Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News |
- Indian student in US convicted for spying his Gay roommate
- PM requests IIT Professor to end up his Fast unto Death
- Air India launches Mobile Ticket Booking
- Top risks while downloading apps from Andriod Market
- When 16-year-old hijacked Plane using Toy Gun
- The myth of Indian Defense Budget 2012
- Albert Einstein’s papers, notes and letters made online
- Kudankulam Nuclear Plant gets Green Signal
- Today is World Sparrow Day
- Daily Exercise can also trigger coregasms in Women
| Indian student in US convicted for spying his Gay roommate Posted: 20 Mar 2012 12:51 PM PDT An 18 year old Indian student in United States has been charged with spying into his Gay roommate and has been convicted to 10 years of Imprisonment. This act of silly justice brings about how ill-matured some country’s laws are and need a revamp. Ravi, a former Rutgers University student charged with spying on his gay roommate Tyler Clementi, was found guilty by a New Jersey jury of 15 counts including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. He faces ten years in prison and deportation to India. Commenting on the verdict, Sunil Adam, editor, The Indian American, wrote in the Huffington Post: “Ravi, it appears, has been turned into the proverbial sacrificial lamb for society’s collective guilt about its own bias intimidation against homosexuals.” “Make the Punishment Fit the Cyber-Crime,” exhorted Emily Bazelon, a senior editor at Slate, writing in the New York Times. “The idea of shielding vulnerable groups is well intentioned,” she said. “But … these civil rights statutes are being stretched to go after teenagers who acted meanly, but not violently. This isn’t what civil rights laws should be for.” Some experts, cited by msnbc.com called the guilty verdict against Ravi “precedent setting” in the battle against bullying, but others decried it as entering the “realm of vengeance.” “This is well beyond looking for justice and into the realm of vengeance considering the number of charges against Ravi and the seriousness of them,” Bill Dobbs, a longtime gay activist and civil libertarian was quoted as saying. “As hate crimes prosecution mount, the flaws of such laws become apparent,” he wrote. However, Louis Raveson, a law professor of criminal and civil trial litigation at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, suggested “It will be an important precedent throughout the country.” Meanwhile, Marc Poirer, an openly gay professor of law and sexuality at Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey, said he was concerned about the verdict. “I think that the law didn’t fit very well,” he said, calling Ravi’s actions those of a “dumb 18-year-old” that “went wrong.”  |
| PM requests IIT Professor to end up his Fast unto Death Posted: 20 Mar 2012 12:51 PM PDT Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday appealed to environmentalist G.D. Agarwal, who has been on a fast-unto-death since Jan 15 to save the Ganga river, to end his stir, saying the government is ready to discuss issues raised by him. Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) V. Narayanasamy and Union Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal Tuesday visited the 80-year-old activist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) where he was shifted from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh after his condition deteriorated Monday. Agarwal had stopped taking water from March 9. “We were sent by the prime minister to appeal to him to end his fast. We had discussions on demands made by him and have accepted some of them. We are taking his message to prime minister and something positive will come by Wednesday morning,” Jaiswal told reporters after the meeting. Agarwal, 80, a former Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) professor, is unhappy over unsatisfactory and ineffective functioning of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), a central government constituted body for cleaning Ganga. Besides, Agarwal is against ongoing construction of dams/barrages/tunnels on Ganga which would totally destroy the natural flow regimes and quality of the river water, total failure of regulatory agencies in controlling discharge of urban and industrial wastes into the Ganga and complete lack of sensitivity of the government on these issues. Tarun Agarwal, G.D. Agarwal’s nephew who is accompanying him, said the activist demanded that a meeting of the NRRBA be called immediately and the government has agreed to convene a meeting in April. “We are also demanding that till the meeting is held, work on four under construction projects on the river should be temporarily stopped. But the government is agreeing to three projects. The ministers have assured us that they will convey our concerns to prime minister and will let us know by Wednesday,” Tarun told IANS. Agarwal has served as a secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board, the country’s premier anti-pollution body, and helped put together environmental legislation in India. This is his third fast-unto-death in last four years.  |
| Air India launches Mobile Ticket Booking Posted: 20 Mar 2012 08:42 AM PDT Air India Tuesday launched mobile phone booking facility for buying and paying for domestic tickets using mobile technology, an airline official said. Now a customer can book and buy an AI domestic travel ticket through the cellphone, using a one-time downloadable Ngpay software. Payments can be done through credit/debit cards/net-banking through the mobile phone itself. “The facility primarily helps passengers from tier-II and tier-III cities where the internet facility may not be readily accessible. High-flying executives can make bookings, in between meetings, on the go or the tech savvy generation who are comfortable with eCommerce technology,” said the official. For the ordinary citizen, the new facility essentially means ‘going’ to an Air India booking counter through the mobile phone and purchasing an Air India ticket. For this, the passenger needs only to sms ‘ngpay’ to 56767 and download the free Ngpay software from ngpay.com on his GPRS enabled mobile phone. The software takes up between 65 to 80 kb space, depending on the instrument model. The process of booking and payment for a particular flight is menu driven and extremely user friendly, the official said. The moment booking and payment transaction is complete, the customer is informed about the ticket by two means — sms: with details about the booked sector with flight number and reference i.e. PNR and an Itinerary Ticket Receipt (ITR) through the e-mail. The passenger not having a hard copy of the ITR, may report at the kerbside counter of Air India with the sms detail, along with a photo ID proof, for taking a copy of the ITR to enable him/her to enter the airport.  |
| Top risks while downloading apps from Andriod Market Posted: 20 Mar 2012 04:28 AM PDT The inclusion of ads in mobile applications or apps is fraught with privacy or security risks, so beware, says a new study. These app developers incorporate “in-app ad libraries,” which are provided by Google, Apple or other third-parties, for revenue generation. These libraries retrieve ads from remote servers and run the ads on a user’s smartphone periodically. Every time an ad runs, the app developer receives a payment. Significantly, researchers found more than half of the 100,000 of the apps contained so-called ad libraries. And 297 of the apps included aggressive ad libraries that were enabled to download and run code from remote servers – which raises significant privacy and security concerns. “Running code downloaded from the Internet is problematic because the code could be anything,” says Xuxian Jiang, assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University and study co-author. “For example, it could potentially launch a ‘root exploit’ attack to take control of your phone – as demonstrated in a recently discovered piece of Android malware called RootSmart.” In Google Play (formerly known as the Android Market) and other markets, many developers offer free apps, according to a North Carolina statement. Jiang’s team looked at a sample of 100,000 apps available on Google Play between March and May 2011 and examined the 100 representative ad libraries used by those apps. One significant find was that 297 of the apps (one out of every 337 apps) used ad libraries “that made use of an unsafe mechanism to fetch and run code from the Internet – a behaviour that is not necessary for their mission, yet has troubling privacy and security implications,” Jiang says. Jiang’s team found that 48,139 of the apps had ad libraries that track a user’s location via GPS, presumably to allow an ad library to better target ads to the user. These ad libraries pose security risks because they offer a way for third parties – including hackers – to bypass existing Android security efforts. Specifically, the app itself may be harmless, so it won’t trigger any security concerns. But the app’s ad library may download harmful or invasive code after installation. These findings will be presented on April 17 at the Vth ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks in Tucson.  |
| When 16-year-old hijacked Plane using Toy Gun Posted: 20 Mar 2012 04:23 AM PDT It may sound ridiculous, but a 16 year old Teen from Kashmir had hijacked Indian Airlines Srinagar-Jammu flight to Lahore Jan 30, 1969, armed with a toy pistol and a wooden grenade Forty-three years after it happened, few remember that one of the earliest plane hijacks in the world was carried out with a toy pistol by a 16-year-old Kashmiri boy. But in the mind of Hashim Qureshi, that boy who is now 59 years old, the incident still ticks away like the script of a high voltage Hollywood thriller. He hijacked an Indian Airlines Srinagar-Jammu flight to Lahore Jan 30, 1969, armed with a toy pistol and a wooden grenade. From a freedom fighting hijacker to an advocate of peace and progress today, his journey has been arduous. Hashim, who is still facing a hijack case in a Srinagar court – the trial has been going on for 12 years, says he first went to Pakistan in 1968 to see his sister who had married there. “I met Maqbool Bhat (founder of the pro-independence outfit JKLF) in Peshawar. Bhat said India would never leave an inch of Kashmir to Pakistan, but an independent Kashmir could always be negotiated,” Hashim told IANS in an interview. Hashim became dedicated to the freedom cause. He came back and circumstances helped him use the Border Security Force (BSF) for his plans. “In a haircutting salon in Lal Chowk, I met a Kashmiri Border Security Force (BSF) officer. I told him I wanted to go to Pakistan. He agreed to help me cross the border provided I brought some information the BSF needed. I agreed and the BSF managed my clandestine entry into Pakistan through the Sialkot border.” He was actually double-crossing the BSF. In Pakistan, Hashim was trained for the hijack. “Maqbool Bhat said to highlight the Kashmir problem we must hijack an Indian plane. Javaid Mantoo, a retired pilot, helped familiarise me with a Fokker Friendship plane. He took me to Chaklala airport where I was allowed to see the plane from inside.” After hijack training, Hashim crossed back into Kashmir from the Sialkot border. “I boarded a bus, but the bus was stopped by police and I was caught with a pistol and a hand grenade. I was taken to a BSF interrogation centre. I told them how I had been trained along with three others for the hijack in Pakistan. “I was asked by the BSF to keep a watch at the Srinagar airport. An advertisement appeared in a newspaper about the sale of a look-real pistol which could be used to scare away thieves. I ordered one by post. I fabricated a wooden hand grenade and painted it with metallic colour.” Hashim booked tickets on the Srinagar-Jammu Indian Airlines Fokker Friendship flight for Jan 30, 1969, for himself and his cousin Ashraf. “Once airborne, I rushed to the cockpit, placed the pistol on the pilot’s head and announced the hijack. We ordered the pilot to fly the plane to Pakistan. There were 34 passengers, including the crew. “We landed at Lahore airport at 1 p.m. Jan 30, 1969. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto reached there. The Pakistan authorities asked us to release the passengers. I said not before I had spoken to Maqbool Bhat. We remained at the airport till 8.30 p.m. Feb 2, 1969. “Then a Lahore police official came and told us to finish the drama and set the plane ablaze. Bhat opposed the torching of the plane. He said we should continue the ordeal at Lahore airport to get maximum media attention. “Finally, one Pakistan army officer came with a canister of fuel and told us Bhat had said we must now set the plane on fire. We did it, but later learnt that Bhat had opposed torching of the Indian plane till the very end,” Hashim told IANS. After the hijack, Hashim and his cousin were treated like heroes in Pakistan for three months. “Everywhere we went, a hero’s welcome awaited us,” he said. But glory was shortlived. “I was arrested in April 1971 in Pakistan and released in 1980. After my release, I was told by Pakistan intelligence that we should arrange groups of Kashmiri youth for training in firearms. “They said after militancy spread in Kashmir, Pakistan would come to our assistance by an armed invasion. It was clear they were looking for Kashmiris to fight Pakistan’s proxy war against India without committing themselves to our independence. “I finally left Pakistan in August 1986 for Holland and remained there till December 27, 2000, when I got homesick.” Today he advocates freezing of the Kashmir issue for 20 years to address the hatred between India and Pakistan. Hashim lives on a hillside mansion in the Nishat area of the city where he gazes at the Dal Lake from his multi-terraced lawn, playing golf in between – and recounting his story.  |
| The myth of Indian Defense Budget 2012 Posted: 20 Mar 2012 03:48 AM PDT Commodore Uday Bhaskar thinks that Indian Defense Budget for 2012 lacked a strategic vision and is a meagre when compared to China The Indian defense expenditure for the financial year 2012-13 has been budgeted at a fairly high figure of Rs.193,407 crore (budgeted expenditure, or BE) which converts to $38.5 billion and is not unreasonable — but is well below China’s corresponding figure of $100 billion. However, to get a true sense of how this translates into tangible Indian military capacity, this allocation is to be seen in relation to the revised expenditure (RE) for the last fiscal that was announced as Rs.170,937 crore ($34 billion). The increase thus is of the order of 13 percent from the actual amount spent in 2011-12. However, this is only one perspective, for the BE for 2011-12 was Rs.164,415 crore ($32.7 billion) and this was revised by over Rs.6,000 crore to reach almost Rs.171,000 crore. The Indian defence expenditure is broadly divided into two heads – the revenue and capital components – with the latter accounting for acquisition of new equipment and inventory items, as also modernisation of existing platforms. Ideally, a 50:50 ratio, or even a marginally greater amount for the capital head, would be the most desirable norm – but in the Indian case, since the military machine is largely manpower intensive, the opposite pattern prevails – meaning that the revenue component is higher. Thus for the current fiscal – 2012-13 — the total revenue expenditure is budgeted to be Rs.113,829 crore, while the total capital outlay is pegged at Rs.79,578 crore. Paradoxically, in the last fiscal, 2011-12, the capital expenditure was planned for a total of Rs.69,199 crore – but the actual expenditure as announced in the budget documents presented on March 16 was of the order of Rs.66,143 crore. In other words, the defence ministry surrendered Rs.3,056 crore as unspent from its capital head – and this is reflective of the inability to arrive at swift and objective decisions that will contribute to laying a strong foundation for capacity-building of the Indian military profile. But then the question that arises is where did the increased expenditure occur over the last year? The increase from BE to RE for the last fiscal, 2011-12, is of the order of Rs.6,522 crore and this was expended in the revenue component, which along with the unspent capital amount of Rs.3,056 crore offers an insight into the trends that characterise India’s defence expenditure. The lack of a clear strategic focus is evident when the spending pattern of the last decade is examined in some detail. On the one hand, the revenue expenditure is closer to 60 percent against the capital head, even when allocated amounts remain unspent – except in the last fiscal – which was an exception to the general trend. The lack of a strategic underpinning is evident when a very anomalous situation obtains, in that capital funds are returned as unspent when the Indian military across the board is in dire need of modernisation of critical equipment and platforms. For instance, the Indian Army has been seeking to replace the old Bofors gun – the mainstay of the artillery for well over a decade — but to little avail. Given the kickback allegations and related political scandal going back to the Rajiv Gandhi years (mid-1980s), the Indian higher decision-making system remains inert or is in eternal slow motion. Thus 25 years after the Bofors scandal broke and a decade after the Kargil War, the Indian Army is yet to get a replacement for its artillery gun! Decision-making remains paralysed since the major political parties have chosen to attack one another over corruption and transgression issues – from Bofors to coffin scams – and as a result, India’s military capacity has glaring gaps. Defence expenditure and budget allocation is held accountable to strict compliance with audit regulations and fear of politically-motivated investigations and hence no senior official in the Ministry of Defence wants to take long-term decisions that will benefit national military capability-building. India’s total defence allocation can also be viewed in the regional context — while the current allocation for this year is closer to $40 billion, the Chinese defence budget announced recently is closer to $100 billion. While India does not seek equivalence with China, the pattern of defence allocation and the priorities set by the political leadership is a contrast. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, Beijing has set itself the task of acquiring credible indigenous design and production capabilities in the defence and military domain – and also utilised its domestic industrial base to advantage. India, on the other hand, has the dubious distinction of becoming the world’s leading arms importer over the last decade. Much of the funding from the capital head goes to foreign suppliers and over the last 20 years, Indian funding has proved crucial to the very survival of certain defence industries — first in Russia and now in France. It is regrettable that the defence expenditure is rarely discussed in parliament despite being a reasonably large amount – and where debates do occur, they are zero sums games between bitter political opponents. It merits recall that over the last decade, two high-powered committees have rendered their reports – the Kelkar and the Rama Rao panels – about the challenges to India’s acquisition procedures and the need for a rigorous defence public sector/DRDO review. However, both reports remain shrouded in secrecy – and have not come up for detailed discussion in parliament or in the national trade and commerce chambers. If examined in an objective manner, where everyone is a stakeholder in contributing to national security, some embarrassing truths will be revealed. More than 60 years after becoming a republic and 50 years after the debacle with China, the opaque Indian defence production establishment does not produce high-quality clothing and personal inventory items like boots – let alone a suitable rifle for a one million army, or tanks and aircraft. The question that Defence Minister A.K. Antony may like to ask is why the stoic Indian jawan still buys his uniform from the market and shuns what the government provides? Fiscal allocations by themselves tell a partial story. Creating appropriate military capacity requires a certain degree of political commitment and institutional integrity that appear elusive in the Indian context. (20-03-2012 – Commodore (Retd) C. Uday Bhaskar is one of India’s leading strategic analysts. He can be contacted at cudayb@gmail.com)  |
| Albert Einstein’s papers, notes and letters made online Posted: 20 Mar 2012 02:20 AM PDT A website launched by a university in Israel has catalogued more than 80,000 of Albert Einstein’s collected papers and notes and personal correspondence, including love letters. The website’s launch — marked simultaneously in Israel, at The Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, and at Israeli embassies worldwide — commemorated Einstein’s 133rd birthday March 14 also observed as Israel’s National Science Day, Xinhua reported. Dalia Mendelsson, who heads the archives project’s IT department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the website was created with specifically-designed database software, in order to allow the public to see what was once only available to scholars and students. Einstein, who developed the General Theory of Relativity and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work in theoretical physics, is widely considered the father of modern physics. Among the non-scientific documents are a letter to Azmi El-Nashashibi, editor of the Falastin newspaper, discussing a solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict, a postcard to his sick mother, a letter from a younger mistress, and amusing fan letters about his iconic unruly hair. “There were 43,000 documents from 2003 until today, so, of course, the database grew from then. Now we are providing the 80,000 records. We are starting the project with 2,000 images, and by the end of the month we will have 7,000 images,” Mendelsson said. “It’s like meeting the author of all these letters, in an intimate look at all of his work,” Mendelsson said of Einstein, who helped found the university in 1918.  |
| Kudankulam Nuclear Plant gets Green Signal Posted: 20 Mar 2012 12:16 AM PDT Kudankulam nuclear plant, the center of protest of Anti-Nuclear Lobby will finally be operational in few months. State Cabinet today gave green signal to the power plant and allotted Rs.500 crore for local area and infrastructure development. Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa said her cabinet concluded earlier in the day that “there is no risk of an earthquake or tsunami and the plant (had) best safety features”. She said in a statement that the cabinet examined the reports of panels of the central and state governments as well as the memorandum submitted by those opposed to the atomic power plant. She said the water from the plant will not endanger marine ecology or affect the livelihood of fishermen. The central government’s expert panel had answered the doubts of the locals about the plant. With an idea of implementing development projects without affecting the safety and livelihood of the people, the cabinet also passed a resolution to take steps to start the plant, Jayalalithaa said. She said the cabinet also decided to allot Rs.500 crore for setting up a fishing boat repair centre, cold storage to stock the fish catch, housing for the villagers, and roads and other infrastructure facilities. India’s atomic power plant operator, Nuclear Power Corp of India Ltd (NPCIL), is building two 1,000 MW reactors at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district, around 650 km from here. Villagers of Kudankulam, Idinthakarai and others fear for their lives in the event of a nuclear accident. Their agitation, led by the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), had put a stop to the project work, delaying the commissioning of the first unit slated in December. The Tamil Nadu government had earlier passed a resolution asking the central government to halt work at the plant and to allay the fears of the locals. To resolve the issue, the central and state governments set up two panels. The central panel submitted its final report Jan 31. The Tamil Nadu government set up another expert committee which too favoured the project. Meanwhile, in Kudankulam, police arrested 10 anti-KNPP protesters with the government changing its stance on the project. The 10 included advocate S. Sivasubramanian, M. Pushparayan, convener of the Coastal People’s Federation and a leader of People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), told IANS over phone. Police declined to confirm or deny the arrest. On Monday morning, tension gripped Kudankulam and surrounding areas. Hearing the news of the arrests, activists in Idinthakarai village began ringing the church bell to mobile the villagers. Leading activists live in this fishing village. “Around 3,000 policemen were deployed in Kudankulam and surrounding areas,” Pushparayan said. He said the heavy police deployment deterred them from accepting an invitation from the Tiruvelveli Collector to meet him. Two PMANE leaders – S.P. Udayakumar and M. Pushparayan- have started an indefinite fast demanding the closure of the atomic power plant at Idinthakarai near Kudankulam. Udayakumar told reporters that the agitation would continue despite “the betrayal of our trust by the state government”. He said: “This is a people’s movement and cannot be crushed by police.” Meanwhile, NPCIL employees at KNPP numbering around 500 have entered the project site after a gap of nearly six months. “We are going to office now!” an official told IANS, full of enthusiasm.  |
| Posted: 19 Mar 2012 11:13 PM PDT
The “Common Bird Monitoring Program”, a pioneer project and first of its kind in India, will monitor and carry out detailed mapping of 18 common bird species found across the country with direct public participation, said Nature Forever Society chief Mohammed Dilawar. The birds like house sparrows, house crow, rock pigeon, rose-ringed parakeets, Ashy Prinia and Hoopoes shall be monitored, mapped and counted around the country as well the entire Indian Subcontinent, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Dilawar told media persons. “The data collected will help map the presence/absence, population/distribution of these common birds since there is currently no scientific data available on these common species in India,” Dilawar explained. The initiative is supported by a corporate house, the Jaypee Group Executive Chairman Manoj Gaur and Jaypee Group’s IT arm, JILIT’s Director Sunita Joshi – the latter has taken care of the technology to design the program. This data, over a period of time would be statistically analysed for launching conservation efforts, he said. “The knowledge about the status, population and distribution of common birds will help in timely conservation measures that can save these birds from extinction, and help create conservation interest among the masses,” said Dilawar. Similar programmes are continuing in many western countries, some more than 100 years old, with the Christmas Bird Count in the US running since 1900. These bird monitoring acts as an early warning system to initiate remedial measures to save species from extinction before it is too late, he said referring to the critically-endangered status of the vulture, which was once common in India, and proper monitoring could have checked its decline. Dilawar said that citizens can register and spend 15 minutes daily to monitor the 18 birds for the project from their homes, windows or any other location and make notings and enter their data daily, weekly or monthly or annually.  |
| Daily Exercise can also trigger coregasms in Women Posted: 19 Mar 2012 10:27 PM PDT
As a term, “coregasm” has circulated in the media for years, because of its linkage with exercises for core abdominal muscles, said study co-author Debby Herbenick, co-director of the Indiana University Centre for Sexual Health Promotion. “These data are interesting because they suggest that orgasm is not necessarily a sexual event, and they may also teach us more about the bodily processes underlying women’s experiences of orgasm,” added Herbernick. Findings from a first-of-its-kind study have shown that these women were neither fantasizing sexually nor thinking about anyone they were attracted to during their experiences, the journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy reported. Herbenick who co-authored the study with J. Dennis Fortenberry, professor at the Indiana School of Medicine, surveyed 124 women online who reported experiencing exercise-induced orgasms (EIO) and 246 who experienced exercise-induced sexual pleasure (EISP), said a university statement. The women were aged between 18 to 63 years. Most were in a relationship or married, and about 69 percent identified themselves as heterosexual. About 40 percent of women who had experienced EIO and EISP had done so on more than 10 occasions. Diverse types of physical exercise were associated with EIO and EISP. Of the EIO group, 51.4 percent reported experiencing an orgasm in connection with abdominal exercises within the previous 90 days. Others reported experiencing orgasm in connection to such exercises as weight lifting (26.5 percent), yoga (20 percent), bicycling (15.8), running (13.2 percent) and walking / hiking (9.6 percent). “It may be that exercise — which is already known to have significant benefits to health and well-being — has the potential to enhance women’s sexual lives as well,” said Herbenick, who is a widely read advice columnist and book author.  |
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