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indianexpress: Municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi’s announcement of a crackdown on encroachments blocking streams and nallas in the city following the death of 11 people in two wall collapses at Baner and Kothrud on early Saturday has hardly any takers. Corporators and civic activists have demanded that he initiate action against the civic staff for failing to curb encroachments on nallas all these years.

On Saturday, Pardeshi had admitted that illegal structures have come up rapidly in the past decade or so in the city. A draft report on watershed management of the city had indicated that a staggering 11,846 mt of nallas in the city were encroached upon by builders, slum dwellers and gunthewari houses in the fringe areas.

However, Pardeshi has expressed his inability to take action against the encroachments in nallas. “It is impossible to demolish every construction that has come up on nallas. But we want to send a strong message that there will be zero tolerance on the blocking of natural streams. The PMC will file criminal cases against the encroachers,” said Pardeshi on Saturday.

However, there is a hitch. “The PMC cannot initiate a demolition drive against encroachments in nallas as many political bigwigs have constructed educational institutions and other constructions which have buried the streams,” admitted a top civic official.

Civic activist Vijay Kumbhar said the PMC has time and again announced drives against encroachments but failed to deliver. “The Bombay High Court’s order last year has clearly stated that civic officials should be held accountable for the encroachments. Now, as the PMC is admitting that nallas and streams are encroached upon, action should be taken against PMC officials who failed to stop encroachments,” he added.

indianexpress: The monsoon fury on Friday and Saturday claimed 21 lives in the district, including 11 due to wall collapses and one electrocution in the city. A loss of over Rs 26 lakh to livestock and dwellings was also caused, according to a report prepared by the district collectorate.

A copy of the report was submitted to the divisional commissionerate and the chief minister’s office on Sunday evening.
 
The dead included eight men, nine women and four children. A woman identified as Laxmibai Gogawle was killed after being struck by lightning in Khed on Friday.

Around 25 villages were affected by heavy rain while three houses were completely destroyed, resulting in a loss of Rs 65,000. A total of 117 houses were partially destroyed, causing a loss of Rs 21,30,536.

The rain claimed 47 animals comprising 24 oxen and 23 sheep. The total damage to livestock has been estimated at Rs 5.29 lakh.

Resident Deputy Collector Chintamani Joshi, officer in-charge for preparation of the report said: “We expect the situation to ease as the intensity of the rain had subsided since Saturday night.”

Eleven people had died in two separate wall collapses in Pune during the wee hours of Saturday. Seven deaths were reported in Baner following a wall collapse, while four members of a family residing in the hutments in Rambaug Colony area near MIT College in Kothrud were killed when a compound wall collapsed on their hut following a heavy downpour.

indianexpress: Following the wall collapse tragedies that killed 11 people — seven in Baner and four in Kothrud — on Saturday the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) initiated a drive focussing on illegal retaining walls in the city on Sunday.

The civic body served notice to a builder on Bibwewadi-Kondhwa road after it was noticed that the wall constructed by him posed a threat to eight slums in the locality. The PMC squad brought down two vulnerable walls of Shivarkar garden in Wanavadi and served notices to four slum dwellers to vacate the place immediately.
 
In Dhankawadi (survey number 20) the illegal retaining wall near a nalla and a temporary shed were demolished.

Meanwhile, a wall collapse was reported in the Meethanagar area in Kondhwa near Shivneri Dugad school. The PMC has asked the concerned builder to re-construct the wall on an immediate basis.

In Wadgaon Sheri, a drive was undertaken to clear encroachments in nallas. Some locals whose houses were inundated due to the rains in the past two days, were shifted to the Balgangadhar Tilak school in Ramwadi.

Also, eight houses in Jagtap chowk on Shivarkar Road were dewatered. Water from15 houses in Unnatinagar (Hadapsar), hutments in Sainath slums and Lohiyanagar was removed.

Meanwhile, as a result of power failure to Warje pumping station water supply to some areas in the city including Dahanukar Colony, Kothrud, Bhusari Colony, Mahatma Society, Karvenagar, Pashan, Bavdhan and Aundh was disturbed. The PMC water supply department officials said that the supply will be streamlined to these localities by Monday morning.

indianexpress: For the third consecutive day, the city reeled under prolonged power cuts on Sunday after supply lines developed technical snags and feeders broke down.

A fault in the 132 KV Mundhwa substation resulted in power cuts in Koregaon Park, Darodemala, Gadge Maharaj Basti, Kavdewadi, Madari Vasti, Bund Garden, Vidyut Nagar, North Main Road and Pune Cantonment while areas under Deccan, Dhankawadi, Wadgaon Dhayari, Narayan Peth, Gurunanak Pradhikaran, Kondhwa, Aundh, St. Mary subdivisions reeled under power scarcity the entire day.
 
The MSEDCL call centre received as many as 800 complaints from hassled citizens. A call centre staff said, “We cannot address all complaints. Detection of underground faults is time-consuming, but efforts to complete repairs are on.”

Angry citizens from Salisbury Park said they had not had power for over 36 hours since early Saturday and their calls were not being answered. Power was restored to Salisbury Park around 6 pm through generators. Superintending engineer of Rasta Peth circle Srihari Chowdhary said the delay was due to multiple cable damages.

“There were six cable faults while nine transformers tripped. We fixed six transformers by Sunday afternoon while the remaining three were put into service by 7 pm. Three generators were hired to reinstate power supply,” said Chaudhary.

MSEDCL executive engineer Rasta Peth circle RV Padhye said the department had hired at least 40 technical people to address complaints.

indianexpress: Following three days of heavy rain, the health department of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has asked citizens to take precautionary measures. On Sunday, PCMC health chief Dr Nagkumar Kunachagi asked citizens to boil water before drinking.

The health department has also asked citizens to avoid eating stale food. Kunachagi said from Monday, civic conservancy staff will undertake a major exercise of spraying insecticides on garbage dumps in town.
 
He said all the nallas in the twin industrial township have been cleared of the muck before monsoon.

Kunachagi added that a builder in Dapodi whose construction work had obstructed a natural flow of nalla has been issued a notice. “Municipal Commissioner Dilip Band has asked us to take action in places where illegal constructions exist. Whoever it may be, we are going to take action against them. We have specific directions from the commissioner,” he said.

Meanwhile, PCMC assistant municipal commissioner Dilip Gawde, who is in-charge of the flood control cell, said there were no reports of water-logging or overflowing nallas from any part of the town on Sunday. “On Saturday, we had received distress calls from six places where there was water-logging. But on Sunday, except for one tree felling incident in Pavanangar which is outside PCMC limits, there were no distress calls.”

Gawde blamed faulty constructions of housing societies for the problem of water logging.

indianexpress: The Pune Sub-Area Southern Command (HQ) along with irrigation department and district collectorate has set up a control room to monitor floods in the State, Pune Sub-Area commandant Brigadier R J Sharma said on Sunday.

“There is a flood control room at the collectorate and another in the Sub-Area Command to monitor the flood situation that will help us send men and material wherever required,” he added.
 
The irrigation department will provide the data on water release while the collectorate will give them the ground realities related to damage due to flooding, condition of the affected, where the situation has worsened, where to send personnel for rescue and where to drop food packets.

Three columns have been readied with boats, life jackets and vehicles to rush relief as soon as the collector seeks the Army’s help.

Collector Prabhakar Deshmukh too said they were prepared. “ Every village has got ten people trained in rescue and relief operations and a disaster management committee. The flood control cell has all contact details of these cells,” he added.

indianexpress: An excursion to the monsoon destination of Alibag turned into disaster for a group of Puneites when one of them, twentythree-year-old Aparna Iyer, was swept away during the high tide at Colaba fort, in Alibag on Saturday afternoon. The body washed up on the shore later in the evening and was claimed by her brother.

Aparna and her friends —Nachiket Vilas Gole (23), Girish Bhaurao Deshmukh (23) and another girl were at the Colaba fort on Saturday morning when the tide was low. A little after noon, when the high tide began to rush in warning sirens were sounded on the seashore as well as inside the fort. While most of the visitors rushed out, it appears this group stayed back.
 
To warn them of the danger, API Suresh Gaikwad of the Alibag police chowki sounded the siren twice, which went unheeded. The group was at the shore when the high tide rushed in. Seeing all of them in the water, attempts to save them were made— the lifeguards jumped into the sea and rescued Gole, Deshmukh and one of the girls. However, Aparna was swept away due to the strong current.

Alibag police said that their men were immediately sent to Thalgaon, Naugaon, Apshi, Varsoli and Koliwada to look for the missing girl. A patrolling jeep was also deputed to keep a lookout. However, all hope was lost when the body washed up at the shore at 4.30 pm on Saturday. Her brother Arun Iyer claimed the body from the Civil Hospital in Alibag.

pcworld: Creative has announced a new version of its feature-free Zen Stone music player — the Zen Stone Plus. The MP3 player has a 2GB flash memory and will have a small circular blue display. This contrasts with the Stone, launched last month, which had no screen, aping Apple’s tiny iPod Shuffle player.

The Zen Stone Plus has a built-in FM radio, clock and stopwatch as well as a microphone, meaning the player will be able to double as a voice recorder.

Songs can be dragged and dropped on to the Stone Plus, with no special software required. If it works the same way as the Stone, a reboot will be required the first time you hook up the player to your PC, after which you will be able to plug it in via a USB port and copy tracks straight to it.

Retailing at #49.99 (US$98) including VAT, the 2GB Stone Plus boasts twice the capacity of the Stone — at the lowest sampling rate of 64K, it will be able to accommodate as many as 1,000 songs. In practice, most tracks are ripped from CD or downloaded from an online store at higher bitrates than this, so storing 500 to 700 songs on the Stone Plus may be a more realistic figure.

Even so, the price of the Stone Plus significantly undercuts that of Apple’s minute iPod Shuffle MP3 player, offering almost twice the capacity for the same price. Coupled with the fact that Creative is one of the best-known brands in MP3 circles, the Zen Stone Plus could be a compelling choice for Apple iPod refuseniks.

Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative, said: “With the Zen Stone Plus, we are giving consumers another great choice. For #49.99 they can have 2GB of memory and a vibrant screen that enables them to access their favorite FM radio stations, plus a built-in microphone for voice recording. There’s even a clock/stopwatch and customizable equalizer settings.”

wired: It sounds like a pretty hypothetical problem right now, but just you wait. When future workers are marooned on the Moon or Mars for months or even years at a time, mental breakdowns will be common.

At least, this is the opinion of Rutgers School of Business, Camden professor Chester Spell. He’s extrapolated the current mental health of workers in remote locations, like Australian mining towns and Antarctic research stations, to the conditions that astronauts will experience during long duration space travel. Despite the high adventure that goes along with their careers, these workers experience higher rates of depression, and the physical woes that can go along with it.

On the Moon, the cramped conditions, extreme isolation, and lower gravity will take its toll on astronauts. And if one team member is feeling down or anxious, the mood can spread to others on the team like a “social contagion”, eventually bringing everyone down.

What’s the solution? Managers and mission planners have to put an emphasis on social interaction among the team members, and not allow anyone to “go dark”. Since help could be hundreds of thousands or even millions of kilometers away, everyone on the team will need to recognize the signs and be able to support one another.

beta: With a minimum of fanfare, the licensing body for the developers of a supplemental copy protection technology exclusively for Blu-ray Disc announced its initial specification for BD+ - which supporters had hoped would be available early last year - is finally ready for licensing to developers. 20th Century-Fox appears to be the first to board the bandwagon, having obtained a license for its developers to write for a virtual machine that will be embedded in future BD-ROM player devices.

One of the original sticking points between studios and technologists over high-definition disc formats concerned a provision of Advanced Access Copy System (AACS) copy protection that enables content providers to revoke a player’s ability to decrypt new discs’ content if the integrity of that content is found to be compromised for that player - in other words, if someone has hacked into the access keys and has posted them online, enabling others to copy the content.

While most everyone involved in the original high-def negotiations agreed that AACS’ concepts of the “clearing house” for online activation of content and its media key distribution structure were necessary, its revocation ability was a key bone of contention. So the group that would eventually form the Blu-ray Disc Association presented a three-part alternative to AACS copy protection alone - the scheme backed by the DVD Forum, which supports HD DVD.

This scheme would buffer AACS by adding BD-ROM Mark technology, which stores access keys using a secret physical location scheme rather than within a logical file (that technology is already ready to go), and something called BD+. Once studied as an alternative to AACS altogether, BD+ relies on an embedded, programmable virtual machine that gives studios the option of creating title-specific security functions - mechanisms specific maybe even to just one movie.