News

IndianExpress:  WEDNESDAY is when the city will bid goodbye to Ganesh. Although the five frontline Ganesh mandals and representatives of other important ones in the city have agreed to start the immersion procession at 10.30 am instead of noon as scheduled, and promised to continue the tradition in future too, the procession is likely to throw city life off-track this year too.

In the last four decades, successive immersion processions have taken over 24 hours to wind up even though the number of Ganesh mandals has risen only marginally.

Consider this. In 1965, the main procession on Laxmi Road had 282 mandals and wound up in eight hours. In 2005, the 298 mandals that participated in the procession took 34 hours.

IndianExpress: Pune Municipal Corporation has slapped notices on nine present and former office-bearers, including mayor Rajani Tribhuvan, deputy mayor Nilesh Magar and leader of the House Ramesh Bagve for using government vehicles for private use on August 28.

Municipal secretary Sharad Samel also sent notices to former office-bearers mayor Dilip Chaudhary, deputy mayor Dilip Barate, leader of opposition Mahadeo Babar, standing committee chairman Sangeeta Deokar, Rashid Shaikh and Ujjwal Keskar.

Samel had earlier asked them to give information on the use of official vehicles by June 14. However, even after two months, when no answers were forthcoming, notices were served last week, with a list of places and dates on which the vehicles were used by them between January and October 2005. It gave them four days to explain.

IndianExpress: THE BJ Medical College (BJMC) authorities on Monday suspended second year MBBS student Nikhil Sahu (19) for his alleged involvement in the ragging of first year student Akhilesh Shukla (17). Shukla was made to do 200 sit-ups on August 27 in the college hostel and collapsed after he had finished 180.

On August 30, when Shukla complained of excruciating pain in the lower abdomen, he was admitted to Sassoon Hospital where he underwent dialysis following renal failure and pancreatic complications, doctors said.

The BJMC’s anti-ragging committee comprising six professors, hostel rector and the dean investigated the incident. ‘‘All the angles are being probed,’’ dean Vishwanath Yemul said, adding this was an isolated case. ‘‘Our watchmen and staff maintain strict vigil,’’ he said.

IndianExpress:  In a dare-devil act, police constable Madhuri Dhule (35) stopped a car driver from fleeing away, after hitting a motorcyclist on Monday.

According to the Deccan police, the car which was heading towards Bhandarkar Road from Fergusson College road hit the motorcyclist at Good Luck Chowk. He was stopped by Madhuri who asked for his licence. She had kept her hand on the car window, when the car driver tried to flee.

Constable Madhuri immediately jumped into the car and made a call to PSI Pratibha Joshi who was in the same area, who rushed to PYC Gymkhana and intercepted the car.

IndianExpress: THE Bundgarden police have arrested Jokhan Ramkawal Dikshit (42) and Baban Nagendra Tiwari (33), both residents of Duncan Road, Perfect Production Security, Khadki for preparing fake firearms licenses and illegal possession of firearms. According to the police, the duo, residents of Bihar, procured fake licenses from the office of Deputy Commissioner Joylin in Nagaland.

The incident came to light after the duo submitted fake documents for registration at the Pune Police Commissionerate
 

TechTree: Samsung Electronics, in collaboration with MusicNet, will be launching a new state-of-the-art digital music service, which the company claims will be compatible with all its forthcoming line of portable media players.

According to the Samsung, the underlying technology and service required for the service will be powered by MusicNet. Additionally, the content for its new subscription-based digital music service and download stores will also be provided by MusicNet.
Reportedly, the new music service will offer its customers with a library of more than 2 million licensed songs, which includes content from all of the major record labels and more than 40,000 independent labels. Further details relating to the service and pricing have not been disclosed as yet.
Initially, the music service and stores will be launched in United Kingdom, Germany, and France. They are expected to launch later this year. However, Samsung plans to expand the service throughout Europe and Asia at the later stage.

TechTree: Skype has announced a range of cordless phones that enable Skype users to make and receive both Skype calls over the Internet and traditional landline calls, without a computer.

The company has partnered with Philips and NetGear to introduce the first two cordless phones with this ability. The cordless phones are the Philips VOIP841 and another from NetGear. Both connect directly to users’ broadband connections to enable web-connectivity.

Since both the Philips VOIP841 and the NetGear cordless phones can make and receive traditional telephone calls through a landline, Skype is promoting them as replacements for ordinary cordless phones. However, the company made it clear that the phones do not replace landlines and cannot be used for emergency calling.

TechTree: SanDisk Corporation has introduced the Sansa c200 series, an open-format flash memory-based MP3 player.

The new c200 incorporates high-end features such as a bright LCD color screen measuring 1.4″ with 128 x 98 pixels and a microSD expansion slot. It is available in two capacities 1GB (gigabyte) and 2GB.

However, the memory can be expanded with an optional SanDisk microSD card available in capacities ranging from 256MB (megabytes) to 2GB.
Using the 2GB microSD card, a user can transform a 2GB player into a 4GB player that can hold nearly 2,000 songs (at 64kbps.)

TechTree: Philips has introduced a 100-inch LCD TV, which includes its exclusive Ambilight display technology, at last week’s IFA technology conference in Berlin.

Philips said that its latest prototype LCD TV measures a massive 100 inches and features four-sided Ambilight technology, called Full Surround, which is expected to create an immersive viewing experience by matching the color and brightness in the images on the screen.

In a statement, Rudy Provoost, chief executive officer, Philips, said that Ambilight backlighting is very much one of their innovative stellar products at the moment. They all know that High Definition TV is the future, but if one watches their Ambilight Full Surround, one gets a whole extra dimension to HD, an even more dramatic improvement of viewing experience.