Tuesday, 12 July 2011

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

Old people repeatedly getting abused in our state

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 08:09 AM PDT

Patna: Bihar is seeing an increasing trend of the exploitation and abuse of elderly people.A survey done by an NGO reports that Patna is on almost top of the graph in case of abuse of elderly people. In many cases they suffer from physical and mental loneliness, inspite of being financially comfortable.

“We get at least 20 calls from elders asking for help every day. Most of them inquire about old-age homes,” said HelpAge India’s Bihar head Debabrata Ghosh.Social activist Shanti Ojha, who was running an old-age home till last year, added that the number of elders coming to her was far more than the beds in the old-age home.

The government is also coming forward to setup few old age home in the state.The identified locations are at Patna, Gaya, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga and Bhagalpur. Each home would have 100 beds.
Regards

Train Driver prevents another major accident in Bihar

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 05:38 AM PDT

Kudos to the driver of New Delhi – Muzaffarpur Sapta Kranti Express for averting another railway mishap and saving the lives of thousands,else Bihar would have been hitting national headlines today.

Around 8am on Monday, the New Delhi-Muzaffarpur Sapta Kranti express hit a faulty portion of the track between Khairpokhara and Bagaha railway stations in West Champaran district.The alert driver, immediately applied emergency brakes and mitigated yet another potential accident.As per sources, the train was travelling at the enormous speed of 70 kmph.

With the prompt response of railway authorities, the train was flagged off within 30 minutes after fixing the track.No injuries have been reported to occur.

Bihar witnesses phenomenal rise in milk production

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 04:20 AM PDT

Bihar has seen a phenomenal increment in the milk production in past 10 years with the figures booming by over 400 percent. The total milk production of the state i 1999-2000 was 281 thousand litres, which has soared to 14 lakhs litres per day(more than 4x times)

This includes the production by individuals cattle owners as well as by large dairies and cooperatives. Thsi model has provided income opportunities to more than 5 lakh rural families.
This also helped Bihar to secure second position is the milk production, next only to Gujrat.

Bihar runs these initiatives under the brandage of COMFED.COMFED tries to fashion itself around Anand with three tier structures- all working in perfect coordination with each other. At the primary level which actually is village level, Primary Dairies Cooperatives exist.

There are 8600 PDCs in the whole of State. About 4.50 families are connected to these PDCs but only one member from each family has voting rights. Each family can purchase share but no matter how much share one owns, voting right is limited to one in a family unlike commercial venture where greater no of shares gives you greater clout.
Village level dairies cooperatives elect District Cooperative Unions which are presently six in number with head quarters at Patna, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Barauni, Arrah and Bhagalpur. Two more are in the process of coming up.
At the village level, dairy cooperatives have 13 members with a Chairman. The chairmen of Primary Dairy Cooperatives elect district milk union board. These district milk union boards take care of the needs of village dairy cooperatives and operate in tendem with them. At the state level the COMFED is constituted by the chairmen of district union boards which are six in number. There are 11 members on the board of COMFED in which 3 are from National Dairy Development Board, Managing Director and the chairman being the other two.
Milk is collected from dairy cooperatives in the village twice a day and brought to milk sheds in district milk unions which have more than one dairy plant on average. There are 13 dairy plants in total. At the plant, milk is processed for urban consumer , filled in pouches and milk derivatives are produced. COMFED has about 26 milk products and this is marketed under the brand name of Sudha. On an average 7.5 lakhs litres of milk is procured every month with this figure touching 11 lakh litres in March 2010.It is being marked in 110 cities even crossing the boarder of State to West Bengal, UP and Jharkhand.
Amidst the dismal cooperative scenario in the state of Bihar the story of Sudha is indeed inspiring. Most of the cooperatives be it consumer, land development bank, the once famous BISCOMAUN are defunct bodies today. But even for COMFED the journey is far from complete. Sudha would be truly successful when along with raising the milk production entire milk production in the state is routed through it. Mr Ashok Jawa, the General Manager at COMFED is confident that with new plants and vision of expansion this could be achieved.

Learn the A to Z of Google Plus

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 03:30 AM PDT

By now, you have all probably heard about the Google+ project, Google's next attempt at making their network more social. Its goal is to make sharing online more like sharing in real life.

If you haven't gotten your invite just yet, you canlearn more about Google+ in the following quick-look video, and by visiting the Google+ project overview, searchable details anddiscussion pages.

You can also take a demo tour so you can get a feel for what to expect once you are able to join the project.

Limited Field Trial Invites

If you're one of the lucky ones, you received an invite for Google+ during their limited field trial. While the invite messages ranged from a sneak preview of what will be inside to your friend is hanging out, the commonality is the brick-red Learn more about Google+ button.

Here is an example email invite to Google+.

Whenever you click on the button, you're taken to the invite screen for Google+. If you have a Gmail address, all you have to do is update your public profile to begin.

Join Google+ when someone sends you an invite.

Two things to note when joining. During the limited field trial, there is the following disclosure:

"Things may not always work as intended. By using this product in Field Trial stage, you're responsible for protecting yourself and your data from any risks, including data loss or disclosure. By signing up, you also agree that we may contact you to ask for feedback about the product."

There is also a checkbox that says "Google may use my information to personalize content and ads on non-Google websites." When you click on the question mark for more information, it takes you to the privacy notice about +1 on non-Google siteswhich lets you know that when you enable +1, you will be able to see recommendations by your friends in Google+ and they will see your recommendations based on the +1's you have clicked. +1's will show up on yourGoogle public profile which you should fill out if you are planning to start interacting more on Google networks.

Once you've read the Google+ privacy policy, click on the Join button to get started!

Inside Google+

The first question you are greeted with is a popup on whether you want to link yourPicasa Web Album (Google's version of Flickr) to your Google+ account to share your photos and videos with others. If you have albums already, the privacy settings for them will remain the same. Since I do photography, I went ahead and connected mine. It's also a bit confusing as your only other option is Don't Join Google+.

The Welcome Screen

Next, you will be greeted by the Welcome screen.

Google+ greets you on your first visit with popular options.

Creating Your Profile

The first thing you will want to do is click on your name in the black bar across the top of the screen and view your profile.

Edit your Google+ profile so connections can learn more about you.

Here you will be able to edit your Google+ profile information, including adding a tagline, employment information, education and photo scrapbook. You can also set the privacy on each one of these to anyone on the web, extended circles (friends of friends), your circles or only you.

When you click on Continue to my profile, you will see your full profile which will pull your Google+ updates on the Posts tab.

View your complete Google+ profile and make edits where necessary.

Your About tab pulls information from your main Google profile; you can also edit that here by clicking on Edit Profile and then clicking on the section you want to edit. UnderPhotos and Videos, you will see anything you allowed to be imported from Picasa. Next are your +1's and Buzz updates.

Adding Connections

Next, you will want to start adding people as connections. Click the Show all > link in the right sidebar under Suggestions to see the friends you have already on Google+. It may be limited during the trial, so don't be surprised if you don't have many.

Add friends from your Google connections and see who has added you to their circles.

From here, you can find people based on who you connect with on Google—people you have emailed in Gmail who also have Google accounts, people you follow on Google Buzz and so forth—using the Find and Invite tab. You can also see who has already added you to their connections by using the People who've added youtab.

Want to know about a particular person? Just click on their box and then the link to their profile where you can see (based on their privacy preferences) their latest updates, people they have added to their circles, people who have added them to circles, and people you have in common between your circles.

Creating Circles

Circles are the way to organize your connections on Google+. Learn more about them in this short intro video.

The default circles you have are Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following. You can drag people into circles individually or by highlighting multiple people at a time and dragging them all into one circle. You can also create a new circle by dropping a friend onto the Drop here to create a new circle or simply hover over that circle to create a new one before you start dragging your connections over.

Create new circles for different connections.

When you add your first person who has already added you to a circle, you will get a popup notification that you can now share with them and see what they are sharing with you. They will be notified that you added them, but not see the name of the circle you added them to.

You will also be notified that they will appear on your public profile. If you don't want that to happen, you can click on the Change link which will take you to your Google profile with a highlighted box where you can change the visibility settings to show people in all circles or just selected ones, select whether anyone on the web or just people in your circles can see that information and select whether to show people who have added you to their circles.

For the people who are not on Google+ yet, adding them to a circle means that you will be able to send them updates via email. I have added people not on Google+ to circles in the hopes that when they do join, they will already be organized where I want them. I'm not sure how I feel about sending them updates because those people haven't signed up and might not really want to be opted into updates, but regardless it is there for those who feel that someone would be interested in the updates.

Your Settings

Before you go too far into Google+, you might want to tweak some of your settings. To do this, click on the Options symbol all the way to the right in the black bar across the top of the screen.

Manage your Google+ settings, including notifications, geolocation and tags.

Here you can set what notifications you receive. After that, there are two important settings you will want to note.

Photos and Geolocation Information—If you don't want a location tagged to your photos, you will want to uncheck this one. I haven't seen any location tags on a photo yet, but I once uploaded a photo to a Twitter photo sharing service that tagged the photos on map view, so if you took a photo of your house, you would be giving the world directions.

People Whose Tags Are Automatically Approved to Link to Your Profile—A network where not everyone can tag you! If you keep your connections organized well, only people you want to tag you can, as you can set this to particular circles, extended circles, all of your own circles or public.

Your Notifications

When there is new activity for you on Google+ (someone shares a post with you, adds you to their circle, etc.) then a red number will appear next to your name in the black bar across the top of the screen.

See your latest Google+ notifications.

You can click on these individual items to see more details about them or go directly to posts that have been shared with you.

Your Stream

Once you have set up your profile, added people to your circles, and adjusted your settings, you can go back to your main page by clicking on the Home icon to see a stream of updates from your connections.

Read the latest updates from your Google+ connections.

You can see updates from all of your connections, or click on the circle names in the left sidebar to see updates from just people in those circles.

Also, for each individual update, you can click on the down arrow to the right of the update to link to the post and share it on your profile, report it as abuse, mute the post or block the person who sent it.

How +1 Ties Into Google+

You've seen the implementation of Google +1 on blogs, websites and in search results. Here's where it comes into play within Google+. Just like you can Like posts on Facebook, you can +1 posts!

Give a +1 to your favorite posts in your stream.

You can also see the count of how many +1s the updates receive and who has given it the +1.

Sending Updates

To send an update, you click on the box right below your stream. You will have the option to send photo-, video-, link- or location-based updates.

Send updates to the public, all of your circles or only specific circles.

You can then select who will see this update among your different circles, all of your circles, extended circles or anyone on the web.

There is also an option to email your updates to people you've added to circlesif they are not a part of Google+ yet.

Forward updates via email.

Again, I'm not sure how I feel about opting-in someone who isn't even a part of the network yet, but it's there.

Chat With Friends

In your left sidebar, you have an option to connect with people in Chat. It's similar to the same chat feature in your Gmail, also known as Google Talk.

Google Talk is now inside Google+.

The indicators will show you if someone is online and if they are available for a text chat (the green dot) or a video chat (the green video camera). When you click on their name, a little chat window will pop up at the bottom right side of your screen so you can start chatting.

Start a text, video, phone or group chat.

From here, you can click on the video icon, phone for Google Voice chat or the + person icon to add more people to start a group text chat. And if you want to start blocking someone, just click on the Actions dropdown for that option.

You can set your Google+ chat to only show you as online to particular circles, or you can set your overall status to Available, Busy, or Invisible to everyone signed into chat.

Video Chat With Friends Using Hangouts

Since I'm not quite comfortable with video yet, I haven't gotten into this one. But you can connect with people via video by clicking on the Start a Hangout button in the right sidebar of your home page. You can learn more about this feature in this quick video.

You will need to have a webcam and install the Google Voice and Google Video plugins to use this feature.

Feeds From Sparks

Sparks is a feature within Google+ that allows you to get a feed from a variety of websites on any topics you choose.

Simply search for the things you are interested in to bring up a feed for that interest.

Check out the latest news in your industry with Google+ Sparks.

When you click the Add interest button at the top of a search, it will save it for you in your left-hand sidebar under your streams for easy access. It's a great way to catch up on news on your favorite topics or within your industry. It also gives you some quick content to share with your circles!

Mobile Access

Last but not least, you can access Google+ on your mobile device. Currently the only app is for Android, with iPhone coming soon. But you can access google.com/+ in your browser on Android, iPhone, iPad and Blackberry with the specified OS systems.

Your Thoughts on Google+

What do you think? This article contains everything I know about Google+ thus far. Have you joined? What has been your experience so far? Do you think you will use this more or less than other social networking platforms? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

 

We at Biharprabha are too at Google Plus.To get into our circles visit https://plus.google.com/u/0/107365143924563510327/posts

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is an Internet marketing specialist with Vertical Measures and author of Kikolani, a blog that focuses on social media and blog marketing. Follow her on Twitter @kikolani. Other posts by Kristi Hines

All Reserved by the Author

How Google Plus can ruin your social life

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 03:24 AM PDT

This article is for entertainment purposes only; facts and opinions included may be partly or entirely fictional.

Unless you were stuck in a mine, you must have heard about Google+. I was one of the few that managed to get invited to the “limited field trial”, as Google calls it. I was quite excited about it, as I was growing tired of Facebook, with its “One Type of Friend Fits All” approach. Now you may have heard good things about Google+, but after just 5 horrible days, I don’t agree anymore.

Day 1: The friendly import

As you know, Google is all about personalization – silently filtering stuff. I should have seen it coming when I used the “Import friends from other social networks” feature, but it just looked so, well, friendly. I had over 500 friends on various networks, but after the import, 20% of them were suddenly gone. Only after a while I noticed the small warning that mentioned, “Some friends might have been dumped. Don’t worry about it.” So apparently, Google+ didn’t approve of my current girlfriend, my best friend, and my neighbors. Indeed, a very limited trial.

Day 2: A little notification won’t hurt

Google+ just loves to send notifications to let you know what friends are doing, and the other way around. The creepy part is that “user input is optional”, as Google puts it. Somehow Google+ just knows what everyone is doing and isn’t too shy to let everyone know. That’s how I learned my new girlfriend was cheating on me with my new best friend. On the other side, my friends found out how I won $2000 by cheating at our poker nights. At the end of the day, I either dumped or got dumped by 25% of my network.

Day 3: It’s the autopilot, stupid

After the stress of the first two days, I took a day off to recover, but I wish I didn’t. Google+ has an “autopilot” feature, that assumes your identity while you’re offline and lets people now what you’re doing on vacation. Oh yes, Google+ knows what you’re doing offline. If I only had been aware of that, I would never have gone to my favorite Disney-themed strip club. Thanks Google, that’s another 10% of my friends down the drain.

 

Day 4: Lost in translation

As you know Google+ also has a videochat feature, Hangout. It fully integrates with Google Translate, so you can talk with anyone, even if you don’t speak their language. I thought this would work to my advantage, so I planned to finally make a move with all the cute girls I met online but could never talk to. Man, I felt like I was on a hidden camera show. Google Translate totally screwed up on me, telling the girls with a robotic voice “Your clothes are interfering with my natural urges”, “Darling, let me erupt my vulcano in your fjord” and “All your breast are belong to me”. Thanks Google, that’s how another 15% of my friends dumped me.

Day 5: The Facebook Factor

As was to be expected, Facebook doesn’t like people jumping on the Google+ bandwagon, but I didn’t expect they would utilize artificial intelligence to take revenge. When Facebook noticed I had become active on Google+, I suddenly found out it had been sending messages to my left-over friends – yep, the ones that Google+ didn’t let me import – describing vividly how intimate I was with a female goat. Well, it comes as no surprise that the last 20% of my friends dumped me as well after that.

Yes, it has been quite a week for me. In my next article, I’ll let you know how I resuscitated my online reputation with another wonderful Google tool, Me on the web.

Article Author: Raymond van Velzen

The IT-Reporter.com brings you the humorous side of IT, featuring remarkable (fictional) articles, breaking news flashes about everything IT – internet, hardware, sofware, management, hosting, and what not.

Raymond van Velzen’s author page — Author’s Blog

Reproduced from http://technorati.com/technology/article/how-google-totally-ruined-my-social/

Plan to welcome 7 billionth baby in the world with a girl child

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 02:18 AM PDT

India must urgently tackle its ‘vanishing’ girl population as the nation awaits the birth of the world’s 7 billionth baby, says child rights organisation Plan India.

Plan will mark October 31- the day when the global population is projected to pass 7 billion – by celebrating the birth of a girl in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

According to India’s 2011 Census, the growing gap between the population of girls and boys aged 0 to 6 years has now reached 7 million. The ratio of girls to boys has dropped to an all time low since records began. Today, the sex ratio in this age group showing 914 girls for every 1,000 boys

Despite the Indian Government having enacted the law against using ultrasound technology for sex-selective abortions, its continued practice is believed to be resulting in more than 500,000 female foetuses being terminated every year.

As part of its commitment towards the girl child, Plan India has launched ‘Let Girls Be Born’ initiative to address the issue of female foeticide and infanticide and ensuring the right to identity, name and citizenship for girls.

Bhagyashri Dengle, Executive Director, Plan India said: “We are the world’s most rapidly growing nation, yet among the most challenging for girls. Plan has been working in India for the last three decades and the survival, protection and development rights of girls have been a key focus of our community development work. With ‘Let Girls be Born’ we hope to reach out to people to make them realize the consequences of the declining sex ratio, and encourage them to be active in celebrating girls.”

Plan India which has made registration of birth an integral part of its girls’ rights campaign will advocate with the state government to reiterate its commitments to the girl child and to issue a birth certificate to ‘Baby 7 Billion’ – a girl child, at a public function on October 31.

Asif Mohammad, Director, Program Implementation, Plan India said: “A birth certificate is recognition of a valued life. In India particularly, it gives live data on the gender gap and serves as a vital indicator to track where girls are being lost.”

Bollywood fans- you are more likely to get tobacco addicted

Posted: 12 Jul 2011 02:08 AM PDT

It has been reported that Bollywood fans are more likely to be tobacco addict. In a first of its kind study, HRIDAY has found that Indian adolescents who are exposed to tobacco use in Bollywood films are more likely to be tobacco users. This study entitled “Tobacco use in Bollywood movies, tobacco promotional activities and their association with tobacco use among Indian adolescents” has been published in the online first version of Tobacco Control journal (doi:10.1136/tc.2011.043539). The cross-sectional study was conducted among nearly 4000 students from 12 schools across New Delhi to assess their current and ever tobacco use status, receptivity to tobacco promotions and exposure to tobacco use in movies.

According to Dr. Monika Arora, Head: Health Promotion and Tobacco Control, Public Health Foundation of India and lead author of this paper “the results of this study reveal that the odds of ever tobacco use (using tobacco once or more) among students who were highly exposed to tobacco use occurrences in Bollywood films was more than twice as compared to those with low exposure. Adolescents in this study had seen a mean of 162 tobacco use occurrences from the 59 films that were coded. Results also suggest that boys are much more exposed than girls.”

The Indian film industry produces double the number of films produced in Hollywood. Although depiction of smoking in Hollywood films has already been established as a risk factor for teen smoking in the United States and Europe, no such estimate has previously been available for Bollywood films and their influence on Indian adolescents. With viewership of nearly 3 million world-over, the impact of these films on audience behaviour and attitudes, particularly youth, is insurmountable.

According to Dr. Gaurang Nazar, Manager – Research, HRIDAY and one of the co-authors on this study, “This is the first systematic study in India to show an association between tobacco use depiction in Bollywood films and tobacco use among adolescents, as a well-established content analysis method has been adopted in this research. Each film was viewed by coders and tobacco use exposure in each film was recorded.”

The study has also found that students who owned or were willing to wear tobacco branded merchandise had greater chances of being ever tobacco users. Nearly 7.3% of all adolescents in the study reported owning a tobacco promotional item. This promotion of tobacco brands is in gross violation of Section 5 of the Indian tobacco control law, COTPA 2003, which bans all forms of direct and indirect tobacco advertising.

Dr. Monika Arora further emphasized, “results from this research highlight the need to strengthen implementation of Section 5 of COTPA, and finalize the rules related to tobacco use in films, with particular attention paid to prohibit showing smoking and tobacco use in Indian films, which glamorizes this behaviour for the young audience and they get an impression that smoking and tobacco use is a norm. Both, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting need to work concertedly in this direction.”

In India, high prevalence of tobacco consumption is one of the major challenges to health and wellbeing of its citizens. About 2700 Indians die every day from tobacco use. Research shows that 5500 youth in India start using tobacco daily. A survey of tobacco use among young people, the Global Youth Tobacco Survey-2009, reveals that nearly 15% of youth currently use tobacco in India. Many teenagers light their first cigarette after watching their favourite actor smoke on screen.

The Government’s ruling to prohibit the depiction of smoking in films has been challenged by a renowned film producer on grounds of freedom of expression. Owing to the Delhi High Court’s decision to uphold the petition, the matter is now pending in the Supreme Court. Though the Apex Court has stayed the High Court’s decision, the matter is pending for final adjudication. Given that an end to portrayal of tobacco use in films is of such significant interest to public health, especially youth, this study provides strong evidence in favour of the prohibition.

Recently, HRIDAY sent a Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) kit and tips to quit tobacco to popular screen star Shahrukh Khan following his claim to attempt quitting, publicly. A number of film actors have reportedly made attempts to quit recognizing the ill-effects of tobacco use. HRIDAY also sent a letter to critically acclaimed film actor Aamir Khan, applauding his suggestion to include tobacco control messaging at the start of film screenings and his attempts to address the influence of tobacco use in Indian films. However, the Bollywood fraternity continues such depiction of tobacco use in films unabated and exposure to such smoking and tobacco use scenes is extremely high in many recent films.

The complete study is attached for reference and can also be accessed at http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2011/07/05/tc.2011.043539.full.pdf

Bihar at bottom in terms of Per Capita Expenditure

Posted: 11 Jul 2011 11:19 PM PDT

Despite recent spikes in the growth and increase in the per-capita income of the people of the state, the per capita expenditure of the state couldnot witness similar boom.Still we are at the bottom in the list of per-capita expenditure.

According to a report by National Sample Survey, rural Bihar with the per-capita expenditure of Rs. 780 lies at the bottom followed by Chattishgarh Rs.784 and Odisha Rs. 818. This is quite lower compared to our national average of Rs 1054 for rural India.The urban family per-capita expenditure of Bihar is Rs 1238 which is still much smaller vis-a-vis that of urban India i.e. Rs 1984.

These results pose a serious question mark over the tall claims by various state Governments regarding the rise in the income level and industrialization or other developmental activities.

The survey was conducted between July 2009 and June 2010. It ranked Bihar at the bottom. A similar survey conducted during July 2007 to June 2008 had put both Bihar and Orissa in the same positions as now, indicating that the condition of people in these states had remained unchanged.
The states at the apex of the list are Kerala, Punjab and Harayana with the highest average MPCE of Rs 1,835, Rs 1,649 and Rs 1,510 respectively in rural areas. Among urban areas, Maharashtra with Rs 2,437 is on top to be followed by Kerala Rs 2,413 and Haryana Rs 2,321.

This survey highlighted few key points which say that rural economy is not booming as hyped by media and Governments.Experts are deeply concerned over this rise in divide and say that it shows that the agriculture sector is simply collapsing in the country.The survey also says that average urban MPCE was 28 per cent higher than rural MPCE in Punjab, 31 per cent higher in Kerala, and 41 per cent higher in Rajasthan.

A similar report by the Late Arjun Sengupta, member Planning Commission, four years back stated thatt 77 per cent Indians spend just Rs 20 a day. In economic terms, nothing has changed since then, except the fall in the value of Rupee.
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