IPL 5: Kolkata eye crucial win against Rajasthan

Jaipur: Unarguably the biggest underachievers in the Indian Premier League, the Kolkata Knight Riders did not get their IPL 5 campaign to the most auspicious of starts by ending on the losing side against Delhi Daredevils by eight wickets. The task does not get any easier for them as they now take on Rajasthan Royals at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium on Sunday, who were victorious in their opening fixture against Kings XI Punjab.

Kolkata - who reached the last-four stage of the competition for the first time in 2011 - will be aiming for a quick turnaround in order to get back to winning ways. They can also be assured of their full quota of 20 overs this time around should they need it, unlike last time when the match was reduced to a 12-overs per side affair because of a downpour at the Eden Gardens.

Live Updates: Chennai maul Deccan by 74 runs

Deccan Chargers innings:

18th over: 119 all out It's all over for Deccan. Bollinger gets the final wicket. Ankit Sharma lofts Bollinger but doesn't get the required elevation, giving an easy catch to Albie Morkel at mid-off.

Ankit Sharma c Morkel b Bollinger 15 (8)

IPL 5, Match 5: As it happened

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Delhi Daredevils innings:

20th over: Delhi 137 for 7. Royal Challengers Bangalore open their IPL 5 campaign with a solid win by 20 runs against Delhi Daredevils. Vinay Kumar bowls last over and only five runs came off it. Muttiah Muralitharan was the game-changer for Bangalore.

German industrial production falls

Frankfurt: Germany's industrial production fell by 1.3 per cent in February after bitter winter weather hit construction activity, adding to the risk that the country had slipped into a technical recession.

The month-on-month fall, reported by the Berlin economics ministry on Thursday, highlighted the weakness of Europe's largest economy at the start of the year. The ministry blamed the decline on February's cold snap, which led to an unexpectedly-steep 17.1 per cent fall in construction activity compared with January.

Germany's economy contracted in the final three months of last year as the eurozone crisis escalated. A second consecutive quarter of falling gross domestic product would amount to a technical recession.

However, Dirk Schumacher, economist at Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt, said that even if March's industrial production levels remained unchanged from February's, the German economy could still have expanded modestly in the first quarter. That would "put to rest" some of the worst fears about the impact of the eurozone debt crisis on Germany's economy although the improvement since late 2011 was "nothing spectacular," he said.

US to ease sanctions on Myanmar

Washington/Tokyo: The US is to begin easing sanctions on Myanmar following the weekend by-election victory by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her allies, starting with a relaxation of restrictions on travel by Myanmar officials and on financial transactions and investment.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, who made a historic trip to Myanmar in December, said the elections represented real change in a country dominated by military rule for decades and that the US would consider further steps if the pace of reform were maintained.

"We applaud the president [Thein Sein] and his colleagues for their leadership and courage," she said. The country had embarked on "a historic new path".

The announcement came as the European Union, Japan and Australia all said they were considering ways to ease sanctions and restrictions on doing business as a result of the by-elections, in which Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 40 of the 45 seats at stake.

The decisions underline the remarkably rapid turnround in attitudes towards Myanmar, which was treated as an international pariah for years but whose leaders have consistently surprised the international community with their commitment in recent months to political and economic reform.

New Delhi heaps pressure on Coal India

New Delhi/Mumbai: The battle between India and a UK activist hedge fund over political interference in Coal India is set to intensify after New Delhi issued a rare presidential decree demanding that the coal miner agree to increase supplies to the country's power groups.

The move is designed to boost India's electricity generation and reduce blackouts. But it is likely to trigger a reaction from The Children's Investment Fund, Coal India's largest minority shareholder, which recently launched a public campaign against political meddling in the world's largest coal miner by production volumes.

The demand, which follows intense lobbying by industrialists who have seen their plans to spend about $36bn on new power plants stalled by coal shortages, will penalise the state-run miner if it fails to meet at least 80 per cent of targeted production, and may force it to import more expensive coal from abroad. Previously there had been no such requirement.

If Coal India fails to boost production under the agreement, it would be forced to pay power companies between 20 and 40 per cent of the average additional cost caused by the state miner's inability to provide them the fuel, an official told the Financial Times.

It was unclear whether the board of Coal India would sign the agreement. In theory, it is legally bound to do so, but it has previously objected to a similar scheme put forward by Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister.

Romney sweeps three primaries

Milwaukee/Wisconsin: Mitt Romney secured has solid wins in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia, overwhelming his opponents and piling pressure on them to quit the race for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Mr Romney's sweeping victories in Tuesday's primaries will give him the bulk of the 98 delegates at stake in the three ballots, reinforcing an already all but an impregnable lead over Rick Santorum, his chief rival.

Mr Romney had accumulated at least 646 delegates to Mr Santorum's 272 – putting him more than halfway to the 1,144 needed for the nomination.

Mr Santorum would need to win 76 per cent of the remaining delegates in upcoming primaries to win the nomination, the Associated Press calculated – a next to impossible task unless Mr Romney pulls out of the race.

Newt Gingrich, who for a short time competed strongly with Mr Romney, has already acknowledged that he cannot win. The fourth remaining candidate, Ron Paul, is also not in a position to threaten the former Massachusetts governor. Neither has indicated they will drop out anytime soon.

China to let in more foreign investment

Beijing: China has almost tripled the amount of money foreign institutions can invest in its capital markets, in the latest move aimed at loosening strict capital controls and internationalising the renminbi.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission announced on Tuesday that international fund managers would be allowed to invest a combined total of $80bn in China's onshore capital markets – up from the previous limit of $30bn – in an expansion of the so-called qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) scheme. Beijing also increased the total amount of renminbi that foreign investors can raise in Hong Kong for investment back on the mainland, from Rmb20bn ($3.2bn) to Rmb70bn.

Together the moves will allow global financial institutions to play a more active role in China's largely closed domestic equity markets and breathe life into a market that was one of the world's worst performing last year.

Also on Tuesday, China's premier Wen Jiabao endorsed bolder financial reforms when he declared that the government intended to "smash the monopoly" of the country's big state-owned banks, for whom he said profits come "too easily". His comments, made on Chinese radio, appeared aimed at advancing reforms that would remove the current cap on deposit rates and a floor on lending rates that guarantee banks a healthy profit margin. The reform is also a necessary step towards full convertibility.

Obama hits out at 'social Darwinism'

Washington: President Barack Obama will on Tuesday deliver a sharply worded riposte to Republicans advocating swingeing budget cuts, accusing them of "social Darwinism" that will bring an end to the American dream.

His remarks will lay the foundations of an election-year battle aimed at portraying Republicans as heartless towards ordinary Americans while looking after millionaires, while the Democrats advance the interests of the middle class.

The budget proposal put forward by Republicans in the House of Representatives last month is nothing but "a Trojan horse", Mr Obama will say on Tuesday at a lunch organised by the Associated Press.

"Disguised as a deficit-reduction plan, it's really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It's nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism," the president will say, according to remarks released in advance by the White House.

"It's antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who's willing to work for it – a place where prosperity doesn't trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class," he will say.

Reserves untapped in India's 'land of coal'

Jharkhand: "Welcome to the land of coal," says a billboard greeting passengers arriving at the airport in Ranchi, the capital of India's eastern state of Jharkhand.

Surrounded by one of the nation's largest deposits of coal, the city resting on the top of a valley 1,000 feet above sea level is indeed a gateway to the natural resource.

Shyam Kumar, a local businessman who rents four-wheel drive vehicles mainly to mining executives, says that "everyone in the state depends on coal". Indeed the lives of 1.2bn people in India depend, at least partly, on the extraction of the commodity, as it fuels more than half of the country's power generation and is vital to maintaining economic growth in Asia's third-largest economy.

A sizeable portion is mined by state-owned Coal India but large chunks remain untapped, hidden underneath dense forest areas. To exploit these vast reserves, over the past decade India has allocated large coal blocks – areas beneath which the natural resource lies – to private companies in an effort to spark investment and boost production.

What Is Pinterest?

1. A social photo-sharing website that some call (sigh) the new Facebook killer. Its users 'pin' photographs on virtual boards sorted by 'interests'. It's as easy to use as Twitter, except that it's visual. It's about photos, but unlike with Flickr, Pinterest users pin other people's photographs, not their own. It's like a Facebook page, but less personal.

2. Facebook killer?

It had 11 million users as on January, and is booming. As we write this, it has an Alexa traffic ranking of 63. What makes it more interesting is that it cracks the early-adopter stereotype in that a majority of users are female: Over 80 percent of its users in the US are female.

3. What explains its success?

You never know when it comes to social media. Maybe people just like photographs? In eBay, products with images command a better price; in Facebook, images get more likes and comments. It certainly has something to do with the service making it easy to pin images and easier to browse—ideal for these attention-deficit times.

AR Rahman and the art of focus

Soon after I got out of AR Rahman's North Mumbai home (which also doubles up as his studio), I went online. To look up 'Munbe Vaa,' a song in the Tamil movie, Sillunu Oru Kaadhal, for which Rahman had composed the music.

Now, I don't understand a word of Tamil. And I can confidently say—without fear of contradiction from my wife—that I'm rarely 'mushy'. But the moment the song started to play, I was lost. Lost in words I didn't understand, and—I hate to say it—falling in love with love all over again.

We had visited Rahman with a clear brief in mind. There's a section in ForbesLife India , 'The Pursuit of Happiness,' where we talk to people who are perceptibly happy and ask them one central question: How do they achieve happiness? In earlier issues, as part of this series of dialogues, we'd spoken to people like the absolutely lovely Asha Bhosle, Bollywood's original charmer Shammi Kapoor, and the redoubtable Leander Paes who's known to play his tennis with his heart worn loud on his sleeve.

When my colleague Jarshad NK, who has known Rahman now for many years, asked him if he'd spend time with us, I was pleasantly surprised when he agreed; Rahman, to my mind, projected reticence, a deep regard for his privacy, so I'd pretty much taken it for granted he'd politely decline to let us into his head. I was wrong.

And he continued to confound my expectations. There was no name-dropping; he didn't carry the gravitas of somebody who's worked with some of the biggest names in the world; there wasn't the sense of self-importance you'd expect in someone who has won practically every award in the business, including two Oscars and two Grammys.

Masand: 'Housefull 2' is for four-year-olds

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Cast: Akshay Kumar, John Abraham, Ritesh Deshmukh, Shreyas Talpade, Rishi Kapoor, Randhir Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty, Boman Irani, Chunky Pandey, Johnny Lever, Asin, Jacqueline Fernandes, Zarine Khan, Shahzahn Padamsee, Ranjeet

Director: Sajid Khan

It's ironic that the funniest joke in Housefull 2 should appear after the film has ended. In the outtakes during the closing credits sequence (if you’re brave enough to still be watching!), Akshay Kumar brings Asin to meet his father, a sleazy shrink named Dr Ranjeet Vasna K Pujari, played by yesteryears villain Ranjeet. Inching towards the girl, unbuttoning his satin black shirt, the leering senior mutters salaciously: "Baby, baby, baby!" When informed by Akshay that she's the soon-to-be wife of his son, he instantly retraces his steps, buttoning up again, now muttering "Beti, beti, beti!"

Housefull 2, directed by Sajid Khan, is 'bigger' than the last film, but not necessarily better. To be fair, you can't use words like 'better' or 'funnier' to compare these films; and asking me which one I preferred out of Housefull and Housefull 2 is like asking me what I'd rather have between a migraine and a hernia. Thank you, but I'll pass.

Masand: 'Titanic 3D' is a wonderful trip down the past

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Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Gloria Stuart, Kathy Bates, Bill Paxton

Director: James Cameron

Watching Titanic on the big screen again, I felt a surge of nostalgia sweep through me. Great movies have a timeless quality to them, and Titanic is nothing if not a great movie. Set against a historical event whose outcome we already knew (the ship sinks!), James Cameron delivered an irresistible love story between free-spirited steerage-class passenger Jack Dawson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kate Winslet's Rose DeWitt Bukater, a shackled aristocrat yearning to breathe.

Like Star Wars, and possibly E.T., Titanic is hardly just a film – it's a pop-cultural phenomenon, an event that took place 15 years ago. And surprisingly, much of it – from those spectacular visual effects to the sheer innocence of its leads – still holds up. The bits that were cheesy in 1997 are still cheesy…like the clunky dialogues that will make you cringe even today, and the caricaturish villain, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), Rose’s overbearing millionaire fiancé.

Sequels are the latest fad in Bollywood

Mumbai: For all we know, the new Vidya Balan hit Kahaani may turn into a franchise soon. Director Sujoy Ghosh wants to cast Vidya in a series of films based on her character. "I feel her character Vidya Bagchi has the potential to grow and go much further.

I don't want to do a sequel for a sequel's sake. I see my protagonist growing into other stories and circumstances. It would all depend on how far Balan wants to go with the character. "Filmmaker Aanand Rai echoes a similar sentiment when he tells us why he has decided to do a sequel to his 2011 surprise hit Tanu Weds Manu. Says Aanand, "It isn't as though I have this burning ambition to do a sequel to Tanu Weds Manu. But I feel there hasn't been a closure to the lives of the two characters. I am left with a sense of dissatisfaction about their lives. I want to know what happens to Tanu and Manu after they marry." Aanand discounts any burning urge to cash in on the success of the first film.

"If I wanted to cash in on Tanu Weds Manu I'd have launched a sequel immediately. But I'm making another film after Tanu Weds Manu and will return to the characters only when I am mentally prepared to take on their lives again." Serenading sequels merely to cash in on a lucrative brand name is not unknown in Bollywood.

IBNLive

Rohit Shetty's Golmaal and All The Best were roaring successes. While Golmaal has gone to its third segment All the Best is yet to go to Number 2. According to a source, "The game-plan was to build both as franchises. But Rohit ran out of steam for All The Best after Part 1.

And since some of the star-cast was also common to both he decided to focus only on taking Golmaal through a series of feature films." Interestingly the characters in Golmaalbarring Tusshar Kapoor's 'talking' deaf-mute, are all different in the three Golmaal films, and so are the situations and screenplays.