Now India's turn................................

India reached a milestone on Sunday when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur launched the country's first indigenous nuclear-powered submarine 'INS Arihant' for sea trials.


Code-named Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV), the submarine christened 'INS Arihant' (destroyer of enemy) was launched for sea trials at the Matsya naval dockyard in Vishakapatnam. As India has declared "no first use" of nuclear weapons, the country's weapons system must survive a first strike for retaliation. Therefore, Arihant's primary weapon is stealth as it can lurk in ocean depths of half a kilometre or more and fire its missiles from under the sea. The 6000-tonne submarine is powered by an 85 megawatt capacity nuclear reactor and can acquire surface speeds of 22 to 28 kmph (12-15 knots) and submerged speed upto 44 kmph (24 knots). It will be carrying a crew of 95 men and will be armed with torpedoes and missiles including 12 ballistic missiles


The launch of the submarine is said to put India in the exclusive league of five other nations capable of designing and building their own nuclear submarines.

China was said to be the last country to join the league in 1971. While the conventional diesel-electric submarines have to go up the surface to charge the batteries, the nuclear submarine has underwater endurance and could also travel at double the speed of conventional submarines.

Indian Business in Hollywood

It was one of the largest deals in global cinema in recent years, Anil Ambani's Reliance Big Entertainment (http://www.rbe.co.in/) and Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg's Dream works (http://www.dreamworksstudios.com/) on Wednesday announced US$825 million funding for their Los Angeles-based production house Dreamworks Studios.

According to the sources the movies produced by Dreamworks will be distributed by Walt Disney globally, while the exclusive rights for India will be with Reliance Big Entertainment .


"There is no scaling up or scaling down of investment. We will begin with $825 million and this is the largest in recent times," said the Mumbai-based industrialist, whose aides had earlier indicated an investment outlay of as much as $1.5 billion for Dreamworks.


Spielberg said he was looking forward to films produced by Dreamworks as also to visit India soon to meet with filmmakers, scriptwriters and actors to see how they can all collaborate. "We have a golden opportunity to have a better control over our product," he added.


Some of the films that will be produced first include 39 Clues, Cowboys and Aliens, Dinner For Schmucks, Motorcade and Hereafter in a mix of genres including thrillers, action, comedy and family drama.


Ambani also announced that his associate Amitabh Jhunjhunwala and Spielberg's partner for decades Stacey Snider, who has been associated with projects like Eric Brockovich, The Mummy and American Pie, would also serve on the Dreamworks board.


The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group ranks among India's top three industrial houses with interests in areas including telecommunications, energy, finance, entertainment and infrastructure development.


The Anil group's entertainment business owns 428 cinema screens across India, the US, Malaysia and Mauritius, contributing 11 percent to the domesticindustry's box office collections and 35 percent from the Hindi movies screened in the US.


Its entertainment business has its presence across several platforms, including FM radio, music, sports, gaming, animation, Internet and mobile portals, direct-to-home TV, Internet TV and mobile TV.

Sources: http://www.rbe.co.in/