News

indianexpress: Workers of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) Shivajinagar unit, led by president Sandeep Kale, shut Lush, one of the city’s biggest pubs located on Dhole Patil Road, on Sunday at around 12.40 am. A group of 70 people, armed with saffron flags stormed into the pub chanting slogans, got on to the dance floor and asked nearly 100 couples to leave.

The workers had also forced another popular city restaurant Soho in Kalyaninagar to down its shutters on June 30, as a ‘protest ‘ against pub culture.
 
On Sunday, after disrupting the pub’s activities, they called up Bund Garden police and asked them to lodge a complaint against the pub owner for violating the 11.30 pm deadline and check the liquor licence of the pub as well as those of the party-goers. They alleged that a majority of the pub-goers were underaged and were being served alcohol without checking if they had the mandatory liquor licence.

They also cited loud music played by the pub as a nuisance to senior citizens in the nearby societies.

At Lush, the pub’s bouncers led by owner Tehsin Poonawala prevented and even threatened The Indian Express photographer from taking pictures. The police arrived late and shooed away the rest of the revelers.

indianexpress: The palkhis (palanquins) of Sant Dnyaneshwar and Sant Tukaram will be arriving in the city on Monday morning for the customary two-day halt. Sant Dnyaneshwar palkhi commenced its journey on foot to Pandharpur from the banks of Indrayani at Alandi, some 22 kms from the city on Sunday. Earlier, the Sant Tukaram palkhi left Dehu on Saturday. The palkhis traditionally meet at Mari Aai Gate on the Pune-Mumbai highway and further commence their journey together with lakhs of devotees from across the state participating in the annual affair.

To ensure a smooth and safe passage of the palkhis, the city and rural police have made traffic and security arrangements, which were announced in advance.

Many organisations have come forward to make arrangements for the stay of the warkaris (pilgrims), in the city on Monday and Tuesday. Besides making arrangements for food and lodging in Nana Peth, the Sakhlipeer Talim Rashtriya Maruti Mandir has organised stock of medicines, four ambulances, in addition to the official arrangements by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) health department, said Mandal president Ravindra Malwadkar.

The Dnyaneshwar palkhi halts at Palkhi Vithoba temple and the Tukaram palkhi at Nivdungya Vithoba temple.

indianexpress: There seems to be ray of hope for the Suvarna Sahakari Bank Sangharsha Samiti finally. The samiti hopes that depositors will get their money back as the state cooperative department is wielding its power to recover the losses.

In a press release issued on Sunday, the samiti said that the total losses suffered by depositors were worth Rs 348 crore and the recovery and sale of property owned by the bank’s chairman Dyaneshwar Agashe has helped recover around Rs 250 crore. “The samiti will pull up its socks to recover the remaining amount of Rs 100 crore from Agashe and others who have duped the bank,” the release said.

The samiti has also assured every assistance for the merger of bank with any other bank.

Members of the samiti have assured all support to the administrator of the bank.

“Secretary of cooperative societies Ratnakar Gaikwad has convened a meeting of depositors to decide the further course of action where along with the members, the cooperative commissioner and other government officials will be present,” the release added.

The samiti has appealed to its members to extend their cooperatation in the procedure of recovery as well as the possible merger of the bank.

indianexpress: The anti-power theft drive launched by Maharashtra State Energy Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL)’s special squad has yielded good results: A total of 1,334 cases of electricity theft and 776 cases of illegal electricity connections were detected with recovery amounting to Rs 17.8 lakh.

In all, 255 cases under section 135 and 138 of Electricity Act 2003 and 332 cases under section 126 of the Act have been registered. Around 4,788 illegal hooks have been removed so far.

In a statement released recently, MSEDCL Acting Chief Engineer, Pune Division Ashok Gujar said the special squad detected electricity theft amounting to Rs 5.51 lakh by Asha Cold Storage in Kothrud.

The company has now paid Rs 2 lakh against the stolen electricity. Similarly, a recovery of Rs 10 lakh has been done in Shivajinagar and Bhosari areas of the city,’’ Gujar added.

The anti-power theft drive started on June 18 and has been extended for the next 15 days. Gujar added that surprise raids and checks are being carried out in areas prone to electricity theft.

A number of offenders have been made customers of MSEDCL along with distribution of forms for those interested in subscribing to new electricity connections.

Meanwhile, MSEDCL authorities have activated its control room for disaster management in the wake of heavy rainfall in the city.The control room is headed by an officer of the rank of executive engineer and works round the clock.

indianexpress: With 100 days left for the World Military Games to be held in Hyderabad, the Pune Cantonment Board (PCB), Pune Sub area head quarters, Bombay Engineering Group Centre (BEG), College of Military Engineering (CME, Khadki), NDA, Army Institute of physical Training (AIPT), Army Sports institute (ASI), Military Hospital Cardio Thoracic Centre (MHCTC) and Command Hospital (CH) held a tree plantation programme as part of its promotional drive on Sunday. Schools in the Cantonment area were a part of the drive .

Speaking to Newsline, Brigadier R J Sharma, president, PCB said that the emphasis would lie on the survival rate of the trees. “Our garden supervisor will constantly help the children in ensuring that the trees survive. We will monitor and supervise their growth,” he said.

Sharma said that the saplings were a mix of different varieties. “We planted shady trees along the road sides, kept the ornamental varieties for the inside lanes and the fruit trees in select protected areas,” he said.

Military forces of 109 countries are expected to participate in the World Military Games to be held in Hyderabad from October 14 to 21.

Meanwhile, INS Shivaji in Lonavala also launched a greening drive, which included officers and sailors and saw the planting of around 5,000 saplings. The Air Force Wives Welfare Association and the Army Wives Welfare association also pitched in.

indianexpress: They came to the city all the way from Orissa, lured by promises of wages for work at a construction site. These labourers were paid small amounts for petty expenditure. But when the work got over, the contractor vanished. With little or no money and stranded in a strange city, the labourers had nobody to turn to till an alert government officer and office bearer of a labour union took up their cause and brought them justice.

The 22 adivasi and dalit labourers from Orissa’s Balangir district, had been hired to work at the construction site of the Air Force Residential Quarters located on Pune-Nagar Road. The contractor who hired them, Bansidhar Shahu, disappeared once the work was over.

The credit for giving these labourers their due wages goes to Bandhkam Mazdoor Sabha activist Nitin Pawar and State labour officer Wagh. They spotted the labourers loitering in the Labour Office premises and brought the matter to the notice of the higher authorities.

“While the smallest of thefts is reported, labour exploitation is not even considered a crime. Therefore many labourers are denied their wages despite their hard work. The time has come for labour exploitation to be declared as a criminal offence,” says Pawar.

An officer was sent to survey the construction site. However, the Army authorities refused to permit an inspection stating that the area was off-limits as it belonged to the Army. Meanwhile, the Mazdoor Sabha also approached the Union Labour Commissioner.

bbc: US plane manufacturer Boeing has unveiled its 787 Dreamliner - the firm’s first all-new jet since 1995.
The success of the aircraft - billed as the most environmentally-friendly ever built - is regarded as vital to Boeing’s future in industry.

Boeing says it already has more than 600 orders. The first test flight is expected in August or September.

Sunday was chosen for Dreamliner’s premiere as it is 8 July, or, in the American date style, 07/08/07.

Hours before its debut in Seattle, Boeing said it received 35 new orders for the plane.

The orders, from Air Berlin and a leasing firm, mean Boeing now has 677 orders from 47 customers for the midsize, long-haul jet.

It is due to go into service next year, with Japan’s All Nippon Airways set to be the first recipient as a reward for placing orders for 50 of the aircraft.

cnet: Mobile-gadget makers are starting to take advantage of software-defined radio, a new technology allowing a single device to receive signals from multiple sources, including television stations and cell phone networks.

But a new federal rule set to take effect Friday could mean that radios built on “open-source elements” may encounter a more sluggish path to market–or, in the worst case scenario, be shut out altogether. U.S. regulators, it seems, believe the inherently public nature of open-source code makes it more vulnerable to hackers, leaving “a high burden to demonstrate that it is sufficiently secure.”

If the decision stands, it may take longer for consumers to get their hands on these all-in-one devices. The nascent industry is reluctant to rush to market with products whose security hasn’t been thoroughly vetted, and it fears the Federal Communications Commission’s preference for keeping code secret could allow flaws to go unexposed, potentially killing confidence in their products.

By effectively siding with what is known in cryptography circles as “security through obscurity,” the controversial idea that keeping security methods secret makes them more impenetrable, the FCC has drawn an outcry from the software radio set and raised eyebrows among some security experts.

“There is no reason why regulators should discourage open-source approaches that may in the end be more secure, cheaper, more interoperable, easier to standardize, and easier to certify,” Bernard Eydt, chairman of the security committee for a global industry association called the SDR (software-defined radio) Forum, said in an e-mail interview this week.

cnet: Researchers in the Netherlands say they have come up with a way of using lasers to speed up magnetic hard drives by a factor of 100.

A paper published by Daniel Stanciu of the Institute for Molecules and Materials at Radboud University Nijmegen describes a method of using ultrarapid pulses of polarized light to heat up areas on a hard disk and, crucially, using the same light to change the polarity of those areas. The polarity of the disk storage medium is reversed by reversing the polarity of the laser pulses, according to a report in Science.
 
Sprint breaks up with high-maintenance customers
 Stanciu was not available for comment, but in the abstract accepted for publication by the Physical Review Letters, he wrote, “We experimentally demonstrate that the magnetization can be reversed in a reproducible manner by a single 40-femtosecond circularly polarized laser pulse, without any applied magnetic field.”

This optically induced, ultrafast magnetization reversal, he says, was previously believed impossible, and it is the combined result of femtosecond laser heating of the magnetic system to just below the Curie point, and circularly polarized light simultaneously acting as a magnetic field.

Similar effects have previously been used in magneto-optical storage devices, but those used a magnetic field applied by conventional means, not by the laser.

cnn: Australian and international scientists have launched a search for the genetic secrets of the humble Eucalyptus tree, which is native to Australia and highly prized as a source of fibre for producing paper.

With over 700 different species, eucalypts include some of the fastest growing woody plants in the world.

 The Australian government-backed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) said on Wednesday that an international effort had begun to decode the Eucalyptus genome.

“We are identifying the trees that have superior genes that influence the way wood is developed,” CSIRO scientist Simon Southerton said.

“Qualities like wood stiffness, density, pulp yield, responsiveness to stresses such as salt and drought and overall growth rates will be linked with particular genes, making future breeding programs more efficient,” he said.

The scientific effort is led by Alexander Myburg of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, with the support of the United States Department of Energy.

Australian scientists, in conjunction with counterparts in New Zealand, will be among the first to collaborate on the project, CSIRO said.

The project would have long-term benefits for both the Australian plantation sector and the conservation of native forests, Southerton said.