Indian Railway introduces new Tatkal rules

The Indian Railway has introduced several measures to ensure Tatkal train tickets reach the common man. Booking counters will now open at 10 am instead of 8 am, the day before the journey from the originating station.

"No normal ticket will be issued during this time unless there is no passenger for the Tatkal tickets," an Eastern Railway release said.

ER spokesperson Samir Goswami said Tatkal tickets cannot be booked on internet reservation system during the special time of 10-10.30 am for next day trains.

All travel agents including those of IRCTC will not be allowed to book Tatkal tickets between 10 am to 12 noon from counters as well as on the Internet. There will be separate queues and counters for Tatkal buyers.

CCTVs are being installed at booking centres as well. One will have to carry self attested identity proofs for buying a Tatkal ticket.

The Tatkal revamp comes after the IBN network exposed how touts were cornering these tickets.

Online Tatkal booking made easier:

The Indian Railway has also put in place measures to make online Tatkal bookings easier. High capacity database servers have been installed. The Internet bandwidth has been increased from 344 mbps to 450 mbps.

Web service agents have been permitted to book only one Tatkal ticket per train per day on the internet only after 12 noon. Individual users can now book only two tickets between 10 am and 12 noon

An IT-Anti Fraud Squad has been created. A complaint cell has also been set up. One can email or call these numbers: agentcomplaint@irctc.co.in (011-23745962) or care@irctc.co.in (011-39340000).

Time magazine is late to the party, say BJP and Nitish about PM critique

New Delhi: Time magazine's branding of the Prime Minister as an "under-achiever" in its cover story has predictably been dismissed by his party.  

"It's one among several magazines in the world... it says can the PM rouse himself? The answer is of course," said Home Minister P Chidambaram.

That may be a desperate attempt to see the glass half full. The Asia edition of the magazine, to hit newsstands this week, says the PM appears "unwilling to stick his neck out" for reforms that could revive the country's economy.


With his portrait in the background, the title on the cover reads 'The Underachiever - India needs a reboot'. The party and the Prime Minister's Office have decided not to raise the story or formally contest its contents. The Opposition BJP said today that Time has only "stated the obvious" and that the PM has dented India's international image. Mr Chidabaram described that remark as distasteful, and said he'd like the BJP to remember that in 2002, Time had run a story on then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee titled "Asleep at the wheel."
     
The Time article is titled 'A Man in Shadow'. It says that in addition to the economic slowdown, "investors at home and abroad are beginning to get cold feet. Voters too are losing confidence, as rising inflation and a litany of scandals chip away at the government's credibility."

Last month, global rating agency Standard and Poor's was critical of the Prime Minister as well. Its report said, "Moreover, paramount political power rests with the leader of the Congress, Sonia Gandhi, who holds no Cabinet position, while the government is led by an unelected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who lacks a political base of his own."

The Time magazine report says that "In the past three years, the calm confidence he (Singh) once radiated has been absent. He seems unable to control his ministers and his new, temporary portfolio at the Finance Ministry notwithstanding, unwilling to stick his neck out on reforms that will continue the process of liberalisation he helped start."

Footballer dies after collision with goalkeeper

Jalpaiguri: A footballer, representing a local club, died while playing in a night football tournament here last night, police said.

Mahesh Thapa (27) striker of Torolpara Club accidentally collided with the goalkeeper of Bhanunagar Club at the Torolpara football ground, Bhola Mondal, General Secretary, District Sports Association said today.

He said Thapa who had surged ahead with the ball, came in contact with the rival goalkeeper intent on saving the goal.

Thapa was hit in the chest by the goalkeeper's knee and fell down.

Thapa was rushed to Jalpaiguri Sadar Hospital as his condition turned serious. Due to lack of space in the Intensive Care Unit, he had to be rushed to a private nursing home but died on the way, sources said.

The body was sent for post-mortem, police said.

The District Sports Association paid tribute to the footballer at a memorial service organised by them.

5 free tools to remove Alureon DNSChanger malware

About a quarter-million computer users around the world are at risk of losing Internet access on Monday because of malicious software at the heart of a hacking scam that U.S. authorities shut down last November.

Some blogs and news reports hyped the risk of an outage, warning of a potential "blackout" and describing the Alureon malware as the "Internet Doomsday" virus.

Yet experts said only a tiny fraction of computer users were at risk, and Internet providers would be on call to quickly restore service. They said they considered the threat to be small compared with more-prevalent viruses such as Zeus and SpyEye, which infect millions of PCs and are used to commit financial fraud.

But no threat is small if your PC in the one affected. If you are mysteriously unable to login to the Internet this morning, your computer may be one of the quarter-million odd affected by this malware. Here's what you can do to remove this program from your computer.

First, go to this page to check if your PC is infected. With the FBI's temporary servers now offline, you'll have to open the web page from another computer and follow the manual instructions for your operating system. (See: Internet blackout Monday: Check if your PC is infected)

If it turns out the reason you are offline is indeed the Alureon malware and not a faulty Internet connection, here are 5 free tools that will remove the DNSChanger malware from your system. Download them on another PC and copy them to the infected PC using a USB drive or a CD.

1) McAfee Stringer
Remove Alureon/ DNSChanger: Yes
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Download

2) Kaspersky Labs TDSSKiller
Remove Alureon/ DNSChanger: Yes
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Download

3) Norton Power Eraser
Remove Alureon/ DNSChanger: Yes
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Download

4) Trend Micro  House Call
Remove Alureon/ DNSChanger: Yes
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Download

5) MacScan
Remove Alureon/ DNSChanger: Yes
Platform: Mac OS X
Price: Free for 30-days
Download

Virus could black out nearly 250,000 PCs on Monday

About a quarter-million computer users around the world are at risk of losing Internet access on Monday because of malicious software at the heart of a hacking scam that US authorities shut down last November.

Some blogs and news reports hyped the risk of an outage, warning of a potential "blackout" and describing the Alureon malware as the "Internet Doomsday" virus.

Yet experts said only a tiny fraction of computer users were at risk, and Internet providers would be on call to quickly restore service. They said they considered the threat to be small compared with more-prevalent viruses such as Zeus and SpyEye, which infect millions of PCs and are used to commit financial fraud.

As of this week, about 245,000 computers worldwide were still infected by Alureon and its brethren, according to security firm Deteque. That included 45,355 computers in the United States.

The viruses were designed to redirect Internet traffic through rogue DNS servers controlled by criminals, according to the FBI. DNS servers are computer switchboards that direct Web traffic.

When authorities took down the rogue servers, a federal judge in New York ordered that temporary servers be kept in place while the victims' machines were repaired. The temporary servers will shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) on Monday, which means the infected PCs that have not been fixed will no longer be able to connect to the Internet.

Some US Internet providers, including AT&T Inc and Time Warner Cable , have made temporary arrangements so that their customers will be able to access the Internet using the address of the rogue DNS servers.

Information on how to identify and clean up infections can be found on a website that a group of security firms and other experts set up: http://www.dcwg.org.

"It's a very easy one to fix," said Gunter Ollmann, vice president of research for security company Damballa. "There are plenty of tools available."

Many of the machines that remain infected are probably not in active use since most victims were notified of the problem, said security expert Johannes Ullrich, who runs the Internet Storm Center, which monitors Web threats.

The United States has charged seven people for orchestrating the worldwide Internet fraud. Six were arrested in Estonia, while the seventh, who was living in Russia, is still at large. Tallinn has so far extradited two of the men to New York where they appeared in Manhattan federal court.

The case is USA v. Tsastsin et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 11-cr-878.