That's all, your honour!: Apr 11-17

1. On saturday, there were two blasts outside the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore, just minutes before the IPL match between Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers. A third bomb was also found and diffused. These bombs were timed to go off at 8pm, but obviously 2 of them went off much before that. 17 people have been injured, and there are no casaulities. Preliminary inquiries have revealed that the explosive used is Ammonium Nitrate. Alert folks on twitter have pointed out that Naxalites have stolen a truck carrying Ammonium Nitrate about a month back in Gadchiroli. But police later ruled out the Naxalite theory. Also, this might be a way to distract public attention from the IPL fiasco going on right now. Well, they don't seem to have succeeded fully though, for the media is trying to balance both the blasts and the Tharoor saga! The match was delayed by an hour, but was played fully. This is a serious breach of security, but we might never know who did it, as is the case most of the times.

2. Eyjafjallajokull. No, I am not abusing you. And no, it is not some random keys that I typed! That is the name of the glacier on which a volcano erupted in Iceland. And what happened next? Practically all, yes ALL, airports in Europe have been shut down! Why? The ash that is emanating from this volcano is travelling towards Europe, because of some wind drift, and hence flying aircrafts has become practically impossible. Post the second world war, this is the most massive shutdown of airports in Europe ever. Tens of thousands of people are stranded everywhere, and airport authorities are having a hard time managing the airports. And the crisis is likely to continue to for another 5 days. This might be the biggest crisis the industry ever faced, and that too because of Eyjafjallajokull! Now, beat that!

3. ISRO tried to launch GSLV with its own cryogenic engine this week. Approximately 500 seconds into the flight, the cryogenic engine failed to ignite and the launch vehicle fell into the Bay of Bengal. This was the first time we were launching with our own cryogenic engine. It took ISRO 17 years to develop the engine. Though we have had an history of the first flights failing, this one came as a shock because of the extensive testing that has been done on the ground. ISRO has now announced that it will try to launch the GSLV with our own cryogenic engine in about a year's time. Good luck to them!

4. A cyclone devastated West Bengal this week. 120 peopl died, and about 1 lakh people were displaced. Guess who covered this news - BBC. That's right - not NDTV, not IBN, not TIMES NOW. But BBC! Fellow netizen has written a letter to the Editors Guild on the same. It is a real shame that such news get drowned in seemingly trivial "news".

5. And finally we will talk about this Shashi Tharoor mess! It is actually quite simple. Shashi Tharoor gave his "blessings" and "encouragement" to Rendezvous (pronounced as Ron-de-voo - oof, this English !) Sports, which won the bid for Kochi team. IPL Commisioner Lalit Modi reveals later that this consortium provided 5 % sweat equity to a lady called Sunanda Pushkar. As of today's market value, that 5% translates to 50-70 crores! Now, who is Sunanda Pushkar? She is reportedly the lady Shashi Tharoor is planning to marry! And so now all hell broke lose! Tharoor has been accused of impropeity, and massive pressure has been mounting on him to resign. He releases this statement, and accuses Lalit Modi of trying to scuttle the bid for the Kochi team. Now, that is a very serious allegation - IPL commiosioner trying to be biased. So now my question is very simple. Leave aside all that ethical, impropeitary stuff. As someone who wants to bring in a change into the system, did Shashi Tharoor officially complain to the IPL governing Council on Lalit Modi's attempts? If not, why? That's all, your honour!