Helpline for the ragged students—AT LAST !

India yesterday launched a national, toll free helpline for victims of ragging, assuring them assistance at all hours within 15 minutes of a distress call in a move. Students entering India’s higher education system, scarred by deaths and grievous injuries from violent ragging, will no longer have to fear indignity.

The number 5522 has been chosen for the helpline, which will need to be dialed as 1800-180-5522 to use the toll free mode. Students can also email complaints to helpline@antiragging.net.

BSNL is the telecommunication provider for the service and the helpline will be handled at all hours from a call centre in west Delhi’s Kirti Nagar. The helpline will be guided by the University Grant Commission’s(UGC) new regulations against ragging that have now come into effect.

A student will receive a unique identification number on calling the helpline, which will be used in all subsequent official work on the case to guard his or her identity. The distress call will be forwarded to the head of the caller’s institution and the warden of his/her hostel as well as district authorities and, if necessary, police.

The institution is to alert an anti-ragging squad that must compulsorily be set up under the new regulations. The squad is required to rush to the spot where the student has alleged ragging within 15 minutes of the original distress call.

Some cool facts about the 15th Lok Sabha

Loaded House

The 15th Lok Sabha is the richest, with 300 crorepati (1 crore= 10 million) MPs. That’s almost double the 154 MPs in the 14th house. The combined asset of Indian Mps is more than 3000 crore. Nama Nageswara Rao of the TDP in Andhra Pradesh is the richest with asset worth Rs 173.75 crore followed by Congress MP Naveen Jindal from Haryana worth Rs 131 crore. The Congress has 138 crorepati MPs, while the BJP has 58. The top five states with crorepati MPs are :

1. Uttar Pradesh (52)
2. Maharashtra (37)
3. Andhra Pradesh (31)
4. Karnataka (25)
5. Tamil Nadu (17)

Interestingly, there are about 300 MPs with liabilities, mainly loans, 24 with liabilities over Rs 1 crore. The man with the maximum liability, too, from Andhra Pradesh—L. Rajagopal of the Congress–at Rs 8 crore !

Lawbreaking Lawmakers

The word candidate is derived from ‘candidatus’ in Latin, which means one who is dressed in white. Most Indian politicians do dress in white but many of their thoughts are black. About 150 newly elected Mps have criminal cases pending against them, 73 of them serious charges. That’s a 17.2 per cent increase from the 14th Lok Sabha, which had 128 MPs with criminal charges, 55 of them of serious nature.

Number of MPs with criminal charges is almost equal among the main national parties: the BJP—42; 17 serious offence and the Congress–41; 12 serious offence.

The top five states with the most number of MPs with criminal charges are:

1. Uttar Pradesh (30)
2. Maharashtra (23)
3. Bihar (17)
4. Gujarat (11)
5. Andhra Pradesh (11)

More youth ? Not really

There has been talk about the surge of the youth power in Indian politics. But statistics don’t agree. Though there are 79 MPs under the age of 40, the 15th Lok Sabha is the second ‘oldest’ in Indian history, considering the average age of MPs–53.03.

Youngest MP –Muhammad Hamidullah Sayeed (26) from Congress.

Oldest MP– Ram Sundar Das (88) from JD(U).

Good sex scene

For the first time in Indian history, female representation in the Lok Sabha crossed 10 per cent. 59 of the 556 women candidates have been elected. 23 of them belong to the Congress and 13 to the BJP. The top three states with the maximum number of women MPs are:

1. Uttar Pradesh (13)
2. West Bengal (7)
3. Madhya Pradesh (6)

source: The week

Intel’s Moblin to challenge Windows in netbook arena

A new beta of the Intel-sponsored Moblin OS for netbooks has hit the web. Building on the customized but dumbed-down versions of Linux that shipped with the first wave of netbooks, version 2.0 of Moblin aims to provide a visually rich and interactive UI experience to netbook users.

Physics, animation and OpenGL graphics are all included, and the main interface uses a toolbar and collapsible panels for launching applications and performing tasks such as creating notes and or calendar entries. You can get real-time updates from social networking sites and also update your Twitter or Facebook status right on the home screen. The OS also includes an optimized Web browser, based on Mozilla’s Firefox. Other goodies include a freshly designed media player and easy wired/wireless network connection management.

source: CHIP

Swine flu fears used to spoof search results, spread malware

WebSense Security Labs reports that thousands of newly registered websites claiming to provide information about the recent H1N1 flu outbreak are actually spreading spam, advertisements and malware. The sites use search engine optimization methods to appear at high ranks in search results. Users clicking to visit them are instead redirected to pages serving all kinds of insecure material. Typical behavior includes asking users to install a codec to view content related to Swine flu, which does nothing but install a Trojan.

Source: CHIP

Election-themed websites all the rage

Several web-based companies have launched sites aimed at capturing the attention of voters around the country. With Lok Sabha elections right around the corner, Indians are turning to the internet to learn more about their political representatives and the Indian democratic process in general.

Google, in association with Hindustan Times, has launched www.google.co.in/loksabha2009, which shows surfers information about their constituencies as well as latest news about candidates and what they are saying. Voters can even look up their registration status.

Rival Myspace has roped in Priya Dutt for its effort. www.myspace.com/indiafightsback, which encourages freedom of expression and aims to educate the youth about the importance of voting.

Yahoo has its own take on the idea, with in.elections.yahoo.com which aggregates news about the elections and politicians along with information about each state and constituency.

SMS Trojan preys on jealous lovers

Once again, malware authors are relying on humans’ baser instincts to spread their wares. A new series of spam messages question whether people really know what their significant others are up to and make the highly unbelievable promise of allowing them to spy on anyone’s SMS messages. Those whose suspicion, jealousy or curiosity get the better of them, could be tempted to try a 30-day free trial of the spying program. As expected, the download is nothing more than a Trojan.

The spam message arrive with the subject lines such as “Read her messages!”, “How well do you know your partner?”, “Keep a spy eye on your girlfriend’s mobile”, and “Are you interested in reading other people’s SMS?”. The URLs embedded in the mails point to a download with the name of sms.exe, smstrap.exe and freetrial.exe, all of which contain the Trojan W32.waledac.

Google hosts Life’s archive, 10 million iconic images now free

Google has taken up the task of hosting 10 million historic photos from the archives of the famous American photojournal Life. Discontinued in the year 2000, Life was the first photo-centric magazine, and its poignant images often came to be iconic of crucial historical events, people, places, trends, and culture. Over 2 million of these photos can already be found at http://images.google.com/hosted/life, with millions more to come within months. Upto 97 percent of these images have never been published. The photos are of course of excellent quality, and Google’s versions of them are available at an average resolution of 1280×1000. The spectacular pictures, illustrations and photos date back to the mid 19th century and include previously unseen images of Jackie Kennedy, Times Square and the Vietnam war for instance, under categories such as “People”, “Places” and “Events”. In addition, you can also browse by decade, from the 1860s to the 1970s.

Unnourished Indian children–A call for reform and action

India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) needs to undergo significant changes to address the current malnutrition crisis in India, according to a World Bank report. The prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world, and is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, the report says. It also observes that malnutrition in India is a concentrated phenomenon. A relatively small number of states, districts, and villages account for a large share of the burden – 5 states and 50 percent of villages account for about 80 percent of the malnutrition cases.

“Despite experiencing unprecedented economic growth during the last decade, South Asia, including India, has the highest rates of malnutrition and the largest numbers of undernourished in the world,” it said.

Citing estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO), it said about 49 per cent of the world’s underweight children, 34 per cent of the world’s stunted children and 46 per cent of the world’s wasted children, live in India.

The prevalence of malnutrition varies across states, demographic and socio-economic groups, with scheduled tribes and scheduled castes ranking highest among all. “Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand have the highest malnutrition rates,” it said, adding that even in urban areas, a third of the children are underweight.

“Over the past decade, progress in reducing malnutrition in India has been limited; in fact anaemia has increased,” the report said.

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Click here to downlad the World Bank Report (in pdf format): unnourished_executive_summary

Handycam Gang

They are not exactly slumdogs but they certainly are destitute. They were not lucky enough to win Oscars, but have won eight international film awards in seven countries. Armed with one lone handycam, these 20 odd children—all orphans—have been making award winning human rights films. With help from the Centre for Communication and Development (CCD), based at Madhyamgram, near Kolkata airport, these children make a film for just between Rs 150000 and Rs 20000. The organization was founded in 1979 to take care of children orphaned by the devastating floods of 1978.  Now, films made by these children have won prizes at the Chicago Film Festival and childrens’ international film festivals in Greece, Italy, Tehran, Cyprus and Sydney. Clearly these celluloid adventurers seem set for greater glory.

State Pension Plan in India Will Benefit Low-Income HIV-Positive People

Low-income residents of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who are living with HIV/AIDS are eligible for a monthly pension from the state to pay for antiretroviral treatment, Ramnarayan Reddy, the state’s information minister, announced on Janyary 2009, The Telegraph reports. The Times of India reports that the government has found that 80% of the state’s 50,000 HIV/AIDS patients receiving antiretroviral treatment fall below the poverty line . Under the initiative, which is the first of its kind in the country, about 41,000 people currently taking antiretrovirals will receive the pension, The Telegraph reports. To qualify for the monthly pension of 200 rupees, or about $4.08, a patient must have received antiretrovirals from a government facility for at least six months, have a ration card for use by families living below the poverty line and should not be part of another pension system. Families with more than one HIV-positive person will receive a pension for each family member living with the disease.