News

IndianExpress:  If the Germans came trooping in to learn from Pune’s mistakes of bad infrastructure, a World Bank team is in the city to study Pune Municipal Corporation’s Slum Sanitation Programme for replicating it in developing countries with hygiene problems.

The representatives from five countries, where the World Bank is implementing Water and Sanitation Programme, are in the city to study the slum programme initiated in 1999-2000 under the then municipal commissioner and current Yashada director Ratnakar Gaikwad.

IndianExpress: Amidst festivities and a host of international sportspersons — both former and current — the city on Sunday reminded its citizens that there were ‘750 days to go’ before the curtains go up on the Third Commonwealth Youth Games in 2008.

With Olympians Anjali Bhagwat, Tejaswini Sawant, Dhanraj Pillay, Kamlesh Mehta and equally renowned Balkrishna Akotkar, Adille Sumariwalla being the guests of honour, a ‘Countdown Bus’ decked in the Commonwealth colours was flagged from the Shaniwarwada Fort to commemorate the Games first landmark

IndianExpress:  Showing scant regard for their own rules, senior Army officers in their vehicles entered the walking plaza on MG Road on Sunday. The road is out of bound for vehicles on Saturdays and Sundays from 4 pm to 10 pm.

The incident happened at around 7 pm when two Army vehicles — 03 B 086139 E and 82 B 22714 — and a tourist taxi on Army duty — MH 12 AU 2811 — drove into the walking plaza zone. All the three vehicles were carrying senior Army officials in civilian dress, accompanied by their family.

IndianExpress: With the city witnessing a spate of bank robberies, it was the alertness of two traffic policemen attached to the Sahkarnagar traffic branch that helped in foiling another robbery. Traffic constables Dilip Aba Jadhav and Bhagyawan Dnyandev Nikam helped in nabbing one of the three persons who tried to rob Bank of Baroda’s ATM branch at Wonder City on the westerly bypass.

The constables were on duty at the Katraj-Dehu Road bypass when at around 2.15 am on Friday they heard windows being smashed at the Wonder City building. They found three unidentified persons trying to get into the Bank of Baroda’s ATM that was located on the ground floor of the building

IndianExpress: The body of college student Samir Konale (22) was found in the Mutha near Sainath Nagar on Sunday afternoon. The Yerawada police said Samir may have jumped from the Dengle bridge near Pune Municipal Corporation on Friday. The police and the fire brigade were searching for him and the decomposed body was found after the water level decreased on Sunday. He was identified by the licence found on him. The police said Samir was the son of a retired magistrate. The Deccan police is conducting further investigations.
 

IndianExpress: An unidentifed person robbed a security agency operator’s residence and decamped with a car, jewellery and a laptop. The entire loss has been estimated at Rs 4.37 lakh.

Sun Security Agency operator Sameer Ashok Mango, who has two offices at Magarpatta Road and Fatima Nagar filed a complaint at the Hadapsar police station that his Indigo car, jewellery and laptop were stolen from his residence at Shrishti Apartment on Magarpatta Road when his house was locked between Saturday and Sunday morning.

News.com: Honda, the car maker that floored the world in the 1970s with the first gasoline engine to meet U.S. clean air guidelines without a catalytic converter, said it has developed a new and simple diesel power train that is as clean as gasoline-fuelled cars.

The technology marks a big step forward for Honda at a time when rivals are racing to come up with ways to clear the world’s strictest emissions regulations, called Tier II Bin 5, that the United States will usher in next year.

Diesel engines, which now power half of Europe’s new cars, are slowly gaining traction with fuel-conscious consumers around the world since they typically get 30 percent better mileage than gasoline cars. Their weakness has been the higher exhaust levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx), a greenhouse gas.

News.com: In another move to promote its new “Montecito” Itanium processor, Intel will begin selling “white box” systems that can be emblazoned with other computer makers’ logos.

White boxes, which are generic systems that companies can brand, are typically geared to market segments where it’s harder for those companies to differentiate their products. Although Intel is best known as a processor maker, it also sells white box systems–both in bare-bones configurations or with memory and hard drives installed