Ministry of Defence on Wednesday informed parliament that they have taken necessary steps to insure that military secrets are not leaked out through social networking Web site, Orkut.

Defence Minister, A K Antony, said in a written statement that "defence personnel is periodically sensitized to the nuances of military security, and to the implications of sharing classified information with strangers on social networks. They are also aware of the implications of such sharing under the Official Secrets Act".

According to the minister, directions have also been issued to "take stern action against defaulters" using the Internet at large for passing on defence secrets.

Antony also detailed the steps being taken to ensure that foreign intelligence agencies did not gain access to India's military secrets through the Internet.

These included sensitisation of defence and civilian personnel at all levels, with special attention paid to new entrants at training institutes; regular policy guidelines being issued for compliance; and checks/audits undertaken by in-house teams to locate any breach, the minister stated.

Source: (Techtree, Sify)

Finally it here, PS3 will be hitting Indian market in December 2007 with the price tag of Rs. 24, 900 for the new 40 GB PlayStation3. Yesterday, MR. Atindriya Bose, country manager, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI), unveiled the Playstation 3 (40 GB) for the first time in the Indian market, at a grand expo at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai. The impressive expo included seven gaming zones – Sports Zone, Speed Zone, Action Zone, Shooting Range, Gaming Dungeon, Buzz World and Sing Star Center Stage.

Bose said, "that gaming will soon increasingly become the most accepted form of entertainment in the country and hence the company thought this to be the appropriate time to launch the new products." According to company sources, the PlayStation enjoys 60 percent market share among all the gaming consoles in India.

The Expo also showcased the PSP Slim with Video Out facility and assortment of games including the PSP Spiderman specialty pack at Rs 10,490 with Spiderman games and movies; the Simpsons specialty pack at Rs 9,990 with a new Simpsons game and three new games for PS3.

Source: (ZDnet India, Gameguru,Newslocale)

Yes that true, Rs 34 crore Mumbai flat was brought by an NRI from UK. A four-bedroom flat at NCPA Apartments at the Nariman Point end of Marine Drive for a gravity-defying price of Rs 97,842 per square foot, or Rs 34 crore, which was conducted by C B Richard Ellis, an international property consultant at the Citibank office at Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex.The plush pad (No. 74) is located on the seventh floor and was put up for sale early this month by its owner, Citibank.

The seventh-floor NCPA apartment has a super built-up area of 3,475 sq ft and a carpet area of about 2,100 sq ft. As laid down by Citigroup. Incidentally, NCPA Apartments has been at the centre of some big deals. In April 2006, According to Times of India 'a similar-sized flat in this building was sold at Rs 63,000 a sq ft.

Flats in NCPA are owned by companies and not individuals. The National Centre for the Performing Arts is the promoter of the property. When bookings for the upmarket building began in the early 1990s, the rate was about Rs 7,000 a sq ft. But at the peak of the property boom in 1995-96, apartments at NCPA fetched about Rs 30,000 a sq ft.

There have been reports of a few high-end apartments in south Mumbai being sold at Rs 1 lakh a sq ft. However, a large component is said to have been in cash, as a result of which, on paper, such transactions were smaller.


Source: (Times, 2)

Uttar Pradesh was rocked by serial bomb blasts on firday. As many as six blasts took place simultaneously between 1 and 1:30 pm in three different cities in UP. In total 13 lives were lost and over 59 others injured.

Six bombs — three in Varansi, two in Faizabad and one in Lucknow — went off within a span of 15 minutes in the crowded court complexes between 1:10 pm and 1:25 pm. Some of bombs are believed to have been planted on cycles.

The first blasts occurred outside a court in Faizabad. Then another blast hit outside a civil court in Lucknow. And then three simultaneous blasts occurred within the district court campus in Varanasi. Police later recovered 2 more live bombs from the blast sites in Lucknow and Faizabad.

According to reports, a militant group called 'Indian Mujahideen' has claimed responsibility for the blasts. Reports said an e-mail was sent to major television networks in the country detailing the blasts, five minutes before it occurred. State and Central intelligence agencies are still examining Friday's email. But investigators believe that it could be just a smokescreen. The email is suspected to have been sent from the Rajdhani cyber cafe in east Delhi. The police are questioning the owner.

Both, central and state government have condemned serial bomb blasts in UP saying that it was aimed at fomenting communal strife in the country. Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal told reporters here that the blasts were ‘the handiwork of terrorists who wanted to divide the country on communal lines.’ He urged the people to remain united and ‘not allow the nefarious designs of terrorists to be successful.’ UP Chief Minister Mayawati has announced an ex-gratia relief of Rs 2 lakhs to the kin of those killed and Rs 50,000 to the injured.


Source: (Times, NDTV)

Yes, that's true and thats what BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) has planned for its new series which is Indian Premier League (IPL), and you guessed it right 'it's more or less similar to EPL (English premier League)'.

But that's not what this is all about, it about owing your own team in IPL for a life time and you get to select your players from the pool of players including the top 50 cricketers according to ICC's current rankings and every player in the current Indian team.

The BCCI has asked corporates to pay between $50 million and $60 million (Rs 200 crore to Rs 240 crore) to own an IPL team (for lifetime). In turn, the BCCI will offer companies a revenue share from stadium advertising and gate money.

The IPL will include domestic and foreign teams that will play tournaments, including in the Twenty20 format. Under the Twenty20 format, the company is not a sponsor but the owner of the team. Apart from the ownership amount, a company will have to deal separately with each cricketer it wants in its team. Players ranked higher up on the listings will command as much as $300,000 while those lower down the rung can take home roughly $100,000.

Matches under the IPL banner are scheduled to be played during April 2008. Under the format, interested parties can bid for one of the eight teams that will represent an Indian city. Until now, 90 bidders have expressed their intention to participate in the auctioning that will be telecast on television. Of them are industrialists Anil Ambani and Vijay Mallya, football teams from the English Premier League, some members of the American National Basketball Association, two foreign banks with operations in India and as yet unnamed investment bankers are among those who have expressed interest in owning cricket teams in India.

Moreover, BCCI has also planned to list IPL teams in Stock market and it is going to get very exciting if this proposal to list the cricket teams in the stock exchanges goes trough.

Source: (Business Standard, Times)

India has earned a position at the top five of the prestigious “Top 500 Supercomputer Sites List” for the first time ever, with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), and this has been made possible by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons in Pune, which has installed an Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system which can perform 117.9 TFlop/s (‘teraflops’ or trillions of calculations per second) performance.

In (Supercomputer 07) SC07 Conference held in the US last night, supercomputer developed by the Tata Group has been adjudged the fastest in Asia and fourth fastest in the world, till now the the list was usually dominated by the United States.

The fourth-ranking Tata supercomputer Called ‘Eka’ is derived from Sanskrit term for ‘one’, the project entailed an investment of $30 million, which was entirely borne by Tata Sons, and was put together in a record six weeks. CRL was originally set up in February 2006, but the task of putting together the supercomputer started in June this year. ‘

World’s Top 5 Supercomputers

1. BlueGene/L System (IBM) US

2. BlueGene/P system, (IBM) Germany

3. Silicon Graphics (SGI), New Mexico

4. Eka, CRL (arm of Tata Sons) India.

5. HP Cluster Platform (Sweden)

Source: (Times, IndianExpress)

Recently The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported about a survey conducted by UKTV to choose the most silliest laws still on the books in the UK. Nearly 4,000 people picked laws on a list compiled by UKTV Gold researchers. It examined laws that have never been repealed even though statutes could have rendered them obsolete.

However, here is the taste of what it is all about.....


TOP 10 Silliest Laws in UK:

1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament (27%).

2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British king or queen's image upside-down (7%)

3. It is illegal for a woman to be topless in Liverpool except as a clerk in a tropical fish store (6%)

4. Eating mince pies on Christmas Day is banned (5%)

5. If someone knocks on your door in Scotland and requires the use of your toilet, you are required to let them enter (4%)

6. In the UK a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet (4%)

7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King, and the tail of the Queen (3.5%)

8. It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing (3%)

9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament wearing a suit of armour (3%)

10. It is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls of York, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow (2%)



Well I you are not satisfied at all, then here are some more silliest laws around the world:


1. Women in Vermont must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth

2. In France, it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon.


3. In Milan, it is a legal requirement to smile at all times, except during funerals or hospital visits.

4. A male doctor in Bahrain can only examine the genitals of a woman in the reflection of a mirror

5. It is illegal to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle in Alabama

6. In Switzerland, a man may not relieve himself standing up after 10pm

7. In Indonesia, the penalty for masturbation is decapitation

8. In Ohio, it is illegal to get a fish drunk.

7. In Florida, unmarried women who parachute on a Sunday could be jailed


Source: (BBC, Lazy forum)