18 bombs defused in Surat

AHMEDABAD: In a day of “battle with bombs,” the Surat police on Tuesday unearthed 18 live bombs and its bomb squad succeeded in defusing all of them, averting a major tragedy in the second largest commercial centre of Gujarat.

It was the third consecutive day live bombs and explosives were found in Surat. As panic spread in the diamond and art silk city, all schools and colleges were closed and children sent back home. Shutters of cinema halls and shopping malls were also downed. These places will remain closed on Wednesday too.

Whether the terrorists were playing a hide-and-seek game with the police or all the bombs were planted simultaneously was not clear. But the bombs were found almost one after another from day-break till evening.

Of the18 bombs, as many as 10 were found in the labour-dominated Varacha Road and Katargam areas alone, striking a similarity with Saturday’s bomb blasts here, where the labour-dominated old city areas were targeted. The bombs and the explosive-laden cars recovered in the city in the last two days were also on the Varacha Road or nearby areas.

As if throwing a direct challenge to the police, two of the bombs were found right in front of the Labheswar police chowky and Sardarpura police stations. Two bombs were planted in the diamond market adjacent to the Varacha Road, one in the Radhakrishna textile market and two on a fly-over.
Not totally concealed

Surprisingly, unlike in Ahmedabad and most other places, the bombs were not totally concealed. Most of the bombs were in “boat-shape” and wrapped in coloured papers. They were kept at strategic points, including behind street hoardings or near garbage dumps.

The entire day the police and civic authorities repeatedly urged people to maintain peace and patience and cooperatewith them.

Minister of State for Home Amit Shah also appealed to people not to panic or spread rumours. He said the police were on maximum alert to protect the lives and property of people.

In Ahmedabad, life, by and large, was normal. However, in one incident, panic-stricken parents rushed to a school in Chandlodiya locality to get their wards following rumour of a bomb in a near-by area.
Source : the Hindu dt 29 7 2008

DA correction to add to pay panel’s goodies

NEW DELHI: The Sixth Pay Commission award for government officials is likely to be sweetened with an upward revision in the dearness allowance (DA) entitlement. The committee of secretaries (CoS) looking into the recommendations made by the Sixth Pay Commission has suggested a change in the DA calculations. This could result in additional benefit of Rs 300-3,000 a month to a government employee, depending on her level.

The CoS, headed by Cabinet secretary K M Chandrashekhar, is giving finishing touches to the report that is expected to be submitted soon. The report would then go to the Cabinet for approval. Government sources said the change has been suggested in the wake of an across-the-board protest by government employees against the way DA allowance was fixed.

The Fifth Pay Commission had recommended that the 50% DA payable in April 2004 be merged with basic pay. The dearness pay was to be counted as basic pay for all practical purposes, including for retirement benefit. Thus, logically, as on January 1, 2006, the recommended date of Sixth Pay Commission award, the 24% DA payable should have been on a salary that included the 50% DA that was merged with basic pay from April 2004.

In its calculation, however, instead of compounding the two DA components — 50% as on April 1, 2004 and 24% as on January 1, 2006 — the commission added them, yielding a figure of 74% composite DA. Consequently, while shifting to the concept of grade pay, the pay commission fixed the base salary as on January 1, 2006, at the basic pay drawn along with dearness allowance at the rate of 74%, and rounded it off to next multiple of 10. The anomaly resulted in a loss of roughly 7% to government employees.

To put it simply, if an employee had a basic salary of Rs 100 on April 1, 2004, according to the Fifth Pay Commission calculation, he would have a total salary of Rs 150 (including 50% DA). A 24% DA on that would increase his salary to Rs 186 — and not Rs 174 on January 1, 2006, used as the base for calculating Sixth Pay Commission award. The committee of secretaries is understood to have proposed that the anomaly be corrected and the DA be fixed at 86% and not 74%.

So, in case of a government employee in the Rs 2,550 pre-revised payscale, the revised pay in running pay band would become Rs 4,743 (increase of 86%) against Rs 4,440 (74% increase), a gain of over Rs 300. At the director level, in the payscale of Rs 18,300, the difference because of the change would be over Rs 2,000 a month
Source : The economic times dt. 27 7 2008

Soon, your TV may go green

WASHINGTON: Engineers in the US have developed TV displays based on a telescope design invented by Isaac Newton to reduce the display's electricity consumption.

The rear layer of a conventional liquid crystal display (LCD) used in televisions produces light (backlight), whose brightness is controlled by small liquid crystals that swing round like tiny shutters.

However, most of this backlight is wasted and never reaches the viewer.

Swapping the liquid crystals with microscopic mechanical mirrors arranged in a similar way to a telescope design invented by Isaac Newton can make much more efficient use of the backlight.
Source : infotech.indiatimes.com dt. 26 7 2008

Serial blasts rattle Bangalore; woman killed

BANGALORE: A series of low intensity blasts on Friday rocked the southern and central parts of Bangalore, a city that has of late been on the radar of terror groups. One person was killed and seven were injured in the eight explosions that created panic among residents and threw traffic out of gear on a rainy working day.

The explosions were reported within 45 minutes from 1.15 p.m. Though the police have not ruled out the involvement of terrorist groups, Bangalore Police Commissioner Shankar M. Bidari told journalists that “miscreants” had triggered the blasts to “disrupt the peace” in the city. Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, after an emergency Cabinet meeting, announced that no “hard core terrorist group” was involved in the blasts which, he claimed, were carried out to “malign” the government.

“I heard a deafening explosion as I was starting my bike,” Vinay, an employee of a car showroom on Mysore Road, told The Hindu. “I thought a bus tyre had burst until I saw smoke billowing from behind a bush. I ran back into the office,” he said.

According to police sources, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) fitted to timer devices were used in all the explosions. Preliminary investigations revealed that ammonium nitrate, bolts and nuts and cement chips were packed into the devices.

Sources in the National Bomb Data Centre told The Hindu that the IEDs were almost identical to the ones used in the explosions at the Mecca Masjid, Gokul Chats and the Lumbini Park in Hyderabad, and in the court blasts in Lucknow and Hubli.

The first explosion occurred at a bus stop near the Madivala checkpost, off the busy Hosur Road, around 1.15 p.m. Sudha Ravi, who was waiting for a bus with her husband, was killed on the spot, and two were injured. Two more explosives went off in the adjoining Audugodi area, injuring three persons.

Similar low-intensity explosions took place at three places on Mysore Road and at two spots in the heart of the city — near the Mallya Hospital and near the Rashtriya Military School on Langford Road.

At Audugodi, the explosives were planted behind a telephone junction box near a commercial complex under construction and another near a stormwater drain.

On Mysore Road, the explosives were placed under a power supply transformer near a mall; one near a stormwater drain; and the third near a car showroom next to the Regional Transport Office.

A high alert has been sounded across the State.
Source : The Hindu dt. 26 7 2008

`XP hurting Vista badly

NEW DELHI: Microsoft may have given farewell to Windows XP, but seems users are still in no mood to bid goodbye to one of the most popular operating systems.

According to a recent Forrester survey, less than 10 percent of the 2,300 companies surveyed use Vista. Forrester says 87.1 percent of companies surveyed continue to use Windows XP.

Mendel told a leading tech magazine that it would be wise by Microsoft to "consider following the lead of Microsoft's important partner Intel and re-evaluating the case of Vista."

The report negates Redmond giants claim that over 180 million copies of Vista have been sold. Also, what may be more disturbing for Microsoft is that many of the pre-loaded Vista machines are being downgraded to XP in compliance with corporate licensing plans.

The report also had a bit of good news for Microsoft. It found Vista usage among businesses going up by more than 40 percent since January and that the rate of adoption of Vista remains twice that of Mac OS X.

The Forrester report also shows the growing popularity of Firefox browser. It notes that almost 20 percent of the enterprise users are using Firefox browser and urges developers to make sure that their applications work with Firefox.
Source : infotech.indiatimes.com dt. 25 7 2008

IT jobs to grow ten fold

NEW DELHI: "Indian IT industry may be passing through a rough patch because of a slowdown in the US economy and high inflation rates, but this stage will pass,” says a study.

The study elaborates, “India will continue to drive the global IT market for the next few years. In fact, it will emerge as the second most important IT industry in the world after the US in terms of revenue and employment."

"India will create the second largest IT services labour pool after the US within the next seven to eight years. That's not all, domestic IT industry's contribution to our GDP is likely to rise from 0.8 per cent in 2006-07 to 2.65 per cent by 2015-16."

This has been forecasted by a yet to be released white paper ‘India's Role in the Globalization of the IT Industry' by Evalueserve, a KPO. It says, "by 2015-2016, the number of professionals working in the IT industry will grow ten fold (from 2001-2002) and the total revenue will grow 22 times."

This means, the IT industry is likely to employ 3,750,000 professionals and record $193.1 billion in revenue by 2015-16.

"Since India's GDP is growing at 8.5 per cent per annum in real terms and 14 per cent in nominal terms, by 2015-16 our GDP is likely to be $2,400 billion. Given this, the IT industry is likely to constitute 8.05 per cent of India's GDP."

While in the last decade, IT services exports (including engineering services, R&D, and those related to creating and maintaining software products) have been growing at 32 per cent annually.

Evalueserve estimates this growth rate will taper off and become around 20 per cent in the next seven to eight years. The reason: rising wages, lack of high quality talent, and IT jobs relocating to other low-cost destinations in Eastern Europe and Latin America.

The paper thus concludes: First, by 2016 India will have the second highest number of IT professionals in the world after the US. In fact, US will employ between 1.25 to 1.33 times more professionals than India.

Second, even in 2016, the US IT industry will generate approximately $810 billion in annual revenue, which would be almost five times the revenue of the Indian IT industry.
And third, since the IT industries in both the US and India have become inextricably linked with one another, both countries will import and export more IT services and products for the next seven to eight years.
Source : The indiatimes.com dt. 25 7 2008

UPA claims it has support of 291 MPs

New Delhi (PTI): With just two days to go for the trust vote in Lok Sabha, top UPA leaders on Saturday claimed that the combine had the support of 291 MPs and that JMM was "part and parcel" of the Congress-led coalition.

Union Ministers Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan claimed that the Congress-led coalition has the support of 291 MPs and "we will win the trust vote".

On JMM, Prasad said that the Shibu Soren-led party was "part and parcel of the UPA" and their MPs will vote for the country.

"This deal is in the interest of the nation and UPA has the support of 291 MPs," Lalu claimed and added "Mayawati is not so fortunate to become Prime Minister and Advaniji doesn't have it in his fortunes to become PM."

The Railways Minister said when Mulayam, Lalu and Paswan stand together "nothing can stop them from getting the majority."

Paswan said that the Left parties who had earlier "abused" the BJP have joined hands with the party and termed the opposition alliance as "opportunistic" one.

"There is no danger to UPA government and opposition has become an opportunistic alliance," Paswan said.

"The magic figure is 271 and Laluji said that we have the support of 291 MPs. We have identified 281 of the members who will support us. Remaining 10 will support us during trust vote," he said.

Criticising CPI leader A B Bardhan for termed all MPs as corrupt, Lalu said: "I want an answer from Prakash Karat that Somnath and Jyoti Basu had drawn a line over the issue, when senior leaders have such stand, then he should answer us on what basis they have termed MPs as corrupt," Lalu said.
Source : The Hindu dt 20 7 2008