News

IndianExpress: Municipal Commissioner Nitin Kareer on Friday said the work of the Rs 65 crore Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) pilot project on Pune-Satara and Pune-Solapur road, under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, would be completed by the end of December. He said the buses would be available on these routes every two minutes.

As per plan, the Hadapsar-Katraj travelling time would come down to 45 minutes from one hour now.

IndianExpress:  Marathi might not be their mother tongue but that does not stop them from using the language to express themselves artistically, be it on celluloid or on the stage. The number of non-Marathi actors and directors in the Marathi film and theatre industry is growing and in turn, raising the bar for others.

The king of comedy Johnny Lever hails from Andhra Pradesh but has been seen in several Marathi films — Bhootacha Bhau, Khatarnak, Ghanchakkar. “I was born and brought up in Mumbai and hence have an affinity for the language. I will continue doing Marathi films.”

IndianExpress: Over 40,000 property tax payers from Pimpri-Chinchwad, who had not paid their tax before the October 15 deadline, can now pay their tax any time through an automated cheque collection system. The first such system, installed at PCMC’s `A’ divisional office in Nigdi, will be inaugurated next week. More such machines will be put up in five other suburbs benefitting the 2.25 lakh property tax payers in Pimpri-Chinchwad.

“We are offering a 24X7 property tax paying facility for citizens from next week,’’ said department head assistant municipal commissioner Sahebrao Gaikwad. Citizens will have to place their bill in the machine and key in the bill number. “ The machine is like an ATM. It will speed up the entire tax collection process and make it uncomplicated. Cheques will have to be placed under another slot to test the authenticity. If the cheque is bogus, it will show up on the screen,” added Gaikwad.

IndianExpress: Yogacharya BSK Iyengar has handed over a cheque of Rs 1 lakh on behalf of Shrimati Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Charitable Trust to Anand Gram Society. He said that the society still runs the flour mill donated earlier by Iyengar. The society was founded by late Indumati Patwardhan in 1965 and takes care of 90 leprosy-affected patients. They offer vocational training to patients, honorary secretary of the society Philomena David said. The trust also runs a school from KG to Std VII for children of leprosy-affected patients. Currently almost 3,000 students, including those from adjoining villages are studying in the school.

IndianExpress: After the domestic companies setting up campuses in the city, it is now the turn of the multinational companies to come calling in Pune. If global giant IBM made its intention clear of employing 500 people in the city early this week, on Thursday it was the turn of Swiss financial company Credit Suisse to launch a 1,500-seat center of excellence.

“We are in agreement with our partner, Wipro Technologies, for an initial two-year commitment. It covers the lease of premises in Pune and the provision for outsourced services for a wide range of banking functions like human resource, finance and analytics,” Credit Suisse (Asia-Pacific) chief executive officer Paul Calello told Techie from Mumbai.

BetaNews: The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has turned to an IBM supercomputer to improve its climate change research. Called “Blueice,” the computer is capable of a peak speed of 12 teraflops and a sustained speed of 2 teraflops.

The purchase of the supercomputer is the first phase of a multi-year effort to modernize the research center’s computing systems and help answer climate change questions. IBM says the computer would look at problems such as the increasing severity of storms, the prevalence of droughts, and work on improving forecasting capabilities

TechTree: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has reportedly announced that it will be offering two new 2.5-inch hard drives, each with at least 200 gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity, in 2007.

In line with the industry thinking, Hitachi too believes that over the next couple of years, opportunities in the 2.5-inch segment will grow significantly.

Out of the two anticipated 2.5-inch products, one will be in the 200GB, 7200 RPM range, promising high capacity and performance, and will be available in the first half of 2007