Bihar flood victims loot relief depot

The desperation of the flood victims is getting from the bad to worse. In Madhepura, people waiting for food packets looted a storage depot after the officer guarding depot tried to impose some restriction in food distribution.

With flood-hit areas facing shortage of supplies, their patience is fast running out.

"We are all running around hungry and all we are facing are atrocities and beatings. How is a man supposed to deal with that?" said Kumar, a flood victim.

Officials at the camp say the people were just not willing to wait.

"Ration was stored here to distribute among the flood victims," said Ram Chandra Singh, a police official.

"Ration had come in for distribution which was stored away. The BDO made us incharge of making sure that people gathered in a queue. When we insisted that the ration be distributed or the people would get infuriated the BDO asked people to shift their position which just made things worse," said Singh.

The Centre has already announced a 1000 crore relief package and the Army is aiding rescue and relief operations. But political blame game has already begun.

Lalu Prasad Yadav says the Nitish Kumar government is slow in implementing relief measures and Mayawati is blaming the Centre for not taking up the Kosi dam issue with Nepal.

Did you know India won two gold medals at Beijing?

Did you know that India won two gold medals and not one at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

Sunita Lamba, a fine arts artist from Delhi, won a gold at the games for her sculpture, but so far she has received no felicitation from the government.

Lamba, the sister of late cricketer Raman Lamba, had sent her sculpture, Spirit of Unity, for Olympic Fine Arts 2008, an exhibition put up by the organising committee at Beijing, and it was selected for display.

"The chairman of the International Olympic Committee inaugurated the exhibition on August 11 and on the very same day they announced the gold medal for me," Lamba said.

"I was also given an Olympic torch besides the certificate of winning the gold medal," Lamba added. Shooter Abhinav Bindra is the only sportsperson to have fetched a gold for India at the games this time.

Lamba's gold medal will be given to her after the 40-day exhibition gets over. The show will run for a few months in different areas of China itself and after that it will move to countries across the world.

The stars in her eyes clearly spell the joy of winning the gold medal, but the pain of being ignored by the authorities shows just as much.

"Is 'art' a discipline which doesn't hold any importance for the country? More than 20 days have passed since I won the medal but no one has contacted me yet," Lamba, who is 40 plus, said.

"I am not against any reward for any sportspersons but it pinches when the authorities completely ignore you," she added.

"I belong to a sports family and I believe in sports. My aim is to move ahead in life," said Lamba, who works with The Oberoi hotels in the Capital and is a resident of west Delhi.

Before leaving for Beijing, she had even tried to contact Indian Olympic Association president Suresh Kalmadi and union Culture minister Ambika Soni to tell them about her participation.

"I have been making sculptures for the last 25 years and my work was selected from among 10,000 entries for the final 110. Before leaving for Beijing I tried to contact both of them, but didn't get any response from them," Lamba said.

After waiting for a long time, she finally decided to contact the government herself and called Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit last week. Sheila Dikshit asked her to come to the felicitation function of Olympic bronze medal winner in wrestling Sushil Kumar at her residence Monday.

"But even here, the CM just introduced me to the media and that was it," Lamba lamented. She was not even given a bouquet of flowers.

"Is 'art' not a discipline in itself?" she asked. "Everyone decorates their houses with costly art prices, but they are not ready to recognise it as a discipline," Lamba said.

The saving grace was a call from the father of boxer Vijender Singh, who won a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics.

"He congratulated me and expressed his regret over people's ignorance. He said that art is also a sport and I really felt nice talking to him," she said.

The artist will be travelling to Beruit and US to showcase her work.

"I have also decided to organise an art show in India in which I will invite the international artists who took part in the Olympics art exhibition," she said.

Her elder brother, Rajan Lamba, was quite vocal in expressing his disappointment over her sister being ignored by officialdom.

Dhoni: India's future but still not a Ganguly

Comparisons may be invidious, but when you have an Indian cricket captain doing well, it is no surprise to see him being weighed against the country’s best ever captain. Mahendra Dhoni has been successful as a leader of a young bunch of players, having brought certain freshness by backing his instincts.

He probably matches Sourav Ganguly on that front, but it is still too early to compare him to the Bengal stalwart.

Ganguly wore a heavy crown early in his tenure as captain. The team was still to come to terms with the match-fixing scandal that had shattered many a heart, having not just to win matches but also regain the confidence of people who followed the fortunes of the team.

Ganguly realised early on that he had to back some youngsters and give them the confidence of winning matches. Some like Harbhajan were smashing successes while others like Yuvraj, Zaheer and Kaif promised more than they performed, but the successes were still coming.

Records never give you the true picture and one can’t ignore the fact that there were some easy matches as well.

Under Ganguly, India won 43 per cent of the Tests. However, these included matches against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, without which the figure falls to 30 per cent.

Outside India, he won 11 out of 28 Tests while losing 10. In other words, more than the number of victories, it was the trend of winning outside India that really made Ganguly different.

Leading in both Tests and ODIs with equal firmness, a high point was coming back undefeated from Australia in 2004, he himself setting the tone with a fighting century at Brisbane for a draw.

Google challenges Explorer, offers new browser

Google Inc. is releasing its own Web browser in a long-anticipated move aimed at countering the dominance of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and ensuring easy access to its market-leading search engine.

The Mountain View, California-based company took the unusual step of announcing its latest product on the Labor Day holiday after it prematurely sent out a comic book drawn up to herald the new browser's arrival.

The free browser, called ''Chrome,'' is supposed to be available for downloading from Tuesday in more than 100 countries for computers running on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Google said it's still working on versions compatible with Apple Inc.'s Mac computer and the Linux operating system.

Google's browser is expected to hit the market a week after Microsoft's unveiling of a test version of its latest browser update, Internet Explorer 8. The tweaks include more tools for Web surfers to cloak their online preferences, creating a shield that could make it more difficult for Google and other marketing networks to figure out which ads are most likely to appeal to which individuals.

Although Google is using a cartoonish approach to promote Chrome, the new browser underscores the gravity of Google's rivalry with Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer is used by about 75 percent of Web surfers.

Google's lead in the lucrative Internet search market is nearly as commanding, with its engine processing nearly two-thirds of the Web's queries.

For the past few years, Google has been trying to take advantage of its search engine's popularity to loosen Microsoft's grip on how most people interact with personal computers.

The assault so far has been focused on a bundle of computer programs, including word processing and spreadsheet applications, that Google offers as an alternative to one of Microsoft's biggest money makers, its Office suite of products.

Google has tried to make its alternatives more appealing and accessible by hosting them for free over Internet connections instead of requiring users to pay a licensing fee to install them on individual computers, as Microsoft typically does.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has tried to thwart Google by investing billions in the development of its own search engine and making an unsuccessful attempt to buy Yahoo Inc. for $47.5 billion.

Pune MBA students get life for poisioning friend

A Pune sessions court on Thursday convicted the two MBA students to life for the murder of a classmate.

Twenty-five-year-old Aditi Sharma and Praveen Khandelwal were convicted on Wednesday for murdering Udit Bharti by poisoning him.

The court had delayed the announcement of quantum of sentence till Thursday.

Additional Sessions Court Judge S S Phansalkar-Joshi, based on testimonies of the victim`s friend and the vicera report, held the two management students guilty.

The incident had shocked among students and college campuses in April last year.

The accused Aditi and Pravin, offered Shirdi Sai Baba`s Prasad (offering) laced with poison to Udit.

All three were residents of Jammu and were studying in Pune. According to the police Udit kept pestering Aditi with calls even after their alleged relationship ended.

That's when Aditi conspired with her boyfriend Pravin and poisoned Udit by giving him prasad laced with poison.

Defence lawyer Vijay Rao Mohitesays Aditi and Pravin will go in appeal against the judgement

Police exonerate Ronaldo, say he committed no crime

Brazilian star Ronaldo has admitted he's embarrassed and ashamed about his highly publicized encounter with three cross-dressing prostitutes last week and has called it the biggest mistake of his life.

In an interview on Brazil's Globo TV, the AC Milan striker on Sunday denied claims by one of the prostitutes that he had sex with them and used drugs, but admitted the incident will haunt the rest of his career.

Ronaldo said he wasn't aware the prostitutes were cross-dressers until he got to a motel with them, discovered they were men and decided not to have sex with them because he is heterosexual.

"I'm completely heterosexual, I don't have any doubt on that. But, to be honest, I don't care what she (the transvestite) says or not. The important thing is that my mistake became very big, and took on international proportions," he said.

Police are investigating to determine whether an extortion attempt was made against Ronaldo, but have said he committed no crime.

Three dead infants found in freezer, mom arrested

A 44-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of killing three of her babies after their bodies were discovered in the family freezer by her grown children looking for pizza, police said Monday.

Police confirmed the grisly find Sunday night in the town of Wenden, near Olpe, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia after the woman turned herself in, officials said.

The three infants are believed to have been born alive, but authorities were awaiting autopsy results to determine how they died, said Johannes Daheim, a spokesman for prosecutors investigating the case.

The woman, her 47-year-old husband and three adult children, two sons, aged 18 and 22, and a 24-year-old daughter have lived in the town in a single-family home since 1984.

The children discovered the frozen babies on Saturday afternoon while their parents were away for the weekend, investigator Martin Feldmann said.
The 18-year-old and his sister had been looking for a frozen pizza and came across a lot of expired food so decided to clean out the freezer.

The teenager then found three identical packets on the bottom of the freezer and opened one and saw the head and arm of an infant that was wrapped in a hand towel, police said.

The children confronted their parents when they returned home Sunday, and the couple and their daughter then went to police together to tell authorities, said Herbert Fingerhut, head of the police investigation, at a news conference.

The corpulent woman apparently concealed the three pregnancies, believed to have been in the 1980s, not only from neighbors but also her own family, Fingerhut said.

''It sounds unbelievable, but there are examples showing such things are possible,'' he said.

The news of the discovery took other residents aback.

''I've been mayor for 14 years, and this is definitely the worst day I've seen,'' said Peter Brueser. ''We will need a long time here to work through this.''

It was the latest in a string of similar cases in Germany.

In the worst case, a woman was convicted of manslaughter in 2006 and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison for killing eight of her newborn babies and burying them in flower pots and a fish tank in the garden of her parents' home near the German-Polish border.

More recently, police in February were called to a home in northern Germany where a dead infant was discovered in the cellar.

In January, a 28-year-old German woman was charged with manslaughter after the remains of three babies were discovered in her house and the home of a relative. That woman has denied killing the babies.