Wednesday, February 3, 2010

And (the) Oscar goes to.....

The cat who can predict death

When doctors and staff realised that a cat living in a U.S. nursing home could sense when someone was going to die, the feline, Oscar, was portrayed as a furry grim-reaper or four-legged angel of death.

But Dr. David Dosa, who broke the news of Oscar's abilities in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, said he never intended to make Oscar sound creepy or his arrival at a bedside to be viewed negatively. Dosa said he hopes his newly released book , Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat will put the cat in a more favourable light as well as providing a book to help people whose loved ones are terminally ill. "After the New England Journal article you got the feeling that if Oscar is in your bed then you are dead, but you did not really see what is going on for these family members," said Dosa, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University. "I wanted to write a book that would go beyond Oscar's peculiarities, to tell why he is important to family members and care givers who have been with him at the end of a life."

Dosa said Oscar's story is fascinating on many levels. Oscar was adopted as a kitten from an animal shelter to be raised as a therapy cat at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, that cares for people with severe dementia and in the final stages of various illnesses. SIXTH SENSE? When Oscar was about six months old the staff noticed he would curl up to sleep with patients who were about to die. So far he has accurately predicted about 50 deaths.

Dosa recounts one instance when staff were convinced of the imminent death of one patient but Oscar refused to sit with that person, choosing instead to be on the bed of another patient down the hallway. Oscar proved to be right. The person he sat with died first, taking staff on the ward by surprise. Dosa said there was no scientific evidence to explain Oscar's abilities but he thinks that maybe the cat responds to a pheromone or smell that humans simply don't recognise.

Dosa said his main interest was not to delve further into Oscar's abilities but to use Oscar as a vehicle to tell about terminal illness which is his main area of work. "There is a lot to tell about what Oscar does but there is a lot to tell on the human level of what family members go through at the end of life when they are dealing with a loved one in a nursing home or with advanced dementia," he said. "Perhaps the book is a little more approachable because there is a cat in it. We really know so little about nursing homes and this tries to get rid of this myth that they are horrid factories where people go to die."

Oscar, who is now nearly five years old, had initially sparked a bit more interest in families wanting to send their loved ones to Steere House. Oscar has even been thanked by families in obituaries for providing some comfort in the final hours of life. But he said Oscar remains unchanged by the attention, spending most of his days staring out of a window, although he has become a bit friendlier. "The first time I met Oscar he bit me. We have warmed over the years. We have moved into a better place," said Dosa. "I don't think Oscar is that unique but he is in a unique environment. Animals are remarkable in their ability to see things we don't, be it the dog that sniffs out cancer or the fish that predicts earthquakes. Animals know when they are needed."

Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Colour of Soles

Pak cricket team's drubbing blamed on Green colour of soles

A popular religious talk show host has blamed the drubbing the Pakistan cricket team got at the hands of Australia on the green-coloured of the players' shoes.

Aamir Liaquat Hussain, who hosts the popular Aalim Online talk show on Geo TV and is no stranger to controversy, said green is the colour of Pakistan and of Islam and "this colour being rubbed on the ground" is a derogatory act.

Hence, divine retribution had affected the fortunes of the Pakistani cricket team, he claimed.

Two days after it was aired, the show has been cross-posted on many websites, with most Pakistanis expressing shock at Hussain's "jahaalat" (stupidity). In fact, some bloggers have since renamed his show as 'Jaahil Online' in jest.

"Yes, you heard it right. It's all in the shoes. Or, actually, in the soles!" wrote a blogger on pakistaniat.com.

Another blogger Naeem Sadiq wrote, "It is difficult to believe that someone who professes to be a 'modern religious scholar', in this time and age would be allowed to deliver such superstitious sermons on a leading TV channel.

"One wonders how Geo TV can tolerate 'aalims' of such questionable credentials as they further distract and confuse an already uneducated nation with yet more ignorance."

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Meet Mikey: Terror suspect since age two

Meet Mikey: Terror suspect since age two


That is the question America is asking after it emerged that the eight-year-old Cub Scout from New Jersey is frisked every time he flies because his name is on a US terror watchlist. Michael “Mikey” Hicks, whose father is a US Navy veteran and mother a photojournalist who has flown with the US Vice-President, has been the target of extra security measures at airports since he was 2. “Why would a kid be a terrorist?” he asks.

Michael is not on the US government’s “no-fly” list of 2,500 people considered too dangerous to be allowed into the air. However, his name appears to be among, or to closely match, one of the 13,500 on the “selectee” list who are singled out for extra airport security.

His parents first learnt of his status when they could not get him a seat for a flight to Florida because, as an airline official explained, he was “on the list”. He was patted down for the first time aged 2 as he passed through Newark airport in New Jersey. Michael has been asked to see the supervisor whenever he checks in for a flight. On a recent trip to the Bahamas he was frisked on the way out and searched more aggressively on the return flight.

Michael is the apparent victim of America’s increasingly heavy-handed system of airline security. The attempted “underwear bombing” of a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day led US officials to add even more names to the country’s terror watchlists.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is charged with trying to explode a bomb, was identified as a possible problem when his father in Nigeria alerted the US embassy that he had expressed extreme views before disappearing.

On its website, the Transportation Security Administration, which is responsible for airport security, insists that no eight-year-old boy is on the “no-fly” list.

“Airlines can and should automatically deselect any eight-year-olds out there that appear to be on a watchlist,” it says. “Whether you’re 8 or 80 the most common occurrence is name confusion and individuals are told they are on the no-fly list when, in fact, they are not.”

Michael’s mother, Najlah Feanny Hicks, has enlisted the help of her congressman to get the listing removed. “You could have seen that he was 2; that he was 3, 4 or 5. Now it’s scary because he’s 8. What happens when he is 16?” she asked on the television channel CBS2.

COPYRIGHT - THE TIMES, LONDON


Source: The Telegraph

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Caught in traffic, Mamata takes auto

KOLKATA: It was all in a day's ride for Mamata Banerjee. But for 26-year-old autorickshaw driver Dipak Haldar, it was a day never to be forgotten.

Caught in a traffic jam due to a Muharram procession, the railway minister decided to get out of her car and walk it on Monday evening, rather than be late for her flight to Delhi. Dipak, a regular on VIP Road, was at the right place at the right time and found himself giving a lift to a VVIP. The feel-good story has a twist in the tail, though.

Mamata's efforts notwithstanding, she still had to wait for about an hour at the airport — the flight was delayed because the pilot was stuck in the same bumper-to-bumper jam.

The real gainer of the evening was Dipak. Not only did he have a story to tell his grandchildren, he also ended up Rs 500 richer for a 1-km trip.

"I have never had so many people, including policemen, telling me to drive carefully," the auto driver said, when TOI tracked him down.

The flight was delayed as flight commander Priya Gill was among the thousands caught in the jam. The flight, with 165 passengers, took off 55 minutes behind schedule.

Source:TIMES OF INDIA

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Journey of hope ends in tragedy

Chandan Gupta, 23, had boarded the Amritsar Express at Howrah last Friday hoping to put his career on the right track. Little did he know that this journey of hope — he was to write a bank exam in Lucknow — would end in tragedy.

Chandan could only scream as his father Siuji Prasad Gupta, who had insisted on accompanying him to Lucknow, was shot in the chest by train robbers near Jasidih in Jharkhand.

On Sunday morning, the commerce post-graduate from St Xavier’s College was standing in a Howrah crematorium for his 52-year-old father’s last rites instead of being seated in an examination centre in Lucknow.

Chandan, who has been offered a railway job and Rs 2 lakh as “compensation”, recounts the train journey that claimed his father and explains how safety on tracks has become “a matter of luck”.


I had reluctantly allowed my father to accompany me to Lucknow for the written recruitment test conducted by the Oriental Bank of India. He knew I was capable of taking care of myself but his heart wouldn’t listen. “You focus on the exam, I will take care of the rest,” he would say.

The two of us boarded the S1 coach of Amritsar Express from platform number eight of Howrah station at 7.30pm on Friday. Our berths were 10 and 11.

We were to reach Lucknow around 3.30pm on Saturday and check into a hotel before finding my exam centre. Everything was going according to plan till then, and I was feeling good about it.

Around 10.30pm, we had paratha and sabzi for dinner, after which I climbed to the upper berth. My father was in the middle berth.

I had barely kept my head on the pillow when I heard loud voices a few feet away. I got up to check and saw some youths first abusing and then assaulting a passenger. I realised that a gang of robbers had raided the train.

My father was asleep, but I woke him up to alert him. He ordered me to lie down quietly, saying he would handle the situation if the gang tried to rob us. By then a couple of members of the gang — they all appeared to be in their twenties and were brandishing guns or knives — had reached our cubicle.

One of the men asked my father to hand over all cash and valuables. My father took out whatever money he had in his trouser pocket and gave it to the robber. He then asked for the cellphone and cash in my father’s shirt pocket.

My father hesitated for not more than a few seconds but the youth standing nearby with a pistol in his hand pointed the weapon at his chest and fired without any provocation.

I jumped down from the upper berth and held my father tight, screaming for help all the while. He tried to say something but he could barely breathe. As I held him, I looked at the palms of my hands...they were drenched in blood.

Not a single passenger came to help us. I lay my father down on the floor and ran barefoot from coach S1 to S9 looking for Government Railway Police (GRP) personnel but found none. By the time I returned, my father was motionless. I pulled the chain in desperation, and the train screeched to a halt in the middle of nowhere. Still no sign of GRP personnel. I lost hope.

After five minutes, the train started moving again. Around 25 minutes later, the train pulled into Jhajha station. I got off and scanned the station for someone in uniform but saw none.

I was told that the GRP station was on the other side of the platform and could be reached quickly only if I ran across the tracks. I did as advised, only to find a lone GRP sentry on duty.

When I told him what had happened, the sentry asked me to bring my father to the platform. I ran back to the train and requested our co-passengers to help me lift my father but nobody did. Finally, one passenger came forward and helped carry my father to the platform.

Someone arranged for a vehicle to take him to the ticket office, where we waited for more than an hour before a doctor arrived.

He checked in vain for my father’s pulse. It was too late.

Source : The Telegraph