Mumbai: Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar has reached every conceivable milestone in the world of cricket. Now with the World Cup in his kitty, the clamour for Sachin to be awarded the Bharat Ratna is growing.The Maharashtra Assembly adopted a resolution on Tuesday, seeking India's highest civilian award for Sachin Tendulkar.The state assembly unanimously recommended to the Central Government that Sachin be presented the Bharat Ratna."The Maharashtra Assembly has unanimously decided that Sachin must be awarded the Bharat Ratna for his accomplishments," said Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.The Opposition went a step further and said that Tendulkar's request for extra FSI to construct a gym at his Bandra bungalow, be approved. This despite the fact that Sachin himself, had later withdrawn this demand."If needed, the rules should be amended to meet Sachin's demand as soon as possible," said BJP MLA Devendra Fadnavis.Still others demanded honours for the entire team."Having won the WC, Sachin must get the Bharat Ratna and all other members of Team India must be awarded Padma Puraskar," said Maharashtra PWD Minister and NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal.At the Maharashtra Vidhan Bhavan on Tuesday, after a motion to congratulate the Indian team was passed, the whole assembly gave a standing ovation to the Indian team and cheered loudly for India. The men in blue clearly achieved the unachievable, unity amongst the men in white!
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NEW YORK - With the possible theft of millions of email addresses from an advertising company, several large companies have started warning customers to expect fraudulent emails that try to coax account login information from them.Companies behind brands such as Chase, Citi and Best Buy said over the weekend that hackers may have learned their email addresses because of a security breach at a Dallas-based company called Epsilon that manages email communications.The email addresses could be used to target spam. It's also a standard tactic among online fraudsters to send emails to random people, purporting to be from a large bank and asking them to login in at a site that looks like the bank's site. Instead, the fraudulent site captures their login information and uses it to access the real account.The data breach could make these so-called "phishing" attacks more efficient, by allowing the fraudsters to target people who actually have an account with the bank.David Jevans, chairman and founder of the nonprofit Anti-Phishing Working Group, said criminals have been moving away from indiscriminate phishing toward more intelligent attacks known as "spear phishing," which rely on having more intimate knowledge of the victims."This data breach is going to facilitate that in a big way. Now they know which institution people bank with, they know their name and they have their email address," said Jevans, who is also the CEO of security company IronKey Inc."You're not going to see typical phishing where 90 percent of it ends up in spam traps and is easily detected. This is going to be highly targeted," he added.Among the affected are financial-service companies such as Capital One Financial Corp., Barclays Bank, U.S. Bancorp, Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ameriprise Financial Inc. and retailers including Best Buy Co., TiVo Inc., Walgreen Co. and Kroger Co.Read Morehttp://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/apr/05/millions-of-emails-may-have-been-taken/
Google Inc. (GOOG)’s dominance of the Internet-search industry is being considered for a broad antitrust investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, two people familiar with the matter said.Before proceeding with any probe, the FTC is awaiting a decision by the Justice Department on whether it will challenge Google’s planned acquisition of ITA Software Inc. as a threat to competition in the travel-information search business, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still confidential.An FTC investigation of Google, the world’s most popular search engine, “could be on par” with the scope of the Justice Department’s probe of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) a decade ago, said Keith Hylton, an antitrust law professor at Boston University School of Law. Google “could fight the FTC, but that’s going to cost a lot of money and time.”The FTC and Justice Department share responsibility for oversight of antitrust enforcement, and the outcome of the ITA deal may determine whether the two agencies will vie for control of a broader probe of Google, the people said. The two agencies sometimes negotiate which will handle major antitrust investigations, with the decision turning on their respective expertise.The Justice Department may soon announce its decision on Google’s purchase of ITA, said the people familiar with the matter.Commissioner’s SupportFTC Commissioner Thomas Rosch said in an interview last month he supported a probe of the dominant players in the Internet-search industry, without specifying which companies. Rosch, one of two Republicans on the five-member commission, is the only commissioner to say publicly that such an investigation is in order.The people familiar with the matter said any investigation of the search industry should concentrate on Mountain View, California-based Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine.If consumers don’t like what the company is doing, they can switch to another search engine, said Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman.“Since competition is one click away on the Internet, we work hard to put our users’ interests first and give them the best, most relevant answers to their queries,” he said in an e- mail. “We built Google for users, not websites.”Cecelia Prewett, a spokeswoman at the FTC, and Gina Talamona, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment. Read Morehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/google-said-to-be-possible-target-of-antitrust-probe-after-ita-acquisition.html
Gary Kirsten has called the tough quarterfinal against Australia a tipping point in self-belief in the Indian camp, and that it led to a "sense of destiny" about winning the World Cup. Though no host country had won the World Cup before, Kirsten said he thought there was "never any doubt" about India becoming champions as the knockout stage progressed."I felt we were going to do this thing. And to the point the day before the final we knew were going to win," he told ESPNcricinfo on Monday (full interview will be published on Tuesday). "We actually even spoke about it. That we were going to win this thing. It [the issue] is how we prepare to deal with the success because we are going to win. There was never any doubt at that stage."Kirsten said he was thrilled with the resilience of the Indian team, which managed to win though their opponents were generally viewed to have the edge at the halfway stage of each of the knockout matches. "The one thing what really worked for us in the tournament was that we got ourselves into tough situations in virtually every game," he said. "Even the games against Ireland and the Netherlands were tough. But I believe that really helped us. We were battle-hardened. We had no easy build-up."For me the key moment was the Australian game where we chased down 260, which was a tough ask. And from that moment I just got a real sense that within our unit that now we can actually believe that we can win this (World Cup) because we can confront any situation."We just believe that we can do anything. It stems from Harbhajan Singh scoring hundreds. It stems from Ishant Sharma batting with [VVS] Laxman to save a game. It stems from Gautam Gambhir batting out a day against South Africa in really tough conditions at Newlands. And then all the one-day efforts from difficult situations."One man who rescued the team from tight situations in several matches was Yuvraj Singh, who had lost his place in the one-day side last year after struggling with form and fitness, but transformed into a match-winning allrounder in the World Cup."Yuvi had a turnaround I would say about six months ago when he got left out of the side in Sri Lanka. From that moment he did a lot of work with Paddy [Upton, the mental conditioning coach]. He made some personal decisions about what he was going to do in preparation for the World Cup: one of them was his fielding, one of them was his fitness."He had been through a tough six months, and to end up being the player of the World Cup that is as good a turnaround I have seen in world sport. He just personified the desire and the pride that these individuals have in playing for the country."Among the people who inspired Yuvraj and the rest of the Indian team in the build-up to the tournament was Mike Horn, a high-altitude climber and Arctic explorer, who returned to help the team in the knockout phase as well. Among Horn's extreme adventure feats are climbing a 8000-metre peak without oxygen, navigating 7000km of the Amazon river besides traversing the Arctic circle without the help of motorised transport."The guys were really impressed with Horn's first session, which was during the Kolkata Test against South Africa last year," Kirsten said. "So we got him again during the pre-tournament stage. And again he went down remarkably well with the players, really connected with them, players love him, gave a couple of chat sessions, got involved in the practices."We wanted him (again) from the quarters but he said he couldn't make it but he came for the semis. The players were unaware when he entered the room in Mohali. He gave three very really inspirational talks leading into the final. He really just shares his personal experiences about his life and his adventures. He was the X-factor. He was that little bit of extra kick we needed."Horn may have provided the extra kick, but it was Kirsten's low-profile coaching technique that constructed the base for the team to succeed. Everyone from Sachin Tendulkar to Virender Sehwag have repeatedly spoken of how Kirsten has helped them with their game, and the respect with which the players hold Kirsten was demonstrated when they chaired him around the ground during the victory celebrations at the Wankhede Stadium.Despite the high esteem in which he is held within the Indian establishment, and the many successes during his three years in charge, Kirsten ruled out continuing to coach the national team and said he hadn't been approached by the BCCI to change his mind. The time away from his young family in South Africa was one of the factors in his decision, and he was yet to decide on what his next job would be."There is a lot on the table, you know. South Africa have approached me, and a couple of IPL teams have approached me," he said. One of them is the Mumbai Indians, and the other is a team that he has "forgotten" but for now it seems the only way in which he may remain connected to Indian cricket will be through the IPL.Read More
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ISLAMABAD: Days after winning the hearts of numerous Indian fans with his remarks after his team's loss in the World Cup semifinal, Pakistan cricket captain Shahid Afridi has said Indians are not as large-hearted as Pakistanis.Afridi also slammed the Indian media for its "very negative approach" and said the Pakistani media was a "hundred times better" than its Indian counterpart."In my opinion, if I have to tell the truth, they (Indians) will never have hearts like Muslims and Pakistanis. I don't think they have the large and clean hearts that Allah has given us," Afridi said during a talk show on Samaa news channel when he was asked about relations between the two countries."It is a very difficult thing for us to live with them (Indians) or to have long-term relationship with them. Nothing will come out of talks. See how many times in the past 60 years we have had friendship and then how many times things have gone bad," he said as the audience in the TV channel's studio applauded him repeatedly.Read Morehttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/cricket-world-cup-2011/news/Indians-not-as-large-hearted-as-Pakistanis-Afridi/articleshow/7861946.cms
