NEW DELHI, DEC 4 : India's expenditure on research and development is 0.7% of its gross domestic product (GDP) as compared with China's 1.2%.
Minister of state for HRD D Purandeswari told the Upper House in a reply that North America spends 2.7%, Japan 3.1% and the European Union 1.8% of their GDP in R&D.

No proposal to sell Dabhol plant, says Shinde

The government on Monday told the House that there was no proposal to sell the Dabhol Power Plant (DPP). "There is no such proposal with the government for sale of Dabhol Power Plant at Ratnagiri," power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said in a written reply.

Sachar committee report to be secrutinised

The report of the Prime Minister's high-level committee on social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community, under the chairmanship of Justice Rajinder Sachar, is being examined, minority affairs minister AR Antulay said. The report was tabled in Parliament on November 30.

States advised to set up minority commissions

State governments which are yet to set up state minority commissions have been advised on a number of occasions to take appropriate action in the matter, the House was informed on Monday.

The states which are yet to constitute such a commission are Arunachal, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Orissa, Punjab, Sikkim and Tripura, minister for minority affairs AR Antulay said in a written reply.

Houston, Dec 4, 2006: Sunita Pandya Williams is all set to become the second woman of Indian origin after Kalpana Chawla to blast off on a space mission and spend six months at the International Space Station where US shuttle Discovery will leave her on completion of a 12-day repair job.

Sunita, 41, the daughter Deepak and Bonnie Pandya, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a final stretch of training and preparations for Friday`s shuttle mission STS-116, the first night launch since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

The spaceflight is scheduled to lift off at 8:05 IST on Friday (Thursday, 9:35 p.M. US time) will take along the most rookie crew since 1988 as five of the seven members have never flown in space before.

Besides Sunita, the crew includes mission commander Mark Polansky, pilot William Oefelein, mission specialists Joan Higginbotham; Nicholas Patrick; lead spacewalker Bob Curbeam; and the European Space Agency`s Christer Fuglesang, who will become the first Swede in space.

Describing as having most culturally diverse space shuttle crew, Sunita said she was aware of her mixed ethnicity and the interest her spaceflight has aroused in India.

"I am half Indian and I have got a, I am sure, a group of Indian people who are looking forward to seeing this second person of Indian origin, flying up in space," she said in a pre-flight interview released by NASA.

NASA says the Discovery shuttle will be on the most complex mission yet -- to give the International Space Station a new electricity system. The STS-116 will drop off Sunita for a six-month stay at the space lab.

Sunita excelled in math and science, and was always intrigued by cosmos. She was 4 when she saw Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon. But for most of her life, becoming an astronaut seemed as far-fetched as shaking hands with George Jetson.

She followed her older brother, Jay Pandya, into the US Naval Academy, where she swam competitively and trained in aviation.

As a Navy helicopter pilot, she traveled to the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf. She once spent nine days under 47 feet of water in the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Aquarius habitat, off Key Largo.

Sunita enrolled in the Naval Test Pilot School in 1993 and discovered that she might just be able to realize her dream of rocketing off into space.

To qualify for NASA, she earned a master's degree in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology. Then, in 1998, she was one of 30 picked out of a pool of 2,500 for astronaut training.