The Prime Minister’s office said in a statement that Sharif has “stepped down” despite having “serious reservations” about the judicial process.
Pune, Jul 28: Film buffs will soon be able to watch movies made by students of FTII here as part of their project work, including formative works of iconic directors and actors of Indian cinema.
The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) has a long list of prominent alumni, including filmmakers Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Girish Kasaravalli and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and actors Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Jaya Bachchan and Shabana Azmi.
“The first batch of FTII started in the 1960s, so we have diploma films of our past students since its inception,” the institute’s director, Bhupendra Kainthola, said here.
“The diploma films, made by the students as a part of their final year project work, generally do not see the light of day. So we have decided to screen them for the public at our premises once in a week as all these diploma films are like a goldmine,” he said.
The public screening of these films is to begin on August 5.
The inaugural event will be attended FTII alumnus and veteran actor Shatrughan Sinha who, as a student of the institute, acted in his diploma film, titled “Angry Young Man”, Kainthola said.
Sinha’s diploma film would also be screened on the occasion, he said.
“People have been watching Sinha on the screen after he became an actor. But, it would be a treat for them to see their favourite actor in a film in which he acted when he was a student,” he said.
Similarly, the diploma films of several celebrities and artistes, who once learnt the various aspects of film making at the institute during their student life, will be screened for the public who can just walk in and watch these them for free, the institute director said.
He said there are over 500 diploma films made by former students gathering dust at the FTII and the process to restore them is underway.
Gajendra Chauhan, the former chairman of FTII, said it is a good initiative as people will get to see the works of their favourite artistes when they were students.
A proposal to screen the diploma films on Doordarshan is pending with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, he said.
Pune, Jul 29: Film buffs will soon be able to watch movies made by students of FTII here as part of their project work, including formative works of iconic directors and actors of Indian cinema.
The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) has a long list of prominent alumni, including filmmakers Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Girish Kasaravalli and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and actors Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Jaya Bachchan and Shabana Azmi.
“The first batch of FTII started in the 1960s, so we have diploma films of our past students since its inception,” the institute’s director, Bhupendra Kainthola, said here.
“The diploma films, made by the students as a part of their final year project work, generally do not see the light of day. So we have decided to screen them for the public at our premises once in a week as all these diploma films are like a goldmine,” he said.
The public screening of these films is to begin on August 5.
The inaugural event will be attended FTII alumnus and veteran actor Shatrughan Sinha who, as a student of the institute, acted in his diploma film, titled “Angry Young Man”, Kainthola said.
Sinha’s diploma film would also be screened on the occasion, he said.
“People have been watching Sinha on the screen after he became an actor. But, it would be a treat for them to see their favourite actor in a film in which he acted when he was a student,” he said.
Similarly, the diploma films of several celebrities and artistes, who once learnt the various aspects of film making at the institute during their student life, will be screened for the public who can just walk in and watch these them for free, the institute director said.
He said there are over 500 diploma films made by former students gathering dust at the FTII and the process to restore them is underway.
Gajendra Chauhan, the former chairman of FTII, said it is a good initiative as people will get to see the works of their favourite artistes when they were students.
A proposal to screen the diploma films on Doordarshan is pending with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, he said.
New Delhi, Jul 28 : The government has got down to the job of framing the new telecom policy and a draft one should be ready by the end of December, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said.
“Working groups to draft the policy are being set up as we speak,” she said.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) last week kickstarted the consultation process by meeting operators, infrastructure providers, industry associations and standards bodies.
The department is in the middle of formulating a National Telecom Policy that will focus on areas such as Internet for all, next-generation technologies (like 5G and Internet of Things), skill development and security, among others.
DoT plans to go for a wide consultation and outreach before finalising the new policy and expects to have it in place by March 2018.
The new policy formulation comes at a time when the sector is saddled with financial difficulties. Revenue and profitability of both large and small operators have come under severe pressure after the entry of aggressive newcomer Reliance Jio and the subsequent free data and voice offerings.
The National Telecom Policy, 2012, had taken key steps such as full mobile number portability, liberalisation of spectrum, and allowing delinking of spectrum from licence, among others.
The department will soon write to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India seeking inputs for the new telecom policy, she added.
Lucknow, Jul 28: Terming the developments in Bihar as a “wrong signal for democracy”, BSP president Mayawati said today that misuse of power and official machinery by the BJP leadership posed a serious challenge to established democratic norms.
She claimed that the people of Bihar had been betrayed with state Chief Minister Nitish Kumar switching sides from the grand alliance to the NDA.
Misuse of power and government machinery by the senior leadership of the BJP for the lure of power is continuously posing a challenge to the democratic norms of the country, she said.
“The latest political developments in Bihar after Manipur and Goa clearly prove that future of democracy is at risk under the Narendra Modi government,” Mayawati alleged in a press release issued by her party here.
Terming JD (U) leader Kumar’s move of leaving the anti- BJP alliance and joining hand with the saffron party to form the government “as betraying the people of Bihar”, Mayawati said people had voted for the secular alliance defying the Modi wave.
This mandate should have been honoured, she said.
“Whatever has happened in Bihar after Manipur and Goa is the result of misuse of official machinery… To divert the people’s attention from wrong policies and corruption, the BJP has launched a drive to prove opposition leaders as corrupt which is most condemnable and dangerous for democracy,” she claimed.
New Delhi, Jul 27: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) was on Wednesday pulled up by the Delhi High Court for causing hardship to students by not notifying on its site that re-evaluation was permissible in all subjects of class 12.
The court’s remarks came after it was told that the Board was reluctant to accept applications for re-evaluation after the high court on July 6 had directed CBSE to re-evaluate the answer sheets of all the subjects of all students who wrote the class 12 examination this year and were seeking re- evaluation.
The Board, in its defense, contended that the deadline for accepting applications was July 7, as per an earlier order of the high court, and added that re-evaluation cannot be an open-ended exercise.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar, however, did not accept the CBSE’s argument and said, “Why did you not post our order online on your website? You gave the students only one-day’s time (on July 7) to apply for re-evaluation without even informing them about our decision (of July 6).”
The court also said that once it passed the July 6 order, the deadline no longer applied.
In its July 6 order the high court had said that “the relief (of re-evaluation) is not confined only to the petitioners before it and shall be admissible to all the similarly situated students who seek re-evaluation of their answer sheets”.
During the proceedings today, the court told the lawyers, appearing for some students whose answer sheets were not re- evaluated by the Board, to file an application and said it would pass appropriate orders thereafter.
The observations came during hearing of a plea filed by four students against the CBSE’s June 28 notice imposing certain conditions with regard to re-evaluation of answer sheets.
The high court had set aside the conditions that the right of applying for scrutiny was limited to 12 subjects only, with maximum 10 questions per subject and a revised mark sheet would be issued only if the marks increased by five or were reduced by one.
The marks of all four petitioner students saw substantial increase, their lawyers told the bench today which said to CBSE, “Have you looked at the disparity? 64 marks have become 93 (in one case). That is too much.”
When the Board said that in most cases the increase was of only one of two marks, the court remarked that “even one mark makes a lot of difference”.
The matter has now been fixed for further hearing on August 29.
Scientists have developed a user- interactive colour changing electronic skin inspired by chameleons that could be used in robotics, prosthetics and wearables. While science has been able to replicate the ability of animals such as chameleons, octopus and squids to change colour with artificial skin, the colour changes are often only visible to the naked eye when the material is put under huge mechanical strain.
Now, researchers from Tsinghua University in China have developed a new type of user-interactive electronic skin, with a colour change perceptible to the human eye, and achieved it with a much-reduced level of strain. The team employed flexible electronics made from graphene, in the form of a highly-sensitive resistive strain sensor, combined with a stretchable organic electrochromic device.
Researchers explored the substrate (underlying) effect on the electromechanical behaviour of graphene. To obtain good performance with a simple process and reduced cost, they designed a structure to use graphene as both the highly sensitive strain-sensing element and the insensitive stretchable electrode of the electric current density (ECD) layer.
“We found subtle strain – between zero and 10 per cent – was enough to cause an obvious colour change, and the RGB (red green blue) value of the colour quantified the magnitude of the applied strain,” said Tingting Yang from Tsinghua University. “Graphene, with its high transparency, rapid carrier transport, flexibility and large specific surface area, shows application potential for flexible electronics, including stretchable electrodes, super capacitor, sensors, and optical devices,” said Hongwei Zhu, professor at Tsinghua University.
However, our results also show that the mechanical property of the substrate was strongly relevant to the performance of the strain sensing materials, Zhu said. “It’s important to note that the capability we found for interactive colour changes with such a small strain range has been rarely reported before. This user-interactive e-skin should be promising for applications in wearable devices, robots and prosthetics in the future,” Yang added. The study was published in the journal 2D Materials.
Chennai, Jul 26: The Madras High Court today made singing of the national song ‘Vande Mataram’ mandatory in schools across Tamil Nadu at least twice a week.
Private and government schools in the state should ensure that their students sing the national song at least twice a week, preferably on Monday and Friday, Justice M V Muralidharan said, without giving reasons for the order.
He, however, cited article 226 of the Constitution which bestows on High Courts sweeping powers to pass orders within their areas of jurisdiction to any person or authority, to back his ruling.
The judge said in case any person or organisation has difficulty in singing or playing the song, they shall not be compelled or forced to sing it. They will, however, have to give valid reasons for not doing so.
Noting that the song can also be played in government and private establishments at least once a month, the judge said, “If people feel it is difficult to sing the song in Bengali or in Sanskrit, steps can be taken to translate the song in Tamil.”
The judge said, “The youth of this country are the future of tomorrow and the court hopes and trusts that this order shall be taken in the right spirit and also implemented in letter and spirit by the citizenry of this great nation.”
Interestingly, the court’s order came on a petition moved by K Veeramani, who had failed to clear the written test for recruitment of teachers.
He petitioned to the court that he could not clear the test as, replying to an objective type question, he had written that the national song was originally penned in Bengali.
The answer was declared wrong by the board and he was awarded 89 marks against the minimum 90 to be eligible for appointment.
Claiming that he had failed to get the job by just one mark due to ‘wrong’ evaluation, the petitioner had sought award of the extra mark, treating his answer as correct.
When the matter first came up on July 7, the petitioner’s counsel submitted that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee had written the national song in both Bengali and Sanskrit.
The additional government pleader, on the other hand, argued that it was penned only in Sanskrit and was later translated into Bengali.
The petitioner contended that in all the books he had read, Bengali was mentioned as the language in which the national song was originally written.
Following this, the judge had directed the Advocate General to apprise the court of the correct answer in order to settle the dispute over the linguistic origin of the song.
When the case came up on July 13, Advocate General R Muthukumaraswamy informed the court that the national song was of Sanskrit origin, but had originally been penned in Bengali by Chatterjee.
Islamabad, Jul 26: Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit has sought early retirement and his request has been accepted by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a media report said today.
Basit, who was set to retire from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in April 2018, had “submitted an application to Prime Minister Sharif for his early retirement which was accepted,” Geo News reported, citing sources.
The senior Pakistani diplomat has already completed his three-year tenure in New Delhi.
Basit would be replaced by Sohail Mahmood who is expected to take up his responsibilities as the High Commissioner to India next month, the channel reported.
Mahmood, 55, currently Pakistan’s envoy in Turkey, is a career diplomat who joined the Foreign Service in 1985.
The channel did not give any reason for Basit s premature retirement but foreign office sources earlier told PTI that he was unhappy over the appointment of current foreign secretary Tehmina Janjua, who is junior to Basit.
Basit joined the Foreign Service in 1982 and held several diplomatic assignments at Pakistani missions abroad.
Prior to his appointment as the High Commissioner to India in 2014, Basit had served as Pakistan’s Ambassador to Germany from May 2012 till March 2014.
San Francisco, Jul 25 : Google parent Alphabet has reported a quarterly profit of USD 3.5 billion, with a massive fine by the European Commission biting into earnings.
The technology giant yesterday reported that revenue grew to USD 26 billion in the recently ended quarter, and that profit would have tallied nearly USD 6.3 billion if it weren’t for a USD 2.74 billion antitrust fine levied on search engine Google by the European Commission.
Revenue was up 21 percent from the same quarter last year, according to earnings figures.
“We’re delivering strong growth with great underlying momentum, while continuing to make focused investments in new revenue streams,” said Alphabet chief financial officer Ruth Porat.
Alphabet shares slid about 2.9 percent to .
969.03 in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures.
Investors have been concerned about what the regulatory trouble in Europe means for Alphabet, which gets most of its money from Google advertising while investing in “other bets” such as self-driving cars.
Alphabet took in USD 248 million in revenue and posted a narrowed loss of USD 772 million in its “other bets” category in the recently ended quarter.
Meanwhile, Google and the EU are gearing up for a battle that could last years, with the Silicon Valley behemoth facing a relentless challenge to its ambition to expand beyond search results.
Brussels has already spent seven years targeting Google, fueled by a deep apprehension of the company’s dominance of Internet search across Europe, where it commands about 90 percent of the market.
In a verdict that could redraw the online map worldwide, the EU’s top antitrust sheriff Margrethe Vestager in June imposed a record fine on Google for illegally favoring its shopping service in search results.
The EU accuses Google of giving its multitude of services too much priority in search results to the detriment of other price comparison services.
The decision — if it survives an expected appeal process – could prove to be momentous for Google, as well as for competition law in general.
The EU is also examining Google’s AdSense advertising service and its Android mobile phone software.
Income taxpayer base moved up substantially to 6.26 crore at the end of the last fiscal, from nearly 4 crore earlier, CBDT Chairman Sushil Chandra said today.
Clearing the air on disclosure of bank account details of non-resident Indians (NRIs), expats, as well as foreigners with investments in private equity in India, Chandra also said that such accounts need to be disclosed only when a refund is due to the assessee. The chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said that post demonetization the department has taken a host of measures to increase tax base and the statement of financial transaction (SFT) report filed by banks shows widening of taxpayer base.
“As on date, we have got 6.26 crore assessees. It is a myth that we have 3-4 crore… (These) assessees who have filed returns, paid advance tax or tax has been deducted at source. This is a large jump from earlier years,” he said speaking at the Income Tax Day celebrations here. The challenge before the taxmen now remains how to widen the tax net and officials are working towards it, he said. Chandra said that with the enactment of the amended Benami law, the tax officials have found out clusters and persons who have invested money in real estate without filing tax returns.
New Delhi, July 25: Leading stock exchange BSE will auction investment limits tomorrow for foreign investors to purchase government debt securities worth Rs 10,922 crore.
The auction will be conducted on BSE’s ebidxchange platform from 1530 hours to 1730 hours, after the close of market hours.
The exchange said in a circular today that the debt auction quota gives overseas investors the right to invest in the debt up to the limit purchased.
A mock bidding session would be conducted today to check the system’s performance after the close of markets.
“Live bidding session for allocation of debt investment limits (of Rs 10,922 crore) for FII/FPI/sub-accounts shall be conducted on July 25, 2017 on exchange’s ‘ebidxchange’ platform,” BSE said.
In an online auction conducted earlier this month, government debt securities had attracted bids worth Rs 29,950 crore from foreign investors as against Rs 20,397 crore on offer.
To boost inflows of foreign funds into Indian capital markets, regulator Sebi earlier this month raised the FPI investment limit in government securities to Rs 1,87,700 crore. Prior to that the limit was Rs 1,84,901 crore.
Kolkata, Jul 25: The CBI on Monday sought an arrest warrant against Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) president Bimal Gurung, his wife Asha and 20 others from a city court in connection with the Madan Tamang murder case.
The CBI counsel prayed to the chief judge of the City Sessions Court Kundan Kumar Kumai that the arrest warrant be issued against the 22 accused, who were absent at today’s hearing.
Out of the 48 accused in the case against whom CBI has prayed sought framing of charges for the murder of All India Gorkha League leader Madan Tamang in the heart of Darjeeling in 2011, 26 accused were present.
The Calcutta High Court had on July 19 asked all the accused against whom CBI has sought framing of charges to be present before the court of the chief judge of City Sessions Court, which had fixed today for commencement of hearing.
A division bench presided over by acting Chief Justice Nishita Mhatre had directed the trial court to hold day-to-day hearing and conclude framing of charges by August 17.
Noting that several accused were not present during the hearing for framing of charges on earlier occasions also, the division bench had directed the CBI to ensure their presence in court.
Among the 26 accused present before the court today were former GJM MLA Harka Bahadur Chetri, Captain Ramesh Allay and Rabin Subba.
Apart from Bimal Gurung, senior GJM leaders Asha Gurung, Roshan Giri, Binay Tamang and Devendra Sharma were among those absent.
Those accused who were absent in the court made written prayer before the court seeking to be represented by their lawyers.
CBI counsel Arun Bhagat opposed the prayers, submitting that the high court had expressly ordered their presence before the trial court for the hearing. He sought arrest warrants against them for being absent.
Citing the high court’s noting that CBI did not oppose the prayers of the accused to be represented by their lawyers during earlier hearings, the CBI counsel submitted that he had vehemently raised objection, but it was not recorded.
Claiming that it led to the adverse noting by the high court, Bhagat prayed before the Chief Sessions Judge that his opposition on earlier occasions be recorded.
Debasish Roy, counsel for Bimal Gurung, Asha and some other accused claimed that the notice for appearance before the court was not served at the homes of the these persons and was pasted in marketplaces.
Bhagat submitted that CBI had tried its best to communicate the high court order through SMS, mail or through messenger, but many were not found at their addresses and as such the officials had to paste the notice on the walls of their houses.
The CBI counsel submitted that order be passed on the applications of the accused persons for not being personally present before commencement of hearing on framing of charges.
The judge, after hearing all the parties, adjourned the matter till tomorrow.