News

IndianExpress:  THE Pune police may have picked up over 70 people in the aftermath of the serial blasts in Mumbai, but none of them have any connections with either the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) or Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

‘‘Most of the arrested people are those who are involved in loot and arson during earlier cases in the city. Some of them are habitual criminals and they have been arrested to ensure law and order situation,’’ police commissioner D N Jadhav told Pune Newsline.

The two militant organisations — SIMI and LeT — have come under scanner for their role in the Mumbai blasts and the police, intelligence and anti-terrorist agencies have been probing into their role in it. Senior officials from the Home Department said the government had ordered a crackdown against SIMI and the Pune police, too, had received directives to act against the banned ultra group.

IndianExpress:  AT LEAST one person loses his life on the tracks everyday in Pune railway division and going by the statistics compiled by the Pune Government Railway Police (GRP) there is a sharp increase in the number of railway accidents on this stretch in last three years. The division comprises 147 km on Lonavla- Neera (towards Satara) section where the Pune-Lonavla stretch is 63 km and distance between Pune to Neera is 84 km.

Now, consider this. The accidents were 265 in 2003, 270 in 2004 and rose to 300 in 2005 in the section between Khandala and Neera towards Satara. Some of these were suicides. In 2003, 7 people had committed suicide in the section, which increased to 10 in 2004 and fell to 4 in 2005. Of the natural deaths reported while travelling, 67 people died in 2003, 80 in 2004 and 84 in 2005.

IndianExpress: FEW could have imagined that the tsunami-ravaged shores and beaches of Andaman and Nicobar Islands would ever play hosts to tourists or Campbell and Hut bays will ever function normally.

Had it not been for the Pune-based Central Water and Power Research Station that provided the technological know-how and design for the reconstruction of breakwater barriers (perpendicular concrete walls build to prevent the waves wrecking havoc on the ports) and sea-walls, the earlier barriers and the beaches would have continued the signs of the destruction.

To protect the coastal areas and shores at the islands, the engineers have provided the blueprint for constructing rivetment and sea-walls. By using geo-fabric filter that can withstand corrosion, the walls have been made more durable

IndianExpress: THEY are known for cardiovascular benefits, play a big role in mental health and new clinical studies suggest there is a strong connection between these fatty acids and major depression. Here’s the new buzzword in a health conscious world— omega-3 fatty acids.

In Pune, it’s all about bringing back the omega-3 fatty acids into the food chain. As such we have designer eggs, mushroom biscuits, honey, chocolates and infant formula food — all enriched with omega-3, scientifically researched and developed at Bharati Vidyapeeth’s Interactive Research School for Health Affairs (IRSHA). The health industry has evinced keen interest in these products.

IRSHA has also developed health products in the form of key foods and making them available in a palatable form. ‘‘This can improve your diet without sacrificing the joy of eating good food,’’ says an excited Dr Shahida Khan, head of the health food division and a senior scientist at IRSHA.

IndianExpress: TWO days after the Pune Traffic and Transport Forum (PTTF) served a notice to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Municipal Commissioner Nitin Kareer refuted the PTTF’s claims of irregularities in the proposal of appointing Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Limited (ILFS) as the project consultant.

Kareer said while the PMC could carry out the development projects uptil Rs 500 to Rs 600 crore, the city’s needs were over this. ‘‘Considering this, we need to appoint an external agency to carry out the development works having a larger estimated cost,’’ he said.

IndianExpress: WHEN Snehal Gaikwad said goodbye to her friends on Wednesday evening after school got over, little did they know they would never see her again. The teenager waited till everyone had left, hid in the classroom, waited for it to be locked from the outside, before making a noose from a nylon rope. She then hanged herself from the door frame of her class at the Pune Municipal Corporation’s Baburao Sanas Girls’ High School in Mangalwar Peth on Wednesday evening.

Snehal was a standard X student and suffering from depression. She was not doing well in her studies and had failed twice — once in the standard VIII and again in standard IX, the police said.

In her suicide note addressed to her parents and found by the police in her school bag, Snehal said no one should be held responsible.

TechTree.com: Intex Technologies has reportedly introduced a spanking new MP3 player along with FM to its existing product portfolio.

The portable music device sports a sleek design, and comes with a storage space of 512 MB. It has an in-built microphone, and features systems menu keys that control volume, play, forward, reverse, replay, etc.

The player can be attached to accessories such as a headphone, DVD drive, and a USB cable.

The company says its new MP3 player is equipped enough to feature on the wish-list of any music lover. The Intex MP3 Player is touted as able to deliver perfect sound clarity whilst listening to Jazz, Classical, Pop, Rock, among other different music genres.

The player sports a Black color, and comes with either a green, yellow, orange, or red screen display. Priced at Rs 2,999, it doubles as a pen drive, and comes along with a one-year warranty

ITWire.com: Aiming to capitalise on the nascent market for push email to mobile devices, Palm has announced that it will launch the first 3G WCDMA version of its Treo handheld in Europe later this year, on the Vodafone network and running the Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system overlaid with the Palm user interface.
The device will use Microsoft’s Messaging and Security Feature Pack with Direct Push Technology to support ‘push email’ services. It will be available first to Vodafone customers in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and Netherlands, before the end of  2006.

Palm cites research from the Radicati Group indicating that only an estimated two percent of business email inboxes worldwide are accessed via mobile devices.

Reuters.com:  Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to introduce a Web-based version of its sales and marketing software in 2007 as it targets rivals like Salesforce.com (CRM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Oracle Corp. (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), and SAP AG (SAPG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) in a fast-growing market.

Microsoft said the service initially would target small businesses. Analysts said it showed that the world’s biggest software maker is serious about meeting growing demand for applications delivered over the Internet.

Rob Bois, an analyst at AMR Research, said the upcoming service would give Microsoft a foothold in a burgeoning part of the estimated $11 billion market for so-called customer relationship management, or CRM, software that helps companies manage sales forces and track sales leads.

TheHindu.com: The flight of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from Sriharikota will take place “as planned” in September, according to

B.N. Suresh, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, (VSSC),

Thiruvananthapuram.

“We are getting ready for the PSLV flight,” he said. The PSLV flight from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, will place in orbit three satellites. They are CARTOSAT-2 of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Space-capsule Recovery Experiment