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Press Council of India (PCI) has issued revised guidelines for print and electronic media while reporting on HIV/AIDS. These guidelines, formulated in collaboration with UNAIDS and field activists, including those of Population Foundation of India and Centre for Advocacy and Research, would also enable health service providers and affected persons to interact with media persons reporting on the issue, a Haryana government spokesperson said here today.

Chandigarh : "The State of Punjab is sitting over a list of around 1,600 proclaimed offenders, who are settled abroad in various countries including United States of America, United Kingdom and Canada", said Vikram Bajwa, President, Indian Overseas Congress, while addressing a press conference here today. Bajwa, along with Amarjit Kaur Bhinder, widow of bombed plane Kanishka's co-pilot SS Bhinder and his brother Kamaljit Singh Bhinder, addressed reporters in the wake of the forthcoming three-days Pravasi Divas, to be held in New Delhi from January 7. Bajwa said the Indian Overseas Congress has appealed to the Indian government and to the Government of Punjab as well, to upload the list of 1,600 proclaimed offenders on their websites, so that people who are settled abroad and are either falsely implicated in some cases or have been made POs by mistake, make seek legal remedies. "In absence of such information, what happens is that a NRI comes to India, and is detained at the airport. He receives the shock of his life, when he is told that he is a proclaimed offender in a case registered against him 10 years or 20 years ago. If the list is uploaded, at least the genuine people, who had to undergo such harassment, could seek legal remedies and come back to their motherland", Bajwa added.

Cyber Crime police on Friday evening arrested an internet hacker, Vangalapudi Vijaya Kumar, 23, for swindling Rs 30,600 from an HDFC Bank customer. Vijaya Kumar, a resident of Boduppal and a native of Krishna district, secured the internet banking user name and password of a cyber cafe visitor. He used the details to purchase online a mobile phone (Nokia N-97) worth Rs 30,600 on December 3. On December 8, he sold the mobile instrument for Rs 20,000 to one Shahnawaz Zubair, a mobile vender at Jagdish Market, Abids. Through the IMEI number of the phone, the duo were traced and arrested, an official press release said.

IT is 30 years since a Congress Member of Parliament, V.N. Gadgil, suggested an Act for the protection of privacy, designed, no doubt, to curb press exposure of the wrongdoings of politicians. In reality, it is all but impossible to draft a statute that strikes a fair balance between people's right to know and the protection of a person's privacy. In India, as in the United Kingdom, there is no tort of privacy. India's law of torts (that is, civil wrongs punishable in damages) is based on case law, English and foreign. However, the Supreme Court of India has inferred right to privacy from the ones explicitly guaranteed. Article 21 of the Constitution contains a guarantee of personal liberty and it is obvious that personal liberty also involves the right to privacy.

the managing committee of the group housing society now finds itself in the middle of another controversy: for making it mandatory for skilled workers to furnish their fingerprints before entering the complex. The managing committee has been warned by the police to stop the illegal practice. "We received an e-mail from two members of the society about the practice being carried out, following which we issued the warning. As per law, only government investigative agencies have the right to take fingerprints. We will look into the possibility of taking legal action once we receive a complaint from those whose fingerprints have been taken.