News

IndianExpress: AS part of its nationwide drive in the high profile Navy war-room leak case, a seven-member team from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday swooped down on the residence of Ravi Shankaran, prime accused in the case and kin of retired Naval chief, at Bhavani peth here. The CBI team along with regional transport officers were in the city to seize a blue-coloured Mercedes that was purchased by Ravi Shankaran a year-and-a-half ago.

Ravi Shankaran has been declared an absconder after he failed to appear before the CBI. His passport has been revoked and bank accounts frozen. A red corner notice has been issued by Interpol

IndianExpress:  With only five months to go for the general elections, Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation is witnessing significant political activity in the shape of two BJP corporators, one former MLA belonging to NCP and one senior Shiv Sena leader set to join the Congress.

All four are from Bhosari, which will soon become a Legislative Assembly constituency as per the delimitation committee recommendations.

IndianExpress: THE Pune Municipal Corporation is incorrigible when it comes to awarding roadwork to contractors whose work has been rated as shoddy by the civic body itself. Soon after receiving a directive from chief secretary D K Sankaran to fix the city roads immediately the PMC, has once again turned to an erring contractor to do the job. In a sequel to last week’s instance when the standing committee awarded work to the tune of Rs 1.38 crore to Sunshine Paving Pvt Ltd, on Tuesday it was the turn of Thakar Constructions to benefit from PMC’s benevolence.

IndianExpress: WITH the Federation of All Maharashtra Petrol Diesel Dealers’ Association calling off their indefinite ‘‘no purchase campaign’’ on Tuesday, the district administration also withdrew the Essential Commodities Act. ‘‘We have withdrawn the Act effective this (Tuesday) evening. The situation is normal,’’ district supply officer Apporva Wankhede said.

The federation decided to call off their stir after they were given assurances by the Union Petroleum Minister Murli Deora and Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel that they would ask the State government to slash the sales tax on transportation fuel. The federation has demanded a cut in sales tax from 34 per cent to 26 per cent.

IndianExpress: FROM Thursday, a 225-gm loaf of bread (ladi) will cost Rs 5. The Maharashtra Bakery Producers’ Federation on Tuesday decided to hike the price by Re 1 to meet the rising costs of wheat flour, refined flour and sugar.

Buns that cost Rs 14 a dozen will cost Rs 16 while broon will cost Rs 24. Not just bread, but prices of cakes, pastries and coconut cookies are also set to rise.

BetaNews: An exploit discovered yesterday by security consultancy Sunbelt and verified by Microsoft this afternoon involving the Vector Markup Language (VML) library in Windows could potentially affect not only users of Internet Explorer, but also of the current beta of Office 2007.

Like so many recently discovered vulnerabilities, this one too involves a twist on an old exploit that Microsoft may have thought it patched back in 2004. But this new VML buffer overrun may be of more critical importance now than two years ago, since VML is now a standard component of the Office Open XML format — the default file format of the next edition of Microsoft Office.
 

TechTree: Today, Lenovo launched its ThinkCentre A60, the world’s first ThinkCentre desktop PC with an AMD processor. ThinkCentre A60 is available in a mini-tower or small desktop, and incorporates dual-core processing, improved virus protection, and recovery tools for customers looking for manageable desktops.

Lenovo says offering AMD’s Sempron, Athlon 64, and Athlon 64 X2 dual core processors on a ThinkCentre A-Series desktop is an industry-first that promises customers more flexibility than ever before. A60 is designed to deliver exceptional performance on commonly used applications, and makes for faster and easier downloading and processing, thus saving valuable time and money

TechTree: MSN has announced the beta release of Soapbox, a user-uploaded video service, in USA.

Soapbox allows users to upload, discover, and share personal videos with the Soapbox community and others around the world. It will be available on MSN Video, and will be deeply integrated throughout Microsoft’s portfolio of online services, including Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Messenger

TechTree: Creative Technology has reportedly introduced its Zen Vision W portable video, photo, and MP3 player.

With a 4.3-inch wide-screen high resolution color TFT display, the Zen Vision W allows viewing of up to 240 hours of video, tens of thousands of photos, or storing of up to 15,000 songs.

The Zen Vision W features a built-in compact flash slot, which enables easy import of photos directly from a digital camera without a PC. The player comes with a plug & view slot on the side that supports both compact flash type I and type II media. In addition, an optional compact flash adapter plugs directly into the compact flash slot to accept other types of popular memory cards, including SmartMedia, MultiMedia, and Secure Digital cards

TechTree: Adobe Systems has announced that its Acrobat 8 Professional software will be integrated with its Creative Suite 2.3 Premium, which enables
printers automatically fix problems identified during pre-flight review in PDF.

As such, Acrobat 8 Professional will enhance Creative Suite 2.3 plus its support for Adobe’s PDF workflow, with the help of advanced tools for creating, collaborating, and controlling output of high-quality files.

Adobe also said that in future versions of Creative Suite, Dreamweaver 8 that supports best practices and broader Web workflows, will be integrated as a replacement for Adobe GoLive. Whereas, GoLive will be developed as a stand-alone product.