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indianexpress:  PUNEITES woke up on Saturday to an incessant pounding of the rain which threw normal life out of gear throughout the day. Traffic on the Mumbai-Pune Express Highway was affected severely as vehicles ground to a halt in the Khandala ghat section due to water-logging following heavy rain in the morning and afternoon. Heavy rain and water-logging also led to cancellation of all inter-city trains running between Pune and Mumbai.

Chaos reigned supreme at Pune Railway station following announcement of cancellation of train services. Railway passengers grew restive as there was confusion all over in the absence of announcements of arrival and departures of trains. A majority of passengers complained that the enquiry counters did not respond to their queries. Most of the passengers had gathered at Platform No 1 as all other platforms were leaking and had no provision for accommodating the swelling crowds.

Earlier, heavy rain in Mumbai and adjoining areas prompted Railway authorities to cancel all the inter-city trains due to water-logged railway tracks. Besides inter-city trains, the Deccan Queen and the Sinhagad Express were halted at Lonavla and returned to Pune, said Railway PRO Y K Singh. Thereafter the Mumbai-bound Pragati Express was cancelled.

Rain lashed the city and its suburbs, throwing normal life off gear. The Cantonment court premises was also water-logged in the afternoon. Water logging on the roads, streets and parts of the city led to disruption of traffic. Snarls were a common sight on several arterial roads.

indianexpress: PUNE Municipal Commissioner Pravin Pardeshi’s decision to get the nightmarish stretch of the Pune-Mumbai highway repaired — despite the fact that it was not in actual possession of the civic body — has drawn praise from civic activists in Khadki and Pimpri-Chinchwad. The activists however have urged Pardeshi not to stop just at that, but concretise the entire stretch like it has been done in Wakdewadi.

Welcoming Pardeshi’s initiative, Domnic Lobo, former vice-president of the Khadki Cantonment Board, said that there was a pressing need to resurface the entire stretch which has killed hundreds of road users. “The current cement concretisation work which is going on just ahead of Wakdewadi should be extended right up to Bopodi chowk. The entire road then would become safe for motorists,” he said. Lobo said since PMC has decided to take care of the Khadki stretch, the confusion created by multiple agencies would end. “Now only PMC and PCMC should handle the Pune-Mumbai highway passing through the city.” Lobo had filed a police complaint against the KCB after a youth riding a motorcycle died in an accident on the shoddy stretch at Khadki.

Veteran activist Pandurang Garsund of Khadki said the PMC should put in place ducts on both sides of the highway. “Then there will be no need to dig up the road time and again.” Urging Pardeshi to widen the Khadki stretch, Garsund said only those trees that hinder smooth flow of traffic should be axed on priority.

indianexpress: WITH the India Meteorological Depart-ment (IMD) forecasting “heavy to very heavy” rainfall in the range of 65 to 124.4 mm over the next 48 hours in the State, the Pune district collectorate has flashed an alert on their SMS blaster service for the entire government machinery.

They have said that all the search and rescue teams be kept ready to tackle any eventuality. “Precautionary and preventive measures must be ensured,” reads the message. “As soon as we got the forecast from the IMD, we have flashed the message twice to all government officials concerned,” district project officer Ganesh Sonune told Newsline. The 1077 helpline number has been inundated with calls regarding the rainfall and the preparedness of the district authorities.

With a deep depression formed over east Madhya Pradesh, the Met officials have said that there would be widespread to very heavy rainfall in the State. “The State will stand to get between 7 cm and 24 cm rainfall in the next 48 hours,” said IMD director weather forecasting Rohini Lele. She said that there would be frequent spells of rain in Pune, with it recording 3 cm (32.7 mm) of rain by 5.30 pm on Saturday.
 

indianexpress:  THE Shilpa Shetty row over her alleged racial discrimination may have died down, but for the Kochhars, the battle has just begun. Pune-based businessman Subhash Kochhar has slapped a claim of 10 million USD (Rs 40 crore) on the UK and Canadian governments and the British Airways for what he calls “blatant racial discrimination and bigotry leading to his wrongful and illegal detention” at London’s Heathrow airport in March this year.

Kocchar’s compensation claim has lead to frenetic correspondence between them and the businessman’s advocate Amit Bhowmik. “We are going to fight till the end. I have never felt more humiliated in my life,” says the 61-year-old Kalyaninagar resident, now back in Pune.

On March 14, Kochhar and his wife Navilla, on way to Toronto from Mumbai for the delivery of their eldest daughter living in Canada, were stopped at the immigration at Heathrow airport. “A male white Caucasian at the immigration asked me to step aside while I was in the queue to board our British Airways flight. He said I would not be allowed to continue the journey as my passport was forged since the paper was of poor quality! They said that my wife however could board the flight,” says Kochhar.

Kocchar made his wife take the flight to Toronto while he was whisked away to the UK Immigration Department at the airport where he was made to wait on a bench outside for three hours. His passport, confiscated by the Canadian officer, was returned with a seven-day UK visa stamped on it. “The officer directed me to go to the Indian High Commission in London and get a clearance on the genuineness of my passport,” says Kochhar. But the Commission was closed. With just $ 500 and no medicines or clothes, since the baggage had been checked through to Toronto, Kochhar, a chronic heart patient, managed to reach a friend with whom he stayed the night. Next day he met Sajan Paul, assistant consular-in-charge at the Indian High Commission, who certified the genuineness of his passport. But with tickets being unavailable, Kochhar was forced to spend another two nights in the UK before he finally boarded a flight to Toronto.

indianexpress: A BABY goat that drew curious crowds to Vidyanagar in Chinchwad, died just 24 hours after it was born. The kid had congenital defect and was without a face.

“Its upper jaw and eyes were away from their normal location. It had no visible nostrils either. The breathing was through the mouth,” said Dr Satish Gore, Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation’s veterinary chief, who added such births are rare — one in five-ten lakh cases. The goat was born at 4 pm on Wednesday and died without a warning on Thursday evening. “It sipped milk, but could eat nothing,” said Bhimbabai Undre, who owns the mother of the goat. “The mother has delivered 14 healthy kids in last 10 years.”

Dr Gore said the chances of survival for such animals are almost nil. “In medical parlance, this defect is called ‘varchrignithism’ — a rare occurrence generally due to the wrong posture during the gestation period or in cases of malnutrition,” he said, adding the baby goat has a twin that survived and is normal and healthy.

Locals streamed in to take a sneak peek, considering the birth a miracle.

indianexpress: WHILE the University chowk flyover work is almost through, a big question mark hangs over the Rs 260-crore Integrated Road Development Project (IRDP) of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC).

In mid-May when MSRDC chairman Anil Deshmukh was in the city to inspect the flyover’s progress, he had said they would not undertake any further work until they get money from the Pune Municipal Corporation. Sticking to his guns, Deshmukh on Friday evening told Pune Newsline, “We have not received a single paisa from PMC. How can we proceed with the work without money?”
 
The MSRDC chief said, “We have taken a loan of Rs 100 crore at an interest rate of 14 per cent. We have completed work worth Rs 140 crore. We cannot start other works until we get the money back.” Suggesting that remaining work should be merged in the Rs 1,700 crore IRDP for Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, he said he was hopeful that the changed political scenario in Pune with the Nationalist Congress Party at the helm will help them.

The MSRDC has completed three flyovers, four railway overbridges, widening of three roads, one river overbridge and widening of Wadia overbridge till date. The work on Uday Baug railway overbridge and University chowk flyover will be completed by June end and July first week. The IRDP included 15 flyovers, nine railway overbridges, two river overbridges, widening of six roads and widening of Wadia overbridge.

indianexpress: Magarpatta Township project will soon be adding Rs 400 crore IT-SEZ component. Satish Magar, chairman and managing director of the Magarpatta Township Development and Construction Company (MTDCC), said the last phase at Magarpatta spread over 100 acres will have a 28-acre IT-SEZ. The SEZ land will be developed as soon as the final notification from the government is received, Magar said.

“Total commercial space in the SEZ will be around 22-lakh sq ft, out of which 10 lakh sq ft has been committed to a leading global IT services and consulting company,” Magar said. MTDCC, the holding company of the entire project, will invest Rs 400 crore and it will done through internal accruals and debt. A four-star business hotel with investment of Rs 125 to Rs 150 crore is slated to come up. This will be a 250-room hotel run by an international hotel chain.

cnet: Apple will release one of the most highly touted cell phones in history this week. And by next year, those first iPhones will likely be woefully outdated.

Chipmaker Texas Instruments is in the middle of ramping up for the release of its third-generation OMAP processor, a platform for cell phones. Cell phones containing OMAP 3 will hit the market in 2008, according to Avner Goren, TI’s worldwide director of cellular systems marketing.

And what will OMAP 3 phones have? High-definition video–720×1368-pixel resolution–at the high end, he said. The cameras on the phones will also be capable of shooting 12 megapixels of photos per second. That can be divided up into one 12-megapixel shot, or four 3-megapixel shots taken in burst mode.

Users will also be able to more easily zoom into relevant portions of documents or rotate files like spread sheets and Acrobat documents more easily. The phones, Goren said, will also provide better performance and be better at not interrupting a function–like watching videos or trolling the Web–when phone calls come in.

“People want responsiveness,” Goren said in an interview last week. “When you rotate an Acrobat document, there are a lot of calculations going on.”

TI has also been experimenting with a projector that can be inserted into a phone. The projector is capable of displaying high-definition movies onto a flat surface.

“There is more processing power than what can be shown on a cell phone screen,” he said. “One of the limits is the physical dimensions of the phone.”

cnet: After 18 months of sometimes inflamed debate, the Free Software Foundation on Friday released version 3 of the General Public License, a highly influential legal document that embodies the principles of the free- and open-source programming movement.

The new license adjusts to software industry changes that have arisen in the 16 years since the foundation’s founder and president, Richard Stallman, released GPL 2. One of the biggest changes: the free- and open-source programming movement has been transformed from an academic, legal and philosophical curiosity to a powerful force in the commercial computing industry.

After 18 months of sometimes inflamed debate, the Free Software Foundation has released version 3 of the General Public License.

The new license adjusts to software industry changes, as the open-source programming movement has been transformed from an academic, legal and philosophical curiosity to a powerful force in the commercial computing industry. But it carries several new provisions.

Among those giving the new license a warm reception are IBM, dominant Linux sellers Red Hat and Novell, and open-source database seller MySQL.

“GPL 3 code will be flowing from IBM…We’ll tell our customers we’re fine with it,” said Dan Frye, vice president of IBM open systems development. “As with any consensus process, you don’t get everything you asked for. But we got listened to. What came out is absolutely a commercially viable license.”

The text of the new license can be read on a foundation Web page concerning GNU (Gnu’s Not Unix), the effort Stallman announced in 1983 to create an operating system similar to Unix but free of its proprietary software constraints. The Linux kernel project, governed by GPL 2, was grafted onto GNU, and the result has been an operating system that’s widely used on servers and strongly competitive with Microsoft Windows and Unix.

msnbc: A Japanese company has created a home appliance the size of a paperback novel that can warn of earthquakes seconds before they strike.

Using the early warning system network and data provided by Japan’s Meteorological Agency (JAMA) via the Internet, the appliance sounds off a loud countdown of up to 20 seconds to the moment the tremor begins.

Security firm SunShine Co. Ltd. says this should give people enough time to hide under tables, turn off gas and fire sources or even just to move away from potentially dangerous furniture.

Starting October, the JAMA warnings will also be broadcast on television and radio and sent to mobile phones equipped to receive them, which will go on sale later this year.

But the company hopes its ‘EQGuard’, which will also be available in October, will help people who just happened not to be watching television.

“There are 51 million households in Japan and we expect this system to catch on with at least 20 percent of the households,” said President of SunShine Co. Ltd, Kazuo Sasaki.

Japan accounts for about 20 percent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.