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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Anna Loginova - Russia's most Glamorous Female Bodyguard Killed


Anna Loginova, Russia's most famous and glamorous female bodyguard, was killed in Moscow on Sunday while trying to defend her Porsche Cayenne from a hijacker, media reported.

Loginova, also a former model and the head of a private security firm, tried to fight off a carjacker and clung to the door handle. She was killed after being dragged along the street at high speed as the car screeched away.

A witness to the carjacking said a man ran from a Lada car, as Loginova's Porsche came to a stop, pulled her out of the vehicle and jumped in the driving seat. Loginova was still hanging onto the door when the Porsche screeched away.

Anna Loginova was dragged a few meters along the road and only let go when her head hit the tarmac. She was confirmed dead at the scene.

Anna was the manager of an agency that provided female bodyguards to give secretive protection to Moscow’s wealthy celebrities, their wives and mistresses. Some of her body guards were trained by ex-KGB staff.

The stolen vehicle was found later abandoned in southwest Moscow.

The police are continuing their search to trace those involved in the car theft and death of the famous model.

Loginova was a famous Russian model before venturing into the security business. She took lessons Jiu-Jitsu and mastered the sword handling.

In a recent magazine interview, she insisted that she and her team of glamorous bodyguards gave better protection than the more traditional beefy male security men.

Anna had posed half-naked for a magazine in Moscow. She wanted to prove that she was feminine as well as good with gun. She was highly respected for her bodyguard skills.

She said, "Many restaurants now do not allow a guard inside. They can come in and check everything but then they are asked to wait in the lobby. In contrast, you can take female bodyguards inside, she will sit down at the table and nobody would guess that she's a weapon herself.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

World's Cheapest Car - Tata Nano


Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata on Thursday unveiled much awaited and much hyped Rs 1 lakh Car ($2,500) the Tata Nano at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi.

Ratan Tata, while unveiling the Nano, said: "The car will meet all current safety norms and all emission criteria. The pollution it will cause will be lower than 2-wheelers."

This is the People’s Car, the world’s cheapest car at a starting price of 100,000 rupees ($2,500) or the equivalent of a DVD player in a Lexus.

The prototype of the Nano, the official name of the ultra-cheap car manufactured by Tata, the Indian conglomerate in the lead to buy Jaguar and Land Rover, was unveiled at the auto show in Delhi today with all the frenzied excitement that accompanied the launch of the new Volkswagen Beetle in 1994.

Citing moments in history including the first manned flight by the Wright Brothers and man’s landing on the moon, Ratan Tata, the chairman of the company, revealed a cute, compact car designed to appeal to first-time car buyers in one of the world’s fastest growing car markets.

The car will have a 624-cc petrol engine generating 33 bhp of power. It will sport a fuel tank and 30-litre4-speed manual gearshift. The car will come with air conditioning, but will have no power steering. It will have front disk and rear drum brakes. The company claims mileage of 23 km per litre.

The standard version – which will cost 120,000 rupees on the road after tax and delivery – comes complete with most features in any ordinary car: four doors, a four-gear manual transmission, seat belts, locking and a steering wheel. A small boot allows enough room for a duffel bag.

The deluxe version, costing slightly more, will have air conditioning and central locking, while features such as radios and sun visors can be added at extra cost.

The car will be sold first in India, with an initial production run of 250,000 a year, but is expected to be made available in other emerging markets in Latin America, south-east Asia and Africa within four years. It will launch commercially in the second half of the year.

The Nano is about half the price of the cheapest car available. Both the Maruti 800 from India and China’s QQ3Y Chery sell at about $5,000. The prospect of millions of ultra-cheap cars on the roads of developing countries has sent some environmentalists into a panic.

Tata says the car, which does 50 miles to the gallon, will conform to all present and future emission standards in India and Europe. It has also passed a full-frontal crash test and is designed to pass further impact testing under European standards, he added.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Benazir Bhutto killed in suicide attack on election rally.


Finally former Pakistan Primier Benazir Bhutto has been assasinated. After surviving several assassination attempts in the past, PPP and Pakistan opposition leader and former PM Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Thursday in a suicide attack at a campaign rally that also killed at least 20 others.


The attacker struck just minutes after Bhutto addressed thousands of supporters in Rawalpindi. Benazir Bhutto was not so lucky on Thursday as she was killed by two gunmen who opened fire at her right after she finished addressing a rally at Liaquatbagh.


Bhutto got off the stage after addressing the rally and started moving towards her car. Her vehicle moved a certain distance and she was surrounded by party supporters. She came out of the car and just then two attackers with AK 47s pumped her with bullets, one in the neck and two in the head. After shooting, a third attacker blew himself up near Benazir's car.


Benazir was declared dead at 6.16 pm local time at a Rawalpindi hospital, 40 minutes after she was taken in. The attack also killed more than 20 people and left several others injured.


Nawaz Sharif described Benazir Bhutto's assassination as the most tragic incident in the history of Pakistan.


''I myself feel threatened,'' says Sharif, whose party temporarily suspended the electioneering in the wake of the assassination.


Bhutto is survived by her husband Asif Ali Zardari and three children. Before she returned to Pakistan in October, Benazir Bhutto told that she was not afraid of the threats.


In October some 130 people were killed in an attack on Bhutto's cavalcade when she returned to the country.


Benazir was the first female PM in the Muslim world. Three days of national mourning has been declared. The national flag will be flown at half mast.


Benazir is likely to be buried on Friday in Larkana near her father's grave. National and provincial assembly elections in Pakistan are due on January 8.


It was one of the worst incidents of violence in a year of deteriorating security in Pakistan.

Monday, December 17, 2007

KAKA - FIFA Player of the Year 2007


Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, popularly known as "KAKA" - Brazil and AC Milan's playmaker has simply been the outstanding footballer of 2007 and proved that claim by winning the FIFA Player of the Year award (The FIFA World Player of the Year is a football award given annually to the male and female player who are thought to be the best in the world, based on votes by coaches and captains of international teams.) on Monday, in Paris. Kaka had already been named European Footballer of the Year and took another award from World Soccer magazine.

“It's a very special day for me. When I was young, I dreamt of being a professional footballer for Sao Paulo and playing for the Brazilian national team,” said the attacking midfielder after receiving the award.

The 25-year-old Kaka starred in AC Milan's run to the European Champions League title, then the European Super Cup and the recent Club World Cup.

Kaka plays in the style of a classic number 10 such as legends Pele, Diego Maradona, Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane, whom so many youngsters dream of emulating.

Kaka, comes from a comfortably off family in Sao Paulo, not from the slums which have produced so many top Brazilians, and aged just 20 played in his first World Cup in 2002 where Brazil won the title for the fifth time.

His talent was as obvious and he was a key component of AC Milan's 2003/2004 Italian league winning team which finished 11 points ahead of AS Roma.

He was the main contributor in Ac Milan's Europiun Championship last year, his strike rate of 10 goals in 13 matches in the Champions League helped AC Milan avenge their defeat to Liverpool in the 2005 final.

As his career has progressed, he has become more fluent in his movement, has continually improved technically and has generally got better and better in all departments. He is constantly targetted by top European club to include in thier team. Real Madrid offered AC Milan 90 million euros (123 million US dollars) for Kaka.

Kaka, the highest earning footballer in Italy, "has never wanted to leave and I believe that he will never do so... Kaka is the symbol of Milan," AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi said.

The AC Milan playmaker, who is expected to sign a new contract with the Italian giants in the coming weeks that will keep him at the club until 2013, was also crowned player of the Club World Cup following Milan's successful campaign in which they beat Argentinian side Boca Juniors 4-2 in the final.

Kaka's impressive individual honours list for 2007 now includes the FIFA Player of the Year, Ballon d'Or, World Soccer Magazine, UEFA Club Footballer of the Year and FIFPro World Player of the Year.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old compatriot Marta was named Women's FIFA Player of the Year for the second year running.

Friday, December 7, 2007

A 19 year old boy killed eight people and then himself in Omaha


A 19 year old man killed eight people and then himself with an assult rifel at a busy mall in Omaha on wednesday, sending terrified workers and christmas shoppers scrambling for cover.

"Now i will be famous," the gun man wrote in a sucide note, its landlady told CNN after finding threepart document that she said included his will.

Police declined to discuss the contents of the note.

Five people were bounded, two of them critically, in the early afternoon rampage in the Mid western US city. Most of the victim at the upscale
Westroads Mall were shot inside the Von Maur Department store near the children's clothing areas.

"it was horrible, just horrible."one woman told local television station KE TV, saying she hid under a rack of clothes when the gunfire started.

The white House said it was a "terrible tragedy".

Omaha police chief Thomas Waren identified the gunman as Robert Hawkins, 19, from Bellevue, Nebraska, near Omaha.

Hawkins was living with friends after going through a series of hard times, according to many who said they were close to him.

Warren said the dead were five females and three males but he would not specify whether any were children.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Windows XP is going to be a lot Faster than Windows Vista


Microsoft Coroporation's Windows XP operating system is about to get faster and Windows Vista isn't, according to a report which caused a stir this week as industry watchers speculated that a zipper version of XP could keep customers from upgrading to Vista.

Microsoft, however, said it's too early to evaluate the two service packs it plans to release next year.

Early versions are already in the hands of testers like Devil Mountain Software Inc, which ran several versions of XP and Vista through a test stimulating common desktop computing tasks.

It found the original Vista performed 50% to 100% slower than the prevalent XP Service Pack 2 or SP2.

Vista SP1, due out in the early 2008, barely improved the operating the operating system's performance.

But XP SP3, scheduled for the first half of 2008, did improve on XP's earlier performance, running 10% faster than SP2.

That's a strike against Vista for IT professionals on the fence about switching, according to Craig Barth, the company's chief technology officer.

Kevin Kutz, director of Microsoft's Windows Client group, said the company is working on speeding up tasks such as transferring files between PC's, but its a work in progress.

Michael Cherry, an analyst for a research group in the US, said it's impossible to know Microsoft has started running Vista SP1 for speed. Even if XP gets faster, consumers and businesses may still switch to Vista.

"It might be an acceptable thing to me if it were slightly slower, but mor stable", Cherry said.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Muraltharan Breaks Shane Warne's Record


Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan becomes the highest wicket taker in the history of Test Cricket, leaving behind Australia's Shane Warne's Record of 708 Wickets.

He bowled out England's Paul Collingwood as his 709th wicket on the third day of the first cricket match at Asgiriya Stadium , Kandy, Sri Lanka on Monday 3rd Decembber, 2007.

Murali achieved the record in his 116th Test and on his home ground, which had been eagerly awaiting the historic moment over the first two days of the Test.

The 35-year-old off-spinner is now the highest wicket taker in the history of test cricket with 709 wickets with an average of 21.77 and economy rate of 2.41. He has also a unique racord of taking 5 wickets in an inning 60 times and 10 wickets in a match 20 times.Shane Warne took 145 test matches with an average of 25.41 and economy rate of 2.65 to reach the land mark.

It is the third time Murali has held the wicket-taking record, having originally passed Courtney Walsh in 2004 before briefly sharing the mark with Shane Warne. He then claimed it outright for the second time against South Africa until a shoulder injury allowed Warne to move back to the top against India and Muralitharan has been chasing him since. This time there is no one close to knocking him off and with a tireless appetite for the game 1000 wickets is a possibility.