News

IndianExpress: WITH recent threat posed by terrorists and the Ganesh festival approaching, Director General of Police P S Pasricha on Thursday reviewed the security arrangements in Western Maharashtra and the city. From taking stock of the security arrangements to formulating an action plan to counter any untoward incident, the meeting specifically focused on intelligence gathering and security mechanisms.

The police will also be providing tight security cover to sensitive places in and around the city and also coordinate with the defence establishments to avoid any lapses.

‘‘As per the directives, more emphasis will be laid on security preparedness and assessment, police-public dialogues, community policing and spreading public awareness with respect to handling unidentified suspicious objects. We are geared to handle any eventuality,’’ Pune police commissioner D N Jadhav told Pune Newsline after the meeting

IndianExpress: Giving a shot in the arms of the office of Traffic Police and Regional Transport, the Bombay High Court has ruled in favour of the actions undertaken by these bodies against tourist vehicles ferrying goods on the top of the roofs.

A total of 17 bus operators from Karnataka had filed a petition challenging such actions taken by the Traffic Police and the Regional Transport. The petition named Transport Department of Maharashtra, Regional Transport Officer of Kolhapur as well as Kagal, Kholapur and Washi check posts.The High Court’s verdict against the petition came in July this year
 
The High Court has also ordered tourist operators to demarcate sufficient space at the rear or on the sides, or both, of their vehicles, rather than carrying the luggage on the roofs. The space, the High Court order said, should be dust and rattle proof with adequate safety arrangements.

IndianExpress: PUNE-BASED Serum Institute India Ltd, the largest manufacturer measles and DTP group of vaccines in the world, has picked up a 14 per cent stake in the UK-based Lipoxen PLC. Lipoxen has raised 2.6 million pounds from Serum Institute through a subscription agreement and associated warrant agreement.

Lipoxen — the biopharmaceutical company that specialises in development of differentiated biologicals, vaccines and oncology drugs — will use the funds to drive development of its pipeline of potential protein drugs and vaccines into clinical trials and appoint a leading biologic contract research organisation. It will allow Lipoxen to recruit additional laboratory staff.

For Serum Institute, the agreement will help the company to diversify into oncology and recombinant products different from the generic drugs available in the market.

IndianExpress: THE proposal to abolish the octroi and compensating the revenue lost by increasing the property tax is being viewed by tax experts as an easy option taken by the study group set up by the government to find alternatives to it. The group has suggested abolishing octroi in phases and supplementing the revenue lost through it by going in for a steep increase in property tax.

The experts’ reason that instead of increasing the property tax, the panel could have explored additional avenues to be taxed.

Incidentally, the study group did mention in its report that property tax was not a substitute for octroi. ‘‘The additional revenue arising from property tax is the own revenue of the urban local bodies and should continue to remain so. The alternatives for octroi should be from among altogether new resources,’’ it said.

IndianExpress: THE Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management (SITM) will be conducting the ‘SITM Telecom Grandmasters Quiz’(TGM) at the Symbiosis Vishwabhavan on August 25. The quiz competition in its fifth year, provides a competitive platform to the corporates and students. Five teams comprising of three student teams and two corporate teams, will make it to the final rounds. The prize money on offer is Rs 2 lakh.

The preliminary rounds will be held in Pune on August 20 at the SITM campus. The online preliminary rounds will be conducted at various Hughes Net Fusion centres, across 27 cities on August 18 and August 19.

BBCNews.com: A simple tweak to the way common silicon transistors are made could allow faster, cheaper mobile phones and digital cameras, say UK researchers.
Devices with the modification have already set a new world record for the fastest transistor of its type.

To achieve the speed gain, researchers at the University of Southampton added fluorine to the silicon devices.

The technique uses existing silicon manufacturing technology meaning it should be quick and easy to deploy

BetaNews: Dell is expected to announce on Thursday an expended partnership with AMD that would bring the chipmaker’s processors to Dell desktop and notebook systems. The company has reportedly ordered up to 2 million AMD machines.

In May, Dell unveiled plans to bring AMD’s Opteron chips to its high-end servers before the end of the year, but said nothing about its consumer lineup. The world’s largest computer marker has been a longtime supporter of Intel, helping the company remain atop the processor market.

However, AMD has made big strides in challenging Intel’s dominance, largely thanks to its Opteron platform that has outperformed Intel chips while utilizing less power. Intel recently struck back at the growing threat posed by AMD with its “Woodcrest” server processor, which offers a 40 percent power reduction while providing performance improvements of up to 135 percent.

TechTree: D-Link has launched its new ADSL 2+ Router, “GLB-502T,” designed to provide a simple and cost-effective ADSL Internet connection for individual computers.

With GLB-502T, the company aims to combine high-speed ADSL technology with a robust router in one compact device.

The router provides Internet connection through either Ethernet or USB ports, and can also be used to bridge Ethernet LAN to the Internet. It supports 8 PVCs, and enables users to access data, voice, and video simultaneously. It promises to achieve upstream data rates of 1Mbps, and downstream data rates of 22 Mbps. It has in-built ADSL POTS splitter, which separates voice and data at the customer premise, thus enabling the ADSL line to be directly and seamlessly terminated on the unit