The Advice Steve Jobs Gave Me: Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says he received some words of wisdom from Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs who told the young Silicon Valley billionaire to focus on building the right team for a "high quality" company.

Zuckerberg, appearing in an interview with Charlie Rose with his Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, said Jobs advised him on how to improve his company's focus and also discussed with him about "the aesthetics and kind of mission orientation of companies."

"I had a lot of questions for him," including on "how to build a team around you that's focused on building as high-quality and good things as you  are."

Zuckerberg, 27, also visited Harvard University, his alma mater from where he had dropped out in 2004 to start Facebook, which now has 800 million users.

He told students at Harvard and later at MIT in Cambridge that he would be hiring the best minds from the Ivy League institutions for his multi-billion dollar social network.

Jobs, who died on October 5, had told his biographer Walter Isaacson that he admired Zuckerberg for not "selling out."

Zuckerberg told Rose Jobs had not proposed an acquisition of Facebook.

Named the ninth most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine with a net worth of USD 17.5 billion, Zuckerberg also spoke about Facebook's much-awaited IPO, which he added is not "something I spend a lot of time on a day-to-day basis thinking about."

"We've made this implicit promise to our investors and to our employees that by compensating them with equity and by giving them equity, that at some point we're going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly, in a liquid way. Now, the promise isn't that we're going to do it on any kind of  short-term time horizon," he said.

"The promise is that we're going to build this company so that it's great over the long term, right. And that we're always making these decisions for the long term, but at some point we'll do that," he said.

Referring to the competition in Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg said while people like to talk about war among the technology companies, "there are a lot of ways in which the companies actually work together".

"There are real competitions in there. But I don't think that this is going to be the type of situation where there's one company that wins all the stuff," he said.

Zuckerberg added that while Internet search giant Google "is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook," Amazon and Apple are companies that are "extremely aligned with us."

On acquisitions, Zuckerberg said lot of the acquisitions that Facebook makes is focussed on "great entrepreneurs out there who are building things".

"And often, the acquisitions aren't even to really buy their company or what they're doing. It's to get the really talented people who are out there trying to build something cool."

Logitech releases iPad accessories

Logitech has unveiled its brand new line of tablet accessories with the launch of two new iPad accessories, the Logitech Keyboard Case for iPad 2 and the Logitech Tablet Keyboard for iPad.

The Keyboard Case for the iPad 2 will use Bluetooth wireless technology in tandem with USB connectivity.

Besides this the Tablet keyboard for iPad will actually combine a keyboard with a stand enabling ease of use. The tablet keyboard will also come with Bluetooth connectivity.

Both the products will launch by early September 2011 and will cost Rs 4495 and Rs 3645.

MOG adds free music gas tank to subscription plan

 

All that tweeting and sharing of photos on Facebook could finally have a tangible reward: free music.

MOG, a subscription music service based in Berkeley, Calif., says it is introducing a free music service that will supplement its $5-a-month unlimited streaming plan and $10-a-month unlimited mobile music offering.

Starting immediately, MOG is giving new users a kind of digital gas tank they can use to listen to tracks from its library of 11 million songs.

Sharing songs, making playlists and other actions get users more gas while listening uses it up. Having more friends or followers multiplies the gas-earning effects of a user's activity.

MOG's free system revamps what had been a 14-day free trial and puts it in competition with Spotify, a Swedish subscription music plan that is popular in Europe. Spotify launched in the U.S. in July and has a free service that is limited by listening time caps in some countries. Rdio, another subscription music service, also said Thursday it would expand its free trial service soon.

The moves come ahead of an event on Sept. 22 at which Facebook is expected to announce a new set of tools for music services that the social network hopes will bolster it as a platform for sharing musical tastes with friends.

MOG and services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and Muve Music allow paying customers to download an unlimited number of songs to mobile devices - most of them for $10 a month. Users can listen to the tracks outside of cellphone coverage areas, but access disappears if the subscription is dropped. Music companies are licensing songs to these services in order to promote the fledgling business since purchases of tracks and albums over services like iTunes and Amazon.com have not made up for a decade-long decline in CD sales.

So far, the services haven't attracted enough subscribers to turn the music industry around. Rhapsody, the market leader, has some 800,000 paying subscribers while Muve Music, which bundles its plan with Cricket cellphone service, has doubled its subscriber base in the last two months to 200,000.

David Hyman, chief executive and founder of MOG, said the key for users who want to obtain free music is to prove they are engaged and finding others who may eventually sign up for a subscription.

"Conceptually, if you're a taste-maker, an influencer, you will never have to pay. It'll be free forever," Hyman said. He added that if one of a user's followers or friends is converted into a paying subscriber, the user would be entitled to about three to five months of free music.

MOG's free service will be supported by advertising revenue. For the first 60 days, however, it will come without ads to give users a chance to test it without interruption.

Hyman wouldn't say how many subscribers MOG has or if the company is profitable. MOG, founded in 2005 originally as a network of music bloggers, launched its subscription music plan in late 2009. Its backers include Menlo Ventures, Balderton Capital, Universal Music Group and Sony Musi

Blast at Agra hospital, at least 8 injured

Agra:  At least eight people have been injured in a bomb blast at the Jay Hospital in Agra this evening. There are no reports of any casualty yet.

P K Tiwari, the Inspector General of Police, Agra, has said that preliminary investigations suggest the use of a crude bomb, which was kept under a seat in the reception area. 

An team from the anti-terror squad has been sent to the hospital, Additional Director General of Police (Law & Order) Brij Lal told PTI.

Tokyo game show turns to cell phones, has new star

A startup little known outside Japan that offers games for cellphones is emerging as the new star at this year's Tokyo video game exhibition, usually dominated by big-name console makers like Sony and Microsoft.

Gree Inc., a social networking service that began just seven years ago in the founder's living room, had its first booth ever at the sprawling Tokyo Game Show, which previewed to media Thursday ahead of its opening to the public later this week at a hall in this Tokyo suburb.

Its stardom underlines the arrival of so-called "social games" aimed at casual users passing the time on smartphones and tablet devices rather than the sophisticated plots, imagery and controls found on gaming devices.

With Gree, mobile games are an additional feature to its social networking service, similar to those already common in the U.S. and other nations with Facebook and Twitter, although those don't focus as much on gaming.

Yoshikazu Tanaka, the 34-year-old founder and chief executive of Gree, said he was serious about expanding business overseas, targeting 1 billion users in the next several years.

Gree already has drawn 140 million users worldwide, and has opened overseas offices, including San Francisco and London.

Gree's booth was among the biggest at the annual Tokyo Game Show.

And it was drawing just as much of a crowd as Sony Corp., which exhibits every year, and was showing off its new portable machine, PlayStation Vita, set to go on sale Dec. 17 in Japan and early next year in the U.S. and Europe.

In Japan, PS Vita will face off this holiday season against DS3, the portable from Nintendo Co., which features glasses-free 3-D imagery.

Both Nintendo and Sony executives, in presentations earlier this week, expressed worries about keeping growth going in the gaming business, perhaps because of competition from devices like smartphones, Gree's specialty.

The shift to smartphones was affecting game-software makers as well.

"The network itself is the new platform," said Yoichi Wada, head of Japanese game software maker Square Enix. "Game developers need to keep in mind that gaming is spreading to casual users, including newcomers."

But the advantage of offering gaming on cellphones is simple: Almost everyone in the industrialized world owns a cellphone, and as more nations join that fold, people in those nations are bound to buy cellphones, too.

Tanaka said the advent of social gaming had changed the industry because people were always connected to networks with smartphones and tablets like the iPad, and people aren't necessarily going to go out and invest hundreds of dollars in a special game machine.

Tanaka said he envisioned a time whencell phones would become plentiful in places like Africa and South America for low prices, and people, who would never dream of buying expensive game machines, would be accessing Gree services from cellphones as gaming newcomers.

"What is coming next is very important," he said as a keynote speaker, a good indicator of his spot in the limelight. "Gree is targeting all cellphone-users."

Takashi Sensui, general manager at Microsoft Japan Co., said Microsoft sees social gaming as an opportunity to grow, as it is strong in games for cellphones and computers, as well as with those for its Xbox 360 home console.

What computer device people may want to use merely depends on where they are, such as whether they are on the move or they are at home, he said.

"You can use Microsoft's platform anywhere, anytime and everywhere, on any type of device to enjoy entertainment," he said.

Sony videogame line-up flexes motion control

Sony on Thursday unveiled a holiday season line-up of PlayStation 3 videogames tailored for motion control using the Japanese entertainment titan's Move gear.

Move-enabled titles slated for release during the year-end gift-buying season ranged from "Everybody Dance" and "LittleBigPlanet" to role-playing action game "inFAMOUS."

"The holiday promises to be exceptional for PlayStation gamers, with blockbuster software titles scheduled for release in a variety of genres," said Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) product marketing vice president Scott Steinberg.

Sony released Move late last year.

The controllers, reminiscent of small black flashlights topped with brightly colored orbs, allow gamers to control PlayStation 3 (PS3) videogame consoles with swings, jabs and other natural movements.

More than 80 Move videogames have been released or are in development, according to SCEA.

Sony boasted having sold approximately 51.8 million PS3 consoles worldwide.

Sony also revealed plans to release a kit for software developers to create content for the company's gaming hardware, including new Vita handheld gadgets set for release in Japan in December.

The range of devices encompassed by PlayStation Suite software development kits will include Sony tablet computers powered by Google-backed Android software.

Google adds more IBM patents to tech arsenal

Google confirmed on Thursday that it has added 1,023 more IBM patents to its technology arsenal to fend off legal attacks by rivals such as Apple and Microsoft.

The purchases added to the 1,000 or so patents the California-based Internet firm bought from IBM in July and reportedly ranged from mobile software to computer hardware and processes.

Google spokesman Jim Prosser told AFP that the patent transfers had taken place but would not disclose financial terms of the deal or specifics regarding the intellectual property.

The push by Google to strengthen its patent portfolio comes as the fight for dominance in the booming smartphone market increasingly involves lawsuits claiming infringement of patented technology.

Smartphone titan HTC Corp. this month ramped up its patent war with Apple with the help of ammunition provided by Google, the force behind Android mobile software.

Google transferred a set of patents to HTC that the Taiwan-based company used to amend intellectual property infringement complaints against iPhone maker Apple in the United States.

In August, HTC accused Apple of patent infringement as part of an ongoing legal battle.

In a lawsuit filed in US District Court in the state of Delaware, the Taiwanese smartphone maker charged that Apple violated three HTC-held patents in its Macintosh computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads and other products.

HTC also filed a complaint with the Washington-based US International Trade Commission.

Technology giants have taken to routinely pounding one another with patent lawsuits. Apple has accused HTC and other smartphone makers using Google's Android mobile operating system of infringing on Apple-held patents.

Some of the nine patents that HTC got from Google had belonged to Motorola Mobility, which Google is buying for $12.5 billion in cash.

Motorola Mobility's trove of patents was a key motivation for Google, which is keen to defend Android.

"Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google's patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies," Google chief executive Larry Page said when the Motorola Mobility buy was announced.

Motorola Mobility chief executive Sanjay Jha told financial analysts the US maker of smartphones and touchscreen tablet computers has over 17,000 issued patents and another 7,500 pending.

Google, publishers near settlement in books case

Google and publishers told a US judge on Thursday that they are close to settling a lawsuit over the Internet giant's controversial book-scanning project.

Negotiations between Google and the Authors Guild, which filed suit against Google for copyright infringement with the Association of American Publishers (AAP) six years ago, do not appear to be making as much headway, however.

"We're encouraged by the progress we've made with publishers and believe we can reach an agreement that offers great benefits to users and rights holders alike," Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said after a court hearing in New York.

Bruce Keller, a lawyer for the AAP, also said the settlement talks were promising.

"We've made enough progress in our discussions with Google that a schedule may not matter," Keller said in a reference to drawing up a calendar for a trial if the settlement talks fail to result in an agreement.

"We'd like to resolve the issue reasonably promptly," AAP president Tom Allen said following the court hearing, adding that it could be a question of "weeks."

Michael Boni, a lawyer for the Authors Guild, told US District Court Judge Denny Chin the guild was preparing to file an amended complaint against Google but wanted to nevertheless continue negotiations towards a deal.

"We'd like very much to continue a settlement dialogue with Google to settle the case," Boni said. "We'd be on a parallel track with litigation to work on a satisfactory settlement."

In March, Judge Chin dealt a major setback to Google's plans for a vast digital library and online bookstore by rejecting a proposed settlement reached between the Internet company and authors and publishers.

The 2008 settlement resulted from a class action lawsuit filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the AAP charging Google with copyright infringement over its scanning of millions of books.

The settlement called for Google to pay $125 million to resolve outstanding copyright claims and to establish an independent "Book Rights Registry," which would provide sales and advertising revenue to authors and publishers.

Google opened a Google eBookstore in December, a venture that is separate from Google Books, which was launched in 2004 and has digitized over 15 million books from more than 100 countries.

The Authors Guild and writers from Australia, Britain and Canada filed a separate copyright infringement suit this week against five US universities and the HathiTrust digital library project.

The complaint submitted in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York claims the universities obtained unauthorized scans from Google of an estimated seven million copyright-protected books.

It said the universities, through the HathiTrust consortium, plan to allow unlimited downloads by students and faculty members of so-called "orphan" works -- copyright-protected books whose authors cannot be located.

"By digitizing, archiving, copying and now publishing the copyrighted works without the authorization of those works' rights holders, the universities are engaging in one of the largest copyright infringements in history," the lawsuit said.

NetGenie router allows parents to filter Internet content

With NetGenie -Home, the new 3G and Wi-fi router just launched in India, parents can ensure their children are protected from inappropriate Internet content like pornography and violence. 

The router also comes in a variant suited for small offices who can now put a complete stop to their employees spending time on non-productive sites using NetGenie's Internet controls, which allow differing levels of Internet access.

NetGenie is a product of Cyberoam, a division of Elitecore Technologies.

NetGenie Home is available for Rs. 7,999 and NetGenie for small offices is available for Rs. 10,999

Kerala Temple's Vault B will not be opened for now

New Delhi:  The Supreme Court has said that for now, the only unopened vault of Kerala's Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple will remain closed. However, the court made it clear that this is not because of local superstition that warns of bad luck if the vault is forced open. The court also said it has not given any weight to a recent ritual performed - the 'Devaprasnam - which priests describe as an astrological referendum that also asked that Vault B remain off-limits.

The court will also pass orders on October 21 on the recommendations on various security aspects.

The temple has six underground vaults, five of which have been opened in the last few months to reveal unbelievable gold, jewelry and cash - estimated to be worth one lakh crore.

The court said today that it a committee of experts appointed to supervise the inventory of the treasure has recommended that Vault B should be left alone till the contents of the five other underground chambers are recorded through photographs and videos.

The judges hearing the case said, "Secret Vault B is not being opened now... but we will take a decision and do not propose to hand over the decision to others. Impractical or superstitious decisions and security can't go hand in hand." However, the judge also said, "We are not anxious to break tradition. We will ensure that traditions are respected and certain decisions are to be taken if it becomes inevitable and work out some compromise."

The vaults of the temple are being opened after a local activist in Thiruvananthapuram warned that the treasure in the temple was being mismanaged, and that security was lax.

The temple was built by the royal family of Travancore, whose descendants still manage the trust that governs the temple.

Crocodile kills 10-year-old girl in Uttar Pradesh Indo-Asian News Service, Updated: September 16, 2011 15:42 IST

Lucknow:  A crocodile killed a 10-year-old girl in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri district, officials said on Friday.

The crocodile attacked Anjali, a native of Kaharigarh village, on Thursday while she was standing on the edge of the Saryu river in Tikonya town, 150 km from Lucknow.

"The crocodile pulled away Anjali when she had taken her cattle for grazing," a police officer said.

According to forest officials, crocodiles are usually not found in the part of the river where the girl was attacked.

"But it appears the crocodile that killed the girl was swept down by the flood waters from Nepal," a forest official said.

Another setback for Jayalalithaa in corruption case

Chennai:  For Jayalalithaa, a case that accuses her of corruption has made this week a particularly tough one.

On September 12, the Supreme Court said that the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister could not be exempted from appearing in the Bangalore court which is handling the case. She has been accused of misusing her earlier terms as Chief Minister to personally benefit - the petition suggests that her assets are vastly disproportionate to her income.

Today, the Karnataka High Court said no further investigation should be conducted by the DVAC or Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption which handles charges of corruption among government departments and officials.

After assuming office, the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu government had ordered the DVAC to further investigate the case althought the trial is still pending. Jayalalithaa's political rival, the DMK, had opposed this alleging that further investigation could serve as cover for destruction of evidence.

Jayalalithaa has been asked to appear in Bangalore on October 20. 

The case against her, which was filed by the DMK in 1997, was transferred to Karnataka in 2003 after senior DMK leader K Anbazhagan alleged that she would not get a fair trial in her home state.

NASA detects planet dancing with a pair of stars

California:  Sometimes the orange sun rises first. Sometimes it is the red one, although they are never far apart in the sky and you can see them moving around each other, casting double shadows across the firmament and periodically crossing right in front of each other.

Such is life, if it were possible, on the latest addition to the pantheon of weird planets now known to exist outside the bounds of our own solar system. It is the first planet, astronomers say, that has been definitely shown to be orbiting two stars at once, circling the pair - which themselves orbit each other tightly - at a distance of some 65 million miles.

A team of astronomers using NASA's Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced the discovery on Thursday in a paper published online in the journal Science, in a talk at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and in a news conference at NASA's Ames Research Laboratory in Mountain View, California, Kepler's headquarters.

The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas Star Wars movies, which also had two suns.

"Reality has finally caught up with science fiction," said Alan P. Boss of the Carnegie Institution, a member of the research team.

Indeed, John Knoll, who is a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, which is part of Lucasfilm, and who worked on several of the Star Wars movies, joined the Ames news conference and showed a clip from the original movie.

"Again and again we see that the science is stranger and weirder than fiction," Mr. Knoll said. "The very existence of this discovery gives us cause to dream bigger."

While some double-star systems, of which there are billions in the galaxy, have been suspected to harbour planets, those smaller bodies have never been seen.

"This is a direct detection; it removes all doubt," said Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who led the discovery team.

Beyond the wow factor, astronomers said the discovery - as so many discoveries of so-called exoplanets have done - had thrown a wrench into another well-received theory of how planets can and cannot form. "In other words," said Sara Seager, a planetary expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not part of the discovery team, "people don't really know how to form this planet."

It was long thought, Dr. Seager said, that for its orbit to be stable, a planet belonging to two stars at once would have to be at least seven times as far from the stars as the stars were from each other. According to that, Kepler 16b would have to be twice as far out as it is to survive.

"This planet broke the rule," she said.

Moreover, by timing all the eclipses and transits of the planet and stars in the system, the astronomers have been able to measure the sizes and masses of the stars and the planet to unusually high precision, calibrating models of stellar and planetary properties.

"I believe this is the best-measured planet outside the solar system," Dr. Doyle said.

Technically, Tatooine is probably a ball of rock and gas about the size and density of Saturn living in a system about 200 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus.

If you go, pack to wear layers. Because those suns move back and forth all the time, temperatures on the planet can change by 50 degrees or more over the course of a few Earth days, from minus 100 to minus 150 Fahrenheit. So the weather is like "a nippy day in Antarctica at best," as Dr. Doyle put it.

Kepler, launched in 2009, is on a mission to determine the fraction of stars in the galaxy that have Earth-like planets. It scrutinizes a patch of some 155,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra looking for dips in starlight when planets cross in front of their home stars.

In the case of the Kepler 16 system - home to Tatooine - there turned out to be a lot of dips. The two stars are about 20 million miles apart and produce two eclipses every 41 days as they take turns going in front of each other. One star is about two-thirds the mass of the Sun, the other about a fifth of the Sun.

In addition, there are smaller dips when the planet, which is about 65 million miles from the center of the system - about the distance of Venus from the Sun - passes in front of each of the stars in the course of its 229-day orbit.

The degree of dimming during the planetary transits - those times that a planet crosses the path of something else - usually allows Kepler astronomers to measure the size of a planet relative to the stars. As a result, uncertainties in the properties of stars propagate into uncertainties of as much as 25 percent in the mass of a planet - enough to blur the line between a rocky planet and a gaseous one.

But in the Kepler 16 system, by comparing slight variations in the timing of the transits with calculations of the positions of the stars and the gravitational nudges the bodies give one another, Dr. Doyle's team could deduce the absolute masses and sizes of the stars and planets in the system. That is a tool, they say, that is becoming increasingly valuable for determining the masses of small planets in multiple-planet systems.

As a result, said Dr. Doyle, "it's a laboratory for all sorts of physics and stellar evolution."
The Tatooine laboratory will be available to a wide audience for at least a while longer. Dr. Doyle noted that amateur astronomers in northern Asia, equipped with as little as an eight-inch telescope and an off-the-shelf C.C.D. detector (an electronic device that cameras use to capture images), would be able to record the passage of the Tatooine planet across the brighter star in its system on June 28 next year.

But enjoy it while you can. Because of variations in the planet's orbital plane, as seen from Earth, the planet will stop crossing one of the stars as soon as 2014 and cease transiting the other, brighter one in 2018. It will be around 2042 before the show starts up again for Earthlings.

Fighter plane crashes at air show; 3 dead, over 70 injured

Reno, Nevada:  A vintage World War II-era fighter plane plunged into the grandstands Friday during a popular annual air show, killing at least three people and injuring roughly 75 and creating a horrific scene strewn with body parts and smoking debris.

The plane spiralled suddenly out of control and appeared to disintegrate upon impact. Bloodied bodies were spread across the area as people tended to the victims and ambulances rushed to the scene.

Maureen Higgins of Alabama, who has been coming to the show for 16 years, said the pilot was on his third lap when he lost control.

She was sitting about 30 yards away from the crash and watched in horror as the man in front of her started bleeding after a piece of debris hit him in the head.

"I saw body parts and gore like you wouldn't believe it. I'm talking an arm, a leg," Higgins said "The alive people were missing body parts. I am not kidding you. It was gore. Unbelievable gore."

Among the dead was pilot Jimmy Leeward, 80, of Ocala, Fla., who flew the P-51 Mustang named the "Galloping Ghost," according to Mike Houghton, president and CEO of Reno Air Races.

Renown Medical Center spokeswoman Kathy Carter confirmed that two others died, but did not provide their identities.

Stephanie Kruse, a spokeswoman for the Regional Emergency Medical Service Authority, said 25 people were critically injured and another 25 people were seriously hurt in the crash. More than 25 more people were treated for minor injuries, she said.

Kruse said the critically injured were considered to have life-threatening injuries.

"This is a very large incident, probably one of the largest this community has seen in decades," Kruse told The Associated Press. "The community is pulling together to try to deal with the scope of it. The hospitals have certainly geared up and staffed up to deal with it."

The P-51 Mustang crashed into a box-seat area in front of the grandstand at about 4:30 p.m., race spokesman Mike Draper said. Houghton said Leeward appeared to have "lost control of the aircraft," though details on why that happened weren't immediately known.

KRNV-TV weatherman Jeff Martinez, who was just outside the air race grounds at the time, said the plane veered to the right and then "it just augured straight into the ground."

"You saw pieces and parts going everywhere," he said. "Everyone is in disbelief."

Tanya Breining, off Hayward, Calif., told KTVU-TV in San Francisco: "It was absolute carnage ... It looked like more than a bomb exploded."

Another witness, Ronald Sargis, said he was sitting in the box seat area near the finish line.

"We could see the plane coming around the far turn - it was in trouble," Sargis told KCRA-TV in Sacramento. "About six or seven boxes down from us, it impacted into the front row."

He said the pilot appeared to do all he could to avoid crashing into the crowd. Response teams immediately went to work, Sargis said. After the crash Sargis went up a few rows into the grandstand to view the downed plane.

"It appeared to be just pulverized," he said.

Leeward, the owner of the Leeward Air Ranch Racing Team, was a well-known racing pilot. His website says he has flown more than 120 races and served as a stunt pilot for numerous movies, including "Amelia" and "Cloud Dancer."

In an interview with the Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner last year, he described how he has flown 250 types of planes and has a particular fondness for the P-51, which came into the war relatively late and was used as a long-range bomber escort over Europe. Among the famous pilots of the hot new fighter was WWII double ace Chuck Yeager.

"They're more fun. More speed, more challenge. Speed, speed and more speed," Leeward said.

Houghton described Leeward as "a good friend. Everybody knows him. It's a tight knit family. He's been here for a long, long time," Houghton said.

The National Championship Air Races draws thousands of people every year in September to watch various military and civilian planes race. They also have attracted scrutiny in the past over safety concerns, including four pilots killed in 2007 and 2008. It was such a concern that local school officials once considered whether they should not allow student field trips at the event.

The competition is like a car race in the sky, with planes flying wingtip-to-wingtip as low as 50 feet off the sagebrush at speeds sometimes surpassing 500 mph. Pilots follow an oval path around pylons, with distances and speeds depending on the class of aircraft.

The FAA and air race organizers spend months preparing for air races as they develop a plan involving pilot qualification, training and testing along with a layout for the course. The FAA inspects pilots' practice runs and brief pilots on the route manoeuvres and emergency procedures.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued a statement saying he was "deeply saddened" about the crash.

"My thoughts are with the families of those who have lost their lives and with those who were wounded in this horrific tragedy," he said. "I am so grateful to our first responders for their swift action and will continue to monitor this situation as it develops."

Fifty on ODI finale for Dravid

Cardiff: Rahul Dravid was in no mood to let England have it easy in the fifth ODI which is also his last for India. A huge reception from the spectators at Cardiff was reciprocated with a powerful fifty by the veteran batsman.

Dravid walked in after Ajinkya Rahane's innings was cut short on 26 by Jade Dernbach. Parthiv Patel followed soon after but Dravid batted as he always has and anchored himself in. He scored on both sides of the wicket and was partnered well by Virat Kohli, 15-years junior to him in age. That Kohli kept pushing Dravid for the extra run just showed that like Dravid himself told NDTV: India in ODIs has moved on.

Dravid's half-century had 2 boundaries and came off just 62 deliveries. He was eventually dismissed by Graeme Swann on 69.

India drop to fifth spot in ODI rankings

New Delhi: World champions India have dropped to the fifth position in the Reliance ICC ODI Championship table after England won the five-match ODI series 3-0 on Friday.

It is Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s side’s lowest ranking since October 2008 when it spent three months at the number-five position. The slide in the ODI rankings sums up a disappointing summer for India in England where it also slipped from the number-one position in the Reliance ICC Test Championship to third spot after losing all the four Tests.

India had entered the series in the third position on 117 ratings points and finished on 112 ratings points after it lost the second, third and fifth ODIs while the first ODI at Chester-le-Street was washed-out and the fourth at Lord’s ended in a tie.

In fact, India had slipped to fourth position after the third ODI at The Oval where it went down by three wickets (according to Duckworth-Lewis method) and then slipped further behind after defeat in another rain-reduced match in Cardiff on Friday.

In contrast, England have gained a place and have moved to the fourth spot. England, who remained unbeaten in the series, earned six ratings points which left it a point ahead of India and three behind third-ranked South Africa.

However, India will have a chance to not only reclaim lost ground but potentially move into the second spot with a good show in the five-match ODI series against England which starts at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on 14 October.

Meanwhile, Pakistan have gained one ratings point for their 3-0 win against Zimbabwe. However, there is no change in their ranking as they stay in the sixth position – 11 points behind India and as many ahead of seventh-ranked New Zealand.

Australia still lead the rankins with 130 points while Sri Lanka follow in the second spot with 119 points.

The Reliance ICC ODI player rankings will be released on Sunday.

Modi for PM? Advani quotes US report on his blog

New Delhi:  Amid speculation that BJP leader L K Advani is undertaking his yatra to be in the fray for the next Lok Sabha polls, the senior leader on Friday endorsed a US Congressional report that says Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi may be the next prime ministerial candidate of the party.

"Now, American lawmakers and the State Department are being primed for the return of the BJP to power in New Delhi, with Modi at the helm as prime minister, following what US analysts say is a 'precipitous' decline in the Congress party's fortunes due to a string of corruption scandals," Advani wrote on his blog on Friday.

The senior BJP leader was quoting from the recent report of the US Congressional Research Service, an independent research wing of the US Congress.

Though Advani did not state categorically whether Modi will be BJP's PM candidate in the general elections slated for 2014, he agreed with the claims of the report which praises Modi's performance as Gujarat chief minister. "Although still in some disorder in 2011, there are signs that the BJP has made changes necessary to be a formidable challenger in scheduled 2014 polls. These include a more effective branding of the party as one focused on development and good governance rather than emotive, Hindutva-related issues," Advani said, quoting the report.

Modi, who has been accused of not taking appropriate action to control the 2002 Gujarat riots, has since then tried to project himself as a chief minister committed to development and good governance. Advani also stated that in July 2009 he had taken up with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton the issue of Modi's visa denial in 2005, and told her that the chief minister had not even applied for the same. "I haven't been able to understand how and why your government has announced that Narendra Modi has been refused a visa, when Modi has not even applied for one?" Advani had asked Clinton. A surprised Clinton had then asked her officials whether this was true, he said.

Advani wrote on his blog that one of the officials told Clinton this was true, and added: "a senator had written to government making this enquiry about Narendra Modi's probable visit, and the official reply saying that a visa would be denied had been publicised." The senior BJP leader said he pointed out to Clinton that it was "unfair and improper" to give such a reply without even a request being made, and then to publicise it.

Advani has showered Modi with praises in recent times and risen to his defence whenever situation demanded.

The most recent example was on September 12, when the Supreme Court had passed an order referring the Gulbarg Society riots case of 2002 to a lower court in Gujarat.
Stating that this order had come as a relief to the BJP, Advani had said, "I have not seen any political person maligned in the way Modi has been. In the political history of India, there hasn't been such misinformation propaganda against any other political leader."

The senior BJP leader will attend Modi's three-day fast in Ahmedabad starting on Saturday for peace, unity and harmony in Gujarat. The timing of his blog today is significant in this regard. Advani, who is Lok Sabha MP from Gandhinagar, is also likely to start his rathyatra against corruption from Gujarat.

Azharuddin's son dies of injuries from bike accident

Hyderabad: Five days after he was rushed to a Hyderabad hospital after a road accident, Ayazuddin, son of former cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin, has died. He was 19.

"Ayazuddin, son of former Indian cricket captain Mohammad Azharuddin, has died five days after being critically injured in road accident," doctor said.

Last rites of Ayaz were performed at 5 pm. His body was taken to Mecca Masjid for prayers and it was a private affair.

Ayazuddin was riding a sports motorcycle along with his cousin, Ajmal, on Sunday morning, when their bike crashed on Hyderabad's Outer Ring Road.

Ajmal, whose mother is Azharuddin's sister, died a few hours later. He was 16.

On Monday, doctors at Apollo hospital were reported to have removed one of Ayazuddin's kidneys. He was monitored by a multi-specialty team round-the-clock and his vital parameters were being maintained with supports.

On Thursday, neurological tests showed severe brain damage, said senior doctors attending to the teenager. "Brain function tests conducted on Ayazuddin (in the past few days) indicate brain dysfunction," Dr K Hari Prasad, Apollo Hospitals (Central Region) CEO, said.

Ayazuddin had played in the under-13, under-15 and under-19 side and was considered a promising talent.

Harsha Bhogle, cricket commentator, tweeted: "...and memories of the azhar I knew when he was 19. it is an age to begin life not to end it."

Actor and social activist Rahul Bose also offered his condolences on Twitter. "Very very sad to hear the passing away of azhar's son. No parent should ever have to face such a tragedy. May he have the strength to go on," he posted.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, who played cricket along with Azhar, has also arrived at the hospital.

After intel alerts, anti-hijack drill at Mumbai airport

Mumbai:  With intelligence alerts warning of a possible terror strike at Mumbai's airport, a special drill was conducted there today. It was described by airport officials as "an anti-hijack exercise."

The drill began shortly before 2 pm and ended 90 minutes later. It was conducted near the secondary runway which remains closed on Fridays for maintenance. Flights were therefore not affected.

Recently, intelligence agencies have said that terrorists may hijack a small plane or helicopter to target the Chattrapati Shivaji airport.

A statement by the Mumbai International Airport (Private) Limited (MIAL) said that a bus was used to represent a hijacked plane; security guards and members of the airport staff pretended to be hostages.

"The exercise, which was to assess the preparedness of all Security teams at the airport in dealing such crisis situations, ended successfully," claims MIAL.

Jayalalithaa supports Narendra Modi's fast, will send reps

Chennai:  Narendra Modi's three-day fast, which starts tomorrow, has provoked debate and in some corners, fierce criticism. Not from Jayalalithaa. The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu has deputed two senior leaders from her party, the AIADMK, to attend the first day of Mr Modi's fast in Ahmedabad. Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal will also join Mr Modi in Ahmedabad tomorrow at the state-of-the-art Convention Centre of Gujarat University. So will senior BJP leaders LK Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley. Actor-politicians Hema Malini and Smriti Irani will also be present. 

No wonder Mr Modi tweeted today, "Glad to see overwhelming solidarity for #Sadbhavana Mission. People also joining in large nos. thru' missed call on 022-61550770 (toll-free)."

The Gujarat Chief Minister announced his fast on Tuesday in an open letter. The declaration came as both he and his party declared a Supreme Court verdict related to the Gujarat riots of 2002 had vindicated Mr Modi.

On Monday, the court refused to take a stand on whether there is enough evidence to merit the Chief Minister's trial for alleged complicity in the riots, in which 1200 people died. The Supreme Court referred the matter to a local court in Gujarat, which will scrutinise records and interviews on the riots collated by different people commissioned by the Supreme Court.

Mr Modi saw in this a victory. "For the past ten years, it has become fashionable to defame me and the State of Gujarat," he wrote in his open letter. "These elements who could not tolerate any positive development of Gujarat have not left any stone unturned to defame Gujarat. It is difficult to say whether this campaign of defamation will stop even after the judgment of the Supreme Court. But one thing is certain that the credibility of those who have been spreading lies and defaming Gujarat has come to its lowest ebb."

His will not be the only fast Gujarat will witness on Saturday. Shankersinh Vaghela, who quit the BJP 15 years ago and is now with the Congress, has said his fast will begin before Mr Modi's and end two hours later. Mr Vaghela says his fast hopes to dispel the notion that Mr Modi has been given a clean chit by the Supreme Court.

In India, online retailers take a new tack

Several months ago, when Prabhu Kumar could not find a book he wanted in bookstores here, he found it online at Amazon.com for $10. But he had to pay more than $9 in fees to have Amazon ship it to him.

Mr. Kumar, a software programmer, said he would not be doing that again. He now shops on India's answer to Amazon -- FlipKart.com -- which delivers books, phones and other items in as little as 24 hours at no extra cost. Mr. Kumar doesn't have to pay FlipKart a single rupee until a courier bearing his books arrives at his door. He can then hand over cash or a credit card.

"I think it perfectly fits the Indian mentality," Mr. Kumar said.

While dozens of electronic commerce firms have recently sprung up to capitalize on India's growing Internet use, they have a problem. Indians are not yet comfortable with shopping on the Web. Many of them remain unwilling to use credit cards online. So the Indian retailers have gone to great lengths to gain customers. Customers may pay in cash on delivery, and the company fields delivery squads to ensure shipments get to customers quickly.

One recent afternoon, four FlipKart delivery men loitered at a bungalow in the Koramangala section of Bangalore where the company started. When a small delivery van arrived from the company's warehouse, the men rushed to take out two large duffel bags filled with packages that they put onto two tables in the house.

After scanning the packages with hand-held computers, they put the boxes into large backpacks, which they carried on their backs as they rode off on motorcycles to deliver them.

Online sales still make up a small portion of overall retail spending -- one estimate pegs it at $10 billion, a tiny fraction of India's $500 billion retail market -- but they are growing fast.

FlipKart says it had revenue of 500 million rupees ($11 million) in its last fiscal year, and is now clocking sales of about 10 million rupees a day. SnapDeal.com, a coupon and deals site similar to Groupon, expects sales of 1.5 billion rupees this year, up from almost nothing the year before. The top executives of the Future Group, India's largest retail company, says its daily online sales are on pace to triple between now and March.

"This time it is for real," said Kishore Biyani, the founder and chief executive of the Future Group, referring to an earlier wave of e-commerce euphoria in the early 2000s. "This is the biggest thing to happen in India."

That rapid growth has drawn the attention of venture capitalists who poured $183 million into 20 e-commerce firms in the last 12 months, up from $61 million for 13 firms in the previous 12 months, according to Venture Intelligence, a research firm.

The rapid growth has also attracted the notice of American online retailers. Amazon, which has a software development office in Bangalore, is now building a warehouse and hiring employees for an Indian site, according to two industry officials. And earlier this year, Groupon bought an Indian Web site, SoSasta.com.

But, like in frothy Silicon Valley, some Indian analysts and investors are starting to question the frenzied deal-making. These skeptics find it difficult to justify the high prices venture capitalists are paying to invest in unprofitable Indian e-commerce firms. For instance, VCCircle, a news site, recently reported that FlipKart may soon raise $150 million, which would give it a $1 billion valuation. (Executives at the company declined to discuss its financial plans.)

India has 50 million to 100 million Internet users, according to various analysts, and the number is growing by about 30 percent a year. JuxtConsult, a New Delhi-based research firm, estimates that 17 million people bought something online this year, up from 10 million last year. The Indian government estimates that household consumption has increased by more than two-thirds in the last five years, and most of that increase has come in the purchase of nonfood items.

"It seems to be more for real than a flash in the pan," said Kanwaljit Singh, who is a senior managing director at Helion Advisors, which has invested in about a half-dozen Indian e-commerce sites, including MakeMyTrip.

But capitalizing on India's growth online will not be easy. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (who are not related), the founders of FlipKart, have had to do things that their American or European counterparts would never have. They have set up delivery operations in 13 big Indian cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi because Indian shippers do not have the delivery and package-tracking abilities that FedEx and U.P.S. provide for its American customers. They plan to expand FlipKart's delivery network to 25 cities within a year.

Sachin Bansal, the company's chief executive, said that by having its own staff, FlipKart avoids paying courier services' commissions of more than 2 percent to accept cash on delivery, which make up about 60 percent of its orders. It can also track packages more accurately. And because labor costs are relatively low in India, its delivery cost is a modest $1 a package.

"More than 90 percent of retail transactions in India are in cash," Mr. Bansal said. "People like my dad and my uncle, they are much more comfortable with cash. If we have to increase our customer base, we have to accept cash."

FlipKart is not alone in tweaking its model to suit Indian conditions. Myntra, an online retailer of clothes, has a delivery staff in Bangalore and plans to hire couriers in other cities. SnapDeal offers customers the option of making partial payments online and paying the balance to merchants whose products and services it sells, said Kunal Bahl, a co-founder of the service.

Consumers and suppliers laud FlipKart's service and execution. But they expect the company to soon face greater competition, especially if Amazon starts an Indian operation. "Today they are the best," said Ananth Padmanabhan, vice president for sales at Penguin India. But, he asked, "if Amazon comes here next month, and they might, what will FlipKart do?"

An Amazon spokesman, Craig Berman, declined to comment on the company's plans for India, but Mr. Padmanabhan said Amazon officials have been holding talks with publishers, and another industry official said the retailer has begun hiring employees for an Indian site.

The Bansals say they are prepared for competition from Amazon. Sachin Bansal, who worked with Binny Bansal as a software developer at Amazon before starting FlipKart, brushed aside a suggestion that the firm would make for an easy acquisition by Amazon.

"We are very keen on going our own way," he said. "The opportunity is so large that we would want to grow it to a much bigger level before we think of anything."

Word Games Anytime, No Travel Tiles Required

If the inventor of Scrabble were alive today, he would be amazed by the way millions of people are playing his word game now: on tiny screens, wherever they happen to be, against players who can be halfway across the country, or the world.

Scrabble first proved that it did not need the actual click of tiles against a board when it became popular on computers around two decades ago. Now, the game has migrated to smartphones, both through the trademarked game and a similar game called Words With Friends.

In fact, Words With Friends, owned by Zynga, has stolen some of Scrabble s thunder with its digital-only word formation game. Ten million people have downloaded the iPhone app so far, Zynga says, and it went live on Android systems this month.

Solitaire Scrabble is an option on computer and phones, but many players prefer a human opponent. Both mobile Scrabble and Words With Friends allow social interaction through turn-based play and a chat feature. It feels like I m talking to my friends through the games I m playing with them, said Paul Bettner, who developed Words With Friends in 2009 along with his brother David.

Over the phone, games can take days or even weeks to play out, so people often have several games going at once. (Can you cheat? The answer is yes.)

To add more drama to a game that is prone to pauses, the Bettners increased the scores on some letters a C is four points instead of three, for example, and a J is 10 instead of 8.

They also pushed the double- and triple-count squares closer together so that big word scores were more likely. What ends up happening is you have these moments that are more explosive, Paul Bettner said. Incidentally, making the point values and board layout different from those of Scrabble avoids any legal trouble with Hasbro, which owns the American and Canadian rights to the game (Mattel owns the remainder).

The first time Stefan Fatsis, a competitive Scrabble player, tried Words With Friends, he said, he ended up with a score of 626. His highest score after thousands of games of Scrabble has been 603.

Mr. Fatsis, author of Word Freak, about the culture of Scrabble, said the mobile Scrabble game via Facebook was clunkier and more commercial than Words With Friends. Although Hasbro s digital strategy is improving, it has largely been playing catch-up in the digital realm, he said, taking longer than it should have to introduce new technology and iron out bugs in its games.

As a result, smaller and more nimble entrepreneurs have been able to come up with popular alternatives, he said.

Mark Blecher, senior vice president for digital media and gaming for Hasbro, denied that the company had been slow to embrace digital technology. Hasbro innovates, but we innovate when we know there s a real market, he said. Words With Friends, he added, is not a substitute for Scrabble; it lacks the true rules and the true pattern of the game.

Hasbro does not disclose data on mobile Scrabble users, who can access the game in several ways on their cellphones: through Facebook, through an iPhone app (Android coming soon) and through the site Pogo.com. Its digital games are developed by Electronic Arts.

Megan Lawless, 31, of Chicago, plays Scrabble and Words With Friends on her cellphone and said she liked them both as a way to connect with people close to her. She learned to play Scrabble from her great-grandmother, who belonged to a Scrabble league.

One day in 2009, no one she knew was available to play with her, so she hit the option on Words With Friends that allows play with a random opponent.

It was a very out-of-character thing for me to do, she said. But the game went well: she could tell that she and her opponent were evenly matched in terms of skill. Her opponent proposed a rematch, and repeated games led to chatting about their personal lives. Eventually, she found out that her opponent was a man, Jasper Jasperse, and that he was a firefighter who lived in Holland.

After they began e-mailing each other and talking on Skype, Mr. Jasperse asked if he could visit her in Chicago, and we clicked right away, Ms. Lawless said. Now, they plan to marry in July, and he will move to Chicago.

The random function did not work out as well for Alex Alan, 31, of Brooklyn. For a while, I was playing these anonymous people, seven or eight going on at once, and it was getting out of hand, he said. He was playing Words With Friends, he said, when he could have been talking to his girlfriend. So now he restricts his games to a small cadre of people he knows in real life.

In an effort to unplug, Mr. Alan also tries to play Scrabble with his friends on a real board, the kind that would be instantly recognized by Alfred Mosher Butts of New York, who invented Scrabble in the 1930s.

Indeed, the popularity of digital Scrabble has increased sales of the board game, Mr. Blecher of Hasbro said. The company sold four million Scrabble-branded games of the physical variety in 2010, an increase of more than 100 percent in a five-year period.

As Mr. Fatsis put it: The truth is, there is something really exciting about handling the tiles and putting them down on a board and having your opponent sit right across the table from you.

Intel's new solar powered chipset has 24 hour battery backup

Intel unveiled its next generation Haswell chip architecture at its developer forum which will debut in 2013. It's biggest USP - 24 hour battery backup on a single charge.

This is possible because of a 20 fold reduction in power consumption as compared to the previous Ivy Bridge platform. The reason Intel managed such advanced power saving is the 22nm 3D transistor architecture which uses so little power that the chip can be powered via a solar cell.

Intel showed a demo of the Haswell platform on a Windows prototype, powered through a tiny solar cell which utilized light offered by two light bulbs.

The Haswell platform will succeed the Ivy Bridge platform which will ship in 2012.

Besides this, Intel and Google announced that all future versions of Android would support Intel's chipset architectures.

Intel seems to set to break new ground in terms of power efficiency, which is critical to being successful in the mobile space.

Follow? No, Facebook to let users 'subscribe'

In a nod to rival social networks, Facebook is letting its users "subscribe" to news from other members - even those they are not friends with.

Facebook said in a blog post Wednesday that it is rolling out the "subscribe" button to users in the next few days. This will let people hear from Facebook users they don't know personally - such as celebrities or political figures.

Public figures have already been using Facebook to send news to their fans by creating public pages. By clicking the "like" button on these pages, users can see the updates in their own news feed.

The new button will let people bypass creating public pages and send updates directly to their subscribers. Only updates that users publicly share will be seen by subscribers, and Facebook says the feature is entirely optional. Twitter and Google Plus already have similar "follow" features.

Facebook's button is a bit more customizable, as Facebook features tend to be. Once you subscribe to someone's posts, you can decide whether to see all updates, most updates (which is what you normally see now), or only important updates, such as a marriage or a new job. You can even decide what form of updates you want to see - photos only, games only or some combination.

Nine killed in Bharatpur violence, curfew imposed

Bharatpur:  At least nine persons were killed on Wednesday in a clash here between two communities over a land dispute, forcing the district authorities to impose curfew in a few areas.

The clash erupted Wednesday morning when some members of Gujjar and Muslim communities confronted each other over a land-related dispute. They pelted stones and exchanged fire.

"The situation further deteriorated and at least eight persons were killed in the violence till evening," District Collector Krishna Kunal said.

Additional forces have been called in from Jaipur and other neighbouring districts to bring the situation to normalcy, Divisional Commissioner Rajeshwar Singh said.

"As per primary information, they were killed in firing. Heavy deployment of force has already been done and additional forces have been called in from Jaipur and other nearby districts to control the situation," he said.

Curfew has been imposed in Pahadi, Jurera, Gopalgarh, Kaman, Sikri and Nagar areas of the district, the collector said.

According to police, alleged incorrect entry of land meant for digging a pond as a graveyard in government records by a local patwari was the cause of the clash.

"Gujjars were opposed to it and claimed that the land was never meant for graveyard. The matter is sub-judice but some men from both the sides entered into heated arguments and engaged in a scuffle yesterday in which two persons were injured.

"Today, they once again clashed and the situation worsened later", a police official said on Wednesday.

Additional DG (Law and Order) Navdeep Singh said in Jaipur that additional forces and senior officers have been rushed to Bharatpur.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has called a high-level meeting to review the situation.

Graft during YSR rule was above norm in India: WikiLeaks

Hyderabad:  A leaked diplomatic cable dispatched by the US Consul General in Chennai in 2007 had nailed the then Congress government headed by YS Rajasekhara Reddy in Andhra Pradesh for "widespread corruption that was beyond the pale" even for India.

In the name of social programmes targeted at the common man, the YSR government had engaged in corruption which was beyond the norm for India, whistleblower website WikiLeaks said, quoting the cable.

The YSR government's flagship programmes - construction of irrigation projects and houses for weaker sections - were beset with corruption even as Mr Reddy used the populist spending programmes to great political effect, the cable said.

There is consensus in Andhra Pradesh that irrigation and housing programmes are beset with corruption. On separate visits to Hyderabad, we heard allegations of widespread graft from several neutral observers. An economist who studies the effectiveness of government programmes in the state said with only four to five companies executing the projects, there are many opportunities for graft in the irrigation programme, the cable said.

"Typically, five to seven percent is lost to corruption but in Reddy's irrigation programme, that figure is more like fifteen to 20 per cent," the Consul General is quoted to have said in the cable.

While the housing programme will cost four to six billion dollars, the irrigation programme costs more than 11 billion dollars over five years on 26 major irrigation projects, the cable added.

"Widespread corruption in the Congress government seems to be an open secret in Andhra Pradesh but the political impact is unclear," the Consul General said in the cable.

The cable further added, "Many elites are disgusted by the level of corruption in the Congress government. The sheer size of Reddy's signature programmes, with literally billions of dollars at play every year, leaves much room for 'leakage' to Congress party officials and their allies.

"But the size of the programmes also means that even with a substantial percentage lost to corruption, a lot of money still must be making its way to the common man," it added.

kabul attacks:US blames ISI

Kabul:  The US has blamed a guerrilla faction with ties to Pakistan's military intelligence agency ISI for the attack on the US embassy in Kabul.

The US has blamed Pakistan-based Haqqani group for the recent attack on the American embassy in Kabul. Haqqani group is known to be backed by Pakistan's military intelligence agency ISI.

"The information available to us is that these attackers... are part of the Haqqani network, they enjoy safe haven in northern Waziristan (in Pakistan)," America's ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, has said.

Earlier in April, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said he was troubled by continued relations between the Haqqani group and Pakistan's ISI.

The attack launched on Tuesday lasted for 19 hours and left 14 people dead in a barrage of gunfire and suicide blasts targeting the US embassy and the neighbouring headquarters of NATO-led troops in Afghanistan.

Crocker said at least six rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) landed in the embassy compound. Officials had earlier said that injuries there were limited to three Afghan visa applicants and one Afghan security guard.

"This really is not a very big deal, a hard day for the embassy and my staff who behaved with enormous courage and dedication," he said in a media interview.

"Half a dozen RPG rounds from 800 metres away - that isn't Tet (a key offensive in the Vietnam war), that's harassment."

Crocker also said he thought the nature of the attack showed a lack of strength among insurgents and paid tribute to the response of the Afghan security forces.

"If that's the best they can do, you know, I think it's actually a statement of their weakness and more importantly, since Kabul is in the hands of Afghan security, it's a real credit to the Afghan National Security Forces," he said.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that the "brave" Americans working at the embassy in Afghanistan would not be deterred by the attack

Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/kabul-attack-us-blames-isi-haqqani-133779?pfrom=home-otherstories&cp