Cheif Minister to get executive jet for Rs 150 crore

The government is planning to buy a new executive jet costing Rs 130 crore to Rs 150 crore for the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S Rajasekhar Reddy. The infrastructure and investment department put up the proposal to the finance minister, Mr K. Rosaiah, who held a budget preparatory meeting with officials on Monday.

Sources told this correspondent that the chief secretary, Mr P. Ramakanth Reddy, gave in principle approval for the purchase and forwarded it for approval from the finance wing. The finance ministry was asked to allot Rs 80 crore in the present budget which would be paid as advance for the jet.

The jet will be put to exclusive use of the Chief Minister for long distance travel within the state and outside.

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Only 3 Indians on International Cricket Council list

Only three Indian greats, left-arm spin magician Bishen Singh Bedi, prolific opener Sunil Gavaskar and champion all rounder Kapil Dev, have been named by the International Cricket Council in its 55-strong Hall of Famers list, which has 22 Englishmen in it.

The ICC, while announcing Colin Cowdrey as the 19th cricketer to be formally inducted in its elite list of cricket greats, provided the list of persons who have been chosen for the Hall of Fame, but yet to be formally inducted.

The list contains 22 Englishmen, 11 Australians, 13 West Indians, three each from India, Pakistan and two South Africans and a lone New Zealander.

Strangely, none from Sri Lanka was found good enough to make the list though it has won the World Cup in 1996. Apparently the list does not contain cricketers who have retired after 1995.

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Sibal makes it easy for students

The Union human resources development minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, proposed big bang education reforms, envisaging a single school board to be set up at the all-India level, replacing all state-level boards, and to make the board examination at the Class 10 level optional for students.

The minister said it was not possible to do away with the Class 10 board examination altogether for a number of reasons. Those students who do not intend to leave school or change schools after Class 10 should not have to sit for Class 10 board exams. For them internal assessments should be enough to move up to Class 11, he said.

Later, he cautioned students hopeful of immediate reforms that it was not going to happen this year, or even next year. Study hard, he urged them.

There was an urgent need to reform the entire process, he said, adding that this would be done after a consensus was arrived at with the state governments.

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Coming: 3 eclipses in a row

For those who look skywards, there is much celestial entertainment in store in the coming weeks, with three eclipses occurring in a span of 30 days from July 7.

The penumbra lunar eclipse, in which the moon will be darkened by the earth’s shadow, will occur on July 7 and August 6, and a total solar eclipse is set to occur on July 22. Astronomers have asked people not to miss it since the next total solar eclipse will only happen in 2064.

Interestingly, another lunar eclipse is slated to occur between 1 am and 2 am on the night of December 31, darkening the New Year celebrations.

Though astronomers are excited at the series of eclipses, astrologers are wagging a finger

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Hyderabadi student beaten in Melbourne

A student from Hyderabad was beaten up by locals in Melbourne after a brief lull in racial attacks on Monday. This was the 16th attack on Indians in Australia since May 9.

Mr M.K. Khan, a 23-year-old student of Victoria Institute of Technology, Melbourne, was attacked when he came out of a hair-dressing salon on Monday.

“Two guys came from the side and gave a very bad punch on my face and ran away. This incident happened around 5.30 pm, the peak hour of traffic on the road,” said Mr Khan. “It was a racist attack because they did not take any money. Police came after 10 minutes,” Mr Khan was quoted as saying by a TV channel. The attackers were described as “Caucasians wearing hoods.”

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Fatwas issued against Shah Rukh Khan

Two Islamic seminaries in Bareilly district have ex-communicated superstar Shah Rukh Khan from Islam for alleged remarks on the Prophet. Mufti Muti-ur-Rehman Rizvi of Darul Uloom Mazharul Islam and Mufti Mohd Shoeb Raza Qadri, in separate fatwas, said that one who could make comments on the Prophet had no right to remain in Islam.

“If the marriage of this person (Shah Rukh Khan) has been solemnised as per Islamic law, then the marriage also stands nullified with this fatwa and he will no longer be entitled to get burial space in Muslim graveyards,” the fatwas said.

Students of these seminaries also staged demonstrations and burnt effigies of the superstar to protest against his statements. It may be recalled that Shah Rukh Khan landed in a controversy when a magazine quoted the actor as saying that Prophet was an unimpressive historical figure like Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.

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Against all odds

The last time around, they had missed the World Cup by a whisker. This time, Pakistan left nothing to chance as they packed a punch to thump Sri Lanka and emerge as the World Twenty20 champions at Lord’s on Sunday.

The meagre target of 139 was never a hassle as the Greens rode on Shahid Afridi’s half-century to canter home by eight wickets.

Afridi hit two boundaries and an equal number of sixes as he smashed 54 not out in 40 balls. Kamran Akmal (37) and Shoaib Malik (24) were the next best.

It was only fitting that a team that had undergone innumerous trials and tribula tions, had won the World championship.Sri Lanka were never in the game as Pakistan tightened the screw right from the start to restrict them to a modest total.

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2.5 lakh kids have quit school in Andhra Pradesh

Believe it or not, a staggering 2.5 lakh children are school dropouts in the state.

In Hyderabad alone, the number has touched 13,000 Of these, 2,800 children are employed as child labours in various hazardous occupations in and around the city.

This was established during a survey conducted last year jointly by the Centre for Good Governance and ORG Marg, sponsored by the National Child Labour Project (NCLP).

“There has not been a comprehensive survey for the last seven years, the last state wide survey was in 2001,” said Dr E. Gangadhar, Assistant Commissioner of Labour, Hyderabad and the Project director of NCLP

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Fake offer on job portal cheats youth of Rupees 1 lakh

The city youth has been cheated of Rs 1 lakh after he was sent a fake job offer, said the police.

The police said Rohan, (name changed), had received a mail for employment in “Total”, a French oil and natural gas company.He was asked to click on a link, which took him to a fake website.

According to Rohan, he found a job opening in “Total”, put up at XING, one of the popular job portals. After he contacted it, he received a mail from a person identifying himself as Mr Philip Jorden, head of careers and recruitments of “Total” in the UK.

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Andhra Pradesh transfers 16 Indian Administrative Service officers in first reshuffle

The state government on Monday transferred 16 IAS officers.

The government has shifted collectors of 11 districts in its first major administrative reshuffle.

It seems the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, did not consider the adverse election results in some districts when he decided to shift officers.

Though the Congress fared badly in Nizamabad district where the party heavyweights like the former Speaker, Mr K. Suresh Reddy, and PCC president, Mr D. Srinivas, lost the Chief Minister shifted the Nizamabad collector, Mr Ramanjaneyulu, to Guntur a move many in the political circles see as a promotion.

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Centre on monsoon flu alert

Six more per sons tested positive for the A-H1N1 swine flu virus in different parts of the country on Sunday, the largest number in a single day. The total number of confirmed infections in India now stands at 23.

Three of these were in Hyderabad, two in Bengaluru and one — a schoolboy from Jalandhar just returned with a school group from the US — in New Delhi.

The Union health ministry held a high-level review meeting with officials of the National Disaster Management Authority and the National Institute of Communicable Diseases to ensure the disease does not spread with the monsoon looming.

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Lover pushes girl off Charminar

In the continuing series of attacks on women, a man pushed his 18-yearold girlfriend from the first floor of Charminar in full public view on Thursday.The girl survived the fall and is in hospital in a critical condition.

The girl, whom we are identifying as Rubaina, is battling for life at Osmania General Hospital. Rubaina told the police that she is a resident of Talabkatta in the old city and had come to Charminar along with her boyfriend, Arshad.

Rubaina said they had ice-cream and then climbed to the first floor balcony of the monument. As they were gazing at the sights, Arshad pushed the girl down and disappeared.

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AN-32 wreckage found in Arunachal

Wreckage of the Indian Air Force AN-32 aircraft, which went missing in Arunachal Pradesh with 13 people on board, has been found over Rinchi Hills of Arunachal Pradesh.

A joint team of IndoTibetan Border police and Army had launched search operations after villagers of Palegaon reported sighting a huge ball of fire on Tuesday in the sky and they believe it could be the aircraft crashing into a hill. The aircraft had crashed over Rinchi hill above Heyo village, 60 km from Mechuka in the district.

Earlier, two Army helicopters of the Indian Air Force began aerial reconnaissance in the morning, but were forced to call off their search due to bad weather.

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2 year old girl has Intelligence Quotient of 160

Karina Oakley might be just two years of age, but she has an IQ of 160, which makes her among the top 0.03 per cent of the population in Britain.

Karina, from Guildford, Surrey, was asked to question numbers and complete challenges in several different categories, including verbal ability, memory, handling a pencil and numbers and shapes.

Prof. Joan Freeman, the child psychologist who used the Stanford-Binet IQ intelligence test, said that some of the questions that the girl asked showed a “wonderful imagination”.

Karina’s IQ is 60 points above the mean for the population.

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Students forced to miss exam

In a shocking incident, the management of Guru Nanak Engineering College on Monday locked up about 150 students and prevented them from writing their first year annual exam.

The college officials were angry because the students wanted generators to be switched on in their hostels, which were plagued by power cuts for the last three days. Enveloped in darkness, the students could not study for the exams.

On Monday, some students broke a few windowpanes and tables in protest.The college management simply locked up about 150 hostellers to get them to identify the attackers. About 130 students were released in the evening, hours after the exam ended.

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Google co-mentor drowns in pool

Rajeev Motwani, the 47-year-old Indian American computer science professor at Stanford University who mentored Google’s co-founders when they were graduate students, has died from a freak drowning accident at his Atherton, California home.

Born March 26, 1962, in Jammu, Motwani grew up in New Delhi, earned a computer science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur in 1983, and his doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley in 1988.

He apparently drowned on Friday morning in a backyard swimming pool at the home he purchased three years ago, according to the San Jose Mercury News, a Silicon Valley news outlet. Friends said he did not know how to swim but was planning to take lessons.

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Climate change to hit Andhra Pradesh farmers

Climate change will seriously hit the agriculture sector in Andhra Pradesh, affecting the incomes of farmers by as much as 20 per cent.

According to the latest World Bank report on the impact of climate change on India, dry land farmers in AP may see their incomes plunge by 20 per cent. The WB report is one of the first of its kind in South Asia.

N. Harshadeep, World Bank senior environmental specialist for South Asia, said: “If climate projections are indicative of future trends, the risks associated with water-related climate variability are likely to intensify and worsen.”

Apart from farmers in AP, agriculturists in Maharashtra and Orissa will also be affected badly.

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Obama asks Muslims for new start

Quoting from the Quran for emphasis, US President Barack Obama on Thursday called for a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims” and said that together, they could confront violent extremism across the globe and advance the timeless search for peace in West Asia.

“This cycle of suspicion and discord must end,” Mr Obama said in a widely anticipated speech, an address designed to reframe relations after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the US-led war in Iraq.

Mr Obama conceded at the beginning of his remarks that tension “has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.”

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History made in Lok Sabha as Meira takes over

After her historic election as the first woman Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Ms Meira Kumar on Wednesday assured the Opposition that she would be impartial but steered cleared of whether she would resign from the Congress.

“I assure the House that I will pay full attention to all sections of the House. I also assure you that neither will I be biased against the Opposition nor will I give any opportunity to the Treasury benches to complain)," she said in her first address as Speaker to the members of the House.

Seeking to disapprove of attempts to disrupt Parliament, she observed that no citizen would like the working of the House to be disrupted while raising any issue concerning him.

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Mamata may present Rail Budget on July 8

The railway minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee, is likely to present the Rail Budget in the Lok Sabha on July 8.“The Rail Budget is likely to be presented on July 8.The ministry is preparing a status report to be presented before the railway minister.

The report is to be submitted in a day or two and after that the budget outline will be drawn by the minister,” a senior ministry official said.

The ministry is likely to shell out about Rs 14,000 crore to its staff because of the implementation of the sixth pay commission in the current fiscal. The current operating ratio of 88 per cent is likely to be affected due to the implementation of the pay commission report, said the official. The railways have often drawn flak from passengers for low quality food being served and unhygienic conditions prevailing in trains and platforms. “Some drastic measures need to be taken to improve passenger amenities like food quality and cleanliness in trains,” the official said.

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Another Indian attacked in Oz

An Indian taxi driver was attacked by his Australian passengers who were in an intoxicated condition at Blackburn in Melbourne.

He had asked the passengers to get down after his taxi suffered a puncture.

Initial reports said the driver, who has not been named, said was a native of Hyderabad but it later turned out that the victim was from Punjab.

Eighteen Indians were detained for “breaching peace” during their rally in Melbourne on Sunday. The rally was broken up on Monday; protesters said the “ramrodded” them to break up their sit-in.

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Shravan ‘out of danger’

A 25 year-old Indian student, who had slipped into a coma after being stabbed by a group of teens here, is “out of danger” and has been taken off the life support system, according to a leading community member who visited him at the local hospital.

“He has come out of coma and moved his hands,” said T.J. Rao, while giving an update on the condition of Shravan Kumar, who was stabbed with a screwdriver last Sunday in a brutal attack that also left three of Indian friends injured.

“Kumar is out of life support, but doctors are still not very sure about his full recovery,” Rao, also the former Consul General of India in Melbourne, said.

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