HSBC loses 370,000 customers' details

Disc went missing for two months

Following the recent privacy blunders by the Government, which saw laptops containing personal details about thousands of members of the UK public falling into the wrong hands, banking giant HSBC has also admitted to losing the personal data of its customers.

Names, dates of birth, life insurance details and information on smoking habits for 370,000 life assurance customers were among the information stored on the password protected but not encrypted disc. It did not contain bank account details and went missing almost two months after being sent by courier from the group's offices in Southampton to a re-insurer.

The Financial Services Authority is now investigating the incident.

"The data disk lost by HSBC contains no address or bank account details for any customer and would therefore be of very limited, if any, use to criminals," said an HSBC spokeswoman.

"Nonetheless, HSBC would like to apologise to its life assurance customers for any concern this may cause. Each customer will be contacted shortly and a thorough investigation into this matter is underway."

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As an euphoric Chennai Super Kings led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni welcomes Mumbai Indians for the home match, both the teams will have plans knit around the presence or absence of one man – Sachin Tendulkar.

Before you try out the Links, make sure you have installed the following in your PC :-

Download Sopcast and TVU PLayer

Following are the Live Cricket Streaming links:

** Live Cricket @ NiharsWorld | IPL Opening Cermony

** Sopcast Link 2

** Sopcast Link 3

** Sopcast Link 4

** Sopcast Link 5

For more links:

** TariksWorld

Channels telecasting the Indian Premier League
* Sony Set Max
* Sky Sports
* Fox International
* Channel 9
* Directtv
* ATN CBN

Score Card

enjoy...........


Inter First Year Results 2008

Board of Intermediate Examinations (BOIE) Andhra Pradesh

The Board of Intermediate Examinations (BIE) that conducts the Intermediate Examinations in Andhra Pradesh is all set to release the Intermediate First Year Results.

Only grades will be made available for passed candidates. However marks will be made available for candidates who have failed in an exam so that they can prepare for Advanced Supplementary Examinations.

The Examinations results will be disseminated through various media channels including IVR, Mobile phones and the Internet. VoiceGate Technologies India, a franchisee of BSNL, in association with eSeva has made arrangements to provide intermediate first year results on phones on behalf of BSNL.

This has the facility to host about 600 calls simultaneously thereby making it convenient to those seeking to find the results, according to a VoiceGate release.

Candidates can telephone 1255225, 22222222 from a BSNL Telephone in Hyderabad while others can get the results by calling 95401 255 225 or 95402 222 222.

The results will be made available on various websites including results2.ap.nic.in amongst others. The results will be made available on mobile phones too.

Andhra Pradesh Intermediate First Year Results 2008 will be made available at this website as soon as they are released. The complete list of websites as well as District-wise passouts will be made available.


Check your Results Here:


http://examresults.aponline.gov.in

http://www.aponline.gov.in

http://results2.ap.nic.in/inter

http://ieg.gov.in/examresults

http://202.65.158.36/inter


All The Best.........

On Saturday morning, with cameras in tow, Barack Obama was canvassing the streets of Mayfair. At a lot of the houses, no one answered.

"This reminds me of my days campaigning to be a state senator," Obama told his companions. "Only there was no media, and there were more slammed doors."

In this presidential campaign, few doors have been slammed in the face of the Illinois senator. And he has kicked in some on his own, putting himself in a strong position to win the Democratic presidential nomination over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama is fond of telling crowds that he is reminded constantly, if not by events then by his wife, Michelle, that he is "not a perfect man." For his campaign, the final stretch before the Pennsylvania primary has been not a perfect time.

"I would say we had good days and we had bad days," his communications director, Robert Gibbs, said today, looking back.

Consider all that has happened recently, all of it with a Pennsylvania connection:

Last Wednesday, in the Philadelphia debate, Obama stumbled at times, struggling with a series of questions (which many of his supporters denounced as trivial and unfair) about his past associations and the flag lapel pin he doesn't wear.

The Friday before, Obama and company were rocked by the news that the candidate had described small-town Pennsylvanians as "bitter." He had to spend days explaining what he meant.

To respond to the controversy over his former pastor, Obama chose Philadelphia for his speech on race.

If any of this was bothering Obama in the final days, he hasn't let it show, even as he lashed out at Clinton for what he called her "slash-and-burn" tactics.

"I don't get too high when things are high. I don't get too low when things are low," he told the editorial boards of The Inquirer and Daily News last week.

"I've gotten my share of knocks and made some mistakes during the campaign, and I think I've held pretty steady throughout."

There's little question, though, that these events have complicated Obama's attempts to attract undecided voters in a state with a Democratic electorate that is tilted, demographically speaking, in Clinton's favor.

After closing the gap in the early part of April - thanks largely to spending millions of dollars on television - he had to keep doing everything right to overcome the remainder of Clinton's lead. And he hasn't. His state poll numbers have been stuck in the low-to-mid 40s, about a half dozen points behind her.

That hasn't stopped him, as he traversed the state, from continuing his playful romance with his fans.

At Wynnewood, the first stop on his Saturday whistle-stop train tour, he started talking about his rally on Independence Mall, perhaps the largest of his entire campaign with an estimated turnout of 35,000.

"I was there!" someone shouted.

"I saw you," Obama replied to the delight of the crowd.

That night, on the steps of the Capitol in Harrisburg, he was interrupted as he began to speak by the stirrings of several hundred people far off to his right.

"Can you hear me over there?" he asked, picking up their cause for concern.

"No!" they yelled.

"Well, you could hear me when I asked if you could hear," he said, chuckling, turning to the rest of the crowd. "That was kind of a trick question."

The sound system was repaired, everyone got to hear, and the candidate delivered his fifth speech of the day, this one more energetic than the ones before.

His supporters, for the most part, remain enthralled, with many of them expressing both admiration for the way he has handled his difficulties and agreement with him in calling them mere "distractions."

"They're manufactured problems," said Ruth Martelli, 63, of Reading. "I'm supporting him because he represents for me what this country should be."

"When somebody turns something negative against him, he addresses it, explains it and moves on - I like that," said Cate Kager, 49, a resident of Erie who changed her registration from Republican to Democrat for Obama. "I've hated politics. Now, I've got bumper stickers on my car, and I'm working phone banks for him."

"No one is perfect; imagine if Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln had microphones under their mouths all the time," Rita Tarves, 56, of Havertown, said of his difficulties. "I've been a pretty staunch Hillary supporter. But he's been pulling at my heels the whole time."

The voters get to decide tomorrow whether Pennsylvania will slam the door in Obama's face or decide, after a long and erratic courtship, to welcome him in.

NEW YORK: Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass at Yankee Stadium on Sunday afternoon, calling the gathering of nearly 60,000 people in the stadium "a sign of the impressive growth which God has given to the Church in your country in the past 200 years."

On the last day of his visit to the United States, the pope reached to the past and the future — praying for the dead during a ceremony at ground zero on Sunday morning, and urging inclusion for people, including immigrants, at the Mass at the stadium.

The pope entered the stadium to sustained applause from a capacity crowd, many of whom waved white or gold towels — the colors of the papacy. As did his previous Mass in Washington's Nationals Park, the celebration showed the diversity of the church, with readings in a variety of languages throughout the service.

"Here we are reminded of a fundamental truth: that the church's unity has no other basis than the word of God, made flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord," the pope said. "All external signs of identity, all structures, associations and programs, valuable or even essential as they may be, ultimately exist only to support and foster the deeper unity which, in Christ, is God's indefectible gift to his church."

The pope said American Catholics needed to unite behind church teachings and resist the challenges of living in a society that increasingly values secularism, a theme he has repeated throughout his six-day visit.

"It means overcoming every separation between faith and life, and countering false gospels of freedom and happiness," he said. "It also means rejecting a false dichotomy between faith and political life."

The homily dealt primarily with issues of faith, and unlike several of his earlier public statements, the pope did not directly address one of the most difficult issues confronting the church — the child sexual abuse scandal . However, he drew applause from the stadium when he referred to another controversial topic, abortion, as part of a call to follow "unchanging truths."

"They are the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world — including the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother's womb," the pope said.

The pope was welcomed to the stadium by Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the archbishop of New York. Cardinal Egan called the pope's visit "an immense blessing," and told Benedict that representatives of the country's 195 dioceses and archdiocese had journeyed to take part in the Mass.

"We here in the Archdiocese of New York feel especially blessed by your coming here among us," said Cardinal Egan, who repeated a message of welcome to the pope in Spanish.

About 57,000 tickets were issued for the Mass, and people who attended waited in line hours before the pope arrived.

"You see how many pack together, come to see him?" said Clemens Semon, 50, of Ozone Park, Queens. Semon, originally from the Ivory Coast, spoke as he was going into the Mass with his wife, Elizabeth. "He's a unifier, he brings hope and peace."

The pope began Sunday with an appearance at ground zero, where he prayed for peace and met with a group of survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In a brief prayer at the World Trade Center site, the pope asked for eternal peace for the people who died in the attacks and for strength and healing for their families. Making only an oblique reference to the terrorism behind the attacks almost seven years ago — "Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred" — the pope asked for determination in the world's efforts toward peace.

"Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that lives lost here may not have been lost in vain," he said at the bedrock level of the site, chilly and shrouded with fog that covered the tops of some buildings nearby. "Comfort and console us, strengthen us in hope, and give us the wisdom and courage to work tirelessly for a world where true peace and love reign among nations and in the hearts of all."

The ceremony began when the pope rode down a construction ramp at the World Trade Center site in his specially designed vehicle shortly after 9:40 a.m. As bells pealed, the pope, 81, dressed in white, walked the last quarter or so of the way down the ramp, to a small, rectangular-shaped pool where the family representatives had gathered. He was accompanied by Cardinal Egan. Kneeling briefly before the pool, the pope prayed silently before rising to light a single candle, meant to symbolize resurrection.

Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech has cast a "40-year shadow" over the immigration debate in Britain, with governments failing to provide articulate leadership on the issue, the head of the country's race watchdog said yesterday.

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the UK was falling behind competitors because of the lack of a coherent immigration strategy. While the issue had led in Britain to a "creeping resentment which can only be halted by a policy of manifest fairness", other countries were making the most of immigrant talent.

He added: "Immigration is part of our future. The real question will be whether we can seize the restless tide of talent currently sweeping across the globe. So far we are lagging behind our competitors." Mr Phillips stressed the need for a renewed debate.

Addressing 200 at the Birmingham hotel where Powell made his speech, Mr Phillips said: "Many think this is not the time for this debate. If we cannot talk about it now, then when? We cannot allow discussion of race and immigration forever to be seen as playing into the hands of extremists. The 40-year old shockwave of fear has gagged us."

Powell's speech, with its vision of society disintegrating in racial tension, still bars examination of the subject, said Mr Phillips. "For 40 years we have sustained a silence on the issue where people most needed articulate political leadership. Powell so discredited talk of planning that we have plunged along with an adhoc approach to immigration."

Sir Digby Jones, the Business minister, told the conference: "We are built on immigration. We are a bastard race. This is our country, not mine, and if you are here it's your country, feel you own it."

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Tony Blair is facing questions over whether he was aware of John Prescott's battle with bulimia when he left the former deputy prime minister in charge of the country.

  • Bulimia: Q&A
  • 'Bingeing is a drug and it is very addictive'
  • After Mr Prescott's admission that he has been secretly battling with the eating disorder throughout his political career, it emerged that he had confided in Alastair Campbell about the problem years before Labour was elected.

    John Prescott
    Mr Prescott hid his illness even from his wife

    Mr Prescott, then opposition spokesman for employment, told Mr Campbell in 1993 during a dinner with Mr Campbell's editor at the Daily Mirror, David Banks.

    Mr Banks decided to suppress the story and Mr Campbell, who became the Labour government's chief spin doctor, claimed never to have spoken about it again with Mr Blair or anyone else.

    But critics demanded to know whether senior government colleagues were informed given that Mr Prescott was in charge of the country when Mr Blair was abroad.

    Mark Wallace, the campaign director for the TaxPayers' Alliance, said he should have disclosed his condition, especially as he had claimed £4,000 in food expenses a year.

    A spokesman for Tony Blair said last night that the former prime minister would not comment because it was a private matter.

    Mr Campbell said: "It was not something that came up when I was working with Tony. It vaguely rings a bell but to be honest I forgot all about it until recently."

    Mr Prescott said he kept the condition secret for years before even close friends and family found out.

    He said eating became his "main pleasure" and that at times of stress he would seek comfort in gorging on vast quantities of food and then vomiting to purge his body.

    Mr Prescott, 69, said up until a year ago he would "stuff his face" with digestive biscuits, trifles and fish and chips - and wash it down with condensed milk. When the pressure really got to him, he would drink bottles of vodka.

    On trips to his local Chinese restaurant, the China Palace in his Hull constituency, he said he could eat his way through the entire menu.

    Despite a series of revelations about his private life while he was in the Cabinet, he managed to keep the illness secret from all but his closest friends and family and the doctors from whom he sought help.

    But, as he admits, he is not an obvious candidate for the disease.

    "People normally associate it with anorexic girls, models trying to keep their weight down," he writes in his autobiography, Prezza, Pulling No Punches.

    "With my weight, people wouldn't suspect it. I wasn't a very successful bulimic, in that my weight didn't really drop."