Hunt for 1000 tonnes gold unearths rusted iron and glass bangles

NEW DELHI: Pieces of rusted iron and broken glass bangles are all that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Geological Survey of India (GSI) have so far found on the premises of Raja Rao Ram Baksh Singh’s fort in Unnao.

The agencies started the excavation work on October 18, around three months after seer Shobhan Sarkar told a Union minister that he had dreamt of a 1,000-tonne gold treasure buried on the fort premises at Daundia Khera, Unnao.

Fed up, the agencies have reportedly slowed down the exercise after they realised that they would find only some materials which are of archeological importance. The workers of the agencies took a holiday on Wednesday.

“The fort of Rao Ram Baksh Singh must not be more than two centuries old. Obviously, we don’t have a solid reason to dig the area, except that a seer who has a tremendous influence on some members of the Union government wants us to follow his instinct and continue the exercise till we find the treasure,” an ASI official told M AIL T ODAY . “ We have received some iron pieces and nails from the excavated area. We have also found some broken glass bangles. Further study would reveal the age of these materials,” he said.

Sarkar, however, stood by his claim that 1,000 tonnes of gold is buried in the fort ruins.

“I have told the Union government and the excavators that they would get the gold treasure only after digging 16 metres into the earth,” Sarkar was quoted as saying to his disciples at his Shobhan village ashram in Kanpur.

The excavators could dig up to 192 centimetres so far.

But the ASI officials didn’t appear to be excited. “ While the Centre has taken the seer’s words so seriously and is forcing the ASI to dig for the possible gold treasure, the agency accepted only 588 out of the 728 proposals it had received between 2007 and 2012. Both the ASI and the GSI have not acted on the remaining proposals,” said an ASI official pleading anonymity.

In fact, he has a solid reason to believe so.

At a time when the Central Advisory Board of Archaeology had not discussed this issue in its last meeting on September 30, Daundia Khera excavation was cleared by top officials immediately after Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing Charan Das Mahant wrote to it on October 1.

A team of the ASI and the GSI conducted a survey on the spot on October 3 and 4, and the ASI submitted a 10- page report on October 10, stating that there could be some metallic substances buried inside the fort premises.

The seer who dreamt of 1,000 tonnes of buried gold

Shobhan Sarkar is a mystery for his followers. They know little about him except that he has got many ponds and roads constructed in Kanpur, Fatehpur and Unnao from the money offered to him by his disciples.

The people of the state first came to know of him during the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party government between 2003 and 2007 when Sarkar announced that he would make an over-bridge on river Ganga to connect Unnao with Kanpur.

Barely 5’ 5” tall and in a 5-metre-long saffron loincloth, Sarkar told MAIL TODAY a few days ago that he doesn’t have any wealth in his name.

“I wear khadaun (wooden Shobhan Sarkar’s ashram in Doodhikagar, Fatehpur. Sandals and wrap myself with this cloth. I neither have land in my name nor do I have a bank account,” he said.

Those close to him said: “He was born in Shuklanpurva. He did his intermediate from Brahmawart College and then took sanyas.”

Originally posted on : http://in.news.yahoo.com/hunt-for-1000-tonnes-gold-unearths-rusted-iron-and-glass-bangles-054312096.html?vp=1

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Why Mallika Sherawat's The Bachelorette India is Making Us Gag!

So the much-publicised, overly-hyped The Bachelorette India - Mere Khayalon Ki Mallika premiered last night on Life OK. (You do remember Mallika Sherawat's seductive Happy Birthday to Narendra Modiji, and her recent interview on daddy issues, right?) Well, if you are reeling from those outrageous publicity stunts, you clearly didn't watch the first episode last night. Here's why Episode 1 of The Bachelorette India left us gagging.

By Smart Cookie | iDiva.com – 16 hours ago

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Why Mallika Sherawats The Bachelorette India is Making Us Gag

So the much-publicised, overly-hyped The Bachelorette India - Mere Khayalon Ki Mallika premiered last night on Life OK. (You do remember Mallika Sherawat's seductive Happy Birthday to Narendra Modiji, andher recent interview on daddy issues, right?) Well, if you are reeling from those outrageous publicity stunts, you clearly didn't watch the first episode last night. Here's why Episode 1 of The Bachelorette India left us gagging.

The show revolves around Mallika Sherawat. Need we say more? The incredibly fake jobless-starlet-turned-reality-TV-disaster, with her confused accent and outlandish statements makes for anything but reality TV! Nevertheless, if you need a few cheap laughs you'll probably find them in The Bachelorette India. 

The Bachelorette India contestants

The next thing that had us rolling our eyes was Mallika's suitors. They all have one thing in common. They are missing half a brain. How does one choose between mostly Punjabi men with lousy pick up lines, creepy hugs and bizarre gifts (read ghee, see-through dresses and even a goat!)?

The Bachelorette India show

 

And lastly... Get this. Mallika Sherawat believes that because women in India still don't have the right to choose their own marriage partner, The Bachelorette India will send out the message to one and all of women empowerment. Right! Because all women so badly want to pick from 30 weird-ass men making thorough fools of themselves in a garish, over-the-top setting in Udaipur, no?

Originally posted on http://in.lifestyle.yahoo.com/why-mallika-sherawats-bachelorette-india-making-us-gag-104323927.html

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Banks to offer cheap loans for bikes, fridges

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian banks will offer cheaper loans to stimulate demand for two-wheelers and other consumer durables as Finance Minister P. Chidambaram tries to pull the economy out of the worst slowdown in a decade ahead of national elections due by next May.
Banks will get additional capital to carry out the plan, the finance ministry said in a statement on Wednesday after a meeting between Chidambaram and new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) chief Raghuram Rajan.

The move comes at a time when persistently high inflation coupled with shrinking employment opportunities in a slowing economy have crimped consumer demand.
Growth in consumer spending slowed down to 1.6 percent year-on-year in the quarter through June from 4.3 percent a year earlier, dragging down economic growth for the quarter to a near four year low of 4.4 percent.
"While this will bring relief to consumers, especially the middle class, it is also expected to give a boost to capacity addition, employment and production," the ministry said in a statement.
Unlike China, India is largely a domestic demand-driven economy. Robust consumer demand helped shield the economy from the worst of the global financial crisis in 2008.
The move is expected to boost the production of consumer durables items such as two-wheelers, refrigerators, washing machines and televisions, which has been hit by high interest rates and inflation. The sector has failed to register growth since last November.
"It is a short-term measure and can help to boost demand for the consumer durables and auto sector," said N.R. Bhanumurthy, an economist at National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIP), a Delhi-based think tank.

India's worsening economic slowdown is a major worry for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government as it seeks a third straight term in upcoming national elections.
Economic growth virtually halved in two years to 5 percent in the fiscal year that ended in this March - the lowest level in a decade - and some economists expect growth in 2013/14 to hit the lowest level since 1991/92.
That is nowhere near good enough for a country with India's demographics. It has a population of 1.2 billion and a per capita income of around $1,000.
Singh's government estimates the economy needs to be averaging 8 percent growth to generate jobs for the increasing numbers of youth joining the workforce.
The downturn has hurt the reputation of Singh, who was once hailed for unleashing the unprecedented economic boom of the past two decades. It has also allowed Narendra Modi-led opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to gain momentum ahead of national elections.
(Writing by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

 Originally Posted on http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/banks-offer-cheaper-loans-stimulate-103035646.html

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Workers and employers face off at U.S. Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Workplace disputes pepper the docket of cases the U.S. Supreme Court will take up during a nine-month term starting on Monday, with the justices having delivered a string of victories to businesses and employers in their last term.

Organized labor will feature in two of the cases. In one, an employee seeks to limit the power of public-sector unions to collect dues. In the other, an employee aims to limit the ability of private-sector unions to sign up members.

It would constitute a significant blow to the labor movement were the court, split 5-4 between Republican and Democratic presidential appointees, to rule against the unions in both cases, legal experts say.

During the term that begins October 7 and ends in June, the nine-member court, led by Republican-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts, also will consider President Barack Obama's "recess appointments" to the National Labor Relations Board and take up the issue of whether workers at a steel plant should get paid for the time it takes to change into safety gear.

Despite the current federal government shutdown, the court is scheduled to function normally until at least October 11, the court said on Thursday.

Among the 47 cases the court has already agreed to hear, 28 involve or affect business interests, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the main group representing corporate America before the court.

The court can be expected to accept about 70 cases per term.

In the last term, which ended in June, the Chamber received a favorable outcome in 14 of the 18 cases in which it filed friend-of-the-court briefs, prompting progressive legal groups to renew complaints that the court has become too pro-business.

It's a statistic that concerns Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in the country.

"The Supreme Court we have is the best friend that corporate America has ever had," he told Reuters in an August interview.

It's a categorization that both the Chamber and lawyers who represent businesses dispute.

"There are areas of the law in which business interests prevail, but it isn't because of any systematic pro-business bias," said Kannon Shanmugam, a lawyer with the Williams & Connolly law firm.

Shanmugam warned against concluding the court has a growing interest in labor issues because, he noted, they all deal with quite separate legal questions.

UNION CASES

Taken together, the two organized labor cases raise significant questions about union power, Harvard University Law School Professor Benjamin Sachs said.

"These are not cases about arcane rules of organizing, rules like where on an employer's property can a union talk to employees," he said. "These are cases that go to the heart of the legal regimes that are necessary to enable unionization."

In one of the union cases, Harris v. Quinn, Pamela Harris, a home-based healthcare worker, sued Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn over a state statute that requires public-sector employees to pay the portion of union dues that do not go to political activities.

Illinois, like many states, considers such workers state employees because their payments are administered by the state and covered by Medicaid, the federal health program for lower-income people that is administered by the states.

Attorneys say the questions presented in the case are nearly identical to those in the 1977 Supreme Court case that set that standard, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. The justices hinted in 2012 in the last union case the court heard, Knox v. SEIU, that they may be willing to reconsider whether the compelled payment of union dues infringes on free speech.

"Knox put into serious question whether Abood is still good law," said Marquette University law professor Paul Secunda. "Harris might be the vehicle for overruling Abood, making it more difficult for public unions to raise dues."

The second union case, Unite Here Local 355 v. Mulhall, questions whether agreements between unions and private-sector employers that set conditions for unionizing a workplace violate the anti-corruption provisions in federal labor laws.

It is illegal for an employer to provide "things of value" to a union. The case contends that some of the terms in these now ubiquitous agreements are essentially bribes.

If the court agrees, employers and unions that enter into agreements with such terms would be committing felonies, legal experts say.

The two union cases have reached the court in large part due to the efforts of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which represents workers that don't want to be unionized in both cases.

One of its lawyers, William Messenger, said victory in both cases would be "very significant" for his organization's mission. "Everyone should be able to decide individually who they associate with," he added.

RENEWED FOCUS?

The National Labor Relations Board case hinges on a broad issue concerning the president's power to make so-called "recess appointments" when the U.S. Senate, which would normally have to approve them, is not in session. The case will have a direct impact on companies involved in disputes with employees because if the court rules for the challenger, Noel Canning Corp, it would knock out hundreds of labor relations board decisions dating back to January 2012 and require them to be reconsidered.

The steel plant case has much smaller ramifications, focusing as it does on the meaning of the phrase "changing clothes" under the Fair Labor Standards Act. A group of 800 current and former hourly workers at the U.S. Steel Corp plant in Gary, Indiana, say they should be compensated for changing clothes because it is a key part of their job.

Looking at all four cases, Shanmugam warned against drawing too many conclusions on whether the court has a new interest in labor issues because, he noted, they all deal with quite separate legal questions.

"It would be hard to say these cases reflect a renewed focus on employee-employer relations," he said.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Amanda Becker; Editing by Howard Goller and Ken Wills)

Originally Posted on http://in.news.yahoo.com/preview-workers-employers-face-off-u-supreme-court-053317794.html

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Steve Jobs' Final Vision Is Coming True Thanks (In Part) To Bill Gates And Google

Last week more than a dozen companies had IPOs and among them was an interesting bio-tech company called Foundation Medicine.

Foundation offers to the public the kind of in-detailed genetic cancer testing made famous by Steve Jobs. Jobs was the first well-known person to try this sort of thing.

For about $6,000, this test uncovers all the genetic mutations that lead to a person’s tumor. It's helping to usher in a new era of "personalized medicine" where doctors choose cancer treatments based on genetic knowledge.

Jobs spent some $100,000 to have this kind of test done, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography, and in the end, it obviously didn't save him.

But he believed deeply in the value of the attempt, saying “I’m either going to be one of the first to be able to outrun a cancer like this, or I’m going to be one of the last to die from it,” reports Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review.

After Jobs died, the doctors who reportedly worked on the test at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvardstarted Foundation, Regalado reports. Bill Gates and Larry Page both visited Jobs shortly before his death, according to Isaacson,  and while they could do nothing to help him, they did help fund Foundation.

Bill Gates was part of the company's initial $13.5 million round and still owns 4%, according to documents filed with the SEC.

Google Ventures, the venture capital arm of Google, was part of a long list of VCs that later kicked in cash, and still owns 9%. In fact, foundation raised a whopping $251 million from investors in two years.

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With its IPO last week, Foundation raised another $106 million and investors have already done well. Its shares opened at $18, above its range of $14 to $16, and the stock has nearly doubled, to above $35.

Lalu Prasad convicted in fodder scam case, disqualified as MP

Ranchi: A special CBI court in Ranchi has convicted RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, along with 44 others, in the Rs. 37.70 crore fodder scam case. Lalu has also been disqualified as a Lok Sabha member.

The quantum of punishment to Lalu, and the other 44 convicts, will be decided on October 3. Lalu is likely to face three to seven years in jail.

The court has found Lalu Yadav guilty in just one of the cases against him – that of criminal conspiracy, corruption and cheating. Judgement on the other five cases is awaited.

The verdict is crucial for Lalu Prasad and his future as a political leader since the central government ordinance that would have shielded tainted and convicted parliamentarians and legislators from disqualification has been put under scanner and is likely to be withdrawn.

There were a total of 56 accused in the case. But during the trial, seven accused died, two turned approver, one admitted to the crime and one was discharged.

Judge P.K. Singh had fixed July 15 as the date of verdict, and asked the remaining 45 accused to be present in the court.

Lalu Prasad moved the Jharkhand High Court and later the Supreme Court, seeking change of the judge in the case. Both the courts dismissed his petition, and directed him to complete argument in the case before the CBI court.

Lalu Prasad quit the chief minister's post in 1997 when his name figured in the CBI investigations in the scam, which surfaced in 1996.

Around 54 of the 61 cases were transferred to Jharkhand, after it was created as a separate state from Bihar in November 2000. Different CBI courts have passed judgments in more than 43 cases. Lalu Prasad and Jagannath Mishra are accused in five cases.

Yadav moved the Jharkhand High Court and later the Supreme Court, seeking change of the judge in the case. Both the courts dismissed his petition, and directed him to complete argument in the case before the CBI court.

CBI’s allegations:

Lalu and former MLA and chairman of the public accounts committee (PAC) Jagdish Sharma with a view to protect and patronize the scamsters worked in tandem to get enquirers scuttled and stalled whenever such issues were raised.

Lalu was instrumental in promoting and extending service to scam kingpins and AHD officials, Late Dr Ram Raj Ram and Late Dr SB Sinha.

Huge withdrawal was made in 1994-95. Against the budgetary allocation of Rs. 74 crore for AHD, about Rs. 245 crore was withdrawn.

Lalu has close associations with accused suppliers DN Kashyap, Mohammad Sayeed among others.

Being the CM, Lalu never initiated any action to find out the cause of such alarming excess withdrawals from AHD and thus actively connived with -- finance minister, Chandra Prasad Verma; Vidya Sagar Nishad, Late Bhola Ram Toofani, cabinet ministers of AHD; Beck Julius, Mahesh Prasad, K Arumugam, Phool Chand Singh, AHD Secretaries -- to facilitate the fraud.

20% of the billed amount goes to suppliers and 80% goes to AHD officials, government officials, ministers, CM and other politicians.

Lalu's contentions:

"I have been targeted."

"None of the prosecution witnesses (350) ever mentioned my involvement in their testimony."

Persons who were accused in original FIR were made witnesses after filing of chargesheet.

Supplier Deepesh Chandak who lapped about Rs. 300 crore out of the total Rs. 550 crore scam money, was made prime witness by CBI.

CBI made the wrongdoers the approvers (witnesses), while making whistleblower (Lalu) accused.

Originally Posted on  http://in.news.yahoo.com/lalu-prasad-convicted-in-fodder-scam-case--disqualified-as-mp-055006158.html

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My Days at Kovalam

My Days at Kovalam