Gulbarga (Karnataka), Feb. 22 : In an innovative move, two engineering students in Karnataka’s Kalaburagi district have created a ‘bluetooth enabled route guiding helmet’.
The students Yogesh and Abhijeet, studying in PDA College, are in the fourth semester of their engineering course.
“We have made this helmet as people face problems in getting directions when we go to different city,” said Yogesh, one of the innovators of the helmet.
He added that the feature of the helmet is that it has an “inbuilt Bluetooth speaker”.
“The feature of this guiding helmet is that it has an inbuilt Bluetooth speaker, charging port, and it can run for six hours and has a cooling sheet in the front which is better for night vision,” said Yogesh.
He added that the user will have to connect their phone through bluetooth, which will navigate them with the help of Google maps.
The students said that cost of the helmet is Rs. 1500.
Kohima, Feb 22 : Fifty-nine percent of the candidates for the February 27 Assembly elections are crorepatis with JD(U) nominee Ramongo Lotha being the richest with a total wealth of Rs 38.92 crore, an analysis of the affidavits said.
The Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), which analysed the affidavits of 193 aspirants out of a total of 196 candidates, found out that 114 candidates are crorepatis.
The findings were announced by Hekani Jakhalu of YouthNet Nagaland, a prominent youth organisation, at a press meet here yesterday
The affidavits of three candidates could not be analysed as their affidavits in the public domain of the Nagaland Chief Electoral Officer was not at all clear, Jakhalu said.
Lotha, a retired IAS officer, has movable assets worth Rs 22,81,960 and immovable assets at Rs 38,69,40,000 taking his total wealth to Rs 38.92 crore, the ADR analysis said.
The JD(U) nominee is contesting the elections from Sanis seat in Wokha district.
Akavi N Zhimomi fighting on APP ticket from Ghaspani-I assembly seat in his affidavit has shown nil movable and immovable assets, the analysis said.
Nagland Chief Minister T R Zeliang contesting on Naga People’s Front (NPF) ticket from Peren seat has declared in his affidavit that his total assets (both movable and immovable) are worth Rs 3.52 crore, it said.
Former three-time chief minister and NDPP nominee from Northern Agamai-II seat Neiphiu Rio has movable assets worth Rs 15.37 crore.
Another former chief minister K L Chishi has total assets of Rs 38.20 crore but he also has the highest liabilities among all the candidates at Rs 89 lakh, the analysis said.
The other candidates with meagre assets are T Ngampai, Chinkai Konya and K Kiko Konyak, Jakhalu said.
Ngampai is the Congress candidate from Phomching seat and has total assets worth Rs 5,000, the analysis said.
Konya, the NPF nominee from Tehok seat, has total assets of Rs 10,000 while K Kiko Konyak, the NDPP candidate from Moka constituency, has total assets of Rs 20,000.
While 46 candidates have assets valued at Rupees five crore and above, 42 aspirants have assets at Rupees two crore and above, the analysis said.
Sixty nominees have assets worth Rs 50 lakh and above, 26 aspirants have assets at Rs 10 lakh and above and 19 are in possession of assets valued at less than Rs 10 lakh, it said.
Altogether 27 candidates have not declared their sources of income in their affidavits, Jakhalu said.
The ADR analysis also found three candidates have declared criminal cases against themselves.
The candidates are one each from the NPF, NDPP and BJP.
While three candidates are illiterate, 16 candidates are class-8 pass and five are doctorates, the analysis said.
Colombo, Feb 22: The National Unity government in Sri Lanka will continue, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced in Parliament on Wednesday, removing uncertainty over the future of the country’s first postwar administration.
Wickremesinghe said the agreement between his United National Party and President Maithripala Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party was still valid and there had been no amendment.
“The agreement which was continued with this House’s approval will continue.
The agreement is still valid.
There is no need to cancel it,” said Wickremesinghe.
Ahmedabad, Feb 22: A special CBI court here on Wednesday accepted the discharge petition of ex- Director General of Police (DGP) of Gujarat and the then Joint Commissioner of Police P P Pandey in Ishrat Jahan encounter case.
The court of special judge J K Pandya had completed its hearing on the petition on January 6 and reserved its verdict.
Pandey, a 1980-batch retired IPS officer, told UNI that he always had faith in the judicial system and it has given justice to him.
On June 15, 2004, Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba operative, along with her boyfriend Pranyesh Pillai alias Javed Shaikh and two Pakistani nationals were gunned down by Gujarat police. The Gujarat police had maintained that they were operatives of terror outfit LeT and were on a mission to assassinate the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi. CBI had termed this encounter fake.
P P Pandey and three other then IPS officers D G Vanzara, G L Singhal and N K Amin, four cops and as many Intelligence Bureau officials were made accused in the case.
Arrested in July 2013, Pandey spent around 19 months in jail before his release on bail in 2015 February. He was later taken back in to service and even promoted but had to resign from the post of in-charge DGP on April 3 last year. Former police officer Julio Rebeiro had filed a petition against his appointment as the top cop despite his being an accused in the case. The Supreme Court had asked him to step down.
In the discharge petition filed in January 2017 Pandey had claimed that the case was based on circumstantial evidence and the chain of events had not been established prima facie and there is no material on record to show what could be the motive to be a part of the so-called conspiracy.
He had also said that the Central Bureau of Investigation had concocted the evidence by fabricating the statements of witnesses to somehow implicate him for political reasons.
Mother of Ishrat, Shamima Kauser, had opposed Pandey’s discharge petition saying that he had concealed and misrepresented the case against him as disclosed by the CBI. The charge sheet dated July 3, 2013, discloses material that shows his clear involvement in the criminal conspiracy that culminated in the killings, Ms Kauser contended. She had claimed that Pandey had visited Ishrat several times during her illegal confinement in Khodiyar Farm on S.G. Highway from 12th June 2004 onwards. The statements, Ms Kauser asserted, of the witnesses recorded before a Judicial Magistrate also show that Pandey was part of the conspiracy which led to the illegal abduction, unlawful confinement and extra-judicial killing of her daughter.
CBI had also opposed the petition claiming that Pandey was one of the conspirators.
The court, however, accepted Pandey’s plea and allowed his discharge petition.
It is likely to soon announce its verdict on the discharge petitions of two IB officials, Rajeev Wankhede and Tushar Mittal, accused by the CBI of involvement in the Ishrat case . They have challenged the special CBI court order which took cognisance of a supplementary charge sheet filed on February 2, 2014 and issued summons for their appearance. The court took cognisance of this supplementary charge sheet almost four years after it was originally filed. A total of four IB officers were summoned based on this supplementary charge sheet – the others are former special director Rajinder Kumar and Mukul Sinha.
New Delhi, Feb 21: Amid continuing Constitutional crisis and political instability in Maldives, former President Mohammad Nasheed had a meeting with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman two days ago.
The chance meeting took place on the sidelines of a seminar organized by the English daily “The Hindu” in Bengaluru.
New Delhi, Feb 21: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday set up a five-member panel to look into the reasons for frauds and suggest steps to prevent such occurrences even as the CBI arrested five senior executives in connection with the Rs 11,400 crore Punjab National bank scam.
The panel would be headed by the former member bank’s Central Board of Directors Mr Y H Malegam.
Other members would include– Bharat Doshi, Member, Central Board of Directors, RBI; Mr S Raman, former Chairman and Managing Director, Canara Bank; and Mr Nandkumar Saravade, Chief Executive Officer, Reserve Bank Information Technology Pvt Ltd (ReBIT).
RBI Executive Director Mr A K Misra will be the Member-Secretary of the committee.
The panel will also look into RBI’s supervisory assessment and the steps needed to prevent such occurrences.
New Delhi, Feb 20: Joint research projects on Water Quality Research and Energy Demand Reduction in Built Environment were launched here on Monday.
The UK- India projects were jointly launched by NITI Aayog member Dr V K Saraswat, Department of Science and Technology Secretary Ashutosh Sharma and Research Councils UK- India Director Daniel Shah.
The Water Quality Research programme has eight projects and Energy Demand Reduction in Built Environment programme has four projects, with a total joint investment of up to £15 million.
These projects aim to deliver mutual benefits and research solutions not only to the UK and India but also to address shared global sustainable development goals of clean water and clean energy.
A dossier highlighting India’s national efforts in Building Energy Efficiency comprising details of 30 projects was also released on the occasion.
Kosovo on Saturday celebrated a decade since declaring independence, a moment of pride for its ethnic Albanian majority, although sovereignty remains fiercely contested by Serbia.
Pristina-born British pop star Rita Ora headlined a concert for thousands of Kosovans who packed the main square of the capital, which was covered in the blue and yellow colours of the flag for a weekend of festivities.
“It’s been a long journey to get to this point and I think it’s just a start of an ongoing incredible journey for our country,” the 27-year-old told reporters after flying in for the show, which ended with fireworks over the city.
The singer’s family left Kosovo in 1991 to escape the repression imposed by Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic after he stripped the Yugoslav province of its autonomy.
In 1998, a war broke out between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian troops that left 13,000 people dead, most of them Albanians. Belgrade withdrew its forces the following year after a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia.
Kosovo subsequently became a United Nations protectorate and, with the support of Washington and other Western powers, declared independence from Belgrade on February 17, 2008.
“The state of Kosovo has upheld the people’s demand for freedom,” Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said in a special government session in Pristina on Saturday.
But “we are aware that citizens’ expectations for a modern state have not yet been fulfilled”.
Although more than 110 countries have recognised Kosovo’s independence in the past 10 years, Serbia and dozens of other states have not.
Dhaka, Feb 18 : Myanmar’s Aung san Suu Kye, heavyly criticised for failing to stand up for the Rohingyas, could be held accountable for crimes aganist humanity, says UN Special Envoy Yanghee Lee “For complicity or neglecting to do anything.
I am afraid so,” she said in an interview with the UK’s Channel 4 News.
Professor Lee agreed with the interviewer that what has happened with the Rohingyas in Myanmar is a systematic targeting and persecution of people.
Asked whether there has been an effort to destroy the very identity of Rohingyas, which appears to suggest genocide was occurring, her reply was, “Absolutely.”
One has to be legally correct to determine genocide and it has to be through a process of legal procedures.
New Delhi, Feb 18: Minister for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Dr Jitendra Singh on Saturday said the government has created an exclusive forum at the NITI Aayog to prepare plans for the development of the North East Region.
The forum would be co-chaired by the Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog and Secretary of DoNER, an official statement said.
Addressing a press conference here, the Minister said that the forum would look at various proposals both at the central and the state levels and prepare plans for the speedy development of the region.