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Theatre takes over Chennai's night life

Night life in Chennai need not be the same anymore with the new entertainment option being theatre. It`s a new trend that slowly catching on in the city.Now, night shows in the city are not restricted to movies. "Most of the time, plays are in the evenings or afternoons and many can`t make it. I like this concept," said Usha, a theatre enthusiast.For the actors, staging four shows a day, all in quick succession, can be quite draining. But no one`s complaining."It was hectic but fun. An experience doing four shows a day," said Shruti Gupta, actor.


PM on visit to China, Japan

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is on a two-nation tour

of Japan and China where the current financial crisis is expected to form a major part of his agenda. Dr Manmohan Singh is in Tokyo for two days on a bilateral visit following which he will travel to China for the 45-nation Asia-Europe Meeting Summit which is expected to assess the impact of the global meltdown that started with the United States.On Monday the Prime Minister had finally spoken out telling investors that they had nothing to fear but he did caution that growth would slow down.

Is poverty in India coming down?
Is India becoming poorer or richer? How many people live below the poverty line? These are basic indicators, which could tell us what India's recent economic reforms have meant for its people. Officially, between 1993 and 2004, in the liberalisation decades, poverty declined from 36 per cent to 27.5 per cent which means around 300 million Indians are poor.But that's if one strictly goes by the poverty estimates. The question is, should we? ''By any standard, poverty line grossly underestimated,'' said Abhijit Sen, economist, Planning Commission.Indian poverty estimates are based on data collected through a door-to-door survey known as the National Sample Survey or NSS. NSS maps income or consumption, which is then used to determine poverty. So if a person earns less than Rs 540 a month in the city, he is poor. So is a person living in the village if he earns less than Rs 356 a month. Rs 540 in the city or Rs 356 in the village - that's the cash needed to buy 2,400 calories, the minimum a man needs to survive. This calorie intake norm was fixed in the seventies.

Being a Gandhi helped me in politics: Rahul




Acknowledging that he was in politics because of his lineage to the Gandhi-Nehru family, Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi on Monday said he wanted to change the system of politician's family members getting easy entrance into politics."I would not have been here, if I was not from a political family. If you do not have money, a family or friends, you cannot enter politics," Rahul told a group of girls here.The Amethi MP said it was "easy" for him to get an entry in politics as his "father was in politics, grandmother was in politics and great grandfather too was in politics."But I want to change this," he said during the nearly hour-long interaction on the first day of his three-day visit to Uttarakhand.He said he wanted to change this situation by introducing elections for posts in NSUI and the Indian Youth Congress of which he is the AICC General Secretary in-charge.
MNS chief Raj Thackeray arrested

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray was arrested in Ratnagiri in the wee hours on Tuesday for Sunday's brutal attack on north Indian rail exam candidates by MNS workers.A case was registered in this connection against Raj Thackeray and his supporters at a north-west suburban police station of Kharwadi, after MNS workers attacked 13 railway board examination centres in suburban Mumbai to protest against "inadequate representation" to locals. Thackeray, who was currently on tour in western Maharashtra and Konkan region was arrested from Ratnagiri district and is likely to be produced in Bandra court in Mumbai later on Tuesday.The arrest of the MNS chief comes against the backdrop of mounting pressure on the Maharashtra Government to rein in Thackeray and his activists.Earlier, a combative Raj had justified the Sunday's attack on north Indians and warned the state that it will have to "regret" the consequences in the event of his arrest.
World »
Chocolate is the most favourite of Brits
Guess what's the most favourite taste of Britons? Well, it's the mouth-watering chocolate, a survey has revealed.In fact, chocolate has beaten the bacon butty to scale the top spot as freshly baked bread came third, ahead of roast lamb and fresh strawberries, leading British tabloid The Sun reported on Monday.The sixth place in the poll of 3,000 Britons went to freshly brewed coffee, followed by cheese, mint, fish, and chips. And, champagne completed the top ten.Jane Ritchie-Smith of EBLEX, which carried out the survey, said it showed Brits were becoming lovers
Of fine food.
21 dead in Mexico prison uprising
At least 21 prisoners were killed after a fire broke out during a pre-dawn prison uprising, judicial officials have said.Unconfirmed media reports said the victims were burned to death in the riot in the Reynosa prison in Tamaulipas state in the northeast, which holds about 2,000 inmates.An official with the state's Chief Prosecutor's Office said the uprising had been brought under control and that 21 bodies were found when authorities checked the premises
UK defence ministry releases UFO files
Britain's defence ministry made public secret files on UFO sightings on Monday, with the dossier including reports ranging from a woman claiming to be an alien to calm pilots giving objective accounts.The 19 different incidents were recorded between 1986 and 1992, and published by the National Archives on its website.Among the recorded incidents was a letter dated March 1990 from a woman who claimed she was an alien whose spaceship landed during World War II and was recovered by the British military."The crashed vehicle contained two males from Spectra, a planet orbiting the star Zeta Tucanae, and a female from one of the two inhabited planets in the Sirius system, Amazon the planet of warrior women," she wrote in the letter, which also included sketches of herself and of Spectrans.