2011 is a great year for Hollywood movies. Here is a list of the most anticipated 2011 movies, from the final installment of ‘Harry Potter’ to Ryan Reynolds in ‘The Green Lantern’ to Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ — not to mention smaller movies like Terrence Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’ and the Nick Frost/Simon Pegg alien comedy ‘Paul.’

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3G Postpaid and Prepaid Data Service

3.1 Activation of Data Plans : SIM and Activation charges as applicable to 3G Postpaid & Prepaid voice plan will also be applicable for 3G data services.

(i) In place of existing FRC 120 for activation of 3G data plan, the following two new FRCs for activation of data plan are introduced.

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New Delhi, 2nd May ’2011: With a vision that brings leadership of a seasoned telecom technocrat, Shri R K Upadhyay, CMD, TCIL took over the charge as Chairman and Managing Director, BSNL, the largest telecom operator in the country on 30th April, 2011.

Shri Rakesh Kumar Upadhyay is an officer of 1975 Batch of Indian Telecom Services. He obtained B.Tech (Electronics) Degree from I.T. Banaras Hindu University in 1974 and MBA (Marketing Management) degree from Indira Gandhi Open University. He is also a graduate of
Defence Staff Services College (DSSC) Wellington and was awarded M.Sc (D.S.) Degree by Madras University. He has successfully worked in Department of Telecommunications from August 1975 to July 1996 in the areas of Planning, Installation and Commissioning, Commercial administration and operations. While on deputation to TCIL during October 1996 to August 1999, he successfully worked in the foreign projects as Project Director, Sana’a and General Manager, Yemen.

After a stint from Jan.’2000 to Jun.’2003 in BSNL as General Manager Jammu & Kashmir Telecom Circle he joined TCIL again on deputation in June 2003. After joining TCIL, he successfully worked as a Chief Project Director, Algeria, Group General Manager (New Technology) and Executive Director (Project Monitoring) and other important assignments. He has got rich experience in the fields of Planning, Projects, Operation and Business Development. He took the charge of Director (Projects) w.e.f. 1st Nov.’2005 and subsequently took the charge of Chairman and Managing Director on 1st March 2007

Commenting on his joining, Shri R K Upadhyay , CMD, BSNL, said “After a good old journey of more than three decades in the telecom industry, I am privileged and humbled to take the responsibilities of BSNL. A great challenge lies ahead of us and I am sure we will meet every challenge with determination”.

Mobile handset company Spice Mobility today said it will invest Rs 1,000 crore this fiscal to further expand its business through opening new centres and going in for acquisitions.
The company in the long run will also look to merge Spice Mobility with Spice i2i in order to streamline its various businesses.”The company will be investing Rs 1,000 crore during FY’11-12 to position itself as a mobile internet company and will also work to streamline its various operations under one fold,” Spice Mobility Chairman B K Modi told reporters here.The company will be using the funds for building new offices, regional centres, hiring new employees, he said adding the resources would generated internally.
In order to expand in the Indian mobile retail market, the company has created a seven cluster distribution model for which it plans to hire about 300 more people for further strengthening customer relationship, Modi said.
To kick start its new positioning campaign, Spice Mobility today showcased its new logo and unveiled the dual SIM phone on the Android platform, which the company will be launching next week in the market.
“Earlier, we were known as a mobile phone company. Now we have merged our various divisions like devices, retail and value-added services into one and focus on mobile internet. Our market capitalisation stood at Rs 2,400 crore,” Modi added.
The company, continuing its acquisition spree, is close to buying Indonesia-based Nexian for which the company has already raised $200 million and the Bangladesh-based Sprint, for which it has to seek regulatory clearances.
The Spice group is present in areas like mobility, finance, infotainment and innovative technologies through its various companies like Spice Mobility, Spice Hotspot, Spice Digital Spice Labs, SpiceI2I, S-Unno, Spice CSL, Spice BPO, Spice Online Retail Spice Money (WSFL) and Spice World and Spice Cinemas

New Delhi:  As Air India pilots’ strike enters its sixth day today, the Delhi High Court will hear a contempt case against three pilots including Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) President A S Bhinder and General Secretary Rishabh Kapur.
The Delhi High Court had directed the pilots on strike to go back to work by 5 pm last Friday but over 800 pilots defied court orders. The three pilots facing contempt charges have not yet responded to the notice served by the court last week. If found guilty, they could be asked to spend six months in jail.
Meanwhile, just like the past three days, 90 per cent of the airline’s domestic fleet will be grounded today. With no solution in sight to the crisis caused by the pilots’ stir, the airline has further curtailed its operations with limited flights till May 6.
The national carrier has also decided to put into use bigger, wide-bodied aircraft including jumbo jets for the already few domestic flights that it is currently operating.

The CMD of Air India, Arvind Jadhav, in an SMS to the employees of the national carrier appealed to “persuade” striking pilots to return to the negotiating table and work to “save our airline.” (Read: Air India chief appeals in SMS)
The Bharatiya Janata Party, meanwhile, slammed the Prime Minister’s Office for the mess.
Dubbing the strike as a cover-up to shut down the airline, BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said, “The present dispensation of Air India has nothing to do with the Civil Aviation Ministry, it is completely being controlled by the secretariat of the PMO…The CMD of Air India directly reports to the PMO, so all my charges are towards the PMO”.
The pilots had on Saturday said they were willing to return to work if authorities gave them an assurance that their demands regarding their pay hike would be looked into. They also said they had not yet received any formal invitation for talks from the management of Air India management.
At the heart of the battle is the issue of how much pilots are paid. In 2007, the government merged Air India with Indian Airlines, assuming it would lead to a more cost-efficient national carrier. The desired results are nowhere on the horizon, despite 2000 crore rupees being infused into operations.
The pilots on strike were all originally hired by Indian Airlines; they say that four years after the merger, they are still paid significantly less than the pilots who joined them from Air India. Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi is not moved by their plight. He said 1600 pilots make 800 crore rupees. “Many of them are plus two, not even graduates, and they are getting Rs. 3.8 lakh a month… I hope sense will prevail upon these people. Are they starving?” he added.

source: ndtv

WASHINGTON — NATO officials insisted Sunday that an airstrike that may have killed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s son was aimed at destroying a military control center, not an assassination attempt.

Saturday’s attack in a Tripoli neighborhood killed Gadhafi’s son and three of his grandsons, according to the Libyan government. Gadhafi himself escaped unharmed, it said.NATO, in a statement, called the target of the airstrike “a known command-and-control building.” The top NATO commander of the air war in Libya, Canadian Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, said reports about the deaths of Gadhafi’s son and grandson had not been confirmed and added that NATO “does not target individuals.”"All NATO’s targets are military in nature and have been clearly linked to the Gadhafi regime’s systematic attacks on the Libyan population and populated areas,” Bouchard said in a statement.PHOTO: Rebellion in LibyaNATO has been frustrated by Gadhafi’s commingling of military communication sites in residential areas, Stephen Flanagan, a military strategy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Sunday. The attack may have been an attempt to show the Gadhafi regime that the allies are willing to root out its remaining command posts.”It’s a murky game at this point, but I don’t think this is part of a direct effort to hunt down Gadhafi,” Flanagan said.The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain of Arizona, defended the airstrikes in Libya on CBS’ Face the Nation. He called on President Obama to put U.S. warplanes back in the forefront of the fight. U.S. forces led the initial attacks to destroy Libyan air defense but since then have taken on a support role. U.S. aircraft primarily fly intelligence, refueling and communications-jamming missions.”We should be taking out his command and control,” McCain said. “And if he is killed or injured because of that, that’s fine. But we ought to have a strategy to help the rebels succeed and overthrow Qadhafi and everybody associated with him.”Meanwhile, the Russian government on Sunday criticized the attack for going beyond the United Nations authorization for the NATO-led alliance to protect Libyan civilians from attack . Gadhafi sought to quash an armed rebellion that began in February, part of a broad uprising in the Middle East against authoritarian governments. Russia abstained from voting on the authorization in March.On Sunday, the Russian foreign ministry accused NATO of using disproportionate force, blamed it for civilian deaths and called for a cease fire. Russian complaints, Flanagan said, probably stem from its concerns that a Western alliance might interfere with its interests closer to its borders. “They don’t have any particular love for Gadhafi,” he said.

source: usatoday

The helicopter carrying Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu could not be traced on Sunday, the second day after it went missing. Bad weather forced the Indian Air Force to suspend search later in the day.

However, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, V Narayanasamy, who is camping in Arunachal Pradesh, said in a late night communiquA© that a radio signal was detected and it was being ascertained whether the signal was from the missing chopper carrying Dorjee.

The state government statement on the incident said that Bhutanese authorities have given permission for carrying out air sorties for search and rescue operations in its territory. The statement added that a team of the National Disaster Response Force comprising 38 personnel had proceeded to Bomdila to assist local police in the search operations. The team has the latest search and rescue equipment. Earlier in the day, Indian and Bhutanese soldiers fanned out in the hilly terrain to trace the chopper that went missing on Saturday morning. A crisis management team is supervising the operations and the Prime Minister’s Office is monitoring the overall scene.

However, confusion remained on whether Dorjee’s helicopter landed in Bhutan on Saturday, as claimed by Governor JJ Singh. Intelligence agencies were looking into a satellite phone call that was received by an unnamed Congress MLA close to Khandu, based on which the Governor made the claim. The MLA told the chief secretary and the principal secretary to the chief minister that ‘he believed’ it was Khandu who called him. The caller apparently said ‘he was taking off’ presumably from somewhere in Bhutan.

Around 2,400 personnel from Tawang and Tenga Army camps were engaged in ground search operations, besides six teams of 25 personnel each of Indo-Tibetan Border Police . All senior ministers of the state government, along with Union ministers Mukul Wasnik Minister and V Narayanasamy reviewed the situation. Both Central ministers who reached Itanagar on Sunday were engaged in marathon meetings. The Indian Space Research Organisation could not carry out a planned satellite mapping due to thickness of the cloud. ISRO will make another attempt on Monday. According to a source in the Arunachal government , talks on selecting the probable caretaker chief minister has begun. State Home Minister Toko Dabi , however, told ET: “At present, our whole focus is on rescue operations and we believe that the chief minister will come back safely.”

The Pawan Hans helicopter with five people on board that took off at 9.56 am on Saturday from Tawang helipad went missing around 10.30 am. The chopper was scheduled to land at Itanagar at 11.30 am. Just 20 minutes after taking off from Tawang, all communication was lost.

source :TOI

US stocks were up Friday, with the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index closing at a two-year high, as investors welcomed new data that showed the US trade deficit narrowed in October.
According to data from the Commerce Department, the trade deficit decreased 13 percent to $38.7 billion. It said that exports were the strongest since August 2008, with Mexico and China buying large amounts of US goods.
The decline brought the trade deficit to a nine-month low – exports climbed 3.2 percent to $158.7 billion and imports fell 0.5 percent to $197.4 billion.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 40.26 points, or 0.35 percent, to 11,410.32. The broader S&P 500 added 7.40 points, or 0.60 percent, to 1,240.40. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose 20.87 points, or 0.80 percent, to 2,637.54.
For the week, the Dow was up 0.4 percent, the S&P 500 rose 1.3 percent and the Nasdaq gained 1.5 percent.
The US currency gained against the euro to 75.60 euro cents from 75.55 euro cents Thursday. The dollar also gained ground against the Japanese currency to 83.94 yen from 83.75 yen.

A new study has challenged the theory that lowering the minimum legal drinking age would help curb binge drinking on campuses.

Richard A. Scribner, of the Louisiana State University School of Public Health, one of the researchers on the new study, and colleagues used a mathematical model to estimate the effects that a lower drinking age would have on college binge drinking.

The model, developed based on survey data from students at 32 U.S. colleges, aimed to evaluate the “misperception effect” emphasized by the Amethyst Initiative – that is, the idea that underage students widely perceive “normal” drinking levels to be higher than they actually are

The researchers concluded that the campuses that were most likely to see a decline in binge drinking from a lowered legal drinking age were those that had the poorest enforcement of underage drinking laws – being surrounded, for instance, by bars that do not check identification – and a significant level of student misperception of ‘normal’ drinking.

If misperception levels were not present or were at the levels shown by the survey data, these campuses would likely see more binge-drinking if the legal age were lowered.

On ‘drier’ campuses, the study found, student misperceptions would have to be even greater.

“The higher the level of enforcement of underage drinking laws, the higher the level of misperception would have to be for the Amethyst Initiative to have any hope of being effective,” explained lead researcher Jawaid W. Rasul, of BioMedware Corporation.

And without data supporting the existence of such high levels of student misperception, Rasul said, lowering the legal drinking age would be unlikely to curb college binge drinking.

The study is published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. (ANI)