News

IndianExpress: WHEN Sant Tukaram’s palkhi reached Pune from Dehu on Monday evening, a sea of devotion washed the city with lakhs of people walking over 200 km in the pilgrimage. The chants of ‘‘Vitthal, Vitthal’’ was interspersed with the sounds of taals and abhangas. Deep in this spirituality was Balkrishna Malgapur, walking barefoot in the annual pilgrimage.

Though barely 14 years old, Balkrishna is no ordinary teenager. Adorned with a tilak and a topi, he walks the pilgrimage to Pandharpur alone. ‘‘I have devoted my life to God and that’s why I am going there,’’ he says.

IndianExpress: NEELAM (name changed) has been a carrier of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for over three years now. Having come to terms with her fate, Neelam is grateful to the counsellors at National AIDS Research Institute (NARI) for helping her understand HIV. But all that has not prepared her for the next big jolt— cervical cancer.

It will take more than a few sessions or the NARI counselors to prepare her for this reality — HIV infected women face a greater risk of developing cervical cancer than others.

 For the first time in the country, experts from B J Medical College (BJMC) and NARI have got together to study this threat and undertake cervical cancer screening for HIV-infected women.

IndianExpress: EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD Rucha Sunil Joshi was killed after a Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) bus dashed her two-wheeler at the Na Si Phadke chowk near Neelayam theatre on Monday afternoon. Her friend, Varsha Prabhakar Halwai, (18) was seriously injured in the accident.

Rucha, daughter of a photo studio owner, was a resident of Ganesh Mala area on Sinhagad Road and studying in her first year B A at S P College.

Rucha had gone to collect her personality development course certificate from Symbiosis on Monday morning. Later, she went to S P College where she spent some time and then left to go home along with her friend Varsha.

IndianExpress: FOR years, winged visitors to Bhigwan, some 100 km from Pune have been making bird-watchers happy. Now, they are over the moon as an unprecedented number of painted storks have been spotted here.

City-based ornithologist Satish Pandey from Pune on a visit to the spot confirmed there were thousands of painted storks. He has more good news. ‘‘About 1,500 juveniles (young ones) were also spotted and this may well make Bhigwan one of the largest breeding grounds for the birds,’’ says he. Pandey also got permission from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), of which he is a member, to ring some 52 juvenile storks this year for a follow-up.

IndianExpress: COMING down heavily on property tax defaulters the Income Tax (I-T) department has asked details of property holders in the city from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). Deputy municipal commissioner (tax collection and assessment) Shirish Yadav said that the I-T department had asked for the preliminary information including the owners of property, house number and survey number.

‘‘The I-T department has been asking for details on the property holders since January,’’ Yadav said. PMC has accordingly provided data of property owners of all 14 ward offices in CD format to the I-T sleuths.

IndianExpress: THE Pune Municipal Corporation’s anti-encroachment department took action on five stall-owners and vendors selling books and school items at the roadside at Appa-Balwant chowk on Monday. Books from two shopkeepers, packed in at least eight bags were seized by the civic administration. The drive undertaken between 11 am and 1 pm, was to remove the hurdles that the vendors were creating.

MumbaiMirror: A top official in China’s space programme has set 2024 for the country’s first moonwalk, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Monday, cementing its position as a new space power.

The mission would kick off in earnest next year, the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po paper said, when China launches an unmanned lunar satellite in March or April to orbit and survey the lunar surface.

“China now basically possesses the technology, materials and the economic strength” to put a man on the moon, the paper quoted the official as saying.

News.com: Microsoft is scheduled on Tuesday to publicly launch Windows Live Messenger, its next-generation instant messaging program that automatically updates contact information and lets people share files by simply dragging and dropping them onto a contact list.

Windows Live Messenger, the upgrade to MSN Messenger, is the first core application of Microsoft’s new line of Windows Live software and services to be launched publicly, said Adam Sohn, director of global sales and marketing public relations.

Windows Live Messenger was released as a public beta in May with international PC-to-PC calls with full-screen video capability.

News.com: Apple Computer is in talks with most of Hollywood’s studios to offer movie downloads via its popular iTunes Music Store Web site, show business newspaper Daily Variety reported Monday.

Citing unnamed sources, Variety said iTunes might begin offering film downloads by the end of 2006, but currently a price on iTunes is a sticking point in negotiations.

Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs is said to want one flat price of $9.99 per movie, whereas studio executives want a range of prices that mirrors videos and DVDs at retail stores which, generally speaking, run from discount titles at a few dollars apiece up to $19.99 or more for new releases

ITNews: Websense Security Labs announced it has discovered that the Google Web site hosting service “Google Pages” is hosting malicious code.

The company said that so far it has not received any report of a lure for the sites within email or Instant Messaging linking to this site or exploit code downloading it, however it may either be in the setup phase or not be widely distributed yet.