The Times

Bangalore: A nanny hired by a couple in India’s IT hub of Bangalore regularly drugged the seven-month-old baby in her care and rented him out for Rs100 a day, to be used by street beggars, the Times of India newspaper reported yesterday.

Early every morning, the couple used to dress their baby in the finest of clothes, keep fresh milk and eatables ready and leave the child in the hands of the nanny who was hired through an established agency.
But as soon as the couple left, the nanny used to mix sedatives in the milk and dress the kid in torn and dirty clothes, the report said.

For the entire day the drowsy child would be carried by a beggar on her shoulders and dropped back in the evening.

IMHO, a sad day for Europe. The Lisbon treaty will "federalize" Europe and take away a lot of the powers from sovereign nations .. RIP Europe!

Europe’s elite celebrated the imminent arrival of its first president last night as the last lingering resistance to the Lisbon treaty fell away with the stroke of a pen in Prague.

European leaders wasted no time in starting the process to choose their new president from a range of names including Tony Blair. Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Prime Minister of Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, began a round of telephone diplomacy to determine a shortlist of names.

This is the best way to fight a war ............

A Taleban commander and two senior Afghan officials confirmed yesterday that Italian forces paid protection money to prevent attacks on their troops.

The payment of protection money was revealed after the death of ten French soldiers in August 2008 at the hands of large Taleban force in Sarobi. French forces had taken over the district from Italian troops, but were unaware of secret Italian payments to local commanders to stop attacks on their forces and consequently misjudged local threat levels.

SCIENTISTS have claimed that the moon could support middle-class life forms after the discovery of a crater containing a Star of India and an excellent primary school.

The discovery overturns previous assumptions that the moon would be incapable of supporting a quality of life much above that of Surat.

Experts now believe that aspirational micro-organisms evolved on the moon over 5 million years ago, progressing quickly from watching lunar WWE Wrestling while eating food from buckets to drinking filtered water and obsessing about CD multi-changers.

Professor Ashraf Patel, of the Institute for Studies, said: "We have long suspected a middle-class presence on the moon since Apollo 14 proved it was possible to play golf.

A boom in “sari-rippers”, India’s version of romantic bodice-ripper novels, has set readers on a collision course with Hindu nationalist politicians intent on preserving the country’s moral fibre.

In the socially conservative subcontinent, where kissing in films is censored and couples can be fined for public displays of affection, women are rushing to buy romantic tales of dashing heroes, ravishing beauties and happy outcomes.

Last week Shiv Sena, a right-wing Hindu nationalist party, called for a government investigation into the legality of romantic fiction.

“This kind of literature should be banned. It is against the cultural values of the country and is likely to have an unhealthy impact on the minds of teenagers,” said Vinod Bansal, a party spokesman.

What more can one ask for ? Watching Laura Croft Tomb Raider or the Premier League on a 3D television..

Sony will announce today that it is aiming to put 3D televisions in homes by the end of 2010.

Sir Howard Stringer, its chief executive, is due to announce that consumers will be able to buy 3D Bravia television sets, Vaio laptops, Playstation3 games consoles and Blu-Ray disc players that are compatible with 3D technology.

It will be an important boost for the 3D industry, which until now has concentrated on enhancing the cinema screen experience.

The burgeoning 3D market is poised to revolutionise the consumer electronics industry. British Sky Broadcasting has already announced plans to introduce a 3D satellite channel in the UK next year.

Amazing story..similarities to the happening in Austria..

The blonde, blue-eyed girl was 11 years old when she was abducted outside her home near Lake Tahoe, California.
After almost two decades the only hope that her parents had left was that one day her body would be found.

Last night that same girl, Jaycee Lee Dugard, was being reunited with her family as a 29-year-old woman after walking into a police station and revealing her identity.

After interviews and DNA tests it is thought that Ms Dugard’s story has been confirmed, bringing an extraordinary end to a missing person case that in 1991 attracted the same kind of media frenzy that the disappearance of Madeleine McCann generated more than two years ago.

No, not the Middle East, but Africa :O)

King Mswati III of Swaziland, Africa’s last absolute monarch and ruler of some of the poorest people in the world, has sent his favourite wives on a multimillion-pound shopping jaunt through Europe, the Middle East and Asia, provoking fierce criticism of his profligacy.

Britain has been drawn into the row because of the millions of pounds in aid reportedly given to the kingdom, with campaigners accusing Whitehall of double standards. “They shout about Zimbabwe, but keep quiet about what is happening in Swaziland, even though they are one of its biggest aid donors. They are wasting British taxpayers’ money on this tyrant,” Lucky Lukhele, of the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN), told The Times.

India has launched a rival to Google Earth, the search engine’s hugely popular satellite imagery service. The online tool, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), has been developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). Its debut comes as India redoubles its efforts to reap profits from its 45-year-old state-sponsored space programme.

Police in Haryana, an affluent but conservative northern state, said that they had been overwhelmed by hundreds of cases in which couples had been attacked by enraged relatives for ignoring the strict social codes that dictate who they should marry.

Under a pilot scheme that will start this month, newlyweds judged to be most at risk will start their lives together under armed guard.

In the rural villages of Haryana, caste purity and adherence to traditions are paramount. As a result, the state has grown notorious as the “honour killing” capital of India.