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indianexpress: A MEETING that was well attended by teachers, school principals, counsellors, women and child rights’ activists, lawyers and doctors on Wednesday whole-heartedly supported sex education in schools and challenged the government’s proposed move to ban it.

The session conducted by organisations like Sangram, Muskaan, Aalochana and Centre for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation at Lokayat hall in Erandwane saw participants unanimously agree that the need of the hour is to provide information to children about sexuality. “Many of us who work with children and young people in schools feel that such a ban is a retrogressive move. It is necessary to inform and educate them about sexuality, as well as issues of abuse and violence,” said Simrita Gopal Singh of Muskaan.

The issue of whether the ban on sex education will be applied in Maharashtra was also raised at the meet. “The government needs to clarify its stand as it does not have the jurisdiction to ban CBSE books dealing with sexuality and sex education in Maharashtra,” said Meena Seshu of Sangram.

Most of the activists agreed that it was also important to talk about ‘sexual health’ and not just limit discussions to sexual abuse, violence or diseases. They said that with a possibility that other information avenues like the internet getting exploited, it is better that sex education be imparted at school level. “It is essential to oppose this ban and look at the text books under question and see if there is anything really objectionable in them, Seshu pointed out.

While need was expressed for a broader meeting with more groups involved in the discussion, the organisations have now sent a letter to the government demanding that the latter clarify its stand over the ban.

indianexpress:  RELIANCE Retail began operations in Maharashtra with the opening of four pilot Reliance Fresh outlets in the city on Wednesday that will provide fresh fruits and vegetables, groceries, dairy products etc. Apart from the four stores at Sujay Garden, D P Road, Mantra Mall, Salunkhe Vihar and Geetai, four more are slated to open in next month.

CEO, Reliance Retail, Gurinder Kapur said the company was looking for stores with separate entrances so that they could begin to sell non-vegetarian food items after three months. A separate counter will be set up for selling Reliance branded products under the label Reliance Select.
 
It will be sourcing produce from the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) and has obtained a Grade A licence for the same. Reliance Fresh will also be going to 18 cities in Maharashtra with a network of 125 stores, which will become operational in the next six months, Guninder Kapur, CEO Reliance Retail said.

The Cash and Carry format store that is slated for a launch in Bangalore soon could also find its way to Pune.

indianexpress: A FOUR-year-old boy drowned in a swimming pool located in Siddheshwar Housing Society in Vishrantwadi on Wednesday evening. The boy was identified as Narendra Kumar Thakur alias Monu. The body was found by some children who were swimming in the pool. He was rushed to Sassoon General Hospital but was proclaimed dead on arrival by the doctors.

According to the Vishrantwadi police, the pool, owned by Siddheshwar Housing Society was opened for the society’s children on Thursday. Monu drowned while he was in the pool where the water was four-foot deep, the police said.

The society’s chairman JP Singh confirmed Monu’s death but refused to comment on how he died.

Other society residents maintained that the pool was unclean when the incident occurred.

Police inspector AV Ghuge of Vishrantwadi Police Station said: “A four-year-old boy died after he drowned in a private swimming pool in Siddheswar society in Vishrantwadi and the body has been sent to Sassoon General Hospital for post mortem. We are yet to register a complaint in this case. We are awaiting all details.”

techtree: Intel has advanced its enthusiast-level quad-core processor family with the introduction of the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX6800.

The company’s twelfth quad-core processor, QX6800, runs at 2.93 GHz - the fastest native clock speed yet reached.

Intel said that the new processor is ideal for those gamers, digital design professionals, and enthusiasts who crave the highest performing computers they can get their hands on.

At the recent Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, several software developers demonstrated new games that have been “threaded” to take advantage of multiple processor cores and threads.

Intel believes that the increased performance of its new processor can help deliver smoother game play, more realistic game effects, and more life-like artificial intelligence.

Some of the most exciting titles of the year such as Crytek’s Crysis, Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander, and Flagship’s Hellgate London have undergone substantial joint engineering efforts to use more than two processing threads to their advantage.

In fact, one of the first games ever developed for the PC, “Flight Simulator X,” is also entering the quad-core era, and according to Intel, is a great match for extreme multi-core processing delivered by the new Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor.

The latest version of the game with service pack one (SP1) is due to be out later this month.

techtree: Samsung has announced it will soon start producing a 24-inch LCD panel with LED backlight that enables PC monitors deliver unprecedented color quality.

The new 24-inch LED-backlit LCD monitor will feature an industry-high color saturation level of 111 percent (of NTSC standard) as compared to 72 percent for conventional monitors.

According to the company, the LED backlight will enable demanding consumers, professional graphics designers, and digital photographers to enjoy the same true-to-life colors that premium LCD TVs provide.

In addition, the 24-inch screen size is most suited for systems equipped with Windows Vista, as against conventional thinking that Vista works best with a 22-inch screen, which is actually not wide enough to support full-HD.

Industry experts are now voicing the view that 24-inch provides a better Windows Vista fit to also include the Vista right side bar and margins.

Samsung claims its new 24-inch LCD display with vivid colors as representative of one of the most advanced monitor screens available today.

Besides, the display features the company’s highly successful S-PVA (Super Patterned-ITO Vertical Alignment) technology that provides the widest viewing angle possible of 180 degrees at the highest contrast ratio of 1,000:1 for LCD monitors. It also supports WUXGA resolution (1,920 x 1,200 pixels), which is the computer equivalent of full HD resolution.

Moreover, the backlight is environmentally-friendly because it does not utilize mercury, which is harmful to the environment.

Samsungs plans to start manufacturing the 24-inch LCD panel with LED backlight in the second quarter of the year.

techtree: Transcend has announced a new 2GB microSD memory card with dual adapters.

The microSD card is approximately 20 percent the size of a fill-sized card, and comes with full-size SD adapter for multiple uses such as saving pictures, MP3 music, or MPEG 4 video clips in MP3 players, digital cameras, mobile phones, smart phones, or PDAs.

Of the two adapters, one can be used for standard SD card slots, while the other for miniSD card slots.

According to the company, this new card is the smallest memory card in the world with dimensions of 15mm x 11mm x 1mm.

The growing popularity of high-resolution digital cameras, digital video cameras, mobile phones, and PDAs has led to an increase in demand for higher performance and bigger capacity flash memory cards. And Transcend claims the new card to be perfect for the next generation of mobile phones and portable devices, which include a memory card slot as standard.

The new microSD card with dual adapters will be available in the coming weeks in two capacities; 2GB and 1GB at an approximate price of Rs 1,750 and Rs 900 respectively.

techtree: Transcend has announced a new 2GB microSD memory card with dual adapters.

The microSD card is approximately 20 percent the size of a fill-sized card, and comes with full-size SD adapter for multiple uses such as saving pictures, MP3 music, or MPEG 4 video clips in MP3 players, digital cameras, mobile phones, smart phones, or PDAs.

Of the two adapters, one can be used for standard SD card slots, while the other for miniSD card slots.

According to the company, this new card is the smallest memory card in the world with dimensions of 15mm x 11mm x 1mm.

The growing popularity of high-resolution digital cameras, digital video cameras, mobile phones, and PDAs has led to an increase in demand for higher performance and bigger capacity flash memory cards. And Transcend claims the new card to be perfect for the next generation of mobile phones and portable devices, which include a memory card slot as standard.

The new microSD card with dual adapters will be available in the coming weeks in two capacities; 2GB and 1GB at an approximate price of Rs 1,750 and Rs 900 respectively.