No wasted effort: When Railways retrieved gold chain from poop

Agencies
July 30, 2017

New Delhi, Jul 30: During his two-decade-long career with the Indian Railways, station master Anil Kumar Shukla has helped passengers in multiple ways. He has now added retrieving a gold chain from poop to his list of accomplishments.

Shukla, currently posted at the Yeola station - about 35 kilometres from Shirdi and 260 kilometres northeast of Mumbai - got a call on July 16, informing him that a passenger had dropped a gold chain in the toilet of a train passing through his station.

"It was an unusual call, no doubt about that," laughed Shukla when contacted by news agency. "I rushed out when a passenger stopped the train and said he had dropped his gold chain into the toilet and wanted us to find it," said Shukla.

The gold chain weighed 50 grams, said its owner, Dr Chavan Patil, an orthopaedic surgeon, and was worth Rs 1.5 lakh.

"It is a lot of money to flush down the drain," said Patil, who was travelling from Nonand to Manmad in Maharashtra by the Maharashtra Express on July 16 and dropped his chain while changing his shirt at the Yeola station, which falls on the Ahmednagar-Manmad rail route.

The doctor sought help from the officials and his expectations weren't misplaced. The Railways, after all, had in recent times taken a slew of measures to meet passenger needs - from delivering medicines, wheelchairs, food and blankets to retrieving phones and laptops left behind.

However, this time, the Railways' helping hand could literally stink from the effort.

"After I pulled the chain to stop the train, the guard and station master came to help me out. However, they said they couldn't do much because the toilet was bio-tech and could be opened only by the cleaning crew at Kolhapur. They asked me to go to Kolhapur and make enquiries," Patil said.

Patil, however, went home to Phaltan, around six hours from Yeola -- and then his tech-savy daughter took over.

On July 18, she posted a tweet, urging Rail Minister Suresh Prabhu to intervene in the matter.

The minister replied in 10 minutes.

"I have given orders to concerned department to do the needful," he tweeted.In half an hour, Patil got a call from the Pune Railway station chief, asking him about the lost chain.

"He asked me to go to Kolhapur the next day. I did, and learnt the toilet was not bio-tech but the usual one," he said.

So, the chain, they realised, had fallen through the hole in the Indian style toilet at Yeola station.

It was then that station master Shukla received his second "unusual call" in as many days.

Informed that the chain was somewhere on the tracks of his station, Shukla, along with his staff, scoured an area of around two kilometres. To compound matters, it was also raining heavily that day. And then he spotted something jutting out of the pebbles.

"We used a wire to pull it out. Yes, it was dirty and covered in filth, but nothing a good wash couldn't get rid of," he said.

A heavy-duty wash under a tap at the station later, the chain finally made it to the hands of its very persistent owner, three days after it went down a black hole.

It is, however, not clear if Patil wore the chain immediately on its return! But what's known is that the effort that went into locating the chain wasn't quite a waste.

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News Network
January 27,2020

Mumbai, Jan 27: The country's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) on Monday said it has increased prices of select models by up to Rs 10,000 with immediate effect to offset the impact of rising input costs.

The price change varies across models and ranges up to 4.7 per cent (ex-showroom Delhi) and are effective from January, 27 2020, MSI said in a statement.

The price of entry level model Alto range has gone up in the range of Rs 9,000-6,000, S-Presso between Rs 1,500 to 8,000, WagonR between Rs 1,500 and Rs 4,000.

The company has also increased the price of its multi purpose vehicle Ertiga between Rs 4,000-10,000, Baleno by Rs 3,000 to 8,000 and XL6 by up to Rs 5,000 (all prices ex-showroom Delhi).

Currently, the company sells a range of vehicles starting from entry-level small car Alto to premium multi purpose vehicle XL6 with price ranging from Rs 2.89 lakh to Rs 11.47 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

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Agencies
May 19,2020

Cybersecurity researchers on Monday warned of a Trojan malware campaign which is targeting India's co-operative banks using COVID-19 as a bait.

Seqrite, the enterprise arm of IT security firm Quick Heal Technologies, detected the new wave of Adwind Java Remote Access Trojan (RAT) campaign.

Researchers at Seqrite warned that if attackers are successful, they can take over the victim's device to steal sensitive data like SWIFT logins and customer details and move laterally to launch large scale cyberattacks and financial frauds.

According to the researchers, the Java RAT campaign starts with a spear-phishing email which claims to have originated from either the Reserve Bank of India or a nationalised bank.

The content of the email refers to COVID-19 guidelines or a financial transaction, with detailed information in an attachment, which is a zip file containing a JAR based malware.

Upon further investigation, researchers at Seqrite found that the JAR based malware is a Remote Access Trojan that can run on any machine which has Java runtime enabled and hence it can impact a variety of endpoints, irrespective of their base operating system.

Once the RAT is installed, the attacker can take over the victim's device, send commands from a remote machine, and spread laterally in the network.

In addition, this malware can also log keystrokes, capture screenshots, download additional payloads, and extract sensitive user information, Seqrite said, adding that such attack campaigns can effectively jeopardise the privacy and security of sensitive data at the co-operative banks and result in large scale attacks and financial frauds.

To prevent such attacks, users need to exercise ample caution and avoid opening attachments and clicking on web links in unsolicited emails.

Banks should also keep their operating systems updated and have a full-fledged security solution installed on all the devices, Seqrite advised.

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Agencies
May 10,2020

In the wake of the gas leak at a factory in Visakhapatnam, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has issued detailed guidelines for restarting industries after the lockdown and the precautions to be taken for the safety of the plants as well as the workers.

In a communication to all states and union territories, the NDMA said due to several weeks of lockdown and the closure of industrial units, it is possible that some of the operators might not have followed the established standard operating procedures.

As a result, some of the manufacturing facilities, pipelines, valves may have residual chemicals, which may pose risk. The same is true for the storage facilities with hazardous chemicals and flammable materials, it said.

The NDMA guidelines said while restarting a unit, the first week should be considered as the trial or test run period after ensuring all safety protocols.

Companies should not try to achieve high production targets. There should be 24-hour sanitisation of the factory premises, it said.

The factories need to maintain a sanitisation routine every two-three hours especially in the common areas that include lunch rooms and common tables which will have to be wiped clean with disinfectants after every single use, it added.

For accommodation, the NDMA said, sanitisation needs to be performed regularly to ensure worker safety and reduce the spread of contamination.

To minimise the risk, it is important that employees who work on specific equipment are sensitised and made aware of the need to identify abnormalities like strange sounds or smell, exposed wires, vibrations, leaks, smoke, abnormal wobbling, irregular grinding or other potentially hazardous signs which indicate the need for immediate maintenance or if required shutdown, it said.

At least 11 people lost their lives and about 1,000 others were exposed to a gas leak at a factory in Andhra Pradesh''s Visakhapatnam on May 7.

The incident took place after it restarted operations when the government allowed industrial activities in certain sectors following several weeks of lockdown.

The lockdown was first announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 for 21 days in a bid to combat the coronavirus threat. The lockdown was then extended till May 3 and again till May 17.

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