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indianexpress: Various state government departments and Pune district administration are working in tandem to give shape to Sharad Pawar’s dream farmer. For the uninitiated, these are the traits that the union agriculture believes an ideal farmer should possess: a teetotaler, one who promptly repays bank loans, does not splurge during marriage ceremonies and above all, encourages at least one member of his family to take up alternative employment.

If this model farmer project, that’s been in the making in Pune, at the behest of the union agriculture minister works out, distressed farmers in Vidharba who’re susceptible to the suicide bug may soon get ‘lessons in living’ from Pawar’s home turf.

With the launch of Mahatma Phule integrated agriculture development pilot project, the district administration is confident that farmers in Pune district will not only make profit of Rs 15,000 –20,000 a month by changing crop patterns but will also become a model for other farmers to follow.

When the project was formally launched on Monday there was no mention as to why it was started in Pune and not in any of the distressed districts of Vidharba. “This is saheb’s own home ground and once farmers here are happy, those across the country will become happy,” said Shantaram Jagtap from Jejuri. His only reservation is that the farmers selected for the project are already of the well-to do variety and often doubling up as politicians.

Those shortlisted for the project are about 5,000 farmers who have between one and three hectares of land holding who will be trained in 24 crop patterns and loans made available to them. “ In the last two weeks, out of 2,500 loan proposals, banks have cleared 1,850 and loans worth Rs 47 crore has been disbursed,” said Pune district collector Prabhakar Deshmukh.

indianexpress: Thirty-five-year-old Bharat Rathod, a small-scale industrialist based in the Bhosari MIDC, survived a murderous assault outside his factory premises on Wednesday night. The attack that has left him shell-shocked has left him bruised all over - with 13 stitches on his face, head and leg and a dislocated left hand. It’s been four days and he can eat and speak only with much difficulty.

“Only this morning, I could utter a few words and eat properly,” says a crestfallen Rathod who is the proprietor of the R K Industries located in Sector 7 of the MIDC Bhosari area. His unit deals in metal processing, employing 14 workers.

The Kasarwadi police chowky — in which jurisdiction the Bhosari MIDC area falls — has only two policemen on night duty to patrol the 5,000 industrial units and other suburbs. “We are hampered by severe staff shortage,” say Kasarwadi police.

On Wednesday night, around 10-15- youths, armed with hockey sticks and iron rods, first intercepted Rathod and his supervisor Shabir Shaikh, about 200 metres from their factory premises, around 9.30 p m. “Both of us were heading home on my motorcycle when one of the youths hit us with a hockey stick. As we collapsed on the ground, all of them pounced on us and tried to beat us with hockey sticks and iron rods. I was mercilessly hit on left arm which is now dislocated,” says Rathod, a resident of Somwar Peth. Shaikh has suffered injuries on both legs.

Rathod says the youths did not speak a word before attacking them. “While beating us they put their hands in my pockets and took away Rs 4,500 in cash. They then snatched my gold chain, gold ring and wrist watch worth Rs 20,000 before fleeing,” he says. The assault was so sudden and brutal that both Rathod and Shaikh could not even shout for help.

indianexpress: The rising malaria scourge has claimed yet another victim in Pimpri-Chinchwad. 70-year-old Kamlabai Wani, a resident of Bhosari-Dighi Road succumbed to falciparam malaria — in which chances of complications are more. Wani died at the PCMC-run Yeshwantrao Chavan Memorial Hospital at 5.30 on Sunday evening. She was treated for septicemia and aneamia. Her blood test reports which were available this morning showed that she also suffered from falciparam malaria.

With Wani’s death, three persons have succumbed to malaria in the twin industrial town since January this year. The total number of persons affected now stands 458 — till yesterday the figure was 448. On the other hand, dengue has claimed four lives in last two months while 152 persons have been affected since January.

Meanwhile, doctors are seeing a sudden spurt in the number of cases of dengue this month. Pimpri Chinchwad has emerged as the major hotspot. Alandi and Bhosari are worst-hit. Dr Rajesh Gadia, chief intensivist at KEM hospital, said there was a sudden spurt in the number of cases of dengue and he had already examined 20 cases in the last month.

According to Pune Municipal Corporation’s insect control department, from the month of January till September there were 102 cases of malaria and 68 cases of dengue. “Ricketssial — a disease transmitted from ticks — has also led to deaths of three persons from Ahmednagar and Shrigonda,” says Gadia.

Pune has seen its share too as the State-run Sassoon General Hospital has till October recorded 18 deaths due to malaria and 154 cases.

“There were 44 cases of leptospirosis and seven deaths due it,” says Dr P S Pawar, a medical superintendent at Sassoon General Hospital.

indianexpress: Members of city-based education trust ‘Initiatives of Change’ are spearheading a campaign called ‘Quiet India’ on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti aimed at creating awareness against noise pollution in the city.
A rally will be organised as part of the event on Tuesday. Starting from the Gandhi statue at Pune Railway Station, the rally will pass through M G Road and East Street and conclude at the statue.

“The city is suffering because of noise pollution and youngsters are also responsible. Unnecessary honking is what we are targeting through the campaign,” said Ashok Vardhan Mishra, one of the conveners of the rally.

The main slogans of the rally include ‘Horn not Ok please’ and ‘Promote silence before all you hear is silence’. The T-shirts with these slogans cost will be available at Rs 180.

Students from Indira School of Communication, Wakad, Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT), School of Information Technology and Management (SITM), Fergusson College and Symbiosis Institute of Management will participate in the rally. “Around 150 people have already registered, but we expect more to join us,” said Mishra. The group will also stage street plays at strategic locations to educate people about noise pollution and its hazards. “We have interacted with traffic policemen and they are the worst victims of noise pollution. Our street plays on noise pollution will educate the public on its effects,” said Mishra.

techtree:That Redmond recognizes the threat posed by the fast expanding online environment is evident from the announcement it intends making today…

The company is set to announce plans for “Office Live Workspace”, a free online service/tool that will help users view, share, and store Microsoft Office documents online. Up to 1,000 documents can be stored on an online workspace in this way, claims Microsoft.

However, if users want to edit Word or Excel documents in online workspaces, they will need to buy the software first.

This is part of what Microsoft calls its ’software plus services’ strategy. Which means it will offer software as a blend of online and offline services. Online services will complement running of software locally, and will not necessarily replace software running on a consumer’s desktop or on a business server.

However for larger customers, Microsoft plans to offer its traditional server software entirely as a hosted service.

Meanwhile, “Office Live Workspace’ is not ready yet, but beginning today, users can sign-up for a beta testing of the service, which is expected to roll-out later this year.

techtree: Freescale Semiconductor has introduced its MCF544x family of ColdFire microprocessors, designed to enable low-power, high-performance embedded systems running the Linux operating system (OS).

The new microprocessors are based on V4 ColdFire microarchitecture, and according to Freescale, are capable of delivering 410 Dhrystone MIPS (DMIPS) core performance at approximately 380 mW.

The MCF5445x family includes 12 advanced microprocessors that each feature: an on-chip memory controller that supports DDR1, DDR2, and mobile DDR memory; plus support for 10/100 Ethernet, USB on-the-go (OTG), advanced technology attachment (ATA), and peripheral component interconnect (PCI).

The microprocessors also feature a cost-effective, non-volatile memory serial interface, and a dual-role master/slave serial peripheral interface (SPI).

Freescale says the MCF5445x family is ideal for consumer applications such as network-attached storage and Ethernet gateways, as also for embedded control applications like industrial control, embedded Voice over IP (VoIP), factory automation, etc.

Supported by full-featured evaluation kits, complimentary Linux board support packages, and third-party software tools, the MCF5445x microprocessors are available at prices beginning around $9.95 in 10,000-unit quantities.

msnbc: Adobe Systems Inc. released new software for its popular Flash Player on Sunday that promises to bring the quality of live video on cellular phones closer to that of video on computers.

Adobe, whose software made possible the rapid rise of pioneering online video site YouTube, said Nokia and NTT DoCoMo Inc. would use its new Flash Lite 3 in their new cell phones.

Adobe said more than 300 million mobile devices equipped with previous versions of Flash had already been shipped and it expected more than a billion Flash-enabled devices to be available by 2010.

Adobe’s Flash software is installed on about 98 percent of all personal computers and is used by virtually all popular online video sites, mainly thanks to the fact it works independently of the device that the video is displayed on.

Gary Kovacs, in charge of marketing at Adobe’s mobile unit, called Flash Lite 3 “the most significant advance we’ve made in mobile” and said it brought Adobe closer to being able to release software versions for mobile and desktop simultaneously.

“It’s probably a few years away. We’ll do it over the next couple to three years,” he told Reuters.

Nokia’s 3.4 million-strong mobile software development group, Forum Nokia, said it would launch a new development community on Monday to help Flash developers and designers.

Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile telephone maker, announced a major new push into multimedia, including video, music and gaming last month, seeking to challenge Apple Inc.’s dominance in portable entertainment.

The head of Forum Nokia, Lee Epting, said in a statement: “Flash Lite 3 will enable us to deliver richer content to our customers, such as videos and animated ring tones.”

Adobe, also known for its Acrobat document management and Photoshop software, said earlier this month that its profit more than doubled last quarter on strong sales of new products and as it makes inroads into mobile, video and office worker markets.

msnbc: Adobe Systems Inc plans to acquire Virtual Ubiquity, makers of Buzzword, an innovative word processor, in a surprise move that competes with Microsoft Corp and Google Inc.

Adobe, a major supplier of business publishing software and design tools, is looking to a team of former Lotus application developers to enable the hundreds of millions of users of Adobe Acrobat software to work together publishing shared documents.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Buzzword, one of a new class of rich Internet applications (RIA), was built by an 11-member team in Waltham, Massachusetts, who helped create the 1980s-era Manuscript, Lotus’s second program created after its ground-breaking 1-2-3 spreadsheet.

“We were looking for a technology to create a modern word processor,” Erik Larson, Adobe’s director of marketing and product management. “The problem of collaborating on documents is not solved and we think we can solve it.”

Melissa Webster, an analyst with market research firm IDC, said many people’s initial reaction to design tools maker Adobe entering the word processing market will be: “What? Adobe?”

“The industry knows Adobe for its creative tools. We don’t think of Adobe in the category of enterprise software vendors that might be going after Microsoft Office,” Webster said.

The software marks a radical break with document-centric publishing by letting users collaborate on shared documents and allowing individual users to save data or format changes online.

msnbc: A program to employ spy satellites for certain domestic uses is on hold indefinitely because of privacy concerns.

Congress has already devoted the money for the program, and it was set to launch at the beginning of this month. But some lawmakers demanded more information about its legal basis and what protections are in place to ensure the government is not peering into Americans’ homes.

As a result, the Homeland Security Department is not formally moving ahead with the program — called the National Applications Office — until it answers those questions, a department spokesman said.

Rep. Bennie Thompson — a strong opponent of the program — commended the department on Monday for what he called a moratorium, and for its decision to “go back to the drawing board and get it right.”

Thompson, D-Miss., is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Both he and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., submitted lists of questions about civil liberties protections and the legal basis for using advanced satellites to watch Americans.

The department would not say how long it plans to postpone the program.

“We are cooperatively working with the Congress to answer any questions that they have, DHS spokesman Andrew Lluberes said last week. “We are totally confident that this is going to go forward.”

msnbc: It’s Thursday, so 18-year-old Dennis Tiangco is off to a bank to collect his weekly allowance, zapped by his mother — who’s working in Hong Kong — to his electronic wallet: his cell phone.

Sauntering into a branch of GM Bank in the town of San Miguel, Dennis fills out a form and sends a text message via his phone to a bank line dedicated to the service.

In a matter of seconds, the transaction is approved and the teller gives him 2,500 pesos ($54), minus a 1 percent fee. He doesn’t need a bank account to retrieve the money.

More than 5.5 million Filipinos now use their cell phones as virtual wallets, making the Philippines a leader among developing nations in providing financial transactions over mobile networks.

Mobile banking services, which are also catching on Kenya and South Africa, enable people who don’t have bank accounts to transfer money easily, quickly and safely. It’s spreading in the developing world because mobile phones are much more common than bank accounts.

The system is particularly useful for the 8 million Filipinos — 10 percent of the country’s citizens — who work overseas and send money home, like Dennis’ mother, Anna Tiangco. Previously, she sent money via a bank wire transfer, which costs $2.50 and takes two days to clear. The cell phone method costs only 13 cents and is nearly instantaneous.