News

indianexpress: OVER six lakh Warkaris did what fellow members of the Bhagwat sect prevalent in Maharashtra have been doing for seven centuries. They accompanied the palkhis of Sant Dnyaneshwar and Sant Tukaram from Alandi and Dehu on the annual pilgrimage to Pandharpur, some 220 km from Pune. They arrived on Monday to tumultuous welcomes at nooks and corners as they progressed towards the heart of the city for a two-day halt before proceeding to the holy town to celebrate Ashadhi Ekadashi at Vitthal Rukmini temple.

Mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale welcomed the palkhis as they entered the city’s jurisdiction— the Dnyaneshwar palkhi at Kalasgaon-Mhaskewasti and Tukaram palkhi at Bopodi chowk on Mumbai-Pune highway. The palkhis reached Kamalnayan Bajaj chowk at Wakdewadi late in the afternoon — Tukaram palkhi at 3 pm and Dnyaneshwar palkhi at 5 pm.

The Warkaris, chanting and singing, had been trooping in since Monday morning. The festivity was marred, perhaps for the first time, by a clash between Shiv Sena and Republican Party of India workers over putting up a banner welcoming the Warkaris leading to tension in Yerawada area on Monday.The incident did not affect the religious fervour of the palkhis’ arrival in the city.

Sena corporator Sagar Sawaram Malkar, who was shot at by Sachin Dhiwar from the rival group, was recuperating at a private hospital in Yerawada. Dhiwar and his accomplice Praveen Nikam have been admitted to Ruby Hall Clinic for treatment, the Yerawada police said.

The incident occurred at around 1.30 am near Sai Hotel on Alandi Road after Malkar rushed to the spot when his supporters were not allowed to put up the banner resulting in an altercation between the groups. Dhiwar pulled out a country-made revolver and fired from close range. The bullet grazed Sagar’s left cheek, the police added.
 

indianexpress: THE Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has set an ultimatum to residents of Bhosari along the Pune-Nashik highway to demolish their structures standing in the way of road widening. The residents have been set a deadline of 9 am on Tuesday, failing which the civic body will move in to demolish all the structures.

This comes after the Bombay Highway Court on Monday dismissed an appeal by local residents, seeking to protect their structures from civic hammer.

Municipal Commissioner Dilip Band said immediately after the high court ruling, notices were issued to residents and shopkeepers to demolish their structures on their own. “If they don’t do it by 9 am on Tuesday, our squad will act,” he said on Monday.

Men and machinery, including 20 trucks, JCBs and cranes,were ready to carry out Tuesday’s anti-encroachment drive. “It will be similar to the Chinchwad demolition drive,” said Band.

In his notice to the residents in Bhosari, Band said, “Those who have been served the demolition notices should raze their structures on their own. Otherwise the PCMC will do the demolition job in which case residents should not hold the PCMC responsible for any loss or damage.”

City engineer Eknath Ugile said 650 notices have been issued to the residents and shopkeepers. “Shops, buildings, residences, chawls, all encroachments that come in the way of road widening will be removed on Tuesday,” he said.

The PCMC wants to widen the Pune-Nashik highway at Bhosari. “Plans are to build an overbridge to reduce the growing traffic congestion at Bhosari chowk,” Band said, adding that the demarcation line had already been drawn.

Ten months ago, when the PCMC had issued demolition notices to the residents, they had appealed in the high court which asked the civic body to maintain status quo. On Monday, the court lifted this order, PCMC officers said.

indianexpress: If Pune has caught the attention of global automotive players, with its claim to be the wannabe Detroit of India, it’s not without reason. The cauldron is fairly boiling over with the Rs 1-lakh car nearing completion at the Tata Motors stable, General Motors readying its new plant as is Volkswagon, both in the Talegaon vicinity, DaimlerChrysler adding trucks to its portfolio, Bajaj Auto getting into four-wheelers, Force driving in Mann trucks from Germany, Piaggio launching its new four wheeler range and the Fiat-Tata combine revving up new models at its Ranjangaon facility.

While the world is watching closely how the Rs one lakh Tata car shapes up, there is no denying that the small car will script India’s future as an automobile manufacturing hub. Indians view development of small cars, in general, and inexpensive cars, in particular, as their country’s contribution to the global automotive industry. They consider design, development and manufacturing of these services as their country’s niche as well as a way to fulfill the needs of Indian buyers. Many of the buyers will migrate to four-wheelers not only because of increase in GDP per capita but also because of the development of small, inexpensive four-wheelers.

This is what ‘Inside India – Indians view their automotive future’ — a report based on the study conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value and the Automotive Analysis Division of the University of Michigan Transportation Research in India says. This report is part of the Go India strategy for IBM.

“India is the largest provider of automotive industry services within IBM. So IBM has got its global automotive leadership team from all geographies to India for three days for a meeting,” Sanjay D Rishi, global leader, automotive industry said. Rishi said global auto industry sees India as a small-car manufacturing hub for both India and the export market.
 

indianexpress:  DIRECTORS and Associate Directors of two city-based research organisations were awarded the Ministry of Defence, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) awards by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, recently.

B Rajagopalan, who is the Director of Research and Development Establishment (Engineers), R&DE (E) received the Defence Technology Spin award for Biometric Equipment, for having successfully designed life-saving biomedical equipment such as hyperbaric chamber, nitric oxide therapy system and high altitude breathing apparatus.

Joint Director R&DE(E) N B Vijayakumar, received the Agni award for designing main mobile hydropneumatic launcher prototype and power supply system.

Director of High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL), Subhananada Rao received the award for the development of the Explosive Detection Kit which is capable of detecting and identifying explosive ingredients used in a blast.

indianexpress: THE Joint Forum of BSNL Unions and Associations of Non Executives and Executives staged a dharna in front of the PGMT Office on Pune-Satara Road on Monday protesting against the delay in settling the 45.5 million cellular lines contract.

On March 22 last year, the BSNL Board issued a tender for a capacity of 45.5 GSM lines following which five leading companies submitted their bids — Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens and ZTE. However, Motorola approached the Delhi High Court against BSNL’s decision to disallow it from bidding for the contract.
 
The company however withdrew its case on April 16 this year after which a committee for evaluation of tender (CET) submitted its report to the BSNL Management. The report was approved and the Advance Purchase Order (APO) was ready for release. Now, the BSNL Board alleges that despite the court case, orders to take the deal further have not been issued by the government causing the company losses.

“Every month we are suffering losses amounting to Rs 55 crores and a two year delay has also cost us our customers,” said joint secretary of the BSNL employees union, N K Nalawade. Nalawade said that the case filed by Motorola was a conspiracy of the private operators.

indianexpress: THE palkhis of Sant Dnyaneshwar and Sant Tukaram Maharaj reached Pune on Monday.

The traffic scene spelt chaos. It was thrown out of gear for over four hours in the evening and normalcy was restored as the palkhis proceeded to their halts on Laxmi Road by late evening.
 
Since the morning, the old Mumbai-Pune highway faced many acute traffic snarls. Several Pimpri-Chinchwad commuters preferred to travel by train to reach Pune rather than use the highway. Meanwhile, highway commuters were stranded near Kasarwadi and several junctions.

Due to the many traffic jams on highway, the Regional Transport Office (RTO) and Jehangir Hospital chowk were among the points which faced acute snarl-ups. In the city, roads like Jangli Maharaj Road and Fergusson College Road had to be partially closed during the day.

The Jangli Maharaj Road faced bumper-to-bumper traffic as the flow of vehicles to Shivajinagar was re-routed from Kumbharwada to the Pune Municipal Corporation via Balgandharva Rangmandir and the palkhi was travelling via Fergusson College Road.

techtree: Logitech has introduced its line of notebook peripherals with the Premium Notebook Headset designed for laptop users and users on-the-go.

The Premium Notebook Headset promises an enhanced experience of Internet calling applications like Skype.

The headset sports a compact portable design, and has a behind-the-head adjustable fit. When not in use, it can be folded flat and slipped into the provided travel case.

Logitech’s notebook headset features a noise-canceling microphone, and in-line volume and mute controls. Connecting through digital USB ports or traditional analog (3.5mm) ports can be done with an adapter.

Premium Notebook Headset is available through Rashi Peripherals and Savex Computers for Rs 3,295. It comes with a one-year warranty.

techtree: Western Digital has today announced shipping its 750GB Serial ATA (SATA) Caviar SE16 desktop hard drives in volume high capacity.

The Caviar drives offer a 3Gb/s transfer rate, 16MB cache, and Native Command Queuing (NCQ), among others. They are particularly useful for desktop users running multimedia and other data-intensive applications.

Sharad Srivastava, sales director (South Asia and India), Western Digital, said, “Our new desktop hard drive brings together SecurePark for better shock characteristics, StableTrac for better vibration performance, and IntelliSeek to reduce power consumption.”

The SE16 desktop drives integrate WD’s SecurePark technology that parks recording heads off the disk surface during spin-up, spin-down, and when the drive is not operating, thus improving non-operational shock tolerance.

The drives incorporate WD’s StableTrac technology for reducing system-induced vibration, and stabilizing platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations.

WD’s IntelliSeek technology makes for reduced power consumption, while PMR technology enables more data on a given disk as compared to conventional longitudinal recording.

techtree: UK-based Skinkers is reportedly developing a new platform named “LiveStation” to deliver high quality live TV over the Internet using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology.

Being co-developed by Skinkers and Microsoft, “LiveStation” integrates Microsoft Silverlight technology, and is just a couple of months away from launch, the companies said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Silverlight is a new cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences for the Web.

According to Matteo Berlucchi, chief executive officer of Skinkers, “By integrating Silverlight with ‘LiveStation’, we are enabling high-quality, cost-effective delivery of live video content for a wide range of audiences.”

The platform will work like a ‘Slingbox’ without the box, eliminating the need for a separate media streaming hub or installation of custom software. It will allow subscribers view and change channels online simply by connecting to a remote server.

A private beta of “LiveStation” will be launched soon, while the broader beta is scheduled for October. The final launch of the product is expected in the first half of 2008.

Meanwhile, being a P2P-based platform, “LiveStation” is being viewed as a ‘Joost Killer’. However there’s a difference; “LiveStation” will focus on live broadcasts, while Joost delivers shows on demand from its large content catalogue.

cnet: Ford Motor plans to announce a test program for hybrid plug-in vehicles on Monday.

The automaker is partnering with electric utility company Southern California Edison, a subsidiary of Edison International.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally is expected to make the announcement with Edison CEO John Bryson at Edison’s headquarters in Rosemead, Calif., at 2:30 p.m.

Ford would not provide further details on the program prior to the press conference, though some reports indicate that it will be a small pilot program of about 20 plug-in hybrid vehicles.

SCE on average provides electricity to 13 million people covering about 11 counties in southwest California. About 17 percent of the power it provides is made from alternative or renewable-energy sources, according to SCE.

This will not be the first time an automaker has partnered with an electric utility on a pilot program for plug-in hybrid vehicles.

In April, DaimlerChrysler, the New York Power Authority, the Electric Power Research Institute, The New York Times Co. and ConEdison, a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, announced a partnership to test a Dodge Sprinter plug-in hybrid electric vehicle for transporting newspapers. The medium-duty truck is housed at the media company’s printing plant in College Point, Queens.