Four engineering students injured during ragging in Mathura

MATHURA: Four students were seriously injured when an altercation broke out between them and their seniors at an engineering college over an alleged ragging incident here in the district, police said.

On Thursday night, some senior students of BSA Engineering college here tried to rag their juniors. Following which an altercation broke out which soon turned violent injuring four junior students.

The college warden reached the spot on time and the situation was brought under control, college registrar Bhagwan Das said.

Six senior students have been expelled from the hostel, he said.

The college discipline committee will take appropriate action in the incident, he said.

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Kenya: Biometric Voter Registration Kit Cancer Rumour, Scares Voters

Rumours that the BVR kits can cause cancer have scared Mwakirunge slum dwellers from registering as voters, IEBC chairman Isaack Hassan has said.

He told the residents to ignore the rumours saying those spreading it want to sabotage the voters registration in the region.

Residents said the rumour, which surfaced soon after the start of the registration, has caused panic and fear.

“A rumor went round and most of them have refused to heed to the calls to register as voters. They say the machine sucks blood form their fingers and it can cause cancer,” said Rose Kazungu, a residents.

Kazungu blamed the low turnout on lack of proper civic education by the IEBC.

“IEBC really failed on this. In slum areas, people are very sensitive and are proactive to such rumors when they occur,” Kazungu added.

Kazungu added that similar problem emerged in the same area when ministry of health started distributing free nets to the residents. She said resident burnt the nets in the pretext that the nets had demons that disturbed them overnight.

According to Genesis for Human Rights lobby group programs officer Caleb Ng’wena, registration rate as at Monday, stood at 3 people per day since registration started.

Coast provincial director f medical services Dr. Maurice Siminyu allayed such fears saying that BVR kits could cause cancer.

“That rumor is not true. BVR kits are only used to penetrate and analyze human tissues just like x-ray machines to pick uniqueness of individuals,” said Siminyu on phone.

Siminyu said that the possibility of BVR kits causing cancer was negligible since the machine is only used once unlike the x-ray machine that is used regularly on the human body.

“There is no way BVR could cause cancer and people should come out to register,” said Siminyu.

South West Coast IEBC Regional coordinator Amina Soud also added that, the kits do no transmit any non communicable disease including cancer.

Amina said, “Our chairman Issack Hassan outlined clearly that the machines are human health friendly. Let them know that such machines can’t be procured without understanding all health implications. That is wrong and I urge people to register.”

Muslim for human rights lobby group officials also said that adequate civic education was needed in informal settlement to sensitize potential voters to participate the process.

“Thorough civic education will be very much important. IEBC should also carry along health experts to demystify the issue of BVR causing cancer,” said Muhuri, rapid response officer Francis Auma.

This comes at the backdrop of hick ups that continue to mar the ongoing voter registration countrywide with low turnout in some parts with the BVR kits failing to function.

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Nick Fouriezos: Script on Murray to Be Determined by Championship Play

When No. 2 Alabama and No. 3 Georgia take the field for the SEC Championship game Saturday, the noise will be deafening. But the uproar has already begun, with a swarm of coverage that has transformed a conference championship into a playoff for the national title.

Forget the reemergence of Notre Dame as one of the nation’s elite programs, something that would normally dominate the college football landscape. For this week anyway, all eyes will be turned on the Georgia Dome, and rightly so — the winner will be riding a streak of six consecutive national championships for the conference. The victor will probably be the favorite in the national title, despite the Fighting Irish’s vaunted defense and unblemished 12-0 record.

If Georgia is that team, it will be due to a number of factors: the coaching of Mark Richt, the play of the defense led by All-American Jarvis Jones and the efforts of two freshmen running backs who have fans screaming, “Gurshall.” But amidst the myriad of storylines for Georgia’s season, the play of Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray exceeds them all.

The junior’s story is well-known by now. His career has been marked by brilliant statistics, then discredited by inopportune losses. Murray has already shattered the school record books, and has now moved on to the conference marks. He leads the nation in passer efficiency and holds school records for single-season touchdowns (35) and overall touchdowns (89).

But Murray has also been plagued by a 3-9 record against ranked opponents and the unshakeable notion that he can’t win the proverbial “big game.” Those first two victories over ranked opponents came against No. 24 Auburn and No. 25 Georgia Tech last season, and the third came in a 17-9 victory over No. 2 Florida earlier this year. But though Murray passed for the game-winning touchdown against the Gators, he also threw three interceptions and completed only 50 percent of his passes.

Murray will be the second Georgia quarterback to play in back-to-back SEC titles, after David Greene accomplished the same feat from 2002-2003. If he can win one, he would join rare company for Georgia, which has won two SEC Championship games, in 2002 and 2005. If he wins the national title, his victories would finally match his statistics in declaring him the best quarterback in Georgia history.

His work can easily be erased though — a loss would cause a freefall for Georgia’s ranking and its bowl hopes. Murray, even with an inspiring performance, would go down as the quarterback who couldn’t win.

Murray asked for permission to be excused from media interviews this week. There was nothing controversial about doing so, though it was surprising, since he had never refused weekly interviews in his three years as a starter. But the message was clear: no distractions. The given reason was that he wanted to have as much time to prepare against Alabama.

With the amount of noise surrounding this game, it’s no wonder. The weight of storylines yet to be written has to be crushing, when Murray’s history could go from one extreme to the next. With one result, he would be dubbed a champion; with the other, a disappointment.

And, in a sport which deifies the starting quarterback’s ability to influence games, only the scoreboard will close the book on Murray’s legacy.

———–

Gurley crucial to Georgia’s success against Alabama

Todd Gurley has been the revelation that the Bulldogs sorely needed at the tailback position this season.

But if they are to go where they hope, Gurley will need to be a playmaker against No. 2 Alabama in the SEC Championship game Saturday.

It’s the natural progression for a running back that burst into the scene in No. 3 Georgia’s first game of the season, rushing for two touchdowns and scoring a 100-yard kickoff return to boot. Reach the SEC Championship game? That was expected. But now the hard part — winning — will be dependent on whether Georgia’s most prominent addition can make a difference.

Gurley runs like a much smaller man, boasting top-level track speed despite being taller than most running backs. He has runs of 55, 51 and 49 yards on the season, bolstering his reputation as a break-away threat. But it will be his size — all 6-foot-1, 218 pounds of it –which will prove crucial for No. 3 Georgia’s chances of upturning Alabama as the top team in the conference.

It’s not that Gurley will need to break a big run. Alabama simply won’t allow that, with the defense holding conference opponents to 2.4 rushing yards per carry, on average. In fact, the Crimson Tide hasn’t allowed a rush longer than 32 yards all season.

But Gurley, who leads conference running backs with 1,138 yards and 14 touchdowns, can make this game competitive for Georgia simply with his yards after contact. The Alabama defense, which often dominates the line of scrimmage, will hit Gurley early and often. But if he can manage to squeeze through a few yards after the hit, the line will soften.

The Georgia offense will be placed in more favorable second and third down situations. The Bulldogs could maintain the semblance of balance required to get receivers open downfield and quarterback Aaron Murray, who leads the nation in passing efficiency, would receive the extra time required to complete those passes.

This isn’t news for the Georgia offense — offensive coordinator Mike Bobo maintains a strict balance in order to strike this very chord. The blueprint to winning against Alabama has already been given to Georgia in the form of its earlier matchup against then-No. 2 Florida, a 17-9 victory that came partly as a result of the Bulldogs’ suffocating defense.

But the overlooked performance of Todd Gurley in that game could be the difference against the Crimson Tide. Gurley ran for 118 yards on 27 carries against the Gators, with most of the yards mirroring the grind-it-out variety, rather than the bigger gains he has been known for.

His longest run was for 23 yards, but it was Gurley’s ability to add extra yards that allowed Georgia to gain 14 first downs, despite only going 1-for-10 on third downs and having three turnovers.

If Gurley can reproduce that type of performance, the Bulldogs may have a chance to win a conference championship. And the freshman running back so readily compared to Georgia legend Herschel Walker would be poised to bring the Bulldogs a championship of his own.

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FitSugar Picks: Our Editors' Holiday Wish List

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Posted on December 1, 2012 4:49AM by Susi May ·

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday under our belts — and gifts bought for all the loved ones on our lists — we’ve started thinking about a few of the gifts we’d like for . . . ourselves! From kitchen gadgets that inspire us to cook to big-ticket getaways, see what items our editors have on their wish lists this holiday season.

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Online Retailers Rush to Adjust Prices in Real Time

The day before Thanksgiving, Amazon was offering a discounted price of $ 49.96 on a popular Xbox game, the same price as Walmart and 3 cents lower than Target.

Then the holiday pricing shuffle began.

Amazon dropped its price on the game, Dance Central 3, to $ 24.99 on Thanksgiving Day, matching Best Buy’s “doorbuster” special, and went to $ 15 once Walmart stores offered the game at that lower price. Amazon then brought the price up, down, down again, up and up again — in all, seven price changes in seven days.

The unluckiest buyer paid more than triple the price that the luckiest buyer paid.

Retail price wars online have entered a new era of speed and precision, creating a confusing landscape for shoppers in which prices leap and plummet on short notice. In the old days, merchants sent employees into competitors’ stores to check on pricing, and days later “sale” signs reflected new markdowns. Now, sophisticated computer programs accomplish the same goal online within hours, and even minutes.

The battle was fierce over the holiday weekend. At the request of The New York Times, the pricing firm Dynamite Data tracked prices at three major online retailers — Walmart.com, Amazon.com and Target.com — starting the week before Thanksgiving and going through Tuesday, after most heavy promotions ended.

The data shows that retailers paid close attention to competitors’ online prices and in-store specials, battling to undercut one another by as little as 2 cents and forcing each other into out-of-stock positions as they pushed prices down. Retailers fight to have the lowest prices to increase sales volume, aid in search-result prominence and help burnish a thrifty reputation.

“There was definitely some gamesmanship going on,” said Diana Schulz, chief executive of Dynamite Data, which tracks online retail pricing, stock status, ratings and other information for clients like Samsung and Abt Electronics.

While Amazon has long tinkered with prices, its competitors are now fighting back. In the last year, Walmart invested heavily in pricing tools, a Walmart eCommerce spokesman, Dan Toporek, said. Dynamite Data said there had been a marked increase in how much Walmart played with prices, and smaller retailers, including GameStop, Best Buy and Toys “R” Us, were now also adjusting some prices at least daily.

The goal is to attract shoppers with competitively priced products that show up on Web searches, but there is risk, too: some consumers tire of price whiplash.

“People are starting to realize, ‘I can’t trust the price I’m getting, because it might change,’ ” a pricing consultant, Rafi Mohammed, said. Shoppers have few ways to gain an advantage — ordering the same product at different prices requires expensive return shipments — but Mr. Mohammed said retailers had an opportunity to soothe consumers by offering refunds for price adjustments.

The parrying could be seen with a Nintendo game, Mario Kart DS.

A week before Thanksgiving, the retailers’ prices varied, with Amazon selling it at $ 29.17, Walmart at $ 40.88, and Target at $ 33.99, according to Dynamite Data. Through Thanksgiving, as Target kept the price stable, Walmart changed prices six times, and Amazon five. On Thanksgiving itself, Walmart marked down the price to its advertised $ 29.96, which Amazon matched.

Ms. Schulz said sophisticated retailers set algorithms to change prices in response to competitors. “Retailers pipe a bunch of information in electronically, like internal information — cost, availability of inventory, sales goals,” along with competitors’ prices, she said.

The software also lets retailers establish rules on the pricing of certain products: always price Furbys 5 percent below Kmart, for example, or make sure some goods are priced at an average of Amazon’s and Walmart’s prices. Generally, pricing managers also manually adjust prices.

Mr. Toporek said Walmart.com used a combination of computer tools and human adjustments. On popular items, like Walmart’s best sellers, the site tries to “maintain low prices on the items people want the most,” meaning it usually responds to competitors’ price changes.

Mr. Toporek said, however, that the site also tried not to jostle shoppers.

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I K Gujral cremated with full state honours

Former Prime Minister I K Gujral was today cremated here with full state honours in the presence of the country’s top leadership, including President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Amid prayers and a 21-gun salute, his body was consigned to flames at Smriti Sthal on the banks of Yamuna where Vice President Hamid Ansari and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi were also present.

The last rites were performed by his two sons, including Akali Dal MP Naresh Gujral, and his grandson at Smriti Sthal, located between Jawaharlal Nehru’s memorial ‘Shanti Van’ and Lal Bahadur Shastri’s ‘Vijay Ghat’.

Defence Minister A K Antony, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, Law Minister Ashwani Kumar, Farooq Abdullah, Jaipal Reddy, BJP leaders L K Advani and Arun Jaitley, Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala, LJP’s Ramvilas Paswan, JD-S’ Danish Ali, Amar Singh and some senior bureaucrats attended the cremation.

Diplomats from various countries were also present.

The president, Vice President, Prime Minister, Gandhi, Antony, Shinde, Badal, Advani, Jitendra Singh (Mos) and others laid wreaths on the body.

The body, draped in tricolour, was brought to Smriti Sthal from his 5-Janpath residence in a flower bedecked gun-carriage accompanied by military personnel and close family.

Officers from the three armed forces carried on their shoulders the mortal remains of Gujral to the cremation ground as he was accorded a state funeral.

Gujral (92), who led a rickety coalition in late 1990s and was known for ‘Gujral Doctrine’ of five principles for maintaining good neighbourly relations, breathed his last at a private hospital in nearby Gurgaon yesterday afternoon.

… contd.

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North Korea Is Preparing to Launch Another Long-Range Rocket

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Saturday that it would try to launch another long-range rocket later this month, as the country prepared to commemorate the death a year ago of longtime ruler Kim Jong-il and as his son, Kim Jong-un, struggles to bolster his credentials as a leader.

The launching, which North Korea said would take place between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22, is likely to prompt international condemnations and heighten already strained tensions with Washington and its allies. Critics consider North Korea’s launching of a Unha-3 rocket as a cover for testing technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In a previous effort in April, a rocket blasted off from the launch site on the west coast near China only to disintegrate shortly afterward, failing in its goal of putting an earth-observation satellite into orbit.

Saturday’s announcement came at a sensitive time in the region. South Korea is gearing up for a presidential election on Dec. 19, and Japan plans lower house elections on Dec. 16. In Washington, President Obama will begin his second term in January.

“For Kim Jong-un, a successful rocket launching may be the best he can think of to show his achievements in his first year in power,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul and a visiting scholar in international studies at Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Kim took over after the death of his father on Dec. 17, 2011.

April’s launch led to the collapse of a deal under which Washington promised to ship humanitarian aid to North Korea in return for North Korea’s promise to suspend nuclear and missile tests, as well as uranium enrichment, and allow United Nations monitors back into its main nuclear complex.

The official Korean Central News Agency quoted an unidentified spokesman for the Korean Committee for Space Technology as saying that North Korea had “analyzed the mistakes” made in the failed April attempt and had improved the precision and reliability of the rocket and satellite. The rocket is expected to take the same path as the abortive April launching, traveling between China and the Korean Peninsula. If successful, the spent second-stage booster will fall into the ocean off the Philippines. North Korean said on Saturday that it would conduct the launching “transparently” and according to “international practices.”

South Korea expressed “serious concern” about the North’s plan, calling it “a grave provocation” in defiance of international warnings and said it would trigger a “strong response” from the international community. “The North must realized that its repeated provocations have only deepened its isolation,” the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Since 1998, North Korea has launched several long-range rockets, which the United States and South Korean officials say have all exploded in midair or failed in their goal of putting satellites into orbit. North Korea, however, has insisted that two satellites were circling the earth, broadcasting songs praising the Kim dynasty.

North Korea has often used nuclear and missile threats during changes of power within the region as a way to try and force the new governments to engage in talks and possibly offer concessions. North Korea has also been accused of using military provocations to influence elections in the South.

This time, the announcement about the launch “could very well have to do primarily with domestic political considerations, that Kim Jong-un wants a demonstrable a feat to boost his legitimacy, and his technicians have assured him they are ready,” said John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. “It doesn’t hurt that South Korea is in the middle of a string of aborted efforts at launching a satellite of their own — should Pyongyang succeed, it scores points in the ongoing inter-Korean rivalry, but also highlights what it sees as the hypocrisy of banning one Korea from doing what the other Korea does freely.”

South Korea has twice failed to launch a rocket with a satellite on board — in 2009 and again in 2010. Its third attempt has been delayed twice in the last two months because of technical glitches. North Korea has been citing South Korea’s space program to help justify its own rocket development.

Mr. Kim, the analyst, said it would be hard to predict how the planned rocket launching, whether successful or not, would affect the election in South Korea, which pits Park Geun-hye, the conservative candidate from the governing Sanuri Party, against Moon Jae-in, the liberal opposition candidate.

The North’s provocation may be a disadvantage for Ms. Park, who has never served in the military and is trying to become the first female president of South Korea, but at the same time could help rally conservative voters around the conservative party candidate. For his part, Mr. Moon could try to use the provocations to rally liberal voters who oppose the conservatives’ hard line and prefer a more aggressive engagement with North Korea as the best realistic means of taming its behaviors.

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