News

TOI : PUNE: Revellers looking at the sky on Thursday got an eyeful of the second full moon of the month, also called the blue moon. Contrary to its name, the blue moon is not blue in colour; it is only called so because it is a rare phenomenon.

Arvind Paranjpye, scientific officer of the public outreach programme, IUCAA, explained the event saying,
“When there are two full month in a single month the rare phenomenon is called a blue moon. This blue moon also coincides with a partial lunar eclipse and it happens to be on the last day of the International Year of Astronomy.”

“It is a very rare event and hence it derives its name from the phrase ‘once in a blue moon’. It is basically a calendar event and has no astronomical importance as such. It specifically appears once in 2.7 years,” said Mayuresh Prabhune, secretary of Khagol Vishwa, an amateur astronomer’s club.

But this blue moon is special because it is accompanied by an eclipse, an event that has not occurred in the last five to six decades. A lunar eclipse occurs whenever the moon passes through some portion of the earth’s shadow. This can occur only when the sun, earth and moon are aligned exactly or very closely aligned with earth in the middle. Lunar eclipse occurs only on a full moon day. “The full moon has to happen on the first or the second day of the month and the month must be of 31 days for such an event to occur. It has perfectly matched this month and hence the rarity,” Prabhune added.

Most calendar months see just one full moon. The 29.5 day cadence of the lunar cycle matches up almost perfectly with the 28 to 31 day length of calendar months. Sometimes, however, the one-to-one correspondence breaks resulting in two full moon days in one month….More

TOI : PUNE: Special judge Arvind Rohee on Thursday sentenced prime accused Manoj Mehta of Garodanagar in Ghatkopar in Mumbai to six years rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 11.25 lakh for financing the purchase of a printing machine used for printing fake stamp papers.

Mehta was convicted under various sections of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) after he pleaded guilty when he was produced before the special court at 12 noon. He is the 43rd accused who has voluntarily pleaded guilty.

The disbanded special investigation team (SIT), Pune, headed by superintendent of police C H Wakade, had arrested Mehta on June 12, 2003. Mehta was arrested as investigations had revealed that he had direct links with stamp scam kingpin Abdul Karim Telgi and deposited cash in his account and bought a demand draft for purchase of machinery to print fake stamp papers and stamps.

After the court order, CBI special public prosecutor Raja Thakare and Avdhut Chimalkar told TOI that Mehta, who was into money laundering business, had opened several bank accounts in commercial names and had funded the organised crime syndicate run by Telgi for purchasing an offset printing press.

The prosecutors said, “The trial in the case has begun and we have examined nine witness, but Mehta did not cross examine a single witness and this means that he has accepted the evidence as it is.”

The prosecutors further said that Mehta had filed an application to plead guilty before former special judge P R Bora, but he had later withdrawn the application.

On Thursday, when Mehta was produced before the court, he again filed the same application and pleaded guilty. The judge accepted his plea and sentenced him to various terms and sealed his four bank accounts, the prosecutors added.

Mehta was sentenced to six years and three year and fined Rs…More

TOI : PUNE: The hush-hush manner in which the Pune police deported Nepali citizen Neetu Singh on December 5 has come as a shocker for her colleagues at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). They said they never found Neetu’s activities to be ‘anti-national’.

The police, however, maintained that Neetu Singh, a final year student of editing at the FTII, was deported as her “activities were objectionable” and that they had received information that she may pose “threat to national security”.

Even as Neetu reached Kathmandu, her batchmates in Pune are wondering what ‘anti-national activities’ did she indulge in. “My friends and I went to the Deccan police station after her arrest, but the police did not entertain us,” said a first year student at FTII, on condition of anonymity.

Having assisted Neetu during the shoot for some diploma films, the student describes her as a ‘friendly and warm’ person. “She is extremely knowledgeable and very intelligent. We all like her a lot. In fact, the day after she got arrested, December 6, was the day she was going to start editing her diploma film,” he said.

By December-end, Neetu would have graduated from FTII, said institute director Pankaj Rag. “I spoke to her after she reached Kathmandu. In our chat she expressed her wish to come back to FTII to finish the course,” said Rag.

Another friend of Neetu’s said, on condition of anonymity, “she is one of the most harmless and nicest people I have ever known. That’s all I can say.”

Talking to TOI, deputy commissioner of police (special branch) Ravindra Sengaonkar refuted allegations that Neetu was deported at the behest of her influential husband, a Nepali Congress politician, saying, “her family issues have nothing to do with her deportation.”

Sengaonkar said, “She was studying at the FTII for two years and her activities were constantly under watch. We…More

TOI : PUNE: Vijay Mallya’s Force India Formula One racing team will soon get the edge it requires to develop its next generation cars. And the help, chiefly by way of reduced design cycle time, will be coming from a supercomputer based right here at Hinjewadi.
On Wednesday, India’s first F1 racing team signed an exclusive, three-year deal with Tata Sons’ Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution for designing F1 racing cars.

The multi-million dollar agreement means that the design cycle time will reduce significantly and aerodynamic efficiency will improve, giving the team’s drivers their best chance of a good result.

The CFD designs for F1 cars are among the most complicated and require extremely high compute powers for accurate results. Now, complex simulations will be performed on CRL’s supercomputer Eka at Hinjewadi here, without compromising on processing times.

CRL will provide Force India with a complete high-performance computing (HPC) ecosystem, ranging from hardware support to customized configurations to application support.

Liquor baron Mallya, who is co-owner of Force India, said, “In times when the racing performance of cars is measured in one-hundredth of a second, Force India needed the speed and accuracy of a supercomputer to develop its car. We are happy to have found a partner right here in India.”

Mallya said CFD simulations were a critical part of Force India’s car design process. “The tie-up with CRL will significantly accelerate our computational solutions to drive better on-track results. It gives us an immediate 200 per cent increase in our CFD processing capability, which will rise to almost 800 per cent by end 2010.”

Force India’s CFD-based development of the F1 car will be in conjunction with physical wind tunnel and straight line testing, he clarified.

CRL chairman S Ramadarai said, “With this partnership, CRL reconfirms its commitment to develop technology that will aid in…More

TOI : PUNE: Revellers looking at the sky on Thursday got an eyeful of the second full moon of the month, also called the blue moon. Contrary to its name, the blue moon is not blue in colour; it is only called so because it is a rare phenomenon.

Arvind Paranjpye, scientific officer of the public outreach programme, IUCAA, explained the event saying,
“When there are two full month in a single month the rare phenomenon is called a blue moon. This blue moon also coincides with a partial lunar eclipse and it happens to be on the last day of the International Year of Astronomy.”

“It is a very rare event and hence it derives its name from the phrase ‘once in a blue moon’. It is basically a calendar event and has no astronomical importance as such. It specifically appears once in 2.7 years,” said Mayuresh Prabhune, secretary of Khagol Vishwa, an amateur astronomer’s club.

But this blue moon is special because it is accompanied by an eclipse, an event that has not occurred in the last five to six decades. A lunar eclipse occurs whenever the moon passes through some portion of the earth’s shadow. This can occur only when the sun, earth and moon are aligned exactly or very closely aligned with earth in the middle. Lunar eclipse occurs only on a full moon day. “The full moon has to happen on the first or the second day of the month and the month must be of 31 days for such an event to occur. It has perfectly matched this month and hence the rarity,” Prabhune added.

Most calendar months see just one full moon. The 29.5 day cadence of the lunar cycle matches up almost perfectly with the 28 to 31 day length of calendar months. Sometimes, however, the one-to-one correspondence breaks resulting in two full moon days in one month….More

TOI : PUNE: Special judge Arvind Rohee on Thursday sentenced prime accused Manoj Mehta of Garodanagar in Ghatkopar in Mumbai to six years rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 11.25 lakh for financing the purchase of a printing machine used for printing fake stamp papers.

Mehta was convicted under various sections of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) after he pleaded guilty when he was produced before the special court at 12 noon. He is the 43rd accused who has voluntarily pleaded guilty.

The disbanded special investigation team (SIT), Pune, headed by superintendent of police C H Wakade, had arrested Mehta on June 12, 2003. Mehta was arrested as investigations had revealed that he had direct links with stamp scam kingpin Abdul Karim Telgi and deposited cash in his account and bought a demand draft for purchase of machinery to print fake stamp papers and stamps.

After the court order, CBI special public prosecutor Raja Thakare and Avdhut Chimalkar told TOI that Mehta, who was into money laundering business, had opened several bank accounts in commercial names and had funded the organised crime syndicate run by Telgi for purchasing an offset printing press.

The prosecutors said, “The trial in the case has begun and we have examined nine witness, but Mehta did not cross examine a single witness and this means that he has accepted the evidence as it is.”

The prosecutors further said that Mehta had filed an application to plead guilty before former special judge P R Bora, but he had later withdrawn the application.

On Thursday, when Mehta was produced before the court, he again filed the same application and pleaded guilty. The judge accepted his plea and sentenced him to various terms and sealed his four bank accounts, the prosecutors added.

Mehta was sentenced to six years and three year and fined Rs…More

TOI : PUNE: The hush-hush manner in which the Pune police deported Nepali citizen Neetu Singh on December 5 has come as a shocker for her colleagues at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). They said they never found Neetu’s activities to be ‘anti-national’.

The police, however, maintained that Neetu Singh, a final year student of editing at the FTII, was deported as her “activities were objectionable” and that they had received information that she may pose “threat to national security”.

Even as Neetu reached Kathmandu, her batchmates in Pune are wondering what ‘anti-national activities’ did she indulge in. “My friends and I went to the Deccan police station after her arrest, but the police did not entertain us,” said a first year student at FTII, on condition of anonymity.

Having assisted Neetu during the shoot for some diploma films, the student describes her as a ‘friendly and warm’ person. “She is extremely knowledgeable and very intelligent. We all like her a lot. In fact, the day after she got arrested, December 6, was the day she was going to start editing her diploma film,” he said.

By December-end, Neetu would have graduated from FTII, said institute director Pankaj Rag. “I spoke to her after she reached Kathmandu. In our chat she expressed her wish to come back to FTII to finish the course,” said Rag.

Another friend of Neetu’s said, on condition of anonymity, “she is one of the most harmless and nicest people I have ever known. That’s all I can say.”

Talking to TOI, deputy commissioner of police (special branch) Ravindra Sengaonkar refuted allegations that Neetu was deported at the behest of her influential husband, a Nepali Congress politician, saying, “her family issues have nothing to do with her deportation.”

Sengaonkar said, “She was studying at the FTII for two years and her activities were constantly under watch. We…More

TOI : PUNE: Vijay Mallya’s Force India Formula One racing team will soon get the edge it requires to develop its next generation cars. And the help, chiefly by way of reduced design cycle time, will be coming from a supercomputer based right here at Hinjewadi.
On Wednesday, India’s first F1 racing team signed an exclusive, three-year deal with Tata Sons’ Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution for designing F1 racing cars.

The multi-million dollar agreement means that the design cycle time will reduce significantly and aerodynamic efficiency will improve, giving the team’s drivers their best chance of a good result.

The CFD designs for F1 cars are among the most complicated and require extremely high compute powers for accurate results. Now, complex simulations will be performed on CRL’s supercomputer Eka at Hinjewadi here, without compromising on processing times.

CRL will provide Force India with a complete high-performance computing (HPC) ecosystem, ranging from hardware support to customized configurations to application support.

Liquor baron Mallya, who is co-owner of Force India, said, “In times when the racing performance of cars is measured in one-hundredth of a second, Force India needed the speed and accuracy of a supercomputer to develop its car. We are happy to have found a partner right here in India.”

Mallya said CFD simulations were a critical part of Force India’s car design process. “The tie-up with CRL will significantly accelerate our computational solutions to drive better on-track results. It gives us an immediate 200 per cent increase in our CFD processing capability, which will rise to almost 800 per cent by end 2010.”

Force India’s CFD-based development of the F1 car will be in conjunction with physical wind tunnel and straight line testing, he clarified.

CRL chairman S Ramadarai said, “With this partnership, CRL reconfirms its commitment to develop technology that will aid in…More

TOI : PUNE: Minister of state for home Ramesh Bagwe on Thursday said the practice of registering complaints at police chowkies will be revived from January 1.

At present, complaints can be registered only at police stations. Bagwe said the public, particularly slum-dwellers, have been facing severe problems after 105 chowkies coming under the 28 police stations in the city stopped taking complaints.

Speaking to TOI, Bagwe said that he has instructed police commissioner Satya Pal Singh to re-start the practice at the chowkies from the new year.

The instructions were issued during a meeting at the Pune police commissionerate. The meeting was attended by MLAs, MLCs and officials of the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations as well as the Pune and Khadki cantonment boards.

The police had started the ‘Mumbai pattern’ of registering complaints only at the police stations. The move was aimed at better monitoring of complaints by the police station in-charge and at reducing response time.

This was because chowkies took time in forwarding complaints to the stations for registering an offence.

The delay in registering cases resulted in suspects going absconding and also gave them time to approach the courts for anticipatory bail.

The system evoked a good response from the public initially. Later, however, people complained that approaching police stations for registering complaints causes convenience.

According to Bagwe: “Ever since I became minister, people have been complaining about this issue. I discussed the matter with senior police officials and directed them to allow the registering of complaints at chowkies from the new year.” Bagwe also discussed the issue of pending proposals with the police at the meeting and assured them of early action. Twitter Facebook Share Print Email Save Comment Text Size: | More Stories from this section Midnight deadline for New Year parties Traffic cop helps trace owners of stolen vehicles 4-yr-old succumbs to H1N1 Road safety…More

TOI : PUNE: Party-goers in and around Pune will have to start winding up New Year’s Eve celebrations as soon the clock strikes 12 to usher in 2010. The city and rural police have set a 12 am deadline for hotels and other establishments where parties will be held and another 30 minutes to down shutters completely in view of “terror threat”.

“We have taken a policy decision not to allow New Year’s Eve celebrations beyond midnight on December 31,” joint commissioner of police Rajendra Sonawane (law and order) told TOI on Wednesday.

The state government has taken a decision to allow New Year parties up to 3 am, but it has authorised the police commissionerate to decide on the timings keeping in mind the law and order situation in the city, he said.

“Considering intelligence inputs on terror threat, police officials held a meeting and decided that places where New Year’s Eve will be celebrated will have to close by midnight,” Sonawane said, adding, “We will give 30 minutes after midnight to the organisers to close their business establishments”.

To avoid heavy rush in restaurants and bars in the city, many people prefer to celebrate New Year’s Eve on the outskirts of Pune. The restaurants and hotels in Mulshi, Lonavla, Panshet, Sinhgad road and Wagholi areas have already been booked. Owners of most of these establishments have organised special programmes to usher in the New Year.

However, the rural police have decided to keep a strict watch on these places. Twitter Facebook Share Print Email Save Comment Text Size: | More Stories from this section Cement transport at Khadki rly station opposed Police nab students for stealing LCD monitors Demand to relax sewage tax for newly merged villages Kalubai yatra begins amid tight security Ujjani dam fails to…More