Little Muaaz forgets to breath

 
Little Muaaz will celebrate his fourth birthday on Sunday. And doctors say this is nothing less than a miracle since he is one of the few people who is surviving with Ondine's Curse, medically-known as congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, where the boy literally "forgets" to breath once he falls asleep. Muaaz has to be put on ventilator every time he goes to sleep.

A tracheal pipe (inserted in the throat directly into the windpipe) supplies oxygen to his lungs. This is because, his respiratory centre (part of the brain which sends signal to the respiratory system) gets depressed when he goes to sleep. Muaaz's father, Dr Mohammad Ahmed, an orthopedic surgeon, said that in 2003, he and his wife had their first son, who died within hours of delivery due to undiagnosed conditions. "He (the first son) had difficulty in breathing and despite efforts, we could not save him. Then, we had a daughter in 2006 and Muaaz in July 2007. However, when Muaaz showed similar signs as our eldest child soon after birth, we did not waste a minute and immediately shifted him to the nursery in Sheetla Hospital," said Ahmed.

He added that according to known medical history, this disorder is found only in males. Muaaz survived the first two years of his life purely on ventilator. However, the huge costs compelled the family to make arrangements at home.

"Muaaz has 'died' close to seven times. He would suddenly stop breathing and turn blue. But then like a miracle, he returns to life," explained Dr Akhlak Ahmed, his grandfather and a senior orthopedic surgeon. Dr Akhlak added that Muaaz had a major operation when he was six months where half of his large intestine had to be cut and removed since it had rotted due to lack of functionality. "Since he has slower development of the brain, the neural signals were not reaching major portions of his large intestine. Every time before passing stool, his stomach would swell up because of indigestion. We had to finally operate him," said Akhlak.

However, being on continous medication since the day he was born, Muaaz has several complications. He has lost all his teeth and his immunity is very low. He also suffers from speech and hearing impairment and once he turns five, he is likely to get a pacemaker-like device for his lungs to keep them "operational" even when he goes off to sleep. "We don't take him out of the house and discourage people who have contracted any kind of visible infection near him," said Muaaz's grandmother.

Akhlak added that because both he and his son (Muaaz's father) are doctors, the boy has come so far. "There are less than 200 patients in the world -- who are surviving with this disorder," said Akhlak.

Kind hearted indians .

India has emerged as one of the leaders in charitable giving among emerging markets, compared to other nations such as China and Brazil. In 2010, Indians gave 50% more since 2006 as a percentage of GDP at approximately $5-6 billion, up from $2 billion in 2006, according to a report released by global consultancy firm Bain & Company.

Private charity contributions were largely dominated by money pumped in by foreign funds with individuals constituting only 26% of the overall $5-6 billion. In the US, on the other hand, individual philanthropy totals up to as much as 75% of all private giving while in the UK it stands at 60%.

The report, which includes a survey of over 300 wealthy individuals, said there was optimism that philanthropy is poised to rise further in India as the population of rich individuals grows and more advanced systems come into place to help people give more. The report added that 40% of wealthy Indian individuals plan to increase philanthropic donations over the next five years.

Talking to TOI, Bain & Co's Arpan Sheth, author of the report, said, "In the last 18 months private philanthropy has gone up primarily due to an increase in wealthy individuals, a shift in attitude of high net worth individuals, and the younger generation of entrepreneurs increased their intent to give."

Although, India's private charitable donations between 0.3% and 0.4% of the GDP in 2010 was up by 0.2% in 2006, it's still far behind the developed countries. While in the US, private philanthropy accounted for 2.2% of the GDP in 2009, in the UK it was 1.3% in 2010.

"The culture of each market is different from the other. In the developed markets, the institutions for giving are also much advanced unlike here in India. But the real disparity is because individual donations in India still constitute only 26% of all private charitable contributions," said Madhur Singhal, the co-author of the report, here on Wednesday. In contrast, individual philanthropy mounted to 75% of all private giving in the US while in the UK it stood at 60%.

The most popular causes for philanthropy were education, housing and shelter, and food with the majority of 40% saying education was the top cause of donation. The survey also pointed out that wealthy Indians are giving away between 1.5-3% of their annual household income into charity however, the wealthiest of Indians are donating much less as compared to their US counterparts who contribute about 9% of their income.

Singhal from Bain & Co added that Indian corporates will have to lead the way as far as private giving goes to up the contribution. The report said individual contributions from current estimates of $1.5 billion to as much as $4.6 billion by 2015.

Die in own funeral

A Russian woman survives a presumably fatal heart attack only to die from the shock of waking up in her own casket

Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, collapsed at her home with chest pains. Doctors at a hospital in Kazan, Russia, told her husband Fagill, 51, that she'd suffered a massive heart attack, and was dead. The family gathered for her funeral two days later, and, as grieving relatives filed past the open casket, the "dead" woman's eyes fluttered, and opened.
She heard mourners praying for her soul to go to heaven. Realizing where she was, she started screaming. "We immediately rushed her back to the hospital," says her widower, as quoted by Austrian Times, "but she only lived for another 12 minutes in intensive care before she died again, this time for good."

The hospital has launched an investigation into how the doctors could have been so wrong. Fagili Mukhametzyanov says he plans to sue. "I'm very angry and want answers," he says, as quoted by Austrian Times. "She wasn't dead when they said she was and they could have saved her." It's hard to imagine such a shock, says Zack Oleson at Scallywag & Vagabond. "I'm surprised Mr. Mukhametzyanov didn't die of shock himself."

Baba ramdev biography / baba ramdev biodata

He's a yoga guru, who fashions himself after a 'yoddha sannyasi' or warrior monk. Born as Ramkrishna Yadav in Ali Saiyadpur village in Mahendragarh district of Haryana in 1965, Ramdev's earliest influences, apart from yoga, were revolutionary writings on the lives of Ram Prasad Bismil and Subhas Chandra Bose.


He learnt the value of pranayam when it cured him of the disabling effects of a paralytic stroke he got as a child. His faith in curative nature of yoga enhanced, Ramdev defined 'swasthya swavalamban' — self-reliance in health  as the centrepiece of his worldview. He says only a healthy body with a healthy mind can lead to a healthy society and nation.

But what is Ramdev's politics? Does he have an economic vision? He is a swadeshi zealot — calling him a votary would be gross understatement. An uber social conservative, he harangues foreign medicine and culture, froths at liberal views on homosexuality. At one of his congregations in Haridwar some time back, he invited a scrum of journalists to speak to a largely rural audience of around a couple of thousands in Hindi. He insists on spelling yoga as 'yog' because that's how it is pronounced.

The baba eats fruit and vegetables, drinks a lot of juice, and is lean, without a sliver of fat on his body. An
engaging conversationalist, he sizes up his interlocutor with something approximating intuition. And he has a good memory.

Ramdev, unlike politicians, appears to the folk as someone strongly attached to what he feels and thinks: A man of convictions, a contrast with politicians. His ochre robe — saffron is worshipped in the heartland — make it difficult for politicians to spit at him and run, usually a safe political tactic.

But the baba, who owns a Scottish island at Cumbrae thanks to his NRI bhakta couple Sam and Sunita Poddar who bought it for two million pounds, has a savvy business side to him. While he recently said the turnover of his enterprises is around Rs 1,100 crore, sources close to him placed the worth of his entire business empire at Rs 15,000 crore.

Ramdev is the face of a multi-crore healing business in Haridwar which includes a 300-bed multi-speciality hospital, a Yoga Research Centre known as Patanjali Yogpeeth, a university, and an ayurvedic pharmacy. He is also associated with a food park known as Padarth and Yog Gram. Ramdev recently began another massive project known as Patanjali .

Gurkha soldier who single-handedly defeated Taliban fighters

 
A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly defeated more than 30 Taliban fighters has been awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by the Queen.
Corporal Dipprasad Pun, 31, described how he was spurred on by the belief that he was going to die and so had nothing to lose in taking on the attackers who overran his checkpoint in Afghanistan.
His gallantry award is second only to the Victoria Cross - the highest honour for bravery in the face of the enemy.
Cpl Pun, from the 1st Battalion the Royal Gurkha Rifles, was presented with the CGC during an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace, during which a number of other soldiers were recognised for their bravery.
Speaking after receiving the honour from the Queen, the Gurkha said: 'I'm very excited and happy to here in the Palace to receive the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. This will be a great memory for the future.'
The soldier fired more than 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine to thwart the Taliban assault on his checkpoint near Babaji in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, last September.
At one point, after exhausting all his ammunition, he had to use the tripod of his machine gun to beat away a militant who was climbing the walls of the compound.
After the ceremony, Cpl Pun was congratulated by investiture guests who queued up to shake his hand.
Speaking about the actions which earned him the CGC, he said: 'At that time I wasn't worried, there wasn't any choice but to fight. The Taliban were all around the checkpoint, I was alone.

'I had so many of them around me that I thought I was definitely going to die so I thought I'd kill as many of them as I could before they killed me.
'That incident happened in the middle of my tour and after that I thought nobody can kill us now - when we met the enemy I wasn't scared.
'I thought the Taliban did not have the capacity to fight with us.'
Cpl Pun, an acting sergeant during his Afghan deployment, was on sentry duty at the time of the attack when he heard a clinking noise outside the small base.
At first he thought it might be a donkey or a cow, but when he went to investigate he found two insurgents digging a trench to lay an improvised explosive device (IED) at the checkpoint's front gate.
He realised that he was completely surrounded and that the Taliban were about to launch a well-planned attempt to overrun the compound.
The enemy opened fire from all sides, destroying the sentry position where the soldier had been on duty minutes before.
Defending the base from the roof, the Gurkha remained under continuous attack from rocket-propelled grenades and AK47s for more than a quarter of an hour.
Most of the militants were about 50ft away from him, but at one point he turned around to see a 'huge' Taliban fighter looming over him.
The soldier picked up his machine gun and fired a long burst at the man until he fell off the roof.
When another insurgent tried to climb up to his position, the Gurkha attempted to shoot him with his SA80 rifle. But it did not work, either because it had jammed or because the magazine was empty.
He first grabbed a sandbag but it had not been tied up and the contents fell to the floor.
Then he seized the metal tripod of his machine gun and threw it at the approaching Taliban militant, shouting in Nepali 'Marchu talai' ('I will kill you') and knocking him down.
'I thought the Taliban did not have the
Two insurgents were still attacking by the time the heroic Gurkha had used up all his ammunition, but he set off a Claymore mine to repel them.
At this point his company commander, Major Shaun Chandler, arrived at the checkpoint, slapped him on the back and asked if he was OK.
In total he fired off 250 general purpose machine gun rounds, 180 SA80 rounds, six phosphorous grenades, six normal grenades, five underslung grenade launcher rounds and one Claymore mine.
The only weapon he did not use was the traditional Kukri knife carried by Gurkhas because he did not have his with him at the time.
The married soldier, whose father and grandfather were also Gurkhas, is originally from the village of Bima in western Nepal but now lives in Ashford, Kent.
His medal citation said he saved the lives of three comrades at the checkpoint at that time and prevented the position being overrun.
It read: 'Pun could never know how many enemies were attempting to overcome his position, but he sought them out from all angles despite the danger, consistently moving towards them to reach the best position of attack.'
Major General Nicholas Carter, who was commander of combined forces, including British troops, in southern Afghanistan during Cpl Pun's deployment, praised the soldier and those from the Mercian Regiment receiving gallantry awards today.
The senior officer, who received the Distinguished Service Order from the Queen for his leadership in the Middle East country, said: 'Their efforts have been tremendous. It was a privilege to have members of the 1st Battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles and the Mercian Regiment under my command.
'The Conspicuous Gallantry Cross does not get handed out lightly, it was a most remarkable achievement by that particular young Gurkha.'

Disconnecting into reallife

The knowledge that I'd be cut off from Internet and cellphone service in just a few hours started to relax me long before I reached the secluded, serene site of a two-day yoga retreat in upstate New York.

For 43 magical hours, chirping birds replaced car horns and sirens. Two-hour yoga classes, hammock-lounging and hot-tubbing replaced sitting at my desk in Manhattan.

The best part: Absolutely nothing replaced my iPhone. It sat powered off at the bottom of my backpack all weekend save for a brief stint as an alarm clock to wake me from a nap.

I readily admit that I am powerless. Without a forced break from email, text messages, Facebook and an endless stream of online news and blogs, I am an information addict. Spending a few days without mobile service in an age where smartphones have become like limbs for many, I found immense value in disconnecting from our always-on, always-connected world.

It wasn't easy. During the three-hour ride upstate, I clutched my phone and reloaded Facebook, Gmail and Hotmail every 10 to 15 minutes. I followed our route on Google Maps, checked in to Route 17 on Foursquare and scanned the app for The New York Times for news updates for the fourth, fifth, sixth time.

As we neared the no signal zone, I called my husband to say goodbye for the second time and left a message for a friend to wish him well on medical-school admission tests that he was taking that weekend. I checked email once more.

Should I have called my mom? Posted one last update on Facebook about the looming Rapture? See if I missed any tech news by taking Friday off?

My goodness, what have I become?

Then, "No Service" appeared in the top left corner on my phone, and that was that. I took a deep breath, turned off the phone and turned to my surroundings and later, inward.


Facebook came up at least twice during the retreat at Heathen Hill. Both times, our yoga instructor was leading the 18 of us through relaxation techniques. Forget about work, she said, forget about your children at home, for a moment, and forget about Facebook. We lay on our mats, listening to the softly tapping rain and chirping birds and complied. We breathed.

It's become an increasingly rare treat to disconnect from "real world" while on vacation. For many people, work and family left behind require constant email and phone contact. Wireless access through Wi-Fi is plentiful and often free, as I have discovered in the Irish countryside, in the outskirts of my hometown of Budapest, Hungary, and in parts of the Catskills, notwithstanding the pocket where my yoga retreat took place.

Like many people, I have also developed a bit of an unhealthy attachment to my iPhone in the past couple of years, though it's not to the point where that I sleep with it under my pillow.

Convenient as it is, there are plenty drawbacks to the constant ability to check in — to friends, strangers, work, news, gossip and whatever else my phone gives me instant access to. Sometimes I don't even notice when I subconsciously reach for my phone when there's a lull in a conversation over dinner or when I want to avoid awkward small talk in the elevator.

Then there's the type of information I'm getting. Sure, some of it is valuable, but more of it is on the caliber of cute animal stories and incidental Facebook updates from friends or casual acquaintances. After coming back from the retreat, I extended my Facebook ban, so it's been five days already. I'm not sure I've missed much, except perhaps a few laughs or headshakes at friends' posts.

So what did we do, without news, Twitter and email in the Catskill Mountains? Yoga, and lots of it.
Our teacher instructed us to turn inward. That's especially difficult to do in the age of social media, when many of us seek validation even for the most minute actions and passing thoughts of our lives. Why do I need to tell my Facebook friends that it's raining again? And when someone responds, why do I feel weirdly validated in my existence?

I won't call it addiction, but for the first few hours of the retreat, I found myself regularly reaching for my iPhone — for what, I don't know. It was like a phantom limb, unnerving in its absence.

By the second day, the feeling was gone, thanks to vigorous exercise, yogic breathing and our beautiful surroundings. We dined on homemade vegetarian dishes, another break from my regular days as an avid carnivore. I also brought a book with me, printed on real paper. It's called "Living Dead in Dallas," part of a series about Southern vampires that is now a show on HBO. It helps me relax, OK?

At night we sat by the campfire, roasted marshmallows and drank wine. Then sleep, breakfast and more yoga.

I don't advocate disconnecting forever from the Internet or social media, and I admit a weekend was just enough. We needed GPS to find our way back to the city, for one thing. Some email addresses were exchanged, too.

Technology to set up a milk dairy

Four software engineers, former employees of Wipro in Bangalore quit their jobs four months ago and made a paradigm shift right out of the world of technology. They turned entrepreneurs, and set up a milk dairy in Kodihalli village of Channarayapatna taluk of Hassan district.

In the milk business, there's no escape from mooing cows, dung and calving, but Shashi Kumar, Ranjith Mukundan, Venkatesh Sesasaye and Praveen Nale have no regrets about giving up 15 years of high-flying careers and plum salaries.

Says Shashi Kumar, "We planned to take up dairy farming as our business venture and set up Akshayakalpa Farms and Foods Ltd, headed by G N S Reddy and T Prasana, who have been in the business for many years. It has 21 partners, including the four of us. Our aim is to promote rural entrepreneurship in the agro sector to create employment and prosperity in villages, to prevent the educated unemployed from abandoning agriculture and migrating to cities."

So they applied their understanding of technology to their business, to benefit both farmers and consumers. The milk dairy will be set up at a cost of Rs 15 crore on 24 acres, and 300 marginal farmers (those with less than 4.5 acres of land) will be selected within a 15-sqkm radius of Kodihalli village to supply milk to the dairy.


"The farmers will be educated on modern cattle-rearing methods, milking machines and increasing milk production. The dairy will be set up in five months and we will be recruiting 500 villagers," says Ranjith Mukundan.

"The company will help the farmers get loans from banks to set up satellite farms and purchase cows. The milkman will sell milk directly to our company without any middlemen, the transportation of milk and regular medical check-ups of cows will be free for milkmen registered with our company," he added.

The advantages of setting up satellite farms are many - each will be equipped with sensors, GPS, pedometers and other equipment to monitor and trace the movements of cows, how much milk a cow produces every day, and to check the animals' body temperature and keep tabs on their health. All this data will be monitored by the dairy, and we have developed a software for satellite farms, Ranjith added.

long cycle journey to watch the Rugby

A British couple will undertake a 30,000 kilometers long cycle journey together from England to New Zealand to watch the Rugby World Cup 2011 from September 9 to October 23.

After crossing 24 spread countries across two continents, Hudson and Burton arrived at their 25th stop Malaysia on May 10.

"The moment we hopped on our bikes, we never looked back. The journey has been nothing short of magical. We have learnt so much about many countries and the various cultures," The Star quoted Burton, as saying.

"The change in climate, from shivering coldness to scorching heat, we had to adapt to it all. But when you do something genuinely from your heart and in good faith, these potential hindrances can be easily overcome," said Hudson,

He added they were also trying to raise up to 30,000 pounds for charity. "That's like a pound for each kilometer we cover," said Hudson.

Hudson said they were hoping for the generosity of well-wishers when they arrive in New Zealand, as they had no tickets for the World Cup nor did they have much money left.

They will resume their cycling odyssey today with the next stop being Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and finally New Zealand.

husband reason for his divorce

When a husband took to the radiowaves to discuss his troubled marriage, the irony could not have been richer.
It was not another woman, an alcohol problem, or an obsession with golf that had driven his wife away.
It was his addiction to the radio. More specifically, the very radio station he was now baring his soul to.
While the caller, revealed only as Tony, was pouring out his heart to Radio 5 Live host Victoria Derbyshire, his wife of 14 years was in the midst of filing for divorce.
Tony rang the morning phone-in during a discussion on the pros and cons of the station.

He went on to explain that his obsession with 5 Live had led to furious domestic rows. He told how he had to sneak around their home trying to tune in without his wife knowing.
He finally received a letter from her solicitor which claimed his 'preoccupation with Radio 5 Live had led to a complete breakdown of social interaction between us'.
'My missus left me over 5 Live,' he lamented during the phone-in.
'I've listened to 5 Live for years, even right back to the very beginning.' Tony, who spoke with a Yorkshire accent, and assured Miss Derbyshire his call was not a 'wind-up', added: 'I used to have a shop and I listened to the radio all day.
'But when I came home at six o'clock I wasn't allowed to have the radio on in the evening.
'One day I was in the conservatory listening to it and she came in and threw the radio on the floor and stamped on it.


'But she still couldn't stop it playing so she yanked the wire out of the wall and the radio finished up at the bottom of our garden.

'She used to say to me, "How can you listen to that constant chatter all the time, because it drives me completely mad?" I tried to tell her interesting things that I'd actually heard on 5 Live to try and pacify her but as soon as I said that I'd heard it on 5 Live then the shutters would go down.'

Tony said things got so bad that his wife began doing character assassinations of individual hosts, including Miss Derbyshire.
He added: 'She went two years ago and we're not divorced yet but a friend of hers said to her, "Has he asked you to go back?" When I heard this I thought to myself that if the price of her coming back is that I have to not listen to 5 Live again then she can stay where she is.'

Married India / Early marriage statistics / cause and effect of early marriage

 
That India marries off its daughters in such a hurry that they have little time to grow out of their teens is a fact that no longer raises eyebrows. But what should come as a shock to a country that preens itself over its growing economic prowess is that we fare worse than sub-Saharan Africa, or for that matter, all of Africa put together, when it comes to child marriage.

If that's not bad enough, sample this. The degree to which child marriage is practised in India is more than double the figure for Pakistan, a country we don't quite look up to as a role model. While India would like to believe that it will one day break into the league of countries such as the US and UK, we can take solace from the fact that a worldwide scorecard on child marriage shows that we're better off than Bangladesh, Mali and Burkina Faso. The US and UK dont even figure on the list.

A 2011 data sheet called `The World's Women and Girls', released by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau, shows that 47% of women in India between the ages of 20 and 24 were married by 18. This is higher than the average for South Central Asia (45%), of which India is a part. The average for Africa as a continent works out to 34%. Most African countries fare better than India, including Ghana, Sudan and Nigeria. While Pakistan's score works out to 24%, even Afghanistan, with a pathetic score of 43%, does a better job than India when it comes to curbing child marriage.

Vibhuti Patel, director, post graduate studies and research (PGSR) and head of the PG economics department at SNDT University, who was an early advocate of India's feminist movement, points to the rather strange link between child marriage and the success of some of India's welfare schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).

SSA helps schoolgirls till Class IV, after which there are a large number of dropouts and ICDS children in the age group of 0-6. As a result adolescent girls, who mostly drop out after Class VII as they can't cope up with math, science and English, don't have to look after their younger siblings. ``In the absence of any programmes targeting adolescent girls in terms of vocational training or life-skill development by the state or by civil society groups, many parents are worried that these girls, who are now free of responsibility and have a lot of time on their hands, may end up in premarital relationships and turn unwed mothers,'' she said.

That's why parents in even progressive states like Gujarat and Maharashtra marry off their daughters at an early age, said Patel.

Pointing to the health consequences of child marriage, P Arokiasamy of the International Institute of Population Science, Mumbai, says child marriage has much to do with the low status of women in India.


Arokiasamy says the practice has more to do with culture than development. Sex ratio in Africa is better than India since several tribal societies are matriarchal. In India, regions where the status of women is low, such as Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand, have more child marriages. Even in Andhra Pradesh, which has a low fertility rate, a large proportion of women are married in their teens. Meanwhile, states like Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Jammu and Kashmir fare a lot better.


South Central Asia (of which India is a part)---45

Africa------------------------ --------------------------34

Sub-Saharan Africa----------------------------------38

Northern Africa--------------------------------------17

Western Africa---------------------------------------42

Eastern Africa----------------------------------------41

Middle Africa----------------------------------------42

Southern Africa---------------------------------------6

Central America-------------------------------------27

Caribbean---------------------------------------------30

South America---------------------------------------23

Western Asia-----------------------------------------18

South East Asia--------------------------------------18

the second avatar Sri Sathya Sai Doddamalur

The tiny village of Doddamalur, off the Bangalore-Mysore highway, will definitely be in the news in the coming years, with scores of stories doing the rounds here over the reincarnation of Sathya Sai Baba as Prema Sai.

What has lent credence to claims of people of the Vaishnava sect temples of Aprameya (Vishnu) and Ambegalu Krishna (toddler Krishna) is based on a book `Sri Sathya Sai -- Anandasai' authored by one Swami, an ardent devotee of Sai Baba. In that, he claims that the godman, during his visit to Doddamalur, had told him that Sai Baba had three avatars in kalyug, and of them, he is the second avatar (reincarnation) of Shirdi Sai Baba. The third will be Prema Sai and he will be born in this village. He also claims that Baba, during his visit in the '60s, showed a small house where he will be born.


However, confusion prevails among people who are making claims of Baba's reincarnation in the village. According to Ramadas, who runs a Krishna charitable trust, Prema Sai will be born in this village after 2023, as predicted by Sathya Sai Baba. Ramadas said Baba had predicted that his personal assistant, Narayan Kasturi, who died long ago, will reincarnate himself as a woman in a village near Bhadravathi, marry a person from this village and give birth to Prema Sai. "Today you are my assistant, in the next life you will be my mother,'' Sai Baba is supposed to have said.


Doddamalur, located on the banks of the river Kanva, will be called Gunaparthy after the reincarnation, said Raghav, an aged villager, disclosing that the soil and water of the village have curative powers. The village will be called Gun (cure) parthy (place) in the years to come.

human sexual desires / increase female desire

Scientists have finally got a grip on our deepest sexual desires - by looking at what people type into Google.
They have examined one billion online sex-related searches from around the world to find out what users click on when no one else is looking.

The findings have been published in a book called A Billion Wicked Thoughts, co-authored by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. The pair hope it will prove there is no such thing as sexual deviance as almost nothing is seen as out of bounds.

The survey is so vast it is viewed by many experts as the most complete analysis of human sexual desires.

Among the findings are the fact straight men prefer heavier women to thinner ones and find feet erotic.
They also enjoy a wide variety of erotic images, including bizarrely both elderly women and transsexuals.
Meanwhile straight women enjoy reading about and watching romances between two men, but only when the focus is on emotion and not sex.
Gay men and straight men were found to have the same favourite body parts, which in order are chests, buttocks then feet.

Surprisingly, search engine results from Dogpile, which provided the search data from Google, Yahoo! and Bing, said almost 80 per cent of internet searches were made up of 20 interests, ranging from youth, to cheerleaders.

Mr Ogas told the New York Post: 'Sex therapists haven't known which interests are common and which are rare,'
'We probably now know more than ever before.'
Doctors said the findings may now help reassure patients who think what they are interested in is perverse or disturbed, when it may actually be quite common.
Information from the search also found men fantasise about group sex more than women, and picture more men than women in the action.
Straight men prefer to watch amateur porn online and domination and submission is popular among straight women and gay men. Gay men also enjoy watching straight porn.

Experts think because porn is so readily available on the internet it may be helping human desire evolve as billions of men and women log-on more and more.


Prior to the internet boom there were less than 90 porn magazines but now an estimated 2.5million porn sites have been blocked.

However, Donald Symons, a pre-eminent evolutionary psychologist in America, thinks the survey does not necessarily prove people find the images arousing and they may just be searching out of curiosity.

Others point out that there is no way of knowing what motivated any of the searches.


Dr Symons told the New York Post: 'Ogi is convinced that when people are searching for things, it's primarily for sexual arousal. I'm not so sure about that. If there was a porn star with three breasts - I bet there would be a zillion hits. Would that be a sign men were suddenly aroused by that? I think not.'
The book's authors however, argue that the study does prove a sexual desire as they noticed people were spending money on subscriptions and visiting the sites over and over again, proving they are not just curious.

Beautiful saudi women / Saudi women

Saudi women, who are prohibited by society from living or working independently without written permission from a male guardian, will now be part of a first-of-its-kind "women-only" call centre in the country.


Kanoo Travel, one of the leading travel management companies in the Middle East, said 20 female employees have undergone telephone operation training as the company started a "ladies-only" call centre, Xinhua quoted Arab News as saying.

"Kanoo Travel is also one of the first travel companies in the country to introduce exclusive ladies centres," said Ali Abdullah Kanoo, the company's director.


The call centre has earned praise from the company's clients.

Saudi females - who make up to nine million of the kingdom's 18.5 million people - are subject to a guardian system which prohibits any woman from driving, travelling or living independently without written permission from a male guardian who could be either her husband, father or brother.

Over the years, working as a teacher in girls-only schools was the only job sanctioned for Saudi women, but recently there has been a growing number of Saudi professional women and female doctors.

" Saudi Arabia is a very important market. Over the past few years, our business has grown tremendously in the country," said another company official, Othman Al-Ghamdi.

best way to clear your debts

A small-time businessman from Rajkot found a strange way to clear his debts. He paid a supari to a friend and had himself killed so that his family would get the Rs 2 crore insurance money.

Eight months after paan masala dealer Yogesh Patoliya, 30, was found murdered on the outskirts of Rajkot, police say they have cracked the case. Crime branch officials have arrested Navghan Sindhav, 20, a close friend of Patoliya, who says he committed the murder because the victim insisted that he do it.

Crime branch inspector H K Rana says Patoliya had promised to give Sindhav Rs 90,000. The two had apparently made a pact where Patoliya wrote a letter stating that he owed Sindhav the money. Sindhav was supposed to show the letter to Patoliya's father after his death to get the money. Police officials have a copy of the letter but are yet to find out if Sindhav encashed it.

Sindhav worked with Patoliya for nearly four years and the two were close friends. The accused says he was shocked when Patoliya first proposed his plan but he convinced Sindhav by saying he should do it for the sake of their friendship.

On 17 August 2010, the two went in a car to Rajkot's outskirts. Patoliya even arranged for the knife with which Sindhav was supposed to stab him. The accused told the police he could not bear to see his friend's face while stabbing him so he turned away and then killed him. Police officials said the Patoliya had about Rs 2 crore life insurance cover from various companies and wanted the money to go to his family so that it could clear his debts.

The accused has also told the police that Patoliya had tried to kill himself by orchestrating an accident and had even driven full speed on Jetpur Road. When this plan failed, he asked Sindhav to kill him.

ex-wife belly-dancing

 
A New York City woman who was getting $850 a month in alimony because she was supposedly disabled and unable to work had her payments slashed after her ex-husband spotted online photos of her belly dancing.

Brian McGurk went to court after discovering a blog that showed his 43-year-old ex-wife dancing at a gallery.

In other internet postings, she wrote about dancing vigorously for several hours every day. Dorothy McGurk told the court that the dancing was physical therapy for injuries she suffered in a car accident in the mid-1990s. A county judge didn't buy it — and reduced her payments to $400 per month. The judge also ordered her to pay her ex-husband's legal fees and 60 percent from the sale of their home. "I wasn't really belly-dancing in them," Dorothy McGurk, 43, told the  News on Saturday. "I was posing. In some of them I was moving a veil around with my arms, but I wasn't belly-dancing."


 


























I wish I could be a professional belly dancer," she said, "but it's just not possible." She said the photos showed her and another woman, but that only the other woman was dancing. "My girlfriend in front of me was belly-dancing with a sword," she said, refusing to provide the photos. "I was just standing behind her waving a veil."

"The only thing I do are gentle exercises," she said.

world not free to express

A majority of people across the world feel they are not completely free to express unpopular opinion in their countries, says a survey released on the United Nations International Day of Democracy on Tuesday.

Most people answered in the positive for "freedom of expression" and "democracy" when they were asked how important it is to express political views without fear of being harassed and how important it is to live in a country that is governed democratically, the worldwide poll said.

The survey was carried out in 24 countries including China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia and South Africa, and represented 64 per cent of the world's population.

It asked questions such as -- "How important do you think it is for people to express unpopular political views without fear of being harassed or punished?" and "How important it is for you to live in a country that is governed democratically?" For both questions, the majority of people answered positively for freedom of expression and democracy.

"The notion of the importance of democracy and the notion of accepting diversity, expression of diverse political views are very integrally related," said Steven Kull, Director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, a consortium of research centres around the globe that conducted the poll.

Anda Filip, a top official of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) that sponsored the poll said one of the major challenges to democracy continues to be lack of political tolerance.

"It (political tolerance) is the very foundation of democratic dialogue and political pluralism, and yet it continues to elude us in so many societies around the world," Filip told reporters at the UN.

Established in 1889, the IPU is an international organisation for the parliaments of 143 sovereign states.

Despite the enthusiasm for political tolerance and democracy, most of the polled persons said they could not express their views freely.

"There was actually not a single country where majority said that people are completely free," said Kull.

The poll also revealed that people did not think that ethnic minorities were well represented in legislative bodies.

They also felt that opposition parties did not get a fair chance to express their views, and that legislators have limited freedom to differ from their political party.

"We see this marked discrepancy between the global demand for democratic governance and its supply," said UN Assistant-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Oscar Fernandez-Taranco.

"Despite such massive public support in favour of democracy and pluralism, we continue to be confronted with the problem of lack of political tolerance virtually everywhere," he added.

Fernandez-Taranco also said elections should not be the sole focus of the international community in their assessment of democracy, especially in post-conflict scenarios.

"The UN support in many of these electoral processes is usually accompanied by efforts to promote good governance and fundamental freedom," he said.

Meanwhile, Filip said the IPU would be studying how Members of Parliament did not feel comfortable in expressing their views that differ from political parties.

"It is a very worrying phenomenon that we are witnessing in very many regions of the world of how MPs are losing their seat for not observing certain political party discipline," she said.

In 2007, the General Assembly had designated September 15 as International Democracy Day to reflect on the achievements and setbacks of the democratic process.

The Universal Declaration on Democracy states, "While democracy is imperfect it is the only political system that has the capacity for self correction."

It's a long, long way down

The Yucatan peninsula in Mexico is estimated to have 6,400 cenotes, or sinkholes, and although they are hardly recommended for amateurs, they make for perfect diving pools for the likes of Orlando Duque.

The Colombian is one of the best cliff-divers in the world, and following his 27m-high jump into the freshwater pool at the bottom of Ik Kil – which is 60m wide and known as the Sacred Blue Cenote – he currently tops the rankings for this year's Red Bull Cliff Diving Series. The British diver Gary Hunt, meanwhile, lies in second place. The divers can reach speeds of up to 40mph during their falls.

Pools such as the one at the bottom of Ik Kil, near the Mayan archaeological site of Chichen Itza, exist because the land is made of porous limestone, which means that water can dissolve and erode the rock easily and collects underground rather than in rivers or lakes on the surface.

my life style usa

Meat production is environmentally problematic. The emissions are worse than your car. The ethical issues are worse than those in any Ed Norton film.

Oh, the resources. Meat is so packed with protein and fats that a stomachful is much more than you need. And there's the fact that making meat requires vast amounts of food and cleared land. Problems abound – but so does the demand for meat, despite it being patently clear that we need to eat less of it.

According to the New York Times, the world's total meat supply in 2007 was 284 million tons. Since Americans eat an average of 8 ounces of meat every day – or over 180 pounds a year – this means that if the entire population of the world switched to American meat-eating habits, it would require around 550 million tons a year. Put another way – we'd need two planet Earths to produce enough meat to feed everyone.



Asking the calorie needs of the average human being is a little like asking how long a piece of string is – but as a broad, shot-in-the-dark figure that neglects to account for fitness, exercise, metabolism and a host of other factors, the average human male needs around 2,500 calories and the average woman about 2,000. That's what we need to function. Any extra gets stored away by our bodies for a rainy day.


Americans are not efficient eaters. The calories consumed per day by the average American in 2008 was 3,750 (in a population of 303 million), according to the World Resources Institute. Compare this with the 2,500-calorie average in India (population – 1,147 million). Put thus, the food consumed by Americans could feed 39% of India's population – even though America contains a quarter of the people.


Right now, world hunger is a pressing issue. Some people aren't even getting the minimum they need to survive. In 2006, world salt production was an estimated 240 million tons. Of this, around 17% goes towards making edible salt. If the entire world switched to eating 12g of salt a day, that would be around 30 million tons of salt, or just 12.5% of total world production levels. There's the worry – it could happen. (The reason is that world salt production is higher than ever – in fact it appears to have tripled since 1960′s estimated 85 million tonnes).

significant discovery of god

Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are planning to announce they have found a suspicious bump in their data that could be evidence of a new elementary particle or even, some say, a new force of nature.
    The results,if they holdup,couldbe a spectacular last hurrah for Fermilab's Tevatron, once the world's most powerful particle accelerator and now slated to go dark forever in September or earlier, whenever Fermilab runs out of money to operate it.
    "Nobody knows what this is," said Christopher Hill, a theorist at Fermilabwhowas not partof theteam. "Ifitis real, it would be the most significant discovery in physics in half a century."
    One possible explanation for this mysterious bump, scientists say, is that it is evidence of a new and unexpected version of the long-sought Higgs boson. This is a hypothetical elementary particle that, according to the reigning theory known asthe StandardModel,is responsible for endowing other elementary particles with mass.
   
Another explanation might be that it is evidence of a new force of nature — in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces we already know — that would manifest itself only at very short distances like thosethat ruleinsidethe atomic nucleus.
    Either could shake what has passed for conventional wisdom in physics for the last few decades. Or it could be there is something they do not understand about so-called regular physics.
    The Tevatron has been colliding beams of protons and their opposites, antiprotons, accelerated to energies of 1 trillion electron volts, for over two decades looking for new forces and particles. The bump showed up in an analysis of some 10,000 of those collisions collected by the Collider Detector atFermilab.
    They found that in about 250 more cases than they expected, what came out of the collision were two jets of lightweight particles, like electrons, and a heavy-force-carrying particle called the W boson were produced. The team foundthatin about250times more cases than expected, the total energy of the jets clustered around a value of about 144 billion electron volts, as if they were the decay products of a hitherto unsuspected particle with that mass-energy. For comparison, a proton weighs about one billion electron volts.
    This could not be Standard Model Higgs, Punzi and his colleagues concluded, as the Higgs is predicted to decay into much heavier particles, namely quarks. Moreover,the rate atwhichthese mystery particles were being produced was 300 times greater than Higgsbosonswouldbe produced.If real,itwassomething totally new,Punzisaid.

we are friends.

Tuesday night they surfed the internet together, from 8 pm to 10 pm. On Wednesday, around 5.30 am, they walked along a railway track holding hands, then allegedly committed suicide by jumping before a speeding train, possibly the Howrah Express.
    PU students M Suhas and S Srinivas, aged 18, and residents of Mariyappana Palya, Rajajinagar 1st Block, ended their lives mysteriously. The public on Wednesday morning informed Malleswaram traffic police officials that two mangled bodies were lying on the railway track near Milk Colony, a few furlongs from Malleswaram railway station. The news was flashed by a vernacular TV news channel and family members, who had by now discovered that the two boys had gone missing, rushed to the spot and recognised them. But the reason behind this extreme step is not clear, as no suicide note was recovered. 

 
    

Suhas and Srinivas were studying in PUC II in different colleges in Mandya. While Suhas had joined a college run by the Adichunchanagiri Education Institution, Suhas was studying in a government college, railway police said. They had returned home after finishing their PU exams. Yogesh Kumar, landlord of the house where Suhas lived, recalled how the two boys were very attached to each other. "Suhas and Srinivas were good friends from their school days. Not wanting to be separated from his friend, Srinivas decided to study in Mandya after Suhas got a seat there," family sources said. "They went out together around 8 pm on Tuesday. They were seen in a browsing centre near Devaiah Park. From there, they disappeared," Yogesh said. 

    Meanwhile, an auto driver said he saw the two boys walking on the railway track around 5am. "I thought they were joggers. Later, passengers told me about the tragedy. I recognised the bodies immediately. But I did not know their names or addresses," he said.