inspector in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a candidate from the ruling British Columbia Liberals Party has also won.

Bains is from Hardaspur village in Kapurthala district and Raj Chouhan is from Gohar, Ludhiana.

As many as 32 Indian origin Canadians, mainly Punjabis were in the fray . They mainly preferred to contest from constituencies of Surrey that has a sizeable Punjabi population that is said to be the Mini Punjab of Canada.

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