Excessive alcohol intake increases cancer risk

Excessive alcohol intake may increase the risk of cancer and even lead to premature aging, research shows.

This is due to shortening of telomeres, a region of DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome which is important for the genetic stability of cells. As people age, telomere length shortens progressively.

Excessive use of alcohol has been linked to oxidative stress and inflammation, two mechanisms that accelerate telomere shortening.

Since telomere shortening is thought to increase cancer risk, the researchers speculated that those with shorter telomeres due to heavy alcohol consumption would have an increased risk of cancer.

"Heavy alcohol users tend to look haggard, and it is commonly thought that heavy drinking leads to premature aging and earlier onset of diseases of aging. In particular, heavy alcohol drinking has been associated with cancer at multiple sites," said Andrea Baccarelli, who led the research.

"All the cells in our body have a biological clock in telomeres," noted Baccarelli, who heads the Centre of Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology, Ca' Granda Hospital Foundation, University of Milan, Italy.

The researchers measured serum DNA among 59 participants who abused alcohol (22 per cent consumed four or more alcoholic drinks per day) and 197 participants with variable alcohol consumption habits (4 per cent consumed four or more alcoholic drinks per day).

The two groups were similar in age and other factors that might affect telomere length, such as diet, physical exercise, work-related stress and environmental exposures, a Milan release said.

Results showed that telomere length was dramatically shortened in those who consumed heavy amounts of alcohol -- it was nearly half as long as that in the non-abusers (0.41 v/s 0.79 relative units).

"The decrease we found in telomere length is very sharp, and we were surprised to find such a strong effect at the cellular level," Baccarelli said.

The results were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's 101st annual meeting.

Two females sharing Apartment are not lesbians: Tanushree Dutta

Lesbian pairing of Tanushree Dutta and Neetu Chandra. Darr meeting Girlfriend. Sex element. Cat fight amongst the leading ladies. Tiff between Tanushree and Rohit Roy. These are some of the many rumours that have been floating around for last 8-10 months ever since the shooting of Apartment kick started. Though Neetu plays the role of a schizophrenic in Apartment and Tanushree is a victim, the promotional focus (whether designed or by chance) has stayed on the aforementioned elements rather than the thriller quotient of Apartment. Naturally, Tanushree is upset. In a free wheeling conversation with Joginder Tuteja, Tanushree Dutta talks about Apartment being anything but the aforementioned angles, why she chose the role of a victim over the tormentor and her general unhappiness over the way rumours have floated around the film.


In the middle of last year, when the shooting of Apartment had started, there were speculations around the film being a story of two lesbians. In fact it was safely assumed that at least one of the two leading ladies would be having sexual orientation towards females. Is that the case here?
Please don't expect anything of that nature at all. These things have been plugged by sources who want the film to look tantalising. Just because two females are sharing an apartment here, it doesn't mean that they are lesbians. There are so many guys who share an apartment too in real life. That doesn't make them gays. Titbits around the lesbian angle have just been plugged into media. All of this is entirely fictional. This is just overactive PR machinery in motion here.


Didn't you have a conversation with the producers around this?
See, I am not here to do the blame game. Also I am not saying that the producers are spreading these rumours. Perhaps even they don't know who is doing that. May be there are forces which do not want Apartment to work. They want to malign our reputation.

So let's talk about something which is there in the film. In Apartment, are we looking at a hard hitting dramatic thriller?
Yes, absolutely. It is an absolutely hard hitting psychological thriller. There is a lot of grit element in it and it is very fast paced, edge of the seat thriller. As for my character in the film, it is not very complicated. In fact for that matter, both Neetu and I are fairly simple characters. She is playing a negative villainous role while I am playing a victim. Simple. Also, when I get victimised then there is this trauma and pain also that come in.

Talking about trauma and pain, one is reminded of your last release Rokkk where your character got possessed. Tanushree, since you were pining a lot of hope on Rokkk, weren't you overtly disappointed with it's non-performance at the box office?
On the contrary I was quite happy with the way Rokkk performed at the box office. Collections prove that it did a lot better than some other films that had come during that time. My producers were very happy and they laughed all the way to the bank. The film was made on a shoestring budget and it recovered more than what was expected. The DVD is also out now while there would be a satellite premier soon. For the kind of budget it was made in, we had many avenues from which we got quick recovery.

I guess it is all about the perception factor in that case.
That's true. The producers didn't do aggressive promotion after the film's release due to which not many know that the film actually made a lot of money in the B and C centres. Also, I was looking forward to some good appreciation coming my way and in that aspect, the film really worked for me. I don't have any complains around the promotion strategy though because I truly believe that when a film is good, it doesn't have to be promoted aggressively; especially in a negative way. It can just be done in such a clean manner; something that makes me very happy with Rokkk. There were no controversies whatsoever.

No wonder, you sound dissatisfied with the promotion of Apartment.
(Sighs) Apartment is a very good film. Now if it was bad then I wouldn't have cared about the promotion since I believed in the film right from the time it was narrated to me. I still believe in the makers. Also, I believe in the film till date because I have seen it. With the kind of budget assigned to it, it looks like it has been made on a much larger scale. Whether it is cinematography, clothes, locations, casting - everything is so appropriate. This is where Jag's expertise as a filmmaker with international experience comes in. The entire team was so carefully put together and resultantly, Apartment looks so sleek. This is why it breaks my heart to see all kind of stories floated around in the market. I don't see why this is happening.

India No. 5 in web crime list

India has risen to the fifth spot in the world's cybercrime ranking for 2009 from the 11th spot in 2008 and now only lags behind the US, China, Brazil and Germany.
The report, compiled by Internet security products firm Symantec, shows that cyber criminals are now increasingly going for Web-ased attacks using social-networking sites compared to the earlier dependence on the e-mail route used to steal information about credit cards and bank accounts.
Symantec vice-president David Freer told MAIL TODAY that social-networking sites are becoming the target for cyber attackers because these involve a set of like-minded people who trust each other. "It is the cultural trust that cyber attackers find easy to exploit," he added.
Freer explained that when a file is opened on a social-networking site it can result in a malicious ware being downloaded on to a PC, which is then used by the cybercriminals to steal the required data.
He said that cyber-criminals have also turned their attention toward enterprises, given the potential for monetary gain from compromised corporate intellectual property.
"The report found that attackers are leveraging the abundance of personal information openly available on social-networking sites to synthesise socially engineered attacks on key individuals within targeted companies," he added.
Freer said in 2009 India ranked second in Webbased attacks in the Asia Pacific region, which includes China, Australia, Japan and the ASEAN countries, with 16 per cent of the total attacks.
This is a significant rise from 2008 when India accounted for less than one per cent of Web-based attacks in the region.
Globally, in 2009, India ranked seventh with three per cent of the total webbased attacks worldwide.
According to the report, there has also been a surge of 'bot' or robotic software used for cyber attacks.
India saw an average of 788 bots per day in 2009. About 62,623 distinct bot-infected computers were observed in India during the period.
With 50 per cent, Mumbai had the highest number of bot-infected computers, followed by Delhi at 13 per cent and Hyderabad at seven per cent. "Throughout 2009, we saw botnetinfected computers being advertised in the underground economy for as little as three cents per computer," Freer pointed out.
It also turned out to be a turbulent year for spam. In 2009, spam made up 88 per cent of all e-mails observed by Symantec. Of the 107 billion spam messages distributed globally per day on average, as much as 85 per cent were from botnets.
The 10 major bot networks, including Cutwail, Rustock and Mega-D, now control at least five million computers.
As many as 71 per cent of the malicious codes were propagated through file-sharing, 35 per cent through file transfer and common Internet file system and 17 per cent through remotely exploitable vulnerability.

Lisa Ray Back After Battling With Cancer

The Canadian actress Lisa Ray who was suffering from one of the rarest cancer feels she is "reborn" after recovering from that deadly disease. She is back to India.

 

The actress went all bald but the smile on her face still remains untouched by her pain. She won the battle against death through a stem cell transplant.

 

The optimistic 38-year-old actress is rejuvenated and all set to face the world again. She said, "This has hijacked my life for long enough and now I am going to take matters into my own hands. It's really been a kind of rebirth. It's like being reborn from the inside out. It's a big cleaning from the middle of your marrow and spreading out."

 

The actress who otherwise was seen with her long and beautiful hair in Bollywood flicks like Kasoor and Water flaunted her look with very short hair Los Angeles.

 

The brave actress said, "My hair is coming back and it is looking awesome right now. I am just loving it. It is the sleekest and most well-put together I have ever looked. What was traumatic about losing my hair this time was I didn't have a choice. But I have enjoyed being bald."

 

Her latest movie is ‘Cooking with Stella’ and about 20% of the ticket sales money will be contributed to the Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research.

Katrina not happy with her work in Raajneeti

Katrina Kaif

is one of the most successful actresses in Bollywood today with many hit films

in her kitty but she is not one to let success into her head. She is not ready to settle for anything lesser than the perfect. The latest we hear is that she forced the makers of Raajneeti to rework on the film, as she was not happy with her performance.

She shocked director Prakash Jha with a call on Saturday (April 17), because she was supposed to fly off to London to attend her grandfather's 90th birthday but she cancelled the trip due to volcani ash. However, she decided to make good use of her time by redubbing her portions in Raajneeti.

"First I thought that she was calling from London. I laughed and told her to relax and enjoy her family gathering and stop thinking about work. But then she told me couldn't go to London because all flights to Europe were cancelled. So instead of wasting her time in crying over missing the function, Katrina decided to get busy with re-dubbing her lines for my film. Although there was nothing more to do with the lines, as far as I could see, Katrina was convinced she could improve on her dialogue. Her logic was that if she suddenly had extra time, why waste it sleeping or partying? She said she'd rather work," The Times of India quoted Prakash Jha as saying.

Nityananda to be flown to Bangalore today

Self-styled godman Nityananda Swami, who was arrested on Wednesday from the house of a Delhi-based businessman in Solan in Himachal Pradesh, will be produced in a Bangalore court on Thursday.
The controversial godman had gone into hiding after a purported video footage showing him in a compromising position with a Tamil actress was aired on local TV channels in March. Four of his associates were also arrested.
The arrests were made by a Karnataka Crime Investigation Department team and policemen from Himachal Pradesh in Mamlig village under the Arki police station area in Solan district, Deputy Commissioner, Solan, Amar Singh Rathore, said.
32-year-old Nityananda and his associates, including his close aide, Nitya Bhaktananda alias Gopal Seelam Reddy, were taken to Shimla, 45 kms from Arki, to be produced before a court on Thursday for a transit remand to take them to Bangalore, DIG in Himachal Pradesh CID, N Venugopal, said.
They were arrested after the authorities tracked a mobile phone with a Himachal Pradesh SIM card to establish their location, Superintendent of Police, Solan, Prem Kumar Thakur, said.
Police did not disclose the name of the Delhi-based businessman.
Others arrested were identified as Mitha Sanathan Nanda, Arpil Sangil and Arun Raj, Thakur said, adding that Rs three lakhs in cash, about 7000 US dollars, three video cameras and three laptops were found in the house.
Karnataka Corps of Detectives DGP D V Guruprasad told PTI in Bangalore that two deputy superintendents of police had reached Solan on April 17 following information that Nityananda could be living there. There were reports that he had attended the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar.
Nityananda is wanted in connection with two cases registered at Bidadi, about 35 kms from Bangalore.
Guruprasad said the CID on Tuesday had conducted searches in Nityananda's ashram and seized some 'important' documents and a computer hard disc.

Europe flights back to '100 percent'

London, England (CNN) -- Flights across Europe are expected to return to "100 percent" on Thursday --seven days after ash from an Icelandic volcano forced the shutdown of airspace and stranded thousands of passengers around the world, the air traffic agency Eurocontrol said.
The mood among passengers was one of cautious optimism. After days of endless waiting, many reserved their celebrations for when they were airborne.
"I think when we land down in America, then we'll know we're there. But at the minute, we're a bit cautious," said Georgina Evett.
She was part of a group trying to fly from Manchester, England, to Florida for a world cheerleading championship this week.
Twitter travel updates

Video: Lufthansa leaving no passengers behind

Video: Volcano delays in Russia

Video: Buses haul Britons home

Video: Heathrow returns to normal

Manchester Airport was among many where flights are now taking off and landing.
The closure of so much European airspace for nearly a week left untold numbers of travelers stranded, and it's not clear how long it will take to get everyone home.
Many airlines added or rearranged flights to try to clear the backlog.
The crisis set off a surge of emergency requests from stranded Americans, prompting the U.S. State Department to scramble to arrange everything from housing to, in one case, dialysis treatment for an elderly patient in Frankfurt, Germany.
Tell us your stories -- send videos, photos
At its peak, the crisis affected 1.2 million passengers a day and 29 percent of all global aviation, according to the International Air Transport Association.
It was the worst disruption of air traffic since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001. Following those attacks, the United States closed its air space for three days, forcing Europe to postpone all transatlantic flights.
In addition to clearing a massive backlog of passengers and cargo, airlines now face financial headaches as well as logistical ones.
Budget carrier Ryanair indicated Wednesday it does not plan to pay compensation to passengers other than lost ticket costs.
The European Union's top official for transport had said Monday that airlines were responsible for taking care of them while they were stranded.
The International Air Transport Association estimated Wednesday that the Icelandic volcano crisis cost airlines more than $1.7 billion in lost revenue through Tuesday. Between Saturday and Monday, when disruptions were greatest, IATA said lost revenues reached $400 million each day.
The crisis began after the volcano beneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted Wednesday and sent a cloud of ash into the atmosphere. By the next day that cloud had reached Europe, where authorities quickly closed the airspace over safety fears.

Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models, not on facts. Test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong.
--Giovanni Bisignani, IATA

RELATED TOPICS

• Volcanoes
• Air Travel
• Europe
• United Kingdom

Volcanic ash can shut down engines and electrical systems and damage a plane's windscreen.
By Tuesday, however, airlines had started to complain that the measures were too restrictive.
Ash levels in most parts of Europe, they said, were low enough to allow the safe operation of flights.
Scientists in Iceland said Wednesday the volcano has decreased its ash output by 80 percent compared to the first day of eruption, April 14.
Armann Hoskuldsson, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland, told a briefing that the volcano's output is now "insignificant," though it will continue to be active for a while.
That reduction in volcanic activity appeared to be the main reason that flights resumed operating in Europe on Wednesday, along with European countries relaxing their restrictions on flight, according to a spokeswoman for Eurocontrol, an intergovernmental body that manages European air travel.
In Britain, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) issued revised guidance on flying through volcano ash clouds, allowing airlines to conduct their own risk assessments and requiring them to report any ash damage to the authorities.
The 27 countries of the European Union also agreed with Eurocontrol to split the airspace into zones based on their ash content and to allow flights in the unaffected areas, said Spanish Minister of Public Works Jose Blanco.
"Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models, not on facts," said Giovanni Bisignani, director general and CEO of IATA. "Test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong."
He said the EU's decision to categorize airspace based on risk was a "step in the right direction," but Europe still needs uniform rules on air travel to avoid a repeat of the chaos of the past week.
NATS, the air traffic authority in Britain, said it is confident it had made the right decision in restricting flights.

"The primary concern for all the people involved -- the regulator, the government, and NATS -- has been to ensure flight safety," NATS Senior Manager Alex Bristol told CNN. "Until such time as we had evidence to give us different assurances, then the regulations which existed, and which we were using eight days ago ... then we had to restrict the airspace, and we did the right things."

ICRC President sees historic opportunity to bring nuclear weapons era to an end

Kuala Lumpur : With recent positive developments pertaining to nuclear weapons, countries have an historic opportunity to bring the era of such weaponry to an end, once and for all, says International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) president Jakob Kellenberger.
Developments such as the endorsement by the United Nations Security Council of the objective of "a world without nuclear weapons" and the recognition by United States President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev of their countries' responsibilities in reducing these weapons, signalled an unprecedented opportunity to reduce and eventually eliminate the threat posed by these arms, he adds.
In his address to diplomats in Geneva recently, Kellenberger appealed to States to ensure that nuclear weapons were never used today.
In his statement, released by the office of the ICRC Regional Delegation here Tuesday, the ICRC president underscored the importance of next month's Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Kellenberger said the ICRC supported efforts to negotiate an international agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons, pointing out that preventing the use of nuclear weapons required fulfilment of existing obligations to pursue negotiations aimed at prohibiting and completely eliminating such weapons through a legally binding international treaty.
He added that it also meant preventing their proliferation and controlling access to materials and technology that could be used to produce them.
Arguing that the ICRC stance was based on its understanding of the sufferings caused by war, Kellenberger highlighted the testimony of ICRC delegate Marcel Junod, who was the first foreign doctor to bring assistance to victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.
"The centre of the city was a sort of white patch, flattened and smooth like the palm of a hand. Nothing remained," Junod wrote after his visit on Sept 8, 1945.
Witnesses told him that within seconds of the blast, "thousands of human beings in the streets and gardens in the town centre, struck by a wave of intense heat, died like flies. Others lay writhing like worms, atrociously burned".
The ICRC president stressed that the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki doubled or tripled over the five years following the blasts, and he warned that 65 years later, the world remained ill-equipped to assist the potential victims of a nuclear strike.
"The ICRC has recently completed a thorough analysis of its capacity, and that of other international agencies, to bring aid to the victims of the use of nuclear, radiological, chemical or biological weapons," he said.
"Despite the existence of some response capacity in certain countries, at the international level there is little such capacity and no realistic, coordinated plan. Almost certainly, the images seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be those resulting from any future use of nuclear weapons."
Turning to international humanitarian law, Kellenberger said that already in 1950, the ICRC had expressed its alarm to the States' party to the Geneva Conventions over the total destruction associated with nuclear weapons, which could "make illusory any attempt to protect non-combatants by legal texts."
He said that nuclear weapons were unique in terms of their destructive power, the unspeakable suffering they caused, and the impossibility of containing their destructive power in space and time, and also in terms of the threat they posed to the environment, to future generations, and indeed to the survival of humanity.
"The ICRC finds it difficult to envisage how the use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with the rules of international humanitarian law," he concluded.

YouTube pulls Hitler Downfall parodies

One of the most popular Internet memes of recent years looks to be coming to an end as YouTube has begun removing satirically subtitled clips of Downfall (Der Untergang), the award winning film by Oliver Hirschbiegel about the last days of Hitler's regime.
One scene in the film, where Hitler (played to wide acclaim by by Bruno Ganz) realises that the war is lost, has been used repeatedly to parody modern concerns, including getting banned from Xbox Live, Hitler finding out there is no Santa Claus and the leaking of the iPhone. All have now been withdrawn from YouTube.

Ironically, one of the few Downfall parodies still left up is of Hitler complaining about all the Downfall parodies on the internet.
Hirschbiegel himself has said in the past that he had little problem with the parodies, telling New York magazine:
“The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality. I think it's only fair if now it's taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like."

Content owners will be watching the takedown carefully to see how the online community responds. With YouTube currently facing legal action over its use of copyrighted material on the site the efficacy of its removal procedures is under scrutiny and media owners may well see this as a signal to purge YouTube of unauthorised content.

Apple iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models reaching U.S. on April 30

While the iPad’s debut outside the U.S. has been delayed for end of May, enthusiasts in the U.S. seem to be in for a treat as far as this latest Apple offering is concerned. Come April 30, 2010 and users in the U.S. who had pre-ordered Wi-Fi + 3G models of the iPad can grab their device. It will also be available in Apple retail stores the same day.
Enabling users to seamlessly connect with their apps and content more intuitively, these models will now bring the full potential of the Web to users. The device’s revolutionary Multi-Touch user interface will allow them to browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and more.

The company reveals the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G models to be just around 0.5 inches thick. They tip the scale at approximately 1.6 pounds making them super-portable. Besides being thinner and lighter than conventional laptops or netbooks, the models will offer users up to 10 hours of battery life. This should suffice their needs of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching videos or listening to music. Using a 3G data network, users can watch out for up to nine hours of battery juice to surf the web.As Wi-Fi models, the iPad is available in the U.S. for an approximate price of $499, $599 and $699 for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions respectively. As for the Wi-Fi + 3G models, they will hit shelves on April 30 in the US for a price of $629, $729 and $829 for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models correspondingly. Apple retail stores will be delivering a free Personal Setup service to every user who buys an iPad at the store additionally.

Those outside the U.S. can expect the iPad to be available by the end of May. This includes Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. The company will start taking online pre-orders and will also make public the international pricing for the device on May 10, 2010.

HTC Legend hits India, Priced at Rs. 25,990

HTC India has finally introduced the much anticipated smartphone - Legend with Android Eclair 2.1 mobile operating system in the country. Legend is a worthy Android OS based successor of the ever appealing HTC Hero. Coming in a unibody aluminum enclosure, the new HTC Legend has HTC Sense user interface layered over the Android 2.1 Eclair update.

As a successor of HTC Hero, the Legend carries Android OS goodness with HTC Sense UI enjoyable on 3.2-inch capacitive AMOLED display supporting 320x480 pixel resolution. This stylish phone is machined from one aluminum block. However, we wonder how will the cellular network reception quality will be, considering the fact that aluminum isn't good receptor of radio waves.

Underneath the unibody enclosure, Legend has a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 processor which isn't going to be as fast as the 800MHz Qualcomm processor in Samsung Spica i5700. But Legend leads with 384MB RAM and 512MB ROM as compared to the128MB RAM in Spica. We fail to understand why HTC added a slower processor in this device considering Spica is available for half the price (Rs. 12,500 approx.).

Other than that, Legend has a 5 mega pixel camera (2592x1944) with LED Flash, accelerometer, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor and digital compass. This smartphone also has GPS with A-GPS support. Legend supports 3G networks with HSDPA 900/1200 and quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 networks. One can also make use of the Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g support for wireless Internet and Bluetooth 2.1 for files transfer.

Music listeners should be at ease with 3.5mm audio jack that'll allow them to hook any pair of headphones to this phone. Avid radio listeners should rest assured as this smartphone has Stereo FM radio with RDS.

Packing 1300mAh Li-ion battery, HTC Legend gives talk time of up to 7 hours on 2G Networks and up to 6 hours 10 minutes on 3G networks.

The new Legend is now available for Rs. 25,990 in India.

Sheikhs plan lavish reception for Shoaib-Sania

HYDERABAD: Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik's marriage will reportedly culminate in a grand party to be hosted in Dubai by some Arab sheikhs, possibly towards the end of May. This will be preceded by the couple's walima (reception) in Lahore on April 27, and a visit to Malik's home town of Sialkot.The couple are all set to leave India for Pakistan in the next couple of days by a chartered flight.The couple have already announced they will settle in Dubai. Accordingly, a lavish get-together is reportedly being arranged by a group of sheikhs and top businessmen to introduce the couple to Dubai's high society.Sources told Express on the telephone from Delhi that the venue for the party could be either Burj Al Arab, the most expensive hotel in Dubai, or the Grand Hyatt. Though the couple or their well-wishers have so far not revealed anything about the Dubai party, it was through a few telephonic conversations between some persons that Indian intelligence agencies got wind of it.Some Bollywood personalities, Pakistani cricketers and politicians including some from India and a few from Hyderabad have already been invited for the party, the sources said. However, it remains to be seen who will attend the party. Incidentally, the Grand Hyatt was the venue where Pakistani cricketer Javed Miandad's son, Junaid and fugitive Dawood Ibrahim's daughter Mahrukh Ibrahim held a reception after their nikah a few years ago which attracted the attention of not only Indian but also American and British spy agencies.These agencies are trying to figure out the names of Pakistanis and those from Dubai who are attending the walima of Sania and Shoaib. Sources said that close to 1400 guests have been invited, including about 50 from India, particularly Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi.``A report has been submitted to the Home Ministry about the events involving Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik,'' sources added.

Facebook dumps 'Lite' version

Facebook has shuttered a streamlined "Lite" version of the social-networking service that was seen as a potential challenge to microblogging sensation Twitter.

"We're no longer supporting it, but learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site," California-based Facebook said in a message posted at its website on Tuesday.
"If you used Lite, you'll now be taken to the main Facebook.com site."
Lite was designed as a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enabled people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people's Walls, and look at photos and Status updates.
The service launched about eight months ago in a bid to cater to new users "looking to start off with a more simple experience," Facebook said at the time.
Lite was devoted to fresh comments and updates from friends in a style similar to the real-time interplay at Twitter.
Twitter, which allows users to pepper one another with 140-character-or-less messages known as "tweets," has grown rapidly in popularity since it was launched in March 2006.
Twitter co-founders last week revealed that the service has more than 105 million registered users and the hot micro-blogging service is adding 300,000 new accounts a day.

Girl allegedly raped, duped by would-be fiance

A bit of negligence in getting done a background check of a marriage proposal proved too costly for a girl in Bangalore who was allegedly raped and duped of Rs 1.5 lakh by a man who approached her seeking a marriage alliance.

The family had published a matrimonial advertisement a seeking suitable alliance for their daughter. That's when Satish Chandra K approached the family and introduced himself as an officer working with the Ojas Mining Company.

Impressed by the way he carried himself, the family agreed to the proposal.

According to police, the couple met in March and Satish asked the girl to accompany him on a business trip to Chennai. Convinced that Satish won't take undue advantage of her, she agreed to go along with him.

The couple stayed at the Palmgrove Hotel, and Satish didn't misbehave with her in any way.

A few days later, he asked her to accompany him to Chennai once again and the girl readily agreed.

On both occasions, she paid all the bills, amounting to Rs 1.5 lakh using her credit card.

The duo put up in the same hotel, but this time Satish allegedly forced himself upon her.

"I tried to resist, but he threatened me with a knife. He assured that he would marry me," Radha told cops.

The duo returned to Bangalore the next day, and Satish severed all connections with the girl. That's when she told her parents that she was raped.

Aghast, her family started searching for him. They then contacted Sheshadripuram police who revealed that Satish had cheated several girls in the city with the same premise.

PSI Shrinivas J said, "We have registered the case and have started our investigation. Satish's real name is Amrutahalli, but we are yet to get the number of girls he has cheated."

Kyrgyz interim leader vows to crack down on rioters

BISHKEK，April 21 (Xinhua) -- Seeking to restore order in Kyrgyzstan, the country's interim government leader Roza Otunbayeva vowed on Tuesday to use "deadly force" against looters and armed assaulters.
The interim leader urged the Kyrgyz people to stay calm and fight those who tried to undermine public order and inter-ethnic coherence in her address to the nation on Tuesday.
Law enforcement officers are entitled to use deadly force when facing armed assaults against civilians, their homes and private property, attempts on their lives, as well as strikes on civilian and military objects, she said.
The speech, aiming to quell the unrest and restore domestic stability, came two days after a violent ethnic clash in Mayevka village on the outskirts of the capital Bishkek that killed five people on Monday.
About 1,000 ethnic Kyrgyz mobs stormed the village with a mixed population of Russians, Kyrgyz and Meskhetian Turks and asked the authorities to give them arable land.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who supports the interim regime, issued an order to take measures to protect the safety of Russian citizens in Kyrgyzstan after the clash, a Kremlin spokesman said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, supporters of ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who stormed the regional administration building in the country's southern city of Jalalabad last Saturday, have installed a pro-Bakiyev governor and are in effective control.
The Central Asian country sank into chaos after Bakiyev was ousted in a violent protest in the capital and other cities early this month.
Fleeing into exile first in Kyrgyz's southern city of Osh, and then in Kazakhstan, Bakiyev and his family finally have to seek protection in Belarus.
Addressing the parliament on Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said the deposed Kyrgyz president and his family members are "guests," adding that they are now under the protection of his office and his country.
However, the interim government accused Bakiyev and his brother Zhanysh Bakiyev, defense minister of the toppled regime, of ordering troops to shoot protesters during the unrest on April 7, which killed over 80 people, and wanted him to stand on trial.

Pregnant rape victim seeks Gujarat high court help

Ahmedabad: Caught between the law of the land and social stigma, a 13-year-old rape victim has knocked on the doors of the Gujarat high court for permission to terminate her pregnancy.

The girl moved the high court after the local court in Surendranagar rejected her petition for this. Earlier, local doctors had also refused to terminate her pregnancy saying it was a case of rape and they needed a court’s order to perform the procedure. The minor girl from Halvad taluka in Surendranagar district was allegedly raped several times by her neighbour, Ghanshyamsinh Rajput, for nearly one year.Though she was sexually abused for such a long time, she had kept quiet out of fear of Rajput who allegedly kept threatening her. But when the girl underwent certain physical changes, she brought them to the notice of her parents who found that she was pregnant. Her parents then lodged a complaint against Rajput at Halvad police station. Rajput was arrested for rape.

On learning that their daughter was pregnant, the girl and her parents approached local doctors for termination of the pregnancy. But the doctors refused.

After this, the girl and her family members filed a petition at the local court in Surendranagar but the court rejected their plea on March 30. Then the family members approached the high court. In the petition filed before the high court, the rape victim’s family members have stated that the girl is two-and-a-half months pregnant.

They have prayed that her pregnancy be allowed to be terminated as she will have to suffer humiliation because of it and also because she was too young to bear the responsibility of motherhood. After preliminary hearing of the petition on Tuesday, justice AS Dave of the high court issued notices to the investigating officer of Halvad police station and posted the case for further hearing on April 28.

Flights resume as lockdown eases

Europe eased its aerial lockdown yesterday with almost half of its scheduled flights taking to the skies, but more ash from Iceland's billowing volcano prolonged the agony of most stranded passengers.
Although the eruption of ash that has blackened the skies around the Eyjafjallajokull volcano lost some of its fury, plumes that headed toward Britain meant the runways at the continent's busiest airport remained closed for most of the day.
However, a spokesman at London's Heathrow airport said it reopened just before 9 p.m. GMT after the British air-safety watchdog announced a gradual lifting of flight restrictions.
"I can confirm Heathrow has now reopened, a first BA flight from Vancouver has landed," he said.
And last night, Roberto Kobeh Gonzalez, president of the Montrealbased International Civil Aviation Organization, said it was now safe to fly to Europe.
As some European countries, including France, Germany and Belgium, allowed a gradual resumption of flights, passengers lucky enough to get a ticket home spoke of their utter joy.
"I've never been so happy in my life going back home," said Shahriar Ravari from San Diego, waiting at a Paris airport for a flight to Los Angeles with the end of his travel nightmare in sight.
"I love France, but to be going home is something else."
More than seven million people have been stranded across the globe since Europe began shutting down airspace on April 14. The world association of airlines, IATA, said the crisis was costing the industry at least US$200-million a day.
Willie Walsh, the British Airways chief executive, said it could take weeks for the airline industry to return to a "normal level of operation."
"I do not believe it was necessary to impose a blanket ban on all U.K. airspace last Thursday," he said.
Spain's European minister, Diego Lopez Garrido, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, meanwhile, rejected criticism that
EU members lost precious time before co-ordinating the reopening of some countries' airspace.
"I think the European Union responded well to this huge crisis," he told journalists.
Eurocontrol, the body co-ordinating air traffic control across the region, said almost three-quarters of European airspace was open late yesterday but less than half of scheduled flights were set to depart.
All airspace above 6,096 metres (19,700 feet) was open for flights except in the skies over Finland, the statement said.
Eurocontrol added that it expected 13,000 flights to take place yesterday in European airspace. "On a normal Tuesday, we would expect 28,000."
Ireland and Sweden were among the few countries that kept their airspace closed.
Airlines such as British Airways and Germany's Lufthansa have been at the forefront of pressure for an immediate reopening of the airspace and had hoped that yesterday would mark the beginning of the end of the crisis.
Australia's Qantas Airways extended its ban on flights to and from Europe for another 24 hours, but Air China said it had resumed routes between Beijing and destinations including Moscow, Stockholm and Rome.
South African Airways cancelled what was to be its first flight to London since April 14.
In Iceland itself, police said the plume of ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano was diminishing but warned there was "still considerable volcanic activity at the site and three seemingly separate craters are still erupting."
The World Meteorological Organisation said the ash was expected to head toward the Arctic when the weather changes later in the week.

Secret new iPhone lost in beer hall

A secret prototype of the next-generation iPhone was found on a bar stool.

It was apparently lost by an Apple engineer and was disguised as the current model. The finder spotted a number of differences and under the casing discovered a new-look version with a front camera for video chatting, a rear camera with a larger lens and - for the first time - a flash.

It was then bought by online gadget guide Gizmodo.com, which used information in the iPhone to name the man who lost it in a German beer hall at Redwood City, California.

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The website wrote: "Those beers may have turned out to be the bitterest of his life."

Gizmodo released a letter by Apple vice president Bruce Sewell asking for the iPhone back and vowed to comply.

Apple expert John Gruber said: "The unit is a prototype, fourth-generation iPhone and the company is very interested in getting it back. It's my understanding that Apple considers it stolen, not lost."

Tea party movement is a delayed Bush backlash

I attended the Cincinnati Tax Day Tea Party rally as a speaker. But it was more interesting to be an observer.

First, here's what I didn't see. I didn't see a single racist or bigoted sign or hear a single such comment. Nor did I see any evidence of “homegrown fascism.” Though in fairness, such things are often in the eye of the beholder, now that dissent has gone from being the highest form of patriotism under George W. Bush to the most common form of racism under Barack Obama.

But I did see something a lot of people, on both the left and the right, seemed to have missed: a delayed Bush backlash.

One of the more widespread anti-tea-party arguments goes like this: Republicans didn't protest much when Bush ran up deficits and expanded government, so when Obama does the same thing (albeit on a far grander scale), Republican complaints can't be sincere.

This lazy sophistry opens the door to liberals' preferred argument: racism. “No student of American history,” writes Paul Butler in The New York Times, “would be surprised to learn that when the United States elects its first non-white president, a strong anti-government movement rises up.”

Butler, a law professor and author of the no doubt seminal Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, speaks for many in the media when he insinuates that nearly unprecedented stimulus spending combined with government takeovers of the health care, banking and automotive industries are dwarfed in importance by Obama's skin color.

I speak for many who have actually spoken to tea partiers when I say that is slanderous hogwash. But how, then, to explain the relative right-wing quiescence on Bush's watch and fiscal Puritanism on Obama's? No doubt partisanship plays a role. But partisanship only explains so much given that the tea partiers are clearly sincere about limited government and often quite fond of Republican-bashing. So here's an alternative explanation: Conservatives don't want to be fooled again.

Recall that Bush came into office promising to be a “different kind of conservative,” and one of his first legislative victories was the No Child Left Behind Act, sponsored by Teddy Kennedy. Throughout his presidency, Bush's “compassionate conservatism” surrendered — either rhetorically or substantively — to the assumptions of welfare-state liberalism, i.e. that your decency was best measured by your commitment to large, inefficient government programs. “When somebody hurts,” Bush insisted, “government has got to move.” Many conservatives disliked this whole mindset and the policies behind it, from comprehensive immigration reform to Medicare Part D.

Many conservatives muted their objections, in part because they liked the man personally or approved of his stances on tax cuts, judges, abortion and the war on terror (we can see a similar dynamic with so many anti-war liberals who still support Obama).

Conservatives didn't necessarily bite their tongues (remember the Harriet Miers and immigration fiascoes), but they did prioritize supporting Bush — often in the face of far nastier attacks than Obama has received — over ideological purity. Besides, where were conservatives supposed to go? Into the arms of John Kerry?

The 2008 GOP primaries compounded conservative frustration. Because there was no stand-in for Bush in the contest, there was no obvious outlet for anger at Bush's years of pre-surge Iraq bungling or his decision to outsource domestic spending to Republican congressional ward-heelers. Then, as a lame duck, Bush laid down the predicates for much of Obama's first 100 days, supporting both a stimulus and Wall Street bailouts. As one participant of the D.C. Tea Party rally told the Washington Examiner's Byron York, “George Bush opened the door for Barack Obama and the Democrats to walk in.”

According to last week's NYT/CBS poll of tea party supporters, 57 percent have a favorable view of Bush, but that hardly captures the nuance of tea party feelings. For instance, when Bush's face appeared on the Jumbotron in the arena, the Cincinnati audience applauded. When speakers criticized Bush and the GOP for “losing their way,” the audience applauded even louder.

Going by what I saw in Cincinnati, second to a profound desire to rein in government, the chief attitude driving the 39 percent of tea partiers who describe themselves as “very conservative” isn't partisanship, racism or seizing the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. It's “we won't be fooled again.” In the near term, that spells trouble for Obama and Democrats. In the long term, that lays down a serious gauntlet for Republicans.