RARE SURGERY ON 1-YEAR-OLD PERFORMED AT JIPMER

Department of Neuro Surgery in the Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, a premier medical institution administered by Centre, has done a very rare surgery on a one-year-old girl for brain tumour.   

The child, daughter of a middle income family from Chennai was diagnosed as suffering from what is medically called gelastic seizures, a rare type of seizure that involves a sudden burst of energy, usually in the form of laughing or crying, Dr V R Roopesh Kumar, Head of the Department of Neuro Suregery in JIPMER who headed the team of doctors to perform the surgery last month said in a release.
The survery lasted for about four hours. The child was discharged after 10 days. She was currently free from any symptoms, the release said. 

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SEX SCANDALS ROCK CHINA, EMBARRASS GOVT

China is facing an avalanche of sex scandals as an ‘investigative reporter’, whose videos of an official in compromising positions with his mistress created embarrassment for the government, plans to release more such clips.
The threat came even as an “anchor” of a TV station charged a Communist Party politician of coercing her into a long-term relationship.

Zhu Ruifeng, a “reporter with counter-corruption website” jdwsy.com, told the state-run Global Times that five more sex videos featuring officials of Chongqing, till early this year ruled by disgraced party leader Bo Xilai, will be released after getting enough proof of their authenticity.
Zhu posted the 12-secondlong video to the Internet last week showing Lei Zhengfu, then secretary of the Beibei district committee of the Communist Party of China in Chongqing, in a compromising position with an 18year-old Zhao Hongxia.
Zhu claims Zhao has been Lei’s mistress for the last five years.
Lei, 54, who has been sacked and faced disciplinary probe by the Party, had been receiving bribes and sexual favours provided by local businessmen, Zhu said.
The video, filmed by Zhao with a hidden camera, was later used to threaten Lei by the construction company but Lei managed to get local police, led by then police chief Wang Lijun, to detain Zhao for a month and send the company manager to prison for one year, Zhu said.
Wang, who fled to the US consulate fearing reprisals from Bo over investigations into his wife Gu Kailai’s involvement in the murder of UK businessman Neil Heywood, has been jailed for 15 years.
Xinhua said on Monday that officials pledged a thorough investigation into the sex tape scandal.
In another sex scandal that rocked the administration, Wang Dechun, 42, who identified herself as a former anchor of CityTV of Shuangcheng in Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, has accused a deputy to the local People’s Congress of coercing her into a sexual relationship more than a decade ago, the Beijing News reported on Sunday.
Wang said on her microblog Sina Weibo that congress deputy Sun Dejiang, who is also general manager of a local industrial company, used his power to coerce her into a relationship that began before 1999.
Wang said in her Weibo account that she became indebted to Sun after he arranged to provide her retired mother with a pension and social security benefits by putting her on the list of factory retirees, even though she never worked there. Wang said Sun threatened to cut her mother’s pension unless she continued to provide sexual favours.

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FORMER OXFORD DICTIONARY EDITOR SECRETLY DELETED INDIAN WORDS

An eminent former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary attempted to rewrite it by deleting thousands of words with foreign roots, including those of Indian-origin, a new book claims.

Wikipedia imageRobert Burchfield deleted words like 'balisaur', a badger-like animal from India, 'Danchi', a Bengali plant and 'boviander', the name in British Guyana for a person of mixed race living on the river banks.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is now re-examining words removed by Burchfield who edited the world respected dictionary during the 70s and 80s and who died in 2004 aged 81, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

Burchfield, who bizarrely blamed previous editors for it, has long been considered the editor who opened up the English dictionary to the wider world.

Sarah Ogilvie, also a former OED editor, in her new book 'Words of the World' reveals how Burchfield started a rumour that his earlier editors were inward-looking anglocentrics, when in fact the opposite was true.

After investigating Burchfield's rumours she discovered they were unfounded and that he was actually responsible for the deletion of words such as 'shape', meaning a Tibetan councillor and 'wake-up', a golden-winged woodpecker.

"I was the editor of the OED responsible for words from outside Europe and while editing these words I noticed a pattern that went against the general consensus: there were thousands of foreign words and words from varieties of English around the world in the dictionary and they had been put there by editor James Murray and his fellow editors," she said.

"The irony of the whole story is that although in the beginning the dictionary editors were criticised for putting too many 'outlandish' words in the dictionary that were 'decaying' our language, one hundred years later they were criticised for the opposite: for too many British words in the dictionary and not enough foreign words!

"But it turns out that this was a myth perpetuated by a 20th-century Chief Editor of the OED," said Ogilvie.

She compared Burchfield's four OED dictionaries published between 1972 and 1986 to a 1933 edition and found that he had erased 17 per cent of the 'loanwords' and world English words that had been included by editor Charles Onions, who included 45 per cent more foreign words than Burchfield.

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Aakash 2 tablet was showcased at the UN headquarters

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised India as a "super-power" in the field of information technology as he unveiled the country's first indigenously created low-cost Aakash 2 tablet here. 

The tablet was showcased at the UN headquarters yesterday on the occasion of the India's current Presidency of the UN Security Council. 

CEO of Datawind, maker of the Aakash tablet, Suneet Singh Tuli, presented the device to the UN Chief who voiced appreciation for the tablet for being "small and handy." 

"India is a critical player on security issues, but you are also a leader on development and technology. Indeed, India is a super-power on the information superhighway. There is a reason places like Hyderabad are called 'Cyberabad'," Ban said in his remarks. 

The UN Chief said he is aware that 'Aakash' means 'sky' in Hindi and called on nations to work with the UN to help young people "reach for the sky and meet their dreams." 

He said technology is not an end in itself but is the key to empower people to make the most of their own potential. 

"Information and communications technologies are engines of economic growth and development and can help transform people's lives. They are great enablers, helping people communicate across distances, facilitating trade and commerce and providing better access to health care and education," he said. 

Ban said technology is being used in innumerable ways around the world to improve the lives of people but the challenge is to leverage the power of technology and bridge the digital divide. 

"We need to do more to help all children and young people make the most of the opportunities provided by information and communications technology, especially all those who are still unconnected from the digital revolution," he said. 

The unveiling of the tablet at the UN came against the backdrop of clarifications by Datawind over sourcing some parts of the device, which has been hailed as an example of Indian innovation, from China. 

Tuli gave a detailed presentation about the device and its potential for the education sector in India. 

Later talking to PTI, Tuli said the tablet was a work in progress and it would go through significant improvements and innovation every six months. 

He said one of the major features that need to be incorporated in the device in the future is mobile connectivity.

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Egypt approves new Constitution:News / International

Egypt’s Constituent Assembly on Friday approved a final draft of the country’s first Constitution since the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak.

The Assembly sent the draft to President Mohamed Morsy, who is expected to submit it for public approval in a referendum.

Tempers frayed in the early hours of Friday as the body, after voting through most of the 234 articles with few or no objections, returned to consider the few contentious issues.

The marathon session, which started before 3 p.m. (6.30 p.m. IST) on Thursday, comes ahead of a hearing scheduled on Sunday before the Supreme Constitutional Court to hear a case calling for its dissolution.

Liberal and leftist members and church representatives withdrew from the Assembly in protest at what they saw as attempts by the body’s Islamist majority to force its views through.

In an interview broadcast late Thursday on state television, the Mr. Morsy said that enacting the new Constitution was the way out of Egypt’s current political crisis.

Rival demonstrations and violent clashes have been taking place since Mr. Morsy issued a Constitutional declaration on November 22, 2012 barring the courts from reviewing his decisions — or from dissolving the Constituent Assembly.

Opposition groups and Coptic organisations were planning to rally in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday in opposition to the Assembly as well as to Mr. Morsy’s decrees.

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Serial blasts kill 43 in Iraq :News / International

Back-to-back explosions tore through tents housing Shiite pilgrims in southern Iraq on Thursday, the deadliest in a wave of bombings that killed at least 43 people nationwide, officials said.

The attacks in Hillah began with a roadside bombing near tents set up for Shiites commemorating the 7th century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein. That was quickly followed by a car bomb targeting emergency response teams.

The explosions, which occurred in a busy commercial area, killed at least 29 people and wounded as many as 90, a police officer said, making it the deadliest attack in the city this year.

Twisted and charred vehicles were left outside damaged stores as shopkeepers collected their strewn merchandise from the bloodstained pavement. Hillah is 95 kilometers south of Baghdad.

Ali Hussein, 44, was walking near his house when he heard the two thunderous explosions near the commercial area about 200 meters from his house. “I rushed to the blast site and I saw burning cars and pieces of flesh everywhere,” said Mr. Hussein, who owns a grocery store. “There were small blood pools all around the place,” he added, blaming the security forces who “should do better in order to protect the innocent people.”

Just hours earlier, a parked car exploded near the shrine of Imam Hussein in the Shiite city of Karbala, killing six people and wounding 20, another police officer said.

Karbala, 90 kilometers south of Baghdad, is one of the holiest cities in Shiite Islam and the place where Imam Hussein and his brother, Imam Abbas, are buried. Hundreds of thousands of Shiites flock to their golden-domed shrines every year.

Such religious ceremonies have often been targeted by Sunni insurgents seeking to foment sectarian violence and undermine the Shiite-led government.

A suicide bomber also drove his explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint in the mainly Sunni city of Fallujah, 65 kilometers west of the capital, killing three policemen and wounding 11 others, a police official in the city said.

And in the northern city of Mosul, a parked car bomb went off as a police patrol passed, killing two people and wounded two, police said. Another police patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in the town of Balad Ruz, 70 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding six others.

In other violence, a roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded five others in Taji, north of Baghdad, and a parked car bomb struck a restaurant in Madain, southeast of the capital, killing a civilian and wounding 12 others, according to police.

Five health officials confirmed the casualty figures. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information.

The nationwide death toll was the highest since October 27 when 40 people were killed in a string of bombings and other attacks around the country.

Although violence has ebbed since the peak of insurgency several years ago, attacks are still frequent against security forces, government officials and civilians. No one claimed responsibility for Thursday’s bombings, but car bombs, shootings and roadside devices are the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq.

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