'Delhi Belly' finally gets clean chit in Nepal

Kathmandu: After being put on hold for 48 hours following censors' objections to the expletives peppering its dialogues, Aamir Khan's home production Delhi Belly finally reappeared in Nepal's theatres on Wednesday after the offending parts were addressed.

The Gopi Krishna Multiplex in Kathmandu, where the trouble started Sunday evening after police raided its theatres and seized prints of the Abhinay Deo-directed film, told on Wednesday that Delhi Belly was back on the menu after a written apology to the Film Censor Board by the owner of the theatre, Uddhav Poudel.

Poudel is also the sole distributor of the film in Nepal.

Poudel apologised to the censors, agreed to pay a fine of NRS 5,000 if required and gave an undertaking that he would not in future screen films flouting censors' recommendations.

Nepal's censors had agreed to clear Delhi Belly for viewing by theatre goers above 16 years provided the distributor saw to it that an offending scene showing one of the protagonists, played by Imran Khan, visiting a brothel, was cut and some expletives in two scenes muted.

Chetan Sapkota, one of the censors, said they had agreed to overlook the distributor flouting the recommendations in view of the financial loss he would incur if they called for stronger action. However, Sapkota warned that in future, the board would not show any leniency with films that promoted obscenity or vulgarity.

Delhi Belly, which received good reviews by Nepal's press before it was taken off from Sunday evening, is likely to prosper from the bout with the censors that brought widespread publicity and whetted filmgoers' appetites.

Jai Nepal, another multiplex in Kathmandu, said they had been receiving calls since morning with people asking if the film was back.

Dharma Adhikari, associated with the Media Foundation, a non-profit research and policy initiative, said the Delhi Belly incident went deeper than the use of profanities in the dialogue.

"...The fact is, relations have strained in recent years between the censor board and the studios," Adhikari wrote in the Republica daily on Wednesday.

Adhikari said that the recent amendments in the Film (Production, Exhibition and Distribution) Act of 2001 had increased the power of censors and imposed greater curbs on foreign films.

In the age of Internet explosion, the cuts in Delhi Belly, Adhikari said, would not keep the scenes and words that the censors found offensive out of Nepal.

"Many don't have to go to Gopi Krishna (to watch the expurgated parts)," he said. "If they want, they can as well download in their personal devices the censored clips."

Why Casey Anthony Made Prime Time

Now that the Casey Anthony murder trial is over, now that all the shouting has subsided and the verdicts have been bestowed, perhaps it's time for some context and perspective. While the television heralds were proclaiming the young mother's guilt, and while tens of millions of other eager beavers were leaping at the chance to be judgmental toward someone they'd never meet or ever know, the rest of America's criminal justice system just rolled on. And I mean, rolled on.
Although there is no centralized warehouse of online information about these sorts of cases, the raw statistics and anecdotal evidence suggest that hundreds of other parents around the country have been accused of murdering their children since June 2008, the month Caylee Anthony went missing. Some already have been convicted or have pleaded guilty. Others have been acquitted or are yet to face trial. Yet none have remotely achieved the fame (or notoriety) that Anthony achieved in a little less than three years, from the date she reported her daughter missing until Tuesday, the day she was acquitted of the murder and manslaughter charges against her in an Orlando, Florida courtroom.

Lots of people have lots of theories about why the Anthony case attracted so much attention while so many other murder cases of the era have not. Whether it's right or its wrong, my theory is simple. Anthony is a white, middle-class woman -- she might even have been a soccer mom if things had turned out differently -- who had a darling, photogenic little girl. On many levels, her story connected with the vast swath of Americans who are themselves white, middle-class, and child-rearing.
Casey Anthony wasn't some freak, as so many venal commentators made her out to be. Until it all fell apart for her, you could argue instead that she was much like the millions of others who ended up following her trial. The fascination with her case -- and Caylee's

tragic cause -- was most vibrant within a demographic that is particularly attuned to investing in this sort of a story. If Anthony hadn't been the defendant in the case, if another mother had been accused of murdering another child, is there any doubt in your mind that Anthony would have followed that trial? 
Or, put another way, the Casey Anthony story was made for Nancy Grace and Nancy Grace was made for the Casey Anthony story. One would not have developed (or devolved) the way it did without the other. Which brings me to another reason why so many people followed the case. Because they could! The Anthony trial was televised thanks to Florida's famous "sunshine" laws. The broadcasts were extraordinarily popular because they were a potent blend of soap opera, reality television and Law and Order. And, most of all, they offered hours upon hours of guiltless judgment! That (and the sudden acquittal) was the real common denominator between this case and the O.J. Simpson case nearly a generation ago. 
Even better, when the courtroom lights dimmed for the evening, curious court watchers could come back to their televisions to have their own preconceived notions about the evidence reaffirmed regularly by their favorite celebrity analysts or via Twitter. From the talking heads, so much sound and fury, in the end signifying nothing! In fact, you could argue that never before in the history of criminal trials in America have so many who pretended to know so much for so long been so wrong so quickly, the jury's verdict coming back after only 11 hours of deliberations following a seven-week trial (I did my part, too. On Tuesday, I said that the quick verdict likely meant success for prosecutors). Take away the live audio feed from the courtroom, and there's no way the Anthony trial would have turned into The Anthony Trial.
There are things we cannot know -- or at least things which I could not readily find. We don't know, for example, exactly how many parent-child murders occurred since Casey Anthony was charged with Caylee's death. We don't know exactly how many mothers or fathers have been prosecuted since in murder cases involving their children. And thus we don't know how many of those cases resulted in convictions or acquittals. But there are some things we do know. We know, for example, that the Anthony case, for all its ratings and its hype, was but a spit into the ocean when it comes to murder in America. Again, my apologies to Harper's for the riff on its famous Index:

• Number of days since Caylee Anthony was reported missing in July 2008: 1085 
• Number of murders recorded in Florida in 2008 alone: 1,168
• Average number of murders per day in Florida in 2008: 3.19
• Number of people sentenced to death in Florida in 2008: 16
• Number of murders recorded in Florida in 2009 alone: 1,017
• Average number of murders per day in Florida in 2009: 2.79
• Number of people sentenced to death in Florida in 2009: 15
• Number of murders recorded in Florida in first half of 2010: 487
• Projected number of people sentenced to death in Florida in 2010: 13
• Current number of people on death row in Florida: 394
• Number of innocent people freed from Florida's death row since 1976: 23

Now let's take an even broader look:

• Number of murders reported in U.S. in 2008, the year Caylee Anthony went missing 16,442.
• Average number of murders each day in America that year: 44.92.
• Number of murders reported in U.S. in 2009: 15,241
• Average number of murders each day in America that year: 41.76
• Number of murders reported in U.S. in 2010 or 2011: Data not yet available.

By citing these statistics, I do not mean to diminish the significance of Caylee Anthony's death or to belittle (or endorse) the results of her mother's trial. It was a family tragedy all around -- and it will continue to be so no matter what happens now to Casey Anthony. Instead, by finally panning the camera out from the endless close-up of that courtroom in Orlando, I mean to try to call attention to the heartbreaking stories of some of the other murder victims the nation has lost since the summer of 2008.
The stories of these thousands of "unfamous" victims have never been told on cable television. The narratives of destroyed lives and broken families have never been dissected in magazines, or in books, or in syndication. They never trended on Twitter, the stories of these black victims, or Hispanic victims, or victims whose trials were hidden from the camera's view. There were no primetime specials about them. Every hour of coverage of the Anthony case, every obsessive update about every little tick in her trial, every bit of lousy analysis detracted from the telling of these other stories about life and death, parent and child, conviction and acquittal, law and justice.
Millions of people woke up Wednesday morning as convinced as they had been the morning before that Casey Anthony is guilty of murder. For them, the poor jury's work means nothing and never will. But, for some of the rest of us, with the shadow of the Anthony case finally gone from daily view, the sun now shines on a day when other victims of crime may finally get their due. And that's about the best thing I can say about a case, and a trial, that will leave no lasting mark upon the law despite the fury it generated and the rubble it leaves in its wake.

Senegal: Canadian Company to Help Finance Zinc Supplements for Children

A Canadian zinc mining company and a Canadian nonprofit devoted to getting vitamins and minerals to children in poor countries recently joined forces to create a new partnership, the Zinc Alliance for Child Health.

Zinc, the metal used to line the bars of traditional Paris bistros, is a mineral crucial in trace amounts to children’s growth, brain development and immune system functions. It is found in red meat, beans and peanuts, but many malnourished children eat almost nothing but cornmeal, cassava or other starches.

Teck Resources, a mining company with headquarters in Vancouver, announced that it would give $6.2 million to help six million children in Senegal get zinc supplements. Its partners in the new alliance are the Micronutrient Initiative, a nonprofit group based in Ottawa, and the Canadian International Development Agency, through which Canada channels foreign aid.

A 2006 World Health Organization review of nutrition studies concluded that zinc supplements help save the lives of children with severe diarrhea when given in conjunction with oral rehydration solution. Zinc also helped save severely underweight children.

It was less clear whether children benefited from getting routine zinc supplements, , but many poor children suffer from intestinal illnesses that make it hard to absorb the mineral. The W.H.O. said more study was needed into the best forms to offer supplements.

“The challenge the world faces is not producing more zinc,” said Don Lindsay, president of Teck Resources, pictured above. “It’s getting zinc into the diets of people suffering from zinc deficiency.”

Google Plus vs. Facebook - Unofficial Poll Reveals Most Are Google Loyals

An online poll carried out by The Christian Post aimed at measuring just how Google+ is faring against rival Facebook found that the majority of voters believe both companies will coexist.

The unofficial poll, in which almost 2,000 people participated, gave voters the following three options to choose from:

1. Google+ Will Dethrone Facebook
2. Google+ Will Lose to Facebook
3. Google+ Will Coexist with Facebook, Just Like Coke and Pepsi

The votes proved to be favorable for “Google+ dethroning Facebook,” with 36.5 percent of the votes (702 votes), over “Google+ losing to Facebook,” 16.6 percent of the votes (319 votes). But the majority, 46.9 percent of the votes (903 votes) believe that both companies will co-exist in rivalry the same way Coca-Cola and Pepsi have battled for dominion until the present.

No duplication of votes was allowed in a poll that blocked identical IP addresses from voting twice. And although the poll's accuracy may certainly be questioned due to a limited number of votes casted and various other factors, the results of two additional polls conducted revealed consistent in favorable results for Google+.

The three polls consisted of almost 3,500 votes and are still open to any user who wants to weigh his/her opinion against the general online public.