Mallya pays top dollar for race horse ‘Air Support’

Vijay Mallya, who started owning race horses at the age of 21, is among India's top three horse owners and breeders along with the Poonawalla family and M A M Ramaswamy, founder of the Chettinad Group of companies.

The author has posted comments on this articleTNN | Feb 28, 2014, 03.40AM IST

BANGALORE: Vijay Mallya is getting Air Support for several crores of rupees. But this is nothing to do with his grounded Kingfisher Airlines. The UB Group chairman is paying top dollar for an imported stallion to strengthen his hold in India's multi-million dollar racing circuit.

Mallya, who started owning race horses at the age of 21, is among India's top three horse owners and breeders along with the Poonawalla family and M A M Ramaswamy, founder of the Chettinad Group of companies.

The six-year-old Air Support, after being in quarantine in Chennai for 60 days, will add to a list of imported stallions bought to breed racehorses at the historic 450-acre Kunigal stud farm, which Mallya took over in 1992.

Located on the outskirts of Bangalore — the headquarters of the UB Group — the stud farm is said to have started breeding horses 250 years ago, during the reign of Tipu Sultan.

Sources told TOI that Mallya paid over Rs 4 crore for Air Support, but Zeyn Mirza, MD of United Racing and Bloodstock Breeders — the company that looks after Mallya's interests in racing and breeding — said it was significantly less. If the price is indeed over Rs 4 crore, it could be among the highest paid by Bangalore's top breeders. Air Support is the winner of five races, including the Virginia Derby.

Mirza said that the Kunigal Stud Farm was in need of a new stallion for breeding racehorses. The stud farm has around 100 mares and Air Support will start to cover (mate) with 60 of them this year. There are an estimated 20 stallions in India, all used for breeding racehorses. Stallions are among the best racehorses that have now stopped racing and are used for breeding.

A couple of weeks ago, Mallya set another benchmark in the IPL 7 player auctions, forking out a whopping Rs 14 crore, or over $2 million, to get Yuvraj Singh into his Bangalore Royal Challengers team. While most of Mallya's sporting ventures are majority-owned by the UB Group, Mallya in his personal capacity holds around 98% stake in United Racing and Bloodstock Breeders.

March 31, 2013. In the same period though, the company reported a loss of Rs 14 lakh as against a loss of Rs 35 lakh in the previous fiscal. However, Mirza said the company was currently a profitable entity.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

'Indians' tortured, buried alive in Saudi Arabia: Report

NEW DELHI: In a shocking revelation, three men have confessed to a Saudi Arabia court of torturing and burying alive five Asian workers in 2010.

According to a report in Arab News, the three men confessed in the Qatif general court on Wednesday of torturing five Asian workers — believed to be Indians — for hours and then burying them alive.

The decomposed bodies of the five men were recovered from a farm in Safwa, a city in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, situated on the Gulf coast.

The report claimed that the local police have arrested 25 men in connection with the brutal killings.

The website quoted one of the accused, as saying: "I was driving around with a friend using drugs and alcohol when I received a call from another friend at around 10pm. My friend asked me to meet him immediately at a farm."

"We reached the farm and saw five workers with their hands tied in the seating area. When the friend with me asked why they were tied, our host said that one of them had sexually harassed his sponsor's daughter and other women," the man told the court.

"I saw that the five Indian workers were tied and unconscious, just before we went to another room to drink alcohol and smoke hashish. While we were drinking, I heard one of them screaming so I went out and slapped him in the face," Arab News quoted the man as saying.

"We tied them again with ropes and adhesive tape so that they could not move," he added while describing in detail the horrific incident four years ago.

The man said their host brought his pickup truck and the three loaded the workers onto it. They then dumped them into a 2.5-meter-deep hole," the man told the court.

According to the report, some of the victims were identified by the investigators, who found engraved gold ring and residence cards, from the decaying remains.

The decomposed bodies were found with ropes around their arms and legs and their mouths filled with cotton and covered with duct tape, it said.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Mahindra's $1m bounty awaits desi innovators

MUMBAI: Industrialist Anand Mahindra is throwing a million-dollar challenge to solve two of India's most pervasive and intractable problems—traffic stress and electricity shortages. The chairman of the automobile-to-aerospace Mahindra Group is calling for competitive pitch to develop a driverless car and a do-it-yourself solar power kit from desi innovators.

This is part of Mahindra's first edition of the $1 million 'Rise Prize'—being unveiled on National Science Day later this week—to spur breakthrough Indian innovation which captures the mainstream imagination.

The boss of the $16 billion Mahindra Group hopes the new recognition—at Rs 6.2 crore, it's one of the heftiest awards in terms of prize money—would foster scientific thought that is aspirational and has potential to change everyday Indian life.

"We have to set our own benchmark or metrics to value innovations which impact a part of our lives. Our best minds are used to looking for recognition outside India. The objective is to trigger disruptive innovation in the country," Mahindra told TOI.

The inaugural Rise Prize will see Mahindra posing two challenges—a $700,000 one aimed at building a driverless car for the congested domestic roads, and a $300,000 challenge to develop a solar DIY kit for household energy needs.

Internet giant Google has been pioneering a project developing technology for self driving cars. Its lead engineer Sebastain Thurn and his team at Stanford created the vehicle prototype after winning a $2 million prize from the US Department of Defence.

"The twin challenges have been selected on the basis of relevance to society, potential to create disproportionate impact, scalability and probability of causing a multiplier effect in allied areas," Mahindra said. "We hope this will ignite ecosystem building and change societal mindset. This is going beyond jugaad, or making do," he added.

The competition will be launched on February 28 and candidates at all stages of technological readiness can apply. The first edition will have a timeline of 24-36 months split into three phases—first 90 days for submitting proposals, followed by prototype creation and real world demonstration.

Mahindra is lining up a 100-member team that will include subject experts who would engage with the aspiring innovators throughout the process. The group will not have any rights on the winning innovations. "It's completely open source and has nothing to do with our group businesses," Mahindra said.

The Mahindra move comes at a time when Indian entrepreneurial steam has gathered momentum in recent years, aided by the availability of patient private capital in Asia's third-largest economy.

A recent Kauffman Foundation study shows that 33% co-founders of the US engineering and technology start-ups since 2006 were Indians leaving other immigrant countries far behind. IITs were among the top 10 higher educational institutes in the world that have produced founders of US startups that have raised venture capital funding in the past five years.

A decade-long economic buoyancy and a swelling middle class have created newer markets for products and services where entrepreneurs are kicking up action. Still, disruptive scientific and technology innovations that are 'Made in India' remain a far cry.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Army jawan shoots dead five colleagues, kills self

SRINAGAR: An Army soldier on Thursday shot five colleagues dead at point blank range when they were sleeping before committing suicide in Jammu & Kashmir's Ganderbal district.

"A soldier of a Rashtriya Rifles unit ran amok in the early hours, killing five soldiers before killing himself," an Army spokesman said.

The incident took place inside the Army camp of 13 Rashtriya Rifles at Safapora. A court of inquiry has been ordered into the incident, he said.

According to sources, the soldier, who was posted on sentry duty at the camp, entered one of the barracks at around 2.00am and opened indiscriminate firing on his sleeping colleagues.

They said five soldiers were killed and another injured in the firing before the jawan went on to shoot himself.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Mahindra's $1m bounty awaits desi innovators

MUMBAI: Industrialist Anand Mahindra is throwing a million-dollar challenge to solve two of India's most pervasive and intractable problems—traffic stress and electricity shortages. The chairman of the automobile-to-aerospace Mahindra Group is calling for competitive pitch to develop a driverless car and a do-it-yourself solar power kit from desi innovators.

This is part of Mahindra's first edition of the $1 million 'Rise Prize'—being unveiled on National Science Day later this week—to spur breakthrough Indian innovation which captures the mainstream imagination.

The boss of the $16 billion Mahindra Group hopes the new recognition—at Rs 6.2 crore, it's one of the heftiest awards in terms of prize money—would foster scientific thought that is aspirational and has potential to change everyday Indian life.

"We have to set our own benchmark or metrics to value innovations which impact a part of our lives. Our best minds are used to looking for recognition outside India. The objective is to trigger disruptive innovation in the country," Mahindra told TOI.

The inaugural Rise Prize will see Mahindra posing two challenges—a $700,000 one aimed at building a driverless car for the congested domestic roads, and a $300,000 challenge to develop a solar DIY kit for household energy needs.

Internet giant Google has been pioneering a project developing technology for self driving cars. Its lead engineer Sebastain Thurn and his team at Stanford created the vehicle prototype after winning a $2 million prize from the US Department of Defence.

"The twin challenges have been selected on the basis of relevance to society, potential to create disproportionate impact, scalability and probability of causing a multiplier effect in allied areas," Mahindra said. "We hope this will ignite ecosystem building and change societal mindset. This is going beyond jugaad, or making do," he added.

The competition will be launched on February 28 and candidates at all stages of technological readiness can apply. The first edition will have a timeline of 24-36 months split into three phases—first 90 days for submitting proposals, followed by prototype creation and real world demonstration.

Mahindra is lining up a 100-member team that will include subject experts who would engage with the aspiring innovators throughout the process. The group will not have any rights on the winning innovations. "It's completely open source and has nothing to do with our group businesses," Mahindra said.

The Mahindra move comes at a time when Indian entrepreneurial steam has gathered momentum in recent years, aided by the availability of patient private capital in Asia's third-largest economy.

A recent Kauffman Foundation study shows that 33% co-founders of the US engineering and technology start-ups since 2006 were Indians leaving other immigrant countries far behind. IITs were among the top 10 higher educational institutes in the world that have produced founders of US startups that have raised venture capital funding in the past five years.

A decade-long economic buoyancy and a swelling middle class have created newer markets for products and services where entrepreneurs are kicking up action. Still, disruptive scientific and technology innovations that are 'Made in India' remain a far cry.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sunil Grover had a better platform with me: Kapil Sharma

AALLEGATION 1 It's being said that you want Comedy Nights with Kapil to air only once a week so that you can focus on films and the channel is upset with your decision.
That's true. The original plan was a 26-episode run without a break after which we would evaluate our next step. The response was so overwhelming that we continued to roll. But having a bi-weekly show is too much of pressure. Besides being the host, I am the show's producer too and involved with every creative aspect and can't let the quality fall. Now that I have signed a film, it will be difficult to devote so much time to the show. I have communicated my decision to the channel. I hope they understand and take a call.

ALLEGATION 2 Your differences with Sunil Grover, who played Guthi on the show, eventually lead to his exit and you were left without one of your principal players. I don't know who started this rumour that Sunil and I had problems. In fact, he called me on Monday after hearing that I am laid low with a back problem. We still talk, and very warmly too. What more do I need to say to put this controversy to rest once and for all? The reason he left my show was because he was getting many attractive offers and decided to move on.

ALLEGATION 3 You aren't too impressed with his new show, Mad in India 100% Desi Show. It lacks charm. It was promoted as Guthi's show, but it has far more characters than I have in my show. Sunil had a better platform with me. There was something special when we worked together. I even had a chat with him on this before he left.

ALLEGATION 4 You walked out of the inaugural event of the Cricket Celebrity League because you were not given a vanity van. I have a back problem which tends to recur every six months. I had been shooting through the night and headed straight to the stadium. I needed a place to change. I was asking simply for the basic amenities. Then, my back pain aggravated and I was forced to leave. The next day the headlines were screaming, 'Kapil ne liya Salman se panga.' Baap re!

ALLEGATION 5 Reportedly, you were rude to Kangana Ranaut when she came on your show as a guest. I had a different perception of Kangana before I met her. But I found her to be really sweet. She was very sporting about the jokes too.

ALLEGATION 6 Seems you have grown too big for your boots and keep stars waiting on the sets of your show for hours. If that is true the world would have ended by now. How can I make a star wait? If any delay happened, it must have because I was busy with my team or looking into some backstage details.

WATCH: Comedy Nights with Kapil : Gutti and Palak

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

No railway refund for non-travellers

NAGPUR: From March 1, passengers who do not undertake journey after booking tickets will not be paid any refund.

Refund will also not be paid to those who have booked tickets as a part of a group and decide not to travel for any reason.

The new rules come into effect after the railways modified its scheme on grant of refund from public reservation system (PRS) on cancellation of tickets.

Central Railway senior divisional commercial manager (SrDCM) Dr Sumant Deulkar confirmed that Railway Board vide a circular issued on February 21 to all general managers has intimated to implement the decision from March 1.

In partial modification under 'Computerized Coaching Refund Scheme', the Railway Board has decided that refund across the counters will not be granted in case of passengers who do not turn up and less number of people travelling in groups.

However, refund under this system will be granted for reserved and RAC tickets in cases of lower class travel, failure of AC in coach, discontinuation of journey by passengers due to dislocation of train services, accommodation not provided and cancellation of trains. For wait listed tickets, refund will not be granted under this system but will continue to be granted as per existing rules.

CRIS has been asked to make necessary software modifications. Necessary instructions have been issued to all staff immediately, says a circular issued by Rohit Kumar, deputy director traffic commercial, Railway Board.

Earlier, if the ticket was presented for cancellation up to two hours after the actual departure of the train irrespective of distance, the cancellation charges were 50% of the fare subject to a minimum of the cancellation charge referred.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Porn star reference to future wife irks Charlie Sheen

The author has posted comments on this articleReagan Gavin Rasquinha, TNN | Feb 25, 2014, 04.10PM IST

Charlie Sheen is annoyed that everyone keeps referring to his future wife Brett Rossi as a porn star.

A source was quoted as saying to a US news website: "It's absolutely making Charlie crazy that the media keeps referring to Brett as a porn star, because she no longer is doing that. She recently graduated from nursing school. Furthermore, her stage name is Brett Rossi and her legal name is Scottine Ross. He wants people to refer to her as Scotti, which is the name she goes by in her personal life. Charlie has told his publicist to tell media outlets to stop calling her a porn star.

It should be recalled that Sheen proposed to Rossi on Valentine's Day but she is yet to officially separate from her husband Jonathan Ross.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

US couple finds $10 million in gold coins while walking their dog

LOS ANGELES: A California couple out walking their dog on their property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $10 million in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree.

Nearly all of the 1,427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition, said David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana, which recently authenticated them. Although the face value of the gold pieces only adds up to more than $28,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $1 million apiece.

"I don't like to say once-in-a-lifetime for anything, but you don't get an opportunity to handle this kind of material, a treasure like this, ever," said veteran numismatist Don Kagin, who is representing the finders. "It's like they found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

Kagin, whose family has been in the rare-coin business for 81 years, would say little about the couple other than that they are husband and wife, are middle-aged and have lived for several years on the rural property where the coins were found. They have no idea who put them there, Kagin said.

The pair are choosing to remain anonymous, Kagin said, in part to avoid a renewed gold rush to their property by modern-day prospectors armed with metal detectors.

They also don't want to be treated any differently, said David McCarthy, chief numismatist for Kagin Inc. of Tiburon.

"Their concern was this would change the way everyone else would look at them, and they're pretty happy with the lifestyle they have today," he said.

They plan to put most of the coins up for sale through Amazon while holding onto a few keepsakes. They'll use the money to pay off bills and quietly donate to local charities, Kagin said.

Before they sell them, they are loaning some to the American Numismatic Association for its National Money Show, which opens Thursday in Atlanta.

What makes their find particularly valuable, McCarthy said, is that almost all of the coins are in near-perfect condition. That means that whoever put them into the ground likely socked them away as soon as they were put into circulation.

Because paper money was illegal in California until the 1870s, he added, it's extremely rare to find any coins from before that of such high quality.

"It wasn't really until the 1880s that you start seeing coins struck in California that were kept in real high grades of preservation," he said.

The coins, in $5, $10 and $20 denominations, were stored more or less in chronological order, McCarthy said, with the 1840s and 1850s pieces going into one canister until it was filed, then new coins going into the next one and the next one after that. The dates and the method indicated that whoever put them there was using the ground as their personal bank and that they weren't swooped up all at once in a robbery.

Although most of the coins were minted in San Francisco, one $5 gold piece came from as far away as Georgia.

Kagin and McCarthy would say little about the couple's property or its ownership history, other than it's in a sprawling hilly area of Gold Country, as the region that was the site of the 1849 Gold Rush is known. The coins were found along a path the couple had walked for years. On the day they found them last spring, the woman had bent over to examine an old rusty can that erosion had caused to pop slightly out of the ground.

"Don't be above bending over to check on a rusty can," he said she told him.

They are located on a section of the property the couple nicknamed Saddle Ridge, and Kagin is calling the find the Saddle Ridge Hoard. He believes it could be the largest such discovery in US history.

One of the largest previous finds of gold coins was $1 million worth uncovered by construction workers in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1985. More than 400,000 silver dollars were found in the home of a Reno, Nevada, man who died in 1974 and were later sold intact for $7.3 million.

Gold coins and ingots said to be worth as much as $130 million were recovered in the 1980s from the wreck of the SS Central America. But historians knew roughly where that gold was because the ship went down off the coast of North Carolina during a hurricane in 1857.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Student from Arunachal 'beaten to death' in south Delhi

TNN Jan 31, 2014, 04.16PM IST

(The victim's cousins have…)

NEW DELHI: A college student from Arunachal Pradesh was allegedly beaten to death at Lajpat Nagar in south Delhi, Times Now reported.

According to reports, Nido Taniam, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, along with his friends, had gone to Lajpat Nagar market on Wednesday (January 29). Taniam, a first year student, had reportedly gone to Lajpat Nagar with three friends on Wednesday afternoon, and was looking for an address when someone at a sweet shop started mocking him.

Police sources say a fight erupted in which Taniam broke a glass at the shop.

A group of seven or eight local men then allegedly beat him with sticks and rods. Someone called the police, which reportedly arrived at the spot and took the four students away but inexplicably dropped them back at the same place after a while.

There were allegedly beaten again, sources added.

Meanwhile, the victim's cousins have claimed that Taniam was targeted because of his hairstyle.

The Aam Aadmi Party has put the onus on Delhi police over the death of Arunachal student.

"Whoever is responsible for the attack on Arunachal student must be given stringent punishment," Dilip Pandey, AAP leader, said.

The shopkeeper behind the attack has been detained by the Delhi police.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Man re-books ticket 300 times for free airport meals

BEIJING: A Chinese man bought a first-class plane ticket and re-booked it 300 times to have free meals at the VIP lounge of an airport in China.

The frequent diner purchased the first-class, fully refundable ticket aboard Eastern China Airline and then re-booked his ticket over and over again to have free meals.

He used the ticket to gain access to the Xi'an International Airport's VIP lounge, where high-rolling travellers dine for free, according to a report in the Chinese-language newspaper Kwong Wah Yit Poh in Malaysia.

The man flashed his ticket to lounge staff at the Shaanxi province airport before his trip, ate a meal just like any first class traveller and instead of getting on the flight he would change his flight's departure to another day. The next day he would show up with his newly issued ticket for the revised date, eat and then again change his ticket date. He did this over and over again.

Eastern China Airlines officials only recently figured out the man's scheme after noticing his single ticket being re-booked 300 times over one year. Airline officials admitted there was nothing they could do to stop the frequent diner. The freeloader ended up cashing in his fully refundable ticket and getting back all his money.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More

Bombay HC sets free man who spent 10 years in jail as police dog barked at him

MUMBAI: A dog barking at an accused is in itself not a substantive piece of evidence to nail him for murder, the Bombay high court has ruled in an important judgment. Ten years after a man was arrested for double murder in Solapur, a division bench of Justice P V Hardas and Justice Ajay Gadkari acquitted the accused Rajaram Babar saying there was no evidence to prove that he committed the killings. The judges ordered that Babar who was serving a life term be released immediately from prison if he was not wanted in any other case.

One of the crucial piece of evidence that the police had produced before the trial court was a tracker dog barking at Babar from a line up of suspects. The police said that the dog had been given some blood stained stones from the site of incident to smell. "The evidence of the tracker dog is not substantive piece of evidence and in the absence of proof of the dog barking at accused as well as proof of the article which was given to the dog for sniffing, no reliance whatsoever can be placed on the evidence of dog tracking. We find that there is no other evidence of corroborative nature which would corroborate the evidence of dog tracking.," said the judges. "It is unimaginable that after the scene of incident panchanama was drawn and the inquest panchanama had already been drawn, the stone which was given to the dog for sniffing could be said to have been the stone which was last handled by Babar," the judges added.

The incident dates back to September 2004, when the bodies of one Subhadrabai and her paramour Nivrutti were found lying in front of their house. Police investigations revealed that there was a dispute between Babar and Subhadrabai over laying of pipes. The police called in the dog squad and the tracker dog barked at Babar who was arrested for the murders. A trial court in 2005 held Babar guilty of murder, while acquitting a co accused and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Babar then approached the HC.

The other evidence submitted by the police was the statement of Subhadra's daughter that the accused and others had strained relations with her deceased mother over laying of a pipeline. The court said that strained relations did not prove a motive. The other evidence was an axe and blood stained clothes recovered at Babar's instance. The HC said that there was no proof that the articles were sealed before sending it for analysis to rule out tampering.

The court said that in cases resting on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution has to prove each and every circumstance, which should be of a conclusive nature that should have definite tendency of implicating the accused. "Having examined evidence against the appellant, we find that there is no evidence which would conclusively prove the offence against Babar beyond reasonable doubt," the judges ruled while setting aside the trial court order holding him guilty of double murder.

22.14 | 0 komentar | Read More