Narain Karthikeyan claims maiden Auto GP victory

Silverstone, (UK): India`s top driver Narain Karthikeyan recorded his maiden Auto GP victory after leader Kevin Giovesi was given a one-minute post race penalty at the Silverstone Circuit here.

Ghinzai Motosport’s Giovesi was penalised for pitting on lap 14, the last lap of race one Saturday at round four of the series. The Auto GP regulations allow the drivers to take their mandatory pitstops only between lap three and penultimate lap.

Therefore, Karthikeyan was elevated to the top of the podium. It was an ideal start for the former Formula 1 driver with his new team, Super Nova, who were champions in the 2012 Auto GP season.

“Finally a win has come my way. The car felt great during qualifying and practice and we carried the pace into the race. I was leading the pack for most of the race until Giovesi got ahead towards the end. But he made an error by pitting on the final lap,” Karthikeyan said.

The Indian will start race two Sunday in eighth place on the reverse grid. The win has pushed Karthikeyan to fourth in the standings with 59 points.

Friday, Karthikeyan claimed pole position clocking 1:46.286 ahead of newcomer Giovesi and Super Nova teammate Vittorio Ghirelli in the qualifying.

Karthikeyan drove for Zele Racing in the first three rounds of 2013 before securing a last minute deal at Super Nova.

The 36-year-old scored 34 points in the opening six races while driving for Zele with luck getting the better of him on occasions where he could have pushed for a podium.

Asked why he left Zele, Karthikeyan said: “I was not happy with the reliability of the car. There were times I was in the reckoning for top three but something or the other went wrong.”

A botched pit stop cost the Indian a podium in the last round at Hungaroring.

IANS 

Pakistan takes lessons from India in combating polio

New Delhi: Pakistan is taking oral vaccination tips from India, which has been polio-free for over two years, and wants to replicate its success story, the head of the neighbouring country's polio programme says.

"But what hinders Pakistan in containing the dreaded virus is insurgency, violence and illiteracy," Pakistan National Polio Plus Committee Chairman Aziz Memon told IANS in an interview during a visit here.

Earlier this week, Pakistan's polio campaign suffered a major setback when a volunteer in the vaccination campaign was killed and her colleague wounded in a militant attack near Peshawar. The attack came soon after nation wide polio campaign started May 28.

Memon said Pakistan is taking lessons from India for the way it reached out to its population.

"We are taking lessons from India. Our teams visited Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to see the way they vaccinated children," Memon said.

Both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were the hotbed of the paralytic disease in India. Some members of the Muslim community in the two states resisted polio drops being given to their children as they feared that it could make them children impotent.

After 741 polio cases surfaced in 2009, India started using bivalent vaccines (targetting Polio 1 and Polio 3 viruses) in its national vaccination programme from 2010 January. This showed dramatic effects and India moved out of WHO's list of endemic countries in 2011.

"We picked many tips (from our visit). We learned how to involve hundreds of volunteers (involved in the campaign), how to handle the resource center and how to immunize children at the transit check posts," he said.

As India remains free from polio for the past two years, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only three countries in the world now where the highly infectious, crippling disease still remains endemic.

Menon said that in some areas in Pakistan they have been able to vaccinate children, but some areas still remain out of bounds due to various reasons, including violence.

"The situation of our polio programme is good. One of the main reserves of polio is the Gadap Town slum area in Karachi. Now, it is very much in control there," Memon said.

Gadap Town is the largest slum of Karachi, which has concentration of migrant Pashtun speaking population of Khyber Pakhhtunkhwa province and the tribal areas, which have high incidents of polio, increasing the risk of the virus being imported.

However, Memon said that the issue of insurgency and violence in certain areas was a "major setback" to the programme.

"The area around Peshawar is another focus... Insurgency and law and order is the problem there," Memon said.

After the May 28 attack, the Pakistani authorities suspended the four-day polio vaccination programme.

Memon said that the tribal region of the northwest was another dark area, with the Taliban's rejection of the oral vaccination programme.

While the Taliban in Afghanistan recently announced its support for polio vaccination, the Pakistani Taliban continues to oppose this.

"The Afghan Taliban has announced support for polio vaccination, but the Taliban in Pakistan is different. The Afghan Taliban's support had no effect on the Pakistani Taliban," Memon said.

"In Pakistan, Taliban leaders change every 30 miles. They are against polio vaccination," he added.

The Pakistani Taliban has banned polio vaccination, saying that it is a cover for espionage.

"Working in that area (the northwest) is not so easy. There are many issues. Children are trapped there, though we have vaccinated some children with the army's help," Memon said.

Media reports, two children have been detected with polio in the last 36 months in the North Waziristan area of the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA).

FATA is a semi-autonomous tribal region in the northwest, lying between Afghanistan to the west and north, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the east and Balochistan to the south.

As per WHO data, during the last polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan, some 1.83 million children missed polio drops across the country owing to various reasons, including security threats.



About 763,714 children were missed in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa alone, 621,724 in other areas of FATA, including 260,000 from North and South Waziristan, and 396, 925 in Balochistan.

In 2013, eight cases have so far been reported in Pakistan.

IANS

Haryana Roadways to extend shift timings of buses

Chandigarh: Haryana Roadways on Saturday decided to extend the timings of its bus shifts in Gurgaon and Faridabad from 16 to 18 hours daily.

This was informed by Haryana State Transport Director General Arun Kumar.

The current shifts are from 6 AM to 2 PM and 2 PM to 10 PM.

"Now to extend better facilities to citizens, Haryana Roadways has decided to start its morning shift from 5 AM and extend evening shift to 11 PM," Kumar said in a release here.

Kumar said it has also been decided to extend free travel facility to widows of Haryana Roadways buses employees. As many as 715 widows would be benefited from this scheme.

PTI 

Free coaching to minority students on the anvil

Mumbai: The Maharashtra government's Minorities Development department is contemplating to start free coaching for minority community students appearing for competitive examinations.

Around 500 candidates would be given free coaching to appear in the

Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) and Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams, state Minister for Minorities Development Naseem Khan told reporters.

"The candidates would be selected on their merits," he added.

The step, first of its kind, taken by the state government to give coaching to the students from minority community, comes after Vice President Hamid Ansari recently at a Muslim Educational Conference lamented the low representation of the community in central and state public services, including police and armed forces.

Khan also said about 1,000 candidates would also be given coaching to appear for banking, engineering, medical, IIT and MBA exams.

"The coaching to the students will be given by state government's director vocational training under Maulana Azad free coaching and allied scheme," he added.

The coaching centres will be started at seven places - Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Nashik and Amravati.

"In order to prevent drop-outs of the students having failed in SSC (10th) and HSC (12th) and to pursue them to take further education, 2,000 students will also be trained under the scheme," Khan said, adding that a sharp decline has been witnessed among Muslim community in taking higher education.

"The state government will have to shell out Rs 5.5 crore for the scheme," he said.

PTI

Goa higher secondary schools to hike intake capacity

Panaji: Goa Government has allowed the higher secondary schools to increase intake capacity by 10 per cent for this academic year following higher pass percentage in the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examination.

The has been done to overcome the shortage of seats in Class XI and facilitate smooth admission process, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar told reporters here today.

"Once we increase the capacity (by 10%), it will take care of 1,500-2,000 students," he said.

A few of the schools have also started additional divisions to accommodate the increasing number of students approaching them for admission, he said.

"Around 14-15 extra divisions have been created in various higher secondary schools," Parrikar stated.

As per Government figures, 6,500 additional students had cleared the SSC examination (Class X) this year compared to 2012. This had raised concerns that existing capacity in the higher secondary schools would not be enough to accommodate students in Class X.

A total 20,542 students had appeared for the SSC examination in February-March of which 18,000 cleared it.

PTI 

IBL to launch 'Shuttle Express' to promote badminton

NEW DELHI: The event itself is yet to take flight thanks to several postponement, but the USD 1-million Indian Badminton League is set to launch a programme for school children with an aim to promote the sport at the grassroot level.

Under the Badminton League School Programme (IBLSP), star shuttlers like Saina Nehwal, Jwala Gutta, Parupalli Kashyap and P V Sindhu, among others, will visit school campuses across India to encourage around five lakh students from more than 120 schools in six different cities.

The 'Shuttle Express' will offer an incentive of Rs 10 lakh in prize money to the winners in both the boys and girls singles events and the event will be held in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Lucknow and Pune.

Besides, the finalists in both the singles categories will also be given an opportunity to train at the world-class Pullela Gopichand Academy in Hyderabad.

"It is nice to see that badminton as a sport is being promoted amongst kids. 'Shuttle Express' will not only generate huge interest among the young but also give them the opportunity to get their talent recognised, said London Olympic bronze medallist Saina.

Source : TOI

Wrestling reinstated in 2020 Olympics list with squash, softball-baseball

Washington: In a move that once again raised the hopes of wrestlers all over the world, the sport of wrestling won a reprieve and made the International Olympic Committee (IOC) list for the 2020 Olympics, three months after being dropped from the list.

Along with wrestling, squash and a combined baseball-softball bid also made the cut from a lineup of eight sports vying for a single opening.

The five sports - karate, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and the Chinese martial art of wushu, were eliminated from the contention.

Stating that the list is a good mix of team and individual sports, IOC vice president Thomas Bach said that the IOC executive board will submit wrestling, squash and baseball-softball to the full IOC assembly for a final decision on Sept. 8.

The board voted by secret ballot over several rounds, with wrestling winning on the first round with eight of the 14 votes, baseball-softball beating karate 9-5 in a head-to-vote while squash got through in the final round, getting eight votes to defeat wushu.

The move brought smiles back to the faces of athletes who had thought that their chances to compete in the Olympics were lost forever, even as co-president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation Riccardo Fraccari expressed his gratitude and said that the decision has motivated them to work even harder on behalf of the athletes.

Meanwhile, actor and former college wrestler William Baldwin said that only the sport of wrestling can bring Russia, the US and Iran together quickly, on the same page, united in one voice with the same goal.

Men`s baseball and women`s softball, which have been off the program since the 2008 Beijing Games, merged into a single federation to improve their chances of getting back in, while squash is bidding for an Olympic spot for a third time.

Wrestling was surprisingly cut from the list of core sports by the IOC board in February, causing an international outcry and prompting the United States, Russia, Iran and other countries to join forces in a bid to bring the sport back .

Source : ZeeNews