News4u-News Desk-NEW DELHI: A fire at the headquarters of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) on Tuesday night might have destroyed sensitive electronic data on financial frauds and records pertaining to tapped-phone conversations, including some politically sensitive cases.

The fire broke out, according to sources, in the Interception Room also known as DRI’s “secret room” at its 7th floor headquarters in the drum-shaped building at Indraprastha Estate in the Capital.

The fire brigade was informed at 10.28 pm and six fire tenders were despatched but the flames were doused using internal resources at the DRI office by 11.30 pm. No external fire safety measures were used, according to a fire brigade official.

But before the fire was doused, the blaze destroyed interception equipment and computers that stored sensitive data relating to money laundering, drug syndicates and foreign trade.

DRI has also been involved in investigation of politically sensitive cases and has provided inputs to other investigative agencies such as CBI and Enforcement Directorate. These have been part of the case files dealing with high net-worth individuals.

This may call for a full-fledged investigation by Intelligence Bureau as none of the other rooms seem to have suffered any impact while nothing of the stored intercepted data could be saved in the fire that damaged all the computers in the so-called secret room.

DRI is currently headless with a member of the Central Board of Excise and Customs holding additional charge since March.

Some of the corporate frauds DRI has pursued in the last few years ran into thousands of crores. It had also recently provided inputs to the government on Dawood gang on latter’s operation in Pakistan and also its contacts in India.

Besides financial frauds, the DRI closely monitors terrorist and narcotics activities and keeps a close watch on export oriented units that may be misused by these terror and anti-national outfits to channel funds for their sleeper cells operating in the country. In the past few years it had successfully neutralized several such terrorist and narcotics syndicates having links with Pakistan, Bangladesh, UAE and Nepal. toi

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News4u-News Desk-Dubai, (PTI) Eleven Asian workers, including an Indian, were killed as a fire swept through a perfumery, police said.

“Nine Bangladeshis, an Indian and a Pakistani were suffocated to death when a fire broke out in a warehouse in Al Qous industrial area, while they were sleeping,” Major General Khamis Al Mazeina, Acting Chief of Dubai police, said.

Police also arrested the local owner of the perfumery and two Indians, including the Managing Director of the firm, for illegally using the perfumery premises to lodge workers, Mazeina said.

While ruling out any criminal intent, the police chief said that forensic experts were investigating to establish the cause of the fire, which broke out at 12:59 on Tuesday night, but was brought under control under half an hour.

The police chief said that owners of the perfumery had spread mattresses in a partitioned portion which was being illegally used to house these workers.

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News4u-News Desk-Reuters-OSLO: Smoke from forest fires smothering Moscow adds to health problems of “brown clouds” from Asia to the Amazon and Russian soot may stoke global warming by hastening a thaw of Arctic ice, environmental experts say.

“Health effects of such clouds are huge,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) study of “brown clouds” blamed for dimming sunlight in cities such as Beijing or New
Delhi and hitting crop growth in Asia.

Kim Holmen, director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute, who runs a pollution monitoring station in Svalbard in the high Arctic said the air over Russia was fairly stable in recent days, concentrating smoke over land. But a shift in winds, easing pollution in Moscow, could sweep smog northwards.

Holmen also echoed Russian authorities’ worries the fires may also release radioactive elements locked in vegetation since Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. Radioactive isotopes include strontium 90 and caesium 137. Other pollutants such as PCBs could also be freed.

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News4u – News Desk : President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday declared a state of emergency in seven Russian regions worst hit by the raging wildfires as the toll has mounted to 40, even as firefighters battled hard to douse the flames.

The emergency has been declared in the republics of Mariy El and Mordovia as well as inVladimir, Voronezh, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazanregions, a Kremlin release said.

Under the decree the regional authorities have been ordered to restrict the movement of people and economic activities in the affected areas.

Presidential decree has formalised the full scale induction of Army and Interior Ministry troops in combating the forest fires.

Besides the local authorities have been recommended to involve volunteers and social organisations in fire-fighting and relief work.

The death toll in the wildfires that have swept Russia has now risen to 40, the news agency reported.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who compared the scale and challenges of wildfires with the invasions Russia, has been facing from time-immemorial on Monday warned the heads of affected regions will be held personally responsible.

“The entire responsibility for the performance of this task lies on the heads of constituent territories of the Russian Federation,” Putin said in his televised comments.

He also demanded that officials tighten fire safety regulations.

“The irresponsible behaviour of those who ignore the bans and violate elementary safety rules comes at too high a price for ordinary citizens,” Putin said.

EMERCOM Crisis Management Centre Gen. Vladimir Stepanov said a total of 265 residential areas had been “saved from advancing fires” within the last 24 hours.

He said there was no threat to Federal Nuclear Centre at Sarov in Nizhny Novgorod region and Novo- Voronezhskaya NPP in Voronezh region, where emergency has been declared.

RIA Novosti reported that wildfires raging in the central part of European Russia have also left over 2,000 people homeless and caused damage estimated at over 4.6 billion roubles (USD 150 million).

The wildfires have affected 14 Russian regions, with the most severe destruction in the Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh andRyazan regions.

As dense smoke and smog covered the Russian capital the army units completed the installation of a pipeline in the Yegorievsk district near Moscow to supply water to burning peat bogs.

Another pipeline in the nearby Shatura district is being laid by army engineers pipeline battalions.

Each of the pipelines will deliver up to 3,000 cubic meters of water per day as there are no chances of rains in near future and temperature creep towards 40 degree Celsius mark.

A fire fighting unit in Voronezh region has been expanded from 1,800 to 3,000 people.

Two Emergencies Ministry aircraft, an Il-76 Candid and a Mi-8 Hip helicopter, as well as 500 fire engines are working to fight fires in the region.

The area on fire in the Voronezh region has been cut from 3,200 hectares to 2,200 hectares over the last few days, RIA Novosti added.

Meanwhile, many experts blame the new Forest Code signed into law by Putin in 2007, when he was president, for the badly managed forests.

Russia’s Greenpeace say that transfer of the control of forests from the Federal Government to the local and regional authorities has led to the current alarming situation.

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News4u-News Desk-New Delhi, The 57th meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) was held here on Saturday under the Chairmanship of Union Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal.

Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni, Minister of State for Human Resource Development D. Purandeswari and Vice-Chairperson of CABE Prateek Patel, Minister of State, Youth Affairs and Sports and Ministers-in-charge of Education from various States/UTs attended the meeting.

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The board also has eminent educationists, authors, artists and linguists apart from heads of different autonomous organizations and Secretaries of different departments of the government as its members.

During the meeting, CABE considered the proposal on the draft Higher Education and Research Bill, 2010.

It was clarified that the draft Bill remained the property of the Task Force until it submitted its final proposal to the HRD Ministry.

It also considered the proposal on the proposed National Academic Depository Bill, 2010 for creating and maintaining a national electronic database of academic records and awards at no cost to Central or State Government.

CABE endorsed the proposal which mandates academic institutions – universities, higher educational institutions, CBSE and States Boards of Education to entrust academic awards with authorized Depository to be appointed under the legislation for secure storage, authenticated access, online verification and efficient retrieval while ensuring confidentiality, fidelity and authenticity.

The board unanimously welcomed the steps taken to harmonise the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) with the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009.

It also expressed solidarity in taking proactive steps for ensuring the educational rights of all children.

Recognising the high demand for skill in the country, CABE emphasised the need for a National Vocational Qualification Framework to provide a common reference framework for linking various vocational qualifications and setting common principles and guidelines for a nationally recognised qualification system and standards.

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News4u – News Desk : Rescuers called off the search for survivors on Friday as the death toll from one of Bangladesh’s worst fires rose to 108 after flames ripped through a packed neighbourhood of Dhaka, officials said.

The blaze raged for three hours, destroying a row of multi-storey apartment buildings and trapping hundreds of residents in Dhaka’s densely populated Kayettuli area, city police chief A K M Shahidul Haq said.

“At least 108 people have died including those who expired in hospitals. The toll may rise as quite a few are in critical condition,” district administrator Muhibul Haque said.

The blaze has been put out and a search-and-rescue effort halted after firefighters scoured “every inch of the fire-hit buildings”, Dhaka fire department Chief Abu Nayeem said.

“A wedding party was on the roof of one building and we think this is why the number of casualties is so high,” Nayeem said, adding that highly flammable stock, including chemicals, in a string of small shops had fuelled the blaze.

“At least 41 bodies have been pulled out from the wedding party building,” he said.

Hundreds of people were trapped in burning buildings for hours as rescue workers struggled to contain the blaze, their work hampered by the narrow lanes of the crowded residential area.

Nayeem said the fire had been caused by an electrical fault and took grip before firefighters could access the area.

An explosion in an electric transformer apparently sparked the blaze at around 10 pm and it quickly engulfed a small plastic factory and four other multi-storied buildings and adjacent shops sending the flames some 300 feet height in the sky, a fire brigade official said.

The reports said most of the wounded people were rushed to nearby hospital. Salimullah Medical Collage Hospital has opened a makeshift burns unit to treat the injured.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has expressed her deep shock over the tragedy. She has asked the concerned government agencies to expedite rescue campaign and provide proper treatment to the injured.

Dhaka mayor Sadek Hossain, Health minister AFM Ruhal Haque and several government leaders were overseeing the rescue operations and the treatment arrangements at the hospitals.

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief and ex-premier Khaleda Zia also visited the scene.

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News4u-News Desk- Fourteen oil tankers of a goods train derailed and caught fire when Maoists blew up a railway line between Dighwara and Pipra stations in West Champaran district early on Thursday.

Around 200 Maoists blasted dynamites to blow up the railway line at Chintamani village, 25 kms from here at around 2.30 am, officials said.

The goods train with 50 oil tankers attached to it reached the place soon after and 14 of its oil tankers derailed and caught fire. The train was on way to Raxaul on the Indo-Nepal border from Muzaffarpur.

Railway authorities reached the spot and detached the rest of the oil tankers, while fire tenders from Muzaffarpur and Motihari fought for more than four-and-half-hours to douse the flames. Rail traffic on the Muzaffarpur-Narkatiyaganj section remained affected for several hours after the blast.

Several posters and leaflets left by the Maoists were seized from the spot.

A combing operation has been launched in the area to apprehend the ultras.

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News4u-News Desk-At least 10 people died when a fire broke out in a railway workers’ dormitory in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous region.

The firemen brought the blaze under control in half an hour, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

Fourteen other workers in the dormitory were hospitalized after suffering burns, with six of them were severely injured.
The dormitory belongs to the No 19 subsidiary of the China Railway Group Limited in Saihan District, Hohhot.

The company’s workers are building a railway tunnel. Hu Kaijun, one of the injured, told Xinhua the fire engulfed seven rooms of the workers’ dormitory on Monday  where 35 were supposed to live.

Baoribatu, director of the production safety bureau in Hohhot, said not all of the workers were staying in the dorm when the accident happened, as they work in shifts.

Rescuers confirmed 10 people died and 14 others were injured in the accident.

“I was about to go on night shift when I saw dense smoke from one of the dorms. I also heard a sound like a wire catching fire,” said worker Hu Kaijun with a frail voice and an injured leg. He said he smashed the dorm window and helped four to escape.

Chinese firefighters are seen during a drill in Beijing. At least 10 people have been killed in a fire at a dormitory for railway workers in China's Inner Mongolia region

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