Ten women workers die
Hyderabad: Ten women working under the MNREGA scheme were buried alive and another injured when a mound of mud caved in on them at a village in Narayanpet district of Telangana Wednesday, police said. The incident occurred at Tileru village around 11.15 am when 12 women labourers were sitting at the work site to have lunch, they said, adding rescue efforts were on. Under the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) scheme, the women were engaged for digging earth as part of trench work, a senior district official told PTI. According to eye-witnesses, a mound of earth fell on them and they were buried under six to eight feet of mud. Ten women died and one was injured while another woman managed to come out safely, according to the official. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao expressed shock and anguish over the incident which he described as “unfortunate.” The deceased belonged to the poorest strata, he said and instructed officials to provide all help to the injured and bereaved families. (PTI)
Ambush: 100 Naxals involved
Raipur: At least 100 Naxals are suspected to be involved in the attack in which a BJP MLA and four security personnel were killed in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, a police official said on Wednesday. Police have also recovered a GPS device of Naxals from the site in which the rebels had set the location of the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) used in the incident. Bheema Mandavi, the BJP MLA from Dantewada seat, and four personnel of his security staff were killed when Naxals blew up their vehicle near Shyamgiri village on Tuesday, just two days before the first-phase of the Lok Sabha polls in the state. “We have received inputs that around 100 Naxals, including 50 to 60 armed and rest militia (lower rung) members, led by commanders Deva and Vinod, were involved in the attack,” Dantewada Superintendent of Police Abhishek Pallava told PTI over phone. Malangir area committee of the banned CPI (Maoist), which is active in the area, along with Kerlapal area committee and some cadres of Jagargunda area committee jointly executed the attack, he said. Three weapons, including a 9 MM pistol and two rifles, were reported to be missing from the attack site, he said. The MLA’s mobile phone is missing and it might have been taken by Naxals. (PTI)
616.5 kg silver seized
Jaipur: Six people were detained Wednesday after 616.5 kg silver was found in their possession during inspection at check posts in Rajasthan’s Rajasamand and Sirohi district, police said. Five people travelling in a car on Nathdwara-Jaipur state highway were intercepted at a check post with 600 kg silver ornaments on a tip-off of anti-terrorist squad of the police, Nathdwara police station in-charge Jitendra Kumar Aanchalia said. In Sirohi, a man was detained with 16.5 kg silver during an inspection of a private bus at a check post, police said. Accused Prakash Soni (32) was travelling in the bus from Beawar with the unaccounted silver, Abu Road RICO police station SHO Champa Ram said. The Police Department said the silver was seized and the matter informed to the Income Tax Department for further investigation. (PTI)
Supercapacitors developed at IIT
Mandi: Researchers, Associate Professor Viswanath Balakrishnan and his research scholar Piyush Avasthi, at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mandi, have developed aligned carbon nanotube-based electrodes that could be used in high energy supercapacitors. Supercapacitors can charge and discharge instantly and can ideally last across millions of charge-discharge cycles without performance degradation. The research has been published in Advanced Materials Interfaces and ACS Applied Nanomaterials. “A promising route to improving the performance of energy storage devices, especially in terms of cycling life and charging times, is to move away from batteries towards supercapacitors,” Balakrishnan said. They also have a higher power density than batteries, he added. Where they have fallen short is the area of energy density; supercapacitors have 40 times less ability to store energy than the lithium ion battery. (IANS)