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indianexpress: NEARLY 328 child labourers were found engaged in hazardous and non-hazardous occupations in the city during April and May.

Of these, 77 children under the age of 14 have stopped going to school. Instead, they go in search of new work every day, ranging from construction, cleaning train compartments, to collecting empty plastic bottles.
 
For 70 others, their daily task is to collect the city’s garbage.

Over 20 children are employed in shops, including those selling gutkha and country liquor.

These are the findings of a survey conducted by child rights organisation Childline which will soon be submitted to the State government.

The survey began after a meeting on April 24 at YASHADA convened by district collector Prabhakar Deshmukh, attended by labour department officials and Childline representatives. “Childline volunteered to conduct a study to list child labourers in the city, and identify areas for implementation of government schemes,” said Childline director Anuradha Sahasrabuddhe.

The statistics in the survey were derived from calls received at the Childline office from April 1 onwards, as well as ongoing cases being pursued by its volunteers. Childline also surveyed five slums at Vishrantwadi, and one each at Mangalwar Peth and Shivajinagar. “We conducted surprise inspections at eateries and tea stalls between Vallabhnagar on Pune-Mumbai Road and Pimpri from April end to May 31,” said Sahasrabuddhe.

“There could be an organised trafficking racket, since many children are from Rajasthan, UP, Bihar, and so on,” she added.

While Childline has already begun discussions with the children, the parents and local well-wishers on rehabilitation a detailed proposal will now be submitted to the State government, suggesting measures like special schools under the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) and schemes like Mahatma Phule Shikshan Hami Yojana.

indianexpress: IF the spelling errors in the standard X Marathi textbooks were exposed on Monday, glaring errors have now come to light in the geography textbooks as well.

The three districts of Nandurbar, Washim and Gondia are completely missing from the map of Maharashtra, which is shown as part of the state map of India on the second page of the textbook. Apart from this, maps in the textbook are not according to scale. There are also many mistakes in the names of various villages, and the Golden Quadrilateral scheme has been wrongly named in the Marathi medium textbook.
 
These mistakes came to light after the final draft of the textbooks was obtained by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opposition leader Vikas Mathkari and Pune Municipal Corporation education board member Dilip Kamble. The final draft was prepared after the entire procedure of editing and proofreading was completed.

Meanwhile, as details in the errors in the Marathi textbook became clear, it has been revealed that there were as many as 264 spelling errors. The Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education had issued orders in April to withdraw the 13-lakh textbooks already been printed, and start re-printing. In a new development, however, it has been found that even the newly printed textbooks have mistakes, with one chapter and two poems omitted from the books.

All this has delayed the process of printing, and the textbooks are not yet available in the bookstores. Mathkari said the BJP has demanded the resignation of Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research (Balbharati) director Vasant Kalpande. “We will meet State Education Minister Vasant Purke on Wednesday to discuss this issue,” he said.

indianexpress: COME January and 10 students from Oberlin College, Ohio, will be in India to study Bollywood. The trip, sponsored by Oberlin College and funded by Minneapolis Foundation, would be spread over two weeks in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. The tour begins at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in Pune where the students hope to gain a historical perspective on the Indian film industry.

“I have been in touch with NFAI’s director and he will organise day-long lectures on Indian cinema during our visit there,” said Anuradha Needham, faculty member at Oberlin who will lead the delegation with Steven Volk. While Needham teaches Anglophone Literatures of the Third World, in addition to courses on postcolonial theory and Third World feminism, Volk is teaching Latin American History at Oberlin.
 
“The college recently began a cinema studies programme in which Indian cinema is not included yet. I have been wanting to develop a course on this cinema. Last year, I organised Ravi Vasudevan’s visit to Oberlin to teach a six-week module on Indian cinema, which also included a background for this trip,” said Needham who is writing a monograph on Shyam Benegal tentatively titled The Making of a National Film Maker.

While doing her research for the monograph, Needham delved into popular Indian cinema and the idea for the study tour came up.

According to Needham, they had double the number of applications for the trip than the seats for which funding was received. “The students are all Americans and very excited about the programme,” she said.

indianexpress: Pune farmers will soon have a corporate partner. Helping them usher in agricultural best practices and take advantage of government schemes that otherwise go untapped will be the Aditya Birla Foundation that is looking to replicate a project that it has already rolled out in Thane.

“The main objective is to act as a catalyst between the government, villages and the farmers. Farmers usually have little idea that both the state and central governments run special schemes for them. So these schemes remain unnoticed since very little information reaches the farmer. The Aditya Birla group is running a similar project in Thane,” Rajashree Birla, director, Aditya Birla group, said.
 
The Thane project, implemented in 150 villages, is being run through the Vasavadatta Foundation. The project, that offers assistance to farmers in Thane by way of hybrid seeds, irrigation and agricultural equipment, will be replicated in Pune.

“The project will be rolled out in Pune by the year-end. Since the Aditya Birla Foundation is running the Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital here, the project will fall under the same foundation. A survey will be undertaken soon to ascertain the villages that could come under the ambit of this project. No decision has been taken on the funding yet,” she said.

The group is also planning to set up a temple in Pune. “We are currently scouting for land in Pune for the temple that will be dedicated to Ganesh,” she said. The group invests Rs 90 crore in various social projects annually

indianexpress:  A SYMPOSIUM focused on strengthening police response to HIV was held where senior police officers joined hands with Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society, civil society organisations and groups working on HIV prevention among marginalised populations to prevent the spread of HIV.

Pune district has an estimated HIV prevalence of 1.8 per cent. Not only are men in uniformed services such as the police more vulnerable to HIV, as law enforcers they have a major role to play among groups vulnerable to HIV such as sex workers, drug users, men who have sex with men
 
Sankar Sen, IPS, and former director, National Police Academy, said it was their duty to uphold the rights of citizens, particularly marginalised sections such as sex workers.

“Many are playing an important role in HIV prevention by spreading safe sex messages in their community,” he said.

Prakash Sabde, project director, Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society (MSACS), said the police had a large role in HIV prevention as they not only help maintain law and order but also act as a link between vulnerable populations and society. In addition, they must safeguard themselves from it. “HIV is a great leveller. As police officers we ask that you first respond to it as a person,” he said.

The symposium was organised by the Avahan India AIDS Initiative with support from Constella Futures and Pathfinder International. The objective was to create a cohesive strategy to prevent and combat HIV. It explored ways of strengthening collaboration between different stakeholders such as the police and marginalised communities such as sex workers, injecting drug users and men who have sex with men.

Prabhat Ranjan, Joint Commissioner of Police, said HIV awareness levels in the police were not adequate to protect them from HIV. “We must educate our ranks and file on safe sex practices,” he said. It was decided to train trainers and peer educators from the police staff to disseminate HIV prevention messages among the police force at all levels. Pathfinder International will conduct training programmes for the police stations at Pune, Shivajinagar, Swargate and other places in the city. Around six lakh people are infected with HIV in the state.

indianexpress: SPECIAL Judge R Y Shaikh has remanded corporator Rajendra Namdev Kachi (50), till June 14. The Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Monday arrested Kachi, the corporator of Ward No 79, for accepting a bribe of Rs 1 lakh from businessman Shantilal Rawal (40). Rawal had complained to the ACB saying that he had been forced to pay the bribe.

Additional Public Prosecutor D Y Jadhav said that Kachi, being a public servant had violated the citizens’ trust and described the case as a prime example of white collar crime. Jadhav said in the audio cassette — which bears the conversation between Kachi and Rawal about the bribe — the name of Corporation’s city engineer Prashanth Waghmare was also frequently heard. Kachi’s interrogation will provide more information on this, he said.
 
Jadhav explained that as most of the bribe-related conversations had occurred over a mobile phone and an audio tape, samples of Kachi’s voice were needed in order to compare it with the voice on the tape. Procurement of samples would be facilitated in the police custody, he said.

Jadhav demanded that Kachi should be kept in custody in order to question him about the involvement of the other corporator, Aba Bagul.

Kachi’s lawyer, advocate Pratap Pardeshi said that remanding Kachi in order to arrest corporator Aba Bagul was unnecessary as Kachi was willing to cooperate with the ACB.

Pardeshi also argued that as the amount had also been recovered, Kachi need not be confined to custody. Kachi argued that the complainant being from the Nationalist Congress Party had falsely implicated him.

techtree: Apple Computer’s newly-launched ‘Safari 3′ is the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use Web browser for Windows PCs and Macs, claims Apple.

The company expects Safari to join the ranks of iTunes in delivering a legendary user experience to both Windows and Mac users.

The ‘Safari 3′ browser features easy-to-manage bookmarks, easy tabs for effortless browsing, and built-in RSS reader for quick scanning of latest news and information.

Speaking on the occasion, Steve Jobs, Chief Executive Officer of Apple, said, “We think Windows users are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive Web browsing can be with Safari. Hundreds of millions of Windows users already use iTunes, and we look forward to turning them on to Safari’s superior browsing experience too.”

Apple has always maintained that Safari is the fastest browser on the Mac. Now the company is saying Safari is the fastest browser on Windows as well, loading and drawing Web pages up to twice as fast as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, and up to 1.6 times as fast as Mozilla Firefox 2.

Besides, Apple says the speed of Safari combined with its intuitive user surface would allow users spend more time surfing the Web, and less time waiting for pages to load.

Other features of Safari now available to Windows users include: SnapBack for one-click access to an initial search query; resizable text fields; and private browsing to ensure that a user’s browsing history is not stored.

Safari 3 for Windows requires Windows XP or Windows Vista, a minimum of 256 MB of memory, and at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Whereas, Safari 3 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.9 or later, a minimum of 256MB of memory, and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4, or G3 processor and built-in FireWire.

Meanwhile, a free test version of Safari 3 is now available to the public as download at http://www.apple.com/safari. The final version would be available as free download to users of both Mac OS X and Windows in October this year, the company said.

techtree:  Come Wednesday, June 13th, Microsoft India will reportedly hold a four-day mega IT event dubbed “TechMela 2007″ at the Renaissance in Mumbai.

With a theme that reads, ‘connecting experiences through technology’ “TechMela 2007″ promises coverage of technologies including mobile, embedded, next generation Web, user experience, security, infrastructure management, and unified communication.

The event will be addressed by key speakers the likes of Sam Pitroda, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Ravi Venkatesan, and leading lights from AMD, Nortel, Rediff, and Accenture.

Corporate head honchos and thought leaders will exchange perspective on whether or no IT drives the levers of change in business.

The spotlight of course will be on Microsoft’s Gen-Next Web offerings, including Expression Studio and Silverlight, as also the company’s many initiatives towards convergence of mobile, PC, and Internet technology.

Microsoft says it is for the first time that an event of such large scale will cater to multiple audiences; both developers/designers/IT professionals and technology/business decision makers.

Sprucing up the show would be an exciting Sumo Robot contest with developers in a neck-n-neck race with real Sumo robots.

Reportedly, TechMela is an evolution of the erstwhile TechEd, Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference (MEDC), IndiMIX and IT Professionals’ conference

cnet: The PC power chain has to got to get in shape, according to a group of technology companies.

Google, Intel and a host of PC and component companies on Tuesday unfurled the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, an effort to increase energy efficiency in PCs.

At the heart of the initiative is a push to get PC makers and consumers to adopt more efficient power supplies and voltage regulators. These two components, working together, convert AC power from a wall socket to 12-volt DC power that a computer uses.

Roughly 50 percent of the power delivered from a wall socket to a PC never actually performs any work, according to Urs Hölzle, Google fellow and senior vice president of operations. Half the energy gets converted to heat or is dissipated in some other manner in the AC-to-DC conversion. Around 30 percent of the power delivered to the average server gets lost, he added. The power in both cases is lost before any work is accomplished by a computer: later, even more energy is lost by PCs sitting idle, or as heat dissipated by other components.

By adopting more energy-efficient components, PCs and servers can utilize 90 percent or more of the electricity delivered to them. Google’s own servers, in fact, are already 90 to 93 percent efficient.

“This is not a technology problem. We have power supplies with 90 percent efficiency shipping today,” Hölzle said.

The problem is cost, said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president of the Digital Enterprise Group at Intel. Making a PC more power efficient in this manner adds about $20 to its retail cost, and it adds about $30 to the cost of a server.

techtree: On Saturday, Nokia launched its new Nseries multimedia device, the N92, which the company claims is the world’s first Digital Video Broadcast Handheld (DVB-H) enabled handset supporting Live Broadcast Mobile TV.

Nokia’s announcement follows the recent launch of DVB-H Mobile TV services in Delhi by national broadcaster, Doordarshan. Currently, DD’s service comprises 8 popular free-to-air DD channels, including DD National, DD News, DD Sports, DD Bharati, DD Urdu, DD Punjabi, DD Bangla, and DD Podhigai, supported on DVB-H compliant handsets.

At the Nokia launch, Vineet Taneja, Director of Multimedia, Nokia, said, “We are glad to bring the Nseries flagship device the new N92 to mobile users in the country. With the growing popularity of mobile devices, and their capability to offer instant access to information and entertainment, this initiative will bring in perfect synergy between television content and the mobile platform.”

Nokia claims its N92 is the world’s first 3G/GSM device to feature an integrated DVB-H receiver. The N92 works in conjunction with DVB-H technology to deliver live digital TV broadcasts, making it as easy for consumers to tune into TV channels on the device as it would be within the comfort of their homes.

With the N92, users can set reminders to watch their favorite TV programs, create personal channel lists, and subscribe to TV channel packages.

In a new form factor that is apt for watching TV on-the-move, the N92 has a large 2.8-inch anti-glare QVGA screen with 16 million colors and dedicated media keys.