Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
PUNTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
will punter retires from tests, we will see tomorrow. OMG,i dont want him to retire without regaining the ashes
a nice message from rajesh
understanding wife is like downloading 1 GB file with 2 kbps speed & when u have downloaded 95%, u'll get an error!!!
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
rafale deal
February 7, 2012
Hell hath no fury like Britain 'scorned'
HASAN SUROOR
No single issue in recent years has generated so much anti-India sentiment in Britain as the Rafale deal which many Britons see as a calculated ‘snub' to their country. Last week, on BBC Question Time, regarded as a good indicator of British public opinion, the question that got the maximum applause was: why should Britain continue to “subsidise” India by “doling out” aid when it could afford to spend “billions of pounds” to buy French fighter jets? The question was asked in the context of India's decision, announced a day earlier, to select a French firm over its British rival for a multi-billion dollar contract to supply fighter planes to the Indian Air Force, an issue that has generated an unprecedented level of hostility in Britain towards India.
International Development Minister Alan Duncan was shouted down as he struggled to explain that cutting off aid to India “would mean that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, will die who otherwise could live.” “So what?” asked one woman. If India chose to spend its growing wealth on defence hardware rather than looking after its poor why should the “hard-working” British taxpayer be made to pay for it? Another lamented that Britain failed to get the “value for money” it gave to India.
'Ingratitude'
The fury of the Question Time audience typified the dominant British reaction to the India-French deal. No single issue in recent years has generated so much anti-India sentiment in Britain as this deal which many Britons see as a calculated “snub” to their country. In my experience of reporting Britain I never witnessed such a level of public hostility towards India before — not even when Britain has been at the receiving end of Indian ire such as over London's “double standards” on terrorism and its faintly pro-Pakistan line on Kashmir. The anger is palpable, cuts across party lines and — fuelled by the right-wing media — has percolated down to ordinary Britons on the street. Some of the reaction, especially on the Right, has a whiff of the hard-to-die old cultural arrogance: “how dare a country, a former colony to boot, and a recipient of our aid dare snub us?” Expressions like “ingratitude” are being bandied around with shrill calls for scrapping the aid to India.
“Well that's gratitude! We give India £1bn in aid, THEY snub the UK and give France a £13bn jet contract,” read a headline in the Daily Mail leaving little to the imagination.
In the House of Commons
But such talk is not confined to country pubs or the fringe remnants of the Raj but has gone mainstream. In fact, it started with the House of Commons. MPs who hitherto only ever spoke about India in the most glowing terms — great democracy, great people, great country to do business with — sought to portray it as an unreliable partner and a destroyer of British jobs. Prime Minister David Cameron was mocked for wanting an “enhanced” relationship with India. The French victory was not only a failure of British diplomacy but a personal setback to Mr. Cameron in his campaign to establish Britain as a “partner of choice for India.”
Even an unabashed Indophile such as Labour MP and Chair of Labour Friends of India Barry Gardiner cried foul. He saw the deal as a sign of India moving away from Britain arguing that the delay in appointing a new High Commissioner to the U.K. “demonstrates that the Ministry for External Affairs in Delhi no longer see the U.K. as strategically vital to India's interests.”
Two entirely separate issues — India's decision to accept the French bid and the British aid to India — have been conflated to accuse India of “ingratitude” by suggesting that as a recipient of British money, New Delhi had a “moral” obligation to reciprocate and give it the contract. Crudely put, there were no free lunches.
“We give aid to India many times more than what France gives,” argued David Davis, a senior ruling Conservative Party MP, suggesting that therefore logically, the contract should have gone to Britain. The Indian move, he said, would destroy hundreds of British jobs at BAE Systems.
Another Conservative MP Peter Bone said it was a “myth” that “doling out billions of pounds out to countries like this exerts any influence whatsoever on the decisions made by those governments when purchasing equipment.” He wanted the aid money to be used “to help hard-pressed British families.”
The link between aid and the Indian decision was first suggested by the Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell. Asked to justify aid to India last year, he said its “focus” included “seeking to sell (British-built) Typhoon to India.” Those remarks have come to haunt the Government with Mr. Cameron under pressure to get the bang for his bucks.
India's stance
The fact is that India has been extremely reluctant to take British aid and has made it clear on more than one occasion that it does not want it. As recently as last year, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Parliament that “‘we do not require the aid' describing it as ‘peanuts' in terms of India's massive development efforts.”
Not only that, according to The Sunday Telegraph, former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, formally proposed an end to British aid from April 1, 2011, because of the “negative publicity of Indian poverty promoted by DfID (the department for international development).” But British ministers insisted that they “had spent political capital” justifying the aid to their electorate and “it would be highly embarrassing if the Indian government then pulled the plug.”
Perhaps it's time for India to go ahead and pull that plug.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
beware of these mfkers
Man uploads obscene images of woman colleague after she ends relationship
Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh police have arrested a techie for allegedly opening a fake Facebook account of his former woman colleague and publishing obscene pictures.
T Satish, an engineer working with an MNC in Bangalore, was arrested on Thursday and officials of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) seized a laptop and a hard-disk from his possession, used for uploading allegedly obscene images of the victim, Cyber Crime SP U Rammohan said.
During the investigation, Satish confessed that he and the victim used to work together in Hyderabad and had become good friends.
According to the police, Satish had, taking advantage of his friendship with the victim, blackmailed her into giving her approval to their marriage.
Subsequently, Satish took some obscene photographs of the victim by threatening her, the CID official said adding the victim gradually moved away from him and finally stopped talking to him due to his attitude.
Angered by this, Satish hacked her email account and transmitted her obscene pictures to the contact list.
Later, he also created a fake Facebook account of hers and published her obscene pictures and sent the same to her friends and relatives, the SP said.
Following the complaint, Satish was arrested from Bangalore and was remanded to judicial custody on Friday for 15 days.
T Satish, an engineer working with an MNC in Bangalore, was arrested on Thursday and officials of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) seized a laptop and a hard-disk from his possession, used for uploading allegedly obscene images of the victim, Cyber Crime SP U Rammohan said.
During the investigation, Satish confessed that he and the victim used to work together in Hyderabad and had become good friends.
According to the police, Satish had, taking advantage of his friendship with the victim, blackmailed her into giving her approval to their marriage.
Subsequently, Satish took some obscene photographs of the victim by threatening her, the CID official said adding the victim gradually moved away from him and finally stopped talking to him due to his attitude.
Angered by this, Satish hacked her email account and transmitted her obscene pictures to the contact list.
Later, he also created a fake Facebook account of hers and published her obscene pictures and sent the same to her friends and relatives, the SP said.
Following the complaint, Satish was arrested from Bangalore and was remanded to judicial custody on Friday for 15 days.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Obesity epidemic strikes U.S. pets By Josh Levs, CNN
- Kim Stevens has a problem that affects tens of millions of American Kim Stevens has a problem that affects tens of millions of Americans. If left untreated, it could lead to the death of someone she loves, someone who's part of the family.
Stevens' dog Dodger, a black and gray mixed breed, is obese. According to a new study, he's emblematic of a growing problem.
The majority of adult dogs and cats in U.S. homes are overweight or obese, and the problem has gotten worse over the past year, according to the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention. Fifty-three percent of adult dogs and 55% of cats were classified as overweight or obese by their veterinarians.
"I didn't notice the weight creeping on -- it was like all of a sudden he was just this fat dog," Stevens said as she and Dodger visited Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park.
"His weight is about 82 pounds right now, and he should be 62 pounds." That means he needs to lose about a quarter of his weight -- equivalent to a 200-pound person needing to lose 50 pounds.
The reason is pretty simple: "Too much food and not enough exercise," Stevens said.
The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention report shows not only that more pets are overweight, but also that those with the problem "are getting fatter," said Ernie Ward, the group's founder.
The annual study, to be released next week and given in advance to CNN, found that 25% of cats and just more than 21% of dogs are obese. Both those figures are up slightly from 2010.
About 41 million dogs are overweight.
About 41 million dogs and 47 million cats are overweight or obese, the study found.
A long list of health dangers comes with the excess weight. "It's not a matter of if, it's when" serious complications will strike, said Ward.
These can include high blood pressure, "crippling arthritis," diabetes and some cancers. "Their life is shortened by two or 2½ years," said Ward, a veterinarian in North Carolina.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine, which cites the association's annual study, said the diseases seen among obese pets "are eerily similar to those reported for people."
A central part of the problem, the pet obesity group found, is the growing "fat pet gap:" More and more owners are unaware their pets are overweight. The study found that 22% of dog owners and 15% of cat owners characterized their pets as normal weight when the animals were actually overweight or obese.
"In simplest terms, we've made fat pets the new normal," said Ward.
In many cases, the problem correlates to the obesity epidemic among people, he said.
"This is the sentinel for childhood obesity. When I see dogs who are overweight, I see a child that's at risk for excess weight, because nobody's exercising. The kid's playing video games all day, the dog sits around all day," and "everybody's eating poorly."
Stevens said she needs to shed some weight, too.
"We'll do it together," she said.
The fact that obesity has struck her dog is particularly telling. Stevens does some work as a dog trainer. "To have a dog this heavy when you know better ... is embarrassing," she said.
About a third of U.S. households own a cat.
But she has a lot of company. Thirty-nine percent of U.S. households own at least one dog, and 33% of households own at least one cat, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
The pet obesity survey was conducted at 41 veterinary clinics across the country and included evaluations of a sampling of more than 600 animals. "Over the five years studied, these results have proven to be consistent and increasing at a gradual pace," the association said.
While the obvious advice -- eat less, exercise more -- is the right starting point, there's more that pet owners should understand, Ward said.
Pet foods these days are "more calorically dense" than they used to be, yet owners are feeding their pets more, he said.
If you're concerned your pet may be obese, it's important to work with a veterinarian, and not try to tackle the problem on your own, said Ward. "Diet is not about starvation or deprivation. It's about gradual weight loss."
In many cases, carefully measuring food and committing to exercise can do the trick. But more severe cases need more extensive work.
That's what helped Jane Whitehead's dog, Raleigh.
In February 2006, he weighed a whopping 187 pounds.
"I swear, we didn't overfeed him!" Whitehead said of Raleigh who, like Dodger, is a rescue dog.
"We would try giving him smaller and smaller portions of his regular food and he kept gaining and kept gaining."
A series of tests found nothing wrong with him, but "at a certain point when he had become so obese, he couldn't exercise at all. We would try to walk him a little bit and he would just stop," said Whitehead, CFO of a business in Duluth, Georgia.
A veterinarian switched him to "super low-calorie food" and put Raleigh on an underwater treadmill, which he loved.
"He lost enough that he could exercise on his own and go for walks with us." The energetic Raleigh she loved was back.
Within three years, Raleigh had cut his weight in half.
There are few truly lost causes, Ward said. And that's something critical for owners to know
Daisy has lost nearly 30 pounds through a rigid diet.
Beth Spiess of San Marcos, Texas, said her sheltie, Daisy, became so obese from over-feeding that she couldn't walk, and her previous owners wanted to put her to sleep. The vet refused and gave the dog to a shelter, where Spiess adopted her. Daisy has lost 30 pounds.
iReport: Daisy, before and after
"It's hard to believe she is the same dog," Spiess told CNN in an iReport, though Daisy still needs pills to help with arthritis caused by the obesity.
Cat owners can face more of an uphill climb in trying to get their pets to exercise, Ward said.
Stacie Schafer of Brunswick, Ohio, said people often remark that her cat, Sophie -- now nicknamed Meatloaf -- "is the fattest cat I have ever seen." Schafer has tried to get Sophie to run around like the other two cats in the home, but Sophie just isn't that interested.
"Cats don't jog," Ward said. "Cats by nature are anaerobic creatures. That means they use sugar as their primary energy source. ... They sprint, they pounce, they leap."
Schafer has tried diet cat food and portion control as well, with little results.
Ward recommends families facing trouble work with veterinarians to find ways to bring down the weight.
In the end, living a life in which you prioritize healthy eating and exercise for all members of the family, including domesticated furry friends, is the key, he said. That means no more treats -- "calorie grenades" -- every time your dog does a trick. "They want reward, praise, affection. We take the easy way out, reach into the cookie jar."
It also means snacking on single-ingredient treats like celery, broccoli and asparagus.
And it means moving to stay healthy and stay alive.
"Unless we really get a grip on this very quickly," said Ward, "We're going to see an entire generation of pets that don't live as long as the pets I had when I was a child."
Thursday, February 2, 2012
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