Tech Mahindra’s new BPO

IT firm Tech Mahindra on Wednesday announced that it has opened a BPO centre in Kolkata with the preliminary capacity of 1,000 seats.

The main aim is to provide customer service delivery to telecom service providers and mainly be servicing Reliance Communications' operations in the first phase. In future new clients are added to the kolkata BPO.

1,000 seats are the initial capacity 500 will be added at the end of July 2009 and another 500 in at the end of August 2009.

Tech Mahindra already has centres in Noida, Chandigarh, Pune and Chennai and two overseas centres in Belfast and New Castle.

Tech Mahindra President Sujit Baksi said, "Tech Mahindra has always expanded in major cities around India to leverage the availability of local skilled staff. This centre allows us to spread our operations in Eastern India in a big way and we are keen to tap the local talent pool in this region to make this centre a major hub that will service other telecom service providers in this region as well."

New information on satyam scam

Satyam’s Ramalinga Raju's wish to get hold of vast amount of land was not limited to Hyderabad only is well known by now. Everyone is aware of the reality that Raju and his men zeroed in on chennai, Pune and Nagpur for the reason of creating a formidable land bank. The CBI, which suspect that the land was bought with money that was taped away from Satyam, has now moved special teams to spot and freeze all these land property. Most of the lands are in pieces of five to six acre plot.

The CBI would be extra wide-ranging than the past work out by the Registrar of Companies (RoC) that had full a report on the land transactions of Raju brothers. The RoC exercise had concentrated only on the land bank of the Rajus in Hyderabad and Greater Hyderabad. It was found that the Rajus had bought land through many private companies which was owned by them.

In the meantime CBI sleuths are also struggling to gather evidence on the Rs 60 crore found in three foreign bank accounts in the US was abstracted from the profits of the American depository receipts issue of Satyam in 2001.

Comedy Pranks

Longest Bridges In The World

Vasco Da Gama Bridge Portugal

Lake Pontchartrain Causeway USA

King Fahd Causeway Bahrein

Donghai Bridge China

Chesapeake Bay Bridge USA

Source: http://www.zmetravel.com/

Fantasy On Canvas

A meditative painter, Dhiren Sasmal has devoted most of his artistic career towards creating a world of myth and fantasy. Adekha Dekha, the ongoing show of his paintings, finds the artist looking at the world through the innocent eyes of a child. Inspired by folk tales from around the world, his canvasses portray an imaginative vision of life. His magical, extraordinary and ethereal world of beauty is inhabited by kings, queens, princes, lonely damsels, horses, fish, birds, fairies, demons and many other earthly and unearthly creatures. What Sasmal paints is not simply an illustration of any particular folk tale. On the contrary, the stories are for him a point of departure, from where his creativity takes off. Transforming the spirit of a particular genre of fairy tale, he concentrates on analysing and bringing together the common elements in stories belonging to different traditions. But, at some level, his paintings reflect the folk sobriety of Bengal art when he works with folk tales of Bengal. They are imbued with expressionism when based on Aesop’s Fables or take on the Western surrealistic expression when dealing with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Ultimately, Sasmal achieves pure visual harmony by envisaging the world through the consciousness of a child.

Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/

Summer Collection Launched In Islamabad

Dazzling designs coupled with innovative cuts and glamorous embellishments attracted a large number of women and girls to the launching ceremony of ‘Hunar’ summer collection.

Bringing a blend of modern designs to the eastern 'shalwar-kameez', the designers Semi and Aliya have taken their inspiration from modern 'empowered image of Pakistani women.

According to Aliya, a model-turned-designer having lived in Europe, 'Hunar' is for today's woman who wants to look chic but retain her cultural appearances. “We think that there is a huge scope to alter styles in Pakistan and infuse it with various elements,” she said.

She said that a lot of people work on orders, which tends to take long-term planning for a client and people don’t have time to plan events and evenings. ‘Hunar’ wants to fill that gap, where a trendy outfit can be picked up instantly.

"We have chosen to launch cutting edge designs that will arouse public's fashion sensibilities," she said, while adding that Islamabad needs some of its own homegrown designers and develop synergies amongst the handful names to host its own fashion week.

She said that their range included casual, formal and semi-formal wear while their summer collection exclusively deals with the formal wear. "It is really hard to choose the formal dress in the hot and humid weather of our country, but we created a glamorous look of a summer outfit by embellishing them in a proper way," she said.

The event was formally inaugurated by In Sun Choi, wife of the ambassador of Republic of Korea. It was well-attended by dignitaries, diplomats and fashion conscious women of Islamabad.

Speaking on the occasion, In Sun Choi said that the designs displayed in the exhibition had a great similarity with the Korean designs. "The designers have worked with all colour tones to cater to the demands of all types of customers," she said.

She said that the designs and colour combinations have a great deal of universality in them and is a fusion of different cultures besides representing Pakistan in a true sense.

Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=170814

Obama Makes History in Live Internet Video Chat

The White House said more than 64,000 people watched President Obama answer questions on Thursday in the first live Internet video chat by an American president. But in declaring itself “Open for Questions,” on the economy, the White House learned it must be careful what it wishes for.

More than 100,000 questions were submitted, with the idea that Mr. Obama would answer those that were most popular. But after 3.6 million votes were cast, one of the top questions turned out to be a query on whether legalizing marijuana might stimulate the economy by allowing the government to regulate and tax the drug.

“I don’t know what this says about the online audience,” Mr. Obama said, drawing a laugh from an audience gathered in the East Room, which included teachers, nurses and small-business people. “The answer is no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow the economy.”

The marijuana question later took up a good chunk of the daily White House press briefing, where Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, suggested that advocates for legalizing marijuana had mounted a drive to rack up votes for the question.

Those advocates included Norml, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which urged supporters to “let the president know that millions of American voters believe that the time has come to tax and regulate marijuana.”

But however the marijuana query rose to the top of the White House list, it provided one of the livelier moments in the mostly staid 70-minute event.

Mr. Obama did make a sliver of news, disclosing that he intended to announce in the next couple of days what kind of help his administration would give the auto industry. A senior White House official said no decision had yet been made; Mr. Gibbs hinted that the announcement would most likely occur on Monday.

“We will provide them some help,” Mr. Obama said, as he has in the past, while also talking tough, as he has done previously, by insisting that the auto makers would have to make “drastic changes” to restructure the way they do business.

“If they’re not willing to make the changes and the restructurings that are necessary,” Mr. Obama said, he will be unwilling to “have taxpayer money chase after bad money.”

Thursday’s session, which had been advertised on the White House Web site since Tuesday, is the latest example of efforts by the Obama team to replicate its creative use of the Internet in the election campaign.

Mr. Obama has been trying to make the case for his economic agenda in a variety of forums, from Jay Leno’s late-night television show to the CBS program “60 Minutes” to a prime-time news conference on Tuesday. The Internet chat, streamed live on the White House Web site, was a chance for Mr. Obama to bypass the news media entirely.

“This is an experiment,” the president said in a video promoting the event, “but it’s also an exciting opportunity for me to look at a computer and get a snapshot of what Americans across the country care about.

“So, America, what do you want to know about the economy? Just go to whitehouse.gov and ask.”

Mr. Obama, of course, was not looking at a computer himself. Jared Bernstein, an economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., moderated the event, reading some of the most popular written questions and cuing video questions.

Macon Phillips, the White House director of new media, said in an interview afterward that he was pleased with “the experiment,” which he said was part of Mr. Obama’s mission to open the government to greater citizen involvement.

“Anytime you ask if people will engage and 100,000 people show up, it’s a big deal,” Mr. Phillips said.

Yet at times, the forum had a canned feel, perhaps because most Americans tend to be more polite in their questions than news reporters, perhaps because they lacked any opportunity to follow up.

The first question, on education, prompted Mr. Obama to promise higher pay and more support for teachers, without specifics. The second, on what benefits his stimulus plan offered to struggling homeowners, prompted a recitation of the president’s recently announced housing plan. The third was a video question, from “Harriet in Georgia,” who asked the president what he was doing to bring back jobs that had been outsourced.

ForMoreInfo: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/us/politics/27obama.html?ref=us