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Archives for 2018

DKS said that I’ve gifted iPhones to MPs

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In another wind to the line over iPhones being gifted to Parliamentarians, Minister for Medium and Major Irrigation and Medical Education D K Shivakumar, on July 17, asserted that the iPhones were his personal gift and the government had nothing to do with it.

DK Shivkumar clarified that “Gifting an iPhone was my personal decision. I have gifted these with pure intentions and there is no politics included. If this was a crime then punish me,”

BJP MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar’s tweet about the expensive gifts being offered out to the parliamentarians had stoked a controversy that Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy was trying to sway the opposition by doling out costly gifts. “Dear @CMofKarnataka @hd_kumaraswamy – Thank u 4 coming to all MPs tmrw to discuss Cauvery issue. But why is your govt sending expensive phones to MPs? You claim Austerity; pourkarmikas are being denied salaries, but pub money used 4 this kind of expensive gifts? (sic),” he had tweeted.

Case against TV channels telecasting false news

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The TV channels and web portals have made the news that “I have the relationship with Cycle Ravi and spoke to him over the phone several times. The CCB officials are likely to interrogate me shortly”.

“I don’t know who cycle Ravi is. But some electronic media and web portals have been tarnishing my image by telecasting false news that I have a relationship with him. I have decided to file a case against such media houses”, said former minister MB Patil.

When he was in a programme at Vijayapura, one of his friends called him and informed that some TV channels have been telecasting news that the former minister has a relationship with the rowdy sheeter. He was surprised to hear such news, he said.

“I am hearing the name of Cycle Ravi for the first time. I don’t know anything about his background and whereabouts. But the media have been saying that I have spoken to him over the phone and sent messages. I could not understand this. When I spoke to CCB Joint Commissioner Sathish Kumar and asked him about the news, he told me that ‘the phone number is mentioned in the channels is not the phone number of Cycle Ravi. The phone number belongs to Mandya Congress leader Sachchidananda. But he does not know why the TV channels are making such news’. Some media have made me as a culprit and telecast the news repeatedly. Being accountable to the people, the media should know the reality before telecasting or publishing any news. But these media have crossed their limitations which is regrettable”, the Congress leader said.

“Mandya Congress worker Sachchidananda is a supporter of my close friend and former minister Ambareesh. I know him for several years. This time, he wanted to contest from Srirangapatna constituency from the Congress. I have spoken to him several times. But his phone number was mistaken as the number of Cycle Ravi and telecast false news only to tarnish my image in public life. I would file a case against such TV channels and web portals in the court”, he said in a statement.

Captain service launched in Karnataka Express train

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The South Western Railway on Tuesday launched a Captain service in the Bengaluru-New Delhi Karnataka Express train to ensure comfortable journey to long-distance passengers, said an official.

“The senior-most train ticket examiner (TTE) will officiate as Captain of the train to look after passenger amenities and redress their grievances,” said Bengaluru Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) R.S. Saxena while launching the service.

As a single point-man for about 2,000 passengers, the Captain will attend to complaints on the cleanliness of coaches and toilets, water supply, functioning of fans, lights, charging points, air-conditioning and housekeeping.

“The Captain wears a red badge on his left hand to enable passengers to identify and approach him for help during their 42-hour-long journey. He will contact the staff concerned to address complaints onboard or at the next station,” said Saxena.

The zonal railway will have a Captain in 76 express trains originating daily from Bengaluru to various destinations across the country.

“TTEs will look after the reserved coaches, while the Captain will supervise their working and attend to passengers in person or on mobile whose number will be messaged to them,” said a statement from the divisional office.

Trains like Rajdhani Express, Duranto Express and Shatabdi Express, where train superintendents travel from end-to-end, will also have the senior-most nominated as Captain.

“We had introduced captains on a trial basis recently on Bengaluru-Kannur-Karwar express train and got favorable feedback on the service,” added Saxena.

As one of the busiest railway stations, the Bengaluru city station daily handles about 210 trains, including about 109 to long-distances.

Living a good, full and long life – the Japanese way

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The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life; Author: Hector Garcia & Francesc Miralles; Publisher: Hutchinson/Penguin Random House; Pages: 208; Price: Rs 499

A British businessman once recounted that while holidaying in Asia, he met a Japanese man in the swimming pool, and as soon they found they had common commercial interests, the latter took out a waterproof visiting card to give him. This may speak volumes about their business practices, but there are other lessons we can learn from the Japanese too.

Try to imagine the Japanese and what may come to mind is a polite but focussed and hard-working people that made their country a global economic power, but they also have an old and sophisticated culture and a way of life that sees the country having an exceptionally large number of centenarians — and fairly active ones at that.

Technological expertise and a strong work ethic may not be a sole Japanese trait, but their culture, some of whose enduring expressions are their magnificent gardens, their exquisite cuisine, the arts of bonsai, ikebana and origami, their tea rituals, Zen and concepts like “wabi-sabi”, make them worthy of study — and emulation.

But the most important would be their concept of ikigai, whose essence is expressed in the old Japanese proverb: “Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years.” And, as this book brings out, it is based on no esoteric secrets or any special regimen of diet or exercise, but living fully and contentedly.

The co-authors — Spanish-born Japanese citizen and author Garcia and bestselling author of lifestyle books and novels Miralles, who met up in a tiny bar during a rainy Tokyo night — say they were discussing the questions that start to worry people (meaning of life, whether the point is just to live longer or have a higher purpose and so on) when “the mysterious word ikigai came up”.

Ikigai, which “translates roughly as ‘the happiness of always being busy’, is like logotherapy (developed by psychologist and Nazi concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl) but goes a step beyond”, they say.

Take the residents of the country’s southern-most island of Okinawa, where there are 24.55 people over the age of 100 for every 100,000 inhabitants — far more than the global average. Along with climate, diet and activity, ikigai is cited as a reason why people of Okinawa live longer than people anywhere else in the world.

However, Garcia and Miralles, who researched ikigai with some heartening interactions with the island’s inhabitants, especially of a town there with the highest life expectancy in the world, also found that there is no single book dedicated to bringing this philosophy to the West, and resolved to remedy the deficiency.

And in this insightful book, they reveal how simple ikigai is to understand and follow.

Beginning with a Venn diagram that shows what it is: At the intersection of personal capability, predilection, profession and the world’s requirements, and how it benefits the residents of Okinawa as well as other Japanese, they explore the importance of both a sound body and mind — and how some stress helps.

They then trace how ikigai developed from Frankl’s logotherapy, predated by Japanese psychotherapist-cum-Zen Buddhist Shoma Morita’s purpose-centred therapy, but transcended both, and its correspondence with psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow” theory.

But Garcia and Miralles’ work is not only about comparing theories — which they do most accessibly with the help of some tables, charts and diagrams. They enliven the account with concrete, real-world examples, like of some Japanese craftsmen who exemplify the flow technique, including one who was Steve Jobs’ favourite.

They continue in this vein with some advice from the centenarians — from the world over, not only Japan — feature traditions and proverbs from Japan, the diet that fuels Okinawa’s ikigai, top it up with simple but highly beneficial eastern exercises spanning tai chi to yoga to qigong before coming back to how to achieve ikigai through its 10 rules — the longest of which is seven words.

All this may seem basic common sense, but in our present, complex world, this is not very common. Try it and see — it doesn’t require much and there is not much to lose for you.

Rajya Sabha nominees take oath

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Classical dancer Sonal Mansingh, sculptor Raghunath Mohapatra and author Rakesh Sinha on Wednesday took oath as the nominated members of Rajya Sabha.

Three-time MP Ram Shakal also took oath as a nominated member soon after the proceedings of the upper house begin.

They were nominated by President Ram Nath Kovind.

Key suspect in Kerala SFI leader’s murder nabbed

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After being on the run for more than two weeks, the prime suspect in the brutal murder of an SFI member in a Kerala college has finally been nabbed, police said on Wednesday.

Mohammed Ali was nabbed from the Kerala-Karnataka border, on Tuesday and was being interrogated, a police officer said here.

According to the police, Ali was involved in the stabbing of 19-year-old Abhimanyu, when the Students’ Federation of India and the Campus Front of India groups clashed late on July 2, over graffiti space on the walls of the Maharajas College here.

Both Abhimanyu and Ali, the Alappuzha district president of Campus Front of India and its unit secretary studied at Maharajas College.

Soon after the July 2 incident, Ali along with his parents had gone missing from their home in Alappuzha.

The police had earlier pointed out that there were 15 people who were directly involved in the murder and had arrested four. Another six who were arrested had helped the main culprits.

Trouble had started after both groups wanted to put up their wall graffitis ahead of the commencement of the new academic year. The scuffle led to one death while another student was injured.

Scientists discover new ‘Maghalayan age’ in Earth’s history

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Geologists have classified the last 4,200 years as being a distinct Earth age and are calling it a new chapter — the “Meghalayan Age” — the onset of which was marked by a mega-drought that crushed a number of civilisations worldwide.

They divide up the 4.6-billion-year Earth existence into slices of time. Each slice corresponding to significant happenings — such as the break-up of continents, dramatic shifts in climate, and even the emergence of particular types of animals and plant life.

The current age in which we live is called the Holocene Epoch, which reflects everything that has happened over the past 11,700 years — since a dramatic warming kicked us out of the last ice age, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

But the Holocene itself can be subdivided, according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS).

The ICS is the official keeper of geologic time and it proposed three stages be introduced to denote the epoch’s upper, middle and lower phases. These all record major climate events.

The Meghalayan, the youngest stage, runs from 4,200 years ago to 1950. It began with a destructive drought, whose effects lasted two centuries, and severely disrupted civilisations in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze River Valley, the BBC report added.

To win the classification, a slice of geological time generally has to reflect something whose effects were global in extent, and be associated with a rock or sediment type that is clear and unambiguous.

For the famous boundary 66 million years ago that marks the switch in period from the Cretaceous to Tertiary, this “golden spike” is represented by traces in sediments of the element iridium. This was spread across the planet in the debris scattered by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

For the Meghalayan, the spike is epitomised in specific chemical signatures, the finest example of which can be seen in the layers of stalagmites on the floors of caves in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya.

It was likely triggered by shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation, the ICS said.

The Meghalayan Age is unique among the many intervals of the geologic timescale. Its beginning coincides with a global cultural event produced by a global climatic event, said Stanley Finney, Professor at Long Beach State University and Secretary-General of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), which ratified the ICS proposal.

The middle phase of the Holocene will be referred to as the Northgrippian, and runs from 8,300 years ago up to the start of the Meghalayan. The onset for this age was an abrupt cooling, attributed to vast volumes of freshwater from melting glaciers in Canada running into the North Atlantic and disrupting ocean currents.

The oldest phase of the Holocene — the exit from the ice age — will be known as the Greenlandian.

The International Chronostratigraphic Chart, the famous diagram depicting the timeline for Earth’s history will be updated, the BBC reported.

Government ready to discuss any issue in house: Modi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday urged the political parties to utilize maximum time available in Parliament’s monsoon session and said the government is ready to debate on any issue in the house.

“Welcome everyone to the monsoon session of Parliament. Lots of issues have to be discussed. I expect all the political parties to cooperate and let the session function smoothly,” Modi told reporters in the Parliament complex.

“The government is ready for discussion on all issues,” he said.

He also urged all political parties to make the most use of time in monsoon session and asked them to set an example for the state assemblies.

US lawmakers ask tech giants to ban more offensive accounts

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US lawmakers have asked tech giants Facebook, Google and Twitter to draw clearer limits and flush out hyper-partisan pages from their platforms.

In a three-hour hearing on Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats told the social media platforms to make it clearer when they would ban accounts of repeat offenders, The Verge reported.

Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Global Head of Policy Management, told the lawmakers that Facebook has regularly been removing hyper-partisan pages.

The hearing was a follow-up to an April hearing about “social media censorship”.

Representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter said “their policies take neutral stances politically, and said it is in their best interest to host voices from across the ideological spectrum”.

According to the Washington Post, Facebook, Google and Twitter sought to defend themselves against accusations from Republican lawmakers who said the tech giants censor conservative news and views.

“Our success as a company depends on making Twitter a safe space for free expression,” replied Nick Pickles, a policy aide who testified on behalf of Twitter, to the lawmakers.

According to Juniper Downs, chief of policy issues at Google-owned YouTube, “We have a natural and long-term incentive to make sure our products work for users of all viewpoints”.

Democrats repeatedly questioned the point of the hearing, urging their Republican counterparts to turn their attention to more pressing issues.

“What a dumb hearing this entire hearing is,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).

Lawmakers also said they will revisit Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which offers social media platforms limited immunity for being sued over what their users post.

Guess who uses hatred, fear to maintain power: Rahul Gandhi

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A day after social activist Swami Agnivesh was attacked in Jharkhand by a group, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday attacked the government using a pop quiz that asked people to the name the “perpetrator of hatred and fear”.

“I bow to the most powerful in the line. A person’s strength and power are all that is important to me. I use hatred and fear to maintain the hierarchy of power.

“I seek out the weakest and crush them. I rank all living beings based on their usefulness to me. Who am I?” Gandhi said on twitter attaching the video of Agnivesh being attacked in Jharkhand’s Pakur.

The 78-year-old activist was assaulted by suspected Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists shouting “Jai Shri Ram” slogans.

The incident happened on Tuesday when the group pounced on Agnivesh as he stepped out of a hotel to get into a car to take part in the 195th Damin Mahotsav at Littpara.

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