MONTH THAT WAS

351 excellence schools for SC students

Bhopal: The Scheduled Castes Welfare Department is running 351 Schools for Excellence for scheduled caste students in the state to impart quality education to them. Of these, 90 are district-level and 261 division-level Schools for Excellence. At present, 18 thousand students are pursuing education in these schools. A provision of Rs. 11 crore has been made to run these institutions during current fiscal.

Admission to these hostels is given to tribal students having obtained over 60 percent marks and on the basis of merit list. There are 45 hostels each for boys and girls at the district-level. There are 147 boys hostel and 114 girls hostels at the division level. Free training in computer, library and career building is being imparted to students at these hostels by subject experts.

There are exemplary youngsters!

Oslo — Two Norwegian teens returned 467,200 kroner (some 62,000 euros, $81,500) they found left on a train by an elderly passenger. The pair found the treasure in a handbag left on the seat of a train.

"When I opened the bag, the first thing I saw were these wads and wads of bills," one of the teens, identified as 16-year-old Bendik, told local daily Vestby Avis.

"My first thought was to call the police," he said. After looking in the bag more closely, the good samaritans found the passport of its owner, a man in his 70s.

Helplessness of Apex Court !

New Delhi: Former Bihar governor Buta Singh's occupation of a government bungalow in the national capital invited sharp criticism from the Supreme Court which slammed the estate department for adopting a "pick and choose" policy while evicting unauthorised occupants.

The apex court disapproved that Singh, a former Union minister, was provided with the government accommodation because of the threat perception, saying that "there is no nexus between security threat and government accommodation".

 It also questioned the government for regularising the allotment of 11-A Teen Murti Marg in favour of Singh, whose three year term as the chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Caste, ended in 2010.

"Why this allotment was regularised in favour of one gentleman ( Buta Singh)," a bench of justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya asked additional solicitor general P P Malhotra.

It wanted to know "under which provision of law the accommodation was given to Singh".

The bench, which stopped midway while dictating the order, indicated that the notice issued by the estate department pursuant to the court order to get the accommodation vacated for unauthorised occupation under the public premises (eviction of unauthorised occupants) Act shall remain stayed till the matter is heard at length.

The bench said government will not act suo motu as some persons were targeted and all unauthorised occupants were not treated at par by the authority in the eviction procedure.

UNICEF & child abuse!

Monrovia: A Liberian actor has filed a $25 million lawsuit against UNICEF for alleged child abuse over his starring role aged 13 in a fundraising film as a murderous child soldier who tortures his victims. Mike James, now 28, says he and other cast members have been "stigmatised as rebels, killers, cannibals and drug addicts" after being recruited for the 1997 film "Soldier Boy" and made to act out eating human body parts. The actor said he was appalled that video copies of the film were being sold for up to $200. "I was not given a dime of the millions that UNICEF raked in from the sales of a movie that ruined my life," he said. UNICEF was not available for comment.

BRAIN initiative: Obama way

Washington: Saying that he wanted the next job-creating discoveries to happen not in India or China, but the US, President Barack Obama has unveiled a $100 million initiative to unlock the “enormous mystery” of the human brain.

“I don’t want the next job-creating discoveries to happen in China or India or Germany. I want them to happen right here, in the United States of America,” the president said in an event in the East Room of the White House.

“And that’s part of what this BRAIN Initiative is about,” he said referring to the initiative, dubbed Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. “That’s why we’re pursuing other ‘grand challenges’ like making solar energy as cheap as coal or making electric vehicles as affordable as the ones that run on gas,” Obama said.

“What if computers could respond to our thoughts? Or language barriers could come tumbling down? Or if millions of Americans were suddenly finding new jobs in these fields — jobs we haven’t even dreamt up yet because we chose to invest in this project? That is the future we are imagining. That is what we are hoping for,” he said.

Revolutionary Pak move!

Islamabad: For the first time, Pakistani voters may get the choice of not voting for any of the candidates in the fray for the May 11 general election, with the Election Commission deciding to incorporate “none of the above” option in ballot papers. The decision to include the “none of the above” option in ballot papers was made at a meeting of the poll panel chaired by Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G Ebrahim, officials told the media.

Since the measure will require legal backing, a formal proposal will be sent by the Election Commission to the Prime Minister about issuing an ordinance, the officials said.  A blank slot will be included in ballots along with the names of candidates in every constituency.

If 51 per cent of voters opt for the blank slot, a re-election will be held in the constituency, the officials said. The meeting further decided to monitor activities in all “sensitive” constituencies on election day by satellite. A formal proposal will be sent to the Information Technology Ministry to help in this regard, officials said.

 In a separate development, the Election Commission said it had received 17,186 nomination papers for the polls to the national and provincial assemblies. The figure includes 5,802 nominations for the National Assembly or lower house of parliament and 11,384 for the four provincial assemblies.

Probe Rs 27,000 cr loss in Petronet deal: Former Secretary

New Delhi: A Rs 27,000 crore loss caused by an alleged change of contract by a Qatari company supplying liquid gas (LNG) to Petronet LNG needs to be probed, former Secretary to Government of India E A S Sarma has demanded.

Sarma in a letter to the Prime Minister's Office sought a CBI probe in the role of officials of Oil Ministry and Petronet LNG Ltd in allowing RasGas of Qatar to allegedly violate the contract for supply of 7.5 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

He wanted a probe into the issue of how Petronet, whose Chairman is Oil Secretary, quietly switched to buying lean gas, which can only be used as fuel, instead of rich gas that can also produce petrochemicals and cooking gas (LPG).