Mumbai under attack

Late Wednesday night, Mumbai, India found itself the target of a ferocious terrorist attack, and the situation remains unresolved even now, three days later. According to reports, upwards of 60 young men entered Mumbai in small inflatable boats on Wednesday night, carrying bags filled with weapons and ammunition, and spread out to nine locations to begin their attacks. Lobbing grenades and firing their weapons, they entered hotels, a railway station and several other buildings, killing scores and wounding even more. As of this moment, the identity of the attackers has yet to be definitively determined, though there are reports indicating some of the gunmen were Pakistani - at least nine of them have been killed, nine more arrested. As of this writing, there were a reported 151 people killed from 11 different countries - though nearly 100 were Indian. More than 300 injuries have also been reported - those numbers may yet rise as several hostage situations still exist in the city.

Onlookers stand at the site of a bomb blast in Mumbai November 26, 2008. (REUTERS/Stringer)

A gunman walks through the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Mumbai Mirror, Sebastian D'souza)


A man carries a victim of a gun attack away from the scene of an earlier attack at the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)


Armed gunmen are seen in the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. Teams of gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular restaurant, hospitals and a crowded train station in coordinated attacks across India's financial capital, killing people, taking Westerners hostage and leaving parts of the city under siege Thursday, police said.

A reporter talks on her phone as smoke is seen coming from Taj Hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008. Large plumes of smoke were seen rising from the top of the landmark Taj Hotel in Mumbai on Thursday and heavy firing could be heard, a Reuters witness said. (REUTERS/Arko Datta)
A member of the anti-terrorist squad takes a position during an engagement with suspected militants at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India, Friday, Nov. 28, 2008. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

Firefighters try to douse a fire at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008. Indian commandos freed hostages from Mumbai's Taj Mahal hotel on Thursday but battled on with gun-toting Islamist militants.


The body of a terrorist attack victim is brought in an ambulance to the St. Georges Hospital in Mumbai, India, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008. Dozens of people were still trapped or held captive Thursday.

Employees and guests of the Taj Mahal hotel, site of one of the shootouts with terrorists, are recued by firefighters as fire engulfs the top floor on late November 26, 2008.


Fire engulfs the top floor of the Taj Mahal hotel, site of one of the shootouts with terrorists in Mumbai on late November 26, 2008. (LORENZO TUGNOLI/AFP/Getty Images)


Sharda Janardhan Chitikar, left, is consoled by a relative as she grieves the death of her two children in a terrorist attack while she waits for their bodies outside St. Georges Hospital in Mumbai, India, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008.

The windows on the first floor of the Taj Mahal hotel shatter after the use of a grenade launcher in Mumbai, India, Friday, Nov. 28, 2008. Explosions and gunfire continued intermittently at the Taj Mahal hotel Friday afternoon, two days after a chain of militant attacks across India's financial center left people dead and the city in panic.



Schoolchildren hold candles during a vigil held in memory of the victims of Wednesday's shootings in Mumbai, in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad November 27, 2008. Elite Indian commandos fought room to room battles with Islamist militants inside two luxury hotels to save scores of people trapped or taken hostage, as the country's prime minister blamed neighbouring countries. (REUTERS/Amit Dave)

A National Security Guard (NSG) commando aims towards a window after an explosion on the fourth floor of the Nariman House where suspected militants are hiding, in Mumbai November 28, 2008. (REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe)


A National Security Guard commando fires at suspected militants believed to be hiding in Nariman House, in Mumbai November 28, 2008. (REUTERS/Peter Keep)

I want to live, so I am leaving, says distraught Taslima

KOLKATA: “I can’t take it any more. I will die if I continue to live like this,” Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen said yesterday in a choked voice as she announced her decision to leave India for medical treatment abroad.
“I am losing my eyesight, my heart is damaged. I have to survive. I am dying like this. I have to immediately get good treatment because I am not even getting cardiologists here,” Nasreen said over the phone from an undisclosed destination in New Delhi where she has been sheltered by the government.
“Parchina, parchina, parchina (I can’t, I can’t, I can’t),” she said, after meeting foreign ministry officials.
For her own safety, the author has been kept incognito for nearly four months in a place near New Delhi while security restrictions were imposed on her movement even in Kolkata before she was forced out of the city last year following protests.
“For seven months now, I am living like this. I cannot live like this any more,” she said.
India’s foreign ministry in mid-February extended her visa but restrictions on her movements continued as she was kept confined in a “safe house” by the government since she was shunted out of Kolkata on November 21.
“I don’t know where I am going right now and when. An airline ticket can be purchased online anytime. But I am finally leaving so that I can survive. Whatever damage has been caused has been caused. I have to get treatment now to just be alive and save the rest of me,” she said.
“I want to come back to Kolkata - my home - if I am allowed and not put in prison like this again. Right now my only concern is to live and get proper medical attention,” said Nasreen who recently spent a few days in New Delhi hospital.
“Stress and hypertension is killing me. There is already a big damage to my heart. I need to save the rest,” she said.
“My world is in Kolkata. I have not been allowed to visit the city and collect my own belongings. I hope my friends in Kolkata would help me since I am not allowed to go there,” she said.
Nasreen was living in Kolkata since 2004 after she was forced to leave Bangladesh.
She earlier said: “I am myself surprised that I am living like this. My only hope is that one day I will be able to return to Kolkata where I have set up a home over the years. But that is like hoping against hope going by the developments.
“I am pretty confused about the government’s objective. What purpose would it serve if I live like this?” she asked.
A section of intellectuals continue to mobilise support for the writer whose fearless expressions on the state of women in Muslim society and the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh antagonised clerics and governments, forcing her to live in exile and under heavy security since the 1990s.
The international community and leading Indian intellectuals are campaigning for Nasreen’s freedom and Indian citizenship for her. But the government has been unmoved so far.
Nasreen, who was recently conferred the Prix Simone de Beauvoir by the French government for her writing, was not allowed to receive the award in person from French President Nicolas Sarkozy when he visited India in January.
West Bengal’s ruling Left Front shunted out Nasreen last year after street violence in Kolkata over her extended stay in India.
Nasreen, who was already living confined in a Kolkata apartment, was taken first to Jaipur and then to New Delhi by the central government and has since been kept in a safe house.
In an earlier interview, the 45-year-old author had said impassionedly: “I am only breathing. I don’t think I am alive like you are. Can anybody live like this? It was beyond my imagination that in a secular democracy like India, such a thing could happen to a writer.”
On November 30, Nasreen had agreed to expunge controversial portions from her autobiography “Dwikhandita” (Split in Two).
Though Jyoti Basu, the patriarch of the state’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), said in December that Nasreen was welcome to return to Kolkata, the Left Front government has chosen to remain silent on her plight, keeping Muslim sentiments in mind.
In a delicate balancing act, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has promised to “shelter” Nasreen but urged her to “refrain from activities and expressions” that may hurt the sentiments of Indian people and harm relations with friendly countries. – Indo-Asian News Service

IPTV to be tall task for Indian telecom firms

Mumbai, March 12: Indian telecom firms, seeking to increase revenue and stimulate demand by offering Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services, face hurdles of high costs, low broadband usage and slow speeds, company officials said.

"The interactivity in IPTV opens up a new platform for advertisers, which translates into higher revenues per user for the telecom firms," said Aksh Optifibre's managing director, Kailash Choudhari.

State-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd and Bharat Sanchar Nigam are the only companies which now offer limited IPTV services, or television or video signals over broadband.

Bharti Airtel is expected to roll-out its services shortly, while Reliance Communications Ltd in November announced a $500 million pact with Microsoft Corp for IPTV services in India.

High costs of acquisition

IOL Netcom and Aksh Optifibre are battling high costs as television broadcasters charge telecom companies much more than cable operators for programme feeds.

"We are paying through our nose - paying a big amount to the broadcasters for each territory," said IOL Director A.S.Oberai.

"Our franchisees are finding it difficult to get TV feed at the same rates which they provide to cable operators, with the result it is becoming more expensive for us," said MTNL's Executive Director, J. Gopal.

Broadcasters are looking for minimum subscriber guarantees, officials said. Any shortfall in subscribers has to be made good by the service provider, adding to costs, said Aksh's Choudhari.

Broadcasters "need to be assured of revenues before offering our content," said Ishwar Jha, CEO of Digital Media Convergence Ltd., which distributes content from Zee Entertainment and Zee News to alternate media platforms.

MTNL has now close to 3,000 subscribers in Mumbai and 5,000 on an all-India basis. "We are able to provide 50-60 connections in a day," Gopal said.

IOL and Aksh have tied up with MTNL in Mumbai and Delhi and with BSNL in other areas to provide IPTV services on the state-owned carriers' broadband network.

Low broadband usage

Another big hurdle to popularising IPTV is the low broadband penetration. TRAI figures show India's broadband subscriber base at 3.24 million at the end of January, with less than 1 million new users added between April 2007 and January 2008.

MTNL and BSNL are providing 2 mega bytes per second speed - which is theoretically good enough for video streaming. But, consumers may need a higher bandwidth of 4-8 Mbps for high definition video required to watch video-on-demand and gaming.

"It needs a good feed and last mile connectivity," said Bharti Airtel's vice-president of network services, Shyam Prabhakar Mardikar. Quality of copper also has to be good since India does not have fibre to home connectivity, he said.

Still, companies battle on in hopes of a boost in revenue as well as higher broadband usage in the country.

Strike to Paralyze Indian Airports

Airport workers across India threatened to strike at midnight on Tuesday, a move that could ground hundreds of commercial flights and leave tens of thousands of passengers stranded.

The threatened strike is over plans to privatize two major airports, but workers are expected to join in at 127 other state-run airports _ nearly every airport in India except New Delhi and Mumbai, the two busiest airports, which are already privately run.

S. R. Santhanam, a leader of the airport workers union, said the decision to launch an open-ended strike starting at midnight Tuesday was made after talks with the government broke down Monday.

'No talks are scheduled unless the government sends a message,' he said, adding that some 15,000 airport workers, including baggage handlers, cleaners and ground staff would go on strike.

The dispute between stems from a government plan to privatize new airports in the southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore, a move that union says will endanger the jobs of hundreds of employees.

Airport authorities plan to shift all commercial activity from the cities' old airports to the new ones when they open in coming weeks.

Hyderabad and Bangalore are both large cities that are home to several major multinational corporations as well as scores of thriving information technology companies.

The government plans to use the old airports for disaster management and flights carrying government leaders, aviation ministry spokeswoman Moushmi Chakravarty told The Associated Press.

Chakravarty said the private operators would retain the employees. However, the unions worry that there could be future layoffs.

Subhash Goyal, chairman of the Indian Association of Tour Operators, said any strike could cost the booming aviation sector millions of dollars.

'It will have a tremendous impact on travelers,' he said.

India's airline industry has grown dramatically in recent years as rising incomes and loosened regulations put air travel within reach of millions of new customers.

In the early 1990s, Indian Airlines was the country's single carrier, but Indian authorities opened up the airways and since then about a dozen airlines have opened for business, leading to a heated competition and low prices.

In January India's aviation minister Praful Patel said that Indian carriers were expected to increase their fleet of aircraft from the current 400 to about 2,500 by 2020.

From Mar 31, pay Rs 20 for using any ATM

NEW DELHI: Customers will have to pay a maximum of Rs 20 for withdrawing cash from an ATM of another bank from March 31, 2008. However, balance inquiries will attract no charge with immediate effect.

The charge for cash withdrawal is only till March 31 next year, after which it will become zero. Aiming to make all ATM usage free from April 2009, the Reserve Bank of India on Monday said banks cannot charge for balance inquiries and capped the fee for cash withdrawals at Rs 20 per transaction, irrespective of the amount and the bank where the customer holds the account.

In a circular issued to all commercial banks, RBI also said that banks cannot charge their own customers for ATM usage, with immediate effect.

This is the first instance of RBI fixing tariff for the use of ATMs. So far, banks fixed such charges on their own. As charges vary from bank to bank, a customer can’t be sure of the amount he will have to pay for using an ATM of a bank other than the one in which he holds an account.

In the wake of the circular, a bank will not be able to charge more than Rs 20 for transactions carried out using the ATM card of another bank.

I am fit to play against South Africa: Sachin

Sachin Tendulkar on Saturday dispelled concerns that he will not be available for the Test series against South Africa because of fitness related issues, saying he was fully fit to play the series.

"I have played the last match. As far as I am concerned I am fit. I have not said anything before on this. I will certainly play against South Africa. There is no doubt," the champion batsman said.

Tendulkar was named as the captain of the 'Mumbai Indians' team for the forthcoming Indian Premier League to be held from April 18 and also unveiled the logo of the team at a promotional event in Mumbai.

According to news reports, Tendulkar has been advised rest for two weeks by outgoing physiotherapist John Gloster at the end of the tour of Australia.

The first Test against South Africa commences in Chennai on March 26.

Rat nibbles on face of 10-day-old baby

Dr Suresh Shah, a pediatrician, attends to the baby. He said in such cases there are chances of infection reaching the brain. So he had to take great care of the baby to ensure the infection does not spread



The rodent badly mutilates the infant’s face; eats away nose and parts of the cheek; now, doctors plan to reconstruct the nose

Twenty-three year old Sunita Chavan (name changed) was in for a shock when she saw a rat nibbling at the face of her 10-day-old child on Thursday.

By the time Chavan, who was asleep next to her daughter woke up hearing her scream, the rat had eaten away the nose and parts of her daughter’s cheeks. “I got up and saw a big rat on the face of my child. I raised an alarm. By the time my mother came, the baby was bleeding profusely.” said Chavan.

The child is the first for Chavan, after her marriage a year back. Chavan had come to her parent’s home in a chawl in Matunga, for the delivery. She delivered on January 22 at a private nursing home nearby. As the baby weighed 1.6 kilogrammes at the time of birth, she was kept in the nursing home for three days. According to Chavan, she had finished her afternoon chores when she fell asleep along with the baby. She was in deep sleep when the baby woke up screaming. Chavan and her mother shooed the rat away, and rushed the baby to a hospital in King’s Circle. But doctors there refused to treat the child as the baby’s face was completely covered with blood. “We could not figure out which parts of the face the rat had eaten as the entire face was covered in blood. We kept running from one hospital to another, until she was finally taken care of at Shah Nursing home and Child health centre.” said Sunita’s mother, who did not want to disclose her name.
Doctor Suresh Shah, the pediatrician attending to the baby said, “The child was admitted to the hospital on January 31 at 5.30 pm. I was present in the hospital when she was brought in bleeding profusely. In such cases there are chances of infection reaching the brain, so we had to take great care to ensure the infection does not spread.”

A team of three doctors attended to the baby. Pediatric surgeon Bhalchandra Jaykar and Plastic surgeon Shankar Shriniwas were called in from other hospitals. Dr Shah and they are constantly monitoring the child’s progress. The doctor’s plan to reconstruct the baby’s nose through plastic surgery.

“The child is out of danger, but we had to pay particular attention to the nutrition aspect, as the upper lip is swollen. We also took care of the respiration, since the nose was eaten up.” said Dr Shah.

Kidney Transplant Scam Shocks India

GURGAON, India (Jan. 30) - The last things Mohammed Salim remembered were the knees pinning him to the ground, the guns pointed at his head, and, finally, the injection that sent him into oblivion.

Police in Gurgaon, India, recently busted an illegal transplant racket that allegedly removed kidneys from up to 500 poor laborers and sold their organs to clients. Here, 33-year-old Mohammed Salim recovers at a hospital Wednesday in Gurgaon after his kidney was stolen.

When he awoke, he was in agonizing pain, uncertain where he was or why he was wearing a hospital gown.

"We have taken your kidney," a masked man calmly explained. "If you tell anyone, we'll shoot you."

Salim was one of the last victims in an organ transplant racket that police believe sold up to 500 kidneys to clients who traveled to India from around the world over the past nine years.

Police say that when they raided the operation's main clinic in this upscale New Delhi suburb last week, they broke up a ring spanning five Indian states and involving at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses and paramedics and a car outfitted as a laboratory.

Subsequent raids uncovered a kidney transplant waiting list with 48 names and, in one clinic, five foreigners - three Greeks and two Americans of Indian descent - who authorities believe were waiting for transplants.

Only one doctor has been arrested so far and police are searching for the alleged ringleader, Amit Kumar, who has several aliases and has been accused in past organ transplant schemes elsewhere in India. Authorities believe he's fled the country.

"Due to its scale, we believe more members of the Delhi medical fraternity must have been aware of what was going on," Gurgaon Police Commissioner Mohinder Lal told reporters this week.

There long have been reports of poor Indians illegally selling kidneys, but the transplant racket in Gurgaon is one of the most extensive to come to light - and the first with an element of so-called medical tourism.

The low cost of medical care in India has made it a popular destination for foreigners in need of everything from tummy tucks to heart surgery.

The Gurgaon kidney transplant racket, however, was not the types of operation the medical community wanted in the headlines. The case has shocked the country, sparking debate about medical ethics and organ transplant laws.

Some "donors" were forced onto the operating table at gunpoint, while others were tricked with promises of work, Lal said. There were also some who sold kidneys willingly, usually for between $1,125 to $2,250, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. The sale of human organs is illegal in India.

Salim, 33, a laborer with five children, said he was lured from his home town a few hours outside New Delhi by a bearded stranger offering a construction job that paid 150 rupees ($3.75) a day, as well as food and lodging. He was told the work would last three months.

"I thought I could earn money and save it for my children," he said from a government hospital in Gurgaon, where he is recovering under police protection.

He was first taken to a two-room house "in the jungle" outside New Delhi where two gunmen held him for six days, he said. Then he was taken to a bungalow in Gurgaon, where armed men took a blood sample at gunpoint.

Salim said he tried to escape, but the doors were locked and within moments, the men were on top of him, sticking him with another needle while he slowly lost consciousness.

When he awoke and learned what happened, Salim thought he was soon to die - he didn't know you could live with one kidney. He lay in a haze of pain and confusion for about a day, when the men, apparently tipped off to the coming raid, told him they had to move him.

Minutes later, police burst into the house and rescued Salim and two other men who also had their kidneys taken. He never received any money, he said.

"I don't know how I will survive," said Salim, whose five children were at the hospital. "I am the only earner in the family and the doctors said I can't do heavy work."

Shakeel Ahmed, 28, was in the hospital bed next to Salim, wincing in pain as he told his story. He is unmarried and has no children, but he is responsible for five nieces and nephews, he said.

"I'm sad, I'm angry. I don't know how I will care for them," Ahmed said, pointing to his elderly parents sitting on the foot of his bed. "Why me?"

Indian origin scientist creates oil resistant material

Washington, December 7 : A team of engineers led by an Indian origin scientist at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology has devised a simple process to manufacture materials that have a high tendency to repel oil and can be applied as a flexible surface coating.

The process, state the researchers, may find its use in aviation, space travel and hazardous waste cleanup.

The study was led by Anish Tuteja, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering.

This material may be used to help in protecting parts of airplanes or rockets that are susceptible to damage from being soaked in fuel, such as rubber gaskets and o-rings.

"These are vulnerable points in many aerospace applications. It would be nice if you could spill gasoline on a fabric or a gasket or other surface and find that instead of spreading, it just rolled off," said Robert Cohen, the St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering.

It was challenge for scientists to create a strongly oil-repelling, or "oleophobic" material and the natural variants of such a material are unknown.Oils and other hydrocarbons have the tendency of to spread out over surfaces due to their very low surface tension (a measure of the attraction between molecules of the same substance) unlike water that has a very high surface tension and tends to form droplets.

For example, beads of water appear on a freshly waxed car (however, over a period of time, oil and grease contaminate the surface and the repellency fades).

Researchers overcame the surface-tension problem by designing a material composed of specially prepared microfibers that essentially cushion droplets of liquid, allowing them to sit, intact, just above the material's surface.

When oil droplets land on the material, resembling a thin fabric or tissue paper, they rest atop the fibers and pockets of air trapped between the fibers.

The contact angle between the droplet and the fibers is large, preventing the liquid from reaching the bottom of the surface and wetting it.

These microfibers are a blend of a specially synthesized molecule called fluoroPOSS, which has an extremely low surface energy, and a common polymer.

These can be readily deposited onto many types of surfaces, including metal, glass, plastic and even biological surfaces such as plant leaves, using a process called electrospinning.

Scientists have also developed some dimensionless design parameters that may help in predicting the stability of oleophobicity or oil-resistance between a particular liquid and a surface.

The design equations are based on structural considerations, especially the re-entrant nature (or concavity) of the surface roughness, and on three other factors: the liquid's surface tension, the spacing of the fibers, and the contact angle between the liquid and a flat surface.

After making use of these relationships, the researchers would be able to design fiber mats that are optimized to repel different hydrocarbons.

They have already created a non-woven fabric that can separate water and octane (jet fuel), which they believe could be useful for hazardous waste cleanup.

The Air Force, which funded the research and developed the fluoroPOSS molecules, is interested in using the new material to protect components of airplanes and rockets from jet fuel.

Lenovo to launch $200-computer in India

New Delhi, December 4: Chinese computer maker Lenovo Tuesday said it would soon launch a new computer priced at $200 (about Rs. 8,000) in India.

"We will launch the product in China first. After getting a feedback, we will roll out the device in the Indian market," Lenovo Group USA President and Chief Executive Officer William J. Amelio said on the sidelines of India Economic Summit currently underway here.

Although Amelio did not specify a time for the product's launch, he indicated that the computer would be Internet-enabled.

He added that the firm could produce five million computers every year in India and may export computer parts and other hardware from the country.

Lenovo is also planning to export notebooks from its Baddi, Himachal Pradesh plant.

Amelio pitched a liberal and uniform tax regime for it to conduct its business in India and provide opportunity of greater investments.

Online sex racket busted in India

After drugs and rock 'n' roll, sex has caught the eye of the police in Pune.

The Crime Branch last week unearthed a major Internet-based sex racket of countrywide proportions involving models -turned-television actresses - three were arrested.

The action followed last month's arrest of two Mumbai-based models and a tout from the film industry, and the detention earlier in the year of over 150 young people in a rave party that had set off a chain of narcotics seizures, all of which the police said were signs of lifestyle crimes coming to booming Pune, some 170 km from Mumbai.

The latest arrests came after a complaint against a website, chamadi.com, by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha city chief Sandeep Khardekar. The police said models from various cities across the country had posted their cellular phone numbers to offer "escort" services to "discerning gentlemen".

The website invites successful men who were pressed for time, and could not manage long-term relationships, to try its services.

A trap was laid on Tuesday and models-turned-actresses Swati Tiwari, Renu Mirza and Pooja Sonugar from the Hindi serial Meri Doli Tere Angana arrested along with middlemen Ramprasad Thapa of Pune and Balaji Shinde of Mumbai.

The website, which was still up and offering services, admitted it was into escort services but denied the arrested people were connected with it. The police said Tiwari and Mirza were from Mumbai while Sonugar was from Kolkata.

"The well-heeled form the main clientele of models operating through such websites. The charges range from Rs 15,000 to Rs 1 lakh for a night," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Anil Kumbhare said.

Despite the police action, chamadi.com continued to operate. It featured the name of its chairman, Sameer, and gave a contact number. While a woman on the other end of the line declined to disclose her name, only saying the escort service was currently being offered in Mumbai, a man soon responded saying he was Sameer Nayar and said he had no qualms about running the service.

"I operate several such websites, with services across the globe. In many western countries, the flesh trade is legal. If it is illegal here, it is the problem of the government, not mine. They should amend the law," Nayar said. "The need for sex is universal, therefore I am operating this portal and have no hesitation in admitting it."

Nayar's website said it offered escort service in various cities. Pune was introduced as a "cultural city. that carries a rich historical legacy characterised with glorious rule of Marathas. Pune contributed significantly to the freedom movement and produced heroes like Tilak, Sane Guruji and Chapekar brothers. Today this city is home to numerous prestigious educational institutions and hence is also known as the Oxford of the East."

Expressing surprise on the website still being operational, Kumbhare said they were busy with Diwali duty, but would soon shut down the website and arrest the "main accused".

A senior police official who declined to be named as there was a possibility of further investigations, said the high-profile models on the website were sought by many students from affluent families who came to Pune from other states. Pune is known as an important educational centre, besides being an information technology hub that ensures it houses many well-paid professionals.

The vanishing art of shorthand in India

The Greeks and Romans are known to have practised it and, until not so long ago, it was a much sought after skill in India too. But stenography or shorthand writing has all but disappeared now.

Under the impact of IT, shorthand has become a vanishing art in India. Ironically, this has happened at a time when there is a clamour for skilled stenographers from the corporate world.

'This demand can never be met as few people take to learning shorthand, since it is no more a lucrative job,' said S.V. Ramaswamy, president of the Chennai-based Stenographers' Guild of India (SGI).

Ramaswamy, who was in the city to give a lecture to the Ahmedabad Management Association's (AMA) secretarial training programme, said alternatives to shorthand like voice recognition software have not been much of a success.

As a result, at a time when corporate executives at home and abroad are looking for efficient shorthand writers, they are not available.

Ramaswamy said R&D was going on in Canada to develop a shorthand-writing machine. This machine has a capacity to take 40 words per minute, which is not at all adequate, he said.

Efforts are under way to double this speed, yet even at the increased speed it will be nowhere near the speed that human beings have achieved in the art.

But for the virtuosity in stenographic skills, great speeches, debates and landmark judgments would not have been available for posterity, Ramaswamy said.

A stenographer himself, Ramaswamy who rose to become chief manager in a nationalised bank said shorthand writing or more succinctly rapid writing existed in the Greek and Roman era that employed abbreviations. The Greeks particularly used this technique to record Socrates' speeches.

But in modern times, Sir Isaac Pitman developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known as Pitman Shorthand. With his system, speeds of about 300 words a minute are attainable.

VERBATIM REPORTING EXTINCT

Ramaswamy said because of the waning importance of stenography, the concept of verbatim reporting by the media has almost become extinct.

Attempts are now being made to revive shorthand and work is on in full swing to develop a good alternative to shorthand in the US, Canada, Germany, Britain and China. Stenography has been made compulsory in the media courses of the European College of Journalism and the Asian College of Journalism.

Ramaswamy said the mushrooming of call centres and opening up of BPOs that give handsome salaries have weaned away youths to imbibing proficiency in verbal communications.

Further, youths are now focusing on higher education, which in a way is good, he said. SGI has therefore diversified into conducting secretarial training, personality development and improvement of communication skills.

When at its zenith, the guild, established in 1940, was the most important source for high-speed stenographers.

'We have supplied many of them for the Indian parliament, judiciary and the police forces,' Ramaswamy added.

World's hottest chili to repel elephants

Gauhati, India: Wildlife experts in northeastern India are experimenting with a new weapon to prevent marauding elephants from destroying homes and crops and trampling people in villages close to their habitat - super-hot chilies.

Conservationists working on the experimental project in Assam state said they have put up jute fences smeared with automobile grease and bhut jolokia - also known as the ghost chili and certified as the world's hottest chili by the Guinness Book of World Records. They also were using smoke bombs made from the chili to keep elephants out.

``We fill straw nests with pungent dry chili and attach them to sticks before burning it. The fireball emits a strong pungent smell that succeeds in driving away elephants,'' Nandita Hazarika of the Assam Haathi (Elephant) Project told The Associated Press on Monday.

Hazarika said the chilies would not be eaten and that the smell would be enough to repel the elephants. He emphasized the measures would not harm the animals.

Northeast India accounts for the world's largest concentration of wild Asiatic elephants; 5,000 are estimated living in Assam alone.

Conservationists say wild elephants increasingly attack human settlements encroaching on their natural habitat. Satellite imagery by India's National Remote Sensing Agency shows that up to 691,880 acres of Assam's forests were cleared from 1996 to 2000.

More than 600 people have been killed by wild elephants in Assam in the past 16 years and villagers have reacted with an anger that has shocked conservationists. In 2001, in Sonitpur district, 112 miles north of the state capital of Gauhati, villagers poisoned 19 wild elephants to death after they feasted on crops and trampled houses.

``We have been forced to look for ingenious means to keep wild elephants from straying out of their habitats,'' M.C. Malakar, the state's chief wildlife warden, told the AP.

Indian-born scientist makes steel go green

Sydney, November 10: Millions of tonnes of waste plastic will be recycled into steel. The breakthrough Australian 'green' steel technology, which cuts coke and coal demand and reduces emission, has been invented by a Mumbai-born University of New South Wales (UNSW) materials scientist, Veena Sahajwalla.

Sahajwalla, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kanpur, told IANS: 'Plastic is simply another form of carbon. In making steel there's essentially no difference between the polyethylene plastic in shopping bags and a natural resource like coal.'

Polyethylene plastic contains carbon, an essential raw material in electric arc furnace (EAF) steel making, which recycles steel from scrap metal and accounts for 40 percent of the world's steel production. Annual steel production is around 1.1 billion tonnes globally.

The technology currently substitutes about 30 percent of coke and coal in EAF steel making with polyethylene waste plastic, which would otherwise have ended up in landfill.

Commercial production of this world first 'green' steel is underway at the Sydney furnaces of OneSteel, following a global licensing agreement between the Australian steel maker and UNSW's commercialisation arm, NewSouth Innovations (Nsi).

OneSteel's commercial manager (rod and bar), Adrian Howard, told IANS: 'Patents for this technology have been filed in major steel-making countries including India, China and the US.'

Howard said: 'Trials to date have proven the technology will deliver benefits such as reduced energy consumption and reduced material requirements while increasing steel making capacity.'

In EAF steel making, scrap is melted at around 16000 degrees Celsius and converted into high quality steel using high-power arcs. As the scrap melts, a layer of gaseous slag foam forms on top of molten steel.

The new process speeds this slag-foaming process, reducing power-on time and total power use. Total savings include lower power bills and a commensurate drop in green house gas emissions from coal-fired power stations, net savings on coke and coal usage and a longer electrode life span.

'The new business deal is gratifying because what would otherwise become waste is recycled to become a raw material for EAF steel making,' added Sahajwalla.

Equally significant is the reduction in the power required to run the furnaces using the new waste plastic injection technology. The process promises significant environmental benefits in one of the world's most essential, but energy and resource intensive industries.

Sahajwalla said: 'Getting industry to take up 'good science' is a key driver. I am passionate about creating concepts and solutions which might sound radical, but could provide a foundation for developing novel pathways into the future.'

Both industry and the environment will be big winners if the world's 300 EAF steel makers embrace the technology.

Australians recycle just 13 percent of the 1.2 million tonnes of plastic they use annually. Sahajwalla told IANS: 'Growing up in India, we used and recycled just about everything. Our dinner table conversations always centred on science.'

She recalls IIT Kanpur as being one of the most technically challenging places. 'The four years prepared me to face the world and provided a new perspective into engineering and life in general,' she said.

'By converting waste into a value-added resource we are promoting sustainability of materials industries. There are so many materials that should be recycled and if we can't, we ought to develop products that can be re-used at the end of their life cycles,' she added.

Today, she leads the research on Sustainable Materials Processing at UNSW in Sydney. Along with her research team, she works with many companies across the globe, including Mittal Steel, Nippon Steel (Japan), Ruukki Steel (Finland), Techint (Italy) and US Steel (US), that support her research focusing on sustainability of materials processing.

A recipient of many international and national awards, most recently she won the 2006 Environmental Technology Award from the Association of Iron and Steel Technology in the US and the 2005 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research.

US values ties with India more than Pakistan

Press Trust of India
Last Updated: October 31


Washington, October 31: United States has said that broad-based partnerships between America and India are critical and more important than those with Pakistan, as New Delhi is growing as a potential power with a global influence.

"The US-India strategic potential is very, very profound," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and South East Asia James Clad told online journalists and bloggers during a conference call from the Pentagon.

While India's sometimes contentious neighbour, Pakistan, continued to search for Osama bin Laden and help wage the global war on terrorism, Clad explained, the US-Indian relationship was more important in the long run.

"India simply must, as a long term consideration, matter more for us than Pakistan," Clad has been quoted as saying in the American Forces Press Services.

"India is seen as a potentially a power with global reach," Clad said.

"It's been slow in coming - I think it will be slow in coming in the future - but it is steady. The trend lines are unmistakable," he said.

Clad said India was on a major course to ramp up its military infrastructure with a multi-billion budget at the ready to purchase, among other equipment, 126 multi-role combat aircraft.

"It is the largest external-announced defence procurement budget in the world. And people are obviously interested in this," he said, adding that 52 US defence corporations, including Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Ratheon, Honeywell and General Electric, had all set up offices in India.

Referring to the recent visit by the USS Nimitz to Chennai, Clad said the visit had been an enormous success and had been greeted with great interest by the local people.

The US Navy also recently refurbished its former USS Trenton and presented it as a gift to the Indian Navy, he said.

"This is a substantial vessel which has been very well received in Indian naval circles," he said.

"You hit a golf ball on the Bangalore golf course, and that ball, unless you're careful, is going to go right through a window of IBM, which is right next to Infosys, which is an Indian firm staffed by Indian-Americans who are also listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So it's a much bigger relationship," he said.

"The relationship with India is now more comprehensive in trade, information technology, movement of its peoples," he said, adding that there were two million Indian-Americans now living in the United States.

The US, Clad said, should embrace the opportunity to assist and advise the country.

"It's about maintaining a type of equilibrium, about accepting India's rise into a type of maturity and power and prowess. We're coming into something that's naturally there. It's like a seat which is already at the table, and we're sliding into it," he added.