Mumbai airport: What will it be like

G V Sanjay Reddy, 45, wears many hats. He is the vice hairman of GVK, one of India's largest infrastructure developers; MD of the Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd, which operates India's busiest airport; MD of GVK Jaipur Expressway, which operates the six-lane toll road project on the Golden Quadrilateral; and CEO of GVK Biosciences.

He is also on the board of the Hyderabad-based TajGVK. It's obviously helped that he is the only son of Group Chairman G V Krishna Reddy.

The GVK Group is working at a breathtaking space. It is constructing power plants and special economic zones, will build a port in Dahej, is bidding for the Ganga Expressway project in Uttar Pradesh, the Navi Mumbai airport and the Metro Rail Phase II.

These days, however, Reddy is mostly wearing the MIAL MD's hat, as the upgradation of the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai is one of the most challenging tasks any CEO can ever dream of, Reddy says. The job also involves taking decisions on hundreds of acres of land around the airport which is located in the prime area of Santacruz -- a reason why he has now got 24-hour security (a plain clothed guard is his constant companion).

He also doesn't take any call on his Blackberry if he can't recognise the number. "It's just a professional hazard," Reddy says, trying hard to be nonchalant about these "small" changes in his life.

We are at Masala Bay on the first floor of Taj Lands End in Bandra. The steward ushers us to an exclusive corner, which gives the ambience of a private dining hall. And the reason is quite obvious: the Reddy family is the owner of TajGVK, which runs the Taj hotel properties in Hyderabad. Reddy leaves the choice of food to the steward ("it's better to leave the job to experts," he says) and opts for buttermilk to start with. The steward looks mighty pleased.

The Mumbai airport project, which MIAL bagged in February 2006 in the face of stiff competition, has already completed its first phase of work. And the impact is visible. Take Terminal 1B, which now has gleaming granite, newly-planted waving palms, kalzip roofing (a rainscreen system) and substantially more personnel and counters. The airport now also has a rapid exit taxiway called India, which is saving around two minutes per aircraft movement.

GVK has also managed kerbside improvements, demolished over 600 toilets in the area to upgrade them and even imported furniture from Spain to improve the look and feel of the airport.

Surely, that must be the easier part of the whole airport modernisation plan? Reddy disagrees vehemently and says that it has been, in fact, one of the most difficult part of the job. "If we have managed to do this within the targetted deadline, the rest of it should be easy," he says.

Reason: GVK found that the Airports Authority of India didn't have ownership rights on over 45 per cent of the area within the airport premises. That involves over 400 litigation issues which kept his formidable team of lawyers busy throughout last year.

But they did a damn good job, Reddy says, as the starters arrive. The steward has been most generous indeed as the plate contains grilled chicken, lamb chops and chicken kebabs. For a moment, I mistake it for the main course.

Reddy looks pleased and proceeds to give a fascinating account of how the GVK Group met the formidable challenges that came its way. For example, the airport had given out 35,000 entry passes to all kinds of people who had very little to do with the core function: to make the airport work.

That posed a huge risk to security apart and streamlining these things take a lot of patience and hard work. "We run the risk of treading on too many toes," he says.

Besides, the country's busiest airport is spread over a mere 1,850 acres (the operational area in fact is just 1,450 acres), which is "peanuts" compared to Delhi's 5,000 acres. And apparently, the airport was violating 76 of the 77 universally recognised standards for international airports in the areas of runway rules and security distances to be maintained for smooth flights.

"In no part of the world would you be allowed to function with such non-compliance."

Quickly realising that this should not upset the powers-that-be, Reddy says the state government and the AAI have been most constructive in their suggestions and extending all help.

Another problem was that encroachments were far higher than what was initially indicated. Surveys conducted by MIAL found that the actual encroachments were in excess of 262 acres. But one of Reddy's crowning glories has been in managing slum rehabilitation. Hindustan Development Infrastructure Ltd, which is overseeing this aspect, has already identified 100 acres of land within three kilometres of the airport site.

The immigration system at the arrival area of the international terminal has been overhauled with additional counters making it amongst the fastest in the world. With additional check-in counters at Terminal 1B (80 in all, which is more than double of the earlier capacity) the entire area has been decongested.

The Mumbai airport also became the first airport in India to launch free Wi-Fi internet service throughout the domestic and international terminals. Free internet kiosks will also be set up in all terminals, with each terminal having at least one kiosk with four computers.

The main course -- rotis, chicken curry and baked fish -- looks appetising, but Reddy talks non-stop and eats little. The Mumbai airport makeover is clearly a passion for him -- something which has forced him to stay alone in Mumbai (he visits his wife and two children in Hyderabad only on Sundays) and skip scuba diving and trekking, reasons for his slender frame, for almost two years now.

Reddy's plan is to expand and upgrade the Mumbai airport infrastructure to cater to 40 million passengers per year in two years (against 17 million now) and double cargo movement to one million tonnes per year. In the second and third phases, the international and domestic terminals will be merged and the current domestic terminal will be converted to a dedicated cargo terminal.

With the parallel runway that is being planned, the airport will be able to handle about 60 flights per hour, compared to the current 500 flights per day.

The company is also looking at developing an elevated expressway that directly connects the Western Express Highway to the airport. A monorail system to facilitate passenger movement internally is also on the cards. Besides, talks are on to link the Mumbai airport to the Mumbai Metro.

The project cost till 2010 is Rs 5,200 crore (Rs 52 billion) inanced through a debt-equity mix of 80:20. The debt has already been tied up with Indian institutions led by UTI Bank [Get Quote] and IDBI Bank.

The company has also submitted plans to the state government for extensive city-side redevelopment which will include the commercial development of hotels, convention centres and a recreational area in the proximity of the airport.

The main course is over fast -- a consequence perhaps of the rather heavy starters -- and Reddy is clearly in a hurry to leave. As his black Mercedes rolls in to take him to his office at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, he says his group is also planning to bid for airports in other parts of the world. "If we can succeed in Mumbai, other parts of the world will hopefully be a cakewalk," he says

Hats off to you, Shah Rukh!!!

Despite all the fame and money at his feet, Shah Rukh Khan remains the humble person that he was before he became a super star in Bollywood.

Believe it or not, being a superb actor, King Khan also takes interest in sharing his experience and providing valuable tips and help to newcomers. He not only has millions of fans across the globe, but also many grateful pupils in the industry!

Today, there is no aspect of filmmaking that has been left unnoticed or untouched by Shah Rukh. While he is among the best actors that the country has today, King Khan is also a successful producer.

His production company ‘Red Chilli’ has made successful films like ‘Om Shanti Om’ and the special effects unit of his company is the most sought after in the industry today.

What makes Shah Rukh unique is his availability even to the commoners and his keen desire to meet people from all walks of life. Even after achieving superstardom, Shah Rukh has never made himself aloof.

His greatness and dedication as well as passion towards acting are reflected from the fact that some years back he along with Sohail Khan visited the Kishor Namit Kapoor Acting Institute and took classes there for seven days.

During a recent tête-à-tête, actor Atul Mathur revealed to us that he was a disciple of Shah Rukh Khan.

A proud Mathur confessed, “I have been trained by Shah Rukh when he had visited the Kishore Namit Kapoor Acting Institute and taught us for a week in 1993. Arbaaz Khan, Sajid Khan, Naseer (Jhonny Walker's son) and Sonali Bendre were studying at the institute at that time and we used to be together.

Since Arbaaz was there Sohail too used to come.”

Elaborating, Mathur said, “Once Sohail brought Shah Rukh to the institute. Already he was a big name after the release of 'Dewaana', but Shah Rukh still took out time from his busy schedule and taught us a lot of exercises.

He also talked about a lot of things, discussed how to deal with the industry people, how to keep one’s confidence alive and not get scared. Shah Rukh briefed us on many other things including how we should act and surprise our audience.”

“When 'Bazzigar' and 'Darr' were released we realized what Shah Rukh meant as well as practiced what he preached. When I told Juhi Chawla about this on the sets of 'Krazzy 4' she was surprised.

Despite being a good friend of Shah Rukh, she never knew that he had trained anyone,” Mathur said, adding, “We learnt a lot from Shah Rukh who openly confessed that though he ‘copied’ many actors, no one could find out it as he did it in his own way.

In fact, Shah Rukh has even told us that he had trained with Barry John. His words were so interesting that I remember them even today. The techniques he taught us even work today."

So, if you though you knew all about the superstar, think again for he is a real ‘chhupa rustam’. Hats off to you, Shah Rukh!

New Zealand star Bond set for Indian rebel league: Reports

WELLINGTON, January 3: New Zealand star fast bowler Shane Bond is set to turn his back on his national team following reports on Thursday that he has signed for the rebel Indian Cricket League.

Bond declined to comment but New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan admitted the prospect of losing Bond was "terribly disappointing".

"We'd love to see him playing for New Zealand and that is why we have turned over so many stones, but at the moment we are on the back foot," Vaughan was reported saying in the Dominion Post newspaper.

Vaughan said he had tried to persuade Bond to join the sanctioned Indian Premier League but said Bond had presumably found the rebel deal more attractive.

"I can't say for certain he has signed but I understand that is what his agent is saying," he said.

The injury-prone Bond is recovering from an abdominal tear but had been due to make his comeback when England tours New Zealand from next month.

The 32-year-old has taken 79 wickets in 17 Tests at an average of 22.39 and 125 wickets at 19.32 in 67 One-Day Internationals.

The loss of their top bowler, despite his run of injuries, would be a major blow for New Zealand.

New Zealand Cricket has instructed team selectors to consider other players ahead of those who have joined the rebel league.

Six former New Zealand players have joined the rebel league, although Chris Cairns, Nathan Astle, Craig McMillan, Daryl Tuffey, Chris Harris and Hamish Marshall had either retired or were unlikely to be selected for the national team.

IT companies see profit in opening a nearshore unit

CHENNAI/BANGALORE: When Wipro founder Azim Premji explained at the Q2 earnings conference that opening a near shore centre in high-cost Atlanta would actually net gains for the company, it perhaps mirrored the Indian IT industry’s preparedness to look beyond its India-centric approach.

The traditional reasons to globalise have been proximity to the customer and a diverse employee mix. Now, trackers say, rupee polevault and the race to grab larger ticket size projects may be pushing Indian companies to globalise in a bigger way. Wipro CFO Suresh Senapathy says, “Near shore, of course, becomes more favourable than it was nine-months ago. It is excessive rupee appreciation in relation to other currencies in the last nine months that makes the difference.”

The rupee appreciation, in the last year, has underscored the stark difference between Indian software services majors such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro, and their MNC counterparts like IBM and Accenture who have large operations in India. The wave of worry that affected Indian IT majors perhaps did not crinkle the forehead of MNCs. The reason: The scale of their global operations. For instance, while India is next only to the US in terms of employee strength for IBM, it has just about a fifth of its employees here. On the other hand, Indian software majors have only about a fourth of their employees abroad, including those onsite.

Bloggers battered by viral storm

Google's Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs.

The fake entries contain weblinks that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a Windows PC.

Infected computers are being hijacked by the gang behind the attacks and either mined for saleable data or used for other attacks.

The Blogger attack is the latest in a series by a gang that has managed to hijack hundreds of thousands of PCs.

Attack pattern

Security researcher Alex Eckelberry from Sunbelt Software first noticed the booby-trapped links turning up on Blogger on 27 August.

Now many hundreds of blogs on the site have been updated with a short entry containing the link.

Mr Eckelberry said it was not yet clear how the links were posted to blogs. The bogus entries could have exploited a Blogger feature that lets users e-mail entries to their journal.

The blogs themselves could also be fake and set up solely to act as hosts for spam.

STORM WORM SUBJECT LINES are you kidding me? lol Dude dont send that stuff to my home email... Dude your gonna get caught, lol HAHAHAHAHAHA, man your insane! I cant belive you did this LMAO, your crazy man LOL, dude what are you doing man, who filmed this thing? oh man your nutz OMG, what are you thinking

Commenting on the attack a Google spokesperson said: "The blog posts are likely from users' whose machines have been compromised by a virus.

"Among the other recipients of spam e-mails generated by the virus are users' mail2blogger accounts, which allow them to update their blogs via e-mail," said the spokesperson.

"We are in the process of notifying impacted users and recommending that they scan their computers and run current anti-virus tools--good advice for all internet users," they added.

The entries on the blogs have the same text as some of the spam distributed by the group behind the attacks. These attempt to trick people into clicking on links and downloading booby-trapped files using cleverly crafted messages.

Some pose as YouTube links others claim to be looking for testers of software packages or digital greetings cards.

The group behind the attack on Blogger is thought to have mounted a huge series of attacks since January.

The first attack used a spam that purported to give recipients more information about the severe storms seen in Europe in January. This led to the virus used by the gang being dubbed the "Storm Trojan".

Since January the group has been sending out huge numbers of different spam messages in a bid to trick people.

"The criminals responsible for this spam campaign are experts at exploiting social engineering to propagate their botnets," said Bradley Anstis from security firm Marshal.

The spam messages have been changed to capitalise on news events and the viral payload has been updated many times to fool anti-virus programs.

Mr Anstis said the sheer number of messages being sent by the group was staggering. On some days, he said, 4-6% of all the junk messages seen by Marshal were sent by the group.

Security experts estimate that the group can send out so much junk mail because they have hijacked so many Windows PCs via successive campaigns. Some suspect that the group has infected more than one million PCs over the last eight

Boom times for hi-tech crimina

So say security experts looking back on 12 months in which hi-tech gangs took control of the net's underground.

The economy supporting these groups has matured so much that now everything from virus-writing kits to spam-spewing zombies are available for rent or hire.

This has helped to fuel, say security professionals, rapid growth in the methods criminals use to catch out PC users and steal saleable data.

Money game

"2007 was a fairly interesting year," said Joe Telafici, vice president of operations for McAfee's Avert Labs, "cyber crime continued to fuel most of the security attacks we saw."

It was a year, he said, which saw the effective extinction of young hackers who wrote viruses and other malicious programs for fun.

Now, he said, Windows malware was all about money.

Some attacks, such as phishing runs, were clearly about stealing cash from victims either from a credit card or bank account.

But, he said, many others that looked more innocuous were done with money in mind. For instance, he said, trojans placed in banner ads that try to hijack a home PC were all about getting hold of resources that can be rented out for a fee to spammers or other net-based criminals.

"There's a real eco-system built around this," he said.

Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing said the tool of choice for many hi-tech criminals was the botnet - a collection of hijacked home PCs.

"Botnets are now a well-organised tool," he said. "They are at a point now where they are creating smaller botnets from larger ones."

This was being done, he said, because like all businessmen criminals were keen to make the most of their assets.

Many malicious hackers have moved away from e-mail attacks

2007 saw news break about one of the biggest botnets ever created. The network got its name from spam e-mails sent in January that capitalised on interest in a series of severe European storms to infect a large number of Windows PCs.

Successive spam campaigns added to the numbers of machines in the Storm botnet and, though estimates vary, many believe it was made up of more than 1 million machines.

A ready market for the buying and selling of time on a botnet and the tools needed to put it to good use had sprung up, said Mr Henry.

"Commercial exploitation has brought the real value of these tools to the vast majority," he said.

One of the most widely known tools was the MPack kit which was created by a Russian hacker gang. Anyone buying it got included in the price a year of technical support that updated them with the latest vulnerabilities so it could be used time and again for attacks.

But, said Mr Telafici, this had created problems for some makers of malicious software.

"One kit developer recently threw in the towel because they could no longer get the margins they used to," he said.

"Instead they opened up the source and gave it away. There were just too many players in that space, it's too crowded."

Novel threats

This busy market was driving innovation, said Simon Heron, managing director of Network Box.

Windows remains the biggest target for hi-tech criminals

"We've seen attacks move away from sending e-mail with poisoned attachments to groups doing drive-by downloads," he said.

Some of those that used to send huge numbers of phishing e-mails were now indulging in "spear phishing" which brought together lots of bits of data to make the messages they send look much more convincing.

Mr Heron said he had seen campaigns targeted at a few hundred people such as the senior managers in a large firm.

"It's just fascinating seeing that this is happening," he said.

The move away from the old attack vector of e-mail meant troubled times for users, he said.

"The bad guys are becoming more sophisticated and that means its becoming more difficult to stay safe," he said.

Summing up Paul Henry from Secure Computing said 2007 was the year that hi-tech crime became firmly established and entrenched.

"I see no end to this," he said, "until we effectively reduce the value of personal information to the point where for the hackers it is useless."

Put your questions to Bill Gates

Bill Gates is to answer your questions at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The software supremo and co-founder of Microsoft is preparing to end his day to day involvement with one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world.

Mr Gates will remain as chairman and will continue to advise on key development projects.

As he gets ready to change his role, one of the most important men in technology over the last three decades has invited readers of the BBC News website to send him questions about his life and career.

Perhaps you have always wanted to know what the inspiration was behind Windows. Maybe you want to know what it is like being one of the world's richest men. Or maybe you are more interested in the philanthropic career he has planned after he steps down.

OIL ON A NEW HIGH

Violence in Nigeria, Algeria and Pakistan, the weak US dollar and the threat of cold weather have all raised prices after the new year break.

US light, sweet crude fell back to $99.30 a barrel in electronic trading, while London Brent crude shed 43 cents to $97.41 a barrel.

US crude touched $100 a barrel in the previous session, beating the previous peak of $99.29 set in November 2007.

Stocks fall

The rise in oil prompted a drop in shares and a surge in gold prices.

The US benchmark stock index, the Dow Jones, closed down 220.9 points, or 1.7%, at 13,044.0.

Asian stocks also fell, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index down 480 points to 27,080 by lunch.

There are concerns that the high price of oil will stoke price pressures at a time when many central banks are trying to cut interest rates to stimulate growth.

"It's going to have a huge impact on overall global inflation," said Steve Rowles, a commodities strategist with CFC Seymour securities in Hong Kong.

Reserves

Despite oil hitting $100 a barrel, the White House said it would not open up the nation's emergency crude reserves to bring down prices.

Indonesia's Opec governor warned on Thursday that oil prices could climb to the $100-$110 level and said the cartel might decide to increase output at its 1 February meeting in Vienna if supply was insufficient

Oil traders were waiting for the release of weekly US petroleum supply data later in the day, and some expected crude futures to rise above the $100-a-barrel level if the government reported crude inventories fell by more than expected, analysts said.

"We're so close to $100 right now," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore.

"If the US inventory report indeed shows stock draws, and particularly bigger than expected draws, plus a heightening of geopolitical risks and a falling US dollar, all these factors could push pricing beyond $100," he said.

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