No breaching Super Kings' castle

M.S. Dhoni's Class of 2011 sealed a first ever all-win record at home in the IPL, as Chennai Super Kings defeated Kochi Tuskers Kerala by 11 runs at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium on Wednesday.   The result, which assured CSK of a play-off spot, sent the side to the top of the table and snuffed out any chance that KTK might have had of making it past the league stage. With Tuskers appearing flat for large stretches of the contest, the home side was hardly required to resort to the extraordinary — none of its batsmen crossed fifty and no bowler picked up more than the solitary wicket. Dhoni elected to bat, setting in motion...

Read more »

Most-wanted list goof up, an oversight by Mumbai police: Chidambaram

Home Minister P Chidambaram today accepted the inclusion of terror accused Wazhul Kamar Khan in the list of most-wanted fugitives given to Pakistan was a "mistake". He said it was a "genuine error" by Mumbai Police and an "oversight" by the Intelligence Bureau.  There was a mistake. We are not trying to blame anyone. We take responsibility for it," said Mr Chidambaram adding, that the Red-Corner alert should have been cancelled and Wazhul Khan's name deleted from the list. The Home Minister said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was not informed of Wazhul Khan's arrest by the Mumbai police. "It was also a lapse on the...

Read more »

Political journey of Jayalalithaa

In Tamil Nadu, the clash of the titans is all but over. 63 year old J Jayalalithaa, former matinee idol and three time Chief Minister, is back from political exile. As Amma readies to step into office for the fourth time, riding a wave of 2G scam related anti-DMK feeling, a look at the life of one of the most enigmatic politicians of In...

Read more »

Karnataka crisis: Yeddyurappa parades 122 MLAs, says 'majority proved'

New Delhi/Bangalore: Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa has met President Pratibha Patil and has paraded 122 MLAs before her to prove that he has the numbers in the Assembly. The Karnataka Governor issued a press communique soon after defending his decision to recommend President's Rule in the state. Emerging from the meeting, BJP president Nitin Gadkari said they had also requested the President to recall Karnataka Governor HR Bhardwaj. Mr Gadkari said Governor Bhardwaj's "action was unconstitutional", referring to his recommendation that President's Rule be imposed in Karnataka. Mr Gadkari pointed out that Mr Yeddyurappa "has the...

Read more »

Maternal obesity 'could affect child's brain growth'

Washington: Moms-to-be, please try to shed the flab before giving birth, for a new study says that babies born to obese women are at risk for iron deficiency which may, in turn, affect infant's brain development. In non-pregnant adults, obesity-related inflammation hinders the transport of iron through the intestine, raising the risk of iron deficiency anaemia. But, when a woman is pregnant, iron is transferred through the intestine to the placenta, but it is not known how maternal obesity affects newborn iron status. Foetal iron status is important as 50 per cent of the iron needed for infant growth is obtained before birth. In their study,...

Read more »

Medical interns begin hunger strike

The interns began their indefinite hunger strike near KEM hospital in Mumbai.     There are around 2,060 interns in medical colleges across the state.     Around 500 interns have undertaken relay fasting while the rest would be on hunger strike indefinitely till the demands are fulfilled, their representative Guru Raj said.     "We are demanding stipend not less than Rs 13,000 per month and an annual increment of Rs 1,000," he said.      According to doctors at the government-run KEM hospital, services would not be affected because of the strike....

Read more »

Deepika Padukone can’t stop thanking her stars to have landed ‘Rana’

Mumbai: DP got the opportunity of her career by being offered to play superstar Rajnikanth’s leading lady in upcoming flick ‘Rana’. It is the first time the dusky actress will be working in a Tamil film. She revealed her happiness at a press conference by saying, "I will not even call this a dream come true because it seemed so impossible that I did not even dream that this would happen one day.” She is currently busy shooting a song sequence at a studio in Mumbai. She said to a daily, "Friday was my first day of shoot. We are shooting a song sequence to a number tuned by A R Rahman, the composer of the film." Deepika has a lot of respect...

Read more »

Meet Kalki Kashyap

From the start of the ceremony right till the end, both of them seemed mesmerised by each other,” laughed Ishika Mohan Motwane. Director Vikramaditya Motwane’s photographer wife was one of the few guests at actor Kalki Koechlin and filmmaker Anurag Kashyap’s wedding. The ceremony took place on April 30, in Ooty, the hill town where the bride’s French parents have now been living for 30 years. No fairytale affair, the preparations were kept elegant yet simple. The ceremony began at 10.30 am, in accordance with the mahurat. A small baarat party, comprising Kashyap’s family and a few friends like the Motwanes, writer Piyush Mishra and UTV Spotboy’s...

Read more »

Bollywood cheers Osama's death

The world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden is dead. As US President Barack Obama confirmed the news, Bollywood stars tweeted furiously about it. Minissha Lamba tweeted: 'Osama is Dead. 2nd term guaranteed 4 #obama. Trust American's to steal d world's attn away from d #RoyalWedding. Interesting timing.' Ranvir Shorey advised the government of India: 'America leads by example again. Pakistan lies through its teeth again. India clueless again. Dear Govt. of India, in the middle of your bickering with Pakistan, I have two words for you: DAWOOD IBRAHIM.' Shekhar Kapur agreed with him. 'Osama became the mythical dark force that the US rallied...

Read more »

RIM announces new BlackBerry Bold

T-Mobile USA said it will carry the BlackBerry Bold 9900 later this year. Research in Motion is under pressure to update its high-end phones as it's losing out to iPhones and phones running Google Inc.'s Android software. Last week, the company cut its earnings and sales forecasts for the current quarter, saying it's selling fewer and cheaper phones than expected. Its stock plummeted. The fall continued Monday, with the shares losing 55 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $48.10. Like the original Bold, launched in 2008, the 9900 has a keyboard under a 2.8-inch-screen in landscape orientation. It's thinner than before, at just 10.5 millimeters, making...

Read more »

ISRO develops India's fastest supercomputer

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has built India's fastest supercomputer in terms of theoretical peak performance —220 trillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS). K. Radhakrishnan, ISRO Chairman, inaugurated the supercomputer, SAGA-220, at the newly established supercomputing facility, named after Satish Dhawan, of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre here on Monday. Space scientists are using SAGA-220 (Supercomputer for Aerospace with GPU Architecture-220 TeraFLOPS) for solving complex aerospace problems. The supercomputer was fully designed and built by the space centre using commercially available hardware and open-source...

Read more »

India asks Reliance to boost gas output with more wells

Gas production from a key block off the east coast operated by Reliance Industries has fallen further, the upstream regulator said on Monday, adding the company has been asked to drill 11 new wells by April 1, 2012, to boost output. Reliance is pumping less gas than it should from the D6 block of Krishna-Godavari basin, the second biggest gas producer in India after Mumbai High. It was supposed to drill nine wells in this fiscal year. Upstream Regulator SK Srivastava said Reliance has now been asked to drill two extra wells that it failed to drill in 2010/11. Srivastva said Reliance was currently producing 48 Mmscmd gas from the D6 block,...

Read more »

Osama’s wife was human shield against raiders

One of Osama bin Laden’s wives stood between him and U.S. Navy SEALs as the world’s most-wanted terrorist was gunned down in an airborne assault on the al-Qaeda leader’s safe house deep in Pakistan. He was holed up less than a mile (1.6 kilometres) from the country’s military academy and not far from the capital of Islamabad. Details emerged Monday of the life and dramatic death of bin Laden, the day after President Barack Obama made the stunning near-midnight announcement that the al-Qaeda leader had been killed. Mr. Obama, while assured bin Laden probably was in the compound, did not know with certainty that the 10-year hunt for the notorious...

Read more »

India set for ninth rate hike to cool inflation

AFP - India, which has the highest inflation of any large Asian economy, looked set on Tuesday to hike interest rates for a ninth time as it struggles to clamp down on inflation. The central bank, which warned Monday of the "risk to growth from sustained high inflation," has raised rates eight times since March 2010, albeit in gradual, quarter-point steps to minimise the impact on economic growth. But inflation has remained high and some economists expect Reserve Bank of India (RBI) policymakers to move more aggressively when they meet Tuesday. "A 50-basis-point rate rise wouldn't surprise me -- inflation is proving stubbornly difficult...

Read more »

Jihadists: bin Laden death will not mute Jihad call

(Reuters) - Members of Jihadist forums said they prayed the news of Osama bin Laden's death was not true, and hinted at retaliation if it was, in some of the first Islamist reaction to the al Qaeda leader's death. "Oh God, please make this news not true...God curse you Obama," said one message on an Arabic language forum. "Oh Americans ... it is still legal for us to cut your necks." "Osama may be killed but his message of Jihad will never die. Brothers and sisters, wait and see, his death will be a blessing in disguise," said a poster on another Islamist for...

Read more »

Residents of upscale suburb incredulous wanted terrorist was in their midst

No one in the affluent Bilal Town suburb where Osama bin Laden seemed to suspect his presence here. Nor did they see the possibility that a wanted terrorist, let alone the most hunted man in the world, could live so close to one of its famed military institutions. A suburb with large, sometimes garish houses, Bilal Town is one of the most upscale neighbourhoods of Abbottabad, a vacation spot set in the Himalayan foothills and a two-hour drive from the capital, Islamabad, Unlike most north-west cities, the population of Abbottabad, which was founded by a British colonial administrator in 1853, are ethnic Hazaras, not Pashtuns. Osama bin Laden’s...

Read more »

America's Most Wanted: Osama Bin Laden Killed After 13-Year Hunt

The United States had been trying to kill Osama bin Laden for 13 years, since the administration of President Bill Clinton. "Bin Laden has been our national enemy self declared for far longer than any one person in our history," said Richard Clarke, an ABC News contributor who served as a counterterrorism advisor to Clinton and both presidents Bush. For years the trail had gone cold, some thought he had left the region and Pakistani officials even claimed bin Laden must be dead. In the end he was found in a house where he may have been living for as many as six years, almost next door to Pakistani military installations and less than 100...

Read more »

Panel proposes ‘principles and objects' for Lokpal Bill

New Delhi, May 2:  Civil society members on the Lokpal Bill joint drafting committee have submitted two documents outlining “principles and objects” for the proposed law. “The civil society members submitted a document with respect to the objects of the Bill as well as one that enunciated the general principles underlying the Bill,” the Human Resource Development Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, told newspersons after the second meeting here on Monday. Both sides agreed to reflect on the documents. Mr Sibal said it was decided to fast-track the drafting process ahead of the June 30 deadline and the committee had agreed to meet again on May 7,...

Read more »

Back to 9/11, with forgiveness & fear Indian families sigh, don’t celebrate

May 2: For the Yambem family of Imphal, the news of Osama bin Laden’s death brought a sense of calm satisfaction. In faraway Hyderabad, the relatives of Deepika Kumar Sattaluri expressed similar sentiments. The families of some of the NRIs who died in 9/11 were largely restrained in their reactions to the killing of the attack’s mastermind, their relief tempered by fears of reprisals. “This is the greatest day for the family and all those against terrorism. Now that the symbol of terrorism is dead, my brother Jupiter’s soul can rest in peace,” Laba Yambem, Jupiter’s elder brother, said in Imphal. Jupiter, then 41, was supervising breakfast...

Read more »

EC stepped up security in East Midnapore after CPI(M) complaint

Ahead of the fourth phase of Assembly election in West Bengal on May 3, the Election Commission today further strengthened the security arrangement following complaints of threat and terror by the ruling Left Front. “Security arrangement has been revamped further in East Midnapore district following complaint by the LF. There will not be any problem for any voter to exercise franchise in the presence of a huge contingent of central force and State security personnel in the districts going to poll on May 3”, West Bengal CEO Sunil Kumar Gupta said here today. Mr. Gupta said a LF delegation led by CPI(M) leaders, Rabin Deb and Sukhendu Panigrahi,...

Read more »

Better livelihood prospect drives poor Indian women to prostitution

New Delhi - Four out of five female sex workers in India have joined the profession voluntarily; they were not forced or sold into it. Prostitution is just one among several livelihood options available to women from poor backgrounds, says a new survey. The ‘First pan-India survey of sex workers’, conducted by Pune University researchers Rohini Sahni and V Kalyan Shankar, found that 79.4 percent of sex workers (both those who entered the profession directly as well as those with prior experience in other fields) say they entered the profession on their own accord. The remaining were forced (71. per cent), sold into prostitution (2.8 per cent)...

Read more »

Immune System 'Trigger' That Fights Disease Identified

In a welcome development, scientists are now one step closer to understanding the mysteries of how our bodies mount an immune response to fight disease. David Underhill, an associate professor in Cedars-Sinai's Inflammatory Bowel and Immunobiology Research Institute and colleagues have discovered how a molecular receptor on the surface of white blood cells identifies when invading fungi have established direct contact with the cell surface and pose an infectious threat. The receptor called Dectin-1 detects fungi and instructs white blood cells whether to expend the energy needed to devour the invading pathogens. In early stages of infection,...

Read more »

Obese people help thin friends gain weight!

London: Do our friends make us fatter? Yes, according to a new study which has found that thin people who socialise with the obese can put on weight. But, here is the good news. The process can work in reverse too theoretically, says the study. For the study, a team, led by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, examined 32 years of data collected during a research of people`s hearts in Framingham in Massachusetts. Researchers discovered that where two people who are friends for a long time, and where one is heavier than the other, the thinner friend tended to increase in weight by up to 57 per cent over time. The figure was made more even...

Read more »

42.1 million viewers in India watched the royal wedding

New Delhi : The market share of English news channels increased by 15 percent as an estimated 42.1 million viewers in India watched the royal wedding between Prince Williams and Kate Middleton Friday, said rating agency Audience Measurement and Analytics Ltd (aMap). The surprise element of the rating was the viewership among housewives jumping by 25 percent. "Viewership among housewives increased as they were glued to the watch every detail of the wedding ceremony, the designer clothing and the grand affair," Jiniti Shah, vice president, aMap said in a statement Saturday. I...

Read more »

Royal wedding: official photographer reveals how he achieved 'effortless' pictures

The official pictures of William and Kate's wedding were shot to show two families coming together and reveal the couple's love for each other, the photographer Hugo Burnand has said. Speaking at Clarence House in London, Hugo Burnand said he hoped it looked ''effortless, relaxed and friendly''. He said his favourite photograph was one of the newlyweds with the bridesmaids and page boys, but there were only seconds to set it up and the children were coaxed with promises of jelly beans and sweets. The pictures, taken in Buckingham Palace's throne room immediately after the bride and groom arrived from Westminster Abbey, capture the Royal...

Read more »

Sony executives bow in apology for security breach

TOKYO — Sony executives bowed in apology Sunday for a security breach in the company's PlayStation Network that compromised the personal data of some 77 million accounts on the online service. "We deeply apologize for the inconvenience we have caused," said Kazuo Hirai, chief of Sony Corp.'s PlayStation video game unit, who was among the three executives who held their heads low for several seconds at the company's Tokyo headquarters in the traditional style of a Japanese apology. Hirai said parts of the service would be back this week and that the company would beef up security measures. But he and other executives acknowledged that not...

Read more »

Experts: Apple should've addressed concerns sooner

NEW YORK — Apple should have responded much sooner to concerns about location data stored on its iPhones, even if the company didn't have all the answers ready, marketing and crisis-management experts say. The company took a week to deny that the phones track the precise location of their owners, as some users and privacy watchdogs had feared. As soon as it started selling the devices, Apple should have said how it uses, or doesn't use, location data, said Joe Marconi, a DePaul University marketing professor and author of "Crisis Marketing: When Bad Things Happen to Good Companies." "The whole problem could have been a non-problem if Apple...

Read more »

Delhi Metro to use longer girders to expedite construction

To save time and conform to the latest international technologies, the Delhi Metro will use 25-metre long girders on some of the elevated viaducts to be constructed for the ambitious Phase-III, work on which will begin after the Union Government approves the project. Using 25-metre long girders in the Phase-III will save time as well as minimise the inconvenience caused to people during the construction of the project, which will see another 107 km of the national capital getting connected with the Metro. Delhi Metro had used 25-metre long girders in constructing the Airport Express Corridor, which was completed in just 27 months. In the...

Read more »

Indian pilots' strike enters fourth day

FLAGSHIP carrier Air India was forced to cancel most of its domestic flights by a pilots' strike over pay that entered its fourth day. The financially ailing state-run carrier, which says it has lost $6 million in revenues so far due to the strike, said it was operating just 39 domestic flights out of its regular 320, according to the Press Trust of India. The airline is "operating on only trunk routes" to major Indian cities, an Air India spokesman said. "We do not have any pilots," he added. The airline, which at the start of the strike had been able to operate most flights, has also scaled back international operations. More than 800...

Read more »

India set for ninth rate hike to cool inflation

NEW DELHI: India, which has the highest inflation of any large Asian economy, looks set this week to hike interest rates for a ninth time despite mounting concern over the impact of monetary tightening. The central bank has raised rates eight times since March 2010, albeit in gradual, quarter-point steps to minimise the impact on economic growth. But inflation has remained high and some economists expect Reserve Bank of India (RBI) policymakers to move more aggressively when they meet on Tuesday. "A 50-basis-point rate rise wouldn't surprise me -- inflation is proving stubbornly difficult to reduce," Deepak Lalwani, head of London-based...

Read more »

Critics do not know the sacrifices made by founders: Narayana Murthy

A day after the Infosys board announced leadership changes, its Chairman and Chief Mentor, Mr N.R. Narayana Murthy, took a swipe at those who criticised the IT giant for favouring founders for the top jobs in the company. Speaking to Business Line, Mr Murthy said critics do not realise the sacrifices the founders and their respective families made while building the company. “There are many people who comment on founders versus professionals. Unfortunately, none of them knows the kind of sacrifice the founder professionals made in the beginning.” Explaining the hardship the founders and their families underwent in the early days of the company,...

Read more »

9/11: The Day Osama Shook The World

New Delhi :   On September 11, 2001,  a series of coordinated suicide attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda upon the United States.  On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda  terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger  jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both towers collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into  The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington DC. The...

Read more »