Madhur Bhandarkar (BollywoodNews)

Will Madhur Be Able To Convince Aishwariya To Be His Second Choice?

Beauty queen turned Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is one such actress, who has never accepted a film, where she has been roped in as a second choice. Considering her constant success in this year, she won't be changing this trend in near future too.

However, she has been reportedly approached by renowned Bollywood filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar to replace Kareena Kapoor in his next project Heroine. The filmmaker was very keen to start the film with Bebo but her packed schedule has probably made Madhur to look for a second option.

Well, Madhur will lose nothing if he opts for Ash instead of Bebo because the beauty queen is now ruling the big screen as she has four releases this year. Her Raavan was not a very big success but Robot ruled the country. During Diwali, she had another big release Action Replayy starring Akshay Kumar opposite her. The list does not end here as her next big release will take place in this month only, which is directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and stars Hrithik Roshan. Guzaarish is expected to be yet another hit of Mrs Bachchan.

However, the main question remains the same, will she accept Madhur's offer because she is not the first choice for the female lead role? Madhur's film has a strong script and her character is very strong and crucial so Aishwarya can give a second thought on being the second choice! Moreover, she has never worked with Madhur earlier and he will definitely do his best to project her in a different manner.

Madhur has maintained silence on this issue and said that he is busy with other films so he will think over Heroine only after finishing the pending project. Well, the ball is now in Ash's court and she has to decide.

Moreover, Ash was not the first choice of Abhsihek Bahcchan as his marriage was fixed to another Bollywood star Karisma Kapoor. If she can be second choice of her husband then why cannot be the same for a filmmaker?

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Liverpool and Tottenham

Liverpool and Tottenham set for January transfer battle over Premier League defender

Liverpool and Tottenham have been given encouragement in their pursuit of Gary Cahill after Bolton Wanderers chairman Phil Gartside admitted that his club's current wage bill was unsustainable and hinting that the club would consider offloading players when the transfer window reopens..

“If a Champions League team knocks on our door in January, that's the best time to sell an asset because Champions League teams will pay the money,” said Gartside. “We are carrying too many on the wage bill”

The centre back has matured into a highly dependable player since his move north from Aston Villa in 2008 and was handed his first England cap by Fabio Capello when he came on as a substitute in a 4-0 win over Bulgaria in September.
Cahill's consistency has won him admiring glances from rival Premier League clubs and Liverpool see him as the ideal successor for the ageing Jamie Carragher.
Spurs, meanwhile continue to be jinxed in the centre of defence with Michael Dawson, Ledley King and Jonathan Woodgate all injured. 
Younes Kaboul and William Gallas have filled the void in recent weeks but manager Harry Redknapp is keen to enter the transfer market for a commanding young defender and Cahill is known to be top of his wishlist.

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Mexico hunting 12-year-old drug hitman

MEXICO CITY — Soldiers are hunting a 12-year-old suspected drug gang hitman accused of helping wage a gruesome turf war in central Mexico, a state prosecutor and Mexican media said on Friday. 

The boy, known only as "El Ponchis," is believed to be working for the South Pacific cartel in Morelos state just outside Mexico City and is one of a group of youths who have already committed "terrible acts," Morelos State Prosecutor Pedro Luis Benitez told local radio.

"These minors are still not fully developed and so it is easy to influence them, to give them a gun, pretending it is plastic, that it is a game," Benitez said.

Benitez did not name the boy or give more details but when asked directly about the teenage hitmen he said: "They're persuaded to carry out terrible acts; they don't realize what they are doing," he added.

Mexican daily La Razon said the boy is being paid $3,000 for each murder and is under the command of a little-known drug lord who heads the South Pacific gang fighting the rival Beltran Leyva and La Familia cartels for control in southwestern Mexico.

Benitez said soldiers this week arrested a teenage boy and a pregnant teenage girl also believed to be working for the South Pacific cartel.

Crimes committed by minors, ranging from shoplifting to murders for the cartels, have jumped across Mexico this year, state officials say. Parents in the violent cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana on the U.S. border say children as young as 8 years old want to grow up to be drug lords, as the thrills and wealth of the trafficking world touches their lives.

In some depressed cities where role models are scarce, teenagers see that drug gangs are flush with cash from the trafficking that brings up to $40 billion a year into Mexico.

President Felipe Calderon has made crushing the drug gangs the central focus of his presidency, deploying some 70,000 troops and police across Mexico with strong U.S. support.

In an interview on Friday, Calderon admitted that Mexico is suffering, but vowed to beat back the cartels.

"We have a serious problem. Yes. However, we are facing the problem, and we are fixing that," Calderon told the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, according to a transcript excerpt.

"It is going to take us money, it is going to take us time, and unfortunately, it is going to take human lives."

More than 31,000 people have been killed since Calderon launched his cartel crackdown four years ago, alarming many Mexicans and some foreign investors who are freezing investment in the country just as it is recovering from recession.

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BMW Vision Efficient Dynamics

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Nine 2011 Vehicles That Still Lack Stability Control

If you could check the box for a safety feature that's been shown to dramatically decrease the chances of an accident, you would, right?

That's the case with electronic stability control (ESC); it's been shown to reduce accidents, fatal crashes, and rollovers, and with economies of scale doesn't cost as much as you might think. NHTSA had estimated that its mandate for stability control to be standard by 2012 will cost an average of $111 per vehicle but save nearly 10,000 fatalities annually—along with, potentially, hundreds of thousands of injuries and accidents. Including related components, some automakers have placed the total cost of ESC to be $400 or more.

The idea behind electronic stability control is simple: the brakes are applied individually at one or more of the wheels to help restore a traction and/or a vehicle imbalance in an extreme maneuver—perhaps allowing you to avoid an accident.

But while stability control systems for some SUVs and luxury vehicles are already into their second or third generations of this technology, some of the least expensive models on the market still haven't received the lifesaving technology.

The need is especially dire for small cars because of their weight disadvantage in multiple-vehicle accidents.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), electronic stability control was standard on 85 percent of all vehicles for the 2010 model year—including 100 percent of SUVs but 88 percent of cars and just 62 percent of pickups.

Automakers have just over the past couple of years moved quickly to get stability control into compact pickups. The 2011 Chevrolet Colorado, 2011 GMC Canyon, and 2011 Ford Ranger all now come with it standard, and larger pickups have all come with it for several model years.

What remains for 2011—aside from a few wildcards like the four-cylinder Nissan Frontier and the Mazda RX-8—is a surprisingly long list of cheap, small cars that still don't get the feature, or don't have it standard.

A number of the smallest, least-expensive cars, including the 2011 Ford Fiesta, 2011 Toyota Yaris, 2011 Scion xB, 2011 Kia Soul and 2011 Mazda2, now include standard stability control, while a class up, vehicles such as the Toyota Corolla, Ford Focus, Kia Forte, Hyundai Elantra, and Mitsubishi Lancer all have it standard.

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Lots of Android tablets coming

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said a flood of Android tablets are on the way and repeated that they have to be "truly remarkable" in order to compete with the iPad. And traditional notebooks may imperiled by the deluge, according to Huang.

Nvidia reported earnings today for its most recent quarter, ending October 31. The Santa Clara, Calif., graphics chip supplier's profit slipped to $84.9 million, or 15 cents per share, from $107.6 million, or 19 cents per share, in the year-earlier quarter. Earnings were up, however, from this year's previous quarter, when the company posted a loss of $141.0 million, or 25 cents per share. Revenue was down to $843.9 million from $903.2 million reported a year ago.

After the earnings conference call, I chatted with Huang on the phone. Nvidia's Tegra processorSamsung Galaxy Tab. It's a tablet that uses a phone operating system on a large display. A tablet is not a large phone." is expected to appear in a number of Android tablets, which he admitted were delayed by a "few months" because Nvidia, Google, and tablet manufacturers want to make sure they get it right out of the gate in order to compete effectively against Apple's iPad. "You can't just do another product," he said. "Look at the
Tablets coming out early next year are expected to use a future version of Android designed for larger screens.
Though Huang said he is sworn to secrecy until Android tablets come out and couldn't give details, he did say that upcoming tablets using its dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor "give you the benefit of higher performance and much, much better multitasking and better graphics." All of these combined can lead to a different experience than the iPad, Huang said.
"There's going to be all kinds of interesting industrial designs," he said. "And I think the high-level concept is that when you have such an incredibly low-power SOC [system-on-a-chip] then industrial design freedom really grows." He made clear during the earnings conference call that his company is working with Google on Android tablets.
Huang also touched on why a tablet design is better than a laptop for many applications. "Open your notebook. [Inside] it's got heat pipes, and fans, and heat spreaders, lots of copper. You're going to get rid of all of that," he said. Generally, this results in lighter products with longer battery life.
And what's the fate of notebooks and Netbooks? "By being able to connect a wireless keyboard and mouse--the difference between a tablet and notebook is pretty marginal," he said. "[Tablets] will be quite disruptive to notebooks and entry-level desktops," he said.
Huang also waxed eloquent about tablets during the company's earnings conference call. "Our tablet and phone business is going to ramp. And it's going to ramp hard. The amount of activity in our Tegra business is simply too great right now. Come the beginning the [next] year is when you'll see what we have been so busy working on," he said.
"This isn't a fad. Everybody's building tablets because it's just so important. Car companies are working on tablets, consumer electronics companies are working on tablets, computer companies are working on tablets, and communications companies are working on tablets. The medical industry is working on tablets," he said during the earnings conference call. "I don't remember in the history of computing [when] a singular device is being worked on by all of the industry."

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