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indianexpress: STARTED by the Pune Municipal Corporation in 2003 to give parents the choice to educate their children in the English medium, these schools were the most-sought after ones. Four years later, the entire process of appointment of teachers is under a cloud.

In 2003, the PMC school board appointed 39 primary teachers for its English medium schools. However, the appointed candidates had passed SSC in Marathi medium instead of the mandatory English medium. In all, unauthorised appointments and transfers totalling to 386 have been made by the school board in the past three years.

Now, the civic administration has recommended strict disciplinary action against five school board employees including former chief education officer SJ Khatib, senior officer Tukaram Pawar, superintendent Aruna Gujikar, senior clerk Nirmala Deshmukh and junior clerk Mohini Gaikwad after additional municipal commissioner (general) Mohan Adtani submitted a report.

The report which recommends cancellation of ‘additional’ recruitments and scrapping of all 386 posts has now been tabled before the standing committee which will discuss it on Tuesday. Apart from the additional recruitments between 2003 and 2005, the PMC school board has recruited till now an additional 1,046 candidates when only 2,933 posts were sanctioned.

Recruitments in PMC-run schools are done after posts are sanctioned by the State government and approved by the civic general body. The school board has to publish advertisements calling candidates for interviews.

However, Adtani’s report has observed that the PMC school board made recruitments violating formal procedure. In many cases the recruitment has been made in excess of the required and approved posts. In some cases, direct appointments have been made without any advertisements.

There were discrepancies in the selection process too.

Least preference has been given to reserved posts for candidates from scheduled caste, scheduled tribes, nomadic tribes and other backward castes

indianexpress: PUNE’s skyline is all set to change with the first 22-storey residential complex coming up on a 400-acre integrated township in Hadapsar.

The high-rise is under the special township policy brought out by the State government. Real estate developers City Corporation has roped in 70 farmers from Hadapsar who have been co-opted as shareholders in the township called Amanora Park Town. City Corporation is promoted by Aniruddha Deshpande, considered close to NCP leader Sharad Pawar.
 
“This is Maharashtra’s first high-rise residential project outside Mumbai. Amanora Park Town will have 10 towers, each between 18 storeys to 22 storeys high,” said Deshpande.

The Rs, 9,000 crore township will have its own 100 MW power plant, a railway station and will be a digital city.

The township will totally consist of 16,000 apartments in ten 18 to 22-storey towers designed by the Singapore based architects P & T Consultants Pte Ltd. This includes 680 apartments of two bedroom, two and a half bedroom, three bedroom, three and a half bedroom and four bedroom luxury apartments. These will be ready for occupation in 24 months.

The township, in its second and third phases, will have similar residential towers and a 30-storey commercial complex .

A six-screen multiplex and hyper marts, schools, colleges and hospitals are part of the project.

“We have received clearances from the railway authorities for setting up a railway station and will invest in the infrastructure,” Deshpande said.

He expects the railways station to commence in the next couple of years. Amanora has partnered with Intel Inc., to develop smart cards to bring in features like shopping for groceries and paying with your thumbprint, monitoring health profiles and home protection via a laptop.

indianexpress: PUNE’s skyline is all set to change with the first 22-storey residential complex coming up on a 400-acre integrated township in Hadapsar.

The high-rise is under the special township policy brought out by the State government. Real estate developers City Corporation has roped in 70 farmers from Hadapsar who have been co-opted as shareholders in the township called Amanora Park Town. City Corporation is promoted by Aniruddha Deshpande, considered close to NCP leader Sharad Pawar.
 
“This is Maharashtra’s first high-rise residential project outside Mumbai. Amanora Park Town will have 10 towers, each between 18 storeys to 22 storeys high,” said Deshpande.

The Rs, 9,000 crore township will have its own 100 MW power plant, a railway station and will be a digital city.

The township will totally consist of 16,000 apartments in ten 18 to 22-storey towers designed by the Singapore based architects P & T Consultants Pte Ltd. This includes 680 apartments of two bedroom, two and a half bedroom, three bedroom, three and a half bedroom and four bedroom luxury apartments. These will be ready for occupation in 24 months.

The township, in its second and third phases, will have similar residential towers and a 30-storey commercial complex .

A six-screen multiplex and hyper marts, schools, colleges and hospitals are part of the project.

“We have received clearances from the railway authorities for setting up a railway station and will invest in the infrastructure,” Deshpande said.

He expects the railways station to commence in the next couple of years. Amanora has partnered with Intel Inc., to develop smart cards to bring in features like shopping for groceries and paying with your thumbprint, monitoring health profiles and home protection via a laptop.

indianexpress: TECHNOLOGY services and BPO firm Syntel Ltd has received government approval for its 40-acre IT Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Pune.

“The company’s 40-acre SEZ at Pune and 30-acre SEZ at Chennai have been notified by the government,” Keshav Murugesh, president and CEO, Syntel Ltd said. “The company will construct around 11 lakh sq ft at Pune with an investment of over $ 90 million in the next three years. This will create capacity for around 9,000 employees.”

The company is also all set to finalise campuses in a couple of Tier II locations of the country by the end of 2007.

During the first quarter, the company has already broken ground on its 29-acre campus at Chennai. “Chennai will see a similar kind of expansion. Over 10 lakh sq ft will be constructed at the IT SEZ with an investment of around $ 70-80 million,” he said.

Pune currently has a capacity for 3,200 seats. The company commenced its BPO operations in Pune in the last couple of months with a 500-strong employee strength.

“Pune will focus on banking, financial services, insurance, healthcare and automotive verticals,” Murugesh said. “In the BPO segment, the focus on offering high end financial services on the investment management side.”

The BPO segment has seen the highest growth in the company. Some 12 per cent of the company’s revenue is coming from the BPO. Syntel currently has 8,000 employees across three locations in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. By December 2007, this figure is expected to touch 12,000.

indianexpress: District Consumer Redressal Forum has directed Ruby Hall Clinic to pay Rs 50,000 to Aarti Hemant Chopde of Somwar Peth, whose newborn died due to medical negligence.

Aarti was admitted to the Ruby Hall Clinic on February 24, 1993. She delivered a baby boy on February 25 after undergoing a caesarean section. The baby fell ill on March 1 and was given saline. Soon, the baby’s right thumb turned black. The doctors asked for an expensive injection costing around Rs 1,700 and a surgery was performed. The baby however died on March 4 and according to the post-mortem report, the death was due to gangrene.

A police complaint was lodged at the Mangaldas police chowki alleging negligence on the part of doctors attending the child. It was alleged that the blood vessel got ruptured when the doctor administered the injection. The parents had spent Rs 9,459 for the operation. Subsequently a complaint was lodged with the Consumer Redressal Forum on March 6, 1995 against Ruby Hall Clinic, Rajiv Sinkar and Dr K B Grant.

An expert’s opinion was sought on the issue and Dr S R Bhende of Cantonment General Hospital, Khadki in his report stated: “Where the IV fluid line was started - was wrongly penetrated and injured the vessels leading to gangrene in the right forearm and the patient died due to septicemia.” In their order dated April 18, 2007, Forum president B R Choudhary directed the Ruby Hall Clinic to pay Rs 50,000 before May 18 failing which they would have to pay Rs 1 lakh.

indianexpress: THE NCP dominated the 14 zonal level committee polls on Friday by grabbing 7 posts while the BJP and Shiv Sena combine won five seats. The Congress could get just two posts after two of its corporators who were candidates submitted their resignations last week.

Political lobbying continued even in election process. Congress candidate Malan Bhintade contesting against NCP’s Vishal Tambe for Dhankawadi zone staged a walkout at election time. She did not vote and appeared confused in the absence of Congress corporators including leader of the party Ulhas Bagul.
 
Elections for five zones Karve Road, Ghole Road, Yerawada, Bibvewadi and Dhole Patil were unopposed and lots were drawn for the election at Tilak Road and Sangamwadi.

The winners are Pramod Nimhan (NCP) in Aundh, Ankush Tidke (Shiv Sena) in Karve Road, Vinod Orse (NCP) in Ghole Road, Shivram Mendge (BJP) in Warje-Karvenagar

Chandbi Nadaf (Congress) in Dhole Patil, Chetan Tupe (NCP) in Hadapsar, Dnyaneshwar Shinde (NCP) in Yerawada, Sunil Gogole (NCP) in Sangamwadi, Shantilal Misal (NCP) in Bhawani Peth, Manisha Ghate (BJP) in Kasba Peth, Vandana Bhimale (BJP) in Sahakarnagar, Prasanna Jagtap (Congress) in Tilak Road, Tanaji Lonkar (Sena) in Bibvewadi, Vishal Tambe (NCP) in Dhankawadi.

indianexpress: IT’S been a long wait for motorists and two-wheeler riders using the Khadki stretch of the Pune-Mumbai Highway. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has promised to repair the road so that it does not fall apart in the monsoon.

PMC’s promise stems from its new role as the controlling authority of the nearly two-km Khadki stretch. Last week municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi had offered to take it over for ensuring citizens’ safety. In a resolution passed unanimously, the Khadki Cantonment Board (KCB) decided to hand over the road to the PMC.

“The Khadki Cantonment Board has handed over the highway stretch to PMC,” said cantonment executive officer G S Rajeshwaran. “A copy of the resolution is being forwarded to the PMC for necessary action. The road is now with PMC,” he said.

Pardeshi said he has asked the city engineer to procure a copy of the resolution. “I have also directed him to prepare the estimate for the road work,” he added. Pardeshi said he would ensure that repair work was carried out before the monsoon.

The stretch needs a major overhaul. A heavy downpour is enough to riddle it with potholes. Moreover, the roadwidth does not conform to the new highway norms. While the PMC and PCMC have both been in the process of widening the highway in their respective jurisdiction to 61 mt, the Khadki stretch is barely 30-35 metres wide. Pardeshi has said if the stretch needed a major overhaul, he would get it done.

Last June, there were as many as 200 potholes which later further crumbled. All these years the road has been with the Public Works Department which did little citing lack of funds. Two years ago, at the initiative of Bopodi MLA Chandrakant Chhajed the State government handed over the road to the KCB which said it would start repairs only if the road was in its possession.

techtree: Nokia has launched the first mobile phones that include alerts encouraging people to unplug the charger once the battery is full.

The company said that mobile phones sounding a beep and displaying an alert - “Battery is full, please unplug the charger” - could help in saving enough electricity to power around 85,000 homes in a year.

Starting with the new Nokia 1200, Nokia 1208, and Nokia 1650, the alerts will be rolled out across the Nokia product range.

Kirsi Sormunen, Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Nokia, said, “Around two-thirds of the energy used by a mobile phone is lost when it is unplugged after charging, but the charger itself is left in a live socket. We want to reduce this waste, and are working on reducing to an absolute minimum the amount of energy our chargers use. The new alerts also play an important role, encouraging people to help us in this goal by unplugging their chargers.”

It is learnt that these alerts are part of a series of environmental initiatives that mobile manufacturers, led by Nokia, agreed to take action on this year. And Nokia is the first of these manufacturers to integrate these alerts into its products.

Nokia has decided to put the alerts into mass market products first to help maximize potential energy savings. The Nokia 1200, Nokia 1208, Nokia 1650 are targeting high volumes of sales in fast growing markets such as India, China, and Latin America, the company said.

The company has set its goals to further reduce energy consumption of its chargers. By 2010, it has set itself a lofty goal of reducing by an additional 50 percent the amount of electricity a charger consumes while still plugged into the mains.

bbc: One in 10 web pages scrutinised by search giant Google contained malicious code that could infect a user’s PC.
Researchers from the firm surveyed billions of sites, subjecting 4.5 million pages to “in-depth analysis”.

About 450,000 were capable of launching so-called “drive-by downloads”, sites that install malicious code, such as spyware, without a user’s knowledge.

A further 700,000 pages were thought to contain code that could compromise a user’s computer, the team report.

To address the problem, the researchers say the company has “started an effort to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious”.

Drive-by downloads are an increasingly common way to infect a computer or steal sensitive information.

They usually consist of malicious programs that automatically install when a potential victim visits a booby-trapped website.

“To entice users to install malware, adversaries employ social engineering,” wrote Google researcher Niels Provos and his colleagues in a paper titled The Ghost In The Browser.

  Finding all the web-based infection vectors is a significant challenge and requires almost complete knowledge of the web

“The user is presented with links that promise access to ‘interesting’ pages with explicit pornographic content, copyrighted software or media. A common example are sites that display thumbnails to adult videos.”

msnbc: If you take a long international flight 10 years from now, there’s a good chance the airliner carrying you will be made as much out of plastic as metal.

But not just any plastic. Tomorrow’s airliners will make extensive use of advanced carbon-fiber composite materials, much stronger and lighter than the aluminum parts they replace.

The entire fuselage skin of Boeing’s new 787 twin-engined widebody jet, due to enter service in 2008, will consist of composites. The skin and spars of the 787’s wings are made of composite material too, though the ribs that shape and stiffen the wing from front to back are aluminum.

“We looked at how every part of the aircraft was [stress] loaded, and we chose the right part for every given application,” said Tom Cogan, chief project engineer on the Boeing 787. For instance, Boeing used titanium for the large fittings joining the 787’s wings to its fuselage, because “it’s very light and it does very well in a highly loaded situation.”

Today’s airliners make use of composite materials, but not to the degree that the 787 and its future rival the Airbus A350 XWB will. Composite materials make up “roughly 50 percent” of the 787, said Cogan. The A350 XWB, which won’t enter service until 2013, will be more than 60 percent composite.

Airbus was the first manufacturer to use composite materials for load-bearing parts and flight control surfaces in airliners, but Boeing chose to use composites for the 777’s floor beams when designing the big twinjet in the 1990s.

Composite materials confer several major design advantages. Apart from being very light and very strong, they don’t corrode and they aren’t subject to metal fatigue.

The earliest-built 777s have recently undergone their first “heavy checks” — major structural inspections during which the aircraft essentially were taken apart, examined extremely thoroughly and rebuilt — and their floor beams were “pristine,” said Cogan. “We haven’t sold a single spare floor beam.”

This is great news for airlines. In the course of normal operations their jets are subject to extremes of heat and cold and — particularly on transoceanic flights — fly for long periods in moist, salt-laden, corrosive air.