Kerala girl emerges topper in civil services exam

Thiruvananthapuram: Haritha V Kumar, who topped the All-India Civil Services Examination, initially did not believe it was true as she thought her friends had played a prank.

'Initially, I could not believe it was true. I thought I was being fooled by my friends who called me to congratulate me,' Haritha told a Malayalam TV channel from Faridabad.

Haritha, who is already an officer in the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and posted at Faridabad, clinched the top rank in the civil services examination in her fourth attempt.

'I thank my teachers, well-wishers and friends for my success,' said Haritha, who hails from Kerala's capital of Thiruvananthapuram.

'This victory is the result of her hard work, dedication and determination. We thank God and all those who have helped her,' Haritha's parents said.

An engineering graduate, Haritha chose economics and Malayalam as her main subjects for the civil service.

It is after two decades that a candidate from Kerala has emerged topper in the All-India Civil Services Examination.

V Sriram from Kochi secured the second rank and Albi John Verghese from Muvvattupuzha got the fourth rank in the examination held in 2012. PTI

Kerala girl emerges topper in civil services exam

Thiruvananthapuram: Haritha V Kumar, who topped the All-India Civil Services Examination, initially did not believe it was true as she thought her friends had played a prank.

'Initially, I could not believe it was true. I thought I was being fooled by my friends who called me to congratulate me,' Haritha told a Malayalam TV channel from Faridabad.

Haritha, who is already an officer in the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and posted at Faridabad, clinched the top rank in the civil services examination in her fourth attempt.

'I thank my teachers, well-wishers and friends for my success,' said Haritha, who hails from Kerala's capital of Thiruvananthapuram.

'This victory is the result of her hard work, dedication and determination. We thank God and all those who have helped her,' Haritha's parents said.

An engineering graduate, Haritha chose economics and Malayalam as her main subjects for the civil service.

It is after two decades that a candidate from Kerala has emerged topper in the All-India Civil Services Examination.

V Sriram from Kochi secured the second rank and Albi John Verghese from Muvvattupuzha got the fourth rank in the examination held in 2012. PTI

RBI cuts key policy rate by 0.25 percent

Mumbai: Sticking to its cautious stance, the Reserve Bank today cut the key interest rate by just 0.25 per cent to 7.25 per cent and kept the liquidity enhancing cash reserve requirement unchanged, disappointing the industry and stock market. The RBI in its annual monetary policy statement said there would be modest improvement in the country's economic growth to 5.7 per cent in the current fiscal, as against the decade's low of 5 per cent in 2012-13. Justifying the limited easing, RBI Governor D Subbarao said the 'monetary policy action, by itself, cannot revive growth. It needs to be supplemented by efforts towards easing the supply bottlenecks, improving governance and stepping public investment'.

The BSE benchmark Sensex dropped by half a per cent in the immediate aftermath of the policy announcement. The upside risks to inflation, which cooled to a three- year low in March, 'still remain significant' in the near term on suppressed inflation on the energy front, Subbarao added. 'Overall, the balance of risks stemming from the Reserve Bank's assessment of the growth-inflation dynamic yields little space for further policy easing,' he said. The decision to leave the CRR unchanged seems to have been driven by an improvement in the liquidity deficit, as the banks are now drawing around Rs 84,000 crore from the
overnight window compared to Rs 1.8 lakh crore late last fiscal. 

RBI expects inflation to hover broadly around the 5.5 per cent mark in the current fiscal and said it will deploy 'all instruments at command' to bring it down to 5 per cent by March next year. Referring to the Cobrapost sting on the country's top three private banks allegedly helping launder money, the RBI said the ongoing investigations have underlined the need for better regulatory compliance by banks.

RBI cuts key policy rate by 0.25 percent

Mumbai: Sticking to its cautious stance, the Reserve Bank today cut the key interest rate by just 0.25 per cent to 7.25 per cent and kept the liquidity enhancing cash reserve requirement unchanged, disappointing the industry and stock market. The RBI in its annual monetary policy statement said there would be modest improvement in the country's economic growth to 5.7 per cent in the current fiscal, as against the decade's low of 5 per cent in 2012-13. Justifying the limited easing, RBI Governor D Subbarao said the 'monetary policy action, by itself, cannot revive growth. It needs to be supplemented by efforts towards easing the supply bottlenecks, improving governance and stepping public investment'.

The BSE benchmark Sensex dropped by half a per cent in the immediate aftermath of the policy announcement. The upside risks to inflation, which cooled to a three- year low in March, 'still remain significant' in the near term on suppressed inflation on the energy front, Subbarao added. 'Overall, the balance of risks stemming from the Reserve Bank's assessment of the growth-inflation dynamic yields little space for further policy easing,' he said. The decision to leave the CRR unchanged seems to have been driven by an improvement in the liquidity deficit, as the banks are now drawing around Rs 84,000 crore from the
overnight window compared to Rs 1.8 lakh crore late last fiscal. 

RBI expects inflation to hover broadly around the 5.5 per cent mark in the current fiscal and said it will deploy 'all instruments at command' to bring it down to 5 per cent by March next year. Referring to the Cobrapost sting on the country's top three private banks allegedly helping launder money, the RBI said the ongoing investigations have underlined the need for better regulatory compliance by banks.

Picture books can boost your child's vocabulary

London: A study has claimed books having photographs but no words prove ideal for building children's language skills. And, the parents can help their kids the best if they used such books for the bedtime story.

According to experts, parents turning to wordless storybooks end up spending time discussing the pictures and answering their toddler's questions -- exposing them to complicated words, Daily Mail reported.

Psychologists from the University of Waterloo, Canada, looked at 25 mothers as they read their children a set of bedtime stories.

They found the mothers used more advanced language when they picked up a picture book compared to a book with words.

Study author Daniela O'Neill said: 'Too often parents will dismiss picture storybooks, especially when they are wordless, as not real reading or just for fun.

'But these findings show that reading picture storybooks with kids exposes them to the kind of talk that is really important for children to hear.'

O'Neill said while reading the picture story, 'we would hear mums say things such as 'where do you think the squirrel is going to go?' or 'we saw a squirrel this morning in the backyard'.'

'But we didn't hear this kind of complex talk as often with vocabulary books, where mentioning just the name of the animal, for example, was more common.'

However, O'Neill also said books of all kinds could build children's language and literacy skills, 'but they do so perhaps in different ways'.

Picture books can boost your child's vocabulary

London: A study has claimed books having photographs but no words prove ideal for building children's language skills. And, the parents can help their kids the best if they used such books for the bedtime story.

According to experts, parents turning to wordless storybooks end up spending time discussing the pictures and answering their toddler's questions -- exposing them to complicated words, Daily Mail reported.

Psychologists from the University of Waterloo, Canada, looked at 25 mothers as they read their children a set of bedtime stories.

They found the mothers used more advanced language when they picked up a picture book compared to a book with words.

Study author Daniela O'Neill said: 'Too often parents will dismiss picture storybooks, especially when they are wordless, as not real reading or just for fun.

'But these findings show that reading picture storybooks with kids exposes them to the kind of talk that is really important for children to hear.'

O'Neill said while reading the picture story, 'we would hear mums say things such as 'where do you think the squirrel is going to go?' or 'we saw a squirrel this morning in the backyard'.'

'But we didn't hear this kind of complex talk as often with vocabulary books, where mentioning just the name of the animal, for example, was more common.'

However, O'Neill also said books of all kinds could build children's language and literacy skills, 'but they do so perhaps in different ways'.

Registration fees face steep hike

Pathanamthitta: The registration department has hiked the fee for every service and the new charges came into force from May 1. The department official pointed out that its after one and half decade that fee is being hiked in such a manner. 

The fee for liability certificate faces huge hike as when earlier the fee for the same was Rs 5 for an year, now it Rs 110 for certificate up to five years. The fee for copy of documents is Rs 310 and earlier it was Rs 7 for 100 words. For searching documents, fee is Rs 100 for five years and earlier it was Rs 1. The fee for copy sheets, which was at Rs 1, is Rs 10 now. For registration during holiday, Rs 500 needs to b e given which was at Rs 100. 

Registration fees face steep hike

Pathanamthitta: The registration department has hiked the fee for every service and the new charges came into force from May 1. The department official pointed out that its after one and half decade that fee is being hiked in such a manner. 

The fee for liability certificate faces huge hike as when earlier the fee for the same was Rs 5 for an year, now it Rs 110 for certificate up to five years. The fee for copy of documents is Rs 310 and earlier it was Rs 7 for 100 words. For searching documents, fee is Rs 100 for five years and earlier it was Rs 1. The fee for copy sheets, which was at Rs 1, is Rs 10 now. For registration during holiday, Rs 500 needs to b e given which was at Rs 100. 

Pak prosecutor handling Mumbai attack case shot dead

Islamabad: A senior prosecutor handling the 26/11 Mumbai attack case and Benazir Bhutto assassination case was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen in the Pakistani capital today, police said. Gunmen riding a motorcycle fired at the car of Federal

Investigation Agency prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfizar Ali in the busy commercial area of Karachi Company at 7.30 am. Ali, who was driving, was hit by several bullets and lost control of the car. The vehicle hit a woman crossing the road and she too died later in hospital. His bodyguard, Frontier Corps trooper Farman Ali, was injured in the attack. 

Ali was heading for an anti-terrorism court in the garrison city of Rawalpindi for a hearing of the Bhutto assassination case when he was attacked, his son Nisar told the media. The prosecutor and his bodyguard were taken to the state-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences. Some doctors said Ali was killed instantly as several bullets had hit him in the face.The gunmen escaped after the brazen shooting. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. Ali's son Nisar and unnamed colleagues were quoted by TV news channels as saying that the prosecutor had been receiving threats from a banned extremist group for some time. 

His colleagues said he had continued pursing high-profile terrorism cases despite these threats. The prosecutor was gunned down at a time when there have been important developments in both the Mumbai attack case and Bhutto assassination case.
On April 13, a private witness from Karachi had identified Shahid Jamil Riaz, one of the accused in the Mumbaiattack case, as the person who had bought inflatable boats used by the terrorists who assaulted India's financial hub in November 2008.
The Federal Investigation Agency had recently begun interrogating former president Pervez Musharraf over the 2007 assassination of Bhutto. PTI

Pak prosecutor handling Mumbai attack case shot dead

Islamabad: A senior prosecutor handling the 26/11 Mumbai attack case and Benazir Bhutto assassination case was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen in the Pakistani capital today, police said. Gunmen riding a motorcycle fired at the car of Federal

Investigation Agency prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfizar Ali in the busy commercial area of Karachi Company at 7.30 am. Ali, who was driving, was hit by several bullets and lost control of the car. The vehicle hit a woman crossing the road and she too died later in hospital. His bodyguard, Frontier Corps trooper Farman Ali, was injured in the attack. 

Ali was heading for an anti-terrorism court in the garrison city of Rawalpindi for a hearing of the Bhutto assassination case when he was attacked, his son Nisar told the media. The prosecutor and his bodyguard were taken to the state-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences. Some doctors said Ali was killed instantly as several bullets had hit him in the face.The gunmen escaped after the brazen shooting. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. Ali's son Nisar and unnamed colleagues were quoted by TV news channels as saying that the prosecutor had been receiving threats from a banned extremist group for some time. 

His colleagues said he had continued pursing high-profile terrorism cases despite these threats. The prosecutor was gunned down at a time when there have been important developments in both the Mumbai attack case and Bhutto assassination case.
On April 13, a private witness from Karachi had identified Shahid Jamil Riaz, one of the accused in the Mumbaiattack case, as the person who had bought inflatable boats used by the terrorists who assaulted India's financial hub in November 2008.
The Federal Investigation Agency had recently begun interrogating former president Pervez Musharraf over the 2007 assassination of Bhutto. PTI