LIRC@SFIT

Get ready for your to-read list to reach even more ridiculous lengths. Love to read? Then go ahead and buy as many books as you like. Experts from scholars to poets to  tidying sensation Marie Kondo  all insist that  owning more books than you could possibly ever read  says great things about your mind. The only constraints are the size of your bookshelf and your wallet.  Except maybe that last one is as much of a constraint as you think. Thanks to some hard work by the New York Public Library, there's a new way to get more titles for your to-read list for way less cash.  It's not just the classics that are out of copyright.  Everyone knows that some very old books are no longer under copyright and therefore available for free. That means you can get the likes of  Shakespeare  and  Jane Eyre  for little to nothing (depending on whether you're a sucker for a fancy cover). But according to  a super helpful ...

Source: Maharashtra Times (Mumbai) dated August 22, 2019

Inc. today opened its largest campus building globally in the city of Hyderabad as it prepares for a furious expansion and battle with nemesis Walmart Inc. in one of the world’s fastest-growing retail markets. The Seattle-headquartered company is making an ambitious push in India, the last major retail frontier still primarily reliant on smallscale neighbourhood and mom-and-pop stores. “E-commerce is so small in India relative to the total consumption, less than 3%,” said Amit Agarwal, Amazon’s country manager for India. AFP■ The campus in Hyderabad was built over three years and can accommodate up to 15,000 workers. The largely untapped country is critical to the global domination plans of both Amazon and Walmart, the latter of which spent $16 billion last year to buy India’s biggest startup, retailer Flipkart. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has so far pledged $5.5 billion for its India operations. Built in Hyderabad over three years, the new campus is Amazon’s first owned building outsid...

The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry is considering setting up a specialised body, India Rankings Society, to rank Indian education institutions and help them improve in areas where they are found lagging. The All India Council of Technical Education approved this in a meeting on Wednesday. In 2015, the HRD ministry launched the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) to address the need for an authentic ranking mechanism for educational institutions. In the absence of a specialized body, the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) was given the task. “Although the NBA has done a commendable job, it was assigned this task in addition to its already defined job of accreditation. Secondly, it is envisaged that the specialized rankings society will also guide institutions to perform better on the parameters on which they are found lagging,”a senior HRD official said on condition of anonymity. The plan is to have universities, engineering, medical, pharmacy, and law c...

TEACHERS SAID THAT IT IS UNFAIR TO LINK THEIR PERFORMANCE WITH THE RESULTS OF STUDENTS MUMBAI: A recently-proposed pilot study by the government to check the feasibility of linking salary increments and promotions of teachers to the academic performance of students has been criticised by educationists. In a letter issued by the education department on August 19, officials across various districts in the state have been asked to conduct the pilot on 25 teachers in the first phase. The move aims to understand if their performance can be assessed after looking at the learning outcomes of their students for three years. “Designated officers have to study the feasibility of the move with 25 teachers in their respective districts and submit a report about the same by August 30,” reads the letter. Teachers slammed the move and said that it is unfair to link their performance with the results of students. “While teachers do take efforts to ensure that their class gets the best possible result...

Source: DNA (Mumbai) dated August 22, 2019

Source: DNA (Mumbai) dated August 22, 2019