Saurav, a resident of Patparganj in east Delhi, was taking part in the pastry competition at the office cafeteria when he suddenly felt unwell and went to the toilet, police said. “They were all having fun when Saurav went to the washroom around 1.30pm. After he hadn’t returned for a long while, his friends went into the toilet and found him unconscious,” said Satinder Kumar, SHO, Udyog Vihar police station.

It’s not clear whether it was an informal bet among colleagues or an eatsing competition organized by the company. Officials from Nokia Siemens Networking refused to speak on the incident while police said they were investigating the angle. Dr Sushum Sharma, medical advisor at Max Hospital, Gurgaon, said food had entered Saurav’s windpipe which caused the death. “Saurav had stuffed himself with so many pastries so fast that his windpipe was choked. In fact, when we put him on the resuscitation machine, foodstuff was coming out of the windpipe. There was no way air could have passed through to his lungs,” he said, adding that it was difficult to guess how many pastries Saurav had eaten.

Miraculously, he suffered what appeared to be minor injuries. He was later treated and released at Huntsville Hospital.

Its unclear why Romine was lying on the tracks.

The penguin – called Pingu – began to lose weight and appeared weak after its bigger relative regularly helped himself to all the fish on offer.

Concerned keepers were forced to remove Pingu from the enclosure, but at just three-weeks-old the penguin was in desperate need of company.

Staff bought a £3.99 toy penguin from the zoo shop which acts as a surrogate sibling to the chuffed chick – who cuddles up to its new friend all day.

Mates: Pingu the penguin chick at the Living Coasts zoo in Torquay who has found solace with a stuffed toy

Pingu – an African penguin whose sex has yet to be determined – was born with its sibling at the Living Coasts attraction in Torquay, Devon.

President-elect Barack Obama, the Washington Post reported, will begin by taping this week’s Democratic address at his transition office in Chicago on Friday, and the video will be posted on Saturday to Obama’s transition site, Change.gov, via YouTube. Other members of the Obama administration will post online videos as well.

On Thursday evening, Obama’s transition team co-chair Valerie Jarrett posted a YouTube video, shown below, to the site explaining the lobbying restrictions for Obama’s transition team.

The tradition of the president addressing the public directly via radio dates back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” in the 1930s. Archived audio recordings of all of President George Bush’s weekly radio addresses can be found at the White House Web site.

The book he decreed, “was anti Islamic and also unfit to be taught at any academic institute”. And even as the edict by the veteran cleric, generally regarded as a liberal, has invoked a passionate debate among literary circles, not to mention a feeble protest from his younger colleagues like Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangimahali, the mufti justifies his stance.Mufti Qadiri said that a Muslim organisation from Madhya Pradesh approached him on November 10 with a copy of Madhushala. “They had sought my opinion over the wisdom of prescribing as text book in schools and colleges a book that eulogised alcohol and drunkenness in society.

The decree, said mufti, was passed after going through the contents which “turned out to be extremly hurtful to the setiments of devout, though this kind of writing has its own set of admirers”. Bachchan sahab may have been a good shair but artistic license can be allowed upto permissible limit which he obviously crossed in his writings, the fatwa maintained.

Click on the Russian-language version of the campaign Web site of Benjamin Netanyahu, the conservative Likud leader running for prime minister of Israel, and up pops a picture of him with Barack Obama. On the Hebrew version, Mr. Obama is not pictured. But he is, in fact, everywhere.

The Groningen District Court found the two guilty of severe assault for injecting semiconscious men with HIV-infected blood at sex parties between January 2006 and May 2007.

Peter M., 49, who was also convicted of rape, was sentenced to nine years in prison and Hans J., 39, received a five-year sentence. Under Dutch privacy laws, the surnames of convicted criminals are not released.

Sites like lunarembassy.com, lunarregistry.com and moonshop.com, will only be too glad to sell you a piece of your own celestial hearth. The commute would be a drag but there’s plenty of space and the view is to die for. A whole acre costs a measly Rs 1,000. No wonder then, even Indians have put down a deposit.

Anish Das Gupta who bought land on the moon, says, “This is something that will be taking place soon that common people will be travelling to the moon. People can call me ‘loony’ or whatever they want, but I don’t mind.”

Is it really possible to live on the moon? Well, scientists know it’s rich in minerals and believe it might have frozen water. Which is why NASA’s planning a lunar post by 2020.

“He had just his wallet and his shoes on him,” said the spokeswoman from the Matsushima air base in Miyagi, northern Japan. “He thought it would be funny if he went into the store stark naked, that it would surprise people.”

There was no one else in the store but the store clerk, who called the police shortly after the man left the store. Papers were filed against him on suspicion of indecent exposure.

The complaint, a copy of which TOI has retrieved, was quite shockingly dismissed by the police who have not acted on it even two weeks after the girls were butchered and burned. More surprisingly, Bhiwani superintendent of police Sanjay Kumer said he hadn’t received any ‘‘written or verbal complaint’’ though Shivran went with his petition right to the SP office.

Shivran, who had sent copies of the complaint to the National Human Rights Commission and the National Commission for Women, DIG and DGP of Haryana, goes on to say in his chilling report that the two girls, whose fathers have been named, were waiting for them to come back after they went to some boys’ house to wish them on Diwali. The enraged family members even chased the car that dropped them home but couldn’t lay their hands on it.

‘‘The girls were alive when someone started pouring kerosene over their bodies. They were then dumped in the cremation ground,’’ the complaint goes on to say. ‘‘Everyone knows about it but is keeping quiet as most are in it together and those who dare to speak about it have been threatened with dire consequences.’’

Nay Phone Latt, 28, was sentenced by a court in Rangoon’s Insein prison, said his mother, Aye Than.

Nay Phone Latt’s colleague Thin July Kyaw was sentenced to two years imprisonment, Aye Than reported.

Another dissident, Saw Wai, was sentenced to two years in jail for publishing a poem mocking Than Shwe in the weekly Love Journal.

The first words of each line of the Burmese language poem spelled out the message “Senior General Than Shwe is foolish with power”.

Nay Phone Latt was arrested in January; the sentence delivered on Monday included 15 years for offences under the Electronics Act, two years for “creating public alarm” and three and a half years for offences under the Video Act, his mother said.

The toilet has three separate tanks – one for water flowing in, one for water flowing out, and a third for fish and underwater plants – ensuring that the fish always have enough water to swim in, and are never sucked into the bowl.

The firm behind the toilets say they are ideal for Chinese families seeking company for their only children, but without the room for a stand-alone fish tank or bigger pet.

Packed tightly on long white shelves are hundreds of grenades, while stashed nearby is a selection of historic guns.

At a metre long, the centrepiece of the deadly collection is a Russian anti-tank missile, used against British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“When I first heard that Ron had swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills, I was shocked,” said Hector Benitez, Butler’s friend and coworker at Williams+Kennedy Marketing Consultants. “But after the team went through Ron’s final PowerPoint presentation, I had a solid working knowledge of the pain he was feeling, his attempts to cope, and the reasons for his ultimate decision.”

“I just wish he would’ve shot me an e-mail asking for help,” Benitez added.

Butler broke his presentation into four categories: Assessment Of Current Situation, Apologies & Farewells, Will & Funeral Arrangements, and Final Thoughts.

According to Williams+Kennedy president Bradford Williams, finalgoodbye.ppt was “clear, concise, and persuasive.”

According to an AI official, all the 156 passengers were seated with their seat belts on and the aircraft had started taxiing toward the runaway. “That’s when Sharma got up and went to the toilet,” said the AI official. When the seat belt sign is on, no passenger or crew can visit the toilet. “However, Sharma frequented the toilet many times, making passengers and the crew suspicious,” he added.

During one of his visits, Sharma removed his underwear and left it in the toilet. “In a statement by the air-hostess, she told us that she asked him to take it away,” said a Sahar police station official. Sharma obliged, but minutes later he returned and stuffed the underwear into the commode. “While doing this, one of his two mobiles fell in too,” said the police official.

When the airhostess checked inside the toilet again, she saw the mobile and panicked. “She thought the mobile phone was some kind of explosive gadget and reported the matter to the captain,” said the AI source. “The captain thought it would be risky to continue the flight and requested air traffic control to abort take-off,” he added.

Sharma was then offloaded by AI security guards who handed him over to the central industrial security force (CISF) officials. The CISF handed over Sharma’s custody to the Sahar police. “We have sent him for medical examination and will charge him under the appropriate section after conducting an inquiry,” said Dilip Patil, senior police inspector, Sahar police station.

More : http://www.desihotmasala.com/2008/10/worlds-fattest-man-marries-on-bed.html

Professor Zakaria Stapa of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Islamic Studies Centre told the seminar on Wednesday that Muslims who had taken up yoga should stop practising as it could damage their faith, Bernama said.

Last week the Fatwa Council decreed that tomboyish behaviour by girls, including wearing trousers, was immoral as it may lead to the practise of lesbian sex.

“I thought if I start a fire I wouldn’t have to go through with the wedding,” the Yomiuri quoted him as telling police.

Guests at the hotel were evacuated and no one was injured when he set the fire in the early hours of Sunday morning at the resort hotel in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo.

more at http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/oct/24sadhvi.htm

“We have learnt that inhumane treatment was meted out to the child, Alok Gupta, studying in the kindergarten at a private school,” officer in charge of basic education Awadhesh Kumar said over phone. He said Alok was tied and dragged on Wednesday and was also made to kneel down in front of the school gate for nearly two hours. A case against the principal and the manager of the school in Deoria district of Baghuchaghat village, about 280 km from here, has been registered.

According to information available, Alok was unable to attend school probably due to health problems, Kumar added. A team has been sent to inquire into the incident.

Undeterred by its size, the grey heron, the largest bird of its kind in Europe, swooped down and gobbled the rabbit up in one mouthful, as these pictures show.

However the 13-tonne digger swept Frenchman Philippe Priasso off his feet during a bizarre performance uniting man and machine.

A nervous audience saw him balancing precariously on the digger’s upturned bucket, and hanging from its lip several metres above the ground.

To most people, the purple flower that sprouted between two concrete slabs in a Queens backyard would be just a hardy vestige of summer.

Sam Lal sees something more.

The Jamaica man is convinced the mysterious blossom is an incarnation of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh – and neighbors and friends are flocking to see it.

The nearly 4-foot-tall flower grew in June and began to resemble an elephant’s head and trunk in August. Lal said that the ailments that had plagued him for months disappeared.

“This formation came to heal my illness,” the 60-year-old Hindu man said of his relief from pain due to a bone spur near his spine and bulging discs in his neck.

Covered in blood, she held the head high like a trophy, said police – her way of showing that she had delivered her own kind of justice to her attacker.

The gruesome scene was played out in Makkapurva village, 170 miles south east of the Indian city of Lucknow, where, last night, the woman was being held behind bars.

“He is not listening to words and he is bringing shame to my family. I am tired of his nefarious deeds. Please put this boy in prison so that I can be free,” Sama’ila Tahir, a market trader in the northeastern town of Bauchi, was quoted as saying.

Tahir told the court that his son had refused to go to school and accused him of belonging to a criminal gang.

Granny Mary Ella McLivain, 52, wears just a sun dress instead of protective harnesses as she strides across the wing of a biplane, 1,000ft in the air above Vancouver. Why? She was a secretary, but was tired of being deskbound

The unsolved close encounter features in UFO-related military documents made available by the National Archives. After ruling out the object flying past the Alitalia jet being a missile, weather balloon or space rocket, the MoD closed the inquiry.

Nineteen files covering sightings between 1986 and 1992 are being made available online. Almost 200 such files will be made available by the MoD over the next four years. The current batch also includes a US Air Force pilot’s account of being ordered to shoot down a UFO that appeared on his radar while he flew over East Anglia.

Police say there had been an ongoing dispute over the errant football and a child’s parent called to report that Jester kept the ball after it landed in her yard again.

“I’m 89 years old and I want a little piece of mind,” Jester said. “This is my life here in this chair, looking out that door, and all I see is playing the ball down and all over and all over. If it doesn’t come in my yard, OK, but if it comes in my yard, I’m going to get it. No trespassing.”

this story reminded me of so many KHADOOS and OLD folks who use to live in my colony. I wish we were able to do this in India ;)

Zhu Yalin, a chemistry teacher in Meishan, Sichuan province, has arrived in Xiamen to build his boat.

“Not only is the whole boat made of paper, but the glue is an organic material – cooked flour soup,” he told the Straits Guidance Daily.

Zhu says his boat will be nearly 6ft long, the bottom will be 2ins thick and it will be strong enough to carry two people.

He first tested a paper boat in August 2005, sailing on the Mingjiang River for 50 miles in 11 hours, from Meishan city

Wayne Forrester, 34, was very upset to find that his wife Emma, 34, had changed her online profile to “single”, just days after he had moved out, said police.