Redefine News

It was not the sort of welcome that Mahendra Singh Dhoni would have expected.

The first ball that he faced, he was struck flush on the helmet by a quick bouncer from pacer Ben Hilfenhaus

But the Indian captain didn't make too much fuss about it.

Infact, Dhoni didn't even change his helmet, just pondered for a few seconds, checked whether there was an injury or not.

He survived and then produced one of the best innings in recent times in one-day cricket when he smashed 124 off 107 deliveries to lead India to a convincing 99-run victory.

Dhoni, revealed, how he had lost his bearings for a few seconds after that blow.

" The right-hander revealed short deliveries have always created a problem for him, but had his own way of dealing with it.

"It was a good delivery but it is not like I was hit on the head for the first time. If you make a programme on it I think you will get atleast 15 clippings. I get hit on the head all the time but it is not the best way to start your innings," he said.

Dhoni started off cautiously before unleashing his power-packed shots in the final overs to set up India's mammoth total of 354 for seven, their highest total against Australia [ Images ] in ODIs.

He pointed out that with additional responsibility he had become more mature as far as his batting was concerned, unlike in the past when he would go ballistic with the bat.

"I am not the same what I was three or four years back, less responsibility and more flair but now there is more responsibility whenever I turn up on the field. People expect me to get those runs and some of the venues they expect me to hit big sixes but it is different batting at number five, six or seven. Usually you play according to the situation but mostly it depends on what kind of pressure you are handling," he said.

Dhoni said being the senior player there is a lot of expectations on him to deliver with the bat and his approach had changed accordingly over the years.

"You play by instinct but at the same time there is a cautious attempt to see what the demand actually is. What happens is that if there is a youngster batting at number four and if he plays a big shot and gets out people say it is ok he will learn and improve.

"But when a set player who has played around 100-odd internationals be it anyone if he plays a big shot and succeeds then he is a braveheart and has played a real good shot. But if he is not successful people just rip him apart. At times, that is on back of your head whenever you look to go for a big shot you back yourself and go for it," he said.

The India skipper once again pointed out that it is difficult for him to bat up the order since the top four batsmen are difficult to break up.

"Unless somebody is out of form or is not going through a real good job then we can think about that. Till everybody is doing their job on the field you don't really want to tamper too many things and that is how it works," he said.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni pummeled the australian bowlers all over tha park as he played one of the best innings of his life today at the Vidarbha Cricket Stadium in Nagpur as India leveled the seven match series 1-1 against Australia.

Dhoni blazed through his knock of 124 off just 107 balls and took home his 23rd motorbike, a Hero Honda Karizma, for being declared the man of match. Gautam Gambhir and Suresh Raina gave some excellent support to Dhoni as they cracked quick fifties each. Dhoni and Gambhir jammed to score 119 for the fourth wicket while Raina and Dhoni let it rip as they blasted 136 from 93 balls for the fifth wicket. Virender Sehwag set up the momentum as he played some lusty strokes and made a quickfire 40 off 31 balls. However, Sachin Tendulkar missed out on breaking the 17k barrier as he was out for just 4.

Ponting : "It was always going to be a hard run chase. The wicket was very good and it was a fantastic surface to play ODI. The dew didn't play that much a part as we though. Credit to India who outplayed us in all departments. Once the dew came in, we should have been just two wickets down but we had lost quite a few by then."

Man of the Match is MS Dhoni: "We lost Sachin early but Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag provided the ideal start. Then Yuvraj Singh played well. The platform was given for me to come and do my stuff. We knew that with five overs of Powerplay left, if we can take it at 38 or 40 overs we can always get to a big total. One of those innings that was good. The wicket was good and I exploited that. If you recall India A series in Nairobi, me and Gauti batted a lot and ran a lot. Aashish [Nehra] has been the pick of the bowlers. He has always done well. It was good to see Praveen Kumar bowling well today. Ishant also. Jadeja . . Bhaji also ... The 148 against Pakistan, the 183 against Sri Lanka, the Afro Asia game were good ... This innings was good because it came after a long time."

Mumbai-born and Chicago-raised Eboo Patel, a charismatic Muslim scholar who fights fanaticism and religious intolerance, has been named in the fifth annual Best Leaders issue of the US News & World Report magazine

The list of 22 leaders was compiled in association with Harvard Kennedy School. It also includes Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, Newark city Mayor Cory Booker, Cisco Systems CEO and Chairman John Chambers and playwright-activist Eve Ensler.

A 33-year-old Rhodes scholar and author, Patel is also one of US President Barack Obama's advisers on faith. He has been running an organisation called Interfaith Council and camps for youth from different religions for over a decade.

In the magazine report, Patel recollected how during the 7th-grade student council election, a white classmate had told him, 'Nobody would vote for people like you'. Locker-room humiliation and peer taunts of 'curry maker' -- worse marked his adolescence, he told the magazine.

In his memoir, Acts of Faith, Patel says he could have easily become a religious extremist but for his careful reading of The Koran, and the inspiration he took from leaders ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr to Nelson Mandela.

Patel is tackling what he considers the 'colour line' of the 21st century: The faith line,' the magazine said, adding, 'While Patel's soft-spoken charm may hide his Rhodes scholar intellect, there is nothing understated about his strikingly ambitious vision for global religious pluralism.

Some of the rare letters, postcards and articles signed and autographed by Mahatma Gandhi, will be formally presented to President Pratibha Patil when she arrives in London next week on a three-day state visit.

Leading NRI entrepreneurs Sir Gulam K Noon and Professor Nat Puri, who had bought these articles in an auction here in July will hand over them to Patil at a function in India House here next Wednesday.

The rare articles comprise three letters written by Gandhi to Maulana Abdul Bari, an islamic scholar and a leading figure in the Khilafat movement. The letters are written in Urdu.

The letters referred to the Hindu-Muslim relations, including communal tension in Lucknow, and to the personal friendship of the Mahatma and the Maulana.

In one of the letters written from prison, Gandhi thanked Bari for the gift of cotton for spinning. Bari (1878-1926) worked closely with Gandhi from 1918 onwards.

President Patil, who arrives here on Monday, will be accorded a ceremonial red carpet welcome at the Windsor Castle on Tuesday morning when her three-day state visit commences.

This is the first time an Indian President is visiting UK in nearly two decades. She will be guest of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

The same day, the leader of the opposition David Cameron and leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, will call on the President.

In the evening, the President will attend a reception hosted by Prince Charles and The Duchess of Cornwall and discuss work of the British Asian Trust.

In the night, she will attend a Banquet at Guildhall given by the Lord Mayor and City of London Corporation.

President Patil will be present in the Buckingham Palace on Thursday when the Queen will formally launch the XIX Commonwealth Games Baton Relay.

During the day, she will attend the UK India Business Council Summit at Lancaster House and address the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for India at the Palace of Westminster

 
More than one billion people go to bed hungry everyday as the deadly combination of a severe food shortage and one of the worst global financial crises in living memory has shrunk food aid to an all-time low, a UN body said today.

In the midst of a war of words between the two countries, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday expressed his desire to meet his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Thailand next week.

Premier Wen conveyed his wish during a meeting with Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, who was on a visit to Beijing to attend a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meet, sources said.

A day after China objected to Prime Minister's visit in Arunachal Pradesh, Vice Chief of the Indian Air Force Air Marshal PK Barbora said on Wednesday that Beijing should not interfere in Indian affairs. However Barbora downplayed Beijing's comment's on Prime Minister Singh's visit to Arunachal Pradesh.

The Chinese leader's remarks come a day after Beijing raked up its claim over Arunachal Pradesh, questioning Prime Minister Singh's visit there on October 3. India hit back on Wednesday, reacting strongly to Chinese plans to get involved in projects in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir.

The Chinese premier conveyed his message a day after his government lodged a protest against Singh’s recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims to be an extension of Tibet and its own territory

During the meeting with Wen, Deora put up India's case for participating in the SCO's Tashkent-based Regional Counter-Terrorism Structure, along with the six-nation security grouping's full members.

He said India was in favor of an early adoption of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the United Nations. Both China and Pakistan have not ratified the convention while India has done so. New Delhi is trying to get other countries to support the adoption of the convention at the UN.

India, along with Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia has an observer status in the SCO, which comprises China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In his summing up remarks, Wen said he agreed with the Indian minister that the role of observers has increased with the passage of time. But there was no indication on whether Beijing would accept the Indian proposal for allowing observers to participate in the Tashkent based RCTS.

Both India and Pakistan observers and not full members of the SCO. Though Pakistani prime minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani lobbied for full membership for his country, New Delhi said it wants the role of observers to be heightened.

The average pre-placement salaries offered to students of India's foremost technology schools (IITs) are lower by about half this year as compared to the same time last year, according to sources.

A drop of 36%. IIT Kharagpur has registered 10 compared to 38 a drop of 35% and Lucknow has registered 8 compared to the 25 registered this time last year a drop of 47%. IIT Kanpur has seen a drop of 48% with 12 companies registered so far when compared to 37 in October last year.

The number of companies that have registered for final placements, too, has gone down by around 45%, they said on condition of anonymity.

Pre-placement job offers at IITs have seen average salaries drop by nearly 50% since last year. For example, sources say that in IIT Bombay, average salary for PPOs has dropped from Rs 9 lakh per annum to Rs 5 lakh per annum –– a 55% drop. IIT Kharagpur has seen its average salary for PPOs drop from Rs 9.5 lakhs to Rs 4 lakhs, that's a 65% drop. Other IITs have received PPOs but there's no commitment of salaries.

Sources say that the number of companies registering for final placements so far have also seen a significant fall this year. The IITs are even considering reducing the registration fees charged to these institutions.

Experts say one main reason for the drop in registrations could be that some large companies like Accenture, Wipro and Infosys may visit campuses only in March next year.

Many public sector companies, particularly in the core sector, have shown interest in placements. IITs also expect big recruiters like Larsen & Toubro, Gas Authority of India, Tata Motors, Oracle, JP Morgan and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), who pick up 10-15 students, to return this placement season.

Schlumberger, the world's largest oilfield-services provider that gave the highest package of $100,000 last year, is also expected.

Adobe Systems, will recruit 4-5 graduates from each of the seven IITs, while finance companies Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have already made some offers.

It’s probably right that there's nothing great about this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Other Nobel Peace Prize laureates such as Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, even Al Gore—achieved specific things that unarguably changed the world for the better before they got their awards. Alfred Nobel's prize is for people who have done the most or the finest work for alliance between nations or for the mankind.

This time we can say that The Nobel Committee has accidentally done something that will only widen the political gulf between red and blue by increasing the opposition to Obama, which will make it even more difficult for him to actually achieve any of his goals.

The question is not what he has done. We know that He still continues to soothe the mind of the international left-liberal organization. He's still the artistic—and unifying—symbol of anti-Bush.

We also know that the Afghanistan may not be Vietnam yet but the "necessary" war is going nowhere near the Taliban resistance, healthcare is still a mess and the recession has not exactly ended.

Obama, though, is almost more of a symbol than an actual agent of change—at least so far. If nothing else, this award seems incredibly premature. Why not wait until he’s at least been president for an entire term, after he’s actually had enough time to make good on his promises?

This award, says the Nobel quote, is for Obama's diplomacy which "is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Did we get it right, "...shared by the majority of the world's population"?

Just nine months in office, Obama gets the Nobel for being what he's not.

As Peggy Noonan says in the Wall Street Journal, the Nobel Peace Prize, whenever it's awarded to a politician, is an "award given by liberals to liberals.

President Obama has won the award for what he may achieve in the future.

India has now set to become a global leader in IT services as many software companies have moved towards Indian markets because of the weak US dollar which hurt economic recovery.

As the Chairman and CEO of business publisher Steve Forbes, 62, said “This year I think the US government has made a number of mistakes that has slowed the recovery. They've not reduced taxes ... in terms of the dollar; they have not stabilized the dollar. They've weakened the dollar which hurts business investments, hurts the flow of capital and small businesses” when he was asked that what he made of the US government's response to the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression.

As per the Jury said about her “The research of Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson demonstrates that economic analysis can shed light on most forms of social organization”.

Her work mainly challenged the usual perception that common property is poorly managed.

In an interview on Swedish television she told that her first reaction was “great surprise and pleasure”, and she was totally shocked after being first American women to be honored by the Economic Noble.

Ostrom, being a professor at Indiana University whose name was circulated as a likely winner in recent years “conducted numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, and concluded that the outcomes are "more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories,” as the jury said.