Internet Mogul Google is , once again (atleast for its social media penetration strategy) on front foot and announced purchase of Internet company Angstro. Angstro is founded by Dr Rohit Khare and Salim Ismail. Google also hired Dr. Rohit Khare to look after its business of social networking.This move of Google doesn’t come as surprise to many tech bloggers , as it was questioned already, whether Google be able to beat its Silicon Valley rival Facebook on internet.
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Four years on, the acrimony surrounding the first and only Test match in history to be forfeited has long since evaporated – at least from the minds of the England and Pakistan players.
On 20 August 2006 the match was abandoned on day four when Pakistan declined to take the field after tea after earlier being penalised for doctoring the match ball.
One of the principal protagonists that day, umpire Darrell Hair, is writing a book on the subject and the law relating to ball tampering has now been adjusted to ensure that such a stand off is unlikely ever to happen again.
However, in order for the unhappy event to be firmly cast into distant memory the upcoming third Test between the sides at The Oval needs to pass off competitively, but calmly.
There are still rumblings in the Pakistan camp about Stuart Broad’s flash of ill temper at Edgbaston to the extent that he is now being blamed for causing the fracture to Zulquarnain Haider’s finger that has forced the characterful wicketkeeper to return home.
England captain Andrew Strauss, with an eye on long hot days in the field in Australia, has again spoken of the need for England to remain disciplined and focused when things are not going their way – a tacit reprimand for his pace bowler who pushes the line too often.
From Strauss’s perspective, it was not so much the ball-throwing incident – although he does not condone that – but the missed run-out during the following over when Broad, still distracted and angry, fired the return wildly over Graeme Swann’s head, and the opportunity was lost.
Like many keen NFL observers who tuned into the Broncos‘ preseason opener at Cincinnati on Sunday night, former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann was drawn to the game for its “curiosity factor” surrounding the debut of college legend Tim Tebow.
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Star cast: Raghubir Yadav, Malaika Shenoy, and Naseeruddin Shah
Director: Anusha Rizvi
Producer: Aamir Khan Productions, B. Shrinivas Rao
Music Director: Mathias Duplessy, Indian Ocean
‘Peepli Live’ is a small budget film that has managed to hold its own against other big budget releases and emerge as a hit. It is a moving and in-your-face story about the aspect of the trivialization of news. How non-news become a sensational and breaking news item, due to the mushrooming of so many news channels. It also deals with the issue of farmer suicides. In Andhra Pradesh and so many other states, the farmers take loans but are unable to pay them back, so they are left with no other option but to end their lives.
In the film, debutant actor Omkar Das Manikpuri and Raghubir Yadav are brothers who are unable to pay off a bank loan, so the bank is about to sell off their farming land to recover the dues. They ask for help from all quarters but none is forthcoming. One guy talks about some state government scheme in which the government would give Rs. 1 lac to the farmer who commits suicide, as he is unable to pay off the bank loan. This gets the brothers thinking and they decide that Omkar would commit suicide, so that his family would get the money. He mentions his intentions to a couple of people, from where they are picked up by a local newspaper reporter who creates it into a sensational bit of news. And from there it is picked up by the innumerable TV channels who land upon his village and camp in front of his house waiting for him to commit suicide so that they can report it as a ‘live suicide’ and also garner some much needed TRP’s in the process for their channel.
Omkar and his family’s life are transformed totally and the political parties also come into the picture to get some much needed publicity for themselves. The politicians, bureaucracy, news reporters are not at all bothered about the plight of the innocent and hapless Omkar, but rather they are bothered about how the ‘live suicide’ would aid them in their professional front.
It is a light-hearted movie with a strong and stark look at the going-ons of the political and the bureaucracy machinery. The end is poignant and forces the user to think that even more than six decades after the independence, the nation is yet to be free from the clutches of poverty, hunger and corruption.
Barely five minutes after being declared the new Indian Idol by Amitabh Bachchan over and above the two other finalists Bhoomi Trivedi and Rakesh Maini, Sreeram Chandra from Hyderabad could barely speak with excitement.
“I feel I am walking on the clouds,” Sreeram screamed amidst roars of triumph from the judges. “It hasn’t even begun to sunk in that I’ve really won. My father and mother are here with me. And it seems I’m in a dream.”
Sreeram, who was one of the shyest contestants during this season of Indian Idol, blossomed into a potential winner as the weeks went by.
Says the incredulous winner, “Indian Idol has helped me grow as a human being and as a singer. I feel far more confident now than I did when I came into the show. I feel like I am a different person. This victory means the world to me.”
The Hyderabad boy now hopes to establish a foothold in both Bollywood and the Tamil film industry. “I’ve already sung in Telugu and yes, I hope to make a career in both Hindi and Telugu cinema… actually, it is all too unreal right now. I don’t know what I will do. It’s a moment that I am still trying to absorb.”
Sreeram did take a second out of his euphoria to think about the other finalists. “We had all become like one big family. It didn’t really matter who won and who lost.”