MUMBAI: "I had never planned to join politics. I never had any pressure from my family to join politics.

MUMBAI: Valentino Rossi proved he emains the ultimate fighter in the high-speed world of MotoGP when he won the Portugal Grand Prix to take his title battle with the runaway leader Casey Stoner for yet another week.

And as they take their tooth-and-nail battle to the famous Twin Ring Motegi circuit near Tokyo for the Japanese Grand Prix this week, Ten Sports, the most watched sports channel of the sub-continent, will be present to bring all the action live.

It will be an early morning start for racing enthusiasts in the subcontinent, with the live telecast starting at 7:15 am IST on Sunday, September 23.

In Portugal, Stoner needed to score 15 points more than Rossi to secure the crown with four races in hand, but the Ducati rider faced clutch problems and had to settle for third place behind Rossi and Spain?s Dani Pedrosa.

Stoner now has 287 points, 76 more than Rossi. The Italian former champion has his work cut out and will need to win at least three of the last four races to have any chance of pulling off a miraculous victory over his Australian rival.

The Twin Ring Motegi circuit will always be remembered for the sportsmanship of Rossi. In 2005, he only needed to finish fourth here to wrap up the championship, when his bike clipped the Honda of good friend Marco Melandri. Rossi was reducing the distance on the leader Capirossi, and could have continued. Instead, he stopped and did not finish the race as he helped an injured Melandri.

Motegi was built by Honda and is set in the Hakko mountain chain. The picturesque 2.98mile circuit is surrounded by forest, with the Nakagawa river flowing by. The name itself indicates two racing courses: the Super Speedway ? an American NASCAR-style oval course ? and a European-style road course.

The track has a comparatively long back straight, but a series of slow corners and also two tunnels which allows the oval to run round the outside. It is a stop-and-go circuit with some hard braking and accelerating areas.

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MUMBAI: Get mobile with your new laptop purchased at the Biggest Laptop Sale on eBay India (www.eBay.in), India‘s leading online marketplace. The Biggest Laptop Sale offers online shoppers rocking deals on cool laptops from renowned brands - Zenith, HCL, Toshiba and Sahara. This online sale kicks off on September 21, 2007 and will be on offer until September 30, 2007.

Rathin Lahiri, Chief Marketing Officer, eBay India says "An online Laptop Sale with an unmatched array of brands available at unbeatable prices?it cannot get bigger than this. This offer is sure to resonate with the tech-savvy online buyers with interests in cool gadgets,"

With over 30 models and 1500 laptops up for grabs at phenomenal prices, the eBay Laptop Sale comprises many attractive deals on laptops. An offer that gadget gurus will not resist is the Sahara HJ04 laptop - up for sale on eBay for an unbelievable Rs. 24,883/- only. The Intel PM 1.6 with 256 MB and a 40 GB HDD, also has a DVD Writer, a 14.1" Screen, Wifi and comes with a Reliance Data Card, a web camera, 4 USBs, a special Carry Bag and a Canon Colour printer at no additional cost.

A Zenith Director, for instance, priced at just Rs. 26,800/- is a steal with an Intel CORE DUO Processor, T2080, a 1.7GHz and 2 MB L2 Cache, an ATI Chipset, a 512 MB DDR2 667MHz, 100GB SATA-2 HDD (5400 RPM), a DVD RW, a 15.4" Wide Screen Display, a Glare Screen, an in-built 56Kbps V.90 Modem, a One Mini PCI Slot for Wireless Card, a Glide Pad, an in-built High Definition 2 channel Audio, a 2 Channel built-in Stereo with speakers, a built in PS2 Touchpad with 2 buttons, a Li-Ion Battery Pack and a special Carry Bag.

The HCL laptop AX0L1909A laptop is available for Rs. 27,250. This Intel Celeron M440 has a 15.4 iWXGA Wide Screen TFT, an 80 GB HDD and 512 MB RAM and a 1 year warranty. This is bundled with a free Reliance Data Card, a 1GB pen drive, a laptop bag and a Leaptop Laptop accessories kit.

Click here to buy laptops at rocking prices. Log onto www.ebay.in.

MUMBAI: Have you ever heard of reptiles that wander entire oceans, mammals that traverse continents and birds that almost never come to earth?Animal Planet presents the action-packed missions from the animal kingdom with animal expert Steve Leonard on a drive to find out about some of the toughest missions that animals undertake in ‘Mission Impossible‘.

For us traveling enormous distances is nothing, we let the plane take the strain. We take a trip to Australia and fly 20,000 miles and then come back. Yet some exceptional animals can match these sorts of unbelievable distances with natural power. Sharing his experience in the programme, Steve Leonard said in the programme, "this show gives you a clear insight about which animals are the hardest, which go the furthest, the longest and the most extreme. Here even I am also on a mission to explore some of the impossible yet possible missions for few species set by themselves".
Steve highlights the extreme challenges and fascinating mystery attached to each species that he follows while making of this programme. Some of which are -

• 12 millions sockeye salmon fish are heading for home from all over the north-pacific ocean. With unbelievable accuracy they are returning back to the individual rivers with their breeding hats on and the only thing they can think about is reaching their spawning ground. The target is over 700 miles inland from where they are now and with ospreys, bears, fisherman, everyone waiting for a piece of action, the salmon needs every ounce of energy and unbelievable determination. All the way upriver they change into spectacular mating display colours and finally on reaching the target, while the females lay eggs, the male fertilizes them. But at the end of their mission, it is really hard to digest the fact that, the exhausted fish goes literally belly up and of the millions of fish that start the journey every single one of them will die.

• Sea turtle numbers are tumbling all around the world. The Loggerhead, one of the biggest turtle is certainly the furthest traveled of them all. By checking the tags and analyzing the DNA of Loggerheads researchers have discovered something almost unbelievable. Loggerhead turtles born in Australia have turned up on the other side of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, 7,000 miles away. Some turtles even swim right across the Pacific Ocean, which is one-third the way around the world. After reaching the target, the Loggerhead gets even more extreme and decides to come all the way back home. In this programme, Steve gets hold of a turtle in Australia and says that, it might have swum to California and back. Imagine the sort of navigational accuracy they have to swim a round trip of 15,000 miles and hit the same beach they have started 30 years earlier.

• On his mission to find similar exciting animal adventures, Steve then arrives on the Gold coast, Australia, Southern ocean where he meets the legendary Albatross. These birds have got 11-foot wingspans and people write poems about them. Albatross get 98 percent of the energy for flight from the wind. They don‘t really need the land at all, but if there iss anywhere the wandering albatross calls home is then it‘s the Bird Island, South Georgia. The tiny island is the home for about 2,000 wandering albatross as they appear every year to nest. But one fact about albatross is, they have got to be the most faithful animals in the whole world. One they finish nesting they separate and fly around the oceans of the world for up to two lonely years before they rendezvous again on this tiny island as if they would never been apart.

• Now Steve finally travels to Willow, Alaska to understand what makes the Husky the ultimate endurance machine when someone got to ride with them. He finds that these dogs are capable of running four full marathons every day for ten days in a row. Huskies just don‘t stop for anything they do everything on the move, even snatching a drink. They are super fit athletes with hearts and lungs bigger than a wolf. Steve says, they don‘t even stop when it‘s dark, the extreme cold keeps them cool and they actually run faster in the night. At distances over ten miles the Alaskan Husky is the fastest runner on the planet. There is nothing alive than can beat the Alaskan Husky in terms of speed and endurance. Strange mixture really, soft as butter, but hard as nails.

To catch up with similar kind of daring adventures by animal experts, watch Animal Planet Personalities series, airing every Wednesday at 10pm only on Animal Planet.

MUMBAI: Love is bound to be in the air when Bollywood‘s most gorgeous real life couple Rishi Kapoor & Neetu Singh (Kapoor) will come together on the sets of Amul Star Voice of India, this Friday, Sept.