11-year-old student in Kolkata commits suicide at school

Kolkata: An 11-year-old student has killed herself near Kolkata after she was caught cheating in her exam.

The student, who was in Class 6 at the St.Dominique Savio School in Howrah, jumped from the roof of  her school building this morning. 
 
Parents say her teacher had allegedly scolder her and slapped her.  
The student asked for permission to use the bathroom and left the classroom. She then went to the roof of her building.

हावड़ा में 11 साल की बच्ची ने स्कूल की बिल्डिंग से कूदकर जान दी

कोलकाता: पश्चिम बंगाल के हावड़ा में एक 11 साल की बच्ची ने गुरुवार को स्कूल की बिल्डिंग से कूदकर खुदकुशी कर ली। बच्ची के माता-पिता का आरोप है कि एक टीचर ने बच्ची को डांटा और थप्पड़ मारा, जिसके बाद बच्ची ने यह कदम उठा लिया।

यह स्कूल एक रिहायशी इलाके में है। चार मंजिला इमारत में पहले माले पर स्कूल है। यह बच्ची इमारत के टॉप फ्लोर पर गई और वहां से कूदकर जान दे दी। स्कूल की टीचर को गिरफ्तार कर लिया गया है।

A global steel giant scales back

London: Steel is a notoriously volatile industry. But four years ago, Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian-born tycoon, appeared to have mastered the business.

He was still aglow from his 2006 victory in an epic takeover battle for his nearest rival, Arcelor of Luxembourg, which made the merged company, ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel maker by far. With a fast-growing world economy hungry for steel, ArcelorMittal reported operating income of nearly $12 billion for 2008. 

Things are different now, with Europe in a deep economic funk and once-roaring construction markets like India and China also slowing. Last year, the company had operating income of $4.9 billion. And on Wednesday, it reported second-quarter operating income of $1.1 billion, on sales of $22.48 billion. While the sales were down 10 percent from a year earlier, income was down more than 50 percent as the cost of the industry's raw material, iron ore, rose even as steel prices slumped.


"Clearly, this performance is not acceptable at all," Mr. Mittal said by telephone on Wednesday, while noting that the severity of the various downturns had been unexpected. 

The company has already started curtailing production in Europe to match reduced demand. And it is bracing for resistance from unions and governments to other planned cost cuts. 

Those include the major wage and benefit concessions it is seeking from workers in the United States, where it employs thousands of workers at 12 major facilities in states including Indiana and Pennsylvania. 

Back in the boom times, Mr. Mittal's strategy was to consolidate a fragmenting industry. Putting production into fewer hands would make it easier to adjust output to cushion the cyclical downturns that have always played havoc with steel makers. Among the American companies he bought were Inland Steel and the International Steel Group, which owned plants once operated by companies like LTV and Weirton Steel. 

Beginning with the global recession in 2009, though, ArcelorMittal has faced one setback after another. 

The latest and perhaps the most serious hazard is the protracted euro zone financial turmoil that has all but killed demand for steel in Western Europe. ArcelorMittal, with headquarters in Luxembourg, produced more than a third of its worldwide crude steel in Europe last year. Nearly 100,000 of the company's 260,000 employees work in Europe. 

ArcelorMittal's share price has fallen steeply since 2008, reducing the value of the Mittal family's controlling stake of 40 percent to $9 billion from an estimated $55 billion in 2008. 

The benchmark price of European steel in 2008 was about 850 euros ($1,030 at today's exchange rates) a metric ton. By last month, that price was 573 euros, according to Meps, a consulting firm in Sheffield, England. 

And the lower the price drops, the more reluctant buyers are to commit, "because the material they have in stock is worth less as each week passes," said Peter Fish, the chairman of Meps. 

Inexpensive Chinese steel, heavily subsidized by its government, has also been a big drag on global prices. Even as steel production in Western Europe and the United States has declined over the last five years, China's output has grown about 60 percent, and China now makes 46 percent of the world's steel. 

Mr. Mittal said almost all Chinese companies lost money in the first half of the year. "That is good news in the sense that they will have to work on restructuring the steel industry," eventually putting profit ahead of volume, he said. 

But largely because of China's ravenous appetite for iron ore, the industry's main raw material, its price has quadrupled since 2006, to about $134 a metric ton. 

"The steel makers like ArcelorMittal are caught in the middle," said Jeff Largey, an analyst at Macquarie in London. "On the one hand, the end markets are weak and they don't have any pricing power. On the other hand, they can't do anything about high raw materials prices driven by demand from China." 

Mr. Mittal started out in the 1970s building and operating a minimill in Indonesia. He built his fortune in the next three decades by buying and fixing a network of gigantic but poorly performing plants in places like Kazakhstan, Romania and Mexico. 

But now Mr. Mittal finds himself in a tough fight just to control costs and reduce the company's $22 billion in debt. In Europe, he has idled nine of his 25 blast furnaces, the huge machines that turn iron ore into liquid metal. 

And in contrast to his earlier acquisition spree, he is now selling properties. ArcelorMittal recently sold two North American steel foundation businesses called Skyline Steel and Astralloy to a rival, Nucor, for $605 million - part of $2.7 billion in divestitures since September. 
Because of its mergers, ArcelorMittal has "a lot of low-hanging fruit," said Wen Li, an analyst at Credit Sights in New York. 

The company also benefits from its global reach. The mills in the United States are doing better than those in Europe, thanks to demand from heavy-equipment makers like Caterpillar and for steel pipe to feed the North American shale gas boom. And unlike its rivals, ArcelorMittal has its own major iron ore operations, helping buffer high prices. 

In Europe, where the company faces its deepest problems, it says it wants to keep its best plants - like those in Ghent, Belgium and Dunkirk, France - running at high rates while sidelining the poor performers. But ArcelorMittal probably needs to close some plants permanently, analysts say. And as the automakers know too well, closing plants in Europe requires months, if not years, of talks. 

Labor problems are also looming in the United States. The company and the United Steelworkers union are now in intensive talks in Pittsburgh, trying to reach a new agreement before the current contract covering 12,500 workers expires at the end of August. 

ArcelorMittal is pushing for lower costs and more flexible work rules that the union says would add up to wage and benefit reductions of $28 an hour. 

The company says the workers make an average of $170,855 a year in pay and benefits, of which $82,471 is gross pay. A union spokesman, Anthony Montana, said the company's figure was "an inflated noncash cost calculation," but he would not provide a union estimate. 

The union says that in addition to upfront compensation cuts, the company also wants the right to cut wages during periods of reduced operation. The company is proposing cuts in retirement benefits, too, seeking to eliminate retiree health care for employees hired after Sept. 1, 2012, and switch those employees to a 401(k) from a pension plan. 

Mr. Largey, the Macquarie analyst, said the company might think it was worth enduring a strike if needed to reduce costs. 

But an ArcelorMittal spokesman, William C. Steers, said on Wednesday, "We are optimistic we will reach a fair agreement because ultimately the union and the company want the same thing - a successful business throughout the cycle that provides good job security and industry-leading pay for industry-leading performance."

फिलहाल नहीं बढ़ेंगे डीजल के दाम

नई दिल्ली: खराब मॉनसून की मार झेल रहे किसानों के लिए अब एक बड़ी राहत की खबर है। भारत सरकार ने डीज़ल की कीमतों में बढ़ोतरी के प्रस्ताव को फिलहाल टाल दिया है। इससे किसानों पर बोझ कम होगा और महंगाई दर भी नहीं बढ़ेगी।

जलाशयों और नदियों में घटते पानी की वजह से सिंचाई और बुवाई के लिए डीज़ल पंपों पर किसानों की निर्भरता बढ़ती जा रही है। डीज़ल की मांग बढ़ रही है। किसान तनाव में हैं। लेकिन फिलहाल खराब मॉनसून से जूझ रहे किसानों के लिए बड़ी राहत की ख़बर ये है कि पेट्रोलियम मंत्रालय ने डीज़ल की कीमतों में बढ़ोतरी के प्रस्ताव को टाल दिया है।

यानी डीज़ल पर सब्सिडी कम करने की यूपीए−2 की योजना फिर खटाई में पड़ गई है। डीज़ल की कीमतों में एक रु बढ़ोतरी से 8000 करोड़ तक कमाई हो सकती है सरकार डीज़ल पर सब्सिडी घटाना चाहती है। डीज़ल कारों पर एक्साइज़ डूटी बढ़ाने के प्रस्ताव पर भी बात हो चुकी है। लेकिन कार कंपनियों के विरोध की वजह से सरकार प्रस्ताव आगे नहीं बढ़ा पायी है।

वजह यूपीए के सहयोगी दलों का विरोध भी है जिसे मौजूदा राजनीतिक हालात में दरकिनार करना सरकार के लिए मुश्किल है। सूत्रों ने एनडीटीवी को बताया है कि डीज़ल की कीमतों में बढ़ोतरी कर सरकार ममता बनर्जी को और नाराज़ नहीं करना चाहती है।

संसद का मानसून सत्र अगले महीने से शुरू हो रहा है और महत्वपूर्ण विधेयकों को पास कराने के लिए ज़रूरी है कि सरकार सभी सहयोगी दलों को साथ लेकर आगे बढ़े।

Gujarat High Court orders all vehicles to switch to CNG in 1 year

The Gujarat High Court has ordered the state government to ensure that all public and private vehicles registered in the state switch to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) within a year.

"State is directed to pass necessary orders within shortest possible period, at any rate not exceeding one year from today, compelling the owners of all vehicles having registration in Gujarat to use natural gas, and if necessary, even at higher prices, for the protection of the lives of the citizens living in the state," the court said in its order Wednesday.

The court was hearing a petition filed by an environmental NGO Dhanghdhra Prakruti Mandal, which said that pollution levels in Ahmedabad were as high as those in Delhi and Mumbai, but the Centre did not provide environment-friendly natural gas to the city under the Administered Price Mechanism (APM). CNG costs Rs 53 per kg in Ahmedabad, while it is priced at Rs 38.35 a kg in Delhi.


The NGO had pleaded that the price difference was due to the "discrimination of the Centre" towards Ahmedabad, where the courts have made it mandatory for auto-rickshaws to use CNG.

The court also directed the Centre to allocate natural gas, including CNG, to Ahmedabad city at the same price as it supplies to Delhi and Mumbai under the APM.

It also directed the Centre to immediately implement the order and declined to grant a stay on the ruling for the Central Government to approach the Supreme Court.

The order will create difficulties for the central government because of the limited gas production in the country. The auto sector comes under city gas distribution category, which is fourth in the priority list, after fertiliser, LPG and power.

Importing gas might be the other option, but to create the infrastructure for it in less than one year might not be feasible. India has two LNG terminals-Petronet and Shell- for gas imports, both in Gujarat. However, both Petronet and Shell have legally binding supply agreements with consumers outside Gujarat too. The two terminals deliver 40 million units per day against the overall requirement of 190 million units.

Gujarat accounts for 11 per cent of petrol and diesel sales in the country, so this order will have a major impact of state-run oil retailers in terms of revenues. Shares of Indian Oil, BPCL, and HPCL may fall today. Auto manufacturers may also find it difficult to set up facilities for gas engines within one year time.