News

indianexpress: It was two years to the day that Mumbai was flooded in a day. It didn’t take long to find the culprit — Mithi river that was reduced to a nalla or water body.

On Thursday, the Pune Municipal Corporation decided to take the media to visit another such river that has over the years been reduced to a water body — Ram Nadi, a rainfed tributary of Mula river.

Though the damage wreaked by Ram Nadi on July 2 was not as severe as that in the case of Mithi two years ago, the residents of Aundh, Baner and Pashan cannot be blamed for finding some similarities.

The PMC, that has of late been claiming that Ram Nadi is a water body, can no longer ignore the impact of encroachments alongside the riverbed this monsoon. While the field survey carried out by the administration revealed 27 encroachments, what is becoming clear is that the situation is graver than what was perceived earlier.

Many large-sized constructions have already encroached upon the riverbed and many more are getting ready to join the list.

The Windmill Village of Shiv Shailam Developers in Bavdhan Budhruk, Aditya Shagun Complex of Aditya Group in Pashan, Kumar Aatman of Kumar Builders in Baner and Avinash Bhosale’s 56-bedroom bungalow in Baner are some of the big structures that have constructed their compound walls while encroaching on Ram Nadi’s green belt.

indianexpress:  Three persons were injured when police lathicharged a mob protesting the removal of a centuries-old shrine by the anti-encroachment squad of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) for widening of the Pune-Ahmednagar highway in the small hours of Thursday.

The police later arrested 11 members of the mob and threw a security blanket at the site, which was immediately asphalted.

A civic squad led by deputy commissioner (land and estates )Suraj Mandhre arrived with six bulldozers and dumpers to raze the structure amidst heavy police deployment around 1 am.

Tension mounted as a mob gathered objecting to the demolition saying they had a stay order.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Ravindra Sengaonkar ordered a lathicharge to disperse them.

All this while the police managed to keep one lane of the highway open to ensure uninterrupted flow of traffic.

A civic official later said the Hazrat Rahim Dargah located near Kalyaninagar chowk on the highway was proving to be a major hazard to vehicular traffic on the busy highway that was widened to 60-metres as per the city development plan of 1987.

indianexpress: THE Kailash crematorium was shut down on Thursday by the Khadki Cantonment Board (KCB) following calls for its removal from the plot next to Lokmanya Tilak School.

The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and several Shiv Sainiks had come out in protest shortly after 25 students and four teachers from the school were rushed to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital after fainting from inhaling the crematorium fumes on Wednesday. They were discharged after being put on oxygen for half-an-hour and given saline injections.
 
The protesters demanded action against former KCB vice president Baliram Sawant at whose behest the crematorium had been reopened following an earlier closure. About 100 people also went on a one-day fast in front of the KCB office. People met KCB’s CEO G S Rajeshwaran, urging him to deal with the matter at the earliest. “He has assured us action will be taken against Sawant and ordered for the crematorium to be shut down with immediate effect,” said Shiv Sena member Shivaji Pawar.

The crematorium had on June 21 been closed down following complaints from the school authorities about the stench and fumes from burning bodies that the students had to bear. Only on the previous day, 125 students and four teachers fell ill after inhaling the fumes. Sawant, also a former corporator from Ward 7, had at the time assured the school the crematorium would not be further cause for concern.

indianexpress: ON Thursday, the city recorded 35.8 mm rainfall and the Met department has forecast more rain and thundershowers in the coming 48 hours.

Attributing the rain to local development and not to the revival of monsoon, Deputy Director General, India Meteorological Department (IMD) Dr AB Mazumdar said, “The showers will bring the necessary respite as temperatures are above the normal 28 degrees.

Thursday recorded 30.5 degrees and these spells are likely because of the rising temperatures.’’

Till July, the total rainfall for the city was 485 mm. Mazumdar said the revival of monsoon is not likely to happen in the next two to three days.

indianexpress: The Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) and school representatives in a meeting on Thursday have agreed to retain the existing rate of 50 per cent concession for school children availing public transport services in the city.

Earlier, PMT had decided to hike the concession rates citing increased distances covered. “The buses used to cover an additional 1.5 kms during the pick-up. We have decided to cut the distance instead of hiking the rates,” PMT’s spokesperson D A Pardeshi said.

Pardeshi said the PMT administration has accepted the request from school representatives to revert to original rates. “During the meeting, we asked the schools to decide on the number of children that will travel in each bus. It was decided that there should be a maximum of 40 children availing the concessional rate, that too with proper identity cards,” Pardeshi said.

Henceforth, the onus will be on the respective schools to collect money on a monthly basis from the children and hand it over to PMT. Presently, the parent teacher associations were collecting the money.

The PMT provides transport service to children of around 40 schools in the city. The rates of service are fixed on the basis of the distance travelled.

indianexpress: ISSUES related to global warming, with a special focus on the impact of building constructions, will be thrown up for debate by environmentalists, builders and town planners at a meet organised on July 28 at Patrakar Bhavan by Association for Leadership, Education, Research and Training (ALERT), a city-based collective group working to spread awareness on global warming.

With ALERT focusing on builders and how can they contribute, the discussion will see a good representation from the builders’ lobby as well.

To participate in the discussion, contact Nitin Navale on 9822287129.

techtree: Series” in the country. They include: the MFC-3360C, the MFC-5460CN, and the MFC-5860CN, which is a 6 in 1 office companion that provides color printing, faxing, copying, scanning, etc.

The MFC-3360C is an entry-level machine for the home and small office. It has print speeds of 25ppm (pages per minute) in color and 20ppm in black & white, according to Brother.

The MFC-5460CN and the MFC-5860CN have print speeds of up to 30ppm in black & white and 25ppm in color. These printers are capable of printing directly from digital cameras in a single plug-and-play step, provided they are either PitcBridge-enabled or have PhotoCapture Center, which hosts different media card slots.

The MFC-3360C comes with 16 MB memory to store up to 170 pages of incoming faxes, while MFC-5460CN and MFC-5860CN have up to 32MB memory for storing up to 400 pages of outgoing/incoming faxes.

With the 33.6Kbps Super G3 fax modem, users can send and receive full color faxes at an estimated speed of 3 seconds per page, according to Brother.

The MFC-3360C is also equipped for PC Fax. So users can save on time and resources by faxing documents directly from the PC, thus eliminating the need for printing hard copies.

techtree: Nicholas Negroponte’s ‘One Laptop Per Child’ (OLPC) Project has reportedly announced getting into mass production of it’s low cost XO laptops.

To be manufactured by Quanta in Shanghai, the first mass produced laptops for use by schools would likely be in October.

Nearly 3 million laptops will be available in October, and will be distributed to children in developing countries including Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Greece, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, Tunisia, and Uruguay.

While OLPC estimates the cost of production of each laptop to be nearly $175, it plans to sell each machine for about $100 so as to better prospects for children in developing countries.

Based on the XO Beta-4 (B4) engineering model, the XO laptop is designed to withstand hard environmental conditions. OLPC claims the screen is bright enough to read in sunlight, and stays on even when the rest of the motherboard turns off, thus conserving energy.

The batteries can be recharged using a crank, a pedal, a car battery, solar panels — anything capable of producing up to 10 to 20 volts of electricity.

techtree: Kingston Technology has announced availability of it’s DataTraveler 100 or DT 100 USB Flash drive.

Sporting a capless design, the USB connector is housed inside of the DataTraveler’s casing. And a new ‘thumb-action’ slide that is placed on the side of the drive makes retracting or protracting the USB connector a simple, single-handed operation.

The DT 100 makes simpler — storing and transferring of large files from one digital device to the other — sans the need for passwords or built-in software programs.

Rajesh Panicker, country manager - India, Kingston Technology, said, “The DataTraveler 100’s new thumb-action, retractable design reduces the drive’s overall size, which allows for easy and unobtrusive transport in a pocket or attached to a keychain.”

The DataTraveler 100 is fully compatible with Windows Vista, Windows XP (SP1 and above), and Windows 2000 (SP3 and above), as well as with Mac OS (10.x and above), and Linux (2.4 and above) operating systems.

Additionally, it is fully compliant with high-speed USB 2.0 specifications.