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IndianExpress: EVEN as Pune road development is languishing, faced with shortage of funds and charges of poor coordination between the constituents flying thick and fast, the Rs 45 crore phase one project in Baramati though got over in February this year and its next phase is about to begin. Once again, the culprit seems to be the absence of an implementing body that could have played the role of coordinator between PMC and Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC).

‘‘The problem of taking up the Pune IRDP has raised the question of revenue. We have approached the State government seeking as to how to further proceed with the project,’’ says Ramanath Jha, vice chairman and managing director, MSRDC. He admits that Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) cannot be blamed: ‘‘I appreciate their allocation of a certain amount but they alone cannot finance the entire project.’’

IndianExpress: THE STATE government-appointed study group’s suggestion to hike property tax in Pimpri-Chinchwad by 978 per cent to compensate for the proposed scrapping of the octroi system has been opposed by activists, civic employees and even industrialists who feel it will wreck the development process.

The Pimpri-Chinchwad Mahanagarpalika Karmachari Mahasangh has said the move will make Pimpri-Chinchwad a slum. ‘‘Pimpri-Chinchwad needs capital investment for pushing the development process. Octroi is the main source of revenue and if it goes, development will come to a standstill. High property tax will only increase the cost of living,’’ says general secretary Subhash Sareen.

IndianExpress: THE long-awaited revival of Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd (HA) may prove to be a damp squib on the operational front for the first PSU pharamaceuticals company as only about Rs 10 crore will be available for capital investment and upgrade of the formulations plant out of the revival package of Rs 137.59 crore. The revival has been on the radar of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, under whose Lok Sabha constituency, the plant is located, for quite some time now.

In fact, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram had made a specific mention of the HA revival package in his Budget speech and even Union Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had been a votary of its revival.

IndianExpress: INCESSENT rains in the state have resulted in heavy damage to the standing crop and the results of this will soon be seen as prices of vegetables, fruits and flowers are expected to go up considerably over the next few days.

Also, with the festival season of Ganpati and Gauri on, the agricultural market in the city will see steep inflation as demand for vegetables and flowers increases considerably on the 5th, 6th and 7th days of Ganeshotsav as Gauris are installed in households.

A major agent of vegetables, Vilas Bhujbal said: ‘‘The rates of vegetables have increased by around 30 to 40 per cent this year as compared to the corresponding period last year due to the damage to crops.’’

IndianExpress: TEN thousand international students from over 80 countries, bringing in revenue worth Rs 40-50 crore over a period of five years: With statistics that would have any institution of learning sit up, the University of Pune has now decided to address the issues and problems concerning foreign students and create a more congenial atmosphere to encourage a greater influx in the future.

And as a step in that direction, the varsity’s International Students Centre will organise a seminar on ‘‘India: The Ideal Destination for Foreign Students: Challenges and Perspectives’’ on September 1 in its campus.

News.com: What if your bike helmet could warn you about a pothole in the road? Or the airport arrivals-and-departures sign could sell you a Sprite?

Then you’d be living in Ted Selker’s world, where design meets intelligent computing. A research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, Selker invented these gadgets, among others, out of a desire to make his life and the environment a little bit smarter.

Take the Smart Helmet, a functional headpiece he invented five years ago after reaching a boiling point about inadequate roads and bad drivers in the Boston area. (He commutes by bike from Arlington, Mass., to MIT’s campus in Cambridge about three times a week.) Now, the shiny BMX-adapted bike helmet is nearly perfect, he says.

ITWire: Using a 80 nanometer manufacturing process, Korean memory maker, Samsung Electronics has begun production of smaller and cheaper 1Gb DDR2 memory chips.

Moving from 90 nanometer to 80 nanometer production has enabled Samsung to make the chips about one third smaller and in greater quantities, which reduces the cost.

The release of the memory hungry Vista operating system in 2007 is expected to drive demand for minimum system configurations of 1GB RAM, with 2GB being standard and Samsung is predicting a big hike in memory demand for the coming year.

News.com: Slightly later than planned, Microsoft on Wednesday released a trial version of a free parental-control tool for Windows XP.

Windows Live OneCare Family Safety is designed to help keep Web content that parents deem inappropriate from reaching their children. The beta version of the tool, available to the general public, updates an earlier preview version of the tool made available to about 3,000 testers in March.

“Child safety parental control is really a top-of-mind issue. It just keeps getting bigger with all the coverage around social networking and MySpace and things like that,” said Alan Packer, a product unit manager at Microsoft. “There was an expectation from our customers that we should be doing more to help keep them safer online.”

IndianExpress: PUNE’S march towards a bigger and better city got enhanced after it became the first in the State to get funds for the third project under the Centre’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNURM).

The first tranchet of Rs 99 crore for the Rs 635 crore slum rehabilitation project was approved by the Centre on Monday. A fortnight ago, the civic body had got Rs 65 crore for the bus rapid transit system’s pilot project and earlier Rs 99 crore was given for its sewage treatment project.

Municipal Commissioner Nitin Kareer said the rehabilitation project would be implemented at Hadapsar. ‘‘Around 6,000 flats would be constructed as ground floor plus four storeys at three places. The beneficiaries would get a carpet area of 270 sq feet, two rooms, a kitchen and a balcony. The construction of the buildings would be completed in the next two years.’’