MUMBAI: As we all have witnessed the Union Budget, there was an almost audible buzz that said - ?What will the Budget mean for me?? ?Will it favor the aam aadmi?? ET NOW, India?s fastest growing Business news channel introduces ?Budget & You ? The Fine Print? that will provide the viewer with all the information related to the budget to help them understand the impact of this year?s union budget.

The show will feature some of the biggest market experts & the most influential leaders of Indian Economy like U R Bhat, Dalton Capital; N Jayakumar, Prime Securities; Chetan Ahya, Morgan Stanley; Shankar Sharma, First Global and Managements of Maruti, BHEL, Essar Shipping & Suzlon. This show aims to decode each and every aspect of the budget and provide a comprehensive review to the viewers with regards to - Has the Budget addressed the macro-economic essentials? Has it delivered industry?s expectations? Will Budget 2011 attain the economic priorities it has set?

So, to understand the impact, tune into ET NOW and catch the exclusive analysis of the Union budget 2011-2012 on Tuesday, March 01 at 8.00am.

MUMBAI: MoneyGram International (NYSE: MGI), a leading global money transfer company, is leveraging its ICC partnership for the ICC World Cup 2011 championship by launching the MoneyGram ?Cricket for Peace? programme across South Asia. The multi-country, multi-language consumer initiative will be launched across nine cities in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

MoneyGram?s unique Cricket for Peace initiative is a theme-based music contest that links cricket with world peace. The programme invites music -and cricket-lovers across the three world cup hosting nations to create music compositions that depict how cricket can foster the spirit of world peace.

Today, through March 12, 2011, amateur music groups in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka will create music compositions that creatively capture the spirit of world peace through cricket. Notably, the call for entry also includes charity organisations working with children and senior citizens who will also participate with their compositions in a special category provision. A central jury will shortlist five entry songs as finalists and those bands will perform their compositions at a media event in one of the following cities: Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Mohali, Mumbai, Dhaka or Colombo. These events will take place a day before world cup matches and are aimed at adding a new dimension of excitement to world cup activity.

The entry form can be downloaded from www.moneygram-cricket.com or can be requested by sending an email to cricketforpeace@gmail.com

Further, a MoneyGram Cricket for Peace finale will take place a day before world cup final match in Mumbai on April 1, 2011. It will be performed by nine artists selected from the three host countries. The individuals will come together to create the Cricket for Peace anthem that will be multi-lingual and multi-ethnic in nature, highlighting languages such as Hindi, Bangla, Sinhalese, Marathi, Tamil and others.

Commenting on the Cricket for Peace initiative, Mr. Juan Agualimpia, MoneyGram International?s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said, "Cricket, like music, can be a great unifier. It is universal and can bring people from around the world together for one purpose. The MoneyGram Cricket for Peace initiative is a unique program aimed at delivering a relevant social message using the game of cricket as the platform. MoneyGram‘s brand and services are well known in ‘cricketing countries‘ and, with our long-term cricket sponsorship, we aim to create a greater socially-relevant connection with our customers by combining the heritage of music and cricket for a greater purpose."

MoneyGram will promote the Cricket for Peace initiative through strong public relations activities in-country as well as to the 40 million expatriates of Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The programme creates compelling social media content that will appeal to and engage the resident and expatriate communities across Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

MoneyGram?s partnership with ICC offers the company a multi-country opportunity to reach its target customers across South Asia, Middle East and Africa. The company plans to grow its service network across South Asian regions and especially in key receive markets such as Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. As the ICC World Cup 2011 is hosted in these receive countries, the sponsorship give MoneyGram the opportunity to use Cricket for Peace as a key platform to create strong brand visibility in these important markets.
 

MUMBAI: Does your heart skip a beat at the thought of talking to your favourite star? Do you dream of getting up-close and personal to your heartthrob? UTV & Airtel in collaboration with Globosport Digital gives you an opportunity to make your dream come true! For the first time ever the charming beauty and the very talented Prachi Desai will be on a voice chat to interact with her fans one-on-one.

Prachi earned immense popularity during her stint on Television which only augmented further with her big screen debut. She has garnered fans in all age groups across the country and UTV Interactive & Airtel bring these fans a chance to speak with her in person. She will talk about her upcoming projects, her passions, her likes and dislikes. It will be the real Prachi that her fans can discover on the day of the chat.

Interactive, the digital arm of UTV, & Airtel get your favorite celebrities close to you through the latter?s ?Talk2Me? platform. Prachi Desai will get chatty with her fans and will answer their questions on 27th February, 2011 between 4:00pm and 5:00pm. You can now subscribe by dialing 50505 and ask Prachi all that you have been longing to know about her.

About this initiative, Prachi Desai said, ?This is going to be my first ever direct interaction with my fans & I am super excited to be talking to them 1-0-1. My fans have just seen me on the big screen, but there I am playing a character, on my voice chat they will get to know the real me. I am looking forward to connect to them & know what they think of the real Prachi! ?
 

MUMBAI: Across Kenya there is a terrible secret, a secret that affects more than three million men, women and children. People locked up in darkened rooms barely existing, despised and shunned by families and neighbours. In this edition of ?World‘s Untold Stories: Locked Up And Forgotten? CNN takes viewers inside the terrifying world of the mentally ill in Kenya.

David McKenzie, CNN?s award-winning Nairobi-based correspondent spent many months uncovering victims hidden away in darkened rooms, in small villages and makeshift accommodation. His documentary tells the story of a few of the millions of mentally ill Kenyans suffering in silence, ignored, forgotten and degraded.

People like Thomas Matoke, who for more than 30 years has spent his life in a makeshift cell, tied up to a steel bed frame with a piece of blue rope. He‘s surrounded by pools of his urine, his mattress soiled and ripped to shreds.

After a childhood illness, Matoke lost much of his high-level functioning, so his mother ties him up to prevent him from running away or hurting himself. Countless trips to doctors and hospitals haven‘t helped him, and poverty means there isn‘t much medical help his family can afford.

This is just one story that forms part of CNN?s special investigation which found that families across Kenya are struggling to cope with their loved ones who are mentally ill, receiving little help from the state and facing massive stigma from society.

The Kenyan government spends less than one percent of its health budget on mental health, though their own figures show one-quarter of all patients going to hospitals or clinics complain of mental health issues.

Dr. Frank Njenga, President of the African Association of Psychiatrists and a leading expert in the field, believes the scale is "catastrophic."

"We as a people have perfected the system of hiding our friends, relatives and other loved ones who have intellectual disability away from sight," says Njenga. "Out of sight, out of mind, no funding, neglected completely."

In the making of this harrowing film McKenzie?s team met families locking up their loved ones, torn apart by shame; children discarded by institutions and living in poverty; and suspected sexual abuse cases.

The show airs on Saturday 26th February 1930, Sunday 27th February 1530 and Tuesday 1st March at 1700 IST

Further information / video can be found at www.cnn.com/wus.

MUMBAI: After bagging the best VFX award at the recently held Apsara Awards, Prime Focus has claimed two awards for VFX (general) for the best film content, Guzaarish and VFX for the best TV content, Indigo Airlines‘ On Time advertisement at the recently held Excellence In Media & Entertainment (EME) awards at Kolkata.

Speaking on the occasion, Prime Focus co-Founder and chief creative director (India) Merzin Tavaria said, "We are truly honoured with this award and would like to stress that we are getting all these awards and getting nominated in a lot others, because of our talented team of artists who are truly passionate about their work.
"There is a strong yen of pushing ourselves to become the best and to keep creating benchmarks which are to be broken by none other but us. It is a great satisfaction to deliver good quality work and be able to exceed our clients‘ expectations and these awards are a testimonial to that".

Films of Sanjay Leela Bhansali are always visually impressive and the Prime Focus team has worked on some really challenging and spell-binding VFX shots for Guzaarish. Prime Focus provided a full end-to-end service for the film, right from pre-production to final delivery. Along with DI and VFX, Prime Focus also supplied the film prints and Digital Cinema Masters.

The Prime Focus DI team in Mumbai spent two months on the project and worked on every single frame from the skies, to the wall colouring, every part of the movie has been enhanced in some way. "It helped to visualize and plan a complete look and feel of the movie when we were involved in the project right from the start of production. With this project we have proved that Prime Focus knows how to utilise its creativity and technology in the best possible way to showcase the filmmaker‘s vision on the big screen", adds Prime Focus sr. VFX supervisor Reupal Rawal.

Talking about the Indigo Airlines‘ ‘On Time‘ advertisement, Mahesh Baria, , Prime Focus VFX supervisor said, "It was quite a challenging job to create CG characters and place them with live characters and make them all move realistically. We had to match the live action camera movement with the simulated one and make it look as seamless as possible within the given length of the shot. The purpose was to make it all very stylish and real and a team of over 10 artists delivered this stylish ad campaign ‘On Time‘ in 2 weeks."

The award ceremony was organised by the Ananda Bazar Patrika group in association with Assocham.
 

MUMBAI: STAR, Asia?s leading media and Entertainment Company, recently announced a distribution deal with Nigeria based Pay TV operator HiTV to launch STAR Gold, one of India?s leading Bollywood Movie channels in Nigeria. The launch which took place on Jan. 10th, 2011 marks STAR?s entry into Nigeria.

?In our constant endeavor to deliver & distribute our top quality content across the STAR channels, we?re proud to bring India?s favorite movie channel to HiTV subscribers through this distribution deal,? said Sumantra Dutta, STAR?s Country Head - Middle East, Africa & Pakistan. ?I?m confident that STAR Gold will excite viewers in the region with India?s biggest Blockbuster Movies and Super Hit Premieres. Looking ahead, we look forward to working more closely with HiTV to bring subscribers even more TV choice from our highly rated bouquet of South Asian channels.?

Head of Content at HiTV, Miss Morayo Aka-Bashorun is quoted as saying, ?Our mission is to offer the best channels on our platform. We are very happy to welcome STAR GOLD on HiTV and build a relationship with STAR, the leading broadcaster of Indian TV content, worldwide. One more time, we respect our mission: offer the best to our subscribers.?

STAR Gold showcases latest blockbusters and has a huge library of some of the biggest movies in Bollywood. Movies like Anjaana Anjaani, I Hate Love Storys, Paa, Rajneethi, De Dana Dan, Wanted, Housefull, Veer, Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge, Tere Bin Laden, Action Replayy etc?are some of the premieres on STAR Gold.

The robust STAR Gold library also has a healthy collection of comedy and action titles. Twenty 20, Comedy Honors and Sabsey Favourite Kaun are some of the tent pole properties on STAR Gold.

STAR Gold will be available to viewers on premium bouquet priced at USD 23 per month.