The approval of TIE Bhubaneswar Chapter was posted in http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/invest_bbsr/message/1027. The TIE Global web page is http://www.tie.org/. TIE Bhubaneswar facebook page is here.

On the visit of Cupertino Mayor, following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.

… Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has joined hands with Cupertino City of California.

BMC mayor A N Jena on Wednesday signed a letter of intent (LOI) with his Cupertino counterpart Gilbert Wong here to explore the possibility of establishing a "sister city" tie-up between Bhubaneswar and Cupertino city. "This will help BMC understand the functioning of the foreign civic body as well as improving our operation," Jena said.

"Besides the exchange of expertise in the functioning of both the civic bodies, the Cupertino-Bhubaneswar Sister City Initiative will facilitate exchange of ideas and resource in areas of education, healthcare, environment, trade, culture, tourism, technology and urban planning," Cupertino mayor Wong said. "The initiative will soon be cleared at the Cupertino City Council meeting," he added. The details about the exchange programmes would be chalked out soon, Wong remarked.

Cupertino City recently established the "sister city" status with Hsinchu city of Taiwan, Ivrea in Italy and Toyokawa in Japan.

It is for the first time that BMC entered an agreement with a foreign civic body for logistic support. "BMC took the initiative to rope in Cupertino City Council, following a visit by some government officials to the US last year," BMC commissioner Vishal Kumar Dev said.

Wong’s visit came close on the heels of the tour of some foreign delegates of Washington State India Trade Relation Action Committee (WASITRAC) to Bhubaneswar for a similar "sister city" tie-up last November. But no such pact was signed.