Indian Dalit icon Mayawati attacked over rupee garland

Ms Mayawati needed several people to help her lift the garland

Controversial Chief Minister of India's Uttar Pradesh state, Mayawati, has been criticised for accepting a huge garland made entirely of 1,000-rupee notes.

Ms Mayawati's supporters gave her the garland as a gift at her Bahujan Samaj Party's silver jubilee rally on Monday.
It is made of new 1,000-rupee notes and is estimated to have cost anywhere between $400,000 and $2m.
Ms Mayawati, who champions the cause of the poorest of the poor, is criticised for amassing vast personal wealth.
She is India's first woman Dalit (formerly "untouchable") chief minister and has a huge following among those at the bottom of the Hindu caste system.
Calls for inquiry
Photographs of Ms Mayawati, wearing the rupee garland, appeared on the front pages of Indian newspapers on Tuesday morning.
The issue was also raised in parliament, with MPs from different parties criticising what they said was a vulgar display by Ms Mayawati.
"We appeal to the government to take cognisance of the money that is being spent, or rather, misspent in the rally. And millions' worth of the garland that she accepted should be inquired into," senior Congress party leader Digvijay Singh said.
A leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rajnath Singh, said: "I just want to say that state funds and resources have been misused in Uttar Pradesh in every form. And I want the government to take action in this case at the earliest."
It is estimated that nearly 400,000 supporters attended the rally in the Uttar Pradesh state capital, Lucknow, on Monday. The city was draped in blue (the colour of Ms Mayawati's party) for the celebration.
Statue spree
A former school teacher, Ms Mayawati is one of India's most colourful politicians. She has governed Uttar Pradesh and its 180 million people since state elections in 2007.
In the past few years, she has amassed massive personal wealth, developing a fondness for lavish birthday parties and diamond jewellery.
She has been taken to court for commissioning massive statues of past Dalit icons and herself at great public expense.
Ms Mayawati's critics accuse her of wasting precious government funds in one of India's most backward states.
Uttar Pradesh has soaring crime, poor health services and very high illiteracy rates.
Ms Mayawati appears unfazed by all the criticism and has spoken many times about her ambition to be prime minister of India.
Her party denied claims on Monday that state funds had helped pay for Monday's festivities, saying it had footed the bill.

Getting a passport could soon be hassle free

New Delhi, Mar.7 (ANI):If long queues outside shoddy passport offices gives you the jitters and, the thought of brokers and touts stops you from getting your passport by right, here is some good news for passport seekers.

Getting a passport will soon be hassle free with the revolutionisation of the current process, which at best, can be described as arduous.
It is learnt that External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, who hails from IT city Bangalore and, is very tech savvy, is walking that extra mile to facilitate the implementation of the landmark Passport Sewa E- Governance initiative.
Sevety-seven hi-tech state-of-the-art IT-enabled Passport Sewa offices are likely to come up across the country under the new initiative.
Krishna recently inspected two such centers in Bangalore. The presence of cutting-edge technology such as a centralised IT system, which includes a data centre and a disaster recovery centre to which, all proposed centers will be connected, biometric verification, availability of online services for fixing appointments, three national call centers and a grievance redressel system, status of application via SMS and outsourcing of front-end activities, acquiring a passport will be easier and simpler.
If that's not all, the 24x7 national call centre in 17 languages will also be a part of the new project.
The Passport Sewa project is a perfect example of public-private partnership, involving the Ministry of External Affairs and Tata Consultancy Services.
Keeping in view security and sensitivity, the MEA has not surrendered sovereign functions to the TCS and has only outsourced front-end activities.
If fully implemented, then a passport can be got in three days following police verification.
Tatkal applicants could get the passport the same day. Currently, it takes around 30 to 45 days for non-Tatkal passports and a minimum of seven days for getting a Tatkal-routed passport.
Under the proposed system, the number of public dealing counters will also increase from the current figure of 345 to 1250. Public dealing hours will also increase from four to seven hours.
According to sources, new centres could come up at Gurgaon, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Hubli, Dharwad, Mangalore, Baroda, Rajkot, Kottayam, Hoshiarpur, Ludhiana, Ambala, Varanasi, Kanpur, Jodhpur and Sikar etc.
Although the project looks impressive, it also has its share of problems and challenges. The IT-enabled project could leave many passport officials out of work. Already, unions in passport offices have opposed the proposal. The other big challenge will be to train underskilled MEA staff on cutting-edge technology. By Naveen Kapoor

Nokia develops self-charging cellphone

London, March 6 (ANI): Experts have come up with a cellphone that can recharge its own battery by harvesting energy from the owner's motion.

The self-charging handset by Nokia, who has already filed for a US patent, was predicted to work with heavier components, such as the radio transmitter circuit and battery, supported on a sturdy frame.

The frame apparently could shift along two sets of rails, allowing it travel up and down and side to side, New Scientist reported.

Each rail apparently hosted strips of piezoelectric crystals at its end, capable of generating a current when compressed by the frame such that motion, by the user or the movement of the phone, generates electricity.

That in turn charged a capacitor and subsequently the battery, boosting the charge.

Auto loans get costly, curtains on teasers

Money is becoming dearer. That was evident on Thursday when private sector banks ICICI Bank (ICICIBANK.NS : 901.75 +3.35), HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank (KOTAKBANK.NS : 801.85 +26.65) upped interest rates on auto loans. At the same time, home loan major HDFC and ICICI Bank decided it was time to do away with teaser loans, which were being offered at 8.25% for an initial period of two years.
Kotak Mahindra Bank went a step further and hiked home loan rates for new customers to 8.5% from its existing 7.99%. "Our decision to increase home loan rate is in lines with the rising interest rate scenario," said KVS Manian, the bank's retail liabilities head. Car loans at Kotak Mahindra will now be costlier by 50-75 basis points and borrowers will have to pay between 10-10.50% as interest.
"Borrowing rates have been firming up since the last credit policy. While we did not pass on the rate hike earlier, we need to do it now," Kotak Mahindra Prime CEO Sumit Bali.
ICICI Bank has raised auto loans rate by 25-50 basis points, which means they will cost between 9.75%-11%, depending on the tenure.
The bank's home loans up to Rs 30 lakh will attract an interest rate of 8.75% while loans between Rs 30 lakh and 50 lakh will be at 9%.
HDFC Bank plans to charge between 25 and 100 basis points more for car loans. "There has been a change in the monetary stance and there could be some shortage of liquidity with the CRR hike and advance tax payments coming up. So it is not surprising that interest rates are going up," said Ashish Parthsarathy, head of treasury, HDFC Bank.
Meanwhile, the country's largest lender, State Bank of India (SBIN.NS : 2047.2 +14.5), is likely to take a call on whether or not to increase rates at its next assets and liability committee (Alco) meeting. SBI's chief financial officer SS Ranjan said, "Generally, interest rates are moving up and that is possibly the reason some banks have increased lending rates."
At IDBI bank (IDBIBANK.NS : 0 0) though rates may not move up. According to its CFO P Sitaram, while IDBI had marginally increased deposit rates in a couple of buckets in February, the bank has no plans hiking its lending rates as of now. Added Bank of Baroda chairman and managing director MD Mallya, "We are maintaining both our lending and deposits rates for the moment. But the situation is dynamic."
HDFC has discontinued its special festival offer on home loans much like ICICI Bank, which too will no longer offer special rates home loans. In February, two public sector and two private sector banks had raised deposit rates following the Reserve Bank's decision to hike the cash reserve ratio by 75 basis points.

Strategic break periods spelt out in IPL

The Indian Premier League has fixed a five-minute period, split into two equal halves, for the mandatory strategic time-outs during the third edition of the Twenty20 event starting March 12.

"The batting team would have to take the 2 and a half minute time-out mandatory between the sixth and eighth overs while the fielding side would have to take the time-out between the 11th and 16th overs," IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi said.

Modi said the decision to specify the overs for taking the mandatory stoppages, lasting 2.5 minutes each, had been arrived at after having a look at the time-outs in other games like basketball and American football (NFL).

"We have found out that these are the times the batting and fielding teams normally rearrange their strategies. The players will not leave the field of play but would confer in the middle," he said. Modi said the batting side can opt for time-outs after the fifth, sixth or seventh over while the bowling team can do so after the end of the 10th to 15th overs.

"We have a new partner for strategic time-outs, Maxx Mobile, and the deal is for three years from season three commencing on March 12," Modi announced, adding "they will also be our official playoff partner", without specifying the financial details.

New video of tsunami wave sweeping through Chilean town

New amateur video has been released showing how the tsunami that followed a massive magnitude 8.8 quake swept in the small town of Penco in southern Chile on Saturday.
The footage was taken by a resident who captured the surge of water that swept through the streets, leaving cars overturned and homes submerged.

Chandrayaan data reveals water on moon equator too

SCIENTISTS had another eureka moment as water was found on the moon's equator.

New analysis of data from the moon mineralogy mapper ( M3) on board Chandrayaan- 1 shows water on the moon is not limited to its polar regions but extends to the equator.
" The new map shows water and hydroxyl ions detected by M3 is more extensive," US geologist Roger Clark and colleagues said at the ongoing 41st lunar and planetary science conference at Woodlands near Houston.
Last September, NASA and ISRO scientists had announced the discovery of water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. M3 had also revealed hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, in the lunar soil.
Data from instruments on board two NASA spacecraft, Cassini and Deep Impact , had also shown the presence of water and hydroxyl trapped or absorbed in the minerals on the lunar surface. It corroborated the initial M3 find.
However, there was a problem. While the other spacecraft indicated the presence of water closer to the equator, the M3 data failed to show that.
Scientists said the main reason for the mismatch was conservative processing of the M3 data.
Scientists also found that M3 had not completely covered certain wavelengths that denote the presence of water. So, they constructed a new map on the basis of finer data and it now confirms what Cassini and Deep Impact had indicated there is water close to the equator of the moon too.
Clark, who works with the US geological survey, is part of the team that analysed data from visual and infrared mapping spectrometer on board Cassini which had had a flyby of the moon in 1999 as well as M3.
NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft, en route to the comet Hartley 2, had also observed the moon for calibration. In June last year, it took detailed measurements of light from the north polar regions of the moon. Data from these two experiments had confirmed M3 findings last September.
However, the water found by M3 in the lit areas of the moon was not much. As much as 1,000 water molecule parts per million could be in the lunar soil. That means if you harvested one tonne of the top layer of the moon's surface, you could get as much as 32 ounces ( 946 ml) of water.
But what mini- synthetic aperture radar ( SAR) on board Chandrayaan- 1 found inside the lunar craters on the dark side of the moon was two metres of thick layers of ice, potentially yielding millions of tonnes of water, as NASA claimed. The tonnage, however, was not published in a journal article.
An ISRO spokesperson said the space agency would comment on the new equatorial water find only after Prof J. N. Goswami, the principal scientist of Chandrayaan- 1 , returns from the Houston conference later this week.