Prime Ministers Office declared on Thursday that Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy died in an air crash.

The helicopter carrying YSR Reddy, two of his staff and two pilots went missing in pouring rain Wednesday morning over the Naxal and tiger-infested Nalamalla forests.

Five bodies were been found at the site where Andhra Pradesh chief minister YSR Reddy chopper’s wreckage has been traced.

The government on Thursday confirmed that Nearly 24 hours after YSR’s chopper went missing, it was located atop Serai Salem hill, at a distance 40 nautical miles (70 kms) east of Kurnool.

The CM left Hyderabad on a six-seater Bell chopper at 8.35am for Chittoor accompanied by his secretary and chief security officer. After 9.27am, radio contact was lost with the helicopter.

Soon after the chopper lost contact, multiple agencies of the state launched a massive hunt for possible wreckage in the desolate terrain. By evening, it expanded into the country’s biggest-ever search operation with satellites in the sky joining remote sensing aircraft, fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles, troops on the ground and even barefoot deer-hunting tribals with bows and arrows.

Courtesy:- Times Of India

Telecom major Tata Indicom on Tuesday launched a ‘pay per call’ plan for its pre-paid subscribers, in which subscribers will have to

pay fixed charge on a per-call basis both for local and STD usage, regardless of the call duration.

“Our pre-paid subscribers will pay a fixed charge of Re 1 per local call and Rs 3 for STD calls for unlimited duration, said MD of Tata Teleservices Anil Sardana while launching the new tariff system. Tata Indicom operates CDMA-based mobile services in the country and has a customer base of 40 million subscribers.

The new tariff system, which will intensify the rate war, is valid on all calls made by Tata Indicom subscribers to “any mobile phone

or landline connection on any network”, said a statement issued by Tata. The new offer has also cut SMS charges to 50 paise per SMS for both local and national messages.

The service is available to all new Tata Indicom connections and existing customers can adopt the offer with a one-time recharge of Rs 96. The statement said, all subscribers who opt for it will be charged a daily fee of Re 1 to avail the option.

However, the new tariff will not be available to the post paid subscribers. The company may introduce it for the post paid customers also after assessing its success among the pre-paid customers.

COO of NCR region of Tata Teleservices Vineet Bhatia said, “The product is the result of research and studies to understand consumer trends and usage patterns.” He added customers who opt for this plan will no longer have to worry about the cost every minute of a call. “Also, the fact that this offer is for both local and STD calls makes it unique, something that holds the potential to completely redefine the Indian telecom pricing paradigm,” he said.

Courtesy:- Times Of India

Subrata Paul’s heroics lit up the dramatic summit clash as defending champions India tamed Syria 5-4 to win the Nehru Cup

International Football Tournament at the Ambedkar Stadium on Monday.

Paul conjured up a special performance, saving as many as three penalty shots to script the win after the match had been stretched to penalty shootout following the 1-1 deadlock at the end of the regulation time.

For India, Climax Lawrence, Sunil Chhetri, Steven Dias, Anwar Ali and Surkumar Singh scored in the shootout while Renedy Singh and Meharajuddin Wadoo missed the target.

For Syria, Raja Rafe, Mosab Balhous, Abdul Fatah Alaga and Abdul Razak Al Hussain found the target while the shots taken by Hamzeh Al Attouni, Wael Ayan and Ahmad Haj Muhammad were saved by Paul.

India pocketed $40,000 for their successfil title defence, while Syria went richer by $20,000.

The vociferous crowd, which also included Bollywood actor Salman Khan, had filled the 20,000 capacity Ambedkar Stadium and they ran into the pitch after Pual saved the last penalty of the Syrians.

India had almost won the match without going to the penalty shootout after second half substitute Renedy Singh struck in the 114th minute only to see Syrian midfielder Weal Ayan equalise from a header in the last minute of the extra time (120th).

The second consecutive top finish in the tournament also marked a hat-trick of titles in just over two years by India, under coach Bob Houghton.

India had won the tournament in 2007 and added another title by clinching the AFC Challenge Cup last year which gave the country a berth in the 2011 Asian Cup in Doha.

The win by Houghton’s boys today also meant that India became the only third country in the history of the Nehru Cup to have defended the title after then USSR (1985, 86, 87) and Iraq (1995, 95).

After the barren regulation time, Renedy injected life into the match taking a 35-yard free kick from near the left touchline.

Renedy curled it into the Syrian near post with goalkeeper Mosab Balhous remaining a mute spectator but the Indian joy was shortlived as Syria equalised soon.

In a match which turned rough and tense on several occasions, both sides failed to penetrate with the Indian back four admirably thwarting the Syrian attacks led by Mohammad Al Zino.

Playing with 3-5-2 formation, the physically stronger Syrians were more in possession of ball but they still could not get the better of the Indian defence.

For India, who played their usual 4-4-2 formation, the midfield duo of Climax Lawrence and NP Pradeep failed to hold the ball while the two wings rarely made the threatening crosses.

Steven Dias, who starred against Sri Lanka, could not do much as also left winger Anthony Pereira as the taller and well built Syrians played physical at times.

Bhaichung Bhutia was closely marked by the two tall defenders Ali Dyab and Hamzeh Al Attouni and the Indian captain had a lot of tussle with them, both with and without the ball.

In one such physical tussle, Bhutia was shown yellow card by the Maldives referee Adil Ali, his second of the tournament.

Bhutia’s strike partner Sunil Chhetri had a great game today as he made the Syrian defenders busy will his turns and dribbles.

In the first 15 minutes, India made a couple of threatening moves with Bhutia in the thick of action.

As early as the first minute itself, Bhutia got the better of Hamzeh Al Attouni but his left-footer was blocked by Syrian goalkeeper Mosab Balhous.

In the 19th minute, Dias got a clear look at the Syrian goal after a fine cross from the left by Anthony Pereira but only to see his shot being blocked by a defender.

Next minute it was the turn of the Syrians as Moutaz Kaildini’s left footer gone wide and then an Al Zino header went over the bar.

Courtesy : Times Of India

Force India’s Giancarlo Fisichella created history by giving India their first-ever Formula One race point,

finishing a sensational second in the Belgian Grand Prix, even as Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen
overtook the Italian, who started from the pole, to win the race.

Fisichella said he had achieved the goal of scoring points for his team Force India, partly owned by Indian business tycoon Vijay Mallya.

It was Raikkonen’s first victory in 25 races and Ferrari’s first this year. It was also his first since the 2008 Spanish Grand Prix, and the 18th of his career.

It came on a day when the drivers’ championship battle was given a shake, if not tipped upside down, thanks to a multiple collision on the opening lap.

That accident, which took out four cars, removed drivers world championship leader Jenson Button of Brawn GP and fellow-Briton and defending champion Lewis Hamilton of McLaren Mercedes.

Button said: “I got a very good start. I got past Lewis, I made up four places. As we were going down the straight through turn five, Grosjean out-braked himself. It is so frustrating to be taken out like that.”

Hamilton shrugged off his fate, commenting: “It’s just one of those days.

For Button the damage to his car and his title hopes was limited as his main rivals failed to capitalise with big-scoring results.

His lead ahead of Brawn team-mate Rubens Barrichello was cut by only two points from 18 to 16 while German Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull jumped back to third, by finishing third.

Vettel now has 53 points behind Barrichello on 56 and Button on 72 with five races remaining.

Raikkonen, champion in 2007, whose place in the team is under threat amid unconfirmed reports that Spaniard Fernando Alonso of Renault has signed to replace him next year, was delighted at ending Ferrari’s barren run of 11 races without a win after a barren first-half of the season.

Fisichella lost the lead he had established at the original start – the safety car was sent out during the first lap due to the accidents – when he was cautious at the re-start and Raikkonen surged into the lead.

But he finished up coming home only nine-tenths of a second behind the Ferrari, proving that the Force India’s Mercedes-Benz engine was the most effective on the circuit and certain to be a threat at the Italian Grand Prix next month. Behind the leading duo, who battled for victory, came Vettel ahead of Pole Robert Kubica, fourth for BMW Sauber, team-mate German Nick Heidfeld, with Finn Heikki Kovalainen sixth for McLaren Mercedes.

THE MONETARY GAINS

Fisichella’s podium finish will also bring monetary benefits to Force India:

It took around 500 heavily armed elite Uttar Pradesh cops and commandos more than 50 hours — apart from four of their own dead including a PAC commanding officer — to kill the dreaded dacoit, Ghanshyam Kevat, in a Chitrakoot village on Thursday afternoon.

After holding on to his fortified position in a two-storey pucca house for three days, Kevat was finally shot as he tried to escape towards a nearby forest, after killing a constable, his fourth victim. Alarmingly, STF chief Brij Lal was leading the team into the house and he could have as easily been the dacoit’s next target. However, in Lucknow, DGP Vikram Singh crowed about the operation, saying despite 1,500 rounds being fired and several grenades lobbed, “no civilian casualty or injury was reported”.

The joint team of special task force (STF), special operations group (SOG) and PAC battalions surrounded the village of Jamauli to nail the 40-plus brigand who has nine cases of cases of murder, extortion and dacoity against him.

The operation was the lengthiest in the history of UP police. Apart from surprise attacks by Naxals or the recent ambush by slain brigand Thokia and his gang in which nine STF men were killed, the Jamauli encounter is perhaps the only incident in which four cops were killed while 11 others including an IG and DIG were injured battling a single bandit.

All that Kevat had was .315 bore rifle and some bullets. With more sophisticated weapons and ammunition, it’s anybody’s guess how much longer he could have held out against UP’s crack units.

Kevat, surrounded from all sides, killed constable Veer Singh on Thursday as he, as part of Brij Lal’s team, tried to enter the house. After shooting down the constable, Kevat got out, went to the terrace and — with bullets flying all around him — jumped on to another roof, and ran out towards the field that lay between him and the forest. While police kept firing and missing, Kevat ran almost half a kilometre before being knocked down by police bullets. “We chased him and shot him dead in a rivulet as he tried to run towards a nearby jungle,” Chitrakoot ASP Jugal Kishore told TOI over phone from the spot.

Brij Lal led the final offensive after a pep-talk to his men. He asked them to move and avenge the death of their colleagues. “This did the trick. The next offensive proved to be the last for the dacoit,” Brij Lal told TOI over phone from Chitrakoot.

Courtesy : Times Of India

A nation, at best, is an imagined community. At worst, it’s an idea whose time has not come or has become stale. The idea of India falls between two stools – living and dying, rising and falling every minute. And yet, there are more ideas mushrooming every day, helping, conflicting and destroying each other, and becoming new again. The idea of India, with its ancient traditions and young energy, is never a dull thought.

In a nation where the word for yesterday and tomorrow is the same – kal - future passes into the past in a jiffy and an idea can have only a few moments of glory. Jawaharlal Nehru, sitting in dank prison cell, tried to connect the past with the present with a panorama through ages in his The Discovery of India, creating an idea of India as a “unified whole” on the threshold of a giant leap forward. The idea was born a few months before the ancient civilization turned into a nation state amid bloody chaos at the stroke of midnight. Even as the world saw us as a horror of squalor, Nehru’s idea gave hope of a New India.

As the nation broke free from Gandhi’s idea of India as a loose confederation of self-sufficient villages and began setting up ‘modern temples’, it kept experiencing the rituals of making and unmaking as different forces pulled it in opposite directions. V S Naipaul captured India’s many struggles in ‘A Million Mutinies Now’, an acidic attack on the idea of “unity in diversity”.

The revolutions that Naipaul saw in 1962 failed to destroy the idea as India’s democracy remained defiantly anomalous. In the Nineties, Sunil Khilnani’s The Idea of India underscored the strength of Indian democracy – the result of a long struggle by the silent majority against the despots and colonialists; democracy was also the glue that kept India together.

By this time, the country’s success was being measured in terms of GDP and its collective happiness fluctuated with the sensex. And New India began to dominate the national discourse, giving birth to a host of new writers with a vision for the future. The most prolific among them was former President A P J Abdul Kalam, who churned out four populist books, all dealing with a single theme: how to make India a developed country. In his 2020 – A Vision for the New Millennium, the rocket scientist presented a few action plans for the country’s young people; in Envisioning an Empowered Nation, he talked of networking the thoughts of one billion people towards a common goal; and in Ignited Minds, he addressed the young directly: surge ahead as a developed nation or perish in perpetual poverty.

Since living in a developed nation is still a fantasy in India, Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound, which argued that India’s new economy was unleashing the country’s “animal spirits” and will make the “giant elephant” into a truly global power, became a bestseller. The middle class lapped up Das’s ideas on why “India needs to embrace capitalism more wholeheartedly, for all the costs and risks.”

With capitalism itself under scrutiny, Shashi Tharoor’s idea of post-colonial India -The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone – in which he analyzes the changing nation, makes more sense, with the writer saying the road ahead may be a bit bumpy for its one billion people.

One billion people means one billion argumentative minds, and maybe one billion ideas of India. Maybe there are many Indias, living in different time zones, hopping back and forth between reality and mythology, slipping in and out of consciousness. Maybe Nehru was wrong in trying to “discover” the nation. Maybe, we needed to invent it. Maybe, Gandhi’s experiment with rural swaraj was not such a bad idea. Maybe Ambedkar’s idea of democracy – one man, one vote and one vote, one value – was an idea we should have pursued with greater care. The possibilities are immense. We can all keep trying to invent India. After all, it’s just an idea.

 Courtesy :- Time Of India

It was truly a historic moment for the entire country. The PSLV-C11, which carries India’s first unmanned moon spacecraft Chandrayaan-1, was successfully put into initial orbit from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Wednesday morning at around 6.40 am.

At the end of the 49-hour countdown, the 44.4 meter tall four-stage PSLV-C11 blasted off from the second launch pad with the ignition of the core first stage at 6.22 am.

Large crowds had gathered at Sriharikota since early Wednesday morning to witness this historic event. The crowds cheered at the PSLV, which weighs 316 tonnes soared majestically into the skies. However, the thick black clouds played spoil sport for those waiting to watch the PSLV launch into the skies.

People who stood on the terrace of the Brahm Prakash auditorium to witness the launch managed to catch a glimpse of the vehicle only for a brief moment before it disappeared into the clouds.

However, the mood in the Satish Dhawan Space Centre where the entire Indian Space Research Organisation team behind the mission was seated was upbeat. They were emotional on seeing that the launch was a success.

ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair got up from his chair, clapping his hands, and congratulated other scientists who had ensured that the mission?s success. This is the 14th flight of ISRO’s workhorse PSLV, which has launched 29 satellites into a variety of orbits since 1993.

The launch vehicle uses larger strap-on motors to achieve higher payload capability.

The Chandrayaan-1 is carrying 11 payloads, five entirely designed and developed in India, three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from US, which would explore the moon.

In his message soon after the launch, Madhavan Nair said this was a historic moment for India.

“The first leg has gone perfectly and today we have started a remarkable journey to the moon. We have fought all odds which include heavy rains and thunderstorms since the past four days to ensure that this mission is a success. We will complete the journey in the next 15 days.”

The other men behind the mission, who were obviously elated by the success of the launch, too spoke after the successful launch. They said phase-1 had been completed successfully and for phase-2, the next team would take over.

“We have spent sleepless nights and today our baby is on the way to the moon. Fifteen days from now, we will reach our destination and for the next two years the Chandrayaan will do its job in exploring the mysteries of the moon. We are ready for many more challenges and we must say that this has been a thrilling experience,” he said.

The 1380-kg Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft will first reach a highly elliptical Initial orbit and thereafter the satellite’s Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) will be fired at appropriate moments that will finally take it to an orbit at a height of 100 km around the moon around November eight.

Chandrayaan-1 carries 11 payloads (scientific instruments) — five from India, three from ESA, two from the US and one from Bulgaria. It aims to undertake remote-sensing of the moon in the visible, near infrared, microwave and X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. With this, preparation of a three-dimensional atlas of the lunar surface is envisaged.

“The mission will lead to detailed understanding of the mineralogy of the moon, and (possibility of) abundance of Helium-3 said to be a relatively clean fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors,” an ISRO official said.

“It will also throw more light on what appears to be the presence of water ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the moon’s polar areas”.

Courtesy :- Rediff

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is now the highest run accumulator in the history of Test cricket. The Little Master broke Brian Charles Lara’s record of 11,953 runs in the second Test against Australia at Mohali on Friday when he went past the 15-run mark in the first innings.

 While Tendulkar took 152 matches and 247 innings to reach the landmark, Lara accumulated the runs in 131 matches and 232 innings.

 Tendulkar already holds the world record of most Test centuries with 39 tons under his belt. He has also 42 One-Day Internationals centuries for a total of 81 international hundreds, which again is a world record.

 He also hold the record scoring maximum ODIs runs and is the only batsman to have accumulated more than 15,000 runs in the 50-over format.

Courtesy :- IBN Live

See the difference between yatras doing by chranjeevi and Bala krishna. Good choice by Chandra babu naidu (TDP) tp counter mighty power chiranjeevi.

chiru1 Yatra

balayya yatra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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chiru2

 

 

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This is just for fun guys. We all know Balayya is better than this. But I am wondering when this happened to balayya. I am not able understand to whom balayya waving his hand.

Andhra Pradesh breeds the most number of IITians in the country. At least the JEE organizing committee’s report to MHRD proves so. This year the maximum number of students qualifying for IIT from a single state – 1,697 – came from Andhra Pradesh with Uttar Pradesh following next with 1,194 students out of a total of 5,524 successful candidates.

According to the data compiled after the joint entrance examination (JEE) in 2007, Andhra had given the highest number of students to IITs – 1,384. According to IIT veterans, Andhra Pradesh has been on the top of the state-wise list of qualifying students in the last few years.

“This has been a general perception among all IITians that number of students coming to IIT from AP is more than from other state. The main reason for it is that Hyderabad is a major hub of coaching centres like Kota. And I must say, these coaching centres are doing a great job in training students for IIT JEE,” said M S Anand, director, IIT-Chennai.

According to IIT professors, many students from south India migrate to Hyderabad for coaching and manage to crack JEE. So the students coming from Andhra Pradesh may not necessarily be natives. Most of them are known to go for a seat in IIT Chennai or IIT Bombay. And, with IIT Hyderabad debuting this year under the mentorship of IIT Chennai, the number is expected to go up.

“Students in Andhra Pradesh did not have an IIT till now. But they studied really hard and usually joined Chennai or Bombay. But of late, it seems most of them are going to IIT-Bombay. They say they like the food there better!” remarked Anand. Surprisingly, only 202 out of 9,929 students qualified from Tamil Nadu itself.

According to R Chattopadhyay, JEE chairperson, IIT-Delhi, this trend has come up in the last couple of years. “Once the students join the classes, nobody knows who comes from where because they all mingle so well. But the figures in the last two years have shown that most students qualify from Andhra. Many students also travel to Hyderabad for coaching adding to the number,” he said. According to IIT officials, while IIT Delhi mostly gets students from north India in BTech, there are many students from Andhra Pradesh in the MTech course.

As for the maximum number of students appearing for JEE, UP leads the pack with 72,028 students appearing for JEE 2008 while 57,488 in 2007. Bihar also had a huge number of IIT aspirants – 30,490 this year and 14,854 in 2007 – however, unlike UPSC exams, they could not take IITs by storm. While 533 qualified this time, 146 were successful last year.

Courtesy :- Times Of India