News

IndianExpress: ON Terrible Tuesday, when the blasts in Mumbai threw a scare in Pune, the first thing that the Railway Protection Force (RPF) did was to call the bomb detection squad around 7 pm for checking the premises. However, the sniffer dogs with their handlers arrived one and a half hours late— at 8.30 pm. Thankfully, there was no emergency at the Pune railway station that day. But if there was one, the bomb squad could never have made it on time.

Here’s why they were late. The squad is put up at Ghorpadi railway colony at least six km away from the railway station and has to cross a heavily traffic laden-part of the city including a busy level crossing to reach the railway station.

Predictably, on 7/11, they were stuck in a traffic jam at the Ghorpadi railway crossing. To other similar destinations too, the squad requires at least 30 minutes to reach, say RPF officials.

‘‘The dogs need to be put up near the RPF office close to the railway station. However, the building is waiting approval from the divisional office,’’ says Pune’s divisional security commissioner (Railways) S K Ravivanshi.

IndianExpress: PROPERTY tax collection centres at 21 branches and six extension counters of Cosmos Co-operative Bank were inaugurated by Municipal Commissioner Nitin Kareer on Wednesday morning.

Speaking on the occasion, Kareer said the decision of opening tax collection centres at the bank branches was taken to reduce the time taken for paying the tax. He said the Pune Municipal Corporation had already set up citizens’ facilitation centres to help tax payers and the computerised function of the tax department. He said PMC was the first municipal corporation in the country to adopt the double entry audit system.

Bank chairman M L Abhyankar said the amount collected from tax payers would be deposited in the PMC’s account on the same day. He said an amount of Rs 125 crore to Rs 150 crore was expected to be collected at the bank branches through payment of property tax. He promised cooperation to PMC in other projects too. Kareer and Abhyankar signed a Memorandum of Understanding about the new property tax collection centres.

IndianExpress: THE health clubs and gymnasiums in the city are going in for a new exercise. With no set pattern, norms or guidelines in place, and the ever-increasing number of fitness freaks, these clubs are now looking at setting standards that will help its customers.

As a first step, the fitness fraternity that consists of over 500 health clubs and gymnasiums in the city held a meeting with municipal commissioner Nitin Kareer and sought his help for setting standards. The gym owners, managers and fitness professionals also plan to set up a forum that will look into laying down rules and regulations.

‘‘This is a conscious effort to lay down rules and regulations as so many gyms are mushrooming in every nook and cranny of the city,’’ Stretch gym owner Tushar Ramanan told Pune Newsline.

IndianExpress:  DEFYING the fee structure prescribed by the Government-appointed Shikshan Shulk Samiti (SSS), the Association of Management of Ayurvedic Medical Colleges of Maharashtra (AMAMCM) has announced that it will charge an annual fee of Rs 1 lakh per student for both government and management categories.

Last year, in a Supreme Court-approved joint memorandum of the Government with the AMAMCM, a 50:50 seat-sharing structure had been decided for the year 2005-06, wherein fees for the 50 per cent government seats would be as defined by the SSS, and for the 10 per cent NRI quota would be Rs 1,80,000 per student. For the management quota (students applying through the private CET), the fees would be calculated as per the fees of the above two categories such that the average annual fee per student was Rs 90,000.

IndianExpress:  HERE’S one thing State board students have in common with those from the Central Board for Secondary Education (CASE) — no textbooks.

Even as students of CASE schools across the city prepare for their first unit tests on July 29, they have no clue as to how they will study. Arguably, the culprit is the body authorised to print the books, National Centre for Education Research and Training (NCERT), which has not got its act together almost four months into the current academic year.

Ever since schools began on April 1, textbooks of several subjects for standards I, III, VI, IX and XI, where the syllabus has changed from this academic year, have been in short supply or are not available at all.

“The textbooks should have arrived on March 15 so that we could be ready for the term on April 1,” says Deepak Talwar, owner of National Enterprises that sells CASE textbooks

IndianExpress: FOUR persons were killed and five injured in four separate road mishaps which took place on various roads in the city since Tuesday afternoon.

Sudam Bhagvant Zapake, a 56-year-old employee of Ammunition Factory, Khadki living at Dighi, was killed when his motorbike dashed a truck at the octroi post at Phugewadi on Mumbai-Pune highway on Wednesday morning.

The mishap took place while Zapake was going to resume duty. Police said the mishap occurred because the truck driver suddenly took a turn, without giving any signal, to enter the octroi post. Truck driver Babu Malu Suravase (45) from Ambegaon has been arrested.

A hit-and-run mishap which took place on Nagar Road on Wednesday morning claimed the life of Balu Kadam (40), a resident of Laxminagar area in Yerawada. Yerawada police began looking for the unidentified vehicle driver who sped away after the mishap after Balu’s father Tulshidas lodged a complaint.

IndianExpress: RENOWNED researcher of lavani, Dnyanoba alias Mauli Vitthal Utpat, who was known as lavani king because of his collection of traditional lavanis, on Wednesday died at Pandharpur following renal failure. The cremation took place at Vaikunth Bhoomi crematorium in Pandharpur in the evening.

Incidentally, Dnyanoba’s cousin Vasudeo Bhagvan Utpat, who was also a researcher of lavani, also died at Pandharpur on the same day. Dnyanoba Utpat (72) is survived by wife, a daughter and two sons. Vasudeo Utpat (71) is survived by wife, two sons and two daughters.

News.com: Microsoft on Tuesday said it has bought Winternals Software, a small maker of Windows utility programs, in a deal that the software maker hopes will add key technical talent to its operating system development team.

Terms of the deal to acquire the Austin, Texas-based company were not announced. Among the software that Winternals offers is a set of freely downloadable tools known as Sysinternals.

As part of the deal, the software maker is naming Winternals co-founder Mark Russinovich as a technical fellow.

“I’ve had my eye on Mark for some time,” Jim Allchin, Microsoft divisional co-president, said in a statement. “The work he and Bryce (Cogswell, Winternal’s other co-founder) have completed in system recovery and data protection illustrates the depth of thinking and skill they will bring to future versions of Windows. The addition of their deep kernel-level expertise to our existing strong talent will help provide us with the edge we need to continue to raise the quality and functionality bar for Windows on both the client and the server.”

ABCNews.com: Ranging from just under $250 to over $600, the new cameras aren’t especially cheap, but they are rich in features. At the top end of the range, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 superzoom succeeds our Editors’ Choice for a high-end superzoom, the DMC-FZ30. Like its predecessor, the FZ50 has a 12X optical zoom, manual zoom and focus rings, and lots of manual functions. But the FZ50 also ups the megapixel count with a 10.1-CCD sensor and has a higher sensitivity at 1600 ISO. The FZ50 will list for $649.95.

The Lumix DMC-LX2 replaces the stylish DMC-LX1, which featured a special 16:9 wide-aspect-ratio CCD and a 4X optical zoom lens. The LX2 keeps these features, and the CCD sensor has been increased to 10.2 megapixels. At the Panasonic briefing, the company made sure to promote the fact that pictures taken on this camera would look great when the memory card was played into one of its HDTVs, which have the same 16:9 aspect ratio, (though $2000 is a little pricey for a camera accessory). The list price for the DMC-LX2 is $499.95, which is $100 cheaper than the LX1 listed for.

CIO.com: Samsung Electronics said it began mass production of 8-gigabit NAND Flash Chips, employing 60-nanometer process technology, AFX News Limited reports via Forbes.

Samsung said the 60-nanometer process technology enables a 25 percent increase in production efficiency compared to the 70-nanometer technology that was previously used, according to AFX News.

Mass production of the 8-gigabit chip enables Samsung to create an 8GB solution by putting a 4GB unit atop another, with each unit carrying four 8-gigabit dies, AFX News reports.

The 8GB solution will be able to store roughly 2,000 MP3 files or more than three and a half hours of DVD-quality video, and it should hit the market within the third quarter of 2006, according to AFX News.