Tremors felt in Chennai

An undersea earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale struck off India's Andaman islands in the Indian Ocean on Friday, the US Geological Survey said, causing people to flee their homes.Officials and witnesses said the quake triggered panic and fears of a repeat of the devastating 2004 tsunami that ravaged the island chain.Residents ran out of their homes as the powerful jolt rattled buildings, already weakened by a series of earthquakes that have hit the Andamans since the tsunami.

The epicentre of the quake was 115 kilometres (70 miles) southwest from capital Port Blair.

With its epicentre near Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the quake occurring at around 1700 hrs lasted a few seconds and rocked several parts of Chennai including the busy T Nagar, Nugambakkam and Koyambedu areas, Met office sources and the police told .Employees working in a multi-storeyed building in Venkatnarayana Road in T Nagar rushed out of office as they experienced the tremor, police said.

However, there is no immediate report about any loss of life or property due to the quake.Emloyees working near Marina Beach Ran Out of the office because of the Building Shake Felt.

Source : Times Of India

Home Loans Now Costiler

Bad news with the market tumbling under pressure from rising inflation and oil prices and it seems the worst is not still over with the markets at a 2 year low.The interest rate hike has come from the country's leading bank SBI which gives an indication that the other banks will follow shortly.

The bad news is for those with house , car or any loans from banks.Interest rates have just gone up.Therefore , the equated monthly installments on are to increase or will have to be paid for a longer period.This comes as a bad news for the booming Automobile industry ,Housing ,and Consumer Durables industry which are riding high will se a big dip in their sales.

Pilot Trainee's Struggle is United States As School Shuts

Among 100's of students who are stranded in us from india after their flying school was closed down about a week ago.The students include trainees from Chennai ,Mumbai Delhi ,Pune etc.These students were part of a commericial pilot training programme run by the American School Of Aviation which had tie up with kingfisher airlines.However it is belved that kingfisher has denied that it had "contractual obligations"with the school.

The school informed the students last month that it was facing financial crunch and it might be forced to close down.India has only 32 flying school and only 14 are functioning due to lack of infracture which is the main reason why indian students constitute a major part of students studying in the US flying School.

Hope the indian goverment does something to protect the intest of these stranded students.A question arises about how the economy in US is heading and will be it the same for the number of university ? Will they also close due to finacial crunch?

Anna univ Results Direct Link 2008

http://ns3.annauniv.edu/result/result08.html

http://ns3.annauniv.edu/cgi-bin/ugpg/result08.pl?regno=

If your register number is 1234 you have to use the link as

http://ns3.annauniv.edu/cgi-bin/ugpg/result08.pl?regno=1234

Riders crush Challengers

An unbeaten 158 by wicket-keeper batsman Brendon McCullum coupled with decimating fast bowling helped Kolkata Knight Riders 140-run win over Bangalore Royal Challengers in the opening match of the Indian Premier League in Bangalore on Friday.

Chasing to Knight Riders’ 222 for three, Bangalore’s Royal Challengers were bowled out for 82 in 15.1 over at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. McCullum score was the highest individual score in a Twenty20 game, was adjudged the Man of the Match. He blazed 13 sixes – the most in a Twenty20 contest - and 10 fours in an incredible 73-ball innings on a jam-packed Stadium.

The Fireworks which began in Zaheer Khan’s first over continued till the last ball of the innings, when McCullum hit the medium pacer Praveen Kumar over the long-on ropes. McCullum used his feet, picked the length of the ball early. His was largely a one-man onslaught on the RC bowling; the next highest score in Knight Riders’ innings was Ricky Ponting’s 20.

Chasing an unimaginable target, the host was taken for a ride early by pacers Ashok Dinda and Ishant Sharma. Ishant took an early wicket of Rahul Dravid with an incoming delivery and the host could not manage a recovery.

Ajit Agarkar, who finished with 3 wickets, dented the middle-order. Praveen Kumar’s 18 not out was the highest score of the innings for the KKK

Knight Riders picked up two points while Royal Challengers are yet to open their account

Scoreboard

Kolkata Knight Riders:
Sourav Ganguly c Kallis b Khan 10
Brendan McCullum not out 158
Ricky Ponting c Kumar b Kallis 20
David Hussey c White b Noffke 12
Mohammed Hafeez not out 5
Extras: (b 4, lb 4, w 9) 17
Total: (for 3 wickets in 20 overs) 222

Fall of wickets: 1-61 (Ganguly, 5.2 overs), 2-112 (Ponting, 12.1), 3-172 (Hussey, 17.1)

Bowling:
Praveen Kumar 4 0 38 0 (1w)
Zaheer Khan 4 0 38 1
Ashley Noffke 4 0 40 1 (1w)
Jacques Kallis 4 0 48 1 (1w)
Sunil Joshi 3 0 26 0
Cameron White 1 0 24 0 (1w)

Bangalore Royal Challengers:
Rahul Dravid b Sharma 2
Wasim Jaffer c Ponting b Dinda 6
Virat Kohli b Dinda 1
Jacques Kallis c Kartik b Agarkar 8
Cameron White c Saha b Agarkar 6
Mark Boucher c Kartik b Ganguly 7
Balachandra Akhil c Ponting b Agarkar 0
Ashley Noffke run out (Agarkar/Saha) 9
Praveen Kumar not out 18
Zaheer Khan b Ganguly 3
Sunil Joshi c McCullum b Shukla 3
Extras: (lb 8, w 11) 19
Total: (all out in 15.1 overs) 82

Fall of wickets: 1-4 (Dravid, 1.1 overs), 2-9 (Kohli, 2.2), 3-24 (Kallis, 4.5), 4-24 (Jaffer, 5.2), 5-38 (Boucher, 7.5), 6-38 (Akhil, 8.2), 7-43 (White, 8.6), 8-57 (Noffke, 11.1), 9-70 (Khan, 13.1)

Bowling:
Ashok Dinda 3 0 9 2 (2w)
Ishant Sharma 3 0 7 1 (1w)
Ajit Agarkar 4 0 25 3 (4w)
Sourav Ganguly 4 0 21 2 (1w)
Laxmi Ratan Shukla 1.1 0 12 1

Result: Kolkata Knight Riders won by 140 runs
Man of the Match: Brendon McCullum (New Zealand)

Suresh Menon and Revathi Back Together

Suresh Menon is going to start a production of a Hindi film and his ex-wife Revathy is all set and getting ready to direct it. This sounds a bit unusal and strange because both of them had recently announced that they were going to split and came together SICA awards.

No OBC quota in IIMs, AIIMS

K Venugopal, one of India's highly respected lawyers told rediff.com on Thursday, "According to today's judgment, the Indian Institute of Management and All India Institute of Medical Sciences will not have any reservation for Other Backward Classes."

Venugopal appeared in this landmark hearing in the Supreme Court on behalf of the Junior Doctors Association of AIIMS, New Delhi.

Explaining the reason behind it, he said, "Justices Arijit Pasayat, C K Thakker and Dalveer Bhandari has clearly said in their judgment that you ceased to be OBC when you are educated and attain graduation. Test of the OBC is social and educational backwardness. It says "and", that means if you are not educationally backward you are not OBC. The court has accepted the argument that if you are able to graduate you are not entitled to reservation."

"Not only IIMs, but even AIIMS and such other centres of higher learning will not have any OBC reservation," Venugopal added.

While putting the entire judgment in perspective Venugopal said, "This balanced judgment has scaled down the huge volume of OBC to the core level of OBC. This judgment has upheld the economic criteria of 1993 depriving large number of members of OBC from benefiting from reservation. It is a serious setback to the government who wanted to fill up prestigious institutes with OBC quotas. Today's judgment has kept graduation as the 'cut-off' point that will reduce the numbers of beneficiaries of OBC reservation."

"The 1993 criteria to decide 'creamy layer' amongst OBC section says that people with landed property, all government employees above Class II, all OBC families with monthly income of Rs 20,000 (gross annual income of Rs.2.5 lakh and above ) etc. are barred from availing any reservation from now onwards," Venugopal said.