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indianexpress: Bajaj Auto Limited, in the latest installment of statements to be issued in the ongoing standoff with trade unions, has struck a reconciliatory note on Monday, saying that its Akurdi plant is not being shut down and that it is not planning to use the land for non-automotive business.

Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director, BAL, said in a press release, “The Akurdi plant has not and is not being shut down. All 1,310 staff as also approximately 847 workmen are reporting to work six days a week as per their normal routine.”

“Bajaj has neither internally discussed, nor ever externally applied for approval for the use of its land at Akurdi for any purpose other than that of its automotive business,” Bajaj said.

The statement goes on to add that the management reiterates that it has no grievance with its workmen, and acknowledges their high standards of quality, productivity, and discipline.

“In view of this, and upon the suggestion of Union Minister of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Sharad Pawar the management has immediately and unconditionally agreed to pay all workmen their full wages for 6 days a week, instead of 5-and-a-half days per week which, as per the settlement dated September 5, 2003, the management is entirely entitled to do,” he said in the statement.

The clarifications are being issued since certain officials are continuing to insist that they would not allow Bajaj to shut down its plant, and/or to conduct some alternate business upon this site, he said.

“It is not our intention to cast any aspersion upon such individuals; however, we cannot allow them to malign us by repeatedly insinuating that we had ulterior motives that we never possessed in the first place,” Bajaj said.

indianexpress:  In a surprise raid, a total of six private luxury buses and 346 litres of adulterated diesel estimated to be around Rs 90 lakh was seized by district civil officials during a fuel checking drive of over 25 luxury buses which was carried out from Laxmi Narayan Theatre to Mitra Mandal road on early Monday morning.

Acting on a tip off that the luxury buses were operating on adulterated diesel mixed with kerosene, a team of district collectorate officials comprising of Resident Deputy Collector Chintamani Joshi, District Supply Officer Snehal Barge, Deputy Collectors Avinash Hadgal and Nitin Gosavi carried out surprise checks and inspected the fuel tanks of around 25 luxury buses and found five of them belonging to Usha, Shefali, Raj, Rajendra, Ajinkya and Pawan travels operating on adulterated diesel.
 
Meanwhile cases have been registered against the bus owners at Swargate police station. District Supply officer Snehal Barge said that officials of HPCL, Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum participated in the crackdown. “On the spot, marking test of the fuel revealed adulteration of diesel in the six tanks of the buses seized and action has been taken against the concerned persons.”

Meanwhile, Barge said that more surprise raids will be carried in future and has appealed to the public to inform the District Supplies Office on 26123907 if they come across any cases.

indianexpress: Taking cognisance of public interest litigation (PIL) filed by student organisation Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena (BVS) in June alleging irregularities in the admitted student intake capacity among D.Ed colleges in the state, the Bombay High Court has issued a stay on any college admitting more students than its permitted intake capacity.

The BVS had filed a petition regarding discrepancies found in the intake capacity mentioned in the State government information brochure and that specified by the National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE). “For example in the case of the District Institute of Education and Training, Manmad, Nashik, the NCTE website specifies an intake capacity of 37, whereas the brochure issued by the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) says 50. Since this brochure is used during admissions, it amounts misleading of the students,” said BVS city convener Sunil Jagtap, who filed the petition.
 
Other instances were also cited, including the Shri Genba Sopanrao Moze Junior College of Education and the District Institute for Education and Training (DIET) at Raigad, Jalna, Jalgaon, Akola and Amravati. “Although the information on intake capacity on the NCTE website is only updated up till October 2006, the discrepancies exist even prior to that,” said Jagtap.

Noting this discrepancy found in the SCERT brochure and the NCTE website, the HC in its interim order dated August 24, said that it was a “gross violation of the decision taken by NCTE whilst sanctioning the intake capacity of the institution”. “In view of the fact that the admission process is going on, it will be in the interest of the students taking admissions that such illegality is not permitted to be perpetuated,” the HC order said.

indianexpress: Principals of junior colleges across the city will come together on Tuesday to discuss the issue of improving the performance of students in Pune district in the Common Entrance Test (CET) for medical and engineering courses. The conference has been organised by the District Entrance Examination Performance Enhancement Revolution (DEEPER), an initiative to boost CET performance.

DEEPER, which was launched in September last year, conducts the District Competence Test (DCT) to give students an insight into where they stand in terms of preparedness for the CET. Based on marks obtained in the examination, students are selected for an intensive training programme. A total of 2,957 students appeared for the DCT 2006 that was held in December last year.

“The results of the DCT in December showed that students are very ill-prepared for the CET even towards the end of standard XII. The DCT examination serves as a wake-up call for students, and shows them how they can improve,” said DEEPER governing council president Nandkumar Nikam.

While 114 colleges of the city’s total 164 colleges responded to the DCT notification, DEEPER is now encouraging colleges to enlist more students for the examination so they can benefit from the additional training. “For this reason we have initiated a rolling trophy to be awarded to the college that succeeds in enrolling the largest number of students. This year the award will be given to SP College,” said DEEPER secretary Harish Bhutle. Apart from this, other awards will also be given to the colleges, which volunteered to be examination centres, and also students who excelled in the DCT.

indianexpress: Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) focussed attention on the latest advances in the field of surgical procedures used to treat gynaecological cancers during Gynaecon-2007.

The two-day national conference, which concluded recently, was inaugurated by AFMC Director and Commandant Lt Gen S K Kaul.
 
According to AFMC Professor and Head of Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology Col T K Bhattacharyya, a highlight of the conference was a live relay workshop in which both open as well as laparoscopic surgical procedures used for treating cancers of the female genital tract were demonstrated to delegates. The workshop was inaugurated by AFMC Dean and Deputy Commandant Maj Gen G Rajagopal.

Lt Gen S K Kaul released a souvenir to commemorate Gynaecon-2007. He called for concerted efforts to reduce perinatal mortality which remains unacceptably high in our country.

The keynote address was delivered by Dr Duru Shah on ‘The Adolescent Girl — Problems and Challenges’. She highlighted the role of health care professionals in education of the masses as an effective tool to equip adolescents in understanding problems associated with adolescence. She spoke about the role of Federation of Obstetricians & Gynaecology Society of India in such efforts. This session was presided over by Surg V Adm (Retd) Punita Arora, formerly DGMS (Navy).

indianexpress: The Anti-Extortion Cell nabbed a gang that was involved in the thefts and the sale of industrial gas, on Sunday. Based on a tipoff, the officials spotted a suspicious looking three-wheeler tempo near the Shivaji statue in Market Yard. After a chase, the team stopped the tempo and arrested Vinayak Bharat Naikanware, a resident of Warje, Bhimrao Shinde, a resident of Vitthalnagar and Manish Arun Shinde, both residents of Warje Malwadi and Sagar Mahadeo Pathak, a resident of Kasar chawl, Prabhat Road, Pankaj Shrihari Sonawane, a resident of Warje Malwadi and recovered five cylinders from them.

After interrogation, the police learnt that the gang had stolen around 100-150 cylinders from Pune-Nashik road, Bhosari, Moshi, Katraj and Pimpri areas.

The police said that this gang had been caught for the first time and has urged the citizens to inform them about other such incidents of gas thefts.

techtree: With Internet becoming part of life for more and more Indians, and emails being an essential source to stay in touch, a recent study conducted by messaging security and management services provider – MessageLabs – revealed that the number of malicious Websites is on rise and 1 in every 28 emails is infected.

StormWorm is a new virus on the loose. It uses virtual postcards and YouTube videos for its attack. The study revealed that StormWorm has affected an estimated 1.8 million computers worldwide.

The number of emails, which contained links to malicious code, increased significantly in August to 19.5% – showing a rise of 19% compared to the July figure of 0.5%.

According to the study, India remained the most vulnerable region in terms of virus attacks, with 1 in every 27.8 emails being infected and with spam attacks (or unsolicited bulk emails) accounting for 29.5% of the total emails received in the country in August.

Also the analysis on Web trends in August revealed that a daily average of 1,772 new malicious sites were identified and blocked – an average increase of 783 per day since July.

In August, the global ratio of spam in email traffic from new and unknown sources for which the recipients’ addresses were deemed valid was 74%, an increase of 3% on the previous month.

During this period, Israel received the highest number of spam attack at the rate of 70.7%, while France had the most significant increase in spam levels at a 9.5%, followed by Spain at 9.2%.

techtree: Micronet has unveiled its new SP916GK wireless broadband router.

Micronet SP916GK wireless broadband router is the latest generation of wireless router product for home and Small Office and Home Office (SOHO) users.

This device has been specifically designed to provide Local Area Network (LAN) and wireless users a cost-effective solution with multiple accesses to the Internet.

SP916GK enables multiple users to share the Internet through a single Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) or cable modem. It s an embedded Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server and simplified Internet Protocol (IP) address management function.

In addition, Network Address Translation (NAT)/firewall is also implemented on this compact router box for shielding the entire LAN from external attack.

The key features of SP916GK are compliance with Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11g wireless LAN for data rate up to 54M and provide wireless LAN of 4 built-in 10/100M LAN ports.

It allows easy network connection with Uniform Resource Locator (URL) filter to prevent users from accessing improper websites.

techtree: According to reports, the online bookseller Amazon is planning to launch an e-book reader dubbed as Kindle.

Kindle is rumored to be based on wireless connectivity for downloading e-books and surfing the internet.

The device will directly connect to Amazon’s online eBook store, which means that users would have access to over almost 700,000 titles. It’ll have a keyboard, which would allow users to take notes. It’ll display the pages in black and white.

The device will support Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to download news from major newspapers, which apparently might work as an add-on to lure the consumers.

It’ll come with some pre-loaded content to showcase its usability using the proprietary Mobipocket software.

Amazon is expected to offer Kindle for USD 400-500 (Rs.16,254 – 20,318).

However, this isn’t a first of its kind device: it’s been over 15 years since the launch of the first such device. But such devices have created an impact neither on the market nor on the reading habits of the consumers so far.

cnet: Dell might be losing ground in PCs, but it’s looking to take even further advantage of the exponential growth in digital data.

Dell is specifically targeting the small and medium business market with a new storage consolidation system, the PowerVault MD3000i. It’s a storage area network (SAN) array based on an iSCSI standard, which works on a company’s existing Ethernet network, and is a cheaper alternative to installing fiber networks. A fully configured system will cost about $13,000, according to Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager of Dell Storage.

Chief Executive Michael Dell and Senior Vice President Paul Bell were also on hand for the SMB customer Town Hall here, one of a series of events aimed at eliciting customer feedback.

For the first time ever, the amount of digital data generated will exceed digital storage capacity, Dell said. How did we get to this place? he asked. “We can blame storage vendors in the industry that haven’t met the needs of small and medium businesses.”

Storage is an area in which Dell is looking to grow. It is its smallest business, responsible for only 4 percent of its revenue in the most recent quarter. Dell is also looks to be making a play in the small-business category. In July, the company introduced Vostro, a separate line of PCs for businesses employing 1 to 25 people.