News Highlights - Week of 2 - 6 May 2011
Consumer price inflation surged in the Philippines and Thailand in April, while slowing in Indonesia and the Republic of Korea. Consumer price inflation in Singapore was steady in March. Inflation in the Philippines accelerated to 4.5% year-on-year (y-o-y) in April-the highest rate in 12 months-due to higher fuel, electricity, and water prices. Thailand's consumer price inflation accelerated to a 15-month high of 4.04% y-o-y in April on the back of higher food prices caused by unstable weather. Meanwhile, consumer price inflation in Indonesia and the Republic of Korea eased in April to 6.2% and 4.2% y-o-y, respectively, on account of lower food prices. In Singapore, consumer price inflation remained unchanged at 5.0% y-o-y in March.
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand raised their respective overnight policy rates by 25 basis points each, while Viet Nam raised its rate by 100 basis points,
on the back of increased inflationary pressures. Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) hiked its overnight policy rate to 3.0% from 2.75% and raised the statutory reserve requirement ratio by 100 basis points to 3.0%. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) raised its reverse repurchase facility to 4.5% and the repurchase facility to 6.5%. The Bank of Thailand (BOT) raised its 1-day repurchase rate to 2.75%. The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) raised its reverse repurchase rate to 14.0% and its discount and refinancing rates to 13.0% and 14.0%, respectively.
on the back of increased inflationary pressures. Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) hiked its overnight policy rate to 3.0% from 2.75% and raised the statutory reserve requirement ratio by 100 basis points to 3.0%. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) raised its reverse repurchase facility to 4.5% and the repurchase facility to 6.5%. The Bank of Thailand (BOT) raised its 1-day repurchase rate to 2.75%. The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) raised its reverse repurchase rate to 14.0% and its discount and refinancing rates to 13.0% and 14.0%, respectively.
Indonesia's economy expanded 6.5% y-o-y in 1Q11, down slightly from 6.8% in 4Q10, boosted by household consumption. Except for mining and financial services, all major industry sectors posted lower annual growth in 1Q11 compared with the previous quarter.
Last week, MIE Holdings Corp, a People's Republic of China (PRC) oil company, raised USD400 million from the issuance of a 5-year non-call three bond. Hong Kong, China issued HKD2.5 billion worth of 5-year bonds at an average yield of 1.647%.
In Indonesia, a total of IDR50 billion worth of LCY government bonds were exchanged for a new 15-year bond. Hong Leong Bank of Malaysia sold MYR1.0 billion worth of 10-year Lower Tier 2 notes and MYR1.4 billion of 60-year Tier 1 stapled securities. In the Philippines, Ayala Corporation priced its 10-year PHP10.0 billion puttable bond at 6.8%, and Rockwell Land raised PHP4.0 billion in 7-year notes.
In Indonesia, a total of IDR50 billion worth of LCY government bonds were exchanged for a new 15-year bond. Hong Leong Bank of Malaysia sold MYR1.0 billion worth of 10-year Lower Tier 2 notes and MYR1.4 billion of 60-year Tier 1 stapled securities. In the Philippines, Ayala Corporation priced its 10-year PHP10.0 billion puttable bond at 6.8%, and Rockwell Land raised PHP4.0 billion in 7-year notes.
In the PRC, the China Qinfa Group has mandated UBS as its book runner for a 5-year USD-denominated bond that will be callable after 3 years. China Liansu Group plans to issue a USD300 million 5-year non-call bond. In Malaysia, KPJ Healthcare Bhd. may raise up to MYR500 million from its Islamic Commercial Paper/Islamic Medium-Term Note Programme.
Net foreign investment in the Republic of Korea's LCY bonds climbed to KRW1.13 trillion in April from KRW996 billion in March. The largest net investments by country were from Germany, Malaysia, and the PRC.
Government bond yields fell last week for most tenors in the PRC; Hong Kong, China; and the Republic of Korea, while yields rose for all tenors in the Philippines and most tenors in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Viet Nam. Yield movements were mixed in Singapore. Yield spreads between 2- and 10- year maturities widened in the PRC and Indonesia, while spreads narrowed in most other emerging East Asian markets.
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| Apple Inc overtook Google Inc |
Apple has overtaken Google as the world's most valuable brand, ending a four-year reign by the Internet search leader, according to a new study by global brands agency Millward Brown.
They have reported that Apple's brand value is worth $153 billion while Apple's market capitalization is $319 billion almost double than its brand value
Apple was become world's most valuable company last year by overtaking Microsoft.
Peter Walshe, global brands director of Millward Brown, says Apple's meticulous attention to detail, along with an increasing presence of its gadgets in corporate environments, have allowed it to behave differently from other consumer-electronics makers.
"Apple is breaking the rules in terms of its pricing model," he told Reuters by telephone. "It's doing what luxury brands do, where the higher price the brand is, the more it seems to underpin and reinforce the desire."
"Obviously, it has to be allied to great products and a great experience, and Apple has nurtured that."
Of the top 10 brands in Monday's report, six were technology and telecoms companies: Google at number two, IBM at number three, Microsoft at number five, AT&T at number seven and China Mobile at number nine.
McDonald's rose two places to number four, as fast food became the fastest-growing category, Coca-Cola slipped one place to number six, Marlboro was also down one to number eight, and General Electric was number 10.
Walshe said demand from China was a major factor in the rise of fast-food brands. "The Chinese have been discovering fast food and it's such a vast market -- Starbucks, McDonald's... and pizza has hit China," he said.
"The way McDonald's has reinvented itself, adapted its menus, added healthy options, expanding the times of day it can be visited, for example oatmeal for breakfast... that allied with growth in developing markets has really helped that brand."
Nineteen of the top 100 brands came from emerging markets, up from 13 last year.
Facebook entered the top 100 at number 35 with a brand valued at $19.1 billion, while Chinese search engine Baidu rose to number 29 from 46.
Toyota reclaimed its position as the world's most valuable car brand, as it recovered from a bungled 2010 product recall. The survey was carried out before the March earthquake that caused massive disruption to Japanese supply chains.
The total value of the top 100 brands rose by 17 percent to $2.4 trillion, as the global economy shifted to growth.
Millward Brown takes as a starting point the value that companies put on their own main brands as intangibles in their earnings reports.
It combines that with the perceptions of more than 2 million consumers in relevant markets around the world whom it surveys over the course of the year, and then applies a multiple derived from the company's short-term future growth prospects. See below links for all detailed reports
( Source: Reuters )
NIFTY Performed on Friday:
The NSE benchmark S&P CNX Nifty snapped its nine-session losing streak by gaining 91.60 points in early trade on Friday on renewed buying on easing of macroeconomic worries in view of a sharp fall in crude oil prices.
The Nifty futures closed and settled finally at 5555, down by 96.60 or (-1.77 %). It is looking bullish in the coming trading session if it manages to trade above the resistance level of 5595 else below support level of 5415 it would be in a downward trend.
Positional Trend with Levels
Sustenance above the 5500 levels will see the NIFTY gradually head higher towards the 5650-5687 levels. (Expected time zone 72hrs)
Above 5594, NIFTY may see 5669, 5706…Easily…? (Yes)
Yes, Everybody knows of Thursday of last week given to BUY Nifty fut. 5450 in small quantities…! (Your Stop loss is your bought price)
Note: This pull is not believable for ending of Bearish Trend but also not confirmation of Bullish fully
Therefore, Just Non-Stop 5688-5722 will be sign of Bulls for 5800-5840
Keep Patience of Accurate single and our levels
(New update will be below 5440 only)
Technical Data-Sheet on NIFTY:
Last (06/05/2011) close@5551 (+92 points)
Last high@5564 low@5472
Weekly high@5909 low@5443
5DMA@5563
20DMA@5764
50DMA@5631
200DMA@5752
Buyers expected on two levels: 5449 to 5461(last hope) and 5492 to 5511
Today's Intraday Targets 5597 to 5632
(After closing above 5585, Nifty future will be strong pull back for targets 5677-5743 in 72hrs)
Just watch opening 5550 above
(For the 11 o' clock trading above this level…then intraday heavy buyers might come to test 5641-5663)
Note: In this case, you must be keeping Stop point as 5536-5531 See below links for detailed analysis
Positional Trend with Levels
Sustenance above the 5500 levels will see the NIFTY gradually head higher towards the 5650-5687 levels. (Expected time zone 72hrs)
Above 5594, NIFTY may see 5669, 5706…Easily…? (Yes)
Yes, Everybody knows of Thursday of last week given to BUY Nifty fut. 5450 in small quantities…! (Your Stop loss is your bought price)
Note: This pull is not believable for ending of Bearish Trend but also not confirmation of Bullish fully
Therefore, Just Non-Stop 5688-5722 will be sign of Bulls for 5800-5840
Keep Patience of Accurate single and our levels
(New update will be below 5440 only)
Technical Data-Sheet on NIFTY:
Last (06/05/2011) close@5551 (+92 points)
Last high@5564 low@5472
Weekly high@5909 low@5443
5DMA@5563
20DMA@5764
50DMA@5631
200DMA@5752
Buyers expected on two levels: 5449 to 5461(last hope) and 5492 to 5511
Today's Intraday Targets 5597 to 5632
(After closing above 5585, Nifty future will be strong pull back for targets 5677-5743 in 72hrs)
Just watch opening 5550 above
(For the 11 o' clock trading above this level…then intraday heavy buyers might come to test 5641-5663)
Note: In this case, you must be keeping Stop point as 5536-5531 See below links for detailed analysis
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| Facebook Logo |
ALL right, class, here’s your homework assignment: Devise an app. Get people to use it. Repeat.
That was the task for some Stanford students in the fall of 2007, in what became known here as the “Facebook Class.”
The students ended up getting millions of users for free apps that they designed to run on Facebook. And, as advertising rolled in, some of those students started making far more money than their professors.
Almost overnight, the Facebook Class fired up the careers and fortunes of more than two dozen students and teachers here. It also helped to pioneer a new model of entrepreneurship that has upturned the tech establishment: the lean start-up.
Almost overnight, the Facebook Class fired up the careers and fortunes of more than two dozen students and teachers here. It also helped to pioneer a new model of entrepreneurship that has upturned the tech establishment: the lean start-up.
Facebook Class Continue....
The students ended up getting millions of users for free apps that they designed to run on Facebook. And, as advertising rolled in, some of those students started making far more money than their professors.
Almost overnight, the Facebook Class fired up the careers and fortunes of more than two dozen students and teachers here. It also helped to pioneer a new model of entrepreneurship that has upturned the tech establishment: the lean start-up.
“Everything was happening so fast,” recalls Joachim De Lombaert, now 23. His team’s app netted $3,000 a day and morphed into a company that later sold for a six-figure sum.
“I almost didn’t realize what it all meant,” he says.
Neither did many of his classmates. Back then, Facebook apps were a novelty. The iPhone had just arrived, and the first Android phone was a year off.
But by teaching students to build no-frills apps, distribute them quickly and worry about perfecting them later, the Facebook Class stumbled upon what has become standard operating procedure for a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley and beyond. For many, the long trek from idea to product to company has turned into a sprint.
Start-ups once required a lot of money, time and people. But over the past decade, free, open-source software and “cloud” services have brought costs down, while ad networks help bring in revenue quickly.
The app phenomenon has accentuated the trend and helped unleash what some call a new wave of technology innovation — and what others call a bubble.
Early on, the Facebook Class became a microcosm of Silicon Valley. Working in teams of three, the 75 students created apps that collectively had 16 million users in just 10 weeks. Many of those apps were sort of silly: Mr. De Lombaert’s, for example, allowed users to send “hotness” points to Facebook friends. Yet during the term, the apps, free for users, generated roughly $1 million in advertising revenue.
Such successes helped inspire entrepreneurs to ditch business plans and work on apps. Not all succeeded, but those that did helped to fuel the expansion of Facebook, which now has nearly 700 million users.
Venture capitalists also began rethinking their approach. Some created investment funds tailored to the new, bare-bones start-ups.
“A lot of the concepts and ideas that came out of the class influenced the structure of the fund that I am working on now,” says Dave McClure, one of the class instructors and founder of 500 Startups, which invests in lean start-ups. “The class was the realization that this stuff really works.”
Nearly four years later, many of the students have learned that building a business is a lot harder than creating an app — even an app worthy of an A+.
“Starting a company is definitely more work,” says Edward Baker, who was Mr. De Lombaert’s partner in the class and later in business. The two have founded Friend.ly, a social networking start-up.
Still, many students were richly rewarded. Some turned their homework into companies. A few have since sold those businesses to the likes of Zynga. Others joined hot start-ups like RockYou, a gaming site that at the time was among the most successful Facebook apps.
The Facebook Class changed Mr. De Lombaert’s life. His team’s app, Send Hotness, brought in more users and more money faster than any other in the class. And its success attracted the attention of venture capitalists.
“The class, more than anything, set the tone for us to try to start something big,” says Mr. Baker, 32, Friend.ly’s C.E.O.
When the Send Hotness app began to take off, Mr. Baker encouraged Mr. De Lombaert to treat himself to a new car. Mr. De Lombaert settled for a laptop. (He also put some money aside to help to pay his Stanford tuition.) They eventually sold the app to a dating Web site.
Facebook did not actively participate in the Stanford class. But some of its engineers attended sessions, and it benefited from the success of the students’ apps. “It really felt like an incubator,” says David Fetterman, a Facebook engineer who helped develop the applications platform.
The startling success of some of the class’s projects got Silicon Valley buzzing. The final session, held in an auditorium in December 2007, was attended by more than 500 people, including many investors.
“The Facebook platform was taking off, and there was this feeling of a gold rush,” said Mike Maples Jr., an investor who attended some of the classes and ended up backing one of the start-ups.
THE Facebook Class was the brainchild of B. J. Fogg, who runs the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford. An energetic academic and an innovation guru, he focuses on how to harness technology and human psychology to influence people’s behavior.
Mr. Fogg thought that the Facebook platform would be a good way to test some of his theories. Creating a new model of entrepreneurship was far from his mind.
At first, university administrators pushed back. “Facebook was not taken so seriously in academic circles back then,” Mr. Fogg recalls.
But there was no hesitation among students — from undergraduates in computer science to M.B.A. candidates — who were spending much of their lives immersed in Facebook.
From the start, many approached the class from a business angle. Mr. Baker, for instance, was a graduate business student but lacked technical skills, so he spent his first week interviewing engineers. “I wanted a technical co-founder,” he says.
He settled on Mr. De Lombaert, and the two, along with a third student, Alex Onsager, created Send Hotness. It let users send points to friends they considered “hot” and to compare “hotness” rankings.
Soon they found themselves in a proverbial “the dog ate my homework” situation. Three days before a presentation was due, Mr. De Lombaert accidentally deleted the computer code he was tinkering with. “We kind of freaked out,” he recalls.
Rebuilding the app would take too long. So, working around the clock over a weekend, they built another version, with a more rudimentary algorithm.
The stripped-down app took off. In five weeks, five million people signed up. When the team began placing ads on the app, the money poured in.
They had stumbled upon one of the themes of the class: make things simple, and perfect them later.
“The students did an amazing job of getting stuff into the market very quickly,” says Michael Dearing, a consulting associate professor at the Institute of Design at Stanford, who now teaches a class based on similar, rapid prototyping ideas. “It was a huge success.”
DAN GREENBERG was sitting at the kitchen table one night when he and another teaching assistant decided to get into the app game. Mr. Greenberg, a graduate student who had done research for Mr. Fogg, hadn’t planned to get app-happy. But the students’ success whetted his appetite.
Four weeks into the quarter, he and his colleague, Rob Fan, set out to create an app that would let Facebook users send “hugs” to one another.
It took them all of five hours.
The app took off. So they moved on to apps for “kisses,” “pillow fights” and other digital interactions — 70 in all.
Their apps caught on with millions of people and were soon bringing in nearly $100,000 a month in ads. After the class ended, the two started a company, 750 Industries, named after the 750 Pub at Stanford where Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Fan were drinking when they decided to become business partners.
But juggling the business and schoolwork was too much for Mr. Greenberg, then 22. So he called his father.
“I said, ‘Dad, it is 10 p.m., and I’ve got so much stuff to do,’ ” Mr. Greenberg recalls. “ ‘We’re running this business, and I’ve got customers, and we are earning money, and we got financing and we have people to hire. But I have to write a paper tonight, and I just don’t have time for it.’ ”
His father advised him to pull a Mark Zuckerberg and drop out. The next day, Mr. Greenberg did just that.
Now 25, he works out of a glass-walled corner office in San Francisco. He is C.E.O. of his company, now called Sharethrough, which uses social media to distribute videos across the Web for companies. It employs 30 people and has raised about $6 million in venture capital. “It feels like a fairy tale when you look back on it,” he says of the class.
He has upgraded his lifestyle somewhat, but still doesn’t own a car. “I have a Vespa and skateboard,” he says.
“LOVE CHILD.” It sounds like an unlikely name for an app. But Johnny Hwin and his Stanford class team set out to build an app of that name, one that would let two users create and raise a virtual child. It never took off.
“We were overly ambitious,” Mr. Hwin says.
Seeing his classmates strike gold with simpler ideas proved to be a valuable lesson. In 2009, he began working on Damntheradio.com, a Facebook marketing tool that helped bands and musicians connect with fans online.
It opened last June and was acquired in January by FanBridge, where Mr. Hwin is now a vice president, for a few million dollars, he says.
Mr. Hwin, who is 26 and also a musician, now lives in a loft space in the Mission neighborhood in San Francisco. He uses his place as a kind of salon for late-night art shows and concerts.
“With Love Child, we wanted it to be perfect,” he says. With Damntheradio, he found his first clients by showing mockups of the product. “We were able to launch within weeks,” he says.
Another class member, Robert Cezar Matei, says he had only modest success with his projects. One, he said, allowed users to send “cheesy pickup lines” to friends; another encouraged people to reveal something about themselves. After graduating from Stanford, he wanted to earn some money to go traveling, but instead of getting a job, he decided to write Facebook apps. “I’d seen my peers being so successful with apps,” he says. “If they could do it, I could do it.”
After a few false starts, he created an app that let people send points and “kisses” to friends. It struggled until Mr. Matei, who speaks several languages, translated the app. The next day, traffic jumped fivefold. He added games, and employees, and the app became one of the most popular Facebook programs in Europe. In late 2009, he sold to Zynga for an undisclosed sum.
Also in the class was Joshua Reeves, who built an app that created animations that Facebook members would send to one another as birthday greetings or other messages. It made enough money for him to quit his job in 2008 to start Buzzeo, a content management system for Facebook. A year ago, Buzzeo was acquired by Context Optional, where Mr. Reeves, 28, is now a vice president. Last week, Efficient Frontier, a digital marketing company, acquired Context Optional for an undisclosed sum.
ONE recent afternoon at the headquarters of Friend.ly in Mountain View, Calif., 10 engineers worked away as two employees turned their attention to a companywide project: a 24,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
For much of the past year, Friend.ly has worked on developing its service, a social network for meeting new people, without much success. A few weeks ago, the work appeared to pay off: traffic took off, growing to nearly five million monthly users.
Mr. Baker says the Facebook platform is a magnet for young developers, even though the kind of simple apps that were the focus of his Stanford class now face bigger hurdles. Facebook has made it harder to develop big-hit apps by controlling how apps spread virally.
But Mr. Fogg, says that for those who were at the right place at the right time — in late 2007 — things were different. “There was a period of time when you could walk in and collect gold,” he says. “It was landscape that was ready to be harvested.”
( Source: The New York times )
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| Citigroup Inc |
Shares of Citigroup Inc, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, will start trading on Monday at around $45 each for the first time since October 2007, as a result of a 1-for-10 reverse split. Citi shares were trading at about $4.52 Friday.
Citigroup, which needed $45 billion in U.S. government bailout to survive the financial crisis, after that it is trading at single-digit share price and hardly able to cross $5.
The will let Citigroup start paying shareholders a nominal dividend — with its regulator's blessing.
The Federal Reserve in March allowed several large U.S. banks to boost payouts but rejected some, including one by Bank of America.
Chief Executive Vikram Pandit wants to get the New York-based bank's shares back in the hands of institutional investors, who are sometimes prohibited from buying stocks priced below $5 or $10 per share.
"It's a bad thing for day traders, but a good thing for long-term stockholders and therefore for the company," Ghriskey said. "This will put it in stronger hands and at least somewhat longer-term investor hands, and provide some stability.”
Yet while getting rid of a sub-$5 share price may look good on its face, investors and industry experts are less than impressed with the means by which Citigroup chose to do it.
"It's sort of a quick fix," said James Rosenfeld, a finance professor at Emory University's Goizueta Business School in Atlanta. "(It) tells me that they're not confident they can grow themselves out of that $4 range."
Rosenfeld co-wrote a 2008 study with April Klein, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, concluding that companies that conduct reverse splits often suffer poor market and operating performance.
Like many rivals, Citigroup is struggling to boost revenue.
A volatile trading environment has depressed investment banking profit and an uncertain economy is shrinking consumer lending.
A volatile trading environment has depressed investment banking profit and an uncertain economy is shrinking consumer lending.
Those problems will not be solved on Monday.
Going to Rehab
Investors see reverse splits as purely cosmetic, and often do not reward the companies that undertake them.
Shares of the insurer American International Group, a recipient of $182 billion of federal bailouts, fell in 2009 after a 1-for-20 reverse split.
Citigroup's own shares fell on the March day the bank announced its own reverse split, and Rosenfeld predicted they would fall again on Monday.
Klein and Rosenfeld this month said Citigroup is slightly different than most companies they studied, which often traded near $1 per share and used reverse splits to avoid delistings.
Citigroup's share price fell as low as 97 cents in March 2009. It has ranged from $3.53 to $5.15 over the last year.
Shares outstanding ballooned during the financial crisis, as the government rescued Citigroup three times and then started selling off its resulting one-third common share stake. The U.S. Treasury finished that process in December.
Now with 29 billion shares outstanding, the bank would be unlikely to win regulatory approval for even a token dividend.
The reverse split would reduce the share count to 2.9 billion. Citigroup could then start paying a quarterly dividend of 1 cent a share, equal to about $116 million a year. Absent a reverse split, the minimum payout would be 10 times that sum.
Citigroup posted a $10.6 billion profit in 2010, its first year in the black since 2007.
"They're trying to rehabilitate their image with the investing public," said Peter Sorrentino, a portfolio manager for Huntington Asset Advisors Inc in Cincinnati.
Citigroup is "a large, once-upon-a-time marquee name in financial services," he added. "They may be a little bit more sensitive to that (low share price), given that most of their peers are not in that category."
Changing Investor Base
Because Citigroup is the most actively traded U.S. stock, the reverse split could affect volume at exchanges operated by NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX Group.
It will also hurt day traders and retail investors, who will now need more resources to trade a higher-priced stock.
Citigroup shares are still relatively cheap compared with those of rivals, according to Timothy Ghriskey, co-founder of Solaris Group, which oversees $2 billion and owns the bank's shares.
The shares trade at about 0.95 times tangible book value, slightly above the level for Bank of America. But other large banks trade at an average of 1.51 times ratio, Ghriskey said.
"It's a bad thing for day traders, but a good thing for long-term stockholders and therefore for the company," Ghriskey said. "This will put it in stronger hands and at least somewhat longer-term investor hands, and provide some stability."
( Source: Reuters )
Below are our recommendations and price targets for CitiGroup Inc |
| Cricket Match Fixing |
Here's a rundown of match-fixing allegations to have hit the game:
1979-80
A suspicious incident, which has been sometimes used as an example of match fixing, can be traced back to the Test series between India and Pakistan in 1979. It happened in the final Test at Calcutta when Asif Iqbal reportedly picked up the coin and told GR Viswanath that India had won the toss. It was Sarfaraz Nawaz who made this allegation two decades later.
1981
Australian players Dennis Lillee and Rodney Marsh bet against their own team. England, following on in that match, were given 500-1 odds of winning. Ian Botham and Bob Willis scripted a remarkable turnaround; England won against all odds and went on to win the Ashes. No action was taken against the two Australians.
1992-93
Australian batsman Dean Jones claims to have been offered $50,000 by an Indian to provide information about the team during the Lankan tour.
1993
Allan Border alleges that he was offered £500,000 by Mushtaq Mohammed to lose a Test match against England.
1996
Former Indian team manager, Sunil Dev alleges that some Indian players indulged in match fixing and demands a judicial enquiry.
1997
Manoj Prabhakar accuses an India team-mate of offering him Rs 25 lakh to throw a Singer Cup match in Sri Lanka in 1994. His revelation leads the BCCI to appoint a commission to look into the allegation.
1998
Pakistan bowler Ata-ur-Rahman accuses Wasim Akram of offering him Rs 3 lakh to bowl badly against New Zealand. As a result of this allegation, Wasim Akram resigns as captain of the Pakistan team.
1998
Rashid Latif accuses Wasim Akram, Salim Malik, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Ijaz Ahmed of fixing matches. He also accuses Salim Malik of fixing matches during Pakistan's twin tour of South Africa and Zimbabwe in 1994-95.
1998
Mark Waugh, Shane Warne and Tim May claim they were offered $50,000 to lose a Test by Salim Malik during their tour to Pakistan in 1994. The Australian cricket board then asks the ICC to appoint a panel to look into the allegations. The PCB in its enquiry implicates three Pakistan players and recommends a ban on Salim Malik.
1998
Shane Warne and Mark Waugh confess to having accepted $11,000 from an Indian bookie to give some information on playing conditions during a tournament played in Sri Lanka in 1994. The Australian cricket board later says that it would impose a hefty fine on Warne and Waugh.
1999
Former England player Chris Lewis says that he was offered £300,000 to persuade England players to lose a match against New Zealand.
April 7, 2000
Delhi police charge Hansie Cronje with fixing South Africa's ODIs against India. Delhi police also reveal that they possess a conversation recorded during the ODI series between India and South Africa in March. They allege that the taped voices were of South African skipper Hansie Cronje and an Indian bookie, Sanjay Chawla. The conversation was about divulging team information and the amount to be paid to Cronje and his team-mates Herschelle Gibbs, Pieter Strydom and Nicky Boje.
April 9, 2000
Hansie Cronje vehemently denies the charges levelled against him saying, "I have never received any sum of money for any match that I have been involved in and have never approached any of the players and asked them if they wanted to fix a game."
April 11, 2000
The South African cricket board sacks Hansie Cronje after he calls Ali Bacher to confess that he was “not entirely honest” and admitted that to have accepted $10,000 to $15,000 from a London-based bookmaker, for forecasting results, not match-fixing.
April 15, 2000
Clouds of match fixing surround England's victory in the Centurion Test, where Cronje took the unexpected step of forfeiting an innings.
April 16, 2000
It is revealed that South Africa nearly accepted $250,000 to lose an ODI against India in Mumbai in 1996. The players had discussed the offer in three meetings before it was turned down as Jonty Rhodes, Dave Richardson and Andrew Hudson were against it.
May 24, 2000
After a year-long enquiry, Justice Qayyum finds Saleem Malik and Ata-ur-Rehman guilty of fixing matches and recommends life bans for the two. The report also says Wasim Akram and Mushtaq Ahmed should not be allowed to captain Pakistan in the future.
June 7, 2000
Former South African spinner Pat Symcox reveals that the team was offered around $250,000 to throw an ODI, on the first day of the King Commission hearings.
June 8, 2000
Herschelle Gibbs accuses Hansie Cronje of offering him a bribe to throw a match and tells the King Commission that he had accepted Cronje's offer of $15,000 to score less than 20 runs in an ODI in India. But by scoring 74, he had reneged the offer. He claimed he had forgotten about the offer after going to bat. Similarly, pacer Henry Williams was asked to concede more than 50 runs in his ten overs – an offer he blew by injuring himself in his second over.
June 15, 2000
Cronje admits to taking money for giving information to bookmakers and asking his team-mates to play badly. But he tells the King Commission that South Africa had never thrown or fixed a match under his captaincy.
June 27, 2000
Former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Paul Condon becomes the International Cricket Council's new anti-corruption investigator.
July 20, 2000
Indian income tax officials raid the homes of top cricket players, including those of then national coach Kapil Dev, former players Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Nayan Mongia and Nikhil Chopra.
August 28, 2000
The United Cricket Board of South Africa bans Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams from international cricket for the rest of the year for their involvement in the Cronje scandal.
October 11, 2000
Cronje is banned from cricket for life by the United Cricket Board of South Africa as a result of his admission that he received money from bookmakers.
"The UCBSA council hereby intends to ban Hansie Cronje for life from all activities of the UCBSA and its affiliates," says a statement issued by the United Cricket Board of South Africa.
October 31, 2000
Bookmaker MK Gupta names several players including Brian Lara, Dean Jones, Alec Stewart, Arjuna Ranatunga, Aravinda de Silva, Martin Crowe and Saleem Malik of being involved in match fixing, says a CBI report. The CBI also says that former India captain Mohammad Azharuddin confessed to fixing games with the help of colleagues Ajay Jadeja and Nayan Mongia.
November 27, 2000
BCCI's anti-corruption commissioner K Madhavan finds Mohammad Azharuddin guilty of match-fixing, while Ajay Jadeja, Manoj Prabhakar, Ajay Sharma and former Indian team physio Ali Irani are found guilty of having links with bookies.
December 5, 2000
BCCI bans Azharuddin for life and Ajay Jadeja for five years for their role in match-fixing. Ajay Sharma is also banned for life, while Prabhakar and Ali Irani are barred from holding any official post in Indian cricket for five years.
July 11, 2001
Former England wicketkeeper batsman Alec Stewart is cleared of allegations that he took money from a bookmaker in return for providing team and pitch information during England's 1992-93 tour of India.
May 12, 2004
Marvan Atapattu is cleared of match-fixing allegations for lack of evidence by the Sri Lankan Cricket Board.
August 17, 2004
Kenyan player Maurice Odumbe is banned for five years by the Kenyan Cricket Association after he is found guilty of receiving money from bookmakers.
November 7, 2004
Stephen Fleming alleges that he was offered $370,000 during the 1999 World Cup to join a match-fixing syndicate.
May 13, 2008
West Indies player Marlon Samuels is slapped a ban of two years for allegedly passing on information to an Indian bookie during an ODI series in India in 2007.
October-November 2008
Chandigarh Lions, a team in the Indian Cricket League, suspends Dinesh Mongia and Chris Cairns on “disciplinary grounds.” Murmurs of corruption in the unofficial league were ripe. ICL didn’t specify what the players were suspended for.
August-November 2010
A bookie is caught on video during a tabloid sting showing Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer conspiring to bowl deliberate no-balls during specific moments in the Lord’s Test against England. Amidst intense media scrutiny, police investigation and PCB’s refusal to act on the grim matter, ICC provisionally suspended the three tainted players.
October 2010
ICC mulls planting secret agents to monitor cricketers. The idea is rubbished by player associations.
November 2010
Pakistan wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider fled to UK while the team was in Dubai playing South Africa. He said he had retired from Test cricket and had been receiving death threats after guiding his team to a one-wicket win.
February 2011
Salman Butt banned for 10 years, Mohammad Asif seven and Mohammad Aamer five for their involvement in the spot-fixing scandal of 2010.
April-May 2011
Former Sri Lanka captain Hashan Tillakaratne says fixing has been rampant in their cricket since 1992. He says he’ll reveal names of the culprits to the ICC.
( Source: Yahoo )
Mother’s Day flowers.
Those words have been typed into search engines by countless Americans in the lead-up to Sunday. What few realize is that an online war over this endearing phrase is being waged by the country’s largest flower sellers, and some of them, apparently, are not fighting fair.
Internet marketing experts say Teleflora, FTD, 1800Flowers.com and ProFlowers are trying to elevate their Web sites in search results with a strategy that violates Google’s guidelines.
The flower companies deny it. But all four have links on Web sites that are riddled with paid links, many of which include phrases like “mothers day flowers,” “mothers day arrangements” and “cheap mothers day flowers.” Anyone who clicks on those backlinks, as they are known, gets sent to the floral retailer who paid for them.
The real goal is to elevate the flower sellers’ sites in the eyes of Google. Or rather, Google’s algorithm,
which uses links as a proxy for popularity — the more links attached to a Web site, the higher a site rises in Google searches.
which uses links as a proxy for popularity — the more links attached to a Web site, the higher a site rises in Google searches.
“This is a pretty typical link-buying campaign,” says Byrne Hobart of Digital Due Diligence, a Manhattan Internet consulting firm. “These companies are paying for links to pages on their site that relate to seasonal terms, like ‘Mother’s Day Flowers’ or ‘Mother’s Day Gifts.’ It’s a high-risk strategy, but in some cases it pays off well for the link-buyer in the short term.”
Google wants Web sites to earn links because the sites are relevant; paying for links is against its rules. When caught in link-buying schemes, companies are often penalized by Google,
which sends the sites plunging in its search results, sometimes for months.
which sends the sites plunging in its search results, sometimes for months.
On Wednesday, The New York Times sent Google representatives a list of roughly 6,000 links to the flower companies that were built in the last month. After Google’s spam team studied the list, a company spokesman, Jake Hubert, sent this statement:
“None of the links shared by The New York Times had a significant impact on our rankings, due to automated systems we have in place to assess the relevance of links. As always, we investigate spam reports and take corrective action where appropriate.”
In essence, Google said that these companies tried to game its algorithm, but for the most part, their efforts failed. So what we are talking about here is not Internet subterfuge — it is attempted Internet subterfuge.
Google is not saying whether it plans to demote any of the companies,
but as of late Friday, it had not. A search of “mothers day flowers” had Proflowers at No. 1, 1800Flowers at No. 2, Teleflora at No. 3 and FTD at No. 4.
but as of late Friday, it had not. A search of “mothers day flowers” had Proflowers at No. 1, 1800Flowers at No. 2, Teleflora at No. 3 and FTD at No. 4.
ProFlowers did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for 1800Flowers.com said the company would not discuss the links. An FTD representative said that the vast majority of its links were on Web sites owned by FTD, adding, “If any of our practices appear to have moved outside of Google’s guidelines, we will certainly address them.”
Teleflora released a statement saying that its “corporate policy is to not pay for any links that would violate Google’s guidelines. After closely reviewing the Teleflora links you provided, we believe we are in compliance with Google.”
There are, however, Teleflora links on some ad-crammed Web sites. Several appear on RickeyPearce.com, which until Friday featured a stock photo of a goateed man in a blue shirt — it is an image found all over the Internet — and a bunch of blandly written entries on topics like mortgages, car leasing and insurance, all of which contain links to corporate sponsors. An entry in March titled “Finding the Best Mothers Day Gifts Online” contained three links to Teleflora’s web site.
FTD’s campaign includes a lot of mom-related Web sites, some of which post links in exchange for money. The publisher of one Web site with an FTD link — who asked that neither she nor her site be named because she did not want to anger the company — said she received $30 a month to post a “mothers day flowers” link on her home page.
“I haven’t updated that site in a couple years,” she said. “There’s not a lot of traffic there.”
1800Flowers posted links on MyIndianRecipes.net, NapaValleyInterfaithCouncil.org and Jonathanduffy.net, which has a header that says the site is all about “Florida real estate — helping you find your dream home.”
A company buying links is risking a trip to the Internet’s answer to Siberia. That was demonstrated in February when Google demoted J. C. Penney in search results after concluding that the retailer had bought links for dozens of valuable terms during the holiday season.
Not every company gets caught, though, and because research shows that most shoppers click on the first two or three results, turning up at or near the top of a Google search presents a financial temptation.
The four flower sellers appear to have taken a calculated gamble: if they bought links and were demoted, they would suffer, but not as much as they would if they missed the chance to rank highly before Mother’s Day, when Americans are expected to spend $1.9 billion on flowers, according to the National Retail Federation.
The links put Google in an uncomfortable spot. Were the company to drag any of the country’s largest flower sellers into virtual oblivion right before Mother’s Day, users would be unable to find a retailer that they might well be looking for — and that rival search engines, like Bing, would feature.
It is impossible to double-check Google’s conclusion that few of the links of the florist companies helped in search results. The particulars of Google’s algorithm are shrouded in secrecy for the same reason that a bank does not publicize the route to its vault.
But Searchmetrics, a seller of search analytics software, found that Teleflora’s ranking had risen from No. 7 in Google searches for “mothers day flowers” to No. 4 not long after the company started its first major foray into link buying, in February of this year. Last year at this time, the company had an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 visitors per day, the company also found. This week, it has an estimated 35,000 visitors per day.
“There is a possible correlation between the backlinks and the increased visibility of the site,” said Horst Joepen, the chief executive of Searchmetrics. But without more research, he added, there is no way to be sure.
( Source : The New york times )
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| Osama Bin Laden |
The videos, released by U.S. intelligence officials Saturday, were offered as further proof that Navy SEALs killed the world's most wanted terrorist this week. But they also served to show bin Laden as vain, someone obsessed with his portrayal by the world's media.
One of the movies shows bin Laden, wrapped in a brown blanket and holding a
remote control, flipping back and forth between clips of himself. The small television was perched on top of a desk with wires running to a nearby cable or control box.
remote control, flipping back and forth between clips of himself. The small television was perched on top of a desk with wires running to a nearby cable or control box.
In another, he has apparently dyed and neatly trimmed his beard for the filming of a propaganda video.
The videos were seized from bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Officials said the clips shown to reporters were just part of the largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever collected.
The evidence seized during the raid also includes phone numbers and documents that officials hope will help break the back of the organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
For years, when it was assumed that bin Laden was living in Pakistan's rugged, mountainous tribal region, officials assumed bin Laden might not be able to get real-time news. After the CIA discovered bin Laden's suburban compound, they realized that a satellite dish provided a television feed to bin Laden's compound.
Watch the video:
Meanwhile, prominent Pakistani lawmakers called for President Asif Ali Zardari and other senior government officials to resign Saturday after the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden and embarrassed the nation.
Pakistani officials have said they were totally in the dark, a hard thing for many Pakistanis to believe since bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad, an army town only two and a half hours' drive from the capital, Islamabad.
Former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who is now a lawmaker for the ruling Pakistan People's Party, fixed the blame squarely on Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani — likely motivated in part by past conflict with the two men.
"This is a great violation of our sovereignty, but it is for the president and prime minister to resign and no one else," Qureshi told reporters in the central Pakistani city of Lahore.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the main opposition leader in parliament, said the country's powerful army and intelligence chiefs should also step down. They are believed to control the real levers of power in Pakistan.
"All from top to bottom who are responsible should take responsibility, and I believe that after such a big tragedy, they should resign," Khan told reporters in Lahore. "This is a call coming from every street of Pakistan."
( Source: The Associated Press)
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| Seal team six logo |
What is seal? What it stands for?
Seals — the term stands for Sea-Air-Land teams — were created by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 as a way to expand unconventional warfare.
Seal Team 6 came later as a reaction to the botched mission to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, when the Pentagon saw the need for what became today’s Special Operations Command, with a special Navy unit focused on counterterrorism.
Seal Team 6 has historically specialized in war on the seas, but in the decade since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it has increasingly fought on land in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its size is classified, but Team 6 is thought to have doubled to nearly 300 since then.
Over all, there are now about 3,000 active-duty Seal members, split between odd-numbered teams in Coronado and even-numbered teams in Virginia Beach.
Team 6, which is based in an area separate from all the others, at the Dam Neck Annex of Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, has many members in their mid-30s, a decade or more older than the 20-year-olds who populate the military.
They serve in what is unofficially called Seal Team 6, a unit so secretive
that the White House and the Defense Department do not directly acknowledge its existence.
that the White House and the Defense Department do not directly acknowledge its existence.
Its members have hunted down war criminals in Bosnia, fought in some of the bloodiest battles in Afghanistan and shot three Somali pirates dead on a bobbing lifeboat during the rescue of an American hostage in 2009.
Seal team 6 is a group of commandos who invaded in Osama Bin Laden's Compound and shot him at close distance.
How Seal team Form?
Inside the Navy, there are regular unclassified Seal members, organized into Teams 1 to 5 and 7 to 10. Then there is Seal Team 6, the elite of the elite, or “the all-star team.”
All Seal members face years of brutal preparation, including a notorious six months of basic underwater demolition training in Coronado, California.
During “hell week,” recruits get a total of four hours of sleep during five and a half days of nonstop running, swimming in the cold surf and rolling in mud. About 80 percent of the candidates do not make it; at least one has died.
For those who succeed, more training and then deployments follow.
After several years on regular Seal teams, Team 6 candidates are taught to parachute from 30,000 feet with oxygen masks and gain control of a hijacked cruise liner at sea. Of those Seal members, about half make it.
