Maternal obesity 'could affect child's brain growth'

Washington: Moms-to-be, please try to shed the flab before giving birth, for a new study says that babies born to obese women are at risk for iron deficiency which may, in turn, affect infant's brain development. In non-pregnant adults, obesity-related inflammation hinders the transport of iron through the intestine, raising the risk of iron deficiency anaemia. But, when a woman is pregnant, iron is transferred through the intestine to the placenta, but it is not known how maternal obesity affects newborn iron status. Foetal iron status is important as 50 per cent of the iron needed for infant growth is obtained before birth. In their study,...

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Medical interns begin hunger strike

The interns began their indefinite hunger strike near KEM hospital in Mumbai.     There are around 2,060 interns in medical colleges across the state.     Around 500 interns have undertaken relay fasting while the rest would be on hunger strike indefinitely till the demands are fulfilled, their representative Guru Raj said.     "We are demanding stipend not less than Rs 13,000 per month and an annual increment of Rs 1,000," he said.      According to doctors at the government-run KEM hospital, services would not be affected because of the strike....

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Deepika Padukone can’t stop thanking her stars to have landed ‘Rana’

Mumbai: DP got the opportunity of her career by being offered to play superstar Rajnikanth’s leading lady in upcoming flick ‘Rana’. It is the first time the dusky actress will be working in a Tamil film. She revealed her happiness at a press conference by saying, "I will not even call this a dream come true because it seemed so impossible that I did not even dream that this would happen one day.” She is currently busy shooting a song sequence at a studio in Mumbai. She said to a daily, "Friday was my first day of shoot. We are shooting a song sequence to a number tuned by A R Rahman, the composer of the film." Deepika has a lot of respect...

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Meet Kalki Kashyap

From the start of the ceremony right till the end, both of them seemed mesmerised by each other,” laughed Ishika Mohan Motwane. Director Vikramaditya Motwane’s photographer wife was one of the few guests at actor Kalki Koechlin and filmmaker Anurag Kashyap’s wedding. The ceremony took place on April 30, in Ooty, the hill town where the bride’s French parents have now been living for 30 years. No fairytale affair, the preparations were kept elegant yet simple. The ceremony began at 10.30 am, in accordance with the mahurat. A small baarat party, comprising Kashyap’s family and a few friends like the Motwanes, writer Piyush Mishra and UTV Spotboy’s...

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Bollywood cheers Osama's death

The world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden is dead. As US President Barack Obama confirmed the news, Bollywood stars tweeted furiously about it. Minissha Lamba tweeted: 'Osama is Dead. 2nd term guaranteed 4 #obama. Trust American's to steal d world's attn away from d #RoyalWedding. Interesting timing.' Ranvir Shorey advised the government of India: 'America leads by example again. Pakistan lies through its teeth again. India clueless again. Dear Govt. of India, in the middle of your bickering with Pakistan, I have two words for you: DAWOOD IBRAHIM.' Shekhar Kapur agreed with him. 'Osama became the mythical dark force that the US rallied...

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RIM announces new BlackBerry Bold

T-Mobile USA said it will carry the BlackBerry Bold 9900 later this year. Research in Motion is under pressure to update its high-end phones as it's losing out to iPhones and phones running Google Inc.'s Android software. Last week, the company cut its earnings and sales forecasts for the current quarter, saying it's selling fewer and cheaper phones than expected. Its stock plummeted. The fall continued Monday, with the shares losing 55 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $48.10. Like the original Bold, launched in 2008, the 9900 has a keyboard under a 2.8-inch-screen in landscape orientation. It's thinner than before, at just 10.5 millimeters, making...

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ISRO develops India's fastest supercomputer

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has built India's fastest supercomputer in terms of theoretical peak performance —220 trillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS). K. Radhakrishnan, ISRO Chairman, inaugurated the supercomputer, SAGA-220, at the newly established supercomputing facility, named after Satish Dhawan, of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre here on Monday. Space scientists are using SAGA-220 (Supercomputer for Aerospace with GPU Architecture-220 TeraFLOPS) for solving complex aerospace problems. The supercomputer was fully designed and built by the space centre using commercially available hardware and open-source...

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India asks Reliance to boost gas output with more wells

Gas production from a key block off the east coast operated by Reliance Industries has fallen further, the upstream regulator said on Monday, adding the company has been asked to drill 11 new wells by April 1, 2012, to boost output. Reliance is pumping less gas than it should from the D6 block of Krishna-Godavari basin, the second biggest gas producer in India after Mumbai High. It was supposed to drill nine wells in this fiscal year. Upstream Regulator SK Srivastava said Reliance has now been asked to drill two extra wells that it failed to drill in 2010/11. Srivastva said Reliance was currently producing 48 Mmscmd gas from the D6 block,...

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Osama’s wife was human shield against raiders

One of Osama bin Laden’s wives stood between him and U.S. Navy SEALs as the world’s most-wanted terrorist was gunned down in an airborne assault on the al-Qaeda leader’s safe house deep in Pakistan. He was holed up less than a mile (1.6 kilometres) from the country’s military academy and not far from the capital of Islamabad. Details emerged Monday of the life and dramatic death of bin Laden, the day after President Barack Obama made the stunning near-midnight announcement that the al-Qaeda leader had been killed. Mr. Obama, while assured bin Laden probably was in the compound, did not know with certainty that the 10-year hunt for the notorious...

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India set for ninth rate hike to cool inflation

AFP - India, which has the highest inflation of any large Asian economy, looked set on Tuesday to hike interest rates for a ninth time as it struggles to clamp down on inflation. The central bank, which warned Monday of the "risk to growth from sustained high inflation," has raised rates eight times since March 2010, albeit in gradual, quarter-point steps to minimise the impact on economic growth. But inflation has remained high and some economists expect Reserve Bank of India (RBI) policymakers to move more aggressively when they meet Tuesday. "A 50-basis-point rate rise wouldn't surprise me -- inflation is proving stubbornly difficult...

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Jihadists: bin Laden death will not mute Jihad call

(Reuters) - Members of Jihadist forums said they prayed the news of Osama bin Laden's death was not true, and hinted at retaliation if it was, in some of the first Islamist reaction to the al Qaeda leader's death. "Oh God, please make this news not true...God curse you Obama," said one message on an Arabic language forum. "Oh Americans ... it is still legal for us to cut your necks." "Osama may be killed but his message of Jihad will never die. Brothers and sisters, wait and see, his death will be a blessing in disguise," said a poster on another Islamist for...

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Residents of upscale suburb incredulous wanted terrorist was in their midst

No one in the affluent Bilal Town suburb where Osama bin Laden seemed to suspect his presence here. Nor did they see the possibility that a wanted terrorist, let alone the most hunted man in the world, could live so close to one of its famed military institutions. A suburb with large, sometimes garish houses, Bilal Town is one of the most upscale neighbourhoods of Abbottabad, a vacation spot set in the Himalayan foothills and a two-hour drive from the capital, Islamabad, Unlike most north-west cities, the population of Abbottabad, which was founded by a British colonial administrator in 1853, are ethnic Hazaras, not Pashtuns. Osama bin Laden’s...

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America's Most Wanted: Osama Bin Laden Killed After 13-Year Hunt

The United States had been trying to kill Osama bin Laden for 13 years, since the administration of President Bill Clinton. "Bin Laden has been our national enemy self declared for far longer than any one person in our history," said Richard Clarke, an ABC News contributor who served as a counterterrorism advisor to Clinton and both presidents Bush. For years the trail had gone cold, some thought he had left the region and Pakistani officials even claimed bin Laden must be dead. In the end he was found in a house where he may have been living for as many as six years, almost next door to Pakistani military installations and less than 100...

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Panel proposes ‘principles and objects' for Lokpal Bill

New Delhi, May 2:  Civil society members on the Lokpal Bill joint drafting committee have submitted two documents outlining “principles and objects” for the proposed law. “The civil society members submitted a document with respect to the objects of the Bill as well as one that enunciated the general principles underlying the Bill,” the Human Resource Development Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, told newspersons after the second meeting here on Monday. Both sides agreed to reflect on the documents. Mr Sibal said it was decided to fast-track the drafting process ahead of the June 30 deadline and the committee had agreed to meet again on May 7,...

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Back to 9/11, with forgiveness & fear Indian families sigh, don’t celebrate

May 2: For the Yambem family of Imphal, the news of Osama bin Laden’s death brought a sense of calm satisfaction. In faraway Hyderabad, the relatives of Deepika Kumar Sattaluri expressed similar sentiments. The families of some of the NRIs who died in 9/11 were largely restrained in their reactions to the killing of the attack’s mastermind, their relief tempered by fears of reprisals. “This is the greatest day for the family and all those against terrorism. Now that the symbol of terrorism is dead, my brother Jupiter’s soul can rest in peace,” Laba Yambem, Jupiter’s elder brother, said in Imphal. Jupiter, then 41, was supervising breakfast...

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EC stepped up security in East Midnapore after CPI(M) complaint

Ahead of the fourth phase of Assembly election in West Bengal on May 3, the Election Commission today further strengthened the security arrangement following complaints of threat and terror by the ruling Left Front. “Security arrangement has been revamped further in East Midnapore district following complaint by the LF. There will not be any problem for any voter to exercise franchise in the presence of a huge contingent of central force and State security personnel in the districts going to poll on May 3”, West Bengal CEO Sunil Kumar Gupta said here today. Mr. Gupta said a LF delegation led by CPI(M) leaders, Rabin Deb and Sukhendu Panigrahi,...

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