Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

India's 1st Gold Medal at Beijing Olympics Beijing: Abhinav Bindra won India’s first ever individual Olympic gold medal when he claimed the men’s 10m air rifle shooting title in Beijing Monday 11th August 2008. Bindra, 25, a businessman from Chandigarh, followed his world championship title two years ago to finally win a landmark gold medal for India. The Indian trumped his rivals with the best finish of 104.5 in the 10-shot final as he went into the last shot level with Hakkinen on 689.7 points. While Bindra secured his best score of 10.8 in the deciding shot, Hakkinen managed only 9.7 to concede the silver to Zhu, whose last shot was 10.5. Bindra finished with a combined tally of 700.5. Bindra said, “Life cannot get better than this. I’m thrilled about winning the gold... It’s very difficult to describe how I feel because the winning moment is yet to sink in. I guess it was my day today.” Dedicating his victory to family and fellow Indians, “I know my country was yea...

A man who cloned the official Beijing Olympics website and made around $US50,000 from fake prize draws has been arrested. Liao Peigui, a 20-year-old computer engineer in Danzhou city, Hainan province, persuaded his victims to transfer 10-20 per cent of the value of their "prize" into his bank account. His copy of the official website www.beijing2008.cn , which gets more than one million visits a day, netted Liao a suspected 400,000 yuan ($56,077), the Xinhua agency said.