Bush's loose lips give Democrats more firepower

The President, who hoped for a triumphant, gaffe-free entrance to the Republican National Convention, has spent the past few days giving rhetorical ammunition to Senator John Kerry

Man barred from sending junk
text-messages to cell phones
The messages were sent over the last several months to cell users in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island

Indian retro comics and ephemera
Straight outta Bombay, a cool collection of strange and unusual artifacts from Indian pop culture

Aamir weds secretly in London
India’s reclusive superstar wed his newest girlfriend Kiran Rao.
But Aamir's aide denies marriage report

Pain ends for heroic Miami Herald editor

During his 21 years at the Miami Herald, John Wolin -- born an anchondroplastic dwarf -- lost the use of one leg, then the other. ‘Yet he kept coming to work, hobbling along on braces and canes at first, then getting around on an electric scooter,’ writes Curtis Morgan. ‘The pain, combated with a dizzying array of powerful drugs, did little to take the edge off the rapier tongue that made him a newsroom legend.’ Columnist Dave Barry recalls: ‘He got really angry at a reporter and yelled into the phone: 'You're not just dealing with a bald dwarf here. You're dealing with a bald, ticked-off dwarf.’’

Government awaits Trai note on DTH content sharing
The government has asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to expedite its recommendations on non-discriminatory clause for direct-to-home broadcasting. The Trai formulation will be incorporated in the DTH licence even for those who are in the market. The clause will make it mandatory for all broadcasters to share their feed across DTH platforms

Pinxit Blue bags Google India account
The first advertisement will roll out in Wednesday's edition of The Times of India, Bangalore, for computer scientists

Mistry millionaires
India’s third richest keep away from flashbulbs, don’t wear it on their sleeve

Satellite fault shuts train doors

Hi-tech systems used to open train doors automatically have been failing, leaving people trapped on trains in the South of England

Losing is an art for most Olympians
For the thousands of athletes who don't win medals, the Olympics teach lessons in defeat

Great Journalist

Want to become a great journalist? Visit Great Journalist.
The site, which will be updated every week or so,
is dedicated to Anjum Nair

Google
What it looked like when it launched in 1997

Now, outsourcing of media, publishing work
Financial news service Reuters' decision to move editorial jobs from US and Europe to India has triggered a new outsourcing era in the global media and publishing business

'Mr Hotmail' seeks new challenges
Sabeer Bhatia is the pin-up of India's IT revolution; the boy from Bangalore who went to Silicon Valley and made his fortune

Road Raja
British celebs drive around Mumbai for Sky reality series

The most powerful woman
Behind every successful woman is an unsuccessful man!

Tumour diary: Two years on
BBC News Online science and technology writer Ivan Noble was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour in August 2002. Since then he has been sharing his experiences in an online diary

Ship's anchor cuts cable to Sri Lanka
Internet and international telephone services have been disrupted. Indian-registered State of Nagaland to be sued for $5 million for damages

Factors behind newspapers' rush to contrition
To judge from this year's rash of apologetic postmortems, American newspapers are a very sorry bunch

Times TV's second coming
India’s premier newspaper publishing company which runs, among other publications, The Times of India and The Economic Times, will burst on Indian television screens with a bouquet of satellite channels

Slower, lower, weaker
A commentator on the first day of the Olympics summed up India's shortcomings

I witness
People in a negative mood provide more accurate eyewitness accounts than people in a positive mood state, according to new research

Big B back with KBC in April


Kaun Banega Crorepati will reappear on Star Plus with Amitabh Bachchan back in the hot seat

Attack on pax

When events in the Middle East turn especially bloody, as they have during the last couple of weeks in Najaf, I am often struck by a whimsical -- some might say ridiculous -- thought. I imagine that the man at the centre of the trouble is not Moqtada al-Sadr (or whoever happens to be the villain of the moment) but Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India's struggle for independence. I wonder what he would have done about it

-- Brian Whitaker

Police turn up volume for GOP convention
Forget the megaphones. The police will have a more high-tech and louder option to make themselves heard over the din of Manhattan traffic and noisy protesters outside the Republican National Convention. The Long Range Acoustic Device developed for the military can blast warnings, orders or anything else at an ear-splitting 150 decibels

Film on hangman rekindles capital punishment issue
One Day From a Hangman’s Life by four-time National Award winning director Joshy Joseph captures hangman Nata Mallik in his many hues

Rumors of Pope's demise

The pope is dying again. I just read about it yesterday. Some of my friends heard it on the radio, and called to see if it was true. By my count, Pope John Paul II has been dying since one Friday afternoon in September of 1994

-- Greg Burke

The space shuttle's return to flight

August 26 last year, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board released its assessment of the devastating space shuttle crash on February 1, 2003, which claimed seven lives and brought the US human space flight programme to a jarring halt. One year on from the report, news@nature.com looks at the shuttle's long road to recovery, and its uncertain future

Stolen!

Scream if you see the original of the painting!

A big hitter steps forward
Zee`s Subhash Chandra has triggered a fight by outbidding ESPN with help from India's cricketers

Dial a demostrator
Thousands of Germans have been protesting against the government's welfare reforms in recent weeks. Now, all they have to do is pick up the phone to have their message carried to parliament

'Stop calling me Wacko Jacko’

The beleaguered pop star said he was tired of being ‘vilified’ and taunted in the public eye

Uday Shankar new head of STAR News
The appointment came after Ravina Raj Kohli quit the company on mutually agreed terms

You're athletes, not journalists
The International Olympic Committee is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other websites

Newspapers' digital editions not yet successful
Vin Crosbie continues campaigning against the waste of money occured by newspapers websites and digital editions. This time (see former postings in February), he gives a few circulation figures for some US newspapers' digital editions:
USA Today – 900 self-reported (0.05 percent of the total weekday print circulation of 2,154,539).
The New York Times – 3,172 ABC-audited (0.28 percent of 1,118,565).
The Washington Post – 424 ABC (0.06 percent of 732,904).
Boston Globe – 321 self-reported (0.03 percent of 452,109).
Arkansas Democrat Gazette – 3,418 s-r (1.8 percent of 187,601).
His conclusion:

With one expection, none of those newspapers have been able to signup a number of digital edition subscribers equal to one-tenths of one percent of that newspaper's print circulation

[Link via www.editorsweblog.com]

What makes good marathoners great
The marathon at the Olympics in Athens is fearsome, so grueling that even an elite athlete is liable to feel at least a moment of trepidation

Hotmail to offer 2GB in September
But it has become useless as a primary mail client for many users

Indian transcription service 'putting lives at risk'
Patients' lives are at risk as letters from hospital doctors are being sent to secretaries in India to be typed and returned to GPs with mistakes

TimeOut Mumbai update
The first issue will be out September 8.
Earlier report

Bombay or Mumbai? Even UN can get it wrong
The United Nations will intervene to avoid confusion over the names of countries, cities, hills and rivers which have been changing so frequently that postal services, search and rescue workers, tourists and public transport companies are struggling to cope

Bollywood Dreams

Sankha Guha embarks on a Bollywood adventure through the film sets of India's city of film. Talking to Bollywood's top stars and directors, he reveals a darker side to the familiar image of glitz and glamour

The prisoner abuse story
About midway into his monthlong stint in Iraq, reporter Mike Francis was chatting with an Oregon National Guard member when the soldier asked, 'You know about the detention facility thing, right?'

He didn't.

Newspaper Tigers
NY Times and LA Times continue to wage war while Big Media gets away with murder

The Internet is now the internet
Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the 'I' in internet. At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net

Indian Curry House ruffles McDonald's feathers
What has stirred spice is the red and yellow colours used on the newly-opened Anisha's Family Restaurant's advertisement boards, prompting McDonald's to shoot off a letter pointing out trademark violation in Australia

New York is going to the dogs

The New York Dog will feature horoscopes and obituaries, dieting tips and pop psychology advice for dogs

Sony shifts its hope to China
It realized it made a wrong decision on investment in India where its performance was getting worse

'Bikini-killer' linked to murders

Charles Sobhraj had never been convicted, even though he has been accused of more than 20 killings in India, Thailand, Nepal, Turkey and Iran
rediff.com: The Bikini Killer

Naveen Andrews to star in television thriller

The British Asian actor, most famous for his role in the BBC drama Buddha of Suburbia, plays a Middle Eastern man in the US series Lost

New Jersey governor reveals he's gay

James McGreevey announces resignation after telling of affair

Crystal ball gazing into Tendulkar’s future
An ageing M F Husain will pay the cricket star tribute by publicly painting a picture. It will show Sachin wrapped in the tricolor, galloping ahead of the horses!

Television channel only for advertisements
The first 24-hour channel dedicated to the world of advertising, Advert Channel, will feature a combination of classic commercials from the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today, plus live studio discussions and debates on the world of advertising, and behind the scenes documentaries on the filming of top commercials

'Nature Boy' is dead
NPR remembers Gypsy Boots, the health food and exercise guru who inspired the 1948 Nat King Cole hit (audio)

The San Jose Mercury News Olympics section frontpage
Channel surfing. Great headline. Great design. Great visual. Great...
[Link via www.newsdesigner.com]

King Kong's girlfriend dies
It wasn't the beast that killed the beauty, it was old age. Fay Wray, the shrieking blond beauty who earned fame as the frightened girl stalked up the Empire State Building, has died at age 96

Sesame Street comes to India

The venerable show for preschoolers is coming to the world's largest democracy

Bollywood producers honoured in Locarno
Swiss President Joseph Deiss is to meet ten top Indian film producers this weekend on the sidelines of the annual Locarno film festival

Tech 1954, where are you?
How much has technology really changed our daily lives? Popular Science asked a highly wired writer to spend 10 days in the big city living with the technology of 50 years ago. No Web, no cell, no laptop, no ATM card

The Golden Temple attack


To mark the 20th anniversary of Operation Bluestar, BBC News Online spoke to a range of people in Amritsar at the time

Gambling ghouls
Guess when a nuclear weapon is detonated and win fabulous prizes! Luke Heidelberger is taking this morbid game to an all new level with the India-Pakistan Death Pool

How to boost circulation
The Editors Weblog's 10 traits of papers whose circulation increased:

1) Take the long view in terms of business success
2) Have a clear definition of your audience - its needs, interests and aspirations
3) Take the best stories to market before competitors
4) Gain circulation today, worry about profit tomorrow
5) Work with other circulation winners to integrate strategies
6) Treat readers as customers and give them what they want
7) Hire young journalists to imbue your paper with fresh blood
8) Target all age groups, particularly older readers
9) Target women readers
10) Watch out for "moments of truth" when you have the opportunity to do something different, radical or risky ... and take the chance!

Big study, little findings
Why do organizations spend money to determine something that is already known?

TV through phone lines
Atlas Interactive, working initially with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, announced a $200 million plan to use IP technology to deliver entertainment and information services over existing copper networks and through television sets

Take a fresh look at Bush



This November, Americans pick their President, but until then, help them pick on their President

The 100 worst 'groaners'

Major Breakthrough. Seems some folks can’t write a medical story without this little bit of redundancy. By definition, there’s no such thing as a minor breakthrough, any more than there’s such a thing as a miniature Sumo wrestler

More groaners...

Smileys banished
EmoteMail uses facial expressions, captured via webcam and typing speed as part of the message to help the recipient get a sense of the mood. Each paragraph gets annotated with a facial expression and a background color that changes depending on how much time was spent on that particular paragraph in relation to the others

Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson is dead
Whether recording the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi in India or Henri Matisse at home, Cartier-Bresson sought to render the feeling of the moment with his distinctive classical style and penchant for geometrical composition

Leander versus Mahima
Is it as simple as a battle of the sexes?

Headliners
Siachen on Indo-Pak table today and
both sides likely to stay frozen

The siren Alam belle spreads panic

-- The Indian Express

Time Out Mumbai it will be

Time Out Mumbai... comming soon
Time Out Mumbai hits the newsstands of India's most vibrant city this summer. Time Out Mumbai is a fortnightly, English-language magzine that will guide readers through the fascinating array of entertainment, shopping and cultural options available in the home of Bollywood. Time Out Mumbai will be on the newsstands in Mumbai every other Thursday (cost INR Rs.30)

May 10, 2004, DantoNews: And still on media buzz, Time Out's Mumbai edition is coming out in June. We don't know if it will be Time Out Mumbai or Time Out Bombay, but it has Naresh Fernandes as consulting editor, as reported on April 19