Blind student cracks public service exam
Beno Zephine, 24, is the first blind girl from Tamil Nadu to crack this year’s Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams getting the 343 rank in India.
Beno juggled her work as a probationary bank officer and preparing for her Ph D thesis to study for the UPSC. She studied through Braille-enabled textbooks and screen reader software. Besides this, her parents and friends also read aloud question banks and other texts.
“I learnt to balance both and understood how to use my time efficiently in the process,” she said. Her next aim is to enter the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
Born into a middle-class family and blind from birth, Beno did her schooling and college in Chennai.
The UPSC is India’s central agency and its exams are considered one of India’s toughest with a pass percentage of 0.1%-0.3%.
Coimbatore gets its first car museum
The city of Coimbatore got its first car museum recently that has about 70 vintage and classic cars from all over the world on display at President Hall on Avinashi Road.
Donated by the GD Naidu Charities and titled Gedee Museum, the display has cars of British, German, French, Japanese and American make spread out over 19,000 sq ft.
Some of the cars are Rolls Royce 20 (four door convertible) made in 1925, Dodge Brothers - Victory Six produced in 1929, DKW-F7 Meisterklasse (two-door sedan) produced in 1938 and BMW Isetta 250 made in 1955.
The museum’s agenda is to show the evolution of the automobile from the first motorised carriage to modern day convertibles. There is also a separate display of all the engines manufactured for cars in the past century.
Road caves in due to tunnelling for metro rail
A portion of a road caved in on Poonamallee High road creating a crater due to underground tunnelling work being done by Metro Rail authorities in Chennai.
The artificial crater was carelessly covered with a metal sheet and a car with two occupants got trapped inside the following day. The car was pulled out with the help of two cranes. The car owners plan to sue Afcons, the sub-contractor construction company in charge of that area of metro work.
Eyewitnesses said it was fortunate that a bus behind the car had not followed thus preventing a major accident. The tunnelling work has previously caused similar accidents and the company faces several court cases for negligence.
Chennai Metro Rail project is expected to be completed within a few weeks.
Tamil Nadu may get 12 smart cities
Tamil Nadu may get 12 smart cities under the federal government’s Smart Cities Mission that has allocated 100 cities in the country.
The state has sent a delegation led by G Prakash, director of municipal administration to New Delhi to press the demand. The cities cover Thanjavur, Vellore, Dindigul, Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchi and others.
The Smart Cities project was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to urbanise tier-II cities and take the pressure off Indian metros. It is also a project to improve housing, city beautification and state-of-art infrastructure.
Sharp rise in sale of helmets
The state government’s decision to make helmets compulsory for two-wheel riders from July 1 has led to an increase in the sale of the product all over Tamil Nadu.
In Madurai, police distributed Mahatma Gandhi’s biographies to bike riders wearing helmets in Goripalayam area.
In Vazhapadi area in Salem district, a shop selling helmets offered free mobile phones for buyers.
