Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

The Tamils of Malaysia, complaining of prolonged oppression by the government, may turn to the LTTE for support and take up arms unless international pressure, particularly from India, compels the Badawi regime to change its attitude, some moderates among them have said, pointing out that several Malaysian Tamils support the LTTE and contribute to the Tigers' war machine in Sri Lanka. In the massive rally of the Malaysian Indians in Kuala Lumpur on November 25, several protesters were seen carrying portraits of Mahatma Gandhi to show their faith in non violence. One of the leaders of that rally called by the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), P.Waytha Moorthy, had declared that Gandhi was his role model and even went on satyagraha when arrested. The police used force to disperse the protesters, which drew all round condemnation, including from TamilNadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi, who wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking India's intervention. In an ap...

A "CYBER cold war" is developing as international web espionage and cyber attacks become the biggest threats to internet security, according to a report. Computer security firm McAfee said governments and government allied groups were engaging in increasingly sophisticated cyber spying, with many attacks originating from China. Some 120 countries could be developing the capacity for such activities. In the past 12 months, there have been reports of cyber attacks against government targets in the US, Germany, India, New Zealand and Australia. What started as probes to see what was possible have become well-funded and well organized operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage, the report said, with perpetrators aiming to cause havoc by disrupting critical national infrastructure systems. Targets include air traffic control, financial markets, water and sewer- age systems, electricity, payrolls, intensive care units and even traffic lights. In September:...

Latte factor makes the day brighter and happier for most youngsters. Yes, many can't function without their coffee of choice but the latte factor is more than that. This term owes its name to the coffee culture, but it describes the loosening of purse strings on a regular basis for an expensive magazine, CDs, cup of coffee, a certain sandwich from your favourtie daily, taking cabs and getting your hair done only in the best salon… At the end of the month or year, a huge chunk of money is spent on daily expenditure, which might seem trivial in the short run. But it's hard to quit the latte culture as it is one of the highlights of the day. And you have every reason to indulge in the latte factor in your youth as this is the only time when you have the least amount of responsibilities according to the youth. Rowena Rumah of Ideal Degree College says, "Looking cool is very important so we get our hair cut every two months in fancy parlours." Shoe addict, Mohit Srivastava...

Have a blog? Where are the readers? Touched a raw nerve, right? Don’t fret it’s not tough to get them, if you follow these rules The 4Ps of blog marketing - BY AJAY JAIN Setting up a blog is as easy as it gets getting traffic is another proposition altogether. Yes, blogs by their very nature are supposed to be search engine optimization ready but there is a catch: Your blog needs to break free from the millions of blogs jostling with each other for attention. And there is no magic wand to do this for you. You could, however, seek out Philip Kotler for some inspiration his 4Ps of marketing can work for your blog, too without spending a dime or morphing into a nerd. Product No matter how sleek a car, it is of no use if it does not run. The same goes for your blog unless you want to attract only monkeys, no one will care to read about the bowl of nuts you enjoy sitting under a tree. Content is everything; this is your product and the first P. “Start by asking why you are writing a blo...

India: This year Railways will be able to run seamlessly through dense fog with the help of signals from the sky, literally. A Geographical Positioning System, or GPS, device will connect trains with a satellite orbiting the earth and tell drivers about foggy conditions ahead and direct their actions accordingly . The "Fog Safe Tech Device" is a high-tech kit of an antenna, a monitor and a few consoles installed at the train's engine. It shows in the monitor visibility conditions up to four kilometres ahead. Moreover, it also alerts about obstructions on the track. "This device lets a driver know what lies ahead even if he cannot sight them. There is also a gauge, which shows the level of visibility and the position of the tracks. Therefore, trains can run even in zero-visibility," said a Northern Railway spokesman. For Railways this is a quantum leap, considering that until last year, drivers used to rely on small explosives called detonators to explode ahead t...

They call him Bijli Wale Baba and not without reason either. Baba Mangal Das, a priest at the Ram Janki temple Bamhorisar village in Lalitpur district, takes electric shocks regularly and actually feels comfortable with a live wire placed on his body. Explaining his bizarre liking for electric shocks the intensity of which can kill an ordinary mortal, the Baba says, "I have been accustomed to this since the past three years. At night, I plug in the wire and place the other end either inside my mouth, ears or under my armpit to sleep well. If I do not take these shocks, I cannot sleep." He claims that he actually feels better after taking the shocks. The 52-year-old priest confesses that he was addicted to opium, smack and marijuana for several years but his craving for intoxicants remained unsaturated until he accidentally touched one end of an electrified iron rod in 2004. "The electric shock that I received gave me a strange kind of satisfaction and then I trie...

Newyork: Just give a second thought before you perch the laptop computer on your lap it can affect your fertility. Researchers in the United States have carried out a study and found that the heat generated by the laptops raises the risk of infertility in men who balance the machines on their lap, the WebMD reported. "Working on laptop computers in a laptop position causes significant scrotal temperature elevation as a result of heat exposure and posture-related effects," according to lead researcher Prof Yefim Sheynkin. Prof Sheynkin and his fellow researchers at the State University of New York came to the conclusion after studying 29 healthy young men aged between 21 and 35 for two, one hour sessions in a climate controlled room.

Former South Africa opener Gary Kirsten is set to take over as India's next coach later this winter, over seven months after Greg Chappell left the post. Kirsten, who secretly met top BCCI officials, the coach selection panel (comprising former cap tains Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and S. Venkataraghavan) and Test skipper Anil Kumble on Monday night in New Delhi, has been offered a two year contract. The former South African opener has played 101 Tests and 185 ODIs. He made his debut against Australia in Melbourne in 1993. He has a Test average of 45.27 and an aggregate of 7,289 runs. He was South Africa's batting coach after his retirement in 2004.

In Hindu mythology, Radha is the principal love of Krishna's life. In the Srimad Bhagavatam, and the Gita Govinda, for example, she is depicted as his paramour but in other Vaishnava traditions of Hinduism, Radha is, in fact, regarded as a primary deity. She is often worshipped as an avatar of Goddess Lakshmi. Radha is almost always depicted alongside Krishna who spent a great deal of time and his youth in the company of cow-herd girls called gopis. As they frolicked in the village of Vrindavan, Radha is said to be one of the gopis with whom Krishna played during his childhood. For many, her importance exceeds that of even Krishna as she is considered to be his original Shakti. The other gopis, it is believed, are her maidservants. In the Padma Purana it is said that there were a total of 18,000 gopis amongst whom 108 were the most prominent. Out of these 108, eight were considered still more important and amongst these eight, two had special positions - Chandravali and Radhara...

Kuala Lumpur: Rising oil wealth is lifting Islamic banking - which adheres to the laws of the Koran and its prohibition against charging interest into the financial mainstream. Big banks, including Citigroup, HSBC and Deutsche Bank , as well as financial capitals like London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, are all going into the Islamic banking business. An estimated 300 Islamic financial institutions hold at least $500 billion in assets, an amount that is increasing more than 10 per cent a year. In addition to Islamic loans, there are Islamic bonds, Islamic credit cards and even Islamic derivatives. Loans and bonds that conform to the Koran are already available in the US. And Britain, Japan and Thailand are contemplating issuing Islamic bonds of their own. "This is an industry on its way from a niche industry to becoming a truly global industry," said Mr Khawaja Mohammad Salman Younis, the managing director for operations in Malaysia for Kuwait Finance House, the world's se...

An Indian film-maker has captured the sordid and hazardous journey of illiterate villagers from Punjab in India, who are trafficked by smugglers into western Europe particularly countries such as Britain and into cities like London and Leicester. The hour long film, titled Shores Far Away by Delhi based film maker Savyasaachi Jain, was broadcast at a neighborhood centre in Rothley street in Leicester late on Friday evening at an event attended by Leicester East MP Keith Vaz and the UK government's borders and immigration agency (BIA) deputy director (Midlands and East of England Region) Simon Excell. "Illegal immigrants are trafficked by these smugglers from India via Russia, the Ukraine, Turkey and then on to Calais (France) from where they reach the United Kingdom and cities like London and Leicester," Mr Vaz said. Another route for the illegal immigration is through Russia, the Ukraine, Slovakia and then into Austria, the gateway to western Europe. The film was ...

Malaysian police on Sunday fired tear gas and water cannon to prevent thousands of ethnic Indians from taking part in a rally, declared "illegal" by the government, outside the British High Commission here. The demonstrators, who had gathered outside the Petronas Twin Towers, the second largest building in the world, were beaten and dragged into trucks by the police, witnesses said. The rally call had been given by Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), a non-governmental agency, which has held the British Government responsible for bringing Indians to the then Malaya as "indentured labourers and exploiting them". It has claimed a compensation of $4 trillion. Kuala Lumpur: Thousands of ethnic Indians, a few carrying photos of Mahatma Gandhi had assembled before dawn near the Petronas towers. Several hundreds more had gathered in Batu Caves, a limestone cave Murugan temple on the city's outskirts. The Government had warned...

Moms to be, please note if you don't want to risk miscarriage, just quit smoking. A team of international researchers has carried out a study and found that chemicals in cigarettes change a pregnant woman's body chemistry and distort the results of screening for disability in the foetus, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday. This puts women at high risk of miscarriage as they then have to undergo a further screening test for abnormality, according to the researchers. According to Imperial College-based Prof. Philip Steer, the Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology which has published the study, "The findings were further proof of damaging effects of smoking during pregnancy". "Babies of mothers who smoke during pregnancy are small for gestational age and tend also to deliver earlier. This research indicates smoking may also cause over estimation of the risk of Down's (Syndrome), thus exposing the mother to a higher risk ...

The AudioPorn Central is a community blog, it is about music, about creating, enjoying, performing, partying and so on. There are so many great bands in the world and not every band gets international spotlight. We are about to change this!!! We wanna team up with music bloggers from all around the world, to post more and more local acts whatever language they sing and wherever they are from. If you have a music blog yourself and you feel like to do something to promote your country's music scene, feel free to contact us!

India won the first Test against Pakistan by six wickets Cricinfo 26 Nov'07: Handshakes all around as the players congratulate each other on a hard fought and thoroughly engrossing Test match. Tendulkar and Laxman walk off to loud cheers from the Feroz Shah Kotla. India needed just 6.2 overs this morning to score the 32 runs needed for victory. Tendulkar scored 24 of them off only 24 balls. Anil Kumble is the Man of the Match for his captaincy , his seven wickets and a useful 24 in the first innings. Kumble: "This ground has been very special, everything had happened on this ground. I think the boys responded really well and getting Pakitan out under 250 in both innings was creditable. The partnerships between Laxman and Dhoni, Dravid and Jaffer and Sachin and Ganguly were all very crucial. [On his own performance] It was excellent to get into the [bowling] groove right away. Three months is a long break at my age and I'm very happy with my performance." So that...

Less than a year after Shilpa Shetty became the victim of racial slur in Britain, two of Bollywood's leading actors have claimed that they're also racially abused while filming in the country. "Sexiest Asian Woman" Bipasha Basu and her co-actor Arshad Warsi were verbally roughed up by a group of white men while they had been shooting a scene for their latest film Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal near Glassy Junction, a popular Indian pub in Southall, west London, some months back. "I was shocked. I'm not used to this sort of thing. A car stopped with a couple of white guys. They just lashed out at us. For me it was an alien thing. It was like, do people actually think like that?" the media reported on Sunday, quoting Warsi as saying here. Even fellow actor John Abraham, who was also present on the sets of the film at that time, has said he's astonished too. "When you come to London and you are shooting, it's the last thing you expect," he sai...

A GENETICS website encouraging people to send in swabs of their saliva began operating on Monday in a closely watched Silicon Valley venture with links to the search firm Google. The site, 23andMe.com , is named after the 23 pairs of chromosomes in the human body It claims to offer the first "personal genome service" for $999 (about Rs 39,000) a customer Using hi-tech analysis software, the company says it can read up to half a million points in an individual's genome. The service is intended to help people understand their inherited traits and to allow them to compare themselves with friends and family Anne Wojcicki , one of the co-founders, said, "We believe this information provides intriguing insights into an individual's genetics, with the goal of expanding the collective knowledge base by enabling active participa- tion in research." Wojcicki is married to Sergey Brin , Google's co founder The venture is based in Mountain View, the same Silic...

San Francisco (Reuters) - Picture having an Olympian view of millions of photos the world's photographers and camera phone users have produced over the last day. That's what Flickr , Yahoo Inc's online photo sharing site, said on Sunday the company plans to offer this week, by introducing a set of mapping features that makes it easier to find photos based on their location. Starting on Monday, Flickr will unveil a way for Web users to browse photos from tens of millions of geographically located photos loaded up to its site, http://www.flickr.com/ . The service, called "Places," identifies on a global map the latest hot spots for photo contributions. "It's a new way to browse what is happening in the world," said Kakul Srivastava, senior director of product management at Flickr. Flickr Places also allows users to search by more than 100,000 geographic place names to find photos that might interest them. Many of the ...

The Ahmadiyya Muslim community believes that Jesus survived the crucifixion and travelled to India where he lived a full life and got married. They believe that his tomb is in Kashmir and that he had adopted the name of Yuz Asaf in Kashmir. A new Hollywood film will now focus on Jesus' years in India, along with the three wise men, during the "missing years" of his life between the ages of 13 and 30 that are not mentioned in the New Testament. The film, Aquarian Gospel, is based on the book of same name that claims to be the true story of the life of Jesus, including "the ‘lost' eighteen years silent in the New Testament." The book, first published in 1908, was written by Levi H. Dowling during the late 19th century. Details from The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ by Russian anthropologist Nicholas Notovich have also been included in the script for the film written by John F. Sullivan and William Keenan, who is also the producer of the $20 million adventure sa...

Islamabad: Defying a growing crackdown on dissent by President Pervez Musharraf, young Pakistanis are using blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook to hit back at a state of emergency. Plans for "flash" protests in Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and other cities are being posted at the last minute to skirt a ban on all political rallies under repressive emergency laws. The Internet has become a vital tool for them, with the government shutting down the country's biggest two private television news channels on Sunday and rounding up thousands of Opposition leaders. "We are coordinating protests with other universities across Pakistan using Facebook , using blogs, cellphones and text messages," Ahmad, a student in his 20s from Lahore, said. He asked that his full name not be used in case he is traced by the authorities. Protesters can face jail if found guilty of inciting unrest, especially since Gen. Musharraf ruled that civilians can be tried i...

DUBAI: MTV hopes hip-hop and reality television tailored and sanitized for the Middle East region will draw young Arabs away from dozens of locally produced music video channels that already dominate the market to a new regional version of the pop-culture channel. MTV Arabia , which official launched over the weekend, will feature 60 per cent international music, 40pc Arabic music and local adaptations of the channel's popular non-music shows. But MTV, which is known for airing provocative videos featuring scantily clad women, says its Arab version will show less bare skin and profanity. "When we come to people's homes, we want to earn their respect," said Abdullatif Al Sayegh, chief executive of Arab Media Group, which along with MTV Networks International, owns MTV Arabia. He explained that there will be "culturally sensitive editors going through content of the programming." The station aired a pre taped show featuring Grammy award-winning rapper and...

London: Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu has been named the sexiest Asian woman by the British newspaper Eastern Eye. On claiming the top spot for the second time after 2005, the Indian actress said: "I'm glad I got the crown back and will try and hold on to it this time. "I think sexiness goes beyond looks and is a total package, from your personality to the way you carry yourself in your everyday life. I'm really grateful to all who voted for me because I work very hard," added the actress, who is looking forward to her next release Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal. Commenting on Bipasha's international appeal, Hamant Verma, editor of Eastern Eye and the founder of its Sexiest Asian Women in the World List, said: "Bipasha is a living embodiment of sexual attractiveness. Her acting ability, beauty and charm are capable of arousing great interest in her from the world media." Last year's winner, former Miss World and Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra, bag...

New York 12 Nov'07: Best selling writer Ira Levin, whose genre hopping novels such as the horror classic Rosemary's Baby and the Nazi thriller The Boys from Brazil provided meaty movie roles for Mia Farrow and Laurence Olivier, has died of a heart attack. The Levin, 78, who also wrote for television and Broadway, passed away in his Manhattan apartment on Monday. Long before authors like Stephen King routinely had their books turned into movies, Levin watched his novels move to the big screen. Besides Rosemary's Baby with Farrow and The Boys From Brazil with Olivier, Levin's novels The Stepford Wives, Sliver and A Kiss Before Dying all received the Hollywood treatment. His long running 1978 play Deathtrap was also made into a Sidney Lumet-directed film. Levin's page turning books were once compared by Newsweek writer Peter S. Frescott to a bag of popcorn: "Utterly without nutritive value and probably fattening, yet there's no way to stop once you...

Formula One motor racing will arrive in India in 2010 . Delhi based infrastructure major JP Associates has won an exclusive 10-year contract to host the premier race in Greater Noida. Manoj Gaur, managing director of JP Associates, confirmed this to the Hindustan Times and added that his group signed the agreement with Fl boss Bernie Ecclestone last week. He refused to divulge details of the deal. The race track to be developed by the JP group, will be near the proposed Greater Noida airport about 50 km from Delhi. The Noida authority has already given in principle approval for the site, sources said. The Rs 1,500-crore project will be spread over around 350 acres land. Enthusiasm in FI has been the on the rise in India ever since Narain Karthikeyan debuted at the FI circuit for Team Jordan. On Tuesday, another young star, Karun Chandhok , tested for Red Bull at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona. Fl track designer Hermann Tilke had recently visited Delhi to work out a possible ro...

Reliance Industries chairman and managing director, Mukesh Ambani is the world's richest man recently has gifted the $60 million Airbus plane to wife Neeta on her 44th birthday. Luxury jet with entertainment cabins, a sky bar and fancy showers for her birthday. The jet is custom fitted with an office and a cabin with game consoles, music systems, satellite television and wireless communication, the report said. It also has a master bedroom, a bathroom with a range of showers and a bar with mood lighting. This is not all. He is building a $1-billion home in India's financial capital of Mumbai, which is considered to be one of the world's most expensive houses. Seems like it's raining money for him now.

Paris: Airbus on Monday announced Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Tala ( world's 13th-richest man ) as the first private buyer of an A380 superjumbo, the world's largest passenger airliner. The prospective buyer's identity had been kept secret for months but was unveiled to coincide with the Dubai air show. Prince Alwaleed, whose interests span Kingdom Holding to Euro Disney, hotels and banking, has ordered a VIP version of the A380, dubbed the "Flying Palace". He already owns a Boeing 747-400, the newest of the original jumbo jet currently in service. The bigger Airbus superjumbo has been hit by production delays but entered service with Singapore Airlines last month. It can seat 525 passengers in three classes or more than 800 in an alleconomy layout by using less space between seats. Leg room will not be a problem on the ‘Flying Palace,' which fea tures 551 sq metres of usable floor space on twin passenger decks enough for a couple of tennis courts. T...

Although we credit Google, Yahoo , and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind. He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex. But there is a long list of great minds that have given us the information system we now use today. This article illustrates some of them. Here is the History of the Search Engine: Ted Nelson Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution. While Ted's project Xanadu, for reasons unknown, never really took off, much of the inspiration to create the WWW came from Ted...

If you've just started experimenting with make up, it's probably not a good idea to use your mother's or your sister's stuff. Girls, buy your own products and follow these tips from celebrity makeup artist Manzoor Khan. Remember, for teenagers, the funda to follow is: Less is more. Keep it simple. You could start with a lip gloss or a lip stain in shades like peach, baby pink or nude. Avoid lipstick and stay away from dark lip colors as they don't suit youngsters. The key is to look fresh and pretty, so don't overdo your eyes either. Use an eyelash curler to give shape to your lashes, then apply a coat of mascara. This will give your face a fresh, open eyed look. Your eyes don't need anything else, but if you're going for a wedding, you could apply a little bit of kajal to define your eyes. Ensure not to use heavy, dark eye make-up as it would only make you look older. Eyeshadow is also not recommended as it could look a bit much. Your skin ...

Lights… cameras…click…the new mantra of new movie buffs. The World Wide Web has opened a portal of convenience for most aficionados who are literally just a click away from their favorite reels. Downloading movies has never been easier. Sites like Mininova, Meganova, Torrent spy ... have millions of users who use these peer-to-peer sites or P2P as they are popularly called. Through these sites you can download movies that are saved in other user's computers. Cinema lovers can get DVD quality films in a compressed format that they can easily download, watch and make copies, all for free. Yash Raj Films in an attempt to curb this rising tide has ventured into the digital download market where the users can log onto sites like www.watchindia.tv and www.tinselvision.com and download movies from the Yash Raj house for a nominal fee. These services are for viewers across the world except India. Anand Gurnani, Senior Manager, Internet and new Media for Yash Raj says that the reason ...

London: Curvy women are not only intelligent, attractive and live longer, they also give birth to intelligent children, finds a new study. Women with large hips and small waists are considered curvy and they are found to be more intelligent than those with either " apple-shaped " or linear bodies , according to the study to be published this week in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour. It is possibly because such women have higher levels of omega3 fatty acids on their hips. Intake of Omega3 fatty acids found in some types of fish is already known to help improve cognitive health. Waist fat can also be a contributory factor in diabetes and heart disease. Thinner or linear shaped women would simply lack enough of either type of fat, scientists at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California, Santa Barbara have found . The researchers based their findings after collecting details of body measurements and scores in cognitive tests of about 16,000 women and gi...

Reuters: A New Jersey man was sentenced to more than two years in prison on Friday for helping send spam e-mails to more than 1.2 million America Online subscribers. Todd Moeller, 28, was sentenced 27 months in prison in a federal court in New York after he was caught making a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails advertising a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the profits, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan said. Moeller and Adam Vitale of New York pleaded guilty earlier this year to breaking antispam laws and defeating AOL's filter system by using a variety of computer servers and changing the header information on e-mails to ensure they could not be traced, court papers said. Moeller told the informant via instant messaging he could conceal the source of the e-mails through his access to 40 different servers and had profited $40,000 a month from other spam e-mail scams that promoted stocks, prosecutors said. In one week in August 20...

Onions, garlic to prevent cancer Newyork: Better load up on the breath mints - a new study has found that eating lots of onions and garlic may help prevent cancers. International researchers have carried out a study and found that people whose diets are rich in onions, garlic, and other alliums have a lower risk of several types of cancer than those who avoid the pungent herbs, the WebMD reported. According to researcher Carlotta Galeone of the Istituto di Ricerche Farmocologiche in Milan , "The health benefits of onions and garlic have been touted for centuries, but few studies have been able to prove the benefits. Onion and garlic consumption could simply be a marker for a healthier lifestyle and a diet high in cancer-fighting herbs and vegetables." Salt has no link to heart disease London: If you think you can lower the risk of heart disease by cutting down on salt, you're wrong if researchers are right. British researchers have carried out a study and foun...

Luxor, Egypt: The linen wrapped mummy of King Tut was put on public display for the first time on Sunday - 85 years after the 3,000-year-old boy pharaoh's golden enshrined tomb and mummy were discovered in Luxor's famed Valley of the Kings. Archaeologists removed the mummy from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb, momentarily pulling aside a white linen covering to reveal his shrivelled leather-like black face and body. The mummy of the 19-year-old pharaoh , whose life and death has captivated people for nearly a century, was placed in a climate controlled glass box in the tomb, with only the face and feet showing under the linen covering. "The golden boy has magic and mystery and therefore every person all over the world will see what Egypt is doing to preserve the golden boy, and all of them I am sure will come to see the golden boy," Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told reporters under the intense Luxor sun. Hawass said scientists began r...

After winning rave reviews for Casino Royale, Actor Daniel Craig has signed a $60m (€41m) deal to star in the next four 'James Bond' films. The blond 39-year-old is currently filming Bond 22 - his second outing as secret agent 007 following the success of 2006's 'Casino Royale' - and movie executives have reportedly signed him up for another three films, tying him to the franchise for the next 10 years. A source says: "To date Daniel has been quite cautious over saying how many films he'd be starring in. "It was presumed he'd probably do a couple more but the word is the new deal ensures he'll do at least another four across the next decade." Craig's predecessor, Pierce Brosnan , starred in four Bond movies - but the longest-serving 007 star remains to be Roger Moore, who played the iconic role in seven films between 1973 and 1985.

Despite the fact that Activision has held the Iron Man license for years now, Sega has recently taken the license over and will be the sole publisher of any and all Iron Man games based on the movie and/or comic. Hopefully this does not have an effect on the upcoming Marvel MMORPG that has been in development, or any sequels that may span from Activision's Marvel: Ultimate Alliance franchise. Check out the first screen shots from Sega's new Iron Man game, which will be based on the upcoming feature film: