The sexy actress and her mother

The sexy actress and her mother have been supporting NGOs in suburban Mumbai that take in beggar children, give them shelter and try to put them up in schools. Last year, a girl child got molested in one such shelter, and when Sameera’s mother got the police involved... the landlady of the shelter was pressurised by the molester to evict all the children and shut down the home. “It happened on Independence Day,” revealed Sameera, “and that’s when I decided to do something for these children. One year later, on this August 15, the actress will throw open the doors of a 1,200 sq ft shelter in Goregaon East that she has managed to raise from scratch for these same street kids. “I appealed to everyone to chip in and within a week, managed to raise Rs 25 lakh,” she said. “I was overwhelmed. Even my liftman offered to help.” She’s had further luck since then. Another well-wisher has donated a place in Mulund for the same cause. “We can now house the girls and boys separately,” said Sameera, thoroughly enthused by the spirit of Mumbai.

Cancer and incense

Burning incense may create a sweet scent, but regularly inhaling the smoke could put people at risk of cancers of the respiratory tract, researchers reported. In a study of more than 61,000 ethnic Chinese living in Singapore who were followed for up to 12 years, the investigators found a link between heavy incense use and various respiratory cancers. The findings are published in the medical journal Cancer on Monday. Incense has been used for millennia in many cultures' religious and spiritual ceremonies. In Asia, people commonly burn incense in their homes - a practice that is becoming more popular in western countries as well. Incense is usually derived from fragrant plant materials, like tree bark, resins, roots, flowers and essential oils. Past research has found that burning these materials can produce potentially cancer-causing substances, including benzene and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. However, no studies until now had linked the practice of burning incense to an increased cancer risk over time, according to the researchers, led by Jeppe Friborg of the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen. For their study, the researchers followed 61,320 Singapore Chinese men and women between the ages of 45 and 74 from the Hokkien or Cantonese dialect group. All of the subjects were cancer-free at the outset. Participants reported on their typical incense use, including how often they burned it in their homes and for how long - only at night, for instance, or all day and night. Over the next 12 years, 325 men and women developed cancer of the upper respiratory tract, such as nasal, oral or throat cancer. Another 821 developed lung cancer. The researchers found that incense use was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of cancers of the upper respiratory tract, with the exception of nasopharyngeal cancer. However, they observed no overall effect on lung cancer risk. Those who used incense heavily also had higher rates of a type of cancer called squamous cell carcinoma, which refers to tumors that arise in the cells lining the internal and external surfaces of the body. The risk was seen in smokers and nonsmokers. Study participants who used incense in their homes all day or throughout the day and night were 80% more likely than non-users to develop squamous cell carcinoma of the entire respiratory tract.

Safe Sex Ringtone!

A cell phone ring tone that sings ‘Condom, condom!’ has been launched to promote safe sex in India, where condoms carry a strong social stigma even though HIV and AIDS are growing problems, health experts said. The cappella ring tone features a professional singer chanting the word condom more than 50 times, a playful approach that public health activists hope will spark discussion and make condoms more socially acceptable. "We've made a conscious effort to move the concept of the condom away from negative association, like HIV and sex work," said Yvonne MacPherson, country director of BBC World Service Trust India. "Condoms are actually health products and if you have a condom and you use it, you are seen to be smart and responsible." Nearly 2.5 million people in India are infected with HIV and the disease is still largely taboo. The BBC group, which is funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, hopes the condom ring tone can make people in India more comfortable with safe sex issues. More than 270 million people use mobile phones in India and ring tones, especially those featuring hit Bollywood songs, are extremely popular. "A ring tone is a very public thing," she said. "It's a way to show you are a condom user and you don't have any issues with it." The ring tone was launched August 8 and has been downloaded 60,000 times, MacPherson said.

Are you really together?

he media has a tendency to portray extremes — either extremely content couples or miserable and intense ones. But the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. It is impossible for any couple to be unhappy or head-over-heels in love with each other all the time. Every relationship has its ups and downs. However, there are some ways to create a strong bond with your lover. Give your partner space Couples that are in solid relationships are not clingy and give each other enough space. This doesn't mean that they don't do anything together. But they don't feel the need to be stuck together all the time nor do they keep an eye on their partners. Only once you are happy with yourself and don't need constant approval from your partner, can you enjoy the space. Positive support Couples in good relationships give each other emotional support and don't put each other down in front of family or friends. Instead, they discuss their problems in private. If you are upset with your partner and feel a strong need to vent your frustration, take him/her to another room where you can talk in peace, instead of making a scene. Quiet moments Content couples don't feel a constant need to talk to each other. You and your partner can be sitting in the room together and reading. Sometimes the physical presence of the other person is more than enough. Share responsibilities It is important to ensure that both of you share equal responsibilities. Especially when it comes to domestic chores, take turns in doing the laundry or picking up the children from school. It shouldn't be that one person in the relationship handles all the tasks and the other doesn't pitch in.

Shilpa Shetty is the highest paid bollywood girl!

Is it possible for a girl??

We have heard that the actress is slated to become the highest paid female anchor in the history of television in India. Sources reveal that Shilpa Shetty has been offered the popular reality show deal at a whopping Rs 10 crores. And, this makes her the highest paid female anchor on Indian television. Must add, Shilpa mein hai dum!

so, therez no substitute of this girl ryt now

Delhi : 49 babies die during clinical trials at AIIMS

What kind of research and trial is this?
As many as 49 babies, many of whom hadn't even celebrated their first birthday, have died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences while being subjected to clinical trials for testing new drugs and therapies over the last two and a half years. Responding to a Right to Information (RTI) query on clinical trials on babies, the AIIMS administration admitted that of the 4,142 babies — 2,728 of whom were below the age of one — who were enrolled for clinical trials by the institute's department of paediatrics, 49 had died since January 1, 2006. The department conducted 42 sets of trials on babies during this period. In its reply, AIIMS said the deaths amounted to a 1.18% mortality rate. The RTI query was filed by Rahul Verma of Uday Foundation for Congenital Defects and Rare Blood Groups, an NGO. Clinical trials are the final stage of research conducted to answer questions about safety and efficacy of vaccines, drugs and devices, new therapies and forms of care or new ways of using known treatments. Many of these trials are for foreign drugs. India recently pipped China to become Asia's most popular destination for conducting clinical trials. According to the Planning Commission, 139 new trials were outsourced to India recently compared with 98 in China. The cost of conducting trials in India is 20% to 60% of the cost in industrialized countries. The RTI query also digs out information on the top drugs (according to volume of consumption) made in a foreign country that were used during the trials on the babies. AIIMS has said five foreign-manufactured medicines were tested during the trials. They were zinc tablets for treating zinc deficiency and serving as a nutritional supplement, olmesartan and valsartan for treating blood pressure-related problems, rituximab for treating chronic focal encephalitis and gene-activated human glucocerebrosidase for treating Gaucher's disease, which affects the liver. AIIMS said it had taken clearance for the trials from its own ethics committee, the health ministry steering committee (HMSC) on ethics and the national ethics committees of ICMR and DBT. Speaking to TOI, Verma said, "This is shocking. We decided to file the RTI when we saw parents unable to admit their seriously ill children at AIIMS while children of some other poor and illiterate families were being kept in the hospital needlessly for a long time." He added, "AIIMS said in its reply that families of patients are given social counselling before trials are started. With most patients in AIIMS being illiterate and belonging to extremely poor families, I doubt if they even understand what a clinical trial is and what their children are being subjected to."

It's possible to be fit and fat

It may be possible to be both fat and healthy, researchers reported, for at least half of overweight adults, and close to a third of obese men and women, have normal blood pressure, cholesterol and other measures of heart health. And being lean does not necessarily protect people, either. Close to a quarter of normal-weight American adults in one study had risk factors for heart disease or diabetes. "We really don't know as much about obesity as we think we do," Judith Wylie-Rosett of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who oversaw the study, said on Monday. "A considerable proportion of overweight and obese US adults are metabolically healthy, whereas a considerable proportion of normal-weight adults express a clustering of cardiometabolic abnormalities," Wylie-Rosett and Rachel Wildman and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. Wylie-Rosett's team looked at data on 5,440 men and women who were examined and filled out questionnaires for the National Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys between 1999 and 2004. Most did not exercise very much. They found just over 51% of those who were overweight, and 31.7% of those who were obese, had healthy levels of cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure and other measures linked to heart disease. These measures have been shown in many other studies to predict heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and other heart disease, although this particular study did not look at whether people suffered any of these problems. More than 23% of those who were at a healthy weight had two or more unhealthy readings, the researchers found.