5 JANUARY 2014

Ø  Kochi has taken its place on the world LNG map with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dedicating a liquefied natural gas terminal here to the nation on Saturday. The Rs. 4,500-crore terminal, which started functioning four months ago, was officially launched at a function held at Puthuvypeen.

Ø  The flight of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-D5) — at 4.18 p.m. on Sunday — from Sriharikota will be an acid test for India as it seeks to prove the design, realisation and sustained firing of its indigenously built cryogenic engine. There is pressure on the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to produce a winner because of two back-to-back failures of the GSLV flights in 2010 — the first, with an indigenous cryogenic engine, on April 15 and the next, with a Russian cryogenic engine, on December 25.

Ø  S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (SNBNCBS), an autonomous research institution under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), has entered into a partnership with Kolkata-based renewable energy college in a solar jacket project. These are summer-jackets to keep one cool. It will use solar modules that will power a fan to suck out warm air around a body ensuring a cool environment.

Ø  Phil Everly, half of the 1950s and ‘60s pop duo — the Everly Brothers — who influenced The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, died on Friday, his widow told The Los Angeles Times . He was 74.

Ø  A Mexican man described as an alleged leader of the powerful Sinaloa drug syndicate has been detained in the Netherlands on a U.S. arrest warrant, U.S. authorities said on Friday. Jose Rodrigo Arechiga-Gamboa, also known as “Chino Antrax” and “Norberto Sicairos-Garcia,” was arrested on Monday at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the office of the U.S. attorney for the southern district of California, based in San Diego, said in a statement.