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indianexpress: IF the Sixth Pay Commission heeds to the National Defence Academy’s (NDA) proposal, then around 1,800 cadets at the training academy will start getting a stipend of Rs 10,000 per month.

“We have proposed a stipend of Rs 10,000 for the cadets and the proposal is with the Pay Commission,” NDA Commandant Air Marshall T S Randhawa said on Monday. As of now, cadets get funds from home that is deposited with the authorities and in turn get Rs 400 per month from them.

The proposal was routed through the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The decision to pay the stipend will benefit the candidates as they do not come under the Army service rules and will follow the academy’s rules.

The move is to attract quality cadets to the defence services. Last year, the NDA had asked for raising another squadron of cadets, taking the strength from the present 1,800 to 1,920. “There is a shortfall of 10,000 officers in the Army and around 3,000 each in the Navy and the Air Force. We need such a move to tide over the shortfall,” Randhawa said.

Though the raising of a squadron has got an in-principle approval, senior academy officials said it would take at least two years for cadets of the new squadron to get inducted into the NDA. “We cannot increase the strength of the officers in the Army, Navy and Air Force overnight. It will definitely take some time before we can augment the shortfall.”

The arrival of 120 cadets would mean new infrastructure facilities like accommodation and training that has been taken into consideration. The total cost work out to be around Rs four-five crore, the officials added

indianexpress: DON’T restrict yourselves to papads and pickles. Look beyond. You should have your own bank in five years. This is what Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar told women from Self Help Groups in Pune district recently. They may not be setting up banks yet, but they are branching out into new business ventures.

Women in Sangamner, about 130 kms from Pune, have come together to set up a Rs 40-lakh solvent extraction plant to make neem-based pesticides. The units, which should start rolling in the next couple of days, will process neem seeds and make neem kernel oil — a natural pesticide. Not a new business for the women of Nirmiti Mahila Industrial Cooperative at Sangamner, they have been perfecting this at their tiny unit since 2003 with a shed and an old machine.
 
“We have a turnover of Rs 50 lakh, supplied to farmers in Sangamner, Nashik, Ahmednagar, Pune and Satara. But because we could not meet the demand, an expansion plan was drawn up to set up a larger unit,” says Shalan Shelke, chairperson of Nirmiti. “We were processing 20 to 25 tonnes till now, but we can go up to 500 tonnes with the new unit,” says Shelke. Neem seeds worth about Rs 10-15 lakh — collected by women from dozens of the surrounding villages — are ready to crush and churn out the Nirmiti brand neem oil.

Nirmiti Ind Coop is an offshoot of the Nirmiti SHG which has brought together 3,500 women. Around 800 of them are member of the industrial coop and have put in Rs nine lakh of their own funds for the project. Shelke said the State Bank of India (SBI) has funded Rs 25 lakh for the plant.

indianexpress: THE PMC on Monday admitted that unauthorised constructions on nallas and lack of storm water drains may result in water logging in the city in the coming monsoon.

“The city has an inefficient storm water drain system. For the 1,800 km roads, in the last one year PMC has added 50 km storm water drainage, but even this is insufficient. Though roads are being repaired ahead of monsoon, potholes will pop up if water logging happens,” said development engineer Vivek Kharwadkar.

Municipal Commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi said, “The PMC has made provision of Rs 250 crore for roads. Also Rs 550 crore from the JNNURM will be utilised for roads. But it is unauthorised constructions on nallas and tributaries in merged villages that block water flow which leads to inundation.”

indianexpress: WHILE the Pune Municipal Corporation presented a budget of Rs 1,681 crore for 2007-2008 on Saturday, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is likely to have a Rs 900 crore budget, an increase of Rs 300 crore from last year.

The highlight is the provision for improving the standard of living of women through social schemes will be doubled. The budget is likely to be presented in early July.
 
Municipal Commissioner Dilip Band said his administration has decided to increase the budgetary provision to help women. “Last year, we had made a provision of Rs 5 crore. For 2007-2008, we are reserving Rs 10 crore for implementing various schemes aimed at improving their lot,” he said. The focus will be on health, education and self-employment schemes.

Band’s response came after Shiv Sena MLC Neelam Gorhe led a delegation to the PCMC on Saturday, demanding a gender-responsive budget. Gorhe made several suggestions to improve living conditions of women. Band said, “All the suggestions will be taken up. Even before they requested us to reserve more funds, we have already decided to do that,” he said. Gorhe said she had demanded that the PCMC implement schemes for rehabilitation of rape victims, reducing dropout rates, improving sanitation condition and making financial schemes available to women not covered so far. “We have already implemented the gender-responsive budget in Aurangabad and pushing for it in all municipal bodies in the State.” She said the gender-responsive budget concept has been advocated by the Central government.

indianexpress:  THE Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) has decided to open an Urdu medium school for its residents from the socio-economically backward sections .

The PCB’s general body recently sanctioned the proposal for a school after it received a suggestion from Ishaque Jafar, general secretary of the NGO Tanzeem-E-Waledain Urdu Schools, Pune to open one in the premise of one of PCB’s own education institutions for the forthcoming academic year. Ghorpadi Village High School, Swami Vivekanand Primary School and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Primary School at Ghorpadi Bazaar are the options.
 
Tanzeem-E-Waledain Urdu Schools, working towards the upliftment of linguistic minorities, requested PCB to open a school in the Cantonment area — especially in Ghorpadi — so children belonging to low income group families would not have to travel far. In fact, distance had become a factor in many children dropping out, which had contributed to the illiteracy in the area. Around 500 families live in Vikas Nagar, Ghorpadigaon, Madar Vasti, Kawade Vasti, Mudhwa and Keshava Nagar areas in Ghorpadi.

The PCB executive officer S K Sardana told Newsline that the board had received the sanction necessary to start the school, scheduled to be implemented from the academic year starting June. “It was a long pending demand of the Cantonment residents to start an Urdu medium school. All those interested in enrolling their wards for admission to the school are welcome,” he said.

The board authorities have decided to start with kindergarten and standard I classes. Thereafter they plan to add more classes as the school strength grows. “We aim to make it a model Urdu school in the city,” Sardana also said.

A nominated member of the PCB — instrumental in pushing the proposal through — said the general body has decided to start a school in the premises of the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Primary School, Ghorpadi Bazaar from June. “Our aim is to provide quality Urdu education to Cantonment residents at affordable and subsidised rates,” he said.

indianexpress: AFFIRMING the charge doing the rounds for long that the Pune Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) was implemented in haste, municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi on Monday admitted that the project was executed even while its engineering drawing was not in place.

Answering a question raised by BJP corporator Ujjwal Keskar, Pardeshi said, “The engineering drawing of the project is incomplete. Once it is done other things like cycle track will move further.”

Traffic planner Shriniwas Bonala said the work on footpaths, cycle track and signaling system would be done once the engineering design was complete. Notwithstanding with the ongoing process of merger between Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad municipal transports, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Friday had announced auctioning some of the PMT routes in city to reduce the per km cost.

Congress leader Aba Bagul said that the PMT should purchase new buses instead. “This will help PMT to give efficient service to citizens,” he said.

According to the commissioner, even after the merger of the two transport bodies, the PMC will continue to play a role as a shareholder in the new transport company. “The PMC will continue to work on the BRT route after the merger as per requirement,” Pardeshi said.

The house witnessed exchange of heated words when the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) members alleged that the Congress and MP Suresh Kalmadi implemented the JNNURM projects including the BRTS in haste ahead of the civic polls to gain political mileage.

“It was the Congress that placed pictures of its leaders in advertisements and hoardings taking credit of bringing JNNURM funds to the city,” said former deputy Mayor Dilip Barate.

Congress leader Aba Bagul countered Barate and said the NCP leaders should not forget that they had jointly ruled the PMC last time.

techtree: With two new stores opened last week, Cartridge World now has in its kitty 4 stores in aamchee Mumbai, 1 in Kolkatta, and 1 in Bangalore.

The company, which has 1,500 stores spanning 40 countries, started India-operations in November 2006, according to Naveen Rakhecha, CEO of Cartridge World (South Asia).

Kick-started as a one-stop shop for consumers looking to fulfil their printer-related needs, some of the products Cartridge World stocks include: OEM printers and inkjet and laser cartridges of brands such as Hewlett Packard, Epson, Canon, Lexmark, Samsung, and Xerox; specialty paper for photographic prints; and fax and office supplies.

However, as Rakhecha says, the ‘core business’ of Cartridge World is refilling and refurbishing of empty inkjet and laser cartridges of all brands, thus helping customers re-use their used cartridges.

At Cartridge World, a refurbished cartridge typically comes for half the price of a new cartridge of that brand, claims Rakhecha.

Besides, they take care to ensure that the customer does not have to compromise on quality while saving money. Rakhecha says the refurbished cartridge is given to the customer only after testing parameters like quality and output, along with a money-back guarantee.

And, according to Rakhecha, those who choose to refill their used cartridges, are inadvertently preventing further depletion of Earth’s valuable natural resources.

Rakhecha says the kind of customer response they have received has made them buoyant, and that they are now looking at setting up about 50 stores by the year end.

techtree: According to an IANS report, Google is planning to digitise at least 800,000 books and manuscripts that are lying at the Mysore University in Karnataka.

The Mysore University library has around 100,000 manuscripts written on both paper and palm leaves, including India’s first political treatise, the ‘Arthasastra’ written in the 4th century BC by Kautilya.

Commenting on the initiative, J Shashidhara Prasad, Vice Chancellor of Mysore University, said this is an effort to restore and preserve this rich cultural heritage for effective dissemination of knowledge.

The literature to be digitised is written either in Sanskrit or Kannada, and comprises manuscripts on Ayurveda, Mathematics, medicine, science, Astrology, and Economy. ‘Arthasastra’ and other paper manuscripts of the Wodeyar dynasty of Mysore are included in this.

Prasad said that the digitised versions of manuscripts would be patented depending on exclusivity, and would also be printed, once the digitisation work was over.

Reportedly, Google will be digitising these manuscripts as well as 700,000 other books free-of-cost. The idea behind digitising for free is to get free links to these materials once the necessary patenting is complete.

Google will also provide expertise, software, and manpower for the digitization work. Whereas, Mysore University is training some of its select Physics students to help in the digitisation process.

Though no time spell has been given by the university on the completion of the project, once complete, they said they would allow students, scholars, and historians from all over the country to access this vast knowledge base.

Meanwhile, ‘TimeShift’ will be available on the PS3 gaming console in autumn this year, and will debut at the ongoing Sony’s Gamer’s Week event in San Diego, California.

techtree: Sierra Entertainment, a division of Vivendi Games, and Sabre Interactive have announced that the game of ‘TimeShift’ will be available on PlayStation 3 (PS3) along with its Xbox 360 and PC versions.

The company says that ‘TimeShift’ is a first person shooter (FPS) video game that immerses the player in a deep storyline, as the main character is equipped with a unique quantum suit that slows, stops, and reverses the flow of time.

With a robust multiplayer experience, gamers can take time control powers online with up to 16 players battling it out across seven game modes. Gamers can customize their own game mode, choosing from over 60 options and 14 multiplayer maps.

‘TimeShift’ features more than 30 combat missions, each showcasing time control elements and challenges that players must complete using both extraordinary capabilities and combat expertise.

Besides, an array of devastation inflicting weaponry from the world’s alternate timeline will be available to the player. This includes: bizarre incarnations of traditional sniper guns, machine guns, pistols and more, and armaments from an era that the game’s makers say looks like nothing humanity has ever seen.

Speaking on the occasion, Al Simone, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, Sierra Entertainment, said, “Sierra Entertainment and Sabre Interactive are changing the way gamers play FPS games by giving them the ultimate weapon, ‘time’. ‘TimeShift’ will compete with the best shooter games of the year on any platform, and will offer PlayStation 3 gamers a visceral new experience unlike any they have ever seen or played before.”

bbc: A British climber has set a world record by making a mobile phone call from the top of Mount Everest.
In the early hours of 21 May, Rod Baber made two calls from the mountain’s north ridge.

In the first call Mr Baber described the view, how cold it was and what he wanted to do when back at base camp; he then rang his wife and children.

The calls were made possible when China set up a mobile base station with a line of sight to the north ridge.

Mr Baber set off from the UK for the Himalayas on 30 March and since mid-April has been getting used to living at high altitude.

Prior to 15 May, when the final ascent began, Mr Baber and the other members of the expedition had been trekking up and down Everest to familiarise themselves with the route and prepare their bodies for the punishing ordeal.

To make the call at the summit, 8,848 metres, Mr Baber had to contend with high winds and temperatures of -30 degrees. The call was made to a voicemail account created by sponsor Motorola to ensure the attempt was recorded.

Mr Baber also did not have much time to make the call because those climbing Everest typically only stay at the summit for 15 minutes. Making such a call is dangerous as talking into the handset meant he had to remove his oxygen mask.

Batteries for the Motorola handset he used were taped to his body to ensure they stayed at a high enough temperature to power the phone.

Mr Baber also claimed a separate record for sending the highest text message.

From base camp before making the attempt to reach the summit of Everest, Mr Baber said: “Everest symbolises the greatest challenge to any climber.” He added that making the call from the mountain was a “once in a lifetime” opportunity.