Munaf to join Indian pace attack in tri-series

India have called medium pacer Munaf Patel into their squad for the tri-series with Sri Lanka and New Zealand in a bid to bolster the side's bowling attack.

Injury problems had already blighted India before they left for a three-Test series in Sri Lanka, with seamers Zaheer Khan and Shanthakumaran Sreesanth being ruled out.

Ishant Sharma then picked up an ankle problem, making him unavailable for the first match of the three-way 50-over series against the Black Caps, a contest India would go on to lose by 200 runs.

Abhimanyu Mithun was brought in as a replacement but had to leave the field after bowling only four overs due to heat stroke.

Leading spinner Harbhajan Singh has been rested for the tri-series and India have turned to Patel, who has played in 43 one-day internationals, due to a dearth of specialist bowlers.

"Munaf Patel is joining the Indian team in Sri Lanka as an additional member of the squad. He will reach Dambulla tomorrow," Board of Control for Cricket in India secretary N Srinivasan stated.

Taj Hotel to reopen on I-Day after 2008 terror attack

Taj Palace in Night

Holding balloons and flowers, employees pledged on Thursday to re-dedicate themselves to Mumbai's Taj Mahal hotel when it reopens at the weekend after the 2008 militant attacks in which guests and staff members died.

The hotel, which suffered extensive damage from a siege laid by four heavily armed gunmen, was one of several Mumbai landmarks attacked by Pakistan-based militants. The November strikes, which lasted over 60 hours, killed 166 people.

Standing on the grand cantilever stairway, staff members cheered and tossed rose petals in the air after chairmanRatan Tata garlanded a bust of the founder of the Tata Group, India's oldest conglomerate, which also owns the luxury Taj hotels.

CWG OC defends on Broadcast rights issue

Stung by the CAG's interim report which has found discrepancies in some deals, the CWG Organising Committee on Thursday defended its broadcasting rights deal with Fast Track despite a high commission paid to them, saying the UK company had doubled the revenue target. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its interim inspection report has pointed out that Fast Track was preferred over Sports  Marketing and Management (SMAM) despite a high comission and thus OC lost on revenue generation.

SMAM had offered its services for 12.5 per cent while OC gave 15 per cent to Fast Track.

OC secretary generalLalit Bhanot said it was a well thought out decision to award the deal to Fast Track as they did not want to give too many contracts to SMAM, which already had bagged the sponsorship contract.

UK donates Euro 10.5 million for Pakistan flood relief

The British public has so far donated £10.5m to help the victims of the Pakistan floods, charities say.


The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) said more than 500,000 survivors had been provided with emergency care, clean water, food or shelter.


At least 1,600 people have died and many more are missing in Pakistan's worst floods for 80 years.


DEC agencies are warning that six million children could be at risk of malnutrition, diarrhoea and pneumonia.


Flood waters are rushing through the densely populated urban areas of Sindh province and southern Punjab.


Mohammed Qazilbash, Save the Children's spokesperson in Islamabad said: "Outbreaks of cholera and malaria are a big concern. In Southern Punjab and Sindh there are vast numbers of people living right along the water, some in makeshift houses with very poor hygiene and sanitation at the best of times.


"Children are drinking, washing in and going to the toilet in the same river water. If this sanitation crisis is not tackled now, in six months time, millions and millions of children will be suffering potentially deadly diarrhoea and other diseases."


There are also reports of measles outbreaks among children in camps set up for the estimated 14 million people displaced.


Meanwhile, Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari has visited a relief camp for flood victims in Sindh, in his first visit to areas hit by the deluge.


The trip follows criticism of his recent tour abroad and of the perceived slow government response to the country's worst humanitarian crisis.

IAF to engage if needed

The IAF has got the government's permission to fire back at Naxals in extremist-hit areas in self-defence, highly-placed Air Force sources said on Thursday.

The government's nod to the IAF's request made in September last year comes at a time when a debate is raging on whether India should use its armed forces against left-wing extremists, whom Prime MinisterManmohan Singh has described as the gravest internal security threat.

The IAF currently deploys two of its Mi-17s and two Dhruv helicopters in anti-Naxal operations. It had lost one of its personnel when a helicopter ferrying election officials and material during the Chattisgarh assembly polls was fired at by suspected Naxals a couple of years ago.

Fine for Telecom Tower radiation

Mobile service providers will have to pay a fine of Rs five lakh per mobile phone tower from November if it does not confirm to internationally accepted limits of radiation, government told the Lok Sabha today.

"To avoid health hazard from radiation of Mobile Towers, Department of Telecom has issued instructions to all Access Service Providers to conform to the limits of radiation as prescribed by International Commission on Non-ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) from time-to-time," Minister of State for Communications Sachin Pilot said.

He said government has asked service providers to have all the base transreceiver station (BTS) self-certified as meeting radiation norms.

Tata DoCoMo launches Pay-per- Site plan

Telecom service provider, Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Limited (TTML), on Tuesday launched a new service 'pay per site', under its Tata DOCOMO brand, which would allow customers to pay only for the websites they use.

The pay per site service offers pay-for-what-you-use Internet browsing model, a press release issued here stated.

The service offers two combination packs--for those only interested in single websites could pay Rs 10 per site, while those with multiple site browsing could opt for a combo pack at just Rs 25 per month.

DoT to bar Telecos if MNP is not implemented

Cracking down on operators for delaying the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP) in the country, department of telecom (DoT) on Wednesday barred existing as well as new service providers from launching any new commercial services after September 1, if their network is not MNP ready.

This implies that operators including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular as well as new operators such as MTS, Uninor and Tata DoCoMo will be unable to launch new services in case they fail to implement MNP by the specified deadline. MNP will allow mobile users to switch their operator while retaining their number, but operators have missed the deadline to implement it four times since last year. Last month, the government extended the deadline to October 31, after service providers failed to implement it by June 30. The telecom department, in a note released on Wednesday, said that the operators must ensure that all inter-operator tests for porting the numbers from one service provider to another are completed before September 1, 2010.

VENTO available from Sept in Indian market; Price starts 6.99lacs

German auto major Volkswagen says it will start selling its midsized sedan Vento priced between Rs 6.99-Rs 9.23 lakh in the Indian market from September this year.

The new Vento, which has been introduced in 1.6-litre petrol and diesel variants will hit the Indian roads from September 6, 2010 and will be available through all Volkswagen dealers, the company said in a statement yesterday.

The much awaited car, which is the company's seventh model in India will be available at prices ranging between Rs 6.99-Rs 9.23 lakh at ex-showroom prices in Delhi. The petrol variant starts from Rs 6.99 lakh while the starting price for the diesel variant is Rs 7.99 lakh, the company added.

"The new Vento is an extension of our commitment towards the Indian consumers of providing the best quality products at competitive prices. Designed for the Indian market, it will be a strong addition to our product portfolio", VW Group Sales India Member of Board Neeraj Garg said.

ISRO to launch SARAL satellite by 2011

India will launch a satellite to monitor sea water levels in collaboration with the French space agency, Minister of State for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan said on Wednesday.

The satellite, called Saral, will carry an altimetre (ALTIKA) for studying the sea surface heights and an ARGOS payload, which is a satellite-based data collection platform.

"The project is a joint project of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the French National Space Agency (FNSA). The ALTIKA and ARGOS payloads are built and supplied by the French space agency. The satellite building and launching are the responsibilities of ISRO," Chavan told the Lok Sabha.

The minister said the satellite is likely to be launched in 2011.

Surprisingly priced Indian Tablet

Kapil Sibal with $35 tablet

"Everybody actually said, 'It cannot happen, a $35 tablet,' and not only does it exist, it works and it works brilliantly," said Rajiv Makhni, co-host of the show "Gadget Guru," who took the computer through its paces with show cohort Vikram Chandra and then talked all aspects of the gadget with Kapil Sibal, the country's Minister for Human Resource Development and the same guy who officially unveiled the super-cheap touch-screen device. Aimed at the country's students, it's being called India's answer to Nicholas Negroponte's famed OLPC laptop.

While originally presented as a Linux device, the prototype on the show runs on Android (and handles the operating system "fairly smoothly," the surprised Gurus say. It has a virtual keyboard, camera, full video capability, Wi-Fi for browsing that the Gurus found to be "simple and quick," an e-reader, and 2GB RAM. They say the touch screen is a bit slow to respond. All in all, though, they call it a "fairly impressive little package," particularly for the price, and a game changer for India and possibly beyond.

"We really didn't think it would be as functional as we have found it be," Chandra said.

The tablet is part of a larger initiative aimed at improving India's educational system through technology. It will originally be delivered by mid-2011, subsidized, to higher-education institutions for the estimated $35, Sibal said. (He acknowledged that it will surely cost more at retail.)

BENQ launches portable projector GP1 in India

Benq's GP1 projector

BenQ has pronounced the latest version of its PC-less, lamp-free GP1 Mini Projector in Indian markets. The projector, runs on 3LED technology, has USB video reader and weighs just 640 grams, making it the ultra-light device to be carried along.

The GP1 Mini supports 120% NTSC, 100 ANSI lumens that are backed by digital LED lighting, Wall Color Correction and comes with a default 2W speaker. Considered to be a many at once solutions provider, it comes in handy as a portable home projector easy to be carried around.

It is known to offer a back-up of over 20,000+ hours of light life and comes with an iPod/iPhone dock or via a USB drive.

BenQ states it to be a superior offering than an average 55%-80% NTSC of most projectors. It works wonders especially for photographers, interior designers, realtors, and all those who seek for color precision and brilliance.

The device is priced at Rs. 36,600 (MOP) and is available across all stores.

Govt sets Aug 31 as deadline for RIM's solution

The government has set August 31 as the deadline for Research In Motion to come up with a solution after high-level talks in India today to decide on possible suspension of encrypted BlackBerry services over national security worries ended "inconclusively". If the Canadian company does not come up with a solution its services are likely to be banned in the country.

The meeting between the home ministry and the intelligence agency did not come to a decision on whether to halt BlackBerry's services if the device's makers failed to address security concerns, a home ministry official .

"The meeting was inconclusive. No decision has been taken and we will hold further talks soon," the official, who declined to be named, said.

CWG financial report irregular -- CAG

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its interim inspection report on Thursday, has found that some large scale of financial irregularities in deals handled by the Suresh Kalmadi led-Commonwealth Games Organising Committee.

The report found discrepancies in choosing consultants for broadcasting rights and sponsorship deal with the Melbourne-based firm, Sports Marketing and Management (SMAM), which was awarded the deal at a very cheap price.

Samsung launches Champ & OmniaLite in India

Samsung has announced two touchscreen handsets, the Champ C330 and the Omnia Lite B7300 for the Indian customers.

The Samsung Champ boasts of a 2.4 inch QVGA touch screen display along with Touchwiz Lite 2.0 UI and the Stylus Pen. The set incorporates 30MB internal memory, microSD support up to 8GB, social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace Twitter and Photo sharing sites like Flickr, Photobucket.

Apart from that, the Champ is integrated with Sound Alive 3D effects and FM Radio listening without antenna. The Champ is the smallest and cheapest touchscreen handset in India.

Samsung Champ C330 is available for Rs 4,000 - 4,500/- in India.

Google's StreetView monitored by German Govt

The German government said on Wednesday it will scrutinize Google's promise to respect privacy requests by letting people opt out of its "Street View" mapping system and that it would be ready to intervene if necessary.

In a country wary of surveillance due to the Nazis' Gestapo and East Germany's Stasi secret police, the response to Street View has been overwhelmingly negative even though Germans got assurances they can have images of their homes kept out.

Google's announcement on Tuesday that it would allow Germans to stay out of Street View failed to allay fears that privacy would be compromised by the navigation system.

Hindustan motors to relaunch All New Ambassdor in 2011

The King of Indian Roads, HM Ambassador is undergoing heart surgery along with make ups and is getting ready for a 2011 relaunch. Ambassador has been almost 70 years old and still running on Indian soil. HM plans to bring the new Ambassador, besides delivering its current Ambassador variants for Taxi segment. And the new Ambassador will be the bread-earner for the company in a few more years after the launch, HM hopes.


HM chairman C K Brila has stated that the new Amby will have a retro design and sport cutting-edge engineering to compete on comfort and value for money. Overseas experts have been roped in for the metamorphosis. He also added that the new version will be ready by January-February 2011 for test trials and is expected to undergo validation by May so that commercial production can begin in July 2011.

European auto experts have been roped in for a renovate Ambassador such that the platform and overall dimensions remain the same. According to MD Manoj Jha, the new car will be a sibling of the Ambassador but the change will be so holistic that it will be a completely different vehicle. Apart from the new-look retro exterior, the interiors will be revamped. It will be powered by BS IV-complaint and BS V-ready 1.5 litre and 2 litre diesel as well as petrol engines that are powerful and fuel-efficient. He also added that , overseas technology firms are processing each aspect of the car to ensure the new Amby is on par with contemporary vehicles on Indian roads in terms of built quality and reliability.

India ranks second in Beer production

India's beer production surged by 12.3 per cent last year, second only to Vietnam among Asian countries, even as the continent overtook Europe for the first time as the world's biggest beer-producing area since 1974.

Asia beat Europe amid its economic growth with 58.67 million kilolitres of beer produced, up 5.5 per cent from the previous year, a Kirin Holdings Co research arm said yesterday.

Among Asian beer producers, Vietnam saw a 24.3 per cent surge during the period, followed by India at 12.3 per cent and China at 7.0 per cent. But production in Japan dropped by 2.2 per cent.

Asia took the top slot in the ranking list for the first time since 1974, the Kirin Institute of Food & Lifestyle has said.

UN appeals International communities to aid Pakistani flood victims

The United Nations planned to launch an appeal on Wednesday for international aid for victims of Pakistani floods that continue to spread.

The floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains have killed more than 1,600 people and devastated large areas of the country.

Maurizio Giuliano, a UN spokesman in Pakistan said 14 million people, including six million children, were affected by the crisis and that nearly half of them would need immediate help for survival.

The appeal for “few hundred million dollars” would be launched this evening at UN headquarters in New York Wednesday, he said.

Rohan Murthy & Lakshmi venu engaged

He courted her for a nearly a year, but it took him less than a day to propose and solemnise a quick-fire engagement that is set to take corporate India by storm.

On Thursday, Rohan Murty, doctoral student at Harvard University and the only son of NR Narayana Murthy, the founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies, the country’s second largest software services firm, was engaged to be married to Lakshmi Venu, the only daughter of TVS Motor company’s CMD, Venu Srinivasan.

“They were introduced to each other by a common friend and they must have spent time time getting to know each other,” said a delighted Mr Murthy, Rohan’s father who says the families have known of the couple’s interest for the past several months. “Lakshmi has visited our home and we are very happy with this engagement,” he added.