Week in Review: Aug 30-Sept 5

Elephants got national heritage status.

Six-hundred and fifty-six Indians have made it to Interpol’s most wanted list in the last five years. Most of the crimes were related to terrorism or raping a minor. One in every five fatal accidents in the country was found to occur in Mumbai, making it the most accident prone city in India. “We ape progressed nations when it comes to technology and use sleek cars, trendy bikes and all sorts of gadgets but we do not follow their good traffic sense,” a traffic official said. PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said she had no interest in becoming Ratan Tata’s successor after the Tata Group head retires this year. “I love my job,” she said. The Bombay High Court admonished PepsiCo for using expired ingredients to manufacture some of their products. “Would you do this in the United States?” Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud asked.

Pakistan’s cricket team was being investigated for match fixing after it came to light that members of the team were paid upto £150,000 to throw matches against England. London-based Pakistani businessman Mazhar Majeed was caught in a sting operation by British tabloid News of the World for accepting money in exchange for “no balls” by Pakistani cricket players. “Thee are only a few players who are genuine and actually here for love of the game,” he was quoted as saying. “A lot of them are just looking for money, women and food”. The Indian government was looking into legalising gambling in sports. Embattled former Indian Premier League chairman Lalit Modi was found to have bought a private jet with Rs80 crore of IPL money.

Eight Indian sportsmen, including Olympic wrestler Rajiv Tomar, failed a drug test just ahead of the Commonwealth Games. A. R. Rahman’s anthem for the CWG was widely panned for not being “impressive”, and the Indian cycling team had yet to receive the imported cycles ordered for the event. Caving to pressure due to the number of international delegates—among them US president Barack Obama who is known to use a BlackBerry—coming to India in the next couple of months, the government gave Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry handset, a 60-day extension to comply with security norms. South Mumbai received its highest recorded rainfall in 50 years; and elephants, which researchers discovered were scared of ants, received national heritage status in India.

A new report predicted that India will have 237 million Internet users by 2015, as many as the United States, but far less than China, with a predicted Internet population of 650 million. Breaking her previous record, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi was elected as the president of the political party for a fourth consecutive term. A government study found that the population of young girls in India was falling as compared to the population of young boys, which it warned could lead to “great social unrest”. Maharashtra had the highest concentration of slum dwellers, with nearly 20 per cent of the country’s total slum population. Speaking about the government’s ambitious plan to make India slum-free by the next decade, an official said, “It appears that we will miss the target.”