After 10 years, Manmohan Singh prepares to move out of Prime Minister's residence

File photo of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

New Delhi:  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will move to a four-bedroom sprawling bungalow on Motilal Nehru Place once he retires after the Lok Sabha elections.

The 3, Motilal Nehru Place type VIII bungalow, spread over 2.5 acres, was vacated by former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit recently.

"Some work has to be undertaken at the bungalow before the VIP moves here and CPWD has been given the responsibility for it," said a senior Urban Development Ministry official.

With the allotment of a Lutyen's bungalow, Dr Singh and his wife would be entitled to occupy the house for their lifetime.

Dr Singh, a Rajya Sabha MP, is currently staying at 7 Race Course Road, the official residence of the Prime Minister.

Ms Dikshit has moved to a 2,000-sq ft, three-bedroom flat in Silver Arch apartment on Ferozeshah Road in central Delhi after vacating the Motilal Nehru Place bungalow.

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Seven sailors were injured and two officers are missing after an accident on board Indian Navy submarine INS Sindhuratna off the Mumbai coast today.

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Indian Navy submarine INS Sindhuratna (file pic)

Mumbai:  Seven sailors were injured and two officers are missing after an accident on board Indian Navy submarine INS Sindhuratna off the Mumbai coast today. The submarine is headed back to the shore after it was forced to surface when smoke was detected on board.

The accident took place in the early hours of Wednesday. The injured sailors, who fell unconscious from suffocation, were airlifted to a Navy hospital in Mumbai. Reports suggest that a fire may have broken out on the vessel.

The INS Sindhuratna was being sea tested after a refit, about 40 to 50 km off the Mumbai coast when the smoke was detected. The senior-most submarine officer of the Western Naval Command was on board.

The Russian-origin Kilo Class submarine was carrying no weapons or ammunition. Since it was still in testing mode, it had not been placed under operational command yet.

While the Indian Navy is yet to release an official statement on the mishap, sources in the Navy have reportedly told news agency PTI that a leakage in the battery compartment of the submarine could have caused the smoke. 

This is the 10th mishap involving an Indian Navy warship and the third submarine accident in the last seven months.

In August last year, Navy submarine INS Sindhurakshak sank in the Mumbai harbour after an explosion on board, killing 18 sailors.  Online Shopping

Earlier this month, an amphibious warfare vessel INS Airavat ran aground after which its commanding officer was stripped of his command duties.

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Emma Watson not concerned about boyfriend's reputation

Emma Watson is smitten with her new boyfriend

Harry Potter star Emma Watson is reportedly not worried about her new boyfriend Matthew Janney's reputation as a ladies man.

The 23-year-old actress started dating the rugby-playing British hunk since splitting with long term boyfriend Will Adamowicz, and is ignoring her friends' warnings that he is could break her heart, reported Star magazine.

"They had instant chemistry. People have warned Emma about his past, but she doesn't care. She became infatuated with him immediately, and he loves her attention," a source said.

The couple were spotted kissing on a romantic break in the Caribbean earlier this month, and Coralie Day - Matthew's guardian, who has looked after him since the death of both his mother and father from cancer, leaving him orphaned at 16 - says she's 'thrilled' for them both.

"We are thrilled to bits that he is seeing Emma Watson. We are looking forward to meeting her soon. Hats off to her for finding such a wonderful young man. There is nothing bad anyone could say about Matt. He is absolutely lovely," she had said.

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Why Daniel Radcliffe sympathizes with women

Daniel says he would never grow his hair long in his own time. Image courtesy: AP

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, who is has grown his hair to play Igor in the new version ofFrankenstein, says it is harder than he expected. The 24-year-old star showed off his new look on Sunday during WhatsOnStage Awards, where he won best actor in a play for The Cripple of Inishmaan.

"I don't mind how it looks, but I mind dealing with it. I don't know why any man would have it voluntarily. The amount of work it takes, having to dry it - doing anything to it is a nightmare," Daniel Radcliffe told the Telegraph.

"I do have a whole new sympathy for women. I wouldn't be growing my hair this long in my own time. But the look has its advantages as the publicity shy actor now finds it easier to incognito on the streets.

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Randeep Hooda waiting for Naseeruddin Shah to watch Highway

Randeep is a huge fan of Naseeruddin Shah.

Actor Randeep Hooda, a huge fan of Naseeruddin Shah, says his latest film Highway will remain incomplete until the veteran actor watches it.

"For me, Highway is incomplete till Naseeruddin sir watches it. I am eagerly waiting for his review. I want him to see the film and sit down with me and discuss about it," Randeep told IANS.

"He has been receiving a lot of calls from the many people praising my work. So he is very happy about it," added the actor, who has worked with Naseeruddin on the theatre platform too.

Randeep had earlier organised a special screening of Highway for Naseeruddin, but the latter could not make it. "Unfortunately, he couldn't make it for the screening. Nonetheless, he will soon watch the film," he said.

Highway has opened to mixed reactions, but Randeep is confident that the movie will pick up on word of mouth. "When we made this film, we were certain that this film was not a huge opener kind of a film. The film has received mixed reactions and I hope the film will pick up over word of mouth. So far the reviews have been favourable for me and for the film," the 37-year-old said.

Directed by Imtiaz Ali, Highway which released on February 21, features Alia Bhatt as the female lead.

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Highway: Celebrating bondage over bonds of marriage

Alia Bhatt in a still from Highway

"In bondage, she found freedom." That's the tagline in the trailer for the Hindi movie Highway, and it makes you wonder if the film will be appalling or merely clueless.

It's neither, although it has tone trouble as it searches for a genre to contain a story with built-in believability problems.

The "she" who finds freedom is Veera (Alia Bhatt), a rich urbanite whose wedding preparations we see in the first, claustrophobic scenes. "Let's run away," she tells her strait-laced fiance. He's willing to go for a drive but warns of the dangers of leaving the city.

And lo and behold, the minute she steps out of his fancy car at a gas station in Nowheresville, bandits nab her.

The director, Imtiaz Ali (Rockstar), doesn't soft-pedal the violence of Veera's kidnapping or the rough treatment she receives at her abductors' hands. She's gagged and bound and slapped and tossed in the back of an old truck. One of the kidnappers gropes her.

Bhatt convincingly shows us the fear in Veera's eyes and her hopelessness. She escapes briefly, running herself ragged on a salt flat under a star-speckled sky. "Where am I?" croons the singer on the soundtrack.

The naturalism and violence (and threat of rape) in these scenes make them an uncomfortable prelude to what comes next: a love story.

Suddenly, Veera is not afraid. "Maybe I've lost my mind," she says, and maybe she has. She begins to fall for the brooding, monosyllabic Mahabir (Randeep Hooda), one of her kidnappers.

At this point, Highway morphs, sort of, into a lighter, slightly more comic film, a road movie with plentiful scenery, some dancing and some yuks. But a dark undertow remains. The fact of the abduction means that a creepiness hovers over the romance, which has other obstacles to overcome, most important the class difference. If the road seems romantic to Veera ("I don't want to get to where we're going"), it's only a dead end to Mahabir, a poor man on the run.

The cinematographer Anil Mehta's lovely, unfussy images ground the film and show us a good bit of India. (It was shot in Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir.) Ali's story, though, wanders too long and too far, sometimes coming off like a forced mash-up of It Happened One Night and Patty Hearst. No wonder the film can't sustain a tone, wavering between realism and Bollywood hokum.

Bhatt has an openness and emotional transparency that help make her character something more than a screenwriter's bad idea, even if you never quite believe that she's attracted to Mahabir. Hooda fares less well, though he has the movie's best scene:

In the mountains, Mahabir and Veera find a little cabin, which Veera proceeds to spiff up. Mahabir peers through the door but can't go in. He turns his back, crying. He tries to enter again. Soon, he's sobbing. The picture of domestic bliss is too much for him.

"I'll never have this," he says, and you know he's right. It's as if he were tossing cold water onto the movie's moony fantasizing. Freedom, he reminds us, isn't always an option.

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Mohnish Bahl may sell bungalow where infant's dead body was found

A two-day-old infant was found dead in the swimming pool of actor Mohnish Behl’s Mumbra bungalow on February 22.

Last Saturday (February 22), a two-day-old infant was found dead in the swimming pool of actor Mohnish Bahl's Mumbra bungalow. This incident has understandably left the actor shaken and he is no longer sure if he wants to hold on to this property.

Mohnish Bahl admits that the house holds a special significance as he spent a fair share of his childhood days there. He says, "My parents had bought the property in 1965 and many of my childhood days were spent there. But after my mother (actress Nutan) passed away in 1991, my father cut down on his visits to this bungalow." After his father (Rajneesh Behl) passed away in 2004, the actor and his wife stopped going there as well.

"Ekta and I have not been there for nearly a decade now. A watchman, who is also the caretaker, has been looking after the place," says Behl. The actor also points out though an emotional attachment with the place kept him from selling it all this while, he's not so sure now. "After what I saw on Saturday, I really don't know what I will do. This incident will never go away from my mind. I hope people change their attitude towards girl children," he says.

It may be pointed out that in November last year, the actor had surrendered around 25 acres of land to the Thane Municipal Corporation (except for the bungalow). He adds, "The area where the bungalow stands has incidentally been earmarked for a park and a cultural centre, but I had requested the TMC to exempt the bungalow."

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Missouri spelling bee runs out of words after marathon duel between Indian-origin boy and American girl

Seventh-grader Kush Sharma and fifth-grader Sophia Hoffman battled in Missouri county's annual spelling bee competition.

Chicago:  A spelling bee competition in the US has been tied between a 13-year-old Indian-origin boy and a 11-year-old girl after they duelled for 66 rounds until finally the judges ran out of words.

Kush Sharma, a seventh-grader at Frontier School of Innovation, and Sophia Hoffman, a fifth-grader at Highland Park Elementary, battled in Missouri county's annual spelling bee competition with both of them getting every word right.

Finally, the judges ran out of words and the contest between them will resume on March 8 for a spot in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington. 

"We did not want to just go through the dictionary and give them more words. We feared that someone would get a word that was too easy while the other would get an extremely difficult word," said Mary Olive Thompson, outreach coordinator for Kansas City Public Library where the event was held.

"We wanted to be a bit more calculated and neutral, and we wanted to give each an equal opportunity," she was quoted as saying by CNN.

The original pool of 25 students was quickly whittled to just Sophia and Kush on Saturday. The programme provides a list of words for contests across the country. Sophia and Kush burned through that list, as well as 20 other words organisers picked from the dictionary when they realised it was possible they might need more words, Thompson said.

"The officials were fatigued. The kids weren't tired. They had endless energy and were doing an amazing job," Thompson said.

Kush cannot remember exactly what word was the hardest for him to spell - something French that started with an "R".

He told CNN he will work hard for the rematch and would study every free minute of the day if he scores a place in the national bee. "I'm looking forward to seeing how far Sophia can push me and how far my skills can go," he said.

For Sophia, the most difficult word was 'schadenfreude', which describes the enjoyment one can get from someone else's bad luck.
She knows how to spell the word, but she apparently does not feel it.

"Kush worked really hard. I wish we could both go (to the national competition)," Sophia said.

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How to get a job at Google

Reuters

Mountain View, Calif.:  Last June, in an interview with Adam Bryant of The New York Times, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google - i.e., the guy in charge of hiring for one of the world's most successful companies - noted that Google had determined that "GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don't predict anything." He also noted that the "proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time" - now as high as 14 percent on some teams. At a time when many people are asking, "How's my kid gonna get a job?" I thought it would be useful to visit Google and hear how Bock would answer. 

Don't get him wrong, Bock begins, "Good grades certainly don't hurt." Many jobs at Google require math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more. 

"There are five hiring attributes we have across the company," explained Bock. "If it's a technical role, we assess your coding ability, and half the roles in the company are technical roles. For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it's not IQ. It's learning ability. It's the ability to process on the fly. It's the ability to pull together disparate bits of information. We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that we validate to make sure they're predictive." 

The second, he added, "is leadership - in particular emergent leadership as opposed to traditional leadership. Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? We don't care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you're a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what's critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power." 

What else? Humility and ownership. 

"It's feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in," he said, to try to solve any problem - and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others. "Your end goal," explained Bock, "is what can we do together to problem-solve. I've contributed my piece, and then I step back." 

And it is not just humility in creating space for others to contribute, says Bock, it's "intellectual humility. Without humility, you are unable to learn." It is why research shows that many graduates from hotshot business schools plateau. "Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don't learn how to learn from that failure," Bock said. 

"They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it's because I'm a genius. If something bad happens, it's because someone's an idiot or I didn't get the resources or the market moved. ... What we've seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They'll argue like hell. They'll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, 'here's a new fact,' and they'll go, 'Oh, well, that changes things; you're right.'" You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time. 

The least important attribute they look for is "expertise." Said Bock: "If you take somebody who has high cognitive ability, is innately curious, willing to learn and has emergent leadership skills, and you hire them as an HR person or finance person, and they have no content knowledge, and you compare them with someone who's been doing just one thing and is a world expert, the expert will go: 'I've seen this 100 times before; here's what you do.'" Most of the time the nonexpert will come up with the same answer, added Bock, "because most of the time it's not that hard." Sure, once in a while they will mess it up, he said, but once in a while they'll also come up with an answer that is totally new. And there is huge value in that. 

To sum up Bock's approach to hiring: Talent can come in so many different forms and be built in so many nontraditional ways today, hiring officers have to be alive to every one - besides brand-name colleges. Because "when you look at people who don't go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people." Too many colleges, he added, "don't deliver on what they promise. You generate a ton of debt, you don't learn the most useful things for your life. It's [just] an extended adolescence." 

Google attracts so much talent it can afford to look beyond traditional metrics, like GPA. For most young people, though, going to college and doing well is still the best way to master the tools needed for many careers. But Bock is saying something important to them, too: Beware. Your degree is not a proxy for your ability to do any job. The world only cares about - and pays off on - what you can do with what you know (and it doesn't care how you learned it). And in an age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of soft skills - leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work.

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Reliance refutes Aam Aadmi Party's allegations against company, Mukesh Ambani

New Delhi:  Refuting allegations made by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) today said that neither the company nor its Chairman Mukesh Ambani hold any illegitimate accounts anywhere in the world.

AAP leader and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had at an election rally on Sunday in Rohtak in Haryana read out numbers of what he claimed were two Swiss bank accounts belonging to Mr Mukesh and Anil Ambani.

"RIL strongly denies all allegations made by AAP against Reliance and Mr Mukesh Ambani in their public meeting recently," the company said in a statement. (Full text of Reliance's statement)

"As stated earlier, it is being reiterated that neither Reliance Industries Limited nor Mr Mukesh Ambani have or had any illegitimate accounts anywhere in the world," it said.

The company said it has business interests in several countries with turnover of thousands of crores of rupees.

"As a part of their normal business, these international subsidiaries of RIL deal with several global banks. These accounts are fully compliant with all regulations and are disclosed in their appropriate jurisdictions and in India," the statement said.

RIL said the allegations being levelled against it by AAP and its leaders appear to be instigated by vested interests.

Days before quitting as Delhi Chief Minister, Mr Kejriwal had ordered FIRs to be registered against RIL, Mr Ambani and Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily among others for creating artificial scarcity of natural gas in the country and jacking up prices.

At the Rothak rally, he had stated, "Mukesh Ambani runs this country."

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Sky Sports bags Indian Premier League broadcast rights from 2015-17 in Europe

Bangalore:  Renowned British television channel Sky Sports will broadcast the Indian Premier League (IPL) for three years, beginning 2015.

"British Sky Broadcasting Ltd has been awarded the telecast, internet and mobile rights for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons of the IPL, for the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and the European territories," said a statement issued here on Monday.

The decision was taken by the IPL governing council meeting here on Thursday.

"It's the cricket competition that everyone is talking about and from next year, only on Sky Sports can viewers follow the IPL live. Sky Sports' cricket coverage has never been stronger, offering something for everyone including the major Test playing nations, the best players and now the world's richest competition. We can't wait," Sky Sports managing director Barney Francis said.

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Indian Sports Minister open to approaching Home Ministry on IPL-7 issue

New Delhi:  Indian Sports Minister Jitendra Singh on Friday said that he was open to discuss security related issues for the hosting of the IPL in the country with the Home Ministry if the concerned authorities approach him with a formal request.

"I have not got any formal communique or request. Formally, I have not been requested. If they request us, we will definitely take it up with the home ministry," Singh told reporters on the sidelines of an event here.

Despite the sports ministry having no authority on providing security to IPL matches, Singh commented after he was asked about his opinion as a sports minister on the possibility of the cash-rich T20 tournament being shifted out of India and how it's going to affect cricket in the country.

Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde earlier in the day said that the government would not be able to provide adequate security for IPL -- likely to be held between April 9 and June 3 -- as its dates clash with general elections.

"Due to general elections, it will be difficult to provide adequate security to IPL matches," Shinde told reporters here.

More than 1.20 lakh central paramilitary force personnel, in addition to state police forces, are expected to be deployed for the multi-phased Lok Sabha polls which are likely to be held in April-May.

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Dwayne Smith to replace injured Chris Gayle for Ireland, England ODIs

Kingston, Jamaica:  Barbados opening batsman Dwayne Smith will replace an injured Chris Gayle for the upcoming One-Day Internationals (ODI) against Ireland and England, the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has said in a statement.

Gayle, who has been recovering from a hamstring injury, which sidelined him for the tours of India and New Zealand, experienced stiffness in his lower back following the first Twenty20 International against Ireland Wednesday, a match the West Indies lost by six wickets.

He did not play in the second and series-levelling victory on Friday. He had precautionary scans and will have medical management and necessary treatment in Jamaica.

Test and T20 captain Darren Sammy said Gayle's omission was out of an abundance of caution after he complained of stiffness in his lower back.

"He is really working hard on his fitness, but on the morning of the match against Ireland he was feeling just a little soreness in his lower back and we decided we are not going to take the chance," said Sammy.

"He is very important for us and we have already lost the services of (injured Kieron) Pollard so we are giving Chris the best possible chance for him to be fit and recover."

Smith was the highest scorer and the Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the recent Nagico Super50 tournament in Trinidad and Tobago. He made 232 runs in four innings at an average of 58 to help Barbados win the Clive Lloyd Trophy.

The West Indies will face Ireland in a one-off ODI Sunday at Sabina Park. They travel to Antigua Monday for three ODIs against England at the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Ground.

The squad to play Ireland:

Dwayne Bravo (Captain), Darren Bravo, Miguel Cummins, Kirk Edwards, Jason Holder, Nikita Miller, Sunil Narine, Kieran Powell, Denesh Ramdin, Marlon Samuels, Darren Sammy, Lendl Simmons, Dwayne Smith

In the squad to play England, young Barbados fast bowler Cummins makes way for the experienced Ravi Rampaul.

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Ian Chappell wants aggressive Virat Kohli to replace defensive MS Dhoni

New Delhi:  Former Australian skipper Ian Chappell feels Virat Kohli should replace Mahendra Singh Dhoni as India's Test captain as the incumbent is defensive and lets the game "meander along like an absent-minded professor strolling in the park".

Writing in a column for 'ESPNCricinfo', Chappell argued for Kohli's elevation as soon as possible after India's shambolic recent tour of New Zealand in which the team failed to register a single win in any format. 

"Dhoni is a brilliant captain in the shorter versions of the game, and a master at timing his run to the finishing line as a middle-order batsman. However, as a Test captain he's too reactive and has a tendency to let the game meander along, like an absent-minded professor strolling in the park," Chappell wrote.

"His conservatism allows the better players among opposition batsmen too much freedom and too many easy runs. Consequently, big partnerships, like the match-saving one by Brendon McCullum and BJ Watling, build too often," he said referring to the drawn second Test in New Zealand which India seemed like wining inside three days at one stage.

"Dhoni really should have been replaced as Test captain following India's disastrous tours of England and Australia in 2011-12, when his teams displayed little fight in losing eight matches on the trot."

Chappell said Dhoni seems to lack ideas when the team flounders. "When a captain starts to hinder his team, he needs to be replaced. During that horror patch, Dhoni was unable to inspire his team and looked like a skipper just going through the motions. There's no doubt that a captain -- even the best of them -- can stay on too long, to the point where he loses his team," he explained.

"Dhoni did bounce back when he orchestrated a convincing whitewash of Australia at home. There's no question he's a better captain under familiar conditions. He's at his best with spinners operating regularly, whereas when conditions are more in tune with seamers he struggles." 

"In fairness to the selectors, not replacing Dhoni following the disaster in Australia was understandable, as a number of senior players retired and the alternatives were few," Chappell said.

Chappell said Kohli has the aggression which is needed to fire up a team in trying circumstances.

"A suitable alternative is now available in Virat Kohli. He has leadership experience as captain of Indian youth teams and, more importantly, he's now the right age and has matured into a top-class batsman. Even more importantly, he has shown his mettle overseas by scoring runs in difficult arenas like the WACA and the Bullring," he said.

"This is the sort of inspiration India need to boost their overseas record. However, what they need even more is a proactive captain who can get the best out of his bowlers when playing in unfamiliar conditions," he added.

"Kohli is an aggressive batsman but that doesn't automatically mean he'll captain in the same manner. Ricky Ponting was an aggressive strokemaker nicknamed "Punter", but as captain he didn't take his gambling instincts on to the field."

Chappell said once given the job, Kohli will have to show a lot of courage in decision-making.

"Kohli needs to be brave as an India captain. Instead of placing defensive fields for Ishant Sharma's wayward deliveries he has to challenge him by deploying men designed to aid the bowler, as long as he maintains line and length. If Ishant can't oblige him, he has to find another bowler who can.

"While Dhoni's tendency to rely on batsmen making mistakes and getting themselves out works brilliantly in the shorter forms of the game, the ploy is often exposed as flawed when gritty opponents like McCullum mount a counterattack in Test matches," he said.

"Dhoni's latest injury may be fortuitous. It gives the selectors a chance to evaluate Kohli's leadership credentials in the one-day arena, and if he's successful, they should appoint him Test captain," he added.

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Indian team leaves for Asia Cup in Bangladesh

India's campaign will start with a clash against hosts Bangladesh on February 25. In MS Dhoni's absence, Virat Kohli will lead the team.

Mumbai:  The Indian cricket squad, led by Virat Kohli in the absence of injured regular skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, departed here today for the Asia Cup competition in Bangladesh starting on February 25.

Dhoni has been ruled out of the tournament after the wicketkeeper-batsman sustained a Grade I left side-strain injury during the course of the second Test against New Zealand earlier this month.

The Kohli-led team would commence its campaign to regain the trophy, that India won for the fifth and last time in 2010 in Sri Lanka, with a round robin game against hosts Bangladesh on February 26.

The remaining round robin fixtures for India are scheduled on February 28 (v Sri Lanka), March 2 (v defending champions Pakistan) and March 5 (v Afghanistan).

The final of the tournament is scheduled on March 8.

India squad: Virat Kohli  (Capt.), Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ambati Rayudu, Ajinkya Rahane, Dinesh Karthik, Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Varun Aaron, Stuart Binny, Amit Mishra and Ishwar Pandey.

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Fine-tuning has limits; it's time to create

When Microsoft tapped Satya Nadella as its third chief executive, the technology giant turned to a longtime engineering executive and company insider. He takes over at a critical time, as Microsoft grapples with both strategic and cultural challenges. In his first interview as CEO, Nadella, just weeks into his job, talks about leadership lessons from his predecessors, his management style and fostering innovation. This interview has been edited and condensed. 

Q: What leadership lessons have you learned from your predecessor, Steve Ballmer? 

A: The most important one I learned from Steve happened two or three annual reviews ago. I sat down with him, and I remember asking him: "What do you think? How am I doing?" Then he said: "Look, you will know it, I will know it, and it will be in the air. So you don't have to ask me, 'How am I doing?' At your level, it's going to be fairly implicit." 

I went on to ask him, "How do I compare to the people who had my role before me?" And Steve said: "Who cares? The context is so different. The only thing that matters to me is what you do with the cards you've been dealt now. I want you to stay focused on that, versus trying to do this comparative benchmark." The lesson was that you have to stay grounded, and to be brutally honest with yourself on where you stand. 

Q: And what about Bill Gates? 

A: Bill is the most analytically rigorous person. He's always very well prepared, and in the first five seconds of a meeting he'll find some logical flaw in something I've shown him. I'll wonder, how can it be that I pour in all this energy and still I didn't see something? In the beginning, I used to say, "I'm really intimidated by him." But he's actually quite grounded. You can push back on him. He'll argue with you vigorously for a couple of minutes, and then he'll be the first person to say, "Oh, you're right." Both Bill and Steve share this. They pressure-test you. They test your conviction. 

Q: There's a lot of curiosity around what kind of role Bill is going to play with you. 

A: The outside world looks at it and says, "Whoa, this is some new thing." But we've worked closely for about nine years now. So I'm very comfortable with this, and I asked for a real allocation of his time. He is in fact making some pretty hard trade-offs to say, "OK, I'll put more energy into this." And one of the fantastic things that only Bill can do inside this campus is to get everybody energized to bring their A-game. It's just a gift. 

Q: What were some early leadership lessons for you? 

A: I played on my school's cricket team, and there was one incident that just was very stunning to me. I was a bowler - like a pitcher in baseball - and I was throwing very ordinary stuff one day. So the captain took over from me and got the team a breakthrough, and then he let me take over again. 

I never asked him why he did that, but my impression is that he knew he would destroy my confidence if he didn't put me back in. And I went on to take a lot more wickets after that. It was a subtle, important leadership lesson about when to intervene and when to build the confidence of the team. I think that is perhaps the No. 1 thing that leaders have to do: to bolster the confidence of the people you're leading. 

Q: Tell me about your management approach in your new role. 

A: The thing I'm most focused on today is, how am I maximizing the effectiveness of the leadership team, and what am I doing to nurture it? A lot of people on the team were my peers, and I worked for some of them in the past. The framing for me is all about getting people to commit and engage in an authentic way, and for us to feel that energy as a team. 

I'm not evaluating them on what they say individually. None of them would be on this team if they didn't have some fantastic attributes. I'm only evaluating us collectively as a team. Are we able to authentically communicate, and are we able to build on each person's capabilities to the benefit of our organization? 

Q: Your company has acknowledged that it needs to create much more of a unified "one Microsoft" culture. How are you going to do that? 

A: One thing we've talked a lot about, even in the first leadership meeting, was, what's the purpose of our leadership team? The framework we came up with is the notion that our purpose is to bring clarity, alignment and intensity. What is it that we want to get done? Are we aligned in order to be able to get it done? And are we pursuing that with intensity? That's really the job. 

Culturally, I think we have operated as if we had the formula figured out, and it was all about optimizing, in its various constituent parts, the formula. Now it is about discovering the new formula. So the question is: How do we take the intellectual capital of 130,000 people and innovate where none of the category definitions of the past will matter? Any organizational structure you have today is irrelevant because no competition or innovation is going to respect those boundaries. Everything now is going to have to be much more compressed in terms of both cycle times and response times. 

So how do you create that self-organizing capability to drive innovation and be focused? And the high-tech business is perhaps one of the toughest ones, because something can be a real failure until it's not. It's just an absolute dud until it's a hit. So you have to be able to sense those early indicators of success, and the leadership has to really lean in and not let things die on the vine. When you have a $70 billion business, something that's $1 million can feel irrelevant. But that $1 million business might be the most relevant thing we are doing. 

To me, that is perhaps the big culture change - recognizing innovation and fostering its growth. It's not going to come because of an org chart or the organizational boundaries. Most people have a very strong sense of organizational ownership, but I think what people have to own is an innovation agenda, and everything is shared in terms of the implementation. 

Q: How do you hire? 

A: I do a kind of 360 review. I will ask the individual to tell me what their manager would say about them, what their peers would say about them, what their direct reports would say about them, and in some cases what their customers or partners may say about them. That particular line of questioning leads into fantastic threads, and I've found that to be a great one for understanding their self-awareness. 

I also ask: What are you most proud of? Tell me where you feel you've set some standard, and you look back on it and say, "Wow, I really did that." And then, what's the thing that you regret the most, where you felt like you didn't do your best work? How do you reflect on it? 

Those two lines of questioning help me a lot in terms of being able to figure people out. I fundamentally believe that if you are not self-aware, you're not learning. And if you're not learning, you're not going to do useful things in the future. 

Q: What might somebody say in a meeting that, to you, sounds like nails on a chalkboard? 

A: One of the things that drives me crazy is anyone who comes in from the outside and says, "This is how we used to do it." Or if somebody who's been here for a while says, "This is how we do it." Both of them are such dangerous traps. The question is: How do you take all of that valuable experience and apply it to the current context and raise standards? 

Q: Any final big-picture thoughts on how you're going to approach your new role? 

A: Longevity in this business is about being able to reinvent yourself or invent the future. In our case, given 39 years of success, it's more about reinvention. We've had great successes, but our future is not about our past success. It's going to be about whether we will invent things that are really going to drive our future. 

One of the things that I'm fascinated about generally is the rise and fall of everything, from civilizations to families to companies. We all know the mortality of companies is less than human beings. There are very few examples of even 100-year-old companies. For us to be a 100-year-old company where people find deep meaning at work, that's the quest.

© 2014, The New York Times News Service

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28 members of Kerala Strikers asked to leave plane for allegedly misbehaving with crew

Cochin:  A team of celebrity cricketers, the Kerala Strikers, was asked to get off an Indigo airlines flight for allegedly misbehaving with the crew.

The Kerala Strikers is one of the teams in a non-professional Celebrity Cricket League that comprises actors.

28 members of that team were asked to get off a Hyderabad-bound Indigo flight at the Cochin airport this afternoon, allegedly over some comments that they made during a security demonstration. 

After the crew complained, the pilot reportedly refused to fly unless the team got off the plane.

The flight was to leave at 1 pm but finally did an hour and a half later after the row.

The team finally left on the 4:30 pm flight, reportedly after buying new tickets. 

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Easyindia Launch India's First Departmental Store In India

Easyindia Enterprises launch online departmental store in india as name infibuy. Infibuy.in selling Mobile phones, Laptop, Electronics and much more with infibeam platform. Infibuy now selling product from infibeam a buildabazaar company as distributor as soon as infibuy launch their own platform . 

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Sridevi approached for comedy, drama films

Sridevi made her much awaited comeback to the silver screen with English Vinglish

Bollywood veteran Sridevi, who made a come back on the silver screen with a sterling performance inEnglish Vinglish has been approached for a comedy and drama film.

"There are two-three subjects lined up including a comedy, drama and a revenge drama film. Sridevijiand Boneyji (producer husband Boney Kapoor) have shortlisted a couple of stories but we are looking to sign a right director," sources close to the actress said.

"She (Sridevi) wants to do a film which a family audience can enjoy and also her role has to be exceptional," the source said.

The decision on which project the 50-year-old star will kickstart will be taken in two-three months. "Besides, there are other subjects also. It is not decided if Boneyji will be producing these films," the source said.

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Facebook to buy WhatsApp

Facebook to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion 

Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock in a landmark deal that places the world's largest social network closer to the heart of mobile communications and may bring younger users into the fold.

The transaction involves $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in stock and $3 billion in restricted stock that vests over several years. The WhatsApp deal is worth more than Facebook raised in its own IPO and underscores the social network's determination to win the market for messaging.

Founded by a Ukrainian immigrant who dropped out of college, Jan Koum, and a Stanford alumnus, Brian Acton, WhatsApp is a Silicon Valley startup fairy tale, rocketing to 450 million users in five years and adding another million daily.

"No one in the history of the world has ever done something like this," Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg, who famously closed a $1 billion deal to buy photo-sharing service Instagram over a weekend in mid-2012, revealed on Wednesday that he proposed the tie-up over dinner with CEO Koum just 10 days earlier, on the night of February 9.

WhatsApp was the leader among a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe. Although WhatsApp has adhered strictly to its core functionality of mimicking texting, other apps, such as Line in Japan or Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat, offer games or even e-commerce on top of their popular messaging features.

The deal provides Facebook entree to new users, including teens who eschew the mainstream social networks but prefer WhatsApp and rivals, which have exploded in size as private messaging takes off.

"People are calling them 'Facebook Nevers,'" said Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed and an early investor in Snapchat.

How the service will pay for itself is not yet clear.

Zuckerberg and Koum on the conference call did not say how the company would make money beyond a $1 annual fee, which is not charged for the first year. "The right strategy is to continue to focus on growth and product," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg and Koum said that WhatsApp will continue to operate independently, and promised to continue its policy of no advertising.

"Communication is the one thing that you have to use daily, and it has a strong network effect," said Jonathan Teo, an early investor in Snapchat, another red-hot messaging company that flirted year ago with a multibillion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook.

"Facebook is more about content and has not yet fully figured out communication."

PRICE TAG

Even so, many balked at the price tag.

Facebook is paying $42 per user with the deal, dwarfing its own $33 per user cost of acquiring Instagram. By comparison, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten just bought messaging service Viber for $3 per user, in a $900 million deal.

Rick Summer, an analyst with Morningstar, warned that while investors may welcome the addition of such a high-growth asset, it may point to an inherent weakness in the social networking company that has seen growth slow in recent quarters.

"This is a tacit admission that Facebook can't do things that other networks are doing," he said, pointing to the fact that Facebook had photo-sharing and messaging before it bought Instagram and WhatsApp.

"They can't replicate what other companies are doing so they go out and buy them. That's not all together encouraging necessarily and I think deals like these won't be the last one and that is something for investors to consider."

Venture capitalist Sequoia Capital, which invested in WhatsApp in February 2011 and led three rounds of financing altogether, holds a stake worth roughly $3 billion of the $19 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter.

"Goodness gracious, it's a good deal for WhatsApp," said Teo, the early investor in Snapchat.

Facebook pledged a break-up fee of $1 billion in cash and $1 billion in stock if the deal falls through.

Facebook was advised by Allen & Co, while WhatsApp has enlisted Morgan Stanley for the deal.

Shares in Facebook slid 2.5 percent to $66.36 after hours, from a close of $68.06 on the Nasdaq.

"No matter how you look at it this is an expensive deal and a very big bet and very big bets either work out or they perform quite poorly," Summer said. "Given the relative size, the enterprise valuations this is a very significant deal and it may not be the last one."

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