Monthly Archives: August 2018

ਬੈਂਗਲੁਰੂ— ਕਰਨਾਟਕ ਦੀ ਰਾਜਧਾਨੀ ਬੈਂਗਲੁਰੂ ‘ਚ ਪਠਾਨਕੋਟ ਹਮਲੇ ‘ਚ ਸ਼ਹੀਦ ਹੋਏ ਰਾਸ਼ਟਰੀ ਸੁਰੱਖਿਆ ਗਾਰਡ (ਐਨ. ਐਸ. ਜੀ.) ਦੇ ਜਵਾਨ ਕਮਾਂਡੋ ਨਿਰੰਜਨ ਕੁਮਾਰ ਨੂੰ ਸੋਮਵਾਰ ਨੂੰ ਹਜ਼ਾਰਾਂ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਨੇ ਸ਼ਰਧਾਂਜਲੀ ਦਿੱਤੀ। ਪਿਤਾ ਨਿਰੰਜਨ ਨੂੰ  ਸ਼ਰਧਾਂਜਲੀ  ਦੇਣ ਲਈ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੀ ਨੰਨ੍ਹੀ ਬੇਟੀ ਵਿਸਮਯਾ ਵੀ ਪਹੁੰਚੀ। ਲੈਫਟੀਨੈਂਟ ਕਰਨਲ ਨਿਰੰਜਨ (35) ਐਤਵਾਰ ਨੂੰ ਪਠਾਨਕੋਟ ਵਿਚ ਇਕ ਬੰਬ ਨੂੰ ਨਕਾਰਾ ਕਰਦੇ ਸਮੇਂ ਸ਼ਹੀਦ ਹੋ ਗਏ ਸਨ।
ਕਮਾਂਡੋ ਨਿਰੰਜਨ ਦਾ ਜਨਮ ਬੈਂਗਲੁਰੂ ‘ਚ ਹੀ ਹੋਇਆ ਸੀ ਅਤੇ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੀ ਪੜ੍ਹਾਈ ਵੀ ਇੱਥੇ ਹੀ ਹੋਈ ਸੀ। ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੇ ਪਰਿਵਾਰ ਵਿਚ ਪਿਤਾ ਸ਼ਿਵਰਾਜਨ, ਪਤਨੀ ਡਾ. ਰਾਧਿਕਾ ਅਤੇ 18 ਮਹੀਨੇ ਦੀ ਬੇਟੀ ਵਿਸਮਯਾ ਅਤੇ ਭਰਾ ਸਕਵੈਡਰਨ ਲੀਡਰ ਸ਼ਰਤਚੰਦਰਾ ਹੈ। ਸ਼ਹੀਦ ਦਾ ਮ੍ਰਿਤਕ ਸਰੀਰ ਐਤਵਾਰ ਦੇਰ ਰਾਤ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੇ ਘਰ ਪੁੱਜਾ ਅਤੇ ਉਸੇ ਸਮੇਂ ਤੋਂ ਹੀ ਉੱਥੇ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਦਾ ਤਾਂਤਾ ਲੱਗਣ ਲੱਗਾ।
ਨਿਰੰਜਨ ਦੇ ਮ੍ਰਿਤਕ ਸਰੀਰ ਨੂੰ ਅੱਜ ਅੰਤਿਮ ਦਰਸ਼ਨ ਲਈ ਬੀ. ਈ. ਐਲ. ਮੈਦਾਨ ‘ਚ ਰੱਖਿਆ ਗਿਆ, ਜਿੱਥੇ ਸਵੇਰੇ ਹਜ਼ਾਰਾਂ ਦੀ ਗਿਣਤੀ ਵਿਚ ਲੋਕ ਇਕੱਠੇ ਹੋ ਗਏ। ਨਿਰੰਜਨ ਦੇ ਪਰਿਵਾਰਕ ਸੂਤਰਾਂ ਨੇ ਦੱਸਿਆ ਕਿ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੇ ਪੁੱਤਰ ਦੇ ਮ੍ਰਿਤਕ ਸਰੀਰ ਨੂੰ ਜਲਹੱਲੀ ਹਵਾਈ ਅੱਡੇ ਤੋਂ ਕੇਰਲ ਸਥਿਤ ਗ੍ਰਹਿ ਨਗਰ ਪਲਕੱਕੜ ਲੈ ਜਾਇਆ ਗਿਆ, ਜਿੱਥੇ ਮੰਗਲਵਾਰ ਦੀ ਸਵੇਰ ਨੂੰ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦਾ ਅੰਤਿਮ ਸੰਸਕਾਰ ਕੀਤਾ ਜਾਵੇਗਾ।

New Delhi: The Seventh Pay Commission award becomes boon for central government employees, is not going to be implemented before the implementation of One Rank One Pension (OROP).

Bhubaneswar has topped the list of first 20 cities that will be developed as Smart Cities, followed by Pune and Jaipur. Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday unveiled the list of first 20 cities.

He said that the smart cities will demonstrate how integrated planning  and smart technologies can deliver better quality of life.

There were 97 cities in the Smart City Challenge, of which 20 winners were selected.

Naidu congratulated 11 States and the Union Territory of Delhi who have made it to the top 20 smart cities list. He added a total investment of Rs 50,802 cr has been proposed in the selected smart cities and towns during the five year period.

The smart cities were chosen based on a challenge that required cities to come up with integrated plans, proposals, so that there is maximum analysis and planning.

Below are the top 20 smart cities winners

1.Bhubaneswar (Odisha)
2. Pune (Maharashtra)
3. Jaipur (Rajasthan)
4. Surat (Gujarat)
5. Kochi (kerala)
6. Ahmedabad (Gujarat)
7. Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh)
8.Visakhapatnam (AndhraPreadesh)
9. Solapur (Maharashtra)
10 Davanagere (Karnataka)
11. Indore ( Madhya Pradesh)
12. NDMC (Delhi)
13. Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu)
14. Kakinada (Andhra Pradesh)
15. Belagavi (Karnataka)
16. Udaipur (Rajasthan)
17. Guwahati (Assam)
18. Chennai (Tamil Nadu)
19. Ludhiana (Punjab)
20. Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh)

Governments, businesses, and economists have all been caught off guard by the geopolitical shifts that happened with the crash of oil prices and the slowdown of China’s economy. Most believe that the price of oil will recover and that China will continue its rise. They are mistaken. Instead of worrying about the rise of China, we need to fear its fall; and while oil prices may oscillate over the next four or five years, the fossil-fuel industry is headed the way of the dinosaur. The global balance of power will shift as a result.
LED light bulbs, improved heating and cooling systems, and software systems in automobiles have gradually been increasing fuel efficiency over the past decades. But the big shock to the energy industry came with fracking, a new set of techniques and technologies for extracting more hydrocarbons from the ground. Though there are concerns about environmental damage, these increased the outputs of oil and gas, caused the usurpation of old-line coal-fired power plants, and dramatically reduced America’s dependence on foreign oil.
The next shock will come from clean energy. Solar and wind are now advancing on exponential curves. Every two years, for example, solar installation rates are doubling, and photovoltaic-module costs are falling by about 20 percent. Even without the subsidies that governments are phasing out, present costs of solar installations will, by 2022, halve, reducing returns on investments in homes, nationwide, to less than four years. By 2030, solar power will be able to provide 100 percent of today’s energy needs; by 2035, it will seem almost free — just as cell-phone calls are today.
This seems hard to believe, given that solar production provides less than one percent of the Earth’s energy needs today. But this is how exponential technologies advance. They double in performance every year or two and their prices fall. Given that California already generates more than 5 percent of its electricity from utility-scale solar, it is not hard to fathom what the impact of another few doublings would be: the imminent extinction of the fossil-fuel industry. Exponential technologies are deceptive because they move very slowly at first, but one percent becomes two percent, which becomes four, eight, and sixteen; you get the idea. As futurist Ray Kurzweil says, when an exponential technology is at one percent, you are halfway to 100 percent, and that is where solar and wind energies are now.
Anyone tracking the exponential growth of fracking and the gradual advances that were being made in conservation and fuel efficiency should have been able to predict, years ago, that by 2015, the price of oil would drop dramatically. It wasn’t surprising that relatively small changes in supply and demand caused massive disruptions to global oil prices; that is how markets work.They cause commodities futures and stock prices to fall dramatically when slowdowns occur. This is what is happening to China’s markets also. The growth of China’s largest industry, manufacturing, has stalled, causing ripple effects throughout China’s economy.
For decades, manufacturing was flooding into China from the U.S. and Europe and fueling its growth. And then a combination of rising labor and shipping costs and automation began to change the economics of China manufacturing. Now, robots are about to tip the balance further.
Foxconn had announced in August 2011 that it would replace one million workers with robots. This didn’t occur, because the robots then couldn’t work alongside human workers to do sophisticated circuit board assembly. But a newer generation of robots such as ABB’s Yumi and Rethink Robotics’ Sawyer can do that. They are dextrous enough to thread a needle and cost as much as a car does.
China is aware of the advances in robotics and plans to take the lead in replacing humans with robots. Guangdong province is constructing the world’s first “zero-labor factor,” with 1,000 robots which do the jobs of 2,000 humans. It sees this as a solution to increasing labor costs.
The problem for China is that its robots are no more productive than their counterparts in the West are. They all work 24×7 without complaining or joining labor unions. They cost the same and consume the same amount of energy. Given the long shipping times and high transportation costs it no longer makes sense to send raw materials across the oceans to China to have them assembled into finished goods and shipped to the West. Manufacturing can once again become a local industry.
It will take many years for Western companies to learn the intricacies of robotic manufacturing, build automated factories, train workers, and deal with the logistical challenges of supply chains being in China. But these are surmountable problems. What is now a trickle of manufacturing returning to the West will, within five to seven years, become a flood.
After this, another technology revolution will begin: digital manufacturing.
In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material to obtain the shape desired. In digital manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on 3D models — adding materials rather than subtracting them. The “3D printers” that produce these use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials — much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. 3D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. But these are slow, messy, and cumbersome — much like the first generations of inkjet printers were. This will change.
In the early 2020s we will have elegant low-priced printers for our homes that can print toys and household goods. Businesses will use 3D printers to do small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. Late in the next decade, we will be 3D-printing buildings and electronics. These will eventually be as fast as today’s laser printers are. And don’t be surprised if by 2030, the industrial robots go on strike, waving placards saying “stop the 3D printers: they are taking our jobs away.”
The geopolitical implications of these changes are exciting and worrisome. America will reinvent itself just as does every 30-40 years; it is, after all, leading the technology boom. And as we are already witnessing, Russia and China will stir up regional unrest to distract their restive populations; oil producers such as Venezuela will go bankrupt; the Middle East will become a cauldron of instability. Countries that have invested in educating their populations, built strong consumer economies, and have democratic institutions that can deal with social change will benefit — because their people will have had their basic needs met and can figure out how to take advantage of the advances in technology.

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 18The child bravery award winners are keen to serve the nation and want to achieve their aim through a career in defence and police services.Dishant Mehndiratta wants to join the Navy. Fascinated by the sea, he thoroughly enjoyed a recent visit with his family to Mumbai and Goa. His quick thinking and lightening fast action helped overcome a sticky situation when a robber threatened his mother at their Panchkula home. He was already bleeding from the cut on his face, but the urge to save his mother drove young Dishant to fall at the robber’s feet, pull his leg and snatch his knife. He then overpowered the assailant with his mother’s help and raised an alarm. Neighbours came to their aid and the robber was arrested.“The man had put a knife at my mother’s throat and wanted to rob us. All I was thinking was how to snatch his knife and save my mother,” said Dishant as he explained how he pretended to seek mercy at the assailant’s feet in order to grab the weapon from him.Twelve-year-old Dishant was at home with his mother and younger brother when a man came to their Panchkula home on April 4, 2015, and said he wanted to meet his father. It was only when the assailant took out a knife that the three realised that they had let an armed robber into the house.As 10-year-old Joena Chakraborty chased the man who had snatched her father’s mobile phone in Delhi, she was only thinking that something wrong had been done. She started chasing the man across a busy Delhi street after her father shouted that his cellphone was missing.“I knew he would head for a narrow alley, so I reached there before him and caught his legs even though people were shouting that he had a knife,” Joena said during a function organised by the Indian Council for Child Welfare for Bravery Award winners.Joena also has suggestions ready for Prime Minister Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. “There should be a Swachh Bharat army of people empowered to collect fines from litterbugs. People who litter must be fined. Repeat offenders should be fined double. Photos of offenders should be publicised to shame them,” said Joena who wants to join the police when she grows up.Sixteen-year-old Arjun Singh will receive the Sanjay Chopra Award this year for saving his mother from a tiger which entered their home in Malgaon village of Tehri Garhwal in Uttarakhand. Arjun’s mother was feeding cattle when the tiger approached their home on July 16, 2014. She screamed and then fell unconscious. Arjun rushed out of his house and picked up a sickle. However, realising that using the sickle would take him too close to the large feline, he quickly picked up a stick and waved it at the tiger. By this time, neighbours came to the house and the tiger fled. Arjun is keen on a career in the Army.

Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 13Lt Gen JFR Jacob (retd) died in the National Capital on Wednesday. He was 93. Jacob was the Chief of Staff of the Eastern Army Command during the 1971 war with Pakistan.Lt Gen JS Aurora was heading the command at Kolkata when the Indian Army and Air Force liberated Bangladesh, which was then known as East Pakistan.Jacob was the Governor of Punjab and administrator of Chandigarh between November 1999 and November 2003. Jacob, a bachelor, was living in Delhi’s RK Puram.  He died after a brief illness at the Army’s Research and Referral Hospital.

Lt Gen JFR Jacob & I interacted often. Had a memorable interaction when he presented his autobiography to me. pic.twitter.com/h32apAvBrm

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 13, 2016

He authored the book ‘Surrender at Dacca’ in which he explianed the surrender of 90,000 Pakistani troops.Jacob as the Administrator of Chandigarh brought in people-oriented changes. He was famous for dropping in unannounced at public offices to check their functioning.

Very sad news: General(Retd)JFRJacob, Indian War Hero,Proud Jew,Friend of Israel,has passed https://t.co/gBZWze6SxS pic.twitter.com/kz994hIFoX

— Daniel Carmon (@danielocarmon) January 13, 2016

Israel Ambassador in India Daniel Carmon also paid homage to General Jacob as a proud “Indian and a proud Jew”.
He said he was a living bridge between the people of India and Israel, adding that he was sorry for the loss.