40 feared killed as bus hits oil tanker, catches fire in Andhra Pradesh

HYDERABAD: Forty passengers were feared dead when a private volvo bus from Bangalore to Hyderabad caught fire on the Mahbubngar national highway-44 during early hours on Wednesday. According to the Kothakota Circle inspector S.Venkateshwarlu and the eye witnesses, the incident took place around 5.30am. The volvo bus belonging to the Jabbar travels (AP02TA0963) coming from Bangalore to Hyderabad met with an fire accident nearly Palem village of Kothakota mandal. The driver and the helper of the bus along with other three passengers escaped with thirty per cent injures. The rest of the passengers got charred to death, according to initial reports which the police have got. Mahabubnagar district collector M.Girija Shankar said five passengers were undergoing treatment at a hospital at Vanaparti. He along with superintendent of police Nagendra Kumar visited the scene. They said a list of only 29 passengers was received from the private bus travels. Other passengers boarded the bus enroute. With heat emanating from the bus, the officials had a tough time trying to retrieve the dead bodies from the bus. The district administration is trying to identify the dead bodies. The bodies were completely charred, police said. Police were approaching the travel agency to know the occupancy in the bus. CM, N Kiran Kumar Reddy and district minister D K Aruna expressed shock at the incident and expressed their condolences to the bereaved families. Five persons who survived with 30 per cent injuries were shifted to the DRDL hospital, Hyderabad. The condition of three among them is set to be critical. The bus left Bangalore at 10 pm on Tuesday and was scheduled to reach Hyderabad at 6.30am.

Air India serving unpasteurized milk on longhaul flights

MUMBAI: Air India has been compromising on the quality of milk served on board certain long-haul flights. For the last 10 days, instead of uploading milk sealed in tetra packs as was

the regular practice, Air India flights from Mumbai used unpasteurized milk procured from local vendors. These are filled in used plastic bottles and uploaded onto the aircraft for flights from Mumbai to the Middle East, Newark and London. Under the new practice, 10 litres of fresh milk procured from local vendors are uploaded per flight. But most of it is left unused despite the demand as flight attendants opt not to serve it. Due to the time difference between production and consumption, airline food is supposed to undergo strict quality checks for possible microbiological contamination. "Unlike milk in tetra packs, which can be served without boiling, this milk needs to be boiled as it is not pasteurized," said a flight attendant requesting anonymity. AI aircraft have no microwave ovens in economy class galleys, so crew use those in the executive class, but not all requests for milk can be attended to. Besides, older planes like the 400-seaterBoeing 747 aircraft have only one microwave oven per aircraft. "Every flight is an ordeal these days as it is not easy to turn down passengers," the source said. An Air India spokesperson denied the allegation, saying Air India procures milk in tetra packs from reputed vendors. "However for the cereal service, milk is procured by caterers in closed containers. We don't procure anything in used plastic bottles. We have microwave/hot cup facilities on board to heat the milk and also there are enough facilities to keep the milk chilled. All precautions are taken to avoid any contamination," the spokesperson added. TOI has copies of flight catering receipts which say that no tetra packs were available and so milk in plastic bottles has been uploaded. Further, the only heating equipment in the economy class are 'hot cups', gadgets which dispense hot water for beverages. "One can't pour anything other than water into these because of the heating equipment within,'' said a cabin crew member. But there is no lack of ingenuity. "We usually empty cola cans, clean them and pour in milk. The cans are then immersed in the hot cups filled with water, the only way milk can be heated,'' said the crew. When tetra packs were in use, the average milk consumption was 6-7 litres on five-hour long flights like Mumbai-Jeddah, and higher on routes to London, Newark. While it was especially sought by passengers travelling with infants, other passengers have not been affected as the airline dispenses sachets of dairy creamers for tea and coffee. The tetra packs were reportedly stopped as Air India defaulted on payments to the milk supplier.

Ad on popular portal: Woman on sale for Rs 2,000

KOLKATA: Sub kuch bikta hai (Everything Sells). When OLX India, which claims to be the next generation of free online classifieds, adopted this slogan, those in charge of the portal may not have thought it would come to this. On October 26, somebody uploaded the photograph of a young woman in an advertisement and offered her for Rs 2,000. The name and telephone number of a contact person was also given. Captioned '22Years girl Kolkata', the classified advertisement said: "I am Soumen Barui i am the ajent of the girl. If u interest enjoying this girl please contract me. please not on fake call." When Barui was contacted on the telephone number published, he lost his cool initially and said that it was a wrong number. On being told that the caller wasn't interested whether he is actually an 'ajent', he calmed down. "You don't know how many calls I have received since Sunday. People have been calling up and asking about some girl. Finally, I checked the internet and realized that somebody had played this prank on me. I don't know why somebody would want to cause me such distress. Finally, I lodged a complaint with the Bijpur police station in Kanchrapara. I realized that if I don't do so, I am liable to get into legal trouble. I shall visit the police station on Wednesday again and insist that the authorities try and find out who the prankster is," Barui said. TOI got in touch with Amarjit Batra, country manager, OLX India, on Tuesday afternoon. He wasn't even aware that something like this has taken place. Keeping the line on hold, he checked the site, and was taken aback by what he discovered. "We have filters. We have a dedicated team of people who go through advertisements. However, this is a very popular site and sometimes things like these do manage to get through. Thank you for informing us. We shall get this advertisement removed immediately," he said. True to his word, the advertisement was removed within the next quarter of an hour. However, a check revealed that portals such as OLX are a happy hunting ground for pranksters and mischief-makers. No authentication is required to upload an advertisement and there are no checks. Batra admitted that there aren't any checks when advertisements are uploaded. "We are a free portal and it is much like the social networking sites that people use. We do go through

the advertisements only after they have been uploaded. That is why we don't take any legal responsibility for whatever appears," he added.