MUMBAI: Ford India launches Fusion Plus, an exciting new variant to the Ford Fusion range.

The new well-equipped Fusion Plus was developed in response to consumer feedback, and their desire for a Fusion with additional features and distinctive styling.

The Fusion range offers best in class headroom, legroom and shoulder room. And within its well sized interior, the Fusion Plus offers enhanced comfort with a height adjustable driver‘s seat and power adjustable outside rear view mirrors.

The Fusion Plus has an all-new anti-lock braking system (ABS) that assists the driver during extreme braking situations, an added featured in the new variant to provide the driver with greater control.

The Fusion Plus carries additional features and styling enhancements such as 15-inch alloy wheels, body coloured outside rear view mirrors, body-colour bumpers, door handles, side moulding and deck lid. A Fusion+ badge is a final distinguishing touch to the new top-end variant.

Available with either a 1.6-litre Duratec petrol engine or a 1.4-litre Duratorq TDCi turbodiesel engine, Fusion Plus boasts features that are contemporary and desirable to make it the most practical car in the category.

Priced enticingly at Rs. 6,16,500 and Rs. 6,83,500 (Ex-showroom, Delhi) for the Duratec petrol and the Duratorq diesel variants respectively, the Fusion Plus offers potential consumers excellent value for money. The introductory offer on the Fusion Plus this month includes a MP3 player with 4 speakers, making it even more attractive.

Ford India has passed on the recent reduction in excise duty to benefit the Fusion Plus consumer ensuring the diesel variant is even more gentle on the wallet.

‘‘We have enhanced the value equation of the Ford Fusion Plus with the inclusion of key features. But we were very careful to retain well known Fusion qualities such as superior performance and driving pleasure,‘‘ said Scott McCormack, Ford India‘s vice president Marketing, Sales and Service.

The 1.6 Duratec petrol engine of the Fusion Plus delivers 101PS at 6500rpm and 146Nm of torque at 3400rpm.

The Ford Fusion Plus is also available with the aluminum alloy 1.4L Duratorq TDCi engine delivering 68PS at 4000rpm. This turbodiesel engine makes no compromises in offering economical fuel consumption and a healthy torque curve. Peak torque of 160NM is reached at 2000rpm. The 1.4-litre Duratorq TDCi engine offers almost 10 percent more torque than does the 1.6-litre Duratec petrol engine.

The Fusion Plus is available in wide range of colours including Brush Steel, Mystic Wine, Moon Dust Silver, Panther Black, Diamond White and Paprika Red.

Fusion Plus exterior styling features:

• New body-colour bumper rub strips, door handles, side moulding and rear deck lid
• New body-colour rear view mirrors
• New 15-inch alloy wheels
• Flexible boot space
• "Lozenge" shaped headlamps with integrated turn indicators

Fusion Plus on-road driving features:

• Maneuverable turning radius of 4.9 metres is well suited to congested city conditions
• Best-in-class ground clearance of 198mm that offers excellent drive on Indian roads - city or highway
• Economical 1.4-litre Duratorq TDCi turbodiesel engine - producing 160Nm at 2000rpm
• Lively 1.6-litre Duratec petrol engine - delivering 101PS at 6500rpm

Fusion Plus interior safety and comfort features:

• Height adjustable driver‘s seat
• Power adjustable rear view mirrors
• Anti lock braking systems (ABS)
• Power steering
• All Power windows
• Plush dual-tone interior
• Soft-touch dash panel
• Distance-to-empty indicator and a digital clock
• Approach lights (activated by key FOB) activates the vehicle‘s interior and exterior lights to illuminate the vehicle for additional safety in poorly lit, dark locations
• Tilt adjustable steering
• Smart starter and smart charger
• Intelligent rear wipers - Rear wipers that come on automatically when the front wipers are on and you shift the car into reverse gear.
• Height adjustable front and rear head rests
• Height adjustable front seat belts
• Defoggers
• Front 12-volt accessory power socket
• Programmable keyless entry
• Over 10 innovative stowage spaces inside the car

The Ford Fusion Plus delivers a superior combination of performance, fuel efficiency, driving dynamics and ride comfort. With these driving attributes and with the inclusion of interior comfort and safety features, the Fusion Plus offers value, luxury, practicality and excitement.

MUMBAI: In Iraq, a place where kidnappings, roadside bombs and sectarian violence are all too prevalent, it is often the women ? faced with the burden of holding fragmented families together ? who suffer the greatest hardships. In ‘Through Their Eyes‘, CNN‘s Baghdad-based international correspondent Arwa Damon intimately profiles women who all share very different stories of survival, heartbreak and determination in one of the world‘s most dangerous places.

Some of these women had to use cameras provided by CNN to record the reality of their day-to-day lives as it was too dangerous for CNN to go, thus giving viewers a candid and raw insight into life in a country plagued by violence and upheaval.

"In some cases we blurred faces [in the documentary] because simply getting caught telling their story could mean a death sentence," Damon says.

CNN was the first television crew allowed in the al-Kadhimiya women‘s prison since the war began nearly five years ago and came across Samar, whose story seemed the most desperate of all the prisoners. She‘s been sitting and waiting on death row for more than three years for a crime she says she did not commit. She says she was tortured by the police into confessing a role in the killings of three relatives, which she says her boyfriend carried out, yet he has never been captured.

"I‘m not like the other girls. Some girls don‘t want to talk to me...they feel sad for me because of my sentence," Samar says. "I don‘t sleep at all on Wednesdays. I stay up from morning through the night because that‘s the day they do the executions, so I‘m always scared until the day is over."

Her family continues to appeal the verdict, but each one has failed, meaning that Samar will be put to death.

Working at an Iraqi hospital, Dr. Eaman is a children‘s doctor, a profession has required her to live apart from her eight-year-old son to protect him from those who would target doctors since they are known in Iraq "to have money." Despite this precaution, her son was accidentally pushed into a bonfire at school, causing third degree burns to parts of his body and debilitating him.

"I don‘t know the future of my one child. How he is going to live? How he is going to depend on himself? But this is unfortunately our life and this is what the war has given us," Dr. Eaman says. "Iraq is my life, my country. I am working for a better Iraq, for a better future and this is a chance that I am not going to escape."

Nahla, mother of a six-year-old autistic boy and manager at a local radio station, was forced to identify her husband‘s charred remains after a car bomb exploded on a bridge he was driving across to pick up their son from school.

"My friends...told me ten were killed, fifteen wounded...at the Jadriya bridge," Nahla says. "It doesn‘t cross your mind; you always think that you are exempt from the numbers. You are pained by them but you are outside of the numbers."

Since Nahla‘s husband was a doctor, she thought he was at a local hospital helping the wounded but she searched through all them all and never found him. She was told there were unidentified bodies melted together in the morgue at one of the hospitals, so she decided to visit it hoping he would not be there, reassuring her he was still alive.

"You have to decide by a gap in the teeth and pin in the knee whether this person, who you shared your life with, is now this burnt thing in front of you," Nahla says calmly. "I knew they were his teeth?but I didn‘t want it to be him. It was a hard moment."

Several months into the making, ‘Through Their Eyes‘ is a dramatic and sometimes harrowing account of the lives of eight women living in Iraq. However, Nahla and the other women profiled in this documentary all share the same strength and determination to carry on in their homeland, sending a hopeful signal to the future of Iraq and the future generations of women whose voices need to be heard.

MUMBAI: Aimed at the ‘aam aadmi‘, Finance Minister presented a generous Rs. 60,000 crore agricultural loan waiver to farmers in the proposed Union Budget 2008-09.In a special series, ‘The Sixty Thousand Crore Loan Waiver‘, CNN-IBN evaluates the possible merits, if any, of this so-called panacea to the rising farmer suicides. Through-out the week CNN-IBN‘s flagship news bulletin, ‘India at 9‘, will bring stories from across the country that look at the state of farmers from some of the worst-affected areas, including how banks are grappling and how political parties are politicising the entire situation in their favour.

The farm loan waiver is expected to benefit three crore small and medium farmers, but in fact the figure is nothing like it. The waiver is in fact only applicable to loans taken from established and recognised banks for less than 2.5 hectares of land. However, a majority of the affected farmers either own more than 2.5-hectares of land and/or borrowed money from private moneylenders. This therefore means that they are exempted from the waiver and that in reality it is just a pre-poll political gimmick. CNN-IBN‘s ‘The Sixty Thousand Crore Loan Waiver‘, travels to places like Bundelkhand, Vidarbha, Telengana, Haryana and even the Finance Minster‘s constituency of Shivganga in Tamil Nadu to showcase ground realities that have been overlooked by the government‘s otherwise impressive grant. Could it be a political carrot it is dangling before farmers to gain momentum before the upcoming elections? CNN-IBN finds out. In addition, the series also lays focus on the growing migration of people from areas like the Azamgarh-Varanasi belt to the big cities in search of urban opportunities. For these former farmers, agriculture is no longer an option and jobs in metropolises seem more alluring.

‘The Sixty Thousand Crore Loan Waiver‘ is a series that looks into the reality of the Budget‘s most hyped provision and how everything is not what meets the eye!

"The series is aimed at unearthing the real impact of the Rs. 60,000 crore loan waiver on those its supposed to help. It sheds light on the plight and state of farmers across the country, for whom nothing really changes." Said, Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-Chief, CNN-IBN & IBN7.

MUMBAI: It?s time for you to bring out your pichkari?s, stock up on gulaal, and get set for the festivities as the NDTV Imagine family gets together for the maha celebration! Jasuben and Jayantilaal Joshi Ki Joint Family invite you to the biggest Holi party on television. Also attending this holi celebration are Sujata and Anuj of Ek Packet Umeed; Radhaa, Rohini, Ragini, Ruchi and Shekhar of Radhaa Ki Betiyaan Kuch Kar Dikhayengi; Siddharth, Aanchal and the kids of Main Teri Parchhain Hoon who play Holi with the Joshi?s in a special two-hour episode titled ?Holi Aayi Re? which will air on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 8:30 pm only on NDTV Imagine!

This Holi extravaganza kicks off with the Joshi joint family gearing up for the Holi party as they welcome all their guests- the parivaar of Umeed Bhavan, Radhaa and her beti?s and Aanchal, Sameer and the kids! The queen of Bollywood dance, Saroj Khan takes a break from her classroom to join the Joshi family for the Holi party! The ?Masterjee? dances on the popular item song Billorani and then teaches Jasuben (Swati Chitnis) and Radhaa (Supriya Pilgaonkar) some moves to the classic favorite Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hain! Watch a masti-bhara act by Rohini (Mona Wasu) and Shekhar (Apurva Agnihotri) as they perform on Jai Jai Shiv Shankar. The youngsters of Umeed Bhavan and the Joshi parivaar have a blast playing Holi together! Watch Anuj (Rakesh Bapat) & Sujata (Rupali Ganguly) along with Pinakin (Krishna) & Nandini (Ketaki) dance on Khaike Paan Banaraswala and Naiyo Naiyo!

And if that?s not enough? don?t miss Aanchal (Megha Gupta) and Siddharth?s (Sameer Dharmadhikari) performance on Chak Dhoom Dhoom followed by Radhaa?s beti?s Ragini (Ragini Khanna) and Ruchi (Ratan Rajput) graceful solo performances! With a complete riot of colours, a lot of naach gaana, bhaang bhari masti and the entire NDTV Imagine family under one roof, this is one Holi celebration you cannot afford to miss!

So join the NDTV Imagine family this Holi! Tune-in to this two-hour mega celebration Holi Aayi ReE, on Saturday, March 15th at 8:30 pm.