Boston East India Hotels moves on upscale market
Abhijit Das knows exactly what he wants out of a hotel company and it is a far cry from what the big name hotels offer around the globe — his vision is of boutique hotels, with bigger rooms, a more residential feel and a connection to the local setting, geography and history. Through his Boston East India Hotels LLC he has already launched one signature luxury brand of hotel properties under Troca Hotels and his plan is to launch many more, both in the New England region and around the globe.
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 In an effort to help family businesses succeed in India, Harvard Business School is conducting a four-day leadership development program in Mumbai from June 24 to 27. The program, which will be held at HBS's classroom at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai, is geared towards imparting managerial tools for families to use in India's competitive business environment. In the new program, attendees will learn how to maximize the strengths of family enterprises while also implementing business practices that drive high performance, shareholder loyalty and healthy family relationships. |
|  MIT professor Sangeeta Bhatia is making key strides towards developing the world's first artificial liver after identifying a dozen chemical compounds that can help liver cells multiply to produce new tissue. Although it's been known that the liver has the ability to regenerate itself for several years now, researchers have been repeatedly stymied in the process to actually produce artificial livers. A major issue in the process involves mature live cells, known as hepacytes, which quickly lose their normal function when removed from the body. "It's a paradox because we know liver cells are capable of growing, but somehow we can't get them to grow outside the body," Bhatia said in a statement
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|  Vicor Corp., an Andover, Mass.-based company specializing in manufacturing modular power components, will be expanding the company's sales and support network in India via a partnership with CoreEL Technologies. Announced June 6, the move signifies a major investment Vicor is making in the high-growth Indian market. It will also allow serve as an opportunity for the company to strengthen relationships with customers and distributors across key regions of the country. |
|  In March 2012, MIT launched 6.002x, a free online version of MIT's introductory course in circuits and electronics. The course, the first massive open online course offered by MITx — and also the inaugural offering from edX, the online learning partnership later founded by MIT and Harvard University — sparked worldwide interest, along with a large amount of data. Researchers from MIT and Harvard are now trying to make sense of this data, which includes students' clickstreams — recordings of where and when users clicked on a page — and their homework, lab and exam scores, as well as comments made on discussion forums and responses to an end-of-course survey.
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|  The two-day meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama in California last week is being hailed as having as much significance as the one between Nixon and Mao 40 years ago. However, cyber-espionage trumped the two-day summit. From the outside it would appear China masterminded the leaking of National Security Agency information by Edward Snowden to coincide with that meeting and since Xi was non-committal about taking steps to stop cyber-attacks emanating from inside China on U.S. defense contractors, corporations and financial institutions, including banks — experts are calling the meeting a failure, at least in that respect.
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|  On June 11, the Merrimack Valley Sandbox held the organization's first Sandbox Summit at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Over 200 entrepreneurs, experts and leaders from around the country convened for the day-long conference, which featured several prominent speakers, including Robin Chase, the founder of Zipcar and Desh Deshpande, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the Deshpande Foundation — an organization that works to strengthen local ecosystems, build entrepreneurs and support innovative thinking. |
| A letter addressed to President Barack Obama from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce alleges widespread discrimination by India's government relating to U.S. exports. The letter, dated June 6, states India is "discriminating against a wide range of U.S. exports, jeopardizing domestic jobs, and putting at risk a growing bilateral trading relationship worth more than $60 billion last year." Signed with the support of 16 other business associations, the letter ultimately asks President Obama to push for fairer legislation regarding business dealings with India. |
| The massive immigration bill currently under debate in Congress contains a number of provisions that would significantly alleviate restrictions for foreign-born physicians practicing in the United States. Over 850 pages in length, the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act" includes several revisions to the Conrad State 30 J1 Waiver Program — a 1994 measure that addressed the issue of physician shortages in rural and urban areas of the United States. Overall, the Conrad program allowed each state the ability to sponsor a certain number of international graduates — initially 20, now 30 — each year for waiver of the two-year home residency requirement of the physician's J1 visa. |
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| Breaking News |
 On Monday, the National Space Society forged a space solar power initiative with India in a move aimed at curbing large-scale issues such as energy needs and climate change. Mark Hopkins, chairman of the NSS executive committee, and Abdul Kalam, former president of India, highlighted the need for such a program amid a number of developing global issues. "We are conscious that all nations have to strive to make our planet livable again after centuries of devastation of its environment and ecosystems and rapid depletion of its precious mineral resources, including fossil fuels and fresh water," the two said in statement.
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|  Indian tire manufacturer Apollo Tyres acquired Cooper Tire & Rubber Company on Wednesday in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $2.5 billion. The merger agreement, which has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors for both companies, makes the combined company the seventh-largest tire company in the world. Apollo, founded in 1972, has an international reputation for high performance tires across a range of well-known premium and mid-tier brands.
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|  A team of researchers from Brown, Yale, Harvard, Mass. General Hospital and Chennai, India recently analyzed India's HIV problem and concluded it would meet international standards of cost-effectiveness — and save millions of lives — to test every person in the country once every five years. Most people who are HIV positive in India don't know they carry the virus, even though testing and treatment is both cheap and available throughout much of the country. |
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| Latest Blogs |
This roundtable was specifically designed to host the finals of the Rackspace Cloud – 1M/1M Startup Challenge.
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| In previous years we suggested purchasing Virginia Land Preservation Credits. A dollar of tax credit could be purchased for 75 or 80 cents, saving a significant amount of money on state taxes. In recent years, however, some of these credits were challenged. Some of the people who purchased them had to redo their tax returns. Now, 88 cents is one of the best prices available. You still have to pay short-term capital gains on what you save. As a result, we are not recommending them this year.
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| In December 2009, Tristina Elmes owed more money than she could pay in taxes and found herself in tax court. The IRS wanted to collect as much as they could as quickly as possible. During an IRS summons, Elmes chose to plead the Fifth Amendment because she didn't trust the IRS in its fishing expedition.
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