Kanimozhi's stay in jail continues

A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court today deferred hearing on the bail application of DMK MP Kanimozhi and Kalignar TV chief Sharad Kumar till 17 October in the 2G spectrum case. Kanimozhi's counsel Sushil Kumar told CBI special judge OP Saini: 'We want to argue on the bail application only after the court frames charges against my client (Kanimozhi) in the scam.'

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Sharad Kumar made the same submissions. The court will hear arguments on other five bail pleas in the case on Monday. Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK president M Karunanidhi, has been in jail since 20 May. The DMK MP on 16 September had filed a fresh bail plea before a CBI special court. Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar, managing director of Kalaignar TV Pvt Ltd, a DMK-run television channel, were named by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as co-conspirators in the 2G spectrum scam. In August, Kanimozhi had reportedly told a CBI court that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram were fully aware of the 2G license allocations and had decided with the now jailed telecom minister A Raja not to auction these. The CBI on Friday filed written replies opposing the bail applications of five accused persons in the 2G spectrum scam case, while leaving it to the special court's discretion to decide on the bail pleas of Kanimozhi and Cineyug Films promoter Karim Morani. While Kanimozhi sought bail on the ground that she was a woman and mother, Morani cited ill-health. Section 437 of the Criminal Procedure Code allows bail for those 'under the age of 16, or is a woman, or is sick, or infirm.' The CBI opposed the bail applications of Sharad Kumar, Raja's private secretary R K Chandolia, Swan Telecom promoter Shahid Usman Balwa and Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables promoters Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal. The agency, in separate replies, cited the order of the Supreme Court, which, while dismissing Kanimozhi's bail plea, had given the accused liberty to move bail applications in the special court after it passed orders on framing of charges.

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'I am ready to go nude' Padmapriya

Thirst for money makes these babes willing to go even nude infront of camera and later they may cry foul like what Sona is doing now!

As of now Padmapriya has no job in Kollywood and is confined to Malayalam movies.  As Malayalam movie industry known for less pay, Padmapriya is still eyeing an opportunity in Kollywood.

"If I get any oppportunity to act in Tamil movies, I am even willing to go nude, if the story demands the same. I am ready for any sort of role that may be demanded." threatens Padmapriya.

She continued "Girl and glamour cannot be separated. If there is no glamour in a girl, then you will not enjoy the beauty in the girl."

When HosurOnline asked, why she is not acting in any movie including Malayalam, she replied "I have temporarily stopped acting on my own, though daily producers and directors stand in queue infront of my house.  I am planning to fly to US to further my education"

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Axis Bank rolls out lifetime fixed rate home loan

Axis Bank, a late entrant to home loans, has launched a lifetime fixed rate home loan at an interest rate of 11.75% for a 20-year tenure. This is the cheapest fixed rate loan available in the market and is 250 basis points lower than the fixed rate product being offered by the bank till now. Most banks charge 13-13.5% interest for fixed rate home loans.

Axis Bank is aiming to woo customers uneasy over rising interest rates. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has raised policy rates 12 times since March 2010. The repo rate, or the rate at which banks borrow from the central bank, has since gone up by 350 basis points.

"This is a pure fixed rate loan with no fine print. Customers would have the option of migrating to a floating rate product. However, it would come at a fee of up to 2%," said Jairam Sridharan, senior vice-president and head (consumer lending and payments) at Axis Bank. The bank runs a home loan portfolio of 20,000 crore of which a major proportion is floating rate loans.

Should borrowers bite Axis Bank's 11.75% fixed rate offer?

"I wouldn't recommend this product to any customer as we seem to have reached the peak of the high interest rate cycle," said Kartik Jhaveri, founder & director, Transcend India Private Limited. "It would be advisable for customers to pay half a per cent more and opt for a floating rate home loan product," Jhaveri added.

"Interest rates have to come down with the slowdown in global economya¦(which is) also looming over India. Locking into a fixed rate at this point is a no-no," says Suresh Sadagopan, certified financial planner, Ladder 7 Financial Advisories.

MOST CUSTOMERS PREPAY LOANS

Most customers prepay loans within 10 years. This loan comes with a 2% prepayment penalty. If a customer prepays the loan, she will end up on the losing side. Even if she locks into such a loan, she will be paying a higher interest cost," Sadagopan adds.

Banks do not charge a prepayment penalty on floating rate housing loans, especially if the borrowers pay off the dues from their own savings. Under 'Nishchint', Axis Bank will offer loans up to 85% for properties valued at up to 20 lakh and 80% for properties costing above 20 lakh, the lender said in a statement.

"The bank will charge a prepayment penalty of 2% on the outstanding amount," the statement added. Analysts are wary of the product as they are concerned about how the bank would raise resources for 20 years. Currently, no bank is marketing fixed rate home loan products aggressively.

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Claire Danes sets up in 'Homeland'

It's "confusing" to talk about her character, CIA operations officer Carrie Mathison, because there's still so much to learn: Four episodes are left to shoot in Charlotte, and "these are not a casual four," says Danes, 32, who, sitting in the airy penthouse of the Hudson Hotel, has swapped Carrie's sensible pantsuits for something more akin to Danes' downtown homeland: black ice-pick-heeled stilettos and a sleeveless sheath from her "buddy," Narciso Rodriguez. "There's nothing casual about this show."

Thanks to a tip gleaned from a tense meeting with an Iraqi prisoner, Agent Mathison suspects that a recently rescued eight-year American POW, now heralded as a hero in his homeland, has turned al-Qaeda terrorist. Throw in a cheating military wife, a Saudi prince, high-end hookers — and a sexy, premium-cable patina — and you get a plot and a pace that's "cracky," Danes says. "We are dying to know what happens next. We're just begging for scraps — from the boom man, from the hair woman."questions with Claire Danes

If it sounds like 24— if 24 starred, say, Jackie Bauer — that's no accident: The executive producers of Homeland had a hand in the Fox hit. But where Jack's action was hugely hands-on, Carrie's conflict is partly in her head: This spy is secretly battling bipolar disorder. Which doesn't mean she's not packing, says Danes, a 24 virgin who took a field trip to Langley, Va., and dived into psychology books to prepare for the part. Still, Homeland makes "a real point of never showing a gun."

The small screen has been good to Danes, who won TV's triple crown — the Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards — for 2010's Temple Grandin, the HBO biopic about an animal scientist with autism who helped overhaul the livestock industry. And there's her cultishly adored mid-'90s role as introspective Angela in My So-Called Life.

Still, she initially flinched at the idea of returning to her series roots because of the time commitment involved. The Homeland script, however, proved "too seductive." Danes had been mired in a "real fallow period" after the success of Temple. "What do you do after that? Do you play the girlfriend?" Carrie's salty CIA agent was the first role to come along that was "really engaging."

After all, "I'm no longer an ingénue," Danes concedes. "I'm grown up" — with two homes, a Soho loft five blocks from where she was raised and a country house upstate, and a husband, the British Hugh Dancy, her Evening co-star and now, in a "dorky coincidence," fellow Showtime employee 

Likewise, her résumé is growing up: She plays the mom of a droll, Angela Chase-esque teenager in the recently wrapped indie film As Cool As I Am. She's not looking to play the part off-screen anytime soon, but "eventually, yes, I would like to be completely humiliated by my children."

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Fight over Rajinikanth's biopic rights

The face-off over Rajinikanth biopic has taken a turn for the worse. To counter the film being made on the South superstar by producer Atul Agnihotri without their consent, Rajini's family is now planning to go ahead with their own biopic on the actor.

In fact, Rajini's daughter Soundarya has been urgently trying to reach Atul to no avail. "I've tried to contact Atul Agnihotri, but I haven't got any response.

We have not authorised anyone to do a biopic on my father. We reserve our rights on this matter," she says, adding that she is still open to discussing the matter with the producer.

Interestingly, in a recent interview Atul reportedly said, "There is a huge responsibility involved in making a film on Rajinikanth. We need his approval and contribution.

Making a film on him will be an enriching experience for us."

His apparent reluctance to resolve the matter with the family, therefore, is surprising. When contacted, both Atul as well as the film's director Lloyd Baptista were unavailable for comment.

After striking gold with 'Bodyguard', starring brother in law Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor, actor turned producer Agnihotri will now work on the biopic.

The idea to make a Rajinikanth biopic came from Agnihotri's friend, ad filmmaker Lloyd Ba Pista, who will direct the film.

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In partnership with Bharti Airtel RIM launches BlackBerry Curve smartphone priced at Rs 19,990

In partnership with Bharti Airtel RIM launches BlackBerry Curve smartphone priced at Rs 19,990.

Research In Motion has finally revealed the most anticipated the next generation BlackBerry Curve smartphone priced at Rs. 19,990 in India today.

"The BlackBerry Curve series has been extremely popular in India and we are excited to launch the all new BlackBerry Curve 9360. This next generation BlackBerry Curve features a stunning new design along with a significant performance upgrade and an unmatched mobile social experience. It provides an ideal upgrade path for our existing Curve customers as well as the millions of feature phone users in the Indian market.” said Frenny Bawa, managing director, India at RIM.

The phone is quite stylish and designed with a comfortable and easy keyboard for fast, accurate typing and an intuitive optical trackpad for easy one-handed use.

The phone also aprons GPS and Wi-Fi support, as well as a 5 mega pixel camera with flash and video recording so that memories can be captured and instantly shared on social networks. Also the microSD/SDHC slot supports up to 32 GB memory cards for additional media storage.

To support the new BlackBerry 7 operating system, the new BlackBerry Curve 9360 smartphone features an upgraded processor, display and memory.It also comes with built-in support for NFC (Near Field Communications).

Also, in another development, RIM has partnered with Bharti Airtel to introduce the phone in India.

Now Airtel’s postpaid customers in India can avail special offers upon purchasing the BlackBerry Curve 9360 smartphone. As part of this offer, first time users of BlackBerry services can sign up for an exciting trial offer from Airtel that promises the Rs.299 BlackBerry plan free for a period of 2 months as well as special prices for local calls at 20p and 5p SMS to any one BlackBerry customer of choice for 1 year.

"We are confident these offers will deliver a compelling proposition for our high value customers looking to leverage their mobile devices for everything from exchanging messages, checking their emails, catching the latest in entertainment or staying connected with friends and family on social networks,” said N Rajaram, chief marketing officer, consumer business, Bharti Airtel.

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Facebook changes: Fact and fiction

Facebook has made a lot of modifications to its network and is planning a lot more. But, as often happens when the social network makes major changes, users are confused about what is and isn’t changing. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new, what’s in the cards, and a couple of busted myths:
News feed and ticker: The News Feed is now more curated, with stories that Facebook deems relevant pinned to the top, recent stories of import further down the page and all the “Julie commented on John’s post” or “John just earned the blue ribbon in Farmville” updates relegated to a real-time feed that runs along the right side of your homepage. Users will also be able to do more than “like” things on their news feeds and friends’ walls. Developers will have all verbs and nouns to choose from in the future. Now you theoretically could do anything from the fairly basic (watch a movie) to the off-beat(high-five a kitten?) through the network.

The Timeline: Pretty much everything Facebook users see and do will change in some way. Your profile, for example, is going to become a personal history, scrapbook, autobiography and news center.
Called the Timeline, the new profile will likely encourage people to put up content that predates their time on the social network. You’ll be able to guide visitors to your profile through your life via an actual timeline on the right side of the page, so they can quickly click to the days of your misspent youth or just see what you’ve been up to since you got your last job. The further back you go, the more content Facebook will hide from the main timeline.
Apps: Users also will be able to add apps that publish content to users’ Timelines automatically. Right now, apps ask users if they want to publish information to their wall before each post, such as when a user reaches a new milestone in a game. Now, Facebook will publish stories with a single permission agreement — for example, users using Spotify will agree to hook their account to the service once, and it will post to their walls every time a track changes.
Some apps, such as The Washington Post’s Social Reader, or Hulu will let you consume news and media content right from Facebook and tell your friends what items you’re reading, watching, or listening.
Is Facebook going to charge a fee?: No. Facebook isn’t going to charge a fee and likely never will. Restating what the company has said since it began, a post to the company’s main page definitively denied the rumor, saying: “We have no plans to charge for Facebook. It's free and always will be.”
Likes and comments: Another viral status that’s been going around is the assertion that users have no control over the sharing settings for their own likes and comments.
“Please do me a favor. Hover your cursor over my name here, wait for the box to load and then hover over the "Subscribed" link. Then uncheck the ‘Comments and likes’ choice”...Then repost if you don't want your EVERY MOVE posted on the right column for everyone to see,” the statuses read.”
Likes and comments on Facebook posts are tied to the privacy of the original post, according to Facebook’s settings. So while it’s true that unsubscribing from someone’s “comments and likes” will keep those posts from showing up in your ticker, users should know that the privacy of those actions is dependent on the root post.

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