News

IndianExpress: In the last few days, prices of essential commodities like wheat, rice, bajra, edible oil, vegetables, groundnut, and even flattened rice (poha) have gone up and are unlikely to come down for the next few months.

“There is little chance of the prices coming down for the next couple of months till the new crop arrives in the market,’’ said Poona Merchants’ Chamber vice president Rajendra Bathia. “The prices of several commodities have gone up because of three reasons — huge purchase from farmers at higher rates by multi-nationals, damage to crops due to excessive rains and forward trading,’’ he added.

Grahak Panchayat president Suryakant Pathak said the price hike was the result of allowing forward trading in the commodity market and having no control over purchase of agricultural produce by multi-national companies. “From the way prices of pulses like chana dal and udid dal have been fluctuating, one can say it is due to hoarding. On the other hand, increase in rice prices is due to large scale purchase of paddy by multinational companies.’’

IndianExpress: After having established itself as the premiere auto and IT hub of the country, Pune is now inching its way to become the design centre of the global companies. Latest to join this bandwagon is Italian driveline systems major, 617 million-euro Carraro Group that has set up a 1 million-euro global design centre - Carraro Technologies India — at an IT park, Gigaspace, at Vimannagar here on Tuesday.

Carraro Group already has a presence in Pune when it opened Turbo Gears India Ltd 11 months ago at Ranjangaon near Pune and invested Rs 110 crore in the plant.

“Carraro Technologies India will focus on futuristic products for the global market and design futuristic vehicles for tractors and earth moving equipment. The centre will work on design of transmission systems to entire vehicle engineering,” group chairman Mario Carraro said. The company will employ 25 engineers by this year-end and ramp up to 75 engineers soon. The group has three design centres in Italy, one in Germany and one in Argentina.

IndianExpress: The Aditya Birla Centre for Community Initiatives and Rural Development on Tuesday announced the formation of Rs 1.2 crore charitable fund.

The fund will be used for treatment of poor and the needy at the Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital at Chinchwad that was inaugurated by the centre chairperson, Rajashree Birla, on Tuesday.

“Today, we have realized the dream of my husband Aditya Vikram Birla, who envisioned a world-class healthcare facility in the country. Initially, we had scouted for 13-acre in Central Mumbai, which was difficult to find. We liked the place in Chinchwad, so we decided to set up the hospital here,” she said.

An independent committee of doctors, NGOs and socio-medical people will decide on disbursal of funds and beneficiaries. The Rs 140-crore “Medicity” spread over 16 acre will initially have 300 beds and will soon be upgraded to 500 beds.

IndianExpress: On Monday, when 55-year-old Chhabutai Landge went to the Yeshwantrao Chavan Memorial Hospital (YCMH) in Pimpri to get the anti-rabies vaccination after being bitten by a stray dog, she was told the hospital had run out of stock of the medicine, Rabipur.

Having tried medical stores in Sant Tukaramnagar, Nehrunagar and Pimpri, the Kasarvadi resident drew a blank at all ends. Finally, her son managed to procure the medicine from Pune for Rs 335. The next day, Chhabutai found the medicine at a shop in Chinchwad.

And she is not the only one. Scores of people in the Pimpri-Chinchwad area are faced with the non-availability of the medicine as all the eight Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation-run hospitals are short of stock for almost eight months now. Add to this, the YCMH hasn’t received a single dose of the medicine since Saturday.

IndianExpress: As the December deadline to install LPG kits in 9,055 autorickshaws as per the recommendations of the Bhurelal Committee recomendation nears, the Pune Municipal Corporation will provide subsidies for the conversion kits.

While the actual procedure was to begin in October last year, it was delayed due to unavailiability of LPG kits as none of the suppliers had permission from the Automative Research Authority of India. Over 4,500 autorickshaws have already been converted.

IndianExpress: The Faraskhana Police on Tuesday rescued five minors who were allegedly forced into bonded labour. Acting on a phone call by an unidentified caller, a police team raided the jewellery shop located on the second floor of Nandan Heights in Ravivar Peth. They arrested the owner Riazul Mohammed Ali Malik and rescued five minors from the shop. According to the police, the children in the age group of 10-16 years were forced into bonded labour by Malik. According to the police, the children hail from WB and now have been sent to a remand home

News.com: Sun Microsystems on Tuesday announced its new Sun Blade 8000 P chassis, a smaller model geared for high-performance technical computing.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company’s first model, the Sun Blade 8000, measured a whopping 33.25 inches tall, a significant jump over competing products from Hewlett-Packard and IBM. The 8000 P is a more modest 24.5 inches tall and is meant for compute clusters rather than mainstream business computing tasks.

The 8000 P, like its sibling, can accommodate as many as 10 blades, each with four Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices, Sun said. However, it has fewer power supplies and a simpler input-output system than the previous model. The 8000 P chassis costs $7,495; the starting price for the four-processor server module is $14,600. The system can be ordered now but won’t begin shipping until February, Sun said.

TechTree: Dell India has launched three Dimension Desktop computers: the E520, the E521, and the C521; all aimed at home users and small businesses.

The main thing about these desktops is that they can be customized to suit specific needs, be it office or entertainment applications.

Dimension E520 and Dimension E521 are highly expandable and upgradeable; while Dimension C521, at around half the size of the E520 and the E521, offers mainstream entertainment features.

All new systems are Microsoft Windows Vista capable, and offer several performance features, multimedia options, and designs.

Each Dimension desktop ships with Microsoft Windows XP Home, and incorporates the Dell QuietCase technology that allows the system to operate quietly in homes/offices

TechTree: Infineon Technologies has unveiled its “miniature” silicon microphone for consumer and computer communications devices, which is claimed to be approximately one-half the size, and operates on just one-third the power required by conventional microphones.

The company says the new microphone, based on silicon MEMS (micro-electrical-mechanical system) technology, achieves the same acoustic and electrical properties as conventional microphones, but is more rugged and exhibits higher heat resistance.

It is learnt that the new silicon MEMS microphone can withstand temperatures of up to 260 degrees Celsius, and is much more immune to vibrations and shocks. And due to high temperature-resistance, it can be soldered without difficulty onto any standard PCB, and is ideally suited for use on fully automated production lines common to mass-market consumer products.

TechTree: To give organizations a way to offer individual employees and group members a personalized home page, Google has introduced its personalized home page feature for organizations.

Meant to be a central access point for Google Applications (Google Apps), the new personalized home page feature for organizations will function as a Google Apps Start Page, a sort of sized-down version of the central overview of Google Apps.

Google Apps was launched by Google in August this year, and is a set of Web-based business software targeted at small business users.

While the latest feature is intended to help businesses, schools, and non-profit organizations set-up individual Google home pages with shared news feeds, calendars, and expense systems; individual users would retain the freedom to add new and instantly updating features to their home pages.