Ponting reprimanded for 'TV incident'

New Delhi: Australia captain has escaped with a reprimand from the ICC after the incident that resulted in a damaged television in Australia's dressing room during the win over Zimbabwe in Ahmedabad on Monday. Ponting was not fined and there was no formal hearing, after he accepted a level one charge and the reprimand from the match referee Roshan Mahanama.

Ponting was visibly frustrated as he left the field after being run out, and he threw his groin protector at his kit bag, only for it bounce up and hit the corner of the television. The Australian camp stressed that the damage to the TV was accidental and he immediately reported it, but the Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) still filed a complaint with the BCCI.

Ponting was found to have breached clause 2.1.2 of the ICC Code of Conduct, which relates to "abuse of cricket equipment or clothing, ground equipment or fixtures and fittings during an international match". However, while the level one charge could have carried a fine of up to 50% of Ponting's match fee, the ICC accepted that the incident was unintentional.

"Ricky knows that his action was in breach of the code, involving a brief moment of frustration," Mahanama said. "That said, it was clear that the damage he caused was purely accidental and without malice, he apologised shortly after the incident at the ground and immediately agreed to pay for the damage."

It was the second time in two months that Ponting found himself charged with a level one offence, after he was fined 40% of his match fee for the Boxing Day Test, over a prolonged debate with the umpire Aleem Dar over a decision review that went against the Australians. The latest incident has captured the attention of the local media, with several newspapers reporting on the morning after the game that Ponting had smashed the TV with his bat, which was not the case.

Collector, Engineer are not hostages anymore, say Naxals

Click to Expand & Play

Bhubaneswar:  District Collector Vineel Krishna and Junior Engineer Pabitra Majhi are no longer hostages, say Naxals who kidnapped them in Orissa a week ago.  However, the two men have yet to reach their home in Malkangiri.

The  Naxals say that  "logistics" are to blame for the delay. 

Last night, the Naxals said Mr Krishna and Mr Majhi were being escorted out of the camps where they were being kept in the forests along the Andhra-Orissa border. Today, representatives said that the terrain was tough to navigate in the dark.

Maoists sources have told NDTV that the 2 government officers would be handed over to local intermediaries by 5 pm this evening.

It took several rounds of negotiations between the government and a team of three mediators appointed by the Naxals to work out the terms and conditions of the release. They include the review of several cases against Naxals active in the area, as well as their family members.  The government has also agreed that no coercive action will be taken to drive out Naxal rebels if their activities are not illegal. 

The state government has also agreed to the release of Naxal leader Ganti Prasadam who is in jail. His bail application was filed on Monday and will be heard today in the Orissa High Court.

Day 2 of Telangana bandh hits hard

Hyderabad:  Normal life remained disrupted in Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh today on the second day of the 48-hour bandh called by the Telangana groups in support of their demand for introduction of a bill for separate statehood for the region.

Schools, colleges, shops and other commercial establishments remained closed and public transport buses largely remained off the roads with some pro-Telangana workers unions participating in the shut down.

People who arrived in the city from far off places at the Secunderabad railway station, headquarters of South Central Railway, and the Mahatma Gandhi bus station here had difficulty in reaching their destinations as city buses and auto rickshaws were not available.

The state government employees in Telangana region have already been organising a non-cooperation agitation in support of the separate statehood demand.

• 
  

Police made elaborate security arrangements and imposed traffic restrictions near the state assembly buildings in view of the bandh.

According to reports from Telangana districts like Karimnagar, Warangal, Medak, normal life was paralysed due to the shut down. There were no major reports of violence from anywhere in the region in the morning hours. 

Jagan's fast divides Congress again in public

Hyderabad:  Congress MLAs and MLCs loyal to former party MP YS Jagan Mohan Reddy today undertook a 'padayatra' from Indira Park in Hyderabad in support of the fast being held by him for the last six days on the tuition fees reimbursement issue.

"We have undertaken the 'padayatra' in protest against the Andhra Pradesh government's insensitive attitude on the demand for release of funds for the tuition fees reimbursement and Jagan's fast," Konda Surekha, a die-hard loyalist of Jagan, told reporters at the Assembly.

The Jagan supporters found fault with the state government for not holding talks or sending a representative to meet Jagan though his week-long fast entered the sixth day and he needed medical attention.

The government deputed ministers or other representatives when opposition leaders like Chandrababu Naidu and state BJP president G Kishan Reddy went on hunger strikes but it has a "revengeful" attitude towards Jagan, they alleged.

The MLAs, loyal to Jagan, have been expressing their protest in the Assembly on the fees reimbursement issue for the last few days by holding placards. About 20 MLAs, loyal to the former MP, have been calling on him during the last six days of his fast.

Meanwhile, policemen requested Jagan to call off his fast and take medical treatment as per doctors' advice but he declined to do so.

Is number portability a nightmare?

New Delhi:  It was viewed as a tool to empower the consumer. But now chinks are showing up in the armour of the much-hyped Mobile Number Portability (MNP) scheme.

Customers who have applied to shift to a different network complain they are facing huge problems. Most of them have alleged that their existing service provider is not allowing them to make the switch.

Saket Dokania who is using an Airtel connection had applied to shift to Reliance. But 20 days later he is still trying. "I applied for MNP on January 30 and also bought a new SIM of Reliance. I also submitted my documents. After that I got a call from Airtel customer care about the reasons for changing the operator. I made it clear that my connection is proving to be costly. They offered to reduce the call rates as well as SMS charges for me. I rejected the offer and said that I will switch to Reliance. After that it's been 20 days but there has been no communication from their side. I have made around 50 calls to customer care but all in vain. In retaliation they have added a poor quality hello tune on my number and have also deducted my balance," said Saket.

Some complain that operators are not allowing them to make the switch, while others are unhappy with the delays. A customer said he was facing problems during the change-over period which stretched to more than a week.

To switch over to another operator, a user has to send an SMS to 1900. On doing this the present operator will reply with a unique porting code which is valid for 15 days. The consumer has to use this code and the application form for the company to which he/she wants to shift. Within a week the recipient operator will take over the service.

Similar is the experience of Sharad Natani, contractor and resident of Sarita Vihar area. "I wanted to shift to Idea as I find their GPRS service good. So on January 28 I bought an Idea SIM and submitted all the documents. I even got my unique porting number which is valid only for 15 days. That has expired now.

I have been calling customer care for shifting to the new network but they are not letting me go. MNP war has shown the true colours of telecom giants. Finally I have applied again and have got a new unique porting number. I hope my number gets shifted now," he said.

Amidst this open war, none of the companies is taking responsibility for the distress to consumers but they expressed the view that the new MNP advertisements are playing an important role in  attracting fresh customers.

According to GSM lobby COAI Director-General Rajan Mathews, technical glitches were bound to crop up in the first few weeks, especially considering the scale of the project.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has claimed that the entire process of switching operators will take a maximum of seven days and subscribers may face disruption of services for about two hours during that period.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is monitoring the whole MNP process and attending to complaints. It has warned service providers against deliberate delays and complaints regarding regulations.

The advent of MNP has also added to the problem of unwanted telemarketing calls for clients. If you are getting calls from a customer care executive asking about your mobile network then the possibility is quite high that the call is not from your existing service provider but from a rival company which is trying to get your feedback and convince you to shift to its network.

Vasundhara enclave resident Harsh Vardhan Singh who is using an Idea connection for last five years was taken aback when he got a call from a rival network. "I received a call from a mobile number and it seemed like a call from my home service provider. The caller asked me about my experiences and if I was facing any problems. Later the caller revealed that he was calling from a rival company and was offering a better tariff plan with promise of better service," he said.

Brains of Blind People Reading in Braille Show Activity in Same Area That Lights Up When Sighted Readers Read

ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2011) — The portion of the brain responsible for visual reading doesn't require vision at all, according to a new study published online on Feb. 17 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Brain imaging studies of blind people as they read words in Braille show activity in precisely the same part of the brain that lights up when sighted readers read. The findings challenge the textbook notion that the brain is divided up into regions that are specialized for processing information coming in via one sense or another, the researchers say.

---

"The brain is not a sensory machine, although it often looks like one; it is a task machine," said Amir Amedi of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "A brain area can fulfill a unique function, in this case reading, regardless of what form the sensory input takes."
Unlike other tasks that the brain performs, reading is a recent invention, about 5400 years old. Braille has been in use for less than 200 years. "That's not enough time for evolution to have shaped a brain module dedicated to reading," Amedi explained.
Nevertheless, study coauthor Laurent Cohen showed previously in sighted readers that a very specific part of the brain, known as the visual word form area or VWFA for short, has been co-opted for this purpose. But no one knew what might happen in the brains of blind people who learn to read even though they've had no visual experience at all.
In the new study, Amedi's team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural activity in eight people who had been blind since birth while they read Braille words or nonsense Braille. If the brain were organized around processing sensory information, one might expect that Braille reading would depend on regions dedicated to processing tactile information, Amedi explained. If instead the brain is task oriented, you'd expect to find the peak of activity across the entire brain in the VWFA, right where it occurs in sighted readers, and that is exactly what the researchers found.
Further comparison of brain activity in blind and sighted readers showed that the patterns in the VWFA were indistinguishable between the two groups.
"The main functional properties of the VWFA as identified in the sighted are present as well in the blind, are thus independent of the sensory modality of reading, and even more surprisingly do not require any visual experience," the researchers wrote. "To the best of our judgment, this provides the strongest support so far for the metamodal theory [of brain function]," which suggests that brain regions are defined by the tasks they perform. "Hence, the VWFA should also be referred to as the tactile word form area, or more generally as the (metamodal) word form area."
The researchers suggest that the VWFA is a multisensory integration area that binds simple features into more elaborate shape descriptions, making it ideal for the relatively new task of reading.
"Its specific anatomical location and its strong connectivity to language areas enable it to bridge high-level perceptual word representation and language-related components of reading," they wrote. "It is therefore the most suitable region to be taken over during reading acquisition, even when reading is acquired via touch without prior visual experience."
Amedi said the researchers plan to examine brain activity as people learn to read Braille for the first time, to find out how rapidly this takeover happens. "How does the brain change to process information in words?" he asked. "Is it instantaneous?"

Email or share this story:

| More

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Cell Press, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Lior Reich, Marcin Szwed, Laurent Cohen, and Amir Amedi. A Ventral Visual Stream Reading Center Independent of Visual Experience. Current Biology, 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.01.040

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

enlarge

Reading in Braille. (Credit: iStockphoto/Marilyn Nieves)

Govt to release Rs. 150 coin soon

New Delhi:  For the first time in the country's minting history, government will issue coins of Rs. 150, marking the number of years of taxation in India.

The special coins, to be released by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee before his Budget speech, will also be brought out in Rs. 5 denomination on the occasion of completion of 150 years, from 1860 to 2010, of the Income Tax department.

This is the first time that coins of Rs. 150 denomination are being minted by the government. The Department of Economic Affairs under the Finance Ministry recently notified the order.

The Rs. 150 coin, made of an alloy of Silver, Copper, Nickel and Zinc, will have an international design with 'Satyameva Jayate' and 'India' on the front side while a portrait of 'Chanakya and lotus with honeybee' on the reverse side.

The Rs. 5 coins will also be minted in the same fashion. While 200 coins will be minted in Rs. 150 denomination, 100 such coins of Rs. 5 will be issued.

"The Income Tax department celebrated 150 years of taxation in the country last year and the these coins, especially the one in Rs. 150 denomination will be minted for the first time," a senior I-T official said.

South African coach names dog after Sachin

• 
  

 Delhi: South Africa bowling coach Vincen
Barnes admitted on Tuesday he's missing Sachin - his dog Sachin that is, not the Indian batting superstar in whose honour he's named.

"Sachin is not here, I am missing him already," Barnes told the Midday newspaper.

"Obviously I couldn't bring him along, what with all the travelling but there are enough people back home to take care of him."

Barnes named his dog after Sachin Tendulkar, his favourite batsman.

"He's a superman and is capable of anything."

Kidnapped Malkangiri Collector, junior engineer released: Sources

Malkangiri:  Orissa Police sources have said that kidnapped Malkangiri Collector, R Vineel Krishna, and junior engineer, Pabitra Manjhi, have been released by the Maoists.

They were in captivity for almost a week.

They are on their way to Malkangiri, sources said. The two were earlier shifted out of the location where they were held hostage.

The release came after three days of negotiations when the Orissa government accepted eight of the 14 demands of the Maoists. However, their main demand - the release of eight Maoists - is yet to be resolved.

One of the leaders who Maoists want released is Ganti Prasad, lodged in the Bhubaneswar jail, and Shriramulu Shrinivas.

The bail plea of Ganti Prasad and four other jailed Maoists including Sireesha alias Padma (wife of top Maoist RamKrishna), Gokul Kuldipia, Rozy Mannangi and Andaluri Ishwari came up for hearing today. They had moved the High Court in Cuttack for bail on Monday.

Shriramulu Shrinivas was produced in a fast track court at Malkangiri for his bail plea on Monday.

The Malkangiri Collector and junior engineer were abducted from Malkangiri district last Wednesday (February16).