Who is KAMRAN KHAN ???

Shane Warne, the Rajasthan Royals captain, has named Kamran Khan, a 18-year-old rookie left-arm fast bowler, as one of the players to watch out for in the IPL starting in Cape Town on Saturday. Warne has also provided fresh insights into his relationship with Graeme Smith, a bitter rival once but an IPL team-mate now, and reiterated his controversial theory that an international team doesn't need a coach.

Warne, whose captaincy was a revelation during last year's IPL when he galvanised a bunch of not-so-famous players into a winning combination, insisted that he did not regret missing out on being Australia captain.

He shared his shortlist of Rajasthan's potential stars of this IPL with the South Africa-based Sunday Times newspaper and included Kamran, who bowled just one over against Cape Cobras in a warm-up on Saturday, alongside India players Ravindra Jadeja and Yusuf Pathan. Indian media reported that Kamran, who bowled Cobras' Justin Ontong with an off-stump yorker in that over, is the son of a woodcutter who gained his shoulder strength from cutting wood in Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh in north India. He is yet to play first-class cricket and was reportedly signed by Rajasthan Royals for Rs 12 lakh (US$24,000) a year after Darren Berry, the assistant coach, spotted him at a local tournament in Mumbai.

The team, which had nicknames for each player to pin down his role in the side, is reportedly on the verge of finalising one for Kamran. "We've got one young player who's going to be very interesting," Warne said. "We're tossing up now what his nickname is going to be -- Wild Thing or Tornado, something like that. Kamran Khan is a young kid, a left-armer, a slinger, he doesn't speak much English at the moment. He's a tiny little guy but he bowls 140 plus. Another guy to look out for is Ravindra Jadeja. He played last year, did enough but he's had another year of experience. Then there's Yusuf Pathan. He was dynamite last year, he just destroys medium-pace and spin bowling. He and Andrew Symonds are two of the cleanest hitters I've ever seen."

Smith was also important to his plans for a lot of reasons, Warne said. "One is that he's another captain to bounce ideas off," he said. "When I'm bowling, he's someone to keep an eye on the field. When I'm talking to a bowler he's making sure the best fielders are in the right spots. I think he enjoys the IPL as well, just having the opportunity and the freedom to go out and bat without the responsibility of anything else. For us, being in South Africa and having the captain of South Africa in our side is a huge advantage."

He said he had become "good buddies" with Smith after spending some time together during the inaugural IPL, and added that the latter had matured as a captain, too. "We had a few beers after the first game and chatted about a lot of stuff," he said. "We hung out a fair bit. We've kept in touch since then and become good buddies. They [South Africa] have done well. He's matured a bit too. He came in at a young age and wanted to try and mix it. He didn't want to take a backward step. He was so verbal and public about everything. We won 5-0 [in 2005/06] and I said to him the other day, when something's not working, try to do something else. Don't just continue and let the ego get in the way. He said, 'yeah, yeah, I've learned my lesson'. He learned a lot about himself and how things work. He's matured into a good captain."

Warne also insisted his views on international coaching had not changed even years after his controversial rift with John Buchanan, the former Australia coach.

"The only reason I'm coach is because the Royals don't really have a coach," he said. "I'm just the captain, really. I've got two assistants who do a good job in Darren Berry and Jeremy Snape. Darren looks after practice while I get around and speak to individuals and Snapey floats around, helps guys prepare and does some one-on-one stuff. Captains should always run the cricket. At international level I don't think you need a coach. At domestic level you need a coach."

He said he had no regrets about not being Australia captain but added he enjoyed captaincy. "I'd be sitting in a straitjacket in a padded cell if I started regretting everything that happened in my life," he said. "I never chased the captaincy. If I'd had the opportunity it would have been great but I don't look back and think about it. I've captained the Royals, Hampshire, Victoria and Australia in one-day matches. People can see the way I captain. I enjoy being captain and it brings out the best in me."

Source: CricInfo, 13^th April 2009, http://content.cricinfo.com/ipl2009/content/current/story/399360.html

T20 American Premier League arrives

Twenty20 cricket fever has now also hit the US, with an inaugural American Premier League (APL) series set to take place in New York in October this year, the Afrikaans weekly Rapport said here on Sunday.

Rapport disclosed that former Proteas Nicky Boje, Andrew Hall and Lance Klusener had already been offered lucrative contracts to participate in the APL, which would be modelled on the success of the Indian Premier League (IPL) that will be played out in South Africa from the next week.

The three South Africans were banned from participating in South African teams after they became the first local players to sign up for the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL) two years ago. The International Cricket Council (ICC) refused to recognise the ICL, with the BCCI launching the IPL in its wake.

Boje, Hall and Klusener, who have jointly represented South Africa in 113 Tests and 374 one-day games, will be in the (American) Premium World Team which will play against Premium India, Premium Bangladesh, Premium Pakistan, Premium Windies and home side Premium America, according to the weekly.

A knockout round, in which each side will play the others once, will be followed by semis and a final consisting of three matches.

The inaugural series of the APL , which will take place twice a year, will be played out in New York from October 6 to 26 and the next one in April 2010 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Like the IPL, the huge interest in the game has brought with it lucrative fees for the players.

The three South Africans have reportedly been offered two-year contracts with a payment of $50,000 per tournament, besides the money that bidders from the various franchises might spend and match money from the games. Players will also be contractually bound to participate in marketing campaigns across the US.

Bidding for the players in the APL sides will take place in the same way as that of the IPL, with players being sold to franchise holders with the highest offer.

IPL supremo Lalit Modi said at the launch of the IPL series in South Africa recently that there was a huge cricket-loving community in the US who had followed the inaugural IPL last year intensely. He also expressed a wish to take the IPL to the US and China in future.

It's the terrorism, stupid; not India: US message to Pak

Courtesy : Times of India

The United States will institute benchmarks that Pakistan will have to meet, including scaling down its confrontational posture against India, if Islamabad is to earn the massive foreign aid Washington and its partners are lining up, Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton indicated on Thursday. ( Watch )

The benchmarks will include moving troops from its border with India to its insurgency stricken areas to fight its homegrown terrorism problem, Clinton suggested, following up on the broad US prescription and advice to Pakistan that its grave domestic situation, and not India

, constituted the biggest danger to its existence.

Clinton provided the assurances about benchmarks at the urging of some lawmakers, but said she would prefer they remain an executive decision rather than legislative so that the administration would not be paralyzed. Some of the benchmarks would be classified, but the administration would share them with Congress

.

"You know, on a simple measure, is the Pakistani military still amassing hundreds of thousands of troops on the Indian border, or have they begun to move those toward these insurgent areas?" Clinton explained at a Congressional hearing, citing the example of one such benchmark. "What kind of kinetic action are they taking? How much? Is there increasing up-tempo or not? Is it sporadic, so they start in and then they move back?"

"I agree with you completely that we need the internal benchmarks," she told an anxious lawmaker, adding the approach would be across the government. "The intelligence community will have certain measurements; the Defense Department will; we (the State Department) will look as well."

The Pakistani government — and some of its supporters like Senator John Kerry — has opposed legislative benchmarks, especially those which condition US aid to Pakistan ending its sponsorship of terrorism against India, saying they are humiliating. But lawmakers on the House side are against giving Pakistan a free ride given what they say is its history of double-dealing.

"I've been around this place 40 years. My experience with Pakistan during all that time is that it has always been Pakistan, which means it's a country of dealmakers, but they don't keep the deals," said Congressman David Obey. "I have absolutely no confidence in the ability of the existing Pakistani government to do one blessed thing."

Other members also complained about Pakistan's double-dealing – paying lip service to fighting terrorism while cutting deals with extremists. "How do we succeed in Pakistan if the Pakistanis themselves are either unwilling or incapable of making the tough choices and taking the tough action needed to confront the insurgency?" asked one Congressman.

Following up on President Obama's

assurance that there will be no blank checks for Pakistan, Secretary Clinton also re-iterated what has become a virtual mantra in Washington in recent weeks: Repeated advice to Pakistan that it is not India, but Islamabad's own home-grown terrorism that posed an existential threat to it.

In an indication that US aid to Pakistan will be contingent on its India policy, even if it is not incorporated into legislation, Clinton said US officials have been "spending countless hours in really painful, specific conversations," to convince Pakistan of the changed situation. Pakistan was slow to understand this, she suggested.

"Changing paradigms and mindsets is not easy," Clinton told anxious lawmakers, adding, "I want to underscore the feeling we get, which is that if you have been locked in a mortal contest with someone you think is your principal — in fact, only — real enemy, and all of a sudden circumstances change, it just takes some time."

Similar policy prescriptions and sentiments (It's not India, it's home-grown extremists) were expressed at a Harvard lecture earlier this week by General David Petraeus, chief of the US Central Command with oversight of Pakistan and the middle-east, indicating that US interlocutors are all reading from the same page.

"The existential threat" facing Pakistan "is internal extremists and not India," Petraeus said in the speech at the Kennedy School of Government, adding such an idea was "intellectually dislocating" for the institutions of Pakistan fostered on decades of projecting confrontation against India.

Over at the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs said the Pakistan crisis was taking a lot of President Obama's time. Defense Secretary Robert Gates too chipped in, asking Islamabad to recognize the danger and take action.

On her part, Clinton told lawmakers there is a growing understanding of the changed circumstances within the Pakistani leadership.

"Now, there are no promises. They have to do it (act against extremists)," she warned.

Bollywood even copies the Ads

Bollywood Ad


Lifted from this hollywood ad

WINDOWS 7 : Learnt from users

WASHINGTON: To design Windows 7, Microsoft analyzed billions of pieces of data. It studied exactly what PC users do in front of their screens.

It tallied hundreds of thousands of Windows surveys. It got feedback from people all over the world who tried different versions of the software.

As a result, every change or new feature in Windows 7 comes with a back story. Here is a sampling of things you'll see in the next operating system and explanations of how each came about.

- New feature: You decide the left-to-right order of icons in the task bar at the bottom of your screen.

- Back story: Microsoft's research showed Vista users commonly launching a series of programmes, then closing and immediately reopening some. Microsoft realised that these people wanted their programmes to appear in the same order on the task bar every time.

- New feature: Right-click on a task bar icon and get a "jump list," a menu of important or frequently used options for the programme.

- Back story: Microsoft had resisted the idea of hiding a key feature behind a right click, worried people wouldn't find it. But the data showed most people right-click on icons to see what that might do.

- New feature: Drag one open window to the left side of the screen, then another to the right side to line them up so they are the same size and side by side.

- Back story: Microsoft couldn't initially figure out why people were spending so much time resizing windows and dragging them around. It turned out that users were trying to give themselves a side-by-side view of documents for easy comparison.


- Back story: From its Vista data, Microsoft could see people's photos, music and other files were swelling in number and stashed all over the place, not organised into the dedicated folders Microsoft had set up.

- New feature: "Shake" an open window with your mouse to make all the other ones "minimise" into the task bar.

- Back story: Microsoft's research showed that people often had six or even 10 windows open at once, which gets distracting. Shake is one of several features designed to help people tame all the open windows.

- New feature: Move your mouse to the bottom-right corner to make all your windows temporarily transparent. Then click the mouse, and all the windows minimise.

- Back story: What's notable here is what Microsoft didn't do. There's no tutorial or bubble advertising the feature, a small step toward making Windows 7 quieter than Vista. "We want people to confidently explore the system," said Sam Moreau, a user experience manager.

Domino's workers caught contaminating food with spit and snot

Select your symbol

The Government of India wants your help. It has invited the public to suggest a symbol for the Rupee. Just as the Dollar is universally denoted by $‚ the government thinks the Rupee should also have its own unique symbol that captures a sense of India’s history and culture.Listed below are 19 suggestions from Our team of designers. Please vote for the one you find best. Our Design Team will present all these symbols ‚ along with the Our Design Team viewers’ preference‚ to the Ministry of Finance . And‚ if you don t like these and have a symbol of your own to offer, mail it to us at editoret@indiatimes.co.in So hone your design skills and choose the right symbol for the Rupee.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/rupeesurvey.cms

Indian youth :- Dumb or Idiot or Ignorant or Shameless or not Indian now

Yeah i'm in my senses while writing this.Yeah i'm the one who wrote and asked the ministers to mind their bussiness and leave the youth alone coz they know what is write and what is wrong.but youth the coolest,brainiest,fastest growing youth only led the Gen X dowm.

Once some great spiritual leader said "If u don't respect the people at home , you won't be respected any where else".This is true, and all kids in India are tought this.but some seem to have been blinded by the glamour,fame,authority,power and the modernization to a great extent.

I'm talking about the MEN in BLUE Captain M.S.Dhoni and the turbunator Harbhajan Singh.These guys seem to have forgotten their values and duties and ethics.They have turned themselves so bussy and important that they found the Highest Civillian Award in India the   " Padm Shri " of least importance and avoided it to attend.

Yes folks they didn't attended the very function that was been headed the very first person of India The President.how dare can some one disrespect the nation as a whole, put down the pride and honour the nation. Have these men lost it or now it's just the IPL and the Ad endrosments that let them make money important for them.none of the citizen of india has any right to and nor any one is allowed to even think that way.

how can these men forget that the position, power, fame, money and whatever they have right now has been given by this very nation . this nation has acknowledged the commitment and the services that they have given to country. and for this very reason the country wanted to acknowledge them.but by not attending the ceremony and proving them selves bussy they have definitly trying to set a wrong and a bad example for generations to follow.

" hey hey hey just for a second hold on guys"

 when Sachin Tendulkar who has no match in his class can come a day before, when Madhuri Dixit can travel a whole lot from the U.S. to recieve this great honour,what happened to these guys,they cannot be that bussy after all family comes first and India is their family.

Above that they were in the country itself,where they were bussy girlfriends, shooting for ads,rash driving,some pub where, where the hell were they.the people of India would definitly like to know the answer.

Please all those folks who consider these guys as role model just come to reality ,they don't deserve to be . And mind u MSD and bhajji u got to pay for this dishonour u served your nation with. and yeah SHAME ON YOU .

JAI HO JAI HO

Atlast something to smile at.....

Increasing level of education of Indian MPs
Courtsey : livemint.com

PirateBay.com owners to go to jail ???

F or some Internet users, the operators of the noto rious the Pirate Bay Web site are heroes who have enabled free access to movies, music and other copyrighted material. This week, a Swedish court will decide whether they are criminals.

Last year, Swedish prosecutors filed criminal charges against four men they say violate the country’s copyright law by operating the Pirate Bay. The file-sharing site has long been one of the top Web destinations for people seeking access to pirated movies, games, books and business software. The site, which says it has 22 million users, is based in Sweden, where the government has taken few steps to curtail piracy until recently.

The four men—Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom—have denied the charges, arguing that they merely provided an index of content and didn’t control what other people did with it.

Arguments have finished, and a ruling is due Friday.

The men face up to two years in jail, although the prosecution has asked for sentences of one year. Entertainment companies, including Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros., EMI Group Ltd. and Sony Corp.’s Columbia Pictures, are also seeking a total of 117 million Swedish kronor ($14.2 million) compensation for lost revenue.

The case represents the culmination of U.S. attempts to get Sweden to take intellectual-property theft more seriously. Peer-to-peer file sharing has long been popular in Sweden. Most homes have broadband access and many people don’t see anything wrong with downloading entertainment without paying—in 2007, 43% of the peo- ple participating in a survey by Sweden’s biggest phone company said they planned to download music during the year. A Swedish political party is dedicated to legalizing peerto-peer file sharing, the main method for distributing pirated material.

Lately, however, and under heavy pressure from the U.S., the Swedish government has taken a tougher stance. This month, a law came into effect allowing content companies to obtain from Internet service providers the names and addresses of people suspected of sharing pirated files, a common practice in the European Union. On the day the law took effect, total Internet usage fell 40% in Sweden and has stayed down, according to Netnod Internet Exchange, an organization that measures Internet traffic.

The Pirate Bay trial, held over three weeks in February and March, became a publicrelations duel between the defendants and the entertainment industry.

The Pirate Bay has developed an international following in part because of its brazen attitude. It posts legal threats made against it for copyright violations on the site along with cheeky replies, lists its most-popular downloads and sells the Pirate Bay T-shirts by mail order. At the start of the trial, Pirate Bay supporters parked buses near the courthouse in downtown Stockholm where they held a press conference. The site’s founders say they believe in promoting free information.

The criminal trial had some Swedish quirks: only one of four judges had legal training and the defendants’ legal costs are being covered by the government. One day, both sides ended up in the same restaurant for lunch and traded awkward small talk.

Supporters posted daily accounts of the trial on the Web.

One of the defendants posted a note to hackers attacking the Web site of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the trade group for the music industry. “Whomever is hacking the IFPI websites, please stop doing that,” Mr.

Sunde wrote on Twitter. “It only makes us look bad!” The defense had an early victory when the prosecution dropped charges of being accessories to the production of copyrighted material, leaving them accused of “assisting in making available” copyrighted material.

Meanwhile, the head of the IFPI, John Kennedy, testified in the trial that the Pirate Bay had become “the No. 1 source of illegal music,” following successful court actions four years ago against peer-to-peer file-sharing sites Grokster in the U.S. and Kazaa in Australia.

Lawyers for the entertain ment companies said the site makes $1 million a year through advertising. The defense lawyers said the actual amount of revenue is a tiny fraction of that.

Throughout the trial, the Pirate Bay Web site has continued to operate, and has done continuously since it was founded in 2003—except for a few days in May 2006, after Swedish police raided its offices on copyright-infringement charges and seized much of its equipment.

While the men appear to have a lot of public support in Sweden, legal experts expect them to lose. “I’ll be surprised if they are not convicted,” said Karl Olsson, a lawyer not involved in the case who works at Sweden’s biggest intellectual property law firm, Awapatent AB. “It is easy when you look at the Web site to see they are enabling people to download” pirated files.

It is unclear if outlawing the Pirate Bay will do much to reduce Internet piracy. In the past, downloaders have simply switched to different sites when the most popular content-sharing site is closed.

Nonetheless, the Pirate Bay has built up such a high profile that the entertainment industry will be able to claim a major victory against Internet piracy if it is shut down.

If the men are found not guilty, Sweden will likely have to change its copyright law to make file-sharing sites like the Pirate Bay illegal to bring the country into line with international agreements protecting the integrity of intellectual property, Mr. Olsson said.

Slumdog aftereffects..Americans afraid of Indians ???

WASHINGTON: A radio jockey who frequently goes out on limb has once again pushed the limit of political correctness - this time referring to workers handling outsourced jobs in India as "slumdogs".

The epithet, derived from the movie Slumdog Millionaire, came from Rush Limbaugh, America's most widely heard radio host, during a discussion on the economy last week.

Responding to a listener's call about flight of jobs, Limbaugh referred to President Obama's statement that the jobs aren't coming back to US. He said, "They're outsourced for a reason, an economic reason, and they're not coming back. If you're sitting out waiting for a job that's now being done by a slumdog in India, and you're waiting for that job to be cancelled, for the slumdog to be thrown out of work, and you to get the job, it ain't going to happen."

Limbaugh is not new to controversy. He has mocked Obama on his program, including playing a parody song titled 'Barack the Magic Negro'.

IIT JEE 2009 Answer Keys / Solutions

Dear JEE - 2009 Aspirants
Find the answer key and / or solutions from the leading coaching intitutes right here at one place.

BANSAL CLASSES
PAPER 1 PAPER2

RESONANCE
PAPER 1 PAPER 2

CAREER POINT
PAPER 1 PAPER 2

NARAYANA
DOWNLOAD from HERE

FIITJEE
DOWNLOAD from HERE

AKASH INSTITUTE
Download from HERE


CUT - OFF Views

The Total Marks including Paper 1 and paper 2 is max 480. As per our estimates the expected cut off for the last rank in IIT JEE 2009 would be somewhere around 165 - 170 marks in paper I and paper II together. You can assess your performance by checking our IIT JEE 2009 Solutions.
-askiitians.com

Different websites and institutes have different views on cut-off this year. However all the estimates lies between 150 to 175 marks. More accurate analysis of cut-off will be published as soon as they are out.

THE LIAR GOVERNMENT,CHEATS IT'S OWN PEOPLE

Do you know how the fuel price is calculated in India?

Suppose if the petrol price per litre in Chennai is Rs 51.90, here the break-up of cost calculated by the government:

• Basic Price = Rs 21.93
• Excise duty = Rs 14.35
• Education Tax = Rs 0.43
• Dealer commission = Rs 1.05
• VAT = Rs 5.5
• Crude Oil Custom duty = Rs 1.1
• Petrol Custom = Rs 1.54
• Transportation Charge = Rs 6.00
• Total price = Rs 51.90

So for a Rs 22 litre petrol at pumps, consumers in India pay Rs 28 tax extra.

Further 1 barrel of crude oil = 42 US gallons (159 liters or 35 imperial gallons). It produces 19.5 gallons of gasoline or petrol (74 liters), plus many other products such as kerosene, etc.

now 1 barrel costs $ 52, and $ 1 equals to 50.2 INR that is INR 2610.10 for 1 barrel.

and at INR 43/ltr of petrol govt makes INR 3182 from the sale of petrol itself,however there are various other products made from that same 1 barrel that approximates as

Every 42-gallon (159-liter) barrel of oil can be refined into 

• 19.4 gallons (73 liters) of gas, 
  
• 10.5 gallons (40 liters) of diesel, and 
  
• 4.1 gallons (16 liters) of jet fuel, not to mention lots of other marketable stuff.

---

Every 42-US-gallon barrel of crude provides a little more than 44 gallons of petroleum products. This is gained due to processing of crude. From one barrel we get (in gallons):

• 7.27 gallons (27.5 liters): Other products (feedstocks for petrochemical plants, asphalt, bitumen, tar, etc.)
• 1.72 gallons (6.5 liters): Liquefied Petroleum Gases (LPG)
• 3.82 gallons (14.5 liters): Jet Fuel
• 1.76 gallons (6.6 liters): Heavy Fuel Oil (Residual)
• 1.75 gallons (6.6 liters): Other Distillates (Heating Oil)
• 9.21 gallons (35 liters): Diesel
• 19.15 gallons (72.5 liters): Gasoline

From petrochemical feedstocks many everyday-life products are then obtained. Some examples are:

• fertilizers for agriculture
• plastic toys and gadgets (bags, computer cases, etc.)
• bubble gums
• car tires
• perfumes
• petroleum jelly
• ammonia
• washing liquids 

so now u have an idea how much the govenment earns on each barrel of petroleum,and still keeps crying that the oil companies are in great losses,so what do u think should be prices of the petroleum products.

and the most important question why has been the government whether upa or nda lying.get up u lousy creatures ,how long will u take this injust.get up ask questions

JAI HO JAI HO

Halla BOL !! RR new anthem feat shilpa shetty

For all the hardcore fans of Rajasthan Royals team....here is the new RR Anthem feat. Shilpa Shetty....keep enjoying and supporting RR....HALLA BOL !!!