MONTH THAT WAS

Civic body sponsors handicapped boy’s study

Thane: Pranav Desai received the best gift for the lifetime. He excelled in the SSC exams and scored 80.40%.

He has been selected by the Thane Municipal Corporation and will be provided all the help to pursue his studies. So what’s special about Pranav? We might ask and the answer is, he is an athlete who will be participating in world Paralympics that will be held in 2021-22.

Pranav has 73% disability. His one leg is half till the knee and does not have complete set of fingers on the hands. With lot of practice, he started running with the help of blades. Before that he had learnt the skating with one leg at Dadoji Konddev stadium, Thane.

 “We were collapsed to see our son in this condition when he was born, but then decided to fight. Pranav is so strong-willed that he wanted to pursue the carrier in sports and since the age of three, his journey of becoming a sportsperson began with learning skating,” said his proud father Prashant Desai who works in private company and is backbone for his son.

Pranav was selected by the corporation and the corporation will help him for his studies for next five years. Also he will be provided all the medical aid that will be required for his treatment, informed the corporation officials. Pranav was felicitated in the office of Corporation Commissioner:

 “We will provide all the help he will require for his education and also for medical assistance. We are planning to make a permanent policy for the help of differently abled sport persons”, said Sanjeev Jaiswal, Commissioner of Thane Municipal Corporation.

Jails for rent: Food, security included

Hyderabad: The Telangana prisons department has come up with a novel idea of renting out its jails to other states to house their inmates from the next year.

Notably, they are following an example set by Norway, which has one of the most humane jails in the world. 

The prisons department proposes to charge a monthly rent of Rs 10,000 per person, which includes food, accommodation, security, mulakhat (meeting family members) and skill development training.Presently, the Telangana prisons is capable of housing 800 inmates from other states. However, the facility will be available for convicts in the non-grievous and non-serious offences, and not for undertrials and hardcore criminals. The prisons department, which is awaiting the state government nod, hopes there will be heavy demand from Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, which are facing acute shortage of space in jails. 

“Telangana jails have a good number of vacancies because of special initiatives taken up by the department. Mahaparivarthan, Vidyadaan and Unnati are some such initiatives that have helped in changing the mindset of those convicted for small offences,” said state prisons department chief, Inspector General V K Singh.

Attributing the excess space to a steep drop in repeat offenders returning to jail, Singh said, “Once they are released, they are giving up their criminal minds and are joining the mainstream because of our initiatives.” 

Telangana has a sanctioned capacity to lodge 6,848 prisoners in all its jails. However, currently there are 6,063 prisoners. The jail chief hopes the number will further come down to 5,000. 

If the scheme gets the government’s nod, the jails department would earn revenue of Rs 25 crore per year, which would help contribute to making the prisons self-reliant.  The department has launched novel schemes like “Be a Prisoner for Rs 500” at the Sangareddy jail museum. It also imparts skill training to the convicts and helps in engaging them in earning activities.Currently, convicts are running 14 petrol bunks in Hyderabad and other places. The department is keen on opening up 50 more pumps by the end of the year.

Hell with world opinion, SCS has a theatre now

Beijing:China has opened a modern cinema theatre on Yongxing Island in the disputed South China Sea as part of its plan to establish authority over the area, PTI reports from Beijing.

Over 200 residents and soldiers watched the Chinese movie “The Eternity of Jiao Yulu’ at the Sansha Yinglong Cinema, located in Sansha Municipality, China’s newest city in the South China Sea (SCS), the state media reported. China has been expanding facilities in the islands under its control encouraging population settlements in the disputed area, where Beijing also built artificial island some with facilities for reinforcing its control over the area.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the South China Sea. 

Poverty affects growing children’s psyche

New York: Apart from physical problems, people with an impoverished lifestyle in childhood are also likely to suffer significant psychological damage during adulthood, reports IANS.

The findings showed that impoverished children had more anti-social conduct such as aggression and bullying and increased feeling of helplessness, than kids from middle-income back-grounds. Poor kids also have more chronic physiological stress and more deficits in short-terms spatial memory.

 “What this means is, if you’re born poor, you’re on a trajectory to have more of these kinds of psychological problems,” said lead author Gary Evans, Professor and child psychologist at the Cornell University in New York, US.

The reason is stress, researches said. “With poverty, you’re exposed to lots of stress. Everybody has stress, but low-income families, low-income children, have a lot more of it,” Evans said. “And the parents are also under a lot of stress. So for kids, there is a cumulative risk exposure.”

For the study, Evans tracked 341 participants over a 15-year period, and tested them at ages 9, 13, 17 and 24. The results revealed that the adults who grew up in poverty had a diminished ability to recall the sequences, tend to be more helpless and had the tendency to give up easily as well as had a higher level of chronic physical stress throughout childhood and into adulthood.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences.

United Airlines in the news again!

New York: United Airlines has once again made headlines by sending US rapper Schoolboy Q's dog to the wrong city in the country during a layover flight.

The 30-year-old California-based rapper arrived in Burbank from a layover in Denver on Friday night to find someone else's pooch, the CNN reported.

"You guys r idiots... HOW U PUT MY DOG ON THE WRONG FLIGHT???? I need answers", he tweeted. “I plan on suing," he said in a text message to CNN.

The rapper, whose real name is Quincy Matthew Hanley, was travelling with his French bulldog puppy, Yeerndamean, from Missouri to Burbank, California. But the dog was switched during a stopover in Denver and flown to Chicago instead.

United Airlines says the dog is being well cared for."We're working as quickly as possible to reunite the pet with their owner later this evening. We have reached out to our customer and sincerely apologise for this mistake and are providing a refund.

Israel to India: adapt our farm-tech

New Delhi: With an aim to expand bilateral ties with India during the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Israel said it does not want to ‘cut and paste’ its innovative farm technologies in India but help the latter ‘cut and adapt’ them to suit local conditions.

Israel does not want to simply ‘talk and talk’ about its technologies but believes in its ability to ‘walk the talk’, Israeli envoy Daniel Carmon told the media after a conference which was a prelude to Modi’s visit, most likely to take place in July, reports PTI. Agriculture secretary Shobhana Pattanayak; Niti Aayog member Ramesh Chand and senior officials from Isareli Embassy and the government as also private companies were present in the conference.

Pattanayak said the purpose of the conference was to identify new areas of co-operation between the two countries. The outcome of the meeting will set the agenda for signing of an agreement during the visit. Stating that Israel is a global leader in agri-innovations, Niti Aayog’s Chand said, “Its innovations are followed by 60 percent growers in California. There is so much to learn and adapt their technologies in India. We want to take the relationship with it to the next stage.”

Israel’s water saving and recycling technologies can be of great benefit to India, which heavily depends on monsoon for agriculture, he said, adding that the country also has wonderful innovations in storage, mechanization horticulture crops and other farm areas.

As part of the bilateral co-operation, Israel has set up 27 centers of excellence in various parts of India. “The first stage was done on a pilot stage. Now, we want these pilots to be implemented on ground level as much as possible.” So far, the bilateral co-operation with Israel has been government-to-government and business-to-business and going forward it should be farmers and at field level so that technologies are adapted successfully, he added.

When phone call could save life

Washington: A few phone calls to people who have suicidal tendencies could significantly reduce future suicide attempts and save many lives, a new study has found.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Brown University in the US found that phone calls to suicidal patients following discharge from Emergency Departments led to a 30 per cent reduction in future suicide attempts.

The year-long trial, which involved 1,376 patients across US, provided suicidal patients with interventions that included specialized screening, safety planning guidance and follow-up telephone calls.

 “People who are suicidal are often disconnected and socially isolated,” said Michael Allen, professor at the CU Anschutz. “So any positive contact with the world can make them feel better,” said Allen.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US. Over one million people attempt to take their own life every year. Allen said simply handing a suicidal patient a psychiatric referral when discharged is not enough.

 “We call them up to seven times to check on them after discharge,” said Allen. “If they aren’t there we leave a message and call again. For many, this telephone call is all they get,” he said.

 “We don’t need more brick and mortar buildings, we can reduce suicide risk by simply calling people on the phone,” Allen said. “Telephone follow-up programs offer a great way to help bridge an ED visit to outpatient mental health care and hopefully save lives,” said Emmy Betz, an associate professor at CU Anschutz.

The trial took place in three phases to create three comparison groups. In the first phase, 497 patients received each ED’s usual treatment as a control group. The number of suicide attempts and the proportion of people attempting suicide declined significantly in the intervention group compared to treatment as usual.

Trump may be neurotic

Melbourne: The Twitter messages of US President Donald Trump show that he is creative, competitive and a rule-breaker, but also has neurotic tendencies, a study has found. 

Since joining the social media platform Twitter in 2009 to May 2017, Trump has issued more than 35,000 messages. This amounts to about twelve tweets a day. With 30 million followers, he is the second most followed politician on Twitter after his predecessor, Barack Obama, who on average tweeted about four times a day.

The researchers, Martin Obschonka from Queensland University of Technology in Australia, and Christian Fisch from Trier University in Germany analysed how aspects of Trump’s personality are revealed in the language he used in 3,200 tweets issued by October 2016, before he became president.

Trump’s language use and online personality were also compared with that of 105 other famous business managers and entrepreneurs including Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk who are not on the political stage.

Their results indicate that Trump is indeed a distinct type of person who shows strong features of a so-called Schumpeterian personality that is said to be typical of successful entrepreneurs.

This personality was described by Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s as being very creative, change-orientated, competitive and rule-breaking.

The analysis further indicates that Trump has neurotic tendencies, and experiences underlying low well-being.

“These traits are rather untypical for entrepreneurs since working as an entrepreneur may not only require emotional stability and optimism but also be able to increase happiness due to procedural utility,” said Obschonka.

He said that neuroticism isn’t necessarily all bad, for it can also stimulate competitiveness.

The researchers speculate that having entrepreneurial personality traits could be advantageous in leading and governing an entrepreneurial society as a top-down process.

However, they stress that leading a company is very different from leading a country and it is unclear whether political leaders with an extremely entrepreneurial personality can indeed act strictly entrepreneurially in their highly responsible role.