Briefs

Meet with minister averts port strike
A day after the employees of the port decided to go on an indefinite strike to force the Central government to meet their demands,sources at the Kolkata Port Trust said the strike has been averted. Nearly 60,000 workers from all the ports in the country had threatened to go on a strike unless their demands,which included getting their arrears from january 1,2007,were met. An employee of the Kolkata port said a recent meeting with the Union Shipping Minister G K Vasan was re-assuring and some of their demands have been met. The strike would have affected nearly 1,000 officers at the Kolkata port and nearly 3,000 grade III and IV officers.

IIT-Kgp gets Bio Energy Centre
KHARAGPUR: The first Bio Energy Centre in the country was inaugurated at IIT-Kharagpur on Tuesday. The centre will conduct interdisciplinary research and generate intellectual property rights (IPR) in the field of bio-energy. The centre has been set up with the help of IIT alumnus Prabhakant Sinha who has pledged to donate Rs 10 crore. For research,the institute has collaborated with University of California,Berkeley.

Basu better but not out of ICU
The condition of former chief minister Jyoti Basu was said to be stable on Tuesday. “His condition has been improving in the last two days but we will not shift him out of the ICU,” said T S Kukreja,Executive VP,AMRI. He said two units of blood that were transfused to Basu helped to improve the situation. Basu was still on liquid diet and has been administered physiotherapy.

CU gets ‘A’ rank from NAAC
Calcutta University has been given an A ranking by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). An eight-member NAAC team had visited the city in the second week of December. The university got 3.4 out of 4.