Mumbai: Bollywood’s latest flick Johnny Gaddaar released to a lukewarm response across India on Friday, as the movie failed to enthuse cinegoers, who termed the flick as a mere ‘time-pass’.

“The movie was okay, just a time-pass flick. I am not satisfied with the movie and the story is not much,” said Varun, a viewer. Yogesh Sharma, another moviegoer added, “Movie is about five men who are out to make money. Its okay, but the music is good.”

The film, which is tribute to the erstwhile Bollywood flick ‘Johnny Mera Naam’, focuses on the notorious nightlife of Mumbai city.

Directed by Sriram Raghavan, the film goes on to portray how the thirst of making some quick bucks lands people in to trouble.

Starring a volley of actors including debutante Neil Mukesh and veteran Dharmendra, the film depicts how things go awry when a gang of five people gets a chance to make money in just four days and how circumstances take a turn when one of them double crosses others.

“Movie is a suspense thriller. It’s about five friends who plan a certain caper and the caper goes wrong because, one of the friends is a double crosser. Now, the audience knows right in the beginning that this person has done it but other characters don’t know. The fun of the movie is like when will they (other four members) find out, how will they find out, what happens when they find out and how will he deal with it?” said Sriram Raghavan, the film’s director.

The film carries nuances from James Hadley Chase novels and other Bollywood thrillers, and its soundtrack is generating quite a lot of interest amongst the people.

Mumbai: Ranbir Kapoor, who brought in his birthday Friday, 28 Sep 2007, with the least fanfare, says he couldn’t get a better birthday gift than Saawariya, his debut film with Sanjay Leela Bhansali.“No gift can equal ‘Saawariya’ ever. Besides that I’d have liked my sister Ridhima to be here. She did send me her gift from Delhi,” Ranbir told IANS.

Though his birthday was a low-key affair, fans inundated him with messages. “The SMS has been going crazy. When I woke up in the morning there were at least 45-50 messages including one from Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. And then there were girls on the road screaming Happy Birthday. It felt good.”

He prefers celebrating his special day with family and close friends.

“It’s always that for me. Why should it be any different this time? A couple of friends came home. No big noisy party for me. I’m not the party kind at all. And I’m not a birthday person … Maybe because I don’t like to build expectations around one day.

“You never know how it would turn out. And I hate disappointments. For me the greatest happiness is to share my evening with my family.

Asked how it feels to share his birthday with Lata Mangeshkar, Ranbir said: “My grandfather Raj Kapoor used to be a huge fan of Lataji. I’m myself a huge fan of her. Just to tell people I was born on the same day as such a great legend gives me a huge high.

“I love her old songs from RK Films, specially ‘Aa ab laut chalen’ (’Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai’) and all the songs of ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’. I love old songs of the 1950s and 60s. My all-time favorite number is ‘Kissi ki muskurahanton pe ho nissar’ by Mukeshji.”

Washington: Whether we are seeking a mate or assessing a possible rival, we are captured almost instantaneously by attractive people.The researchers studied the role mating-related motives can play in a psychological phenomenon called attentional adhesion. “It’s like magnetism at the level of visual attention,” said Jon Maner, an assistant professor of psychology at Florida State University.

“The paper, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You: Attentional Adhesion to Mates and Rivals , is one of the first to show how strongly, quickly and automatically we are attuned to attractive people,” he said. In a series of three experiments, Maner and his colleagues found that the study participants, all heterosexual men and women, fixated on highly attractive people within the first half of a second of seeing them.

Single folks ogled the opposite sex, of course, but those in committed relationships also checked people out, with one major difference: They were more interested in beautiful people of the same sex.

“If we’re interested in finding a mate, our attention gets quickly and automatically stuck on attractive members of the opposite sex,” Maner said. “If we’re jealous and worried about our partner cheating on us, attention gets quickly and automatically stuck on attractive people of our own sex because they are our competitors,” he added.

Maner’s research is based on the idea that, through processes of biological evolution, our brains have been designed to strongly and automatically latch on to signs of physical attractiveness in others in order to find a mate and guard him or her from potential competitors. “These kinds of attentional biases can occur completely outside of our conscious awareness,” he said.

Biologically or not, this phenomenon is fraught with potential romantic peril. For example, even some people in committed relationships had difficulty pulling their attention away from images of attractive people of the opposite sex. And fixating on images of perceived romantic rivals could contribute to feelings of insecurity. “It may be helpful to try to minimize our exposure to these images that have probably been ‘doctored,’” Maner said.

“We should pay attention to all of the regular-looking people out in the world so that we have an appropriate standard of physical beauty. This is important because too much attention to ultra-attractive people can damage self-esteem as well as satisfaction with a current romantic partner,” Maner added.

In the experiments, study participants - 120 people in the first study and 160 and 162 in the second and third studies, respectively, completed questionnaires to determine the extent to which they were motivated to seek out members of the opposite sex. They then took part in a series of ‘priming’ activities before they were shown photos of highly attractive men, highly attractive women, average-looking men and average-looking women.

After a photo of one of the faces flashed in one quadrant of a computer screen, the participants were required to shift their attention away from that face to somewhere else on the screen. Using a precise measure of reaction time, Maner found that it took the participants longer to shift their attention away from the photos of the highly attractive people.

Maner said he was surprised that his studies showed little differences between the sexes when it came to fixating on eye-catching people. “Women paid just as much attention to men as men did to women,” he said.

“I was also surprised that jealous men paid so much attention to attractive men. Men tend to worry more about other men being more dominant, funny or charismatic than they are. But when it comes to concerns about infidelity, men are very attentive to highly attractive guys because presumably their wives or girlfriends may be too,” he added.

Prague (IPA: [prɑːg], Czech: Praha (IPA: [ˈpraɦa]), see also other names), is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Its official name is hlavní město Praha, meaning the Capital City of Prague.

Situated on the River Vltava in central Bohemia, Prague has been the political, cultural, and economic center of the Czech state for over 1100 years. The city proper is home to nearly 1.2 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 1.9 million^[1].

Prague is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe^[2] and belongs to the most visited cities on the continent^[3]. Since 1992, the historic centre of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Nicknames for Prague have included “the mother of cities” (Praga mater urbium, or “Praha matka měst” in Czech)”, “city of a hundred spires” and “the golden city”^[4].

[edit] History

Main article: History of Prague

[edit] Prehistory

The land where Prague came to be built has been settled since Paleolithic Age. Several thousands of years ago, there were trade routes connecting southern parts of Europe to northern Europe which passed through this area, following the course of the river. From around 500 BC the Celtic tribe known as the Boii, were the first inhabitants of this region known by name. The Boii named the region Bohemia and the river Vltava. The Germanic tribe Marcomanni migrated to Bohemia with its king Maroboduus in 9 AD. Meanwhile, some of the Celts migrated southward while the remainder assimilated with the Marcomanni. In 568, most of the Marcomanni migrated southward with the Lombards, another Germanic tribe. The rest of Marcomanni assimilated with the invading West Slavs. (The Migration of Nations started in the 2nd century; it ended at the end of the 9th and at the beginning of the 10th centuries). The Byzantine historian Prokopios mentions the presence of the Slavs in the lands in 512 AD. The Czech Slavic tribe came to Bohemia at the beginning of 7th century and Forefather Czech became the founder of the Czech nation.

According to legends, Princess Libuše, the sovereign of the Czech tribe, married a humble ploughman by the name of Přemysl and founded the dynasty carrying the same name. The legendary Princess saw many prophecies from her castle Libusin, which was located in central Bohemia.^{[citation needed]} (Archaeological finds dating back to the seventh century support the theory of the castle’s location).^{[citation needed]} In one prophecy, it is told, she foresaw the glory of Prague. One day she had a vision: “I see a vast city, whose glory will touch the stars! I see a place in the middle of a forest where a steep cliff rises above the Vltava River. There is a man, who is chiselling the threshold (prah) for the house. A castle named Prague (Praha) will be built there. Just as the princes and the dukes stoop in front of a threshold, they will bow to the castle and to the city around it. It will be honoured, favoured with great repute, and praise will be bestowed upon it by the entire world.”^{[citation needed]}

Brian David Griese (born March 18, 1975 in Miami, Florida) is an American football quarterback for the Chicago Bears of the NFL. He is the son of former NFL great Bob Griese of the Miami Dolphins. They wrote a book together, Undefeated (ISBN 0-7852-7021-3), published in 2000 about their lives through their undefeated seasons and living through the breast cancer illness and death of Brian’s mother and Bob’s first wife, Judi.

[edit] High school years

Griese attended Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, Florida and was a letterman in football, basketball, and golf. In football, he won All-State third team honors as a senior

[edit] College career

Griese played college football at the University of Michigan from 1993 to 1997. Michigan did not offer him a scholarship, so he walked on to the football team. After he was redshirted in 1993 and limited to placeholding duties in 1994, Griese took over as the starting quarterback after Scott Dreisbach was injured five games into the 1995 season. Griese started for the remainder of the 1995 season, capped by a stunning upset of #2 ranked Ohio State, 31-23.

Griese ran into off-season trouble after the 1995 season. On April 7, 1996, the staff of a local bar called Scorekeepers locked Griese out of their establishment after the Michigan star had entered and exited several times through a fire exit to urinate in the alley. In response, Griese broke the bar’s window. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor malicious destruction of property charge for the offense.

At the beginning of the 1996 season, Dreisbach regained his starting job and Griese returned to the bench, serving as the team’s pooch punter. However, after Dreisbach struggled, Griese replaced him at halftime against Ohio State, where he led the Wolverines to another upset victory over the Buckeyes, 13-9. Griese finished the season starting in a 17-14 loss to Alabama in the Outback Bowl.

In 1997, Griese remained the starter. Along with Heisman Trophy winner Charles Woodson, he led the Wolverines to an undefeated season and a share of the national championship. Griese was selected as the MVP of the Rose Bowl, passing for 251 yards and three touchdowns in Michigan’s win over Washington State.

In his Michigan career, Griese had a 17-5 record as a starter. The Wolverines won all three games against Ohio State in which he quarterbacked. Griese was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and received his bachelor’s degree in an individualized concentration from Michigan in 1997.

[edit] Professional career

Brian Griese was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the third round of the 1998 NFL Draft. His Wonderlic Test score was a 39. Griese began his professional career as a 3rd string-backup to Bubby Brister and John Elway. As a rookie, Griese was a member of the Super Bowl champion Broncos, though he primarily watched from the sidelines. Elway retired after that season, and Griese then became a starting quarterback, earning a place in the 2000 Pro Bowl, the same year his QB rating of 102.9 earned the NFL QB rating title. His 19:4 TD to interception ratio that year was the second best in NFL history.

Griese has consistently completed a high percentage of his passes. He has had four seasons with a better than 64% completion rate, including one year (2004) when he completed 69.3% of his passes. Nevertheless, he has yet to establish himself as one of the elite quarterbacks of the league, possibly due to injuries and the perception that his arm isn’t very strong (although he can throw the long ball). At Denver, he was released and replaced with former Cardinals starter Jake Plummer. He was later signed to the Miami Dolphins and then to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His stint with the Dolphins, where his father Bob Griese was a legend, was brief. Griese was given the starting job when the Dolphins starting quarterback Jay Fiedler got injured. Griese had an excellent start as a Dolphin, passing for 3 touchdowns and 0 interceptions in a blowout victory against San Diego. But he was less impressive in later games which was caused by a lack of pass protection and a weak offensive line and was benched for more mobile Jay Fiedler, who himself would later lose the job.

He was able to perform well for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and provided a catalyst for the jumpstart of the Tampa offense. Griese helped them to their only victories in 2004 with a 97.5 QB rating and to a 5-1 record in 2005 before succumbing to a torn ACL. Griese was cut by the Buccaneers in 2006 after his injury to his knee in order to free up money for the salary cap. On March 21, 2006, he signed a five year contract with the Chicago Bears.

After signing with the Bears, Griese saw limited action. Though he fared better than Rex Grossman during the 2006 Pre-Season, coach Lovie Smith decided to keep Griese as the Bears’ second string quarterback. He took late fourth quarter snaps at the end of blow-out victories. Though Grossman started every Bears game in the 2006 season, Smith allowed Griese some extended gametime during week fifteen, after the Bears had clinched home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. In a game against the Detroit Lions, Griese completed six of nine passes for 51 yards, which set up several game-winning Robbie Gould field goals. Smith called on Griese to relieve a struggling Grossman for the second half of the final regular season game against the Green Bay Packers. However, Griese fared even worse, completing 5 of 15 passes for 124 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. Though some Chicagoans questioned Grossman’s ability to lead the Bears to the Super Bowl, Lovie Smith stood by Grossman, and declared him the team’s starter throughout the playoffs. Despite poor performance by Grossman the defense and special teams led the Bears to Super Bowl XLI, where the Indianapolis Colts beat them, 29-17.

On September 25, many news sources reported that Smith demoted Grossman in favor of Griese.^[1] The official announcement came September 26 [1]

[edit] Personal life

• Brian Griese is founder and board president of Judi’s House, a children’s grief support center in Denver, Colorado.

Brian’s mother, Judi Griese, succumbed to breast cancer when Brian was 13. The grieving process was hard for Brian, and so he established Judi’s House to serve grieving children in the Denver area. He continues to maintain close ties with the facility, despite the frequent moves dictated by his professional football career.

[edit] References

1. ^ NFL.com, Griese to replace Grossman at QB for Bears, Retrieved on September 25, 2007.

[edit] External links

• Official Profile and Statistics
• Judi’s House - Grief Support Center

v • d • e

Miami Dolphins starting quarterbacks

Wood • Bo. Griese • Strock • Woodley • Marino • Fiedler • Br. Griese • Feeley • Frerotte • Culpepper • Harrington • Lemon • Green

The FIFA Women’s World Cup is recognized as the most important International competition in women’s football and is played amongst women’s national football teams of the member states of FIFA, the sport’s global governing body. Contested every four years, the first Women’s World Cup tournament, named the Women’s World Championship, was held in 1991, sixty-one years after the men’s first FIFA World Cup tournament in 1930. The current format has sixteen teams competing every four years for the winner’s trophy.

[edit] History

The tournament was originally the brainchild of the then FIFA president João Havelange.^[1] The inaugural tournament was hosted in China in 1991, with twelve teams sent to represent their countries. The 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup was held in Sweden with twelve teams. Over 660,000 spectators attended the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup in the United States, ^[2] and nearly one billion viewers from seventy countries tuned in to watch sixteen countries vie for the title.^{[citation needed]}

Of the first four tournaments held, the United States has won the championship twice, Norway once and Germany most recently in the 2003 tournament.

In the 1999 edition, one of the most famous moments of the tournament was American defender Brandi Chastain’s victory celebration after scoring the Cup-winning penalty shot against China. She took off her jersey and waved it over her head (as men frequently do), showing her muscular torso and sports bra as she celebrated. The 1999 final in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California had an attendance of 90,185, a world record for a women’s sporting event.^[3]

The 1999 and 2003 Women’s World Cups were both held in the United States; in 2003 China was supposed to host it but the tournament was moved because of SARS. ^[4] As compensation, China retained its automatic qualification to the 2003 tournament as host nation and was automatically chosen to host the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup. The host country for the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup will be decided by vote in November 2007.

At the 2007 World Cup in China, U.S. captain Kristine Lilly will participate in her fifth world cup, making her the only woman and one of three players in history to appear in five world cups.^[5]

[edit] Format

The participants qualify through the regional football confederations of Oceania (OFC), Europe (UEFA), North America, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF), South America (CONMEBOL), Asia (AFC) and Africa (CAF).

The competition takes place over the course of three weeks. In the group stage, 16 teams seeded into four groups (A,B,C, and D) compete against each other in a round-robin tournament. After Germany trounced Argentina 11–0 in the opening game of the 2007 World Cup, FIFA president Sepp Blatter conceded that the one-sided match was “not good for the game” and was something that FIFA would consider in deciding whether or not to expand the group phase to 24 teams. ^[6]

In the knockout phase, the top two teams from each group advance to the quarterfinals, a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. The winner of Group A plays the runner-up of Group B, The winner of Group B plays the runner-up of Group A, etc.

The winners of the four quarterfinal games move on to the semifinal matches, which determine the contestants for the championship game. The losing semifinalists compete to determine third place.

[edit] Impact

Since its conception in 1989, the Women’s World Cup has continued to grow in popularity. FIFA estimates that there are currently forty million girls and women playing football around the world.^{[citation needed]} Planning for the 2007 Women’s World Cup in China reflects the growth.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Tournaments

• Key:
  • aet — after extra time
  • asdet — after sudden death extra time

[edit] All-time performance

Main article: National team appearances in the FIFA Women’s World Cup

[edit] See also

• Women’s football (soccer)
• FIFA World Cup

[edit] References

1. ^ Women’s World Cup History. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved on March 25, 2007.
2. ^ FIFA Women’s World Cup — USA 1999. FIFA.com. Retrieved on March 27, 2007.
3. ^ Women’s World Cup History. The Sports Network. Retrieved on March 25, 2007.
4. ^ Koppel, Naomi. “FIFA moves Women’s World Cup from China because of SARS”, USA Today, 2003-05-03. Retrieved on 2007-03-27. 
5. ^ U.S. Women Still Have One Link to the Past. Washington Post. Retrieved on September 7, 2007.
6. ^ FIFA chief dismayed at 11–0 scoreline in women’s World Cup opener. AFP. Retrieved on September 11, 2007.

[edit] External links

• FIFA official site
• UEFA’s page on the FIFA Women’s World Cup
• RSSSF’s pages

Mumbai: Rani Mukherji, who is currently shooting with Pradeep Sarkar for Laaga Chunri Mein Daag, which is about a woman who stumbles into prostitution for her family’s sake, feels like she’s doing a Bengali film.

“We’re all Bongs here - from Pradeepda and his wife to Jayaji (Jaya Bachchan) and Konkona (Sen Sharma). All you’ll hear on the sets is a loud babble of Bengali voices. We’re constantly jabbering in Bengali and cracking up at our own jokes. If you enter the set you’ll feel it’s a Bengali film,” Rani told IANS.

In fact, the one outsider is Kunal Kapoor, whom the two girls constantly torment by talking in Bengali.

“It’s so cute, really. Pradeepda and his unit treat me like a family member. The entire day we’re laughing and cracking up at our own jokes. Shooting is always fun. But this time it’s something else,” Rani said.

Isn’t the bonding over a few schedules too little time to be treated as family members?

“No. It’s not as though I got to know Pradeepda only in this film. I’ve done many ads with him. I’m fortune that I’m now doing a feature film with him. He has a stunning eye for detail. The other unit where I had fun right through is Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Saawariya’.”

She added: “Whether it is Pradeepda or Sanjay, I love my directors. People who are part of my life would never ever disrespect me or my family, or I theirs.”

Mumbai: First she was linked with John Abraham during Salaam-e-Ishq and now she is being attached to her Heyy Babyy and Bhool Bhulaiyaa co-star Akshay Kumar. But Vidya Balan, who is looking for her Mr. Right, is unfazed and rues about the scarcity of eligible bachelors in filmdom.“Yes, I’m young and single and most certainly looking forward to being in love. Unfortunately, both John and Akshay are attached. And that creates an embarrassment more for them than for me. So that’s that…

“Come to think of it, where are the eligible single guys in our industry? I’ll have to look elsewhere,” Vidya told IANS. Commenting upon her link-up with Akshay, she said: “I’m quite prepared for stories to filter back. I’ve gone through this before.

During ‘Salaam-e-Ishq’ they linked me with John Abraham because people saw us having so much fun together. Now there’ll be gossip because Akshay and I had a great time.”

Vidya, who debuted opposite Saif Ali Khan and Sanjay Dutt in Parineeta, has just returned after four months of hectic shooting.

“Akshay is a major prankster. I had to be on tenterhooks all through the two schedules. One never knew what Akshay was up to. My one ambition in life is to get even with him for all the pranks he has played with me. Shooting has never been so much fun. I didn’t even realize how these two long schedules for two completely contrasting films passed by,” she said.