Celebrity News

Protestors blocked the arterial Western Express Highway in Bandra on Thursday morning

Police fired tear gas and lathicharged the mobs to bring the situation under control.

Police beating a rioter in Mumbai's Bhandup suburb.

Protestors blocked roads and trains in many parts of Bhiwandi, Thane.

Two boggies of Deccan Queen burnt near Ulhasnagar.

November 30, Rediff.com

Incidents of violence were reported from various parts of the Mahrashtra as protests against the alleged desecration of Dr B R Ambedkar's statue in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur.

Earlier in the day curfew was imposed in many parts including Nanded and Pimpri area in Pune, which witnessed violent protests following the desecration of the statue.

Soon the wave of violence also hit Mumbai city and its neighbouring disticts like Thane and New Mumbai.

Several parts of Mumbai have reported incidents of stone pelting since this morning.

From nearby Thane district to Worli in central Mumbai and the Western Express Highway in Bandra, incidents of stone pelting, burning of public transport buses were resported.

The police resorted to lathicharge on protestors in places such as Kanjurmarg, Mulund, Kherwadi, Bhandup, Ghatkopar, Chembur and Goregaon.

Protestors reportedly set afire several compartments of the Deccan Queen Express near Ulhasnagar on Mumbai's outskirts. There were no reports of any casualties. This affected the train services between Kalyan and Karjat.

Meanwhile Nashik city in Maharashtra is tense after a night of violence where a young Dalit protestor was killed in a stone-pelting incident. Six people have been arrested in the case.Most of the protests are being led by various factions of the Republican Party of India - the leading platform for Dalits in Maharashtra.

Two youths were killed and another injured in police firing in Osmanabad in Marathwada region of Maharashtra.

In Mumbai, at least 91 Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport buses were damaged in stone pelting across the city, an official spokesman said, adding that four drivers and a woman passenger were injured in these incidents.

Times News Network

Nov. 28 2006

AHMEDABAD: Bra wars II is possibly being scripted on a B-school campus in India. Four final year students of IIM-Ahmedabad are busy giving shape to their own business plans. They have opted out of next year’s placements and are strapping up to launch their own branded women’s lingerie line.

The team has already firmed up a business plan that entails a foray into the mid-segment of women inner-wear market, which they say has been ignored by traditional inner-wear makers.

What’s more, the plan has already made it to the top three innovation-based plans in ‘Anveshan Business Plan Contest’ at the just-concluded Confluence 2006. The team, comprising Vishal Prabhukalonkar, Bhushan Dabir, Vineeta Singh and Debashish Chakravarty, will be mentored for the next two months so that they can improve. They were also given Rs 25,000 as seed funding.

What inspired them? “After a lot of discussions with industry experts led us to believe that this as a lucrative option,” a team member told ET. The four plan to launch products priced between Rs 150 and Rs 500 with the “correct fit at affordable prices”.

“Women inner-wear market is growing at a very high rate. The market size is expected to grow up to Rs 1,200 crore by 2010. At present, the products are available in lower and upper segments. There is nothing significant happening in the mid-segment,” says Prabhukalonkar.

“We will launch our products in that segment. The lower-end products are priced between Rs 20 and Rs 100. The premium costs Rs 1,000 and more. The income of the mid-level consumer is going up and there is a will be demand for our products,” says Prabhukalonkar. During focus group discussions conducted by students, it was found that the two problems in the current inner-wear market are comfort and fitting.

“We found that comfort and proper fit are missing from both the segments. Even after paying thousands for the product, the fit is never right. We will have products, which are tailor-made for Indian customers.

Priced between Rs 150 and Rs 500, our product will offer comfortable size and fabric, matching colours as well as the fit,” says Prabhukalonkar. The team will carry out a research for their products over the next two months and present it before the group of experts as a part of their business plan.

It has also kept an option to foray into food processing open. A final decision has not been taken as yet. “The money required may be raised from venture funds, banks and other routes to name a few,” says a team member.

The group is already talking to several industry players to understand the technology and finances. Once the project is finalised machinery and other required materials will be imported or sourced considering the cost factor, he says.

Nadia has constantly been by the actor's side, along with his sister Priya Dutt and brother-in-law Kumar Gaurav. An actor, on condition of anonymity, says, "Sanju has always been serious about Nadia, but he didn't commit to her because he was not sure about the verdict. Now, he feels that he can take it easy. So he spoke to Nadia on Tuesday night itself, and assured her that they would marry some time next year."

"Sanju is a very emotional person, and he will never let go of any relationship that is close to his heart. He has always stood by his friends and he is very fond of Nadia," says the actor, adding that Nadia was present at Dutt's bungalow to wish him luck on Tuesday.

Dutt has been spotted at several nightclubs with Nadia. Mumbai Mirror carried a report a few months ago which confirmed that they were considering marriage. Dutt met Nadia three years ago in Lahore. Our source reveals, "The two were first spotted together in Mumbai enjoying a cosy meal together on a Sunday night, at a celebrity gathering for the Pakistani Food Festival at a suburban five-star hotel." There, Dutt introduced Nadia to everyone as his girlfriend from Pakistan. Dutt kept his affair with her under wraps for a long time, but now seems to be more comfortable about it.

November 30, 2006 at 12:30

San Francisco: Google has finally run out answers. Four years after the high-pitched launch of its fee-based Answers service, Google has announced its closure, apparently due to its failure to catch on with the web users.

"Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time -- and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a project," a Google official wrote on the company blogsite.

Google Answers was based on an idea by the company's co-founder Larry Page and enlisted researchers to find answers to submitted questions at rates ranging from $2 to hundreds of dollars.

It seems Yahoo's free Answers service took away all the traffic from Google, forcing it to admit a rare defeat. On Wednesday, Google went public with its decision, saying that it would stop accepting questions this week and post the last of the answers by the end of the year.

An archive of Google Answers questions and responses will, however, remain available at the Mountain View, California-company's website, company officials said.

Incidentally, the decision comes only months after Microsoft launched a similar no-charge service called Windows Live QnA. The Answers services on the web tap into the online community for responses to queries.

"Google Answers was a great experiment which provided us with a lot of material for developing future products to serve our users," software engineers Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher blogged on the company website.

"Google Answers taught us exactly how many tyrannosaurs are in a gallon of gasoline, why flies survive a good microwaving, and why you really shouldn't drink water emitted by your air conditioner."

Even as the news broke, the blogsphere went wild with speculation that the shutdown was proof that the company has suffered a chink in its armour. Others, however, said Google dropped the programme as Google Answers wasn't contributing to its mission of 'organising the world's knowledge and making it useful'.

Experts also point out that Google Answers had become simply redundant on the face of its hyper-efficient search engine and its sophisticated algorithms, which are now so good that most people no longer need to pay others to answer questions for them. They can do it themselves quickly, and for free.

November 30, 2006 12:08 IST

Fan clubs, which idolise underworld dons on social networking web sites, have run afoul of the city police who plan to closely monitor the content and the members of these communities.

"Though nobody has complained to us, we fear that the communities would be misused by organised crime syndicates. Moreover, there are thousands of members of communities devoted to dons," said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection) Dhananjay Kamlakar.

There are eight fan clubs devoted to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and one each dedicated to Chhota Rajan, Chhota Shakeel and Abu Salem on Orkut.com alone.

"We will have to monitor the material posted and also the members of the networking sites," he said.

Social networking sites, especially the Google-owned Orkut, were in the news recently. The Pune Crime Branch had recently blocked a community, which had posted objectionable remarks against the Maratha warrior king Shivaji.

A public interest litigation has also been filed in the Bombay High Court asking for a ban on Orkut for hosting the anti-Shivaji community. Earlier, while hearing another PIL, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court had issued a notice to the government about the presence of a community titled 'I hate India' on the same site.

Asian News International
Jagadhri, November 29, 2006

A girl from Nagpur who came to meet her 'net chat boy friend' was found dead at the Jagadhri Railway Station near Yamuna Nagar under mysterious circumstances.

Ujjwala Patil's family has accused Narendra Sharma, her net-friend, as being responsible for her death.

They claimed that Ujjwala went to meet Narendra at Jagadhri, lured by some promises.

"Narendra Sharma is responsible for my sister's death. She never used to go even 50 kms without asking us. She, therefore, could not have gone 1500 kms away from the house all by herself," said Abhay Patil, Ujjwala's brother.

Narendra declared himself innocent, saying that he was at his uncle's home in Muzaffarnagar. He insisted that Ujjwala was putting pressure on him to marry, even though she knew he was married.

"The day when she reached Jagadhri, I was not there. I had gone to my uncle's place in Muzaffarnagar. My sister sent a message saying that she (Ujjwala) has taken poison. Before coming here, she (Ujjwala) sent me a message wanting to meet me, but I did not reply to her," said Narendra.

Even Narendra's wife Sunita does not blame her husband for Ujjwala's death. According to her, Ujjwala never wanted Narendra to stay with Sunita.

"She always used to say that she will never let us stay together. And she told me that she would do something, which will separate us forever. There has never been a problem in our married life and I knew about her since the beginning," Sunita said.

A case has been registered and the investigations are on.

"We have lodged the complaint and only after the post-mortem report, we would take some appropriate step," said Om Prakash, the investigating officer.

Australian singer Kylie Minogue’s bum is special because of its perfect size.

London: A worker at Madame Tussauds Museum learnt the hard way that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, when his girlfriend leaked shots of him kissing Kylie Minogue’s waxwork’s butt.

A shot shows Bryan Boniface pulling down Kylie Minogue’s hotpants and kissing her bum.

In others, taken during night shifts, he fondles Penelope Cruz and J-Lo.

He is also seen beating up Sven Goran Eriksson, throttling London mayor Ken Livingstone and grabbing disabled Professor Stephen Hawking.

Bryan’s ex Sofia Oliveira leaked the shots when their romance ended.

“I’m in hot water,” he was quoted by the Sun, as saying.

PTI, November 29, 2006
KANPUR: The wife of a Wipro employee has withdrawn the names of company chief Azim Premji and another senior executive from a domestic violence case she had filed against her husband in a court here.

Tripti Nigam's lawyer Nandlal Jaiswal said she would file a separate case against Premji and Wipro for allegedly providing a "dating allowance" to her husband Gaurav. Wipro has denied that it pays any such allowance to its employees.

Tripti had created a flutter by naming Premji and Wipro Vice President Pratik Kumar in her case, in which she had alleged Gaurav had abandoned her because the firm paid him a "dating allowance".

Jaiswal said since the names of direct relations alone could be included in a case under the new domestic violence law, the names of Premji and Kumar were withdrawn on technical grounds. But Gaurav's name still remained in the complaint.

Tripti, a resident of Gwaltoli area here, submitted an application to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, asking him to premit her to withdraw the names of Premji and Kumar from the case. This was accepted by the court.

The court fixed December 13 as the next date for hearing the matter. Gaurav was present in the court and sought copies of the papers filed by Tripti.

Jaiswal said a separate case about Wipro allegedly providing a "dating allowance" to Gaurav would be filed against Premji and Kumar in another court.

In the wake of Tripti's allegations, software major Wipro had said on Friday, "We would like to categorically state we don't have a dating allowance in any form and hence cannot elaborate on this alleged issue."

The ‘Newlyweds’ filmed themselves getting it on, according to reports, and the tape has found itself in the hands of the people who leaked the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee tape, and is set to make its internet debut soon.

“Jessica is horrified her name and sex tape are being mentioned in the same sentence. She’s always been a girl of high morals and principles,” a source close to Jess has revealed.

It’s claimed the tape will be leaked unless the couple pay up an undisclosed sum.

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Snoop DoggSnoop Dog was arrested tonight outside NBC in Burbank on weapons and narcotics charges.

The rapper had just performed on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" and was leaving the studio when Burbank detectives pulled his car over on Bob Hope Drive and placed him under arrest. At the time of this posting, Snoop still has not been brought to the Burbank Police Station. We're told he'll be booked at approximately 9:15 PM.

Snoop was arrested earlier this month by Los Angeles Airport Police after he allegedly tried carrying a gun in a carry-on bag onto a plane. We're told law enforcement was investigating the rapper for allegedly possessing illegal weapons and that investigation could have triggered tonight's arrest.

28th Nov 2006

Chennai: Are you tired of just 256 kpbs and annoyed with your service provider for not upgrading to give you higher speeds? Well, wait till January. For, the government is planning to 're-write' broadband speed to make it unlimited.
Union IT and communications minister Dayanidhi Maran said that 2007 will be the year of broadband Internet.
"Next year will be very interesting. There will be tremendous activity on the broadband front. State-owned MTNL and BSNL are readying provocative pricing for Internet at unlimited speed. The present 256 kbps will be a thing of the past. Users will be in for a pleasant surprise. We are opening up superhighway to cyberspace," Maran said while inaugurating Ericsson's R&D centre.
The minister said the country was adding a meagre 5.5 million personal computers a year as against six million mobile connections a month. "We are working out schemes to increase PC penetration in the country," he said.
The details of the plans will be announced by MTNL and BSNL separately in the next few weeks.
The Union government's target of 250 million mobile phones by 2007 is sure to meet its destiny.
"At the present growth rates, we will achieve that by the third quarter of next year," he said and added that the country as of October had 176 million mobile phones.
"We now want to set 500 million as the target by 2010. That would mean 47% coverage and one in four people having a mobile phone. All these are happening in the telecom front because of lowering international long distance (ILD) prices and reducing the license fee for National Long distance (STD). The government is also welcoming the move by cellular operators to share towers. A single antenna for all operators in a locality will only lower the costs further," Maran said.
The universal services obligation fund (USO) will also become active in deploying connectivity in rural areas. The government hopes to cover 2.50 lakh remote villages across the country, even if it has only one household under this scheme.
Mats Granryd, managing director, Ericsson India said that the R&D centre in Chennai will work on cutting edge charging and multimedia solutions besides value added services.

ISD bandwidth prices to drop
Times News Network

New Delhi: International long distance (ILD/ISD) bandwidth pricing is set for a dramatic makeover. Telecom minister, Dayanidhi Maran has directed DoT to accept Trai’s recommendations on ‘Measures to Promote Competition for International Bandwidth in India’, a move set to permanently alter ILD costs and competitive landscape. Simply put, this permits the resale of international bandwidth, which telecom analysts say will alter the balance of power between incumbent VSNL and other service providers as well as boost the competitiveness of the ISP, enterprise and IT segments. Responding to minister’s directive, DoT has asked Trai to forward appropriate guidelines enabling the amendment of the ILD licenses Section 2.2 (a) and (b).