Ticking Heartbeats

  The perpetual debate that is waged about the inadequacies of a vegetarian diet versus the hazards of a non-vegetarian diet is both accurate and wrong on a number of levels and if one really looks at both groups of people and their eating habits, there is room for healthy living in both. Confused? As human beings, we are creatures of comfort, habit and stubbornness. People take ill from time to time by consuming an inadequate diet, overeating or from leading sedentary lives. Did you notice the missing key words in the sentence above? There is no mention of the 'vegetarian' or 'non-vegetarian' -- it is a rule that applies to both categories. It's not the cultural or religious beliefs we hold, but the actual diet and the food we consume that is pulling the rug out from under our feet. The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that death from diabetes and heart disease alone costs India about $210 billion every year, and it is expected to increase to ...

Rahul Gandhi appears to have been economical with the truth on his affidavit while filing his election nomination papers in Amethi this weekend. In the affidavit, he states that he obtained an MPhil from Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, UK, in 1995, in Developmental Economics. A certificate from the University shows that not only has he got dates wrong, he has even got the name of the course he took incorrect. Worse, the man touted as a future prime minister failed one of his four papers. Rahul got 58 per cent in “National Economic Planning and Policy” (according to the grading scale given in the certificate, 60 per cent is the minimum for a pass). The certificate, shown alongside, was issued a year ago by Diana Kazemi, the secretary of the department of Development Studies (and not Developmental Economics) in which Rahul Gandhi studied. He enrolled under the name ‘Raul Vinci’, a pseudonym given by the British authorities in a common practice as there are a g...