Telangana Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao (Photo: DC)
Hyderabad:
Telangana Rashtra Samiti, which took complete control of the Legislative Council and won the Chairman’s post, has made an equally stellar performance in the corporation and municipal elections.
It has bagged the entire three Mayors’ posts of Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Ramagundem municipal corporations. It also won 23 municipalities, followed by the Congress 17, Telugu Desam 4, BJP 3, MIM 2 and Independent 1 in the state.
Elections were held for 50 of the 52 municipalities. Elections to Nalgonda and Suryapet chairpersons’ posts have been postponed.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, closely monitored the elections and put IT minister K.T. Rama Rao, irrigation minister T. Harish Rao and other ministers, MPs and MLAs to oversee the polls across Telangana.
In fact, the Chief Minister asked several ministers, MPs and Legislators who planned to attend the ATA convention in the US, to cancel their visits and focus on the polls. “The TRS is moving forward towards making a Golden Telangana. People have reposed faith in the TRS and the Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, yet again. We will develop all the municipalities, ensure basic and modern amenities un-der the leadership of KCR,” said B. Vinod Kumar, the TRS MP and politburo member.
Mr Vinod Kumar said the state government would strive to ensure some cities in Telangana to be among the 100 major cities planned by the Modi government.
“The Chief Minister would certainly take up the matter with the Modi government to include some cities in Telangana for focussed development and make it like one of the international cities,” he said.
source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> Nation> Policits / by DC Correspondent / July 04th, 2014
Restaurants are roping in mural and graffiti artists to amp up Hyderabad connect and showcase popular sights, right on their walls
What do some of the new eateries in town have in common? No, it’s not the cuisine. It is their decision to showcase snapshots of the city in murals that are framed and mounted on their walls or make up most of one wall. In a new trend, several new eateries in town are opting to highlight popular city landmarks. From the Golconda Fort, Charminar, Falaknuma Palace, Hussain Sagar to the bustling food culture in these parts of town, it is all translated onto the canvas, or in this case on the wall.
PAINT WARS: City murals are fast becoming popular. The work at Plaza Fiesta. Photos: Nagara Gopal
Take for instance the Plaza Fiesta restaurant at Paryatak Bhavan. The restaurant boasts of quite a few works synonymous with the Deccan region. In fact, some of the 3D relief works have been created by popular Hyderabadi artist Aziz. “We wanted to create a unique ambience that would be distinctly different from what other restaurants offer. Also, we wanted to showcase some of our popular landmarks to visitors; so what better way to do so than art,” says Surya Prakash, officer on duty at Plaza Fiesta.
The works in this restaurant include images of the Golconda, the city’s unique rockscape and a banyan tree. “We have works by six artists on display — Aziz, Chinna Shripathi, Supretha Ghosh, Palash Paul, Agacharya and Madhu Kuruva,” adds Surya Prakash. While some of the works are displayed within the restaurant, others are mounted near the entrance to welcome guests.
PAINT WARS: City murals are fast becoming popular. The work at TenHill. Photos: Nagara Gopal
Hyderabadi fine dining restaurant TenHill also proudly displays city landmarks as part of its décor. It has gone beyond mounting paintings in the restaurant, to have an entire wall that displays the mural. “We had city-based artist Rekha create the mural for us; it is quite impressive. My aim was to portray the culture of the city, and I asked her to create something that showcases not just landmarks synonymous with Hyderabad but also the bustling life around these areas. So we have a Charminar, Golconda, Qutb Shahi Tombs etc forming the mural along with images of skilled chefs whipping up the famous Hyderabadi Biryani, haleem and sheermal,” explains Amar Chowdhary, proprietor of TenHill. The black and white mural, which took a week to complete, is the perfect foil for the restaurant’s otherwise bright décor.
PAINT WARS: City murals are fast becoming popular. The work at Hyderabad Times Café Photos: Nagara Gopal
The newly-opened Hyderabad Times Café (HTC) in Jubilee Hills has a wall mural in black acrylic against a white background in one of its dining areas. “Keeping with the name of our café, we wanted to do something with the décor that would have a city connect. Hence, we had artist Aamira Hussaini create a sketch of all the popular landmarks in the city including Taj Krishna and the Hussain Sagar to cover one wall in our café,” says Rizwan M., manager operations at HTC.
Aamira, who has created murals for several office spaces and hospitals in the past, says that this was her first stint with a commercial establishment. “Zeeshan, the owner, is a friend and he wanted something done on one particular wall. He gave me a free hand and I thought why not do a city-specific mural. So what I created is an abstract that highlights various monuments and sights in the city. It took me around two days to complete it,” she says.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Friday Review> Art / by Ranjani Rajendra / Hyderabad – July 02nd, 2014
Swimmers from Hyderabad put up a creditable performance winning four gold, 11 silver and seven bronze in the National Life-saving Pool Championship–cum-training with focus on life-saving techniques in Pune, according to a media release here. The swimmers were initially given training in different forms of life-saving techniques. They were also taught how to respond to crisis calls.
For the 14 swimmers from the city, trained at the SAAP swimming pool at Police Control Room here, it was an experience to remember. “It is a creditable performance given the fact that this was the first exposure trip for all the Hyderabadis who actually joined the pool here as a recreation sport initially,” says coach Hajira Abbasi.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – July 03rd, 2014
Kushagra Mohan of Hyderabad who won the silver medal in the under-10 category of the Asian Youth chess championship in Tashkent. / by Arrangement / The Hindu
Kushagra Mohan clinches silver medal in the Asian Youth Chess Championship in Tashkent.
Kushagra Mohan, a fifth standard student of Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet, provided a silver lining when he clinched the silver medal in the just-concluded Asian Youth Chess Championship in Tashkent (Uzbekistan).
The city boy won the medal in the under-10 category representing India, which incidentally is his second after his bronze in the same event last year. Coached by Rama Raju, Kushagra, who is a Candidates Master now, is already dreaming big and his next big event is the World Youth Chess Championship in Durban (South Africa) this September.
“My confidence level is high after the Tashkent silver. I hope to keep improving,” he said. Ever since his bronze in the 2011 national under-seven championship in Pune, Kushagra has been making a slow and steady progress which was evident when he won the Asian Schools Championship silver the same year.
With father Rajesh Mohan, a businessman, and mother Meena encouraging him to the hilt, Kushagra, who idolises the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen, is in the mood to script a few more success stories in the world of chess.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – July 02nd, 2014
Picture for representational purpose (Photo: DC/File)
Vijayawada:
After dividing the police force, the trained sniffer dogs were divided between the two states. Apart from making the sniffer and tracker dogs stationed in each region to stay put, the intelligence security wing dogs were also distributed. According to ISW officials, AP got 10 sniffer dogs while Telangana got eight based on the population.
DSP of dog training academy at Moinabad K. Subrahmanyam said, “The dog squads are divided, but the training academy is the same. We have 40 dogs being trained in our academy and they will be inducted to the police force as per the earlier requests. We already have five attacker dogs of Belgian Malinois with Octopus the anti-terror force.
In the present batch that is undergoing training, we have five more Belgian Malinois being trained.” However, the requirement for sniffer and tracker dogs from the districts has been increasing. In Machilipatnam on Thursday a sniffer dog died and police cremated it with the official salute. “Several dogs have become old and sick. There are deaths reported from the district units regularly,” said an official.
source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> Nation> Current Affairs / by DC Correspondent / June 29th, 2014
We know robots are the future. But humanoids take a lot of time learning to do their tasks. Hyderabad-raised researcher Dr Rajesh P.N. Rao and his team has found a novel way of teaching robots using crowd sourcing technology. They say robots can just go online and find hints from hundreds of people to do their tasks by themselves without having to teach them with painstaking long commands.
In a first, University of Washington associate professor Dr Rajesh P.N. Rao and his team had demonstrated the first brain to brain interaction through the Internet in which one person would imagine an action and another ‘online’ would replicate the imagined action. Working on robots, Dr Rao, who studied in Hyderabad till the age of 18, says humanoids could one day proliferate in our environment.
But robots are now designed to do a particular task or a set of them. They have to be programmed to teach them how to go about a job. Robots learn by imitating humans, but it could take many lessons for it to hold a dish perfectly or place the book at the right place.
But Dr Rajesh Rao’s team has proposed using crowd sourcing techniques where robots can, all by themselves, go online, and ask for advice “Robots in the not-so-distant future will be in our homes, offices, and other human environments. We will want them to learn new skills on-the-job so that they can get better at helping us” Dr Rajesh Rao said.
“Our research demonstrates that robots can go online, and hire human helpers whenever they are stuck and get hundreds of hints and suggestions from humans all around the world,” he further said.
Crowd sourcing is the process of soliciting information from a large online community. “This is a way to go beyond just one-on-one interaction between a human and a robot by also learning from other humans around the world,” Dr Rajesh said.
However, there could be problems if some spammers in the online community feed wrong information to the robot. “There were some spammers who produced repeated data from multiple accounts, and even others who produced data without following instructions. We are planning to adopt more complex quality control techniques to improve the quality of crowd sourced data in future,” researchers said.
source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> Technology> Latest / by DC Correspondent / June 30th, 2014
Art gallery puts up a collection of visuals on the journey of the medium of radio. As the title revealed, it took the viewer on a journey, of how radio evolved with some local attention on how ‘All India Radio’ (AIR) or ‘Akashvani’ came about, since the 1930s.
At first glance, it looked as if it was a typical film function. But the resemblance ended there. Visitors could then see the distinction at ‘Journey of Radio’ a collection of visuals put together by Muse Art Gallery.
It took a while for guests to go up and down the long corridor at the Marriott Hotel here, looking at paintings and other visuals that seemed to tell a story on their own.
As the title revealed, it took the viewer on a journey, of how radio evolved with some local attention on how ‘All India Radio’ (AIR) or ‘Akashvani’ came about, since the 1930s. The collection of 50 visuals was initiated by the curator of the gallery, Kaali Sudheer.
Veteran announcers Jyothsna and Ilyas, whose tryst with AIR is over 3 decades old, spoke of how serious their programmes were in those days when there was no television. “While officially, our duty hours were 7 hours only, we would normally spend 10 hours and sometimes, during important occasions, it would go up to 15 hours too,” said Ilyas.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – July 01st, 2014
