Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Mid Day International News

Mid Day International News

Indian diplomat's daughter sues New York for false arrest

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An Indian diplomat's daughter is suing New York city for a whopping USD 1.5 million alleging she was falsely arrested and suspended for sending obscene emails to teachers at her Queens high school. Krittika C, a John Bowne HS senior and daughter of Debashish Biswas, vice counsel at the Indian Consulate General here, filed a notice of claim May 6, according to her lawyer Ravi Batra.

She said her claims of diplomatic immunity were ignored when she was handcuffed and locked up for more than 24 hours Feb 8 after a shoddy probe by administrators into the emails.

Even after the Queens District Attorney dropped the charges and expunged her arrest from the record, school officials sent the 18-year-old girl to an offsite suspension centre for more than a month, according to the claim.

It was only after principal Howard Kwait found the real perpetrator that Krittika was allowed back into school.

"The basis for this targeted inquiry was as criminally malicious as it was reckless," Batra said at a news conference Monday.

In addition to unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, Batra suggested that Mayor Bloomberg could perhaps give "a key to the City to Krittika as a token of heartfelt sorrow for the unbecoming pain inflicted upon her".

Batra also claims that officers failed to read Biswas her rights and "continued to inquire about her computer usage".

Female foeticide more among wealthy Indians, says study

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Sex selection of foetuses in India has led to 7.1 million fewer girls than boys up to age six, a gender gap that has widened by more than a million in a decade, according to a study released yesterday. In Indian families in which the first child has been a girl, more and more parents with access to prenatal ultrasound testing are aborting a second female in the hope that a subsequent pregnancy will yield a boy, said the study published in The Lancet.

The increasingly lopsided ratio of girls to boys is larger in wealthy households than in poorer ones, the researchers reported. Between 1980 and 2010, they estimate, four to 12 million girls were aborted because of their sex.

"Selective abortion of female foetuses, usually after a firstborn girl, has increased in India over the past few decades, and has contributed to a widening imbalance in the child sex ratio," they conclude. The female shortfall for the zero-to-six age bracket was 6 million in 2001, and 4.2 million in 1991. "Increases in selective abortion of girls are probably because of persistent son preference combined with decrease in fertility," the authors say.

The mean number of children per Indian woman fell from 3.8 in 1990 to 2.6 in 2008. Selective abortion of female foetuses accounts for two to four per cent of female pregnancies in India, roughly 3,00,000 to 6,00,000 per year out of 13.3 to 13.7 million carrying a girl in 2010, the study found. From 2001 to 2011, the practice increased at a rate of 170 per cent, slowing from 260 per cent over the previous decade.

6 million Number of girls who were aborted from 2000 to 2010


Err,d-day is now coming in October

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After the world didn't come to an end on May 21 as per his prophecy, preacher says he miscalculated, doomsday is actually on October 21

California preacher Harold Camping said yesterday his prophecy that the world would end on May 21, 2011 was off by five months because Judgment Day will actually come on October 21. Camping, who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven on Saturday before the earth was destroyed -- the Rapture -- said he felt so terrible when his original doomsday prediction did not come true that he left home and took refuge in a motel with his wife.


Apocalypse when? Pedestrians walk past a 'Judgment Day' banner
at a street in Manila on May 21, the original date predicted by Camping.
Pic/AFP

"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning," the one-time civil engineer said at the Oakland headquarters of his Family Radio network. His independent ministry, Family Radio International, spent millions -- some from donations by followers -- on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message.

The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on October 21.

It's not the first time the independent Christian radio host has been forced to explain when his prediction did not come to pass. He also predicted the apocalypse would come in 1994, but said it did not happen then because of a mathematical error.

Rather than give his normal daily broadcast on Monday, Camping made a special statement before the press at the Oakland headquarters of the media empire that has broadcast his message.

But no money back
"If people want me to apologise, I can apologise yes," he told reporters after his speech. "I'm not a genius."
The preacher also added that while so many of his followers donated money, in some cases everything they owned, to his ministry in belief that the world would end last Saturday, they won't get it back.

"Why would we return it?" Camping said, arguing that the world is still going to end in October. When the Rapture did not arrive on Saturday, crestfallen followers began turning their attention to more earthly concerns.


Vuvuzelas 'may spread diseases'

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Vuvuzelas -- the horns used by football fans celebrating last year's World Cup -- not only cause noise pollution but may also spread diseases, say experts. A short burst on the instrument creates a spittle shower similar to a sneeze, travelling at four million droplets a second, a PLoS One journal study shows. In crowded venues one person blowing a vuvuzela could infect many others with airborne illness like the flu or Tuberculosis. Organisers are considering whether to allow them at the 2012 London Olympics.


Germ breeder: Critics say one person blowing a vuvuzela could infect
many others with airborne illness like the flu or Tuberculosis.
File pic/Getty images

Vuvuzela etiquette
Critics say they are anti-social and unsafe because of their potential to generate a din louder than a plane taking off. Dr Ruth McNerney, who carried out the latest work at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said a "vuvuzela blowing etiquette" may be needed rather than a ban. "Just as with coughs or sneezes, action should be taken to prevent disease transmission, and people with infections must be advised against blowing their vuvuzelas close to other people," she said.

Her team investigated the vuvuzela hazard using a laser device to measure how many droplets were produced by eight volunteers using the horns. On average, 6,58,000 lung particles, or aerosols, per litre of air were expelled from the instruments. The droplets shot into the air at the rate of four million per second. In comparison, when the volunteers were asked to shout, they produced only 3,700 particles per litre at a rate of 7,000 per second. "When surrounded by vuvuzela players, a spectator could expect to inhale large numbers of respiratory aerosols over the course of the event," Dr McNerney warned.

6,58,000 Number of lung particles or aerosols per litre of air expelled while using a vuvuzela


New York police deny Kahn DNA report

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Officials rubbish claims that traces of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's DNA have been found on maid's clothes

New York police yesterday denied reports of finding DNA traces from ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on the clothes of a hotel maid, saying investigators had so far given "no result and no information" about the test results. DNA was found on the shirt of the 32-year-old woman who said she was attacked in Strauss Kahn's New York hotel suite. The DNA matched sperm on the collar of the maid's shirt, according to The Wall Street Journal. All of the media quoted sources close to the investigation. But neither prosecutors nor Strauss-Kahn's lawyers would comment on the reports.


Playing the victim: The former chief of the International Monetary
Fund is beleived to have told his colleagues that he is living a personal
nightmare. File pic/Getty Images

The evidence could prove that there was a sexual encounter but not that there was violence of any kind, experts said. Strauss-Kahn has denied charges made against him. The French politician, who is racing to find a new home, told his former staff how he is confronting a "personal nightmare". Under house arrest pending trial, he has been rejected by one luxury residence because of his newfound notoriety and must soon leave his temporary apartment.

Charges that he attempted to rape and sexually assault the chambermaid on May 14 forced him to resign as head of the International Monetary Fund last week and torpedoed his chances of standing in the French presidential election next year.

'Am not guilty'
But Strauss-Kahn again denied the accusations in an e-mail message sent to IMF staff on Sunday in which he expressed "profound sadness" at the way he left his post. "I deny in the strongest possible terms the allegations which I now face; I am confident that the truth will come out and I will be exonerated," he wrote.
"In the meantime, I cannot accept that the Fund -- and you dear colleagues -- should in any way have to share my own personal nightmare. So, I had to go."

All holed up
Strauss-Kahn is holed up in the Empire Building at 71 Broadway, where management has apologised to residents and said the new arrival will be gone by "early" this week. His wife Anne Sinclair, had previously arranged a $15,000 (Rs 6.78 lakh) a month apartment on the Upper East Side. But Strauss-Kahn was rejected after residents complained about the bad publicity. His lawyer Benjamin Brafman has said his client will plead not guilty and that he is confident his client will go free.

The defence team has hired a posse of private investigators who are already sifting through the 32-year-old accuser's personal history in New York. Prosecutors told Strauss-Kahn's bail hearing last week that they are also building a "strong" case in support of the accusations. He spent the first days in detention at the notorious Rikers island jail.He now faces seven counts, including the attempted rape charge.

'Buying off'
Friends of Dominque Strauss-Kahn have secretly contacted the family of the maid he is alleged to have sexually assaulted to pay them to drop the case. The alleged victim, who is in protective custody, has an extended family who live in a remote village in Guinea. Associates are alleged to have approached the relatives and offered a seven-figure sum to persuade the maid to withdraw charges.

June 6 Dominique Strauss-Kahn's next appearance in court to make a formal plea


'Schwarzenegger hid sex life as adeptly as Pakistan hid Osama'

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Arnold Schwarzenegger's ability to keep his sexual exploits secret from his wife Maria Shriver has been likened to the Pakistani military's hiding of Osama bin Laden for over five years by an opinion piece in a newspaper.

"That Schwarzenegger could keep his paternal exploits secret from his wife for more than 10 years is as remarkable as the fact that Osama bin Laden was secretly housed within the Pakistani military community of Abbottabad for five years," said the Los Angeles Times, which exposed the former California governor's love child with his housemaid Mildred Baena.

In an opinion piece, the paper said, "Yes, the chickens have come back to roost. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has little to crow about, and his only association with crow is to eat it. We all knew he had the lust to compare with his biceps."

But the paper said the Terminator failed only at his marriage, not governing California during his two terms as a Republican governor in a Democratic state.

"Schwarzenegger deserves all the derision he is receiving for his moral shortcomings. However, he has surely had a bum rap regarding his tenure as governor. The onus belongs on the liberal pundits and Democratic legislators who successfully killed the propositions that would have helped transform California's government, schools and the economy," the paper said.

Meanwhile, the celebrity website RadarOnline, which was first to reveal the housemaid's name, reports that the mother of Arnold's 13-year-old son has disappeared from her home in Bakersfield near here and hired a lawyer.

"Since news of Baena's affair with Schwarzenegger broke, the mother of five has not been seen at her Bakersfield, Calif. home and sources close to her tell RadarOnline.com she is keeping a very tight lip on where she is and what her next move will be."

The website said Baena has hired a Los Angeles law firm "to fight unflattering reports about her. How did we learn? She didn't like what we wrote so her new attorney sent us a letter! So who is paying the bill for the large firm? People in Arnold's camp aren't saying".

Child dies in Malaysia after being locked in car

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A three-year-old Malaysian girl died after being left in a car for 45 minutes by her father who forgot to take her with him as he rushed to attend his cousin's funeral here.

The incident happened on Sunday in Kampung Morak when Ishak Salleh left his child in the car parked in the blazing sun with windows shut for at least 45 minutes before he remembered about her.

When he rushed back to the car he found his daughter Nur Izyan Natasya crying and having difficulty in breathing.

She was rushed to hospital where she was declared brought dead.

The girl was youngest of Salleh's six children and had followed him, his sister and his brother-in-law to the funeral of his cousin.

"I thought my sister and brother-in-law had taken her as I had rushed out of the car to send the body to the cemetery. "I only knew that she had been left behind when my relatives came looking for me to ask for the car key," New Straits Times quoted him as saying.

Ishak's sister, Che Mas Mohd Salleh, 55, said she was shocked when villagers who saw the child inside told her that Nur Izyan was crying and looked pale.

"I wanted to break the window, but the villagers told me to wait for the key. By the time the car was opened, the child was already too weak," she said.

The father said he was shocked over the death of his youngest daughter, but accepted it as fate.
Posted by Harshad at 7:44 AM

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