Mayawati ridicules Pawar over Price Rise

Lashing out at Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar for the recent rise in food prices, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Thursday said wrong policies of the Central Government had helped "blackmarketeers and hoarders".

"The government is working under pressure of black-marketeers. Prices are rising due to the anti-poor policies of the Central Government," Mayawati told reporters. Pawar's policies helped sugar mill owners, she alleged, and added that the sugar prices were sky-rocketing because of wrong policies of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Central Government.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief had come under attack from Pawar on Wednesday for the Uttar Pradesh government's sugar policy, which Pawar said had led to a shortage. On Wednesday, Sharad Pawar had stated that soaring prices of essential commodities will start coming down in 8-10 days, adding that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had called a meeting of the chief ministers in New Delhi on January 27 to discuss the issue. "With the measures we have taken, the prices of essential commodities are expected to start coming down in eight to 10 days," he told reporters after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Prices chaired by Manmohan Singh.

Pawar had said the Prime Minister would also discuss the implementation of the Essential Commodities Act with the chief ministers. Pawar had also stated that state governments were not lifting the wheat and rice stocks made available to them by the Central Government. (ANI)

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Andrew Flintoff out of Indian Premier League

Andrew Flintoff has been ruled out of this year's Indian Premier League (IPL) after another operation on his troublesome knee that is expected to sideline him for about six months.

The Lancashire all-rounder has been out of action since undergoing a micro-fracture operation on his right knee after retiring from Tests having helped England regain the Ashes last year. After an arthroscopy operation this week, the 32-year-old will not now be fit to play for the Chennai Super Kings in the IPL, which runs from March 12 to April 25.

"It is disappointing not to be able to play for Chennai, who have been very supportive throughout my time with them, but I took this decision because I love playing cricket and want to give myself the best chance of extending my career," he said.

Flintoff rejected a central contract from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in September but said he intended to carry on playing One-Day Internationals and Twenty20s. The operation means he will also be unavailable for the Twenty20 World Cup in West Indies from April 30 to May 16. Once he recovers from surgery, however, Flintoff said he now wants to play all forms of the game for his county.

"My goals have changed since last summer," Flintoff told Lancashire's website. "I trust the surgeon, Andy Williams, implicitly and he is very pleased with the progress of the micro-fracture operation. "When I first had the operation I did not think I would be able to play anything other than One-day cricket, but the news of my recovery has led me to believe I may play in all forms of cricket for Lancashire.

"First and foremost I have to prove to myself that I can regain my fitness and perform for Lancashire," he added. "My first love remains playing for Lancashire and I want to help them win trophies and hopefully I can help achieve that later this summer." Flintoff is confident he will eventually return to action with England as well as Lancashire. "I have worked extremely hard over the last few months to get to this position and realise there is a lot more hard work in front of me if I want to return and play international cricket again," said Flintoff.

"But if I am going to go through another six months of hard rehabilitation and training for long hours, I need a big incentive to be the driving force of that and playing for Lancashire and England again will become that", he added. (ANI)

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Suresh Raina and Virat Kohli rise in ODI rankings

India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni continued to top the ICC Player Rankings for ODI batsmen, while young guns Suresh Raina and Virat Kohli made big strides in the chart because of the their stellar performances in the just-concluded tri-series in Bangladesh.

Left-handed Raina has vaulted 10 places to sit in 20th position after scoring 210 runs in the series. He is now one of six India batsmen inside the top 20. The other Indian batters to feature in top 20 include Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar in eighth place (down by four places), Virender Sehwag in ninth (up by one place), Yuvraj Singh in 12th (down by three places) and Gautam Gambhir in 19th. Kohli, who was the leading run-getter with 275 runs, including 102 not out against Bangladesh, Kohli has rocketed 26 places and is now just outside the top 20 in the 21st spot.

Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara has returned to the top 10 in the batsmen chart after his impressive showing in tri-nation series in Bangladesh, which his side won. Sangakkara not only won the player of the series award for his scores of 74, 60, 17 not out, 68 and 55 but has also been rewarded with a jump of six places in the latest rankings which puts him in 10th position for the first time since February 2009.

The left-hander has now become Sri Lanka's highest-ranked batsman, leapfrogging opener Tillakaratne Dilshan who has also climbed two places to achieve his career-best ranking of 13th. Meanwhile, off-spinner Harbhajan Singh (6th) is the lone Indian to feature in the top 10 in ODI bowlers list, which is being headed by New Zealand skipper Daniel Vettori. In the ICC Player Rankings for ODI all-rounders, Yuvraj Singh has achieved a career-best third position by virtue of his Yuvraj four wickets and 96 that he scored in the tri-series in Bangladesh. (ANI)

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Ipl 2009-Katrina kaif at the IPL Grand Finale

Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif (L) performs with US singer Akon during a closing ceremony after Deccan Chargers beat Royal Challenger Bangalore in the 2009 Indian Premier League cricket final match in Johannesburg, South Africa on Sunday May 24, 2009.

A dancer entertains fans at the end of the 2009 IPL T20 cricket final match in Johannesburg on May 24, 2009.

Also, Katrina performs during the closing ceremony of 2009 IPL.

Glam girl Katrina performs during the closing ceremony of 2009 IPL.

Bollywood glam girl Katrina danced to the English version of Jai Ho of Slumdog Millionaire fame sung by the Pussycat Dolls.

Fireworks explode over the Wanderers Stadium during a closing ceremony after Deccan Chargers beat Royal Challenger Bangalore in the 2009 IPL cricket final match in Johannesburg, South Africa on Sunday May 24.

Two new God Of War 3 Screenshots arrive!

After the March reveal of God of War 3, we've had virtually no info on the game- until now.

Some of these screenshots are from the trailers, but most of them are new, and some are even in-game. Nothing much, but maybe it'll hold us till E3.

Teeth bared, veins bulging, Kratos plunges both hands elbow-deep into the gargantuan eye socket of the Cyclops.

Propping a foot against each hulking shoulder of the giant, the bloodthirsty Spartan and raging son of Zeus yanks the beach ball-sized organ as if it was a cork coming out of the world's largest wine bottle.

Blood vomits from the orifice as the glistening optic nerve stretches and stretches and stretches like an overtaxed rubber band. It snaps, the two halves of the ruined eyestalk flutter to the ground, and the giant orb comes free in Kratos's hands.

The kicker: this is an in-game, playable sequence from God of War III, Sony's outrageous new action epic for the PlayStation 3. Though it's months away from completion, God of War III is already something special. So are you really going to think twice before playing God of War 3?

Now Mallika Sherawat joins Twitter

Mallika Sherawat has a new hobby – tweeting - the lady has gotten obsessed with Twitter and just adores the networking site like many Hollywood celebs.

The actress, who has a milkshake named after her in Hollywood, was enjoying the US breeze for quite some time while working for the post production of her movie Hisss. Away from home in the US, the lady used to get lonely in her leisure time and started using Twitter (a popular networking site). She started bonding online big time with the members of the site.

Now that she’s discovering the joy of tweeting, Mallika thinks amazing things can happen when you get connected to people.

Tweeting by the username ‘@MallikaLA’, the bombshell confesses that she is addicted to it now. What began as a hobby to beat her loneliness in the US, has now become an addiction.

The surprising thing is that before she joined Twitter, she took classes to learn how to use social networking sites. The actress also discovered that Shahrukh Khan too is hooked to the site. Twitter is used extensively by many Hollywood celebs like Ashton Kutcher, his wife Demi Moore and also sexy celeb-socialite Kim Kardashian who recently posted her photographs showing her sun-burnt face.

May be to the actors bored with their glam world, the virtual world of internet appears more fascinating. Mallika is the new addition to the fast growing brigade. Among Bollywood celebs hooked to networking are Karan Johar , Priyanka Chopra , Shahid Kapur , Celina Jaitley and many others.

Force India VJM01 gets new rear wing

Following the introduction of an updated diffuser at Spain, Force India has fitted a new rear wing on its 2009 car.

Just like so many other teams, FI is exploiting the small central region of the rear wing where it is allowed to have more than two closed sections.

FI's solution is however quite distinctive as the team have chosen to add an extra little wing above the other elements. At the same time, the existing elements were modified to create an extra slot, similar to that of the new wing of McLaren.

On Sunday the Force India Formula One Team enjoyed its most competitive race performance to date in the Monaco Grand Prix. Giancarlo Fisichella finished a fighting 9th position, just 1.8secs from eighth and and one point, and the final driver to be on the lead lap at the end of the race. Adrian Sutil passed the flag in 14th place.

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All 8 IPL Teams make Huge Profits

If IPL has stood all you thought you knew about cricket on its head, it has done the same with finances too.

In a year when franchisees were complaining about shifting how to South Africa would make a mess of their budgets, each one of them will make a profit.

If that’s not strange enough, try this: The two finalists, Royal Challengers and Team Hyderabad, will make a fraction of the profit that bottom-of-table Knight Riders will, even if you take prize money into account.

The main reason for the healthier bottomlines is a jump in the share of revenues from broadcasting. Last year, each franchisee got Rs 25 crore from IPL as its share of the central pool. This year, that has risen to Rs 67.50 crore each.

BCCI’s profit too has apparently jumped to Rs 477 crore from Rs 350 crore last year. Sony Max is also likely to be in the black this year.

IPL franchisees who had been complaining about the event being shifted to South Africa are in for a surprise: Every single team stands to make a profit from this year’s tournament.

Had the matches been organized in India, it’s likely the teams profits would have been even higher because of higher receipts from ticket and merchandise sale, which have averaged Rs 8 crore and Rs 50 lakh respectively in South Africa.

In 2008, teams like Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians and Team Delhi earned around Rs 20 crore from ticket sales alone as the capacity of their home stadiums was large enough to accommodate over 70,000 and the crowds just poured in.

According to a report by equity research firm IIFL, Team Jaipur will make the highest profit of Rs 35.1 crore in the group matches of the second edition of the tournament. Jaipur had also made the second-highest profit of Rs 14.50 crore in 2008, including the Rs 4.50 crore ($1 million) prize money.

Knight Riders, which finished lowest in the league table during the qualifying round in South Africa, will nevertheless end up with the third-highest profit of Rs 25.8 crore in the second edition of IPL.

In fact, the only semifinalist which also stands to make over Rs 20 crore in profits is Delhi.

This is despite the fact that prize money in the IPL is a sizeable amount, with Rs 4.8 crore for winner, Rs 2.4 crore for the runners-up and 1.2 crore each for the losing semifinalists.

For those who didn’t get past the league stage, the sums are correspondingly smaller - Rs 80 lakh for the team that finished fifth (Kings XI Punjab), Rs 70 lakh for the sixth placed (Jaipur), Rs 50 lakh for the seventh (Mumbai Indians) and Rs 40 lakh for the lowest one.

The healthy bottomlines are a happy change from last year when besides Knight Riders and Jaipur, Team Chennai just scraped into the black due to its Rs 2.25 crore prize money for the runners-up position, according to a highly placed source.

What has helped the IPL and franchisees is essentially the re-awarding of the broadcasting rights. The renegotiated contract was for $1.64 billion (Rs 8,200 crore) for nine years -- a jump of 90% from the original figure