Pak army Brigadier arrest (21-06-11)
Chidambaram presides over security meet in J&K (21-06-11)
SRINAGAR: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram chaired a high-level security meeting in Srinagar on Tuesday. He is to spend the night at the Pahalgam hill station in south Kashmir.
Chidambaram is holding a district level security meeting at Pahalgam where arrangements for this year's Amarnath Yatra would be reviewed besides other things.Pahalgam, situated 74 km south of summer capital Srinagar, is known for its dense pine forests, murmuring Lidder river which passes through the hills station, an amusement park and a recently laid golf course.Pahalgam is also the south Kashmir base camp for the Amarnath Yatra to the cave shrine in Pir Panjal range, which starts here June 29."The expected arrival time of the home minister in Pahalgam is around 3 p.m. and he would remain busy with meetings up to 5 p.m.""After a busy day, the home minister would spend some relaxing movements at Pahalgam," a source here told IANS.A heavy blanket of security has been thrown around the hill station with security forces manning the dense forest areas and mountains in and around the resort.A state protocol department owned hut has been done up for Chidambaram's night halt at Pahalgam."The maximum temperature in Pahalgam yesterday was 25.8 degrees Celsius as against 29.9 degrees in Srinagar," said an official of the local weather department here.The minimum in Pahalgam was 8.0 degrees as against 16.9 degrees in Srinagar."The sky would remain partly clouded in Pahalgam today with possibility of some rain there this evening," the official said.State Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand, senior officials of the union home ministry and the state government, paramilitary forces and the local police would also camp at Pahalgam with the home minister for the night.Jayalalithaa’s letter to Prime Minister on arrested Tamil fishermen (21-06-11)
Nokia unveils new smart phone; analysts not impressed (21-06-11)
Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop unveiled a new smart phone on Tuesday that uses software the firm plans to ditch, a move analysts said would do little to halt the Finnish firm's slide in market share for handsets.
Nokia, once the ubiquitous name in hand phones, has lost ground in the smart phone market to Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices, and in the low end of the market to Asian rivals such as ZTE and India's Micromax.
At a telecoms conference in Singapore, Elop reiterated that Nokia would launch its first smart phone using Microsoft's Windows platform later this year, even as he unveiled the new N9 smart phone, which uses a platform called MeeGo.
"Our primary smart phone strategy is to focus on the Windows phone," said Elop, who moved to Nokia from Microsoft last year.
"I have increased confidence that we will launch our first device based on the Windows platform later this year and we will ship our product in volume in 2012," Elop said.
Analysts said the firm's strategy would condemn the all-screen N9 to being a niche product.
The model -- Nokia's first and last to use MeeGo -- can be navigated by a single finger swipe and comes in black, cyan and magenta colours in a polycarbonate design.
"The N9 comes too close to the expected launch of Nokia's Windows Phone device to have any impact on its current smart phone woes," said Ben Wood, head of research at London-based mobile consultancy CCS Insight.
"The strength of rival ecosystems leaves little room for MeeGo powered devices. It's difficult to see the N9 being anything more than a niche device ... the N9 will be a tough sell."
The MeeGo platform -- a newcomer in the market dominated byGoogle Inc and Apple Inc -- was born in February 2010 when Nokia and Intel unveiled a merger of Nokia's Linux Maemo software platform with Intel's Moblin, which is also based on Linux open-source software.
After Nokia pulled back from the project four months ago, other vendors have become more interested in the technology as Nokia's dominant role in the project had held back others fromadopting it.
Nokia has thrown in its lot with Microsoft, with whom it will co-develop its next generation of smartphones. It hopes to get the kind of attention Apple and Google have attracted from software developers who enrich their devides.
Elop's speech in Singapore was billed by Nokia as "an update on progress in our new strategy", but he provided few details on how he planned to tackle the company's troubles.
Last month, Nokia said it had abandoned hope of meeting key targets just weeks after setting them, raising questions over whether Elop can deliver on a turnaround he promised in February.
Nokia's market value has plunged by more than half since February, after the leak of a memo from Elop that compared the company's market position to a man standing on a burning oil platform.
The company said it plans to launch up to 10 new smart phones using its own Symbian operating system. It introduced three affordable handsets which features dual sim-card, years after its Asian rivals put that feature into their phones.
"Any new products by Nokia will be a stop-gap ... until its first Microsoft phone is out in the market," said Seo Won-seok, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities in Seoul.
"It won't be easy for Nokia to aggressively market these products and even new product lineups will be limited given that it is spending heavy resources in developing Windows phones. Under such circumstances, I'm quite doubtful whether they'll get a strong response from customers."
The partnership with Windows may not be a panacea for Nokia's troubles since rivals including Taiwan's HTC and China's ZTE will bring out devices based on Microsoft's software.
Some phone users said the N9 held no appeal versus its rivals.
"It will be too much of a hassle to switch all of my applications to some other device, so I'd need a lot of convincing to switch to a new type of device like the N9," said Mark Fox, managing director of NetEvents International.
"I'd rather take the easier life and stick with the Apple, which I am happy with. With the iPhone, it's the user interface and the ease of use, how easy they've made it to use the different types of apps."
In a research note this month, Nomura said Samsung Electronics would become the world's largest smart phone maker this quarter and Apple would take the number two spot next quarter, pushing Nokia to third place.
Nokia had led the market since 1996 when it launched the Communicator, a smart phone that is popular in the business community for its ability to browse the internet as well as to receive and send emails, data and f
Mayawati on defensive against rising rapes in Uttar Pradesh (21-06-11)
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati today hit back at her critics maintaining that the BSP was successful in maintaining law and order in the state.
She was responding to the furore created by the recent incidents of rape in the state. Seven rapes have been reported in the past three days.
"Criminals won't be shielded. We will bring them to book," said Mayawati. She assured victims' families justice.
Mayawati also called for changes in law to deal with the menace. She was also for the setting up of fast track courts to mete out justice to victims.
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