Varsha Gupta, a 7-year-old from Noida, wins Doodle4Google 2011

New Delhi: Varsha Gupta, a Class III student from Ryan International School, Greater Noida, was chosen as the winner of this year's Doodle4Google competition organised by Google.

Varsha's winning doodle, titled 'Indian Musical Instruments' will appear on the Google India homepage on Children's Day - 14th November 2011. Explaining her doodle, Varsha writes, "India is a land of different cultures. In India, music plays a very important role. India has given many musical instruments to the world. Goddess Saraswati plays Veena, God Shiv plays Damaru. According to our mythological stories musical instruments used to be played on all the occasions. Even during war musical instruments were played. Lord Krishna's flute is known in the whole world for its magical music. In modern days Mr. Zakir Hussain is world famous as Tabla Mastro and Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma is known as a great Santoor player all over the world".

Google India, presented Varsha with the winning certificate along with a technology starter package including a laptop, a year's Internet connection and a Rs 2,00,000 technology grant for her school.

Google India

The competition was open to all students from Class I to Class X. This year participants were challenged to imagine their own version of the Google logo based on the theme 'India's gift to the world'.

Submitted doodles were shortlisted by partner art schools from across India and 6000 doodles entered the quarter-final round. Faculty from the Sir JJ School of Arts then shortlisted the 600 doodles that made it to the semifinal round. A panel of judges that included adman Prasoon Joshi, actress Nandita Das and artist Ganga Kadakia picked the 45 finalists. Jennifer Hom, from Google's doodle team, chose the winning doodle.

In addition to the the national winner, three group winners were also chosen through an online voting where people voted for their favourite doodle from the finalists.

Shibajyoti Choudhury (Group I) from Jamshedpur won the group prize for his doodle 'Developing excellent India and World'; Abhinav R (Group II) from Coimbatore won the prize for his doodle titled 'India's contribution to the world - Tradition'. And Nishi Bordia (Group III) from Indore won the prize for her doodle titled 'India's gift to the world - India itself'.

Google received over 1,55,000 entries from across India for its third Doodle4Google competition in the country.

The winning doodles


Indian Musical Instruments
Varsha Gupta (National winner), Ryan International School, Greater Noida 


Developing Excellent India and World 
Shibajyoti Choudhury (Group I), Little Flower School, Jamshedpur


India's contribution to the world - Tradition 
Abhinav R (Group II), Stanes AI Higher Secondary School, Coimbatore


India's Gift to the world - India itself 
Nishi Bordia (Group III), The Emrald Heights International School, Indore

Opening wallet before rickshaw-puller proves fatal

Panchkula, November 14
Opening his wallet before a rickshaw puller proved fatal for a migrant labourer. The rickshaw puller finding his passenger in possession of big amount of money took him to a desolated place and killed him before taking away the money. Yesterday, the detective staff of the local police arrested accused Inderjeet, a native of Alwar in Rajasthan. It was on September 26 that the body of Suresh Prasad was found near a park in Sector 21. According to the police, Inderjit, used to park his rickshaw at the Zirakpur bus stand. On September 25. Prasad arrived at Zirakpur form his village and hired the rickshaw of Inderjit to go to Sector 21, Panchkula. On the way he asked Inderjit to get liquor from a shop and handed over the money to him. Indrjit noticed that Prasad had a lot of money in his wallet so he took him to a desolated place and hit him with an iron rod killing him on the spot.

iPhone 4S coming to India on Nov 25th

Aircel has confirmed the date to The Mobile Indian today and Airtel is also likely to launch the smartphone on the same date.

Apple iPhone 4S is set to come to India on 25th of this month. Both Airtel and Aircel have earlier confirmed bringing the latest iPhone couple of days back.

"We are likely to launch iPhone 4S in India on November 25. Tariff plans will be announced later," Aircel spokesperson told The Mobile Indian.

Both the operators are likely to offer attractive money back tariff plans for the iPhone buyers. Both the operators are currently offering iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 with up to 100 per cent money back offers through discounted tariff plans.

Difference between iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

The iPhone 4S comes with the new Siri voice-activated personal assistant, A5 processor, CMDA+GSMchip, 1080p video capability, faster download speeds, improved graphics, improved camera and an intelligent switching antenna. The iPhone 4S also has a new operating system - iOS 5, as well but that will be available for older iPhones as well.

In terms of design, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S look identical as both have Glass Sandwich design. The letter S in the name iPhone 4S probably stands for improved 'speed'. The storage has also gone too high, up to 64 GB. The iPhone 4 storage went up to 32 GB only. The image quality is expected to be better even in low light conditions, the video resolution would also be better.

The iPhone 4S comes with an 8 megapixel camera compared to the 5 megapixel of iPhone 4. In terms of pixels, the front facing camera goes from 720 pixels to 1080 pixels though it still remains a 0.3 MP one. The iPhone 4S also has hybrid GSM/ CDMA cellular connectivity whereas the iPhone 4 had quad-band GSM/CDMA cellular connectivity.

Will the iPhone 4 be discontinued?

Unlike iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4 will not make sense along with the 4S. However, you never know in India after all five generation of Maruti Zen co-existed in India.

Eligibility criteria for federal skilled worker applications as of July 1, 2011

Under changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, federal skilled worker applications are assessed for eligibility according to the criteria listed below. Note: This does not apply to applicants intending to live in the province of Quebec.

These criteria affect you only if you applied on or after July 1, 2011. If your application was received before July 1, 2011, it will be processed according to the rules that were in effect at that time.

Note: If you are applying under one of the 29 eligible occupations, as of July 1, 2011, a maximum of 10,000 Federal Skilled Worker applications will be considered for processing in the following 12 months. Within the 10,000 cap, a maximum of 500 federal skilled worker applications per eligible occupation will be considered for processing each year.

These limits do not apply to applications with an offer of arranged employment.

Is my application eligible for processing?

For your application to be eligible for processing, you must include the results of your official language proficiency test, and fall into one of these three categories:

1. Skilled workers with a valid offer of arranged employment.
2. International students enrolled in a PhD program at a provincially or territorially recognized private or public post-secondary educational institution in Canada who:
   
   • have completed at least two years of study towards a PhD
   • are in good academic standing at the time they apply
   • are not recipients of an award requiring them to return to their home country to apply their knowledge and skills, OR
   International students who graduated from a PhDprogram at a provincially or territorially recognized private or public post-secondary educational institution in Canada who:
   
   • graduated no more than 12 months before the date their application is received
   • did not receive an award which required them to return to their home country to apply their knowledge and skills (or did, but have satisfied the terms of the award).
   (A maximum of 1,000 applications from this category will be considered for processing each year. This will not be included in the total for any other cap. Applications will be considered in order they are received. The first cap year for the PhD stream begins on November 5, 2011.)
3. Skilled workers with one year of continuous full-time or equivalent part-time paid work experience in at least one of the following eligible occupations within the last ten years:
   • 0631 Restaurant and Food Service Managers
   • 0811 Primary Production Managers (Except Agriculture)
   • 1122 Professional Occupations in Business Services to Management (Cap reached)
   • 1233 Insurance Adjusters and Claims Examiners
   • 2121 Biologists and Related Scientists
   • 2151 Architects
   • 3111 Specialist Physicians
   • 3112 General Practitioners and Family Physicians
   • 3113 Dentists
   • 3131 Pharmacists
   • 3142 Physiotherapists
   • 3152 Registered Nurses (Cap reached)
   • 3215 Medical Radiation Technologists
   • 3222 Dental Hygienists & Dental Therapists
   • 3233 Licensed Practical Nurses
   • 4151 Psychologists
   • 4152 Social Workers
   • 6241 Chefs
   • 6242 Cooks
   • 7215 Contractors and Supervisors, Carpentry Trades
   • 7216 Contractors and Supervisors, Mechanic Trades
   • 7241 Electricians (Except Industrial & Power System)
   • 7242 Industrial Electricians
   • 7251 Plumbers
   • 7265 Welders & Related Machine Operators
   • 7312 Heavy-Duty Equipment Mechanics
   • 7371 Crane Operators
   • 7372 Drillers & Blasters - Surface Mining, Quarrying & Construction
   • 8222 Supervisors, Oil and Gas Drilling and Service

NOTE: the occupations above are all Skill Type 0 (managerial occupations) or Skill Level A (professional occupations) or B (technical occupations and skilled trades) on the Canadian National Occupational Classification list.

If you are not sure if you should apply as a skilled worker, you can use the Come to Canada Wizard to get an idea of whether your application would be eligible for processing.

If you apply and do not meet the above criteria, you will be informed of this and  your processing fee will be refunded.

There are many ways to immigrate to Canada. If you don’t meet the criteria to apply under the Federal Skilled Worker Program, you may qualify under another category. Learn more about your options.


Source: CIC, Canada

U.S. drawing in Canada's rich immigrants

United States looks to compete against Canada for wealthy immigrants

If you have $500,000 laying around, you can buy yourself a Green Card through a little-known immigrant investor pilot program in the United States.

The EB-5 Regional Centre program,  allocates 5,000 visas a year for individuals who invest $500,000 into one of over 200 US Government designated investment funds across the country.
With job creation now a top political issue and traditional sources of capital hard to find, U.S. Congressman Rick Larsen is sponsoring a bill that would permanently authorize the program, currently set to expire on September 30, 2012.
"(The EB5 program) is one way to seek direct investment into our communities in order to create jobs," Larsen told a press conference in Bellingham, Washington, Tuesday, noting that there over 20 countries around the world, including Canada, with similar types of programs.
"If we aren't in a position to receive this capital investment, it's going to go somewhere else because other countries recognize how important it is to bring in that overseas investor with their dollars."
By comparison, Canada's immigrant investor program provides visas to affluent foreign nationals who invest $800,000 into the Canadian government coffers for a period of 5 years.  Under the Canadian scheme, applicants can finance their investment through an accredited financial institution so most investor immigrants end up spending only about $200,000 for the privilege of becoming a Canadian.
The popularity of the Canadian program however, has lead to long wait lists and slow processing times - something Larsen says the U.S. can take advantage of.
"(Canada is) actually backlogged which means there are folks looking to move their dollars somewhere for investment. That's created demand for the EB5 program. " Larsen told Yahoo! Canada News.
"Other countries are marketing (their immigrant investor programs) oversees. And those dollars are going to end up invested in a country and I would prefer those dollars end up (i