Johnny Depp in Pirates 4 with bag ful of $75million

Reports are starting to emerge that Johnny Depp decided to reprise his role as captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean 4 (something that is looking fairly likely and quite interesting),then Disney would be willing to pay him 32 million pounds (roughly $75 million) upfront for the performance. This would be the largest up front payment an actor has ever received for anything ever. Offcourse Pirates series is quite successfu, but still it is amazing price.

TATA's Nano car Set to drive from Gujarat

Finally wait is over, Nano plant will now relocate to Gujarat.

Tatas have decided to roll out the Nano car from Gujarat, according to TV reports.
It is a huge gift for Narendra Modi as he completes seven years in office as Gujarat chief minister. The loss of W Benagal is gain of Gujarat.

The air was thick with anticipation as top Tata Motors honchos flew down from Mumbai late on Monday evening to take one final look at the site near Sanand, 25 kms from the western fringes of Ahmedabad, which has been identified for relocation of the Nano plant. Sources said the decks have been cleared for transfer of 1,000 acres of land to the Tatas. Modi's council of ministers will meet at 10 am before the Tata team arrives. The land which the Tatas have to finally select is located within a 2200-acre campus owned by the Anand Agriculture University which serves as a cattle and seed farm. The university has already transferred 1,000 acres back to the government which went into an overdrive to woo Tata Motors ever since the situation started worsening at Singur in West Bengal. Government officials were hopeful that the deal will be clinched on Tuesday, after a final round of negotiations on the concessions Tata Motors will be seeking. While Modi has been personally averse to giving concessions to industry, on the ground that such concessions given in the past had led to a huge loss of revenue to the exchequer, there is willingness to make an exception in the case of the Nano project. "We had to relax our rigid stand considering the fact that other state governments were going all out to roll the red carpet for the Nano plant. Losses due to concessions would be offset by the immense positivity created around the investment climate in Gujarat," a senior official of the industries department said, while admitting that there could be a tough last round of negotiations. While Tata Motors' scouts were scouring sites in Karnataka, AP and Maharashtra over the last two days(there was stiffness among farmers), there was an air of tentativeness in the Sachivalaya at Gandhinagar, even as officials went about clearing all the documents to transfer 1,000 acres in one go. "Our biggest advantage is that we can hand over the land to Tata Motors on Tuesday itself," a source said.

From Where first Nano car will rollout

Following its exit from West Bengal, the Tata Nano car project apparently has no dearth of governments willing to woo it to their respective states, with top officials from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat making no secret of their enthusiasm as they carried out site inspections on Sunday.
The Tata Motors team led by its managing director G Ravikant and accompanied by Karnataka Industry Minister Murugesh Nirani visited three places in and around the twin cities of Hubli-Dharwad in Karnataka — the Belur Industrial area, Mummiatti and another site in the vicinity of the airport near Hubli.
The team also met Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa to discuss the offer made by the state to the company to shift the Nano project to Karnataka. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Yeddyurappa said: “I have made an offer and assured them of all facilities, including land, water and power. Now it is for them (the Tatas) to communicate.”
He added that he would also hold talks with Tata chairman Ratan Tata. It is the fourth round of discussions that Karnataka had with the company after it pulled out of Singur.
But in Andhra Pradesh there was protest from farmers fearing forced land deals.

Gujarat chief minister going gaga over drawing TATA to Gujarat, Narendra Modi also roped NRI Swaraj Paul led group CAPARO for supplying raw material for Nano plant.

Wait and watch from whare first Nano will rollout.

Paul Newman, star with a twist of pain

As the heartfelt obituaries and tributes have been reminding us, Paul Newman never forgot that he was an actor before he was a movie star. His training at the Actors Studio during its 1950s heyday taught him to search out the self-lacerating contradictions and double-take complexities of his characters. His irresistible good looks suggested more of a romantic hero than an unregenerate rogue, but he had a way of incorporating into his seductive appeal (those oceanic eyes, those killer abs!) a startling barbed-wire-like menace.
Newman, however, didn't leave it there. Even his most fiendishly unapologetic cads are shown to be fighting more for their psychological survival than for their selfish advancement. To put it another way, something desperate is driving them to be baser than they really are. Whether or not they're fugitives of the law, they're almost always on the lam from secrets too shattering to share.
For some, he'll always be Butch Cassidy to Robert Redford's Sundance Kid. But it's three early film roles that drew out of Newman what only a playing opposite a woman could expose: a softness too vulnerable to be masculinely withstood.
Not surprisingly, two of the characters come courtesy of Tennessee Williams: Brick, the sexually repressed alcoholic locked in a marital stalemate with Elizabeth Taylor's Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof" and Chance Wayne, the Hollywood hustler he originated on Broadway in 1959 opposite Geraldine Page's man-devouring diva Alexandra Del Lago, and later sensationally reprised alongside her for the 1962 film. The third role is the title character of "Hud," a rowdy, unscrupulous rancher whose estrangement from his deepest feelings is painfully glimpsed when Patricia Neal hops on a bus to escape his sadistic clutches.
"Sweet Bird of Youth" magnificently showcases the many lessons Newman picked up from his theatrical travels: Never play one emotion, when the truth is a barrage; don't give up on your character, even if he seems, morally speaking, to be a lost cause; and finally, don't worry about audience approval when the anguish you're exposing, ugly though it may be, is genuine.
I was only lucky enough to see Newman onstage once. It was in the 2002 Broadway revival of "Our Town," in which he played the Stage Manager, crisply establishing the Grover's Corners universe of Thornton Wilder's classic.
But I have another theatrical memory of Newman that radiates just as brightly. It comes from having sat behind him off-Broadway in 1999 at Playwrights Horizons, where Christopher Durang's "Betty's Summer Vacation" was galloping riotously. My companion and I were laughing in a way that was becoming dangerously out of control; I was afraid an usher might be forced to ask us to leave. But there was no need for embarrassment, as Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward were laughing just as uproariously as we were.
On Friday night, the lights on Broadway will dim in his honor

A Shake-Up in Pakistan's Powerful Spy Agency

According to TIME-- Pakistan may currently enjoy what seems to be a healthy if noisy democracy, but the office of army chief remains the most powerful one in the country - certainly exceeding the effective control of any politician or civilian bureaucrat. And now Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, is showing that he is truly in charge of the military - and hence the most powerfulman in Pakistan.
Just before midnight on Sept. 29, Kayani replaced the head of Pakistan's premier intelligence agency and elevated a slew of handpicked generals to key positions in a major shake-up of the military leadership. The most striking appointment is the promotion of Lieut. General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha to head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), one of the world's most powerful spy agencies - routinely described, and decried, as a "state within a state." Pasha, who had headed military operations in the tribal areas, replaces Lieut. General Nadeem Taj, an appointee and relative of recently departed President and ex–army chief Pervez Musharraf, who was infamous for intertwining military and political affairs.
The reshuffling comes at a sensitive time for Pakistan's half-million-strong and nuclear-armed military. In the Bajaur tribal agency along the Afghan border and in the Swat Valley, it is locked in fierce and enervating operations against the Pakistan Taliban. At the same time, the army's relations with its sponsors in Washington have sunk to a fresh low after the ISI was accused of aiding Taliban militants, and the ensuing breakdown in communication between the U.S. and Pakistan saw a flurry of unauthorized American air strikes that targeted militants in the tribal areas. U.S. special operations forces also mounted their first known ground assault within Pakistani territory this month.
Some observers in Pakistan criticized the personnel shake-up as a response to U.S. pressure. The changes came just weeks after Richard Boucher, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, publicly demanded that reform of the ISI be carried out. They also followed last weekend's secret meeting between Pakistan's recently elected President, Asif Ali Zardari, and CIA head Michael Hayden about what the U.S. intelligence agency called the "double game played by Pakistan's spy agency." While in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, Zardari told Roger Cohen of the New York Times, "The ISI will be handled; that is our problem. We don't hunt with the hound and run with the hare, which is what [former president Pervez] Musharraf was doing."
However, others argue against the notion that the U.S. forced the reforms on Islamabad. The timing of the promotions was not extraordinary and the changes were made "on the basis of merit," says Talat Masood, a retired general turned military analyst. "These postings were in the normal course of events, with many of the officers due for rotation or retirement," he says. "General Kayani used this opportunity to bring in new people according to his [priorities]."
Yet one of Kayani's priorities, analysts say, is restoring relations with Washington, the source of more than $6 billion in military aid since 2001. "There has been a strain in relations between the Pakistan army and the Pentagon," says Hasan Askari-Rizvi, a military analyst, referring to the recent U.S. unilateral actions that sparked sharp condemnation from Kayani as well as public outrage. "The army wants to deal with this through talks and negotiations. Now, with these promotions, you have a team at the top that is in line with General Kayani's thinking on terrorism and militancy in the tribal areas. There was a lot of skepticism about General Nadeem Taj's commitment to fighting militants." By appointing Pasha, who has been leading the military's campaign in the tribal areas and has been noted for speaking out against Islamabad's previous policy of supporting the Taliban, "General Kayani has an ISI chief who is behind in policy, and the American complaint has been answered," adds Askari-Rizvi.
In the wake of the July 7 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, the ISI was accused of being involved with and helping the Jalaluddin Haqqani network, which was blamed for the attack. Indeed, the dispute between Islamabad and Washington appears to center on the activities of the Haqqani network and other militants blamed for mounting cross-border attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan, which have led to a spike in violence in its eastern provinces this year. According to Pakistan military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas, this may be because "the priorities are mismatching." While the U.S. is focused on Afghanistan, the Pakistan army sees the battle currently raging in Bajaur as its priority, he said. "We cannot risk opening up another front while we don't have the resources."
While the Pakistan army strenuously denies the charge of coddling the re-energized Taliban, its chief military spokesman concedes that the army maintains "indirect" contact with an assortment of militant groups it once cultivated. "Which agency in the world would break its last contact with them?" asked Abbas in an interview before the promotions were announced. However, critics contend that the Pakistan army is not yet prepared to sever its links with its former clients in the militant underworld, perhaps as a way of ensuring some kind of influence over Afghanistan, where radical Islamists are once again threatening the stability of the pro-U.S. regime.
Nevertheless, the change at the top of the ISI is likely to be welcomed by Washington and may even relax tensions with Islamabad, analysts say. While the shake-up helps Kayani advance a more coherent response to the challenge of rising militancy, it also underscores the army's enduring clout. The ISI nominally falls under the purview of the Prime Minister, but on this occasion the civilian government merely gave formal approval to a decision by the military leadership. Two months ago, the civilian government attempted to bring the ISI formally under its control. The move was vetoed by the armed forces, proving again where power truly lies in Pakistan.

Book ban ends Arab-Israeli cultural exchange really sad

For 15 years Israeli Saleh Abbasi has traded books between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors, fostering a rare cultural link.
But in August Israeli authorities suddenly refused to renew his trading license because he was trading with "enemy" states Lebanon and Syria, frustrating both Abbasi's business and the Arab and Israeli readers he has helped interest in each other's literary traditions.
"How can the People of the Book be against books?" Abbasi asked, evoking the Jewish Bible as the first monotheistic holy text. "Books are a bridge to peace between cultures."
An Israeli Trade Ministry spokeswoman declined to explain the timing of the ban. But she cited a recent legal opinion that forbade importing goods from four countries Israel views as enemies -- Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Israel has no diplomatic ties with Beirut or Damascus, so 57-year-old Abbasi uses Jordan and Egypt, the only Arab nations to sign peace deals with the Jewish state, as conduits.
Abbasi's original aim was to cater for Israel's 1.2 million minority Arab citizens, many of whom feel the perpetual absence of relations between Israel and its neighbors denies them cultural and ethnic ties to the Arab world.
But he branched out, and over the past 10 years has sold over half a million copies of some 16 Hebrew titles to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab countries, where the translated books reach Arab readers mainly through public libraries and universities.

Tests find melamine in 31 Chinese milk brands

An official news organization is reporting that the industrial chemical melamine has been found in another 31 brands of Chinese milk powder.
The results indicate an expansion in the scandal that has sparked product recalls in China and a host of other countries that received Chinese food exports from infant formula to chocolate.
Results of earlier tests had showed widespread melamine contamination among infant formula, later spreading to fresh milk and other types of dried milk and milk products.
The contamination is blamed for the deaths of four children and kidney ailments among 54,000 others.
The State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine tested samples from 265 brands produced before Sept. 14, the Xinhua News Agency said

Sequel to Will Smith starrer I Am Legend

I Am Legend screenwriter Mark Protosevich is already talking about a potential sequel. The LA Times writes:Of course, a sequel all depends on the box office success of the first film. I Am Legend is a modern day adaptation of the classic 1954 science fiction novel by Richard Matheson. Will Smith stars as Robert Neville, a former scientist who is the last uninfected human in Manhattan, if not the world. Warner Bros has been developing the project since 1994.

At one point Ridley Scott was attached to direct while Arnold Schwarzenegger was in talks to star, but finally Will Smith decided and he did the job excellently.

Now for the sequel also Will Smith will do the job, hmmmmmmmm waiting for its release.

Is Sourav Ganguly thinking about to Quit?

This week could see the end of an unforgettable era, with Sourav Ganguly “set to quit” international cricket if not selected for the Australia series, and if it really happens it will be quite sad to saying googdbye to India's one of the most succesful captain.

The team for the first two tests will be chosen on Wednesday. If Ganguly, 112 short of 7,000 Test runs, does retire, he would be the first of India's ‘Fab Five’ — the others being Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman — to call it a day, bringing to a close what has been Indian cricket’s most dramatic chapter. Sources close to the former India skipper told HT Ganguly’s mind was made up. “He said there is no point in trying to make yet another comeback after this,” said the source. “He has nothing to prove to anyone anymore.”Ganguly, who had not spoken to (or been spoken to) by any selector in the recent fortnight since his axing from the Irani Cup squad, was philosophical. “I’ve seen it all, whatever happens, happens,” was his view, the source added.

Interestingly, in the two years since South Africa and Ganguly's spectacular return from the wilderness, he has played 21 Tests, making 1667 runs at a very respectable 45.05, which is higher than his Test career average of 41.02. According to the selectors, “everyone who’s played first class cricket” was in line for a Test call up. But Ganguly will probably be battling for a berth alongside the much younger Yuvraj Singh and S. Badrinath. And if the new selectors are looking to begin the process of transition, he is where they will likely start.

Dada you should make another comeback, I never forget Dada without shirt shouting in Lord's balcony, that very moment give a new aggression to Team India.

Hitler's secret Indian army

This is the article I found on Internet By some Mike Thomson, quite amazing, so i am putting up it at my blog.

Thank u Thomson.

In the closing stages of World War II, as Allied and French resistance forces were driving Hitler's now demoralised forces from France, three senior German officers defected.
Legionnaires were recruited from German POW camps The information they gave British intelligence was considered so sensitive that in 1945 it was locked away, not due to be released until the year 2021.
Now, 17 years early, the BBC's Document programme has been given special access to this secret file.
It reveals how thousands of Indian soldiers who had joined Britain in the fight against fascism swapped their oaths to the British king for others to Adolf Hitler - an astonishing tale of loyalty, despair and betrayal that threatened to rock British rule in India, known as the Raj.
The story the German officers told their interrogators began in Berlin on 3 April 1941. This was the date that the left-wing Indian revolutionary leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, arrived in the German capital.
Bose, who had been arrested 11 times by the British in India, had fled the Raj with one mission in mind. That was to seek Hitler's help in pushing the British out of India.
He wanted 500 volunteers who would be trained in Germany and then parachuted into India. Everyone raised their hands. Thousands of us volunteered Lieutenant Barwant Singh Six months later, with the help of the German foreign ministry, he had set up what he called "The Free India Centre", from where he published leaflets, wrote speeches and organised broadcasts in support of his cause.
By the end of 1941, Hitler's regime officially recognised his provisional "Free India Government" in exile, and even agreed to help Chandra Bose raise an army to fight for his cause. It was to be called "The Free India Legion".
Bose hoped to raise a force of about 100,000 men which, when armed and kitted out by the Germans, could be used to invade British India.
He decided to raise them by going on recruiting visits to Prisoner-of-War camps in Germany which, at that time, were home to tens of thousands of Indian soldiers captured by Rommel in North Africa.
Volunteers
Finally, by August 1942, Bose's recruitment drive got fully into swing. Mass ceremonies were held in which dozens of Indian POWs joined in mass oaths of allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
Chandra Bose did not live to see Indian independence These are the words that were used by men that had formally sworn an oath to the British king: "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose."
I managed to track down one of Bose's former recruits, Lieutenant Barwant Singh, who can still remember the Indian revolutionary arriving at his prisoner of war camp.
"He was introduced to us as a leader from our country who wanted to talk to us," he said.
"He wanted 500 volunteers who would be trained in Germany and then parachuted into India. Everyone raised their hands. Thousands of us volunteered."
Demoralised
In all 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion.
But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler's tanks rolled across the Soviet border.
Matters were made even worse by the fact that after Stalingrad it became clear that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer Bose help in driving the British from faraway India.
When the Indian revolutionary met Hitler in May 1942 his suspicions were confirmed, and he came to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones.
So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan.
Rudolf Hartog remembers parting with his Indian friends There, with Japanese help, he was to raise a force of 60,000 men to march on India.
Back in Germany the men he had recruited were left leaderless and demoralised. After mush dissent and even a mutiny, the German High Command despatched them first to Holland and then south-west France, where they were told to help fortify the coast for an expected allied landing.
After D-Day, the Free India Legion, which had now been drafted into Himmler's Waffen SS, were in headlong retreat through France, along with regular German units.
It was during this time that they gained a wild and loathsome reputation amongst the civilian population.
The former French Resistance fighter, Henri Gendreaux, remembers the Legion passing through his home town of Ruffec: "I do remember several cases of rape. A lady and her two daughters were raped and in another case they even shot dead a little two-year-old girl."
Finally, instead of driving the British from India, the Free India Legion were themselves driven from France and then Germany.
Their German military translator at the time was Private Rudolf Hartog, who is now 80.
"The last day we were together an armoured tank appeared. I thought, my goodness, what can I do? I'm finished," he said.
"But he only wanted to collect the Indians. We embraced each other and cried. You see that was the end."
Mutinies
A year later the Indian legionnaires were sent back to India, where all were released after short jail sentences.
But when the British put three of their senior officers on trial near Delhi there were mutinies in the army and protests on the streets.
With the British now aware that the Indian army could no longer be relied upon by the Raj to do its bidding, independence followed soon after.
Not that Subhas Chandra Bose was to see the day he had fought so hard for. He died in 1945.
Since then little has been heard of Lieutenant Barwant Singh and his fellow legionnaires.
At the end of the war the BBC was forbidden from broadcasting their story and this remarkable saga was locked away in the archives, until now. Not that Lieutenant Singh has ever forgotten those dramatic days.
"In front of my eyes I can see how we all looked, how we would all sing and how we all talked about what eventually would happen to us all," he said.
reposting from another thread about Indian contributions to the war. This is history that is overlooked fro various reasons.
"the BBC was forbidden from broadcasting their story and this remarkable saga was locked away in the archives, until now."
"After D-Day, the Free India Legion, which had now been drafted into Himmler's Waffen SS, were in headlong retreat through France, along with regular German units.
It was during this time that they gained a wild and loathsome reputation amongst the civilian population.
The former French Resistance fighter, Henri Gendreaux, remembers the Legion passing through his home town of Ruffec: "I do remember several cases of rape. A lady and her two daughters were raped and in another case they even shot dead a little two-year-old girl.""
India does not celebrate VE day or VJ day. They fought on both sides of the war.