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United News of India
21 minutes ago
- Business
- United News of India
IIT Madras, GRID India join hands to strengthen Tanzania's electric infra
Chennai, June 5 (UNI) The Indian Institute of Technology-Madrs (IIT Madras) is collaborating with GRID-INDIA, a Central Public Sector Enterprise, to offer certification programs, conduct joint research, and deliver technical consultation projects to strengthen Tanzania's energy infrastructure. An MoU in this regard was inked recently IIT-Madras announced on Thursday. With an active presence in Africa through IITM Zanzibar, the institute is committed to building global partnerships for sustainable energy. GRID-INDIA, a Miniratna company under the Union Ministry of Power is the National system operator responsible for the reliable and secure management of India's electricity grid. The effort at IIT Madras will be led through the Energy Consortium, an industry-academia collaborative center of excellence focused on clean energy. Expanding horizons, this partnership creates new opportunities for cross-border knowledge exchange, applied research, and commercialisation of clean energy technologies. Prof Manu Santhanam, Dean (IC&SR), said 'IIT Madras Zanzibar was conceived to extend our academic and research excellence to international geographies with a focus on regional relevance. Our collaboration with GRID-INDIA allows us to leverage decades of experience in power systems research and industry engagement in India to deliver targeted capacity-building and applied technology programs for East Africa.' Emphasizing the significance of this MoU, Mr Paresh R. Ranpara, Director (HR), GRID-INDIA, said, 'We are looking forward to this collaboration with IIT Madras to catalyse and promote capacity building in Power Sector for Tanzanian and other east African professionals, with the Zanzibar campus as a focal point. This partnership demonstrates the shared vision of GRID-INDIA and IIT Madras Zanzibar for supporting resilient, future-ready energy systems across the globe.' It said this project encompasses strengthening the technical capabilities of Tanzanian power sector officials through Certification Program that aims to provide foundational knowledge for professionals in areas such as power systems, renewable energy, and energy management; Specialized Certification Programs with hands on trainings on topics such as power system protection and case studies; Joint Research Programs in areas such as microgrids, data analytics and AI and Consultation Projects to provide practical solutions and insights to address the evolving challenges in the Tanzanian power sector. UNI GV 1648
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
US 'deeply concerned' over activists' treatment in Tanzania
Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan (AP) NAIROBI: The United States expressed concern Saturday over the "mistreatment" of two east African activists in Tanzania, days after they were detained and reportedly tortured. Prominent campaigners Boniface Mwangi of Kenya and Agather Atuhaire of Uganda travelled to Tanzania this week in solidarity with detained opposition leader Tundu Lissu ahead of his court hearing on charges of treason, which carries a potential death penalty. But they themselves were detained before being deported and then found abandoned near the Tanzanian border. Mwangi and rights groups allege that both were tortured while held "incommunicado" for days. The US Bureau of African Affairs said on X it was "deeply concerned by reports of the mistreatment" of Atuhaire and Mwangi while in Tanzania. "We call for an immediate and full investigation into the allegations of human rights abuses," it said, urging "all countries in the region to hold to account those responsible for violating human rights, including torture". Atuhaire received in 2023 the EU Human Rights Defender Award for her work in Uganda and was honoured last year with the International Women of Courage Award by former US First Lady Jill Biden. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 축하드립니다! 임플란트 5월 할인 이벤트에 선정되셨습니다. 플란치과 더 알아보기 Undo Mwangi is a longtime critic of the Kenyan government, frequently denouncing instances of alleged injustice and rights abuses. Human rights groups say Tanzania and neighbouring Uganda have accelerated crackdowns on opponents and dissidents as they prepare for presidential elections in the next seven months. But Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has slammed what she called interference in the country's affairs and had urged security services "not to allow ill-mannered individuals from other countries to cross the line here".
IOL News
09-05-2025
- Sport
- IOL News
Elroy Gelant inspires Stephen Mokoka with record-breaking marathon run
CAPE TOWN - STEPHEN Mokoka has lauded Elroy Gelant as 'an inspiration' following the latter's record-breaking marathon run in Hamburg earlier this month. Mokoka had looked the most likely athlete to break Gert Thys' 2.06.33 record from 1999 and actually came within six seconds of doing so. But it was his former teammate at Boxer Athletic Club Gelant who smashed the 26-year-old mark in Hamburg a fortnight ago, the man from Pacaltsdorp in George running a 2.05.36. 'It's amazing that Elroy managed to run a 2:05 and has shown us that it can be done. He is my inspiration because I've always benchmarked at 2.06, but Elroy has changed that plan and now I must go for a 205. "Yes my goal has always been to run a 2.05 before I retire and now Elroy has inspired me to go for it. I believe lots of us will now believe we can do it.' Ahead of Sunday's Absa RUN YOUR CITY Cape Town 10k that both men will be racing alongside a stellar field of top class local and east African athletes, Mokoka was in reflective mood as the race celebrates a decade's existence. 'I've had some special runs in the series and I think I have four podium finishes – two when the race was still 12K and twice in the tens. For me, it was especially great joining the sub 28 minutes and what's been memorable is running 27 minutes in two consecutive years,' the veteran runner who has won just about every title in local road running said. 'The event (Absa RUN YOUR CITY Series) has made a positive impact and elevated road running in the country. We now no longer have to go out of the country to try to run sub 27 minutes, because now the guys are putting their foot down and committing to getting fast times. In the beginning they used to get guys from outside to come pull us through but now we see a stream of local runners dominating and hopefully it grows like that and lifts the others into running faster.' His presence in the sport has served as inspiration for many and Mokoka continues to be a role model deep into the twilight of his stellar career. He is excited by the growth of the sport and the emergence of new talent. 'It is amazing and I wish they can continue to be committed so that one day we get world class runners out of this. For me, it is amazing and a great feeling to be with these youngsters who call me malome (uncle) when we are in the hotels or in the street but on the start line they are my opponents. They are a new generation and I just enjoy the challenge they bring and with the experience I have I give my A game no matter the results. Hopefully my legs will keep on carrying me (to be competitive).' On Sunday, Mokoka will be out to have a better race in the Cape Town leg of the five city series than the one he did last year. 'This is the first one (race), hopefully I can run a 28 minutes and not a 29 like last year,' Mokoka chuckles 'I then would have had seven to eight weeks of preparations for Durban where we've been running 27:55 and now the time for the incentives is 27:40 so if I can run a good 28 here (Cape Town) I will be on to a good thing in Durban.'
The Guardian
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Carol McNicoll obituary
Carol McNicoll, who has died aged 81, belonged to a remarkable cohort of female students who graduated in the early 1970s from the School of Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, then run with benign genius by David Queensberry, with Hans Coper and Eduardo Paolozzi as tutors. McNicoll, along with Glenys Barton, Alison Britton, Jill Crowley, Elizabeth Fritsch and Jacqui Poncelet, offered a series of unsettling postmodern objects that reflected on the long history of the vessel, playing wittily with industrial processes and with historic source material. McNicoll's contribution was dazzling from the start. She argued early on that a domestic setting was a 'truly revolutionary area to work in'. While still a student she made an Alice in Wonderland tea-set for the artist Peter Blake and a 'cushion' dinner service, cast from plaster-filled bags, for the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes (a devoted collector of her work). Her vases, cups, lights and plates were slip-cast from liquid clay, often cast directly from flowers, fans, leaves or folded tinfoil. Each piece was decorated with pattern, whether as brushwork or sgraffito, while industrial ceramics were a resource to be quoted and cannibalised ironically. Sent to the Royal Staffordshire factory in Stoke-on-Trent by Queensberry, McNicoll returned with obsolete moulds and transfers, and went on to produce extraordinary flights of collage in which everyday objects were given a surreal twist – there were teapots through which flew giftware birds, and cups cast in stacks of three. Her jugs, alarmingly, appeared to unfurl. In the 1980s McNicoll's work became intensely fashionable, appearing on record covers and in a commercial for Maxell tapes. Her designs were produced in multiples by Rising Hawk Pottery with Christopher Strangeways, for Axis Diffusion in Paris and, most notably, for Next Interiors, in 1985-86. Her studio work became more complex and sculpture-like – a slab of clay was cut and folded to create a tower holding an angled cylinder, a series of bowls were made by stacking horizontally the same cast curved elements. Visits to India in the early 1990s returned McNicoll to function, and to still more complex surface decoration. She began to draw, and transferred details from her remarkable travel sketch books on to her pots. Her last show, held at Marsden Woo in 2019, used affordable digitally made transfers on a series of elegiac plates that memorialised the death of friends – the journalist Michele Hanson and a fellow ceramicist, Janice Tchalenko. From the late 90s McNicoll cast from mass-produced souvenirs acquired in charity shops. A plastic turbaned figure was one find, cast in triplicate and set to work holding cast grapes. The figures were covered with vine leaf transfers, mingling the familiar tropes of the bourgeois souvenir – the vine leaf, the colonial memento, the grapes and a hint of an Edwardian cake stand. A carved teak giraffe, east African airport art, was cast in multiples to hold a glass bowl, a playful comment on the subaltern's role within empire. After the millennium her work became increasingly political. In Freedom and Democracy (2011), ceramic figures of soldiers sit on an aluminium plate, shouldering Coca-Cola bottles wired to form a fruit bowl. 'There is no political party that I can support ... So I started to think I may as well say it on the pots!' She used the term knick-knacks to describe her work, and advocated a form of high unseriousness while simultaneously investigating the dark side. Tensions in the Middle East, the fall-out from empire, the petrochemical industries and corporate culture were transformed into ornament. Carol was born in Birmingham. Her father, David McNicoll, was a Scottish engineer who could draw beautifully, was good at making things and who gardened obsessively. Her mother, Brigit (nee O'Keefe), who died when Carol was 13, taught her to sew and make clothes; an Irish Catholic from County Waterford, Brigit insisted on a Catholic upbringing for her daughter, which, even in Birmingham, was 'like a lens into European baroque'. When Carol travelled with her parents round Europe, her mother, guidebook in hand, took her into churches whose dark, incense-laden interiors remained with her. The family home was filled with carved furniture and good rugs brought back by her father from India. Years later, in 1972, she went to the Islamic carpet exhibition at the Hayward organised by David Sylvester. It was a prescient show, put on at a time when decoration and decorative were damning words in the art world. A year later McNicoll began to use pattern, starting with some bowls that looked like trompe l'oeil rugs folded into shape. Convent schooling was followed by a term of nutritional science at Solihull College of Technology while making costumes for the Birmingham Rep and for Joan Littlewood's theatre at Stratford East in London. McNicoll responded positively to ideas about the democratisation of art when she attended Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Beckett University) in the late 60s. She and three others directed a film called Musical, involving the whole of the art school in a Busby Berkeley-inspired send-up of the genre. Painting and sculpture appeared to have run out of steam and McNicoll turned to making ceramics. Fashionable Duchampian nihilism was replaced by making, inspired by Japanese oribe wares and 18th-century European ceramics seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum – faience asparagus plates, the lacy beauties of Meissen porcelain and English soft-paste porcelain formed into shell jugs, leafy teapots and plaice sauce boats. At her degree show at Leeds she showed the slip-cast Chops, Chips and Peas with Tomatoes, a set of containers whose lids imitated food – much admired by the external examiner Patrick Heron. In 1970, enrolled with a scholarship at the RCA, she was living with Brian Eno, whom she met while she was at Leeds. Eno joined Roxy Music in 1971 and she was the creator of his black feather stage costume, now in the V&A. She worked intermittently for Zandra Rhodes, meeting another employee, Piers Gough, who subsequently bought and later commissioned work including The Architect's Tea-Set of 1984. Gough later designed her flat at Apollo Works, a former piano factory in north London, with a curving wall, gleaming flexible exposed ducting, monumental cast-iron Victorian radiators, pastel bathrooms suites and eclectic tiling. McNicoll created a second remarkable home in the building's basement, a scaled-up extension of her collaging, salvaging and pattern-making activities. Her obsession with the last of these was set out in the extraordinary show Pattern Crazy, co-curated at the Crafts Council in 2002 with her RCA contemporary Poncelet. If her work and home were visually arresting, so was McNicoll herself. Tall, slender and boyishly good-looking, she was a walking work of art who acquired most of her clothes in charity shops, collaging her finds to create outfits of unusual elegance, and was frequently stopped in the street by youthful admirers. An inspiring teacher at Camberwell School of Art from 1985, she left abruptly in 2001, disappointed by the audit culture taking over higher education. Well-read, discerning and argumentative (she enjoyed lively combative discussions with her son, Beckett), politically ranged left, she was a free spirit, strikingly loyal and straightforward, unfailingly kind to friends in need. Her works are to be found in many public collections, notably the Crafts Council, the Hepworth Wakefield and the V&A. Her life is documented in an interview for National Life Stories at the British Library. A generous selection of her work, together with the recreation of part of her flat and studio, will form a section of a museum of ceramics due to be opened in Ipswich, Suffolk. She is survived by Beckett, her son from a relationship with Paul Vester, and her grandson, Leonard. Carol Margaret McNicoll, ceramic artist, born 24 December 1943; died 2 March 2025
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Youth-run BIPOC business creates healthy desserts in north Minneapolis
The Brief 30 young entrepreneurs of color as young as 12 years old run a dessert business in North Minneapolis called Green Garden Bakery. The bakery grows vegetables in its community garden and bakes them into healthy vegetable-based desserts. To ensure everyone is able to eat healthy, the desserts are "pay-what-you-want" and 1/3 of the proceeds are reinvested back into the community. MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A vegetable-based dessert business in north Minneapolis is booming and kids are the employees who are gardening, baking, and taking orders. Green Garden Bakery, also known as GGB, started 10 years ago. It has been a resource for the community for fresh foods and desserts in what's considered a food dessert. What we know In 2014, youth in the Heritage Park neighborhood worked to raise money for a friend who was injured in a car crash. They came up with the idea to sell desserts as a way to show their support. That's when Green Garden Bakery was born. Its mission is and always has been about building and supporting people in the community. "They surprise us a lot with just how eager they are to work," youth culinary manager Shakyira Jackson said. "They always have a lot of ideas." For years now, kids have been taking cooking, gardening and nutrition classes for youth in Heritage Park. This has given them the unique opportunity to work in a business setting and learn about access to healthy food options. "By the time they're in high school, they're able to speak in front of a crowd, they're able to lead meetings by themselves so a lot of them already have those skillsets," Shakyira said. A third of the bakery's profits are re-invested back into the business, a third is divided to pay employees, and a third is donated back into the neighborhood to a charity of their choice. Down to the packaging, GGB keeps the business eco-friendly. Available desserts include items like lemon zucchini cake, chocolate beet cake, jalapeno chocolate chip cookies, East African spiced sweet potato donuts and more. GGB uses an east African tea spice for the African spiced sweet potato donuts. The recipe was provided by someone in the community. The impact The adults are there just to support and oversee operations. Kids are split into crews and levels. Most want to work their way up to the executive level which gives them the opportunity to travel to different conferences and handle communications like business emails — a much bigger responsibility. There's also a community crew, sales crew, baking crew, garden crew, and art royalty crew. "Youth can let their voices be heard in the business," 15-year-old Sarod Williams said. Williams is a part of the executive team. He got involved through summer programs and, when he turned 13, he became a youth entrepreneur at GGB. "It's not something that gets handed out to a lot of people, so honestly it makes me feel like I have an opportunity," he said. After about 4.5 years at GGB, 17-year-old Nate is also a part of the executive team. He's the sales lead who manages all of the sales emails. "We're busy all the time," he said while washing dishes. Nate loves the idea of being in his community while supporting his community at the same time. His hope is that GGB helps the community grow, and even open another location in Minneapolis. Not only that, but Nate recognized how much the business has helped him mature and become more vocal than he was when he started. "At first it was really challenging because I was shy," he says. He has dreams of attending college and studying computer science and engineering. His co-worker Raija Medeiros, 15, has big dreams too. She would like to work in finance and, right now, she has quite a head-start. Raija is the chief financial officer of GGB. "I handle how we make our money and where our money goes. Right now, I'm working on redoing our net worth," she says. Year after year, starting at the age of 9, Raija applied to work at GGB before she finally got her chance at 13. "I feel like working with GGB gives me a lot of opportunities," she said. "I feel like it gives me purpose. If I wasn't here right now, I would be in my bed playing Mortal Kombat." Most of the youth agree. They think about what they might be doing if it wasn't for GGB. They've learned the true meaning of hard work, dedication and compassion. Most recently, the youth supported a child going through cancer treatment and started a neighborhood beautification initiative. How it works Since the younger entrepreneurs are in school during the day, some youths work once or twice a week. The executive/leadership team works Monday-Friday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Their weekdays are spent working on a variety of projects like social media content, bakery prep work, meetings and more. GGB has what it calls "opportunity youth" which is for 18–24-year-olds who help run the business. The storefront at 815 Sumner Court is open a couple of days a week and, while closed, GGB also has bakery items available at farmers' markets. GGB prefers employees to live in North Minneapolis, but the business has partnerships where it is able to give youth in the surrounding areas an opportunity to participate. The storefront is open 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. If you would like to volunteer or partner for a community event, you can email entrepreneurship youth manager Layne Benton here.
