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

27 Dec' 07: Pakistan's charismatic Opposition leader and two time former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who escaped death by a whisker during a terrorist attack on her home coming parade in Karachi just over two months ago, was assassinated on Thursday evening in an attack by a suicide bomber and AK 47 armed gunmen who shot her in the neck and chest as she was leaving an election rally in the cantonment town of Rawalpindi, near here. Ms Bhutto, 54, was killed just after she had finished addressing a large public rally at the historic Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi as part of her barnstorming campaign across the country for the January 8 general election. She succumbed to her wounds on the operation table at the Rawalpindi General Hospital at 6.16 pm local time (6.46 pm IST). Ms Bhutto, who is survived by her husband Asif Ali Zardari and three children Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Asifa, will be buried at Larkana, the family's ancestral home in Sindh province, close to the grave...

New York: Blogging might be a leisure activity for many famous personalities but it has brought fame to people like India-born Om Malik who has been named as one of the global web celebrities by American magazine Forbes. Ranked at the 12th position for technology blogging on the list of “Web Celeb 25", he shares the limelight not just with fellow bloggers but also with video hosts and gadget gurus. A chemistry graduate from St. Stephen's College in New Delhi, Malik is the brain behind the website http://gigaom.com/ and has also served as a technology journalist for various publications. "Om Malik has a long history as a tech journalist, writing for outlets including Business 2.0, Red Herring and The Wall Street Journal (he was also one of the founding staffers of Forbes.com ). But true web celebrity status didn't come for the Indian-born writer until 2001, when he started his own technology blog, GigaOm," Forbes noted. On the other hand, twenty nine-year...

Today, GPS is a beautiful thing. A receiver in your car can learn its own location from 24 government owned satellites overhead your tax money at work. You're guided to a destination with colorful moving maps on a touch screen and an authoritative voice. But good GPS models must fulfill three requirements. First, each must be tiny, self contained and battery operated, so you can take it hiking or biking. Second, each must display live traffic and accident data - and offer to reroute you as necessary. And finally, each must pronounce actual street names not just "Turn right," but "Turn right on South Maple Street." That feature makes an enormous difference when you're flying blind in a new town. Here are a few top notch GPS models: Magellan Maestro 4250 ($450): Like any gadget in a car, GPS receivers are a distraction, and therefore a safety risk. So it's amazing that speech recognition didn't arrive in these units sooner. On the Magellan, it...

In a novel experiment, the Kanpur police has decided to set out a thief to catch a thief. "Who knows a criminal better than someone who has been a criminal himself? A former criminal knows the tricks of the trade like the back of his hand and if we take him into confidence, he can help us catch other criminals," said SSP Kanpur, Anand Swaroop. The Kanpur SSP plans to use former criminals who are now inactive due to age and ill-health in this new project that is called "history-sheeter friend". The SSP has asked all police station heads in Kanpur to furnish a list of old criminals and history sheeters who have been inactive for quite some time now. "Once identified, I will take them into confidence and ask them to share their knowledge with the local police so that crime can be checked," he said. According to police estimates, there are about 5,000 such "inactive" criminals in Kanpur alone and many of them still maintain a contact with t...

Narain Karthikeyan led Team India to the country's first ever victory in the Al Grand Prix by winning the feature race in Zhuhai, China, on Sunday. Karthikeyan staved off a tough challenge from Team New Zealand and cleared the finish line just about a second before his nearest rival. Though the win gives India 19 points, the team with a total of 27 points is not among the top contenders. Karthikeyan has had several setbacks recently starting with losing his position as a test driver with the Williams Formula One (Fl) team and struggling at the A1 circuit with mechanical problems in the qualifying races. "We weren't doing well in the qualifying. So we changed the qualifying set up for this race. I am glad it helped," Karthikeyan told . India started third in the feature race but New Zealand used two power boosts a special facility that allows drivers to gain an extra 30bhp speed for a few seconds in the last four or five laps. This reduced the gap to 6/10th of a...

Silicon Valley (US): Renowned astronaut Sunita Williams, newly elected Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and controversial fashion designer Anand Jon have been listed among the top 10 Indian American newsmakers in the United States this year. Prominent Hindu chaplain Rajan Zed and teen idol Sanjaya have also made it to the list released by India Currents, a monthly maga zine issued from California which annually names those Americans of Indian origin who make headlines during the calender year. In its list for this year, the magazine has included policy makers, original thinkers, trend setters, record breakers and media sensations. Jindal, 36, hit the headlines for being appointed as the youngest Governor of the US. Williams made it to the magazine's list as she set the record for the longest single space flight while Anand Jon was in news as he was charged with sexually assaulting a number of models who worked for him. Other Indian Americans in the list are Puli...

Millionaires are passé. A new report on wealth published by British banking group on Monday says ‘millionaire,' the old word for the wealthy, has lost its charm. You need 10 million US dollars now to be truly considered wealthy. In other words, you have to be a dollar crorepati, according to 35 per cent of 790 wealthy individuals surveyed by the bank to measure the bar on wealthiness. A self owned home does not count in the calculation to define the wealth status. "This is the perceived level at which people believe they are truly wealthy as it gives them influence within their community and a greater sense of control over their own destiny," Satya Bansal, head of Barclays Wealth in India, said. "This level of wealth elevates their status so they behave more like people with assets of $50 million, than people with $5 million," it said. An old world million dollars is not enough because it now costs more to enjoy some luxuries such as a butler, concierg...