Mary Kom Undergoes Surgery

M.C. Mary Kom at the Shija Hospitals and Research Institute in Imphal on Tuesday.

Imphal, Sep 11 : Five-time world champion and Olympic boxing bronze medallist M.C. Mary Kom underwent a surgery to remove gallstones at Shija Hospitals and Research Institute here this morning.

Dr Sorokhaibam Jugindro, who led the medical team that conducted the keyhole surgery, told The Telegraph that Mary was fine and recovering “very effectively”.

He also said the surgery would not affect her boxing career. “In fact her performance will improve as an ailment is cured,” he said.

Doctors removed 26 small stones and the gallbladder during a 40-minute surgery.

Mary, a mother of three, who is taking time off from the rings after the birth of her third son four months ago, complained of severe pain in the upper abdomen yesterday and consulted a doctor.

Following the doctor’s advice, she got an ultrasound test done at Babina Diagnostic Centre, Imphal, yesterday morning before coming to Shija Hospitals.

“The ultrasound results showed several stones inside her gallbladder and we advised her immediate surgery to avoid complications. The surgery has been successfully conducted and it lasted for 40 minutes,” Dr Jugindro, who is also the president of the Association of Minimal Access Surgeons of India, Eastern Region, said.

He said the gallbladder wall had thickened because of infection.

Mary Kom is preparing to compete in the next Olympics and fight for gold. This is the third surgery for the boxer.

She had delivered her twin sons and also the third son through caesarean sections.

“The first thing Mary Kom said after regaining consciousness after the surgery is that she was fine and wanted to see her youngest son Prince Chungthanglen Kom. She then breastfed her son,” the managing director and chairman of the hospital, Kh. Palin, said.

Mary takes her son along wherever she goes to attend programmes.

Her husband, Onkholer Kom, said apart from breastfeeding, Mary never gives any food supplement to Prince Chungthanglen.

She chose Shija Hospitals as she thinks it is the best in Manipur, the doctors said, quoting Mary.

After the surgery she expressed gratitude to the doctors and medical staff of the hospital for taking care of her.

The doctors, however, declined to allow press interview of the boxer to allow her rest and spend time with her family in the hospital ward.

Dr Jugindro said Mary would be discharged tomorrow and could return to normal activities after seven days.

Tripura Tops List For Suicide Rates in Northeast

Meghalaya ranks third; awareness programmes & counselling to reduce deaths

By SEKHAR DATTA & ANDREW W. LYNGDOH

Agartala/Shillong, Sep 11 : Tripura ranks first in suicide cases while Meghalaya comes third among the states of the Northeast with smaller population.

The 2011 statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reveal that 1,35,585 people died of suicide in India, with Tripura topping the list with 703 reported cases, followed by Sikkim (184), Meghalaya (156), Arunachal Pradesh (134), Mizoram (90), Nagaland (33) and Manipur (33).

Tripura appears to have been a suicide-prone state in the past decade. The crime record bureau’s figure of 703 suicides in a year is in fact a shade lower than figures tabled in the state Assembly earlier.

The matter had been raised in the Assembly by former leader of the Opposition, Ratanlal Nath, who had attributed the “abnormally high number of suicides” to registration of unresolved murders or “political murders” in the category of suicide, by police.

Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar, while rubbishing Nath’s allegations, had called for introspection and awareness programmes by social organisations to prevent suicides. Speaking on the subject, Prof. (retd) Tapati Chakraborty, former chairperson of State Women’s Commission, said there has been no scientific survey on the reasons for high incidence of suicides in Tripura.

“We know that depression because of personal and familial reasons, frustration over failure to get what one deserves often leads to suicide but an element of psychological distortion is also there; it has never inquired into scientifically and reasons have never been established,” said Chakraborty.

P. Bhattacharjee, a councillor of Agartala Municipal Council and a social activist herself, admitted that she was also baffled by the high rate of suicides in Tripura.

“There are the usual reasons but these reasons exist in other states also. Why it is so high in Tripura I cannot say,” she said.

According to the Meghalaya police website, there were 128 cases of suicide, which were reported in 2012. Of these 128 cases, 90 were males and the rest female.

In Shillong, the counselling and psychology department of the Martin Luther Christian University (MLCU) today organised a daylong programme with schoolchildren and university students on its campus to commemorate World Suicide Prevention Day.

In India, across all strata, the leading cause of death among the youth is suicide, and every 40 seconds, there is a death due to suicide.

The International Association for Suicide Prevention and the World Health Organisation (WHO) are co-sponsoring World Suicide Prevention Day on the theme Stigma: A Major Barrier for Suicide Prevention.

University head of the counselling and psychology department Maribon V. Sangma said, “We are concerned about the trend and we would like to tackle this at the core, by investing more time with young people. We are doing our bit to provide a solution but would love to see community-based organisations taking ownership in responding to this social issue without stigmatising people.”

The university’s vice-chancellor, Robert G. Lyngdoh, in his opening remarks, said, “A few decades ago, suicide was taboo because the indigenous communities had a good support system then. But times have changed. The pressures are building up and suicide ideation is a reality today. As evolving communities, we need to take stock of the situation now.”

The university has also started a counselling help-desk where people in need can call +919856277929 or email counsellingpscyh.mlcu@gmail.com. Confidentiality will be strictly maintained, an official said. The purpose of observing World Suicide Prevention Day this year is to provide responsive communities with a special opportunity to address this problem.

Stigma is also the underlying motive for discrimination — inappropriate or unlawful restrictions on the freedoms of individuals with mental illnesses or suicidal behaviour. Such restrictions can occur at a personal, community or institutional level which makes them difficult to adjust in the mainstream community.

Sports Ministry Clears 6 Projects For Northeast

New Delhi, Sep 11 : The north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland and Assam were the biggest beneficiaries as the sports ministry on Tuesday cleared 13 projects under the Urban Sports Infrastructure Scheme.

Six infrastructure schemes were cleared for the four north-eastern states, and seven for Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

Among the north-eastern states, Nagaland will have two multi-purpose indoor halls and an astro turf football field.

The halls will come up in Dimapur and at the Open University in Sodzulhou village near Dimapur. The astro turf will be laid at the Jalukier town in Perun district.

A synthetic turf for football will also be laid at the Sangay Lhaden Sports Academy (SLSA) complex in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh.

Multi-purpose indoor halls will be constructed in the premises of District Sports Association in Silchar, Assam, and in Thoubal District in Manipur.

Andhra Pradesh has been granted a multi-purpose indoor hall and an astro turf for hockey. The indoor hall will come up at the Agricultural College in the Guntur district while the astro turf hockey field will be laid at the YSR Sports School, Putlampalli, in Kadapa district.

Two multi-purpose halls will also come up in Kerala at Pathananmthitta and at Pilakkal in Malappuram district.

Rajasthan will get a multi-purpose indoor hall in the sports complex at the Mohan Lal Sukhadia University in Udaipur.

Two synthetic athletic tracks will be laid at the Bhim Stadium, Bhiwani, Haryana, and at the War Heroes Stadium, Sangrur, Punjab.

Apple Unveils 64-bit iPhone 5S With Fingerprint Scanner

A new M7 co-processor and camera improvements round out the new features.

By Andrew Cunningham

As expected, Apple has taken the wraps off of its latest flagship smartphone at its Cupertino media event today. The new iPhone 5S is an upgrade in the vein of the previous iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4S—it is outwardly similar to last year's iPhone 5, but it includes a few key upgrades to keep the design going for another year.

The 5S still has a four-inch 1136×640 display and a Lightning connector, and it retains the iPhone 5's taller and slimmer profile relative to older models like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. However, it includes a new 64-bit "desktop-class" system-on-a-chip (SoC) dubbed the A7 that boosts CPU and GPU performance over the A6 in the iPhone 5.

The chip has twice the general-purpose and floating point registers of its predecessor and is up to twice as fast at performing CPU tasks. The phone supports OpenGL ES 3.0, and Apple claims that the graphics performance in the 5S is 56 times better than in the original iPhone released six years ago.

The iPhone 5S will include a "motion co-processor" called the M7 that allows the phone to process data from sensors without waking up the phone itself. Apple intends for the chip to be used for "health and fitness solutions"—effectively a replacement for fitness-tracking devices—with data processed by the core motion API.

Apple is also upgrading the phone's camera with a new five-element lens at an f2.2 aperture and a 15 percent larger sensor. The company is opting for "bigger pixels rather than more," with 1.5-micron pixels.

The new "true-tone" flash uses dual LEDs (one warmer and one cooler) to account for the lighting in the room and to light the shot optimally according to the camera app's monitoring. Apple says that this will result in "more neutral skin tones and better colors." The iPhone 5S will also be able to take multiple photos with a single shutter trigger and then choose the best one automatically rather than saving the whole handful to memory.

Auto image stabilization and burst mode are new features in the camera, as is 120 FPS video captured at 720p resolution. The phone can also still capture 1080p video at 30 FPS.

A "Touch ID sensor" for reading fingerprints is embedded in the home button and can be used to unlock your phone in addition to the traditional software passcodes. A fingerprint is read at 500 PPI resolution and can scan sub-epidermal skin layers.

The sensor is encircled by stainless steel and has a layer of sapphire crystal to protect it. Apple notes that iOS 7 will "teach" the phone about each user's fingerprint so that the fingerprint-read will be frictionless regardless of the angle the user's finger comes at it; in theory, all it will require is a simple touch. The button will also still be clickable, as it has been on every previous iPhone.

Apple made special note of the fact that fingerprint data will be encrypted and stored only locally on the A7's processor, not uploaded to any cloud storage. "It never goes up to iCloud, never touches Apple's servers," said Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller.

The phone will still be available in black and white, but Apple is adding a gold (or "champagne") color option for those of you who want to project an even greater air of affluence and privilege when you're poking at your hand-sized computer.

Battery life estimates are "equal to or greater" than the iPhone 5, with 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 40 hours of music playback, and 10 hours of 3G talk time.

 

Apple also announced a new line of leather cases for the phone in 5 colors (yellow, tan, light blue, brown, and black) that will be priced at $39 each.

Per the historical iPhone price structure, the new iPhone 5S running iOS 7 will be priced at $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, or $399 for 64GB with a two-year contract. The new model will go on sale September 20 in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the UK, and it will be in 100 countries total by December 2013. The phone was announced alongside the lower-end iPhone 5C, which will round out the lower price tiers for iPhone's line in lieu of deprecating the previous-gen phone.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar Mentors Northeast Youth To Become Entrepreneurs

The lush, verdant hills of North-East India conceal not only immense natural beauty but also untapped potential in terms of entrepreneurial skills among its youth. Historically and geographically separated from the rest of India, the north-east has seen its fair share of insurgency,unemployment and economic underdevelopment. Nonetheless, the region shows potential in terms of its resources, especially human resources.

With progress in the level of education among the youth as well as with exposure and awareness of economic and market environments, it is time for the young generation of north east to resist the urge to move to the mainland, look beyond government jobs and adopt a radical mindset shift in their choice of vocations. Youngsters from the north east are keen to break the mould of their traditional society and exercise their creativity, innovation and enterprising skills to bring prosperity to their land.

Giving wings to their dreams is the Impact 5000 by 18 Campaign launched by Youthnet in partnership with the Government of Nagaland. The objective of the campaign is to impact a target of 5000 young Nagas with entrepreneurial and employability skills by 2018. Mentored by Dr. Krishna Tanuku, Executive Director, Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED), Indian School of Business, the campaign aims to foster a healthy private sector and thereby facilitate socio-economic prosperity of the youth and the state.

The first program of the Impact 5000 by 18 campaign is the ongoing initiative titled 'The Entrepreneur', designed to enhance business skills of 20 top emerging young entrepreneurs in Nagaland who have the ambition and potential to generate substantial growth in their businesses.To help convert their ideas into action, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Member of Parliament, Visionary Entreprenuer and Chairman of Jupiter Capital, a venture capital firm will be the Chief Mentor of The Entrepreneur program. As the founder of BPL Mobile and one of the first investors in the early 90's to develop India's first and largest green field telecom infrastructure, Rajeev Chandrasekhar is the dream mentor one can have.

The program will be held from August 30 to October 3 and will consist of several modules each concentrating on different aspects of business growth. The modules will be designed especially taking into account the local business environment and the businesses of the 20 participants. The emphasis throughout is on learning that is practically applicable in participants' businesses. Besides this each of the 20 participants will develop their 'business growth plan' and the winner of the 'business growth plan competition' will get 5 lakhs.

Other faculty members of the program include Dr. Rahul Mirchandani (Executive Director of Aries Agro Limited), Neichute Doulo (CEO of Entrepreneurs Associates, a microfinance firm based in Nagaland) and business professionals Rohan Abraham and Hemant Nitturkar.

By fostering entrepreneurial culture and creating an eco-system of business savvy youth through initiatives like 'The Entrepreneur', the North East can soon become the new hub for budding entrepreneurs in India.

To know more about Rajeev Chandrasekhar and 'The Entrepreneur' program visit http://impact5000by18.com

Mizoram League Of Extraordinary Women

By Ninglun Hanghal

Mizo women fight for their rights.

In a collective fight against outdated patriarchal laws, Mizo women fight for legal reforms

In a historic victory for the women’s movement in Mizoram, the State Law Commission is now in the final process of reviewing The Mizo Marriage Bill, 2013, The Mizo Inheritance Bill, 2013, and The Mizo Divorce Bill, 2013, which will be introduced in the State Assembly after public consultations across the State. This is the result of a struggle that has gone on for over a decade, a key party to which is the Mizo Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm Pawl (MHIP), an apex body representing several local women’s groups.

After years of advocacy and repeated attempts at sending memorandums and draft bills to the Assembly and other executive bodies, the MHIP finally managed to push the system into considering judicial and legislative changes in the marriage, divorce, inheritance and succession laws in order to safeguard the interests of ordinary women.

Pi Sangkhumi, 60, former president of MHIP, is a happy woman. It’s been her dream to ensure reforms related to marriage and inheritance as she has seen generations of Mizo women suffer because of the legal biases in the system.

“A Mizo woman has never had any rights over property whether moveable, immoveable or even gifts, known as ‘bungrua’ in the local language, that are given to her at the time of marriage. Her husband can divorce her at any time and throw her out of the house without providing any financial support,” she explains.

Traditionally, Mizo women have made a mark outside their homes as entrepreneurs, teachers and officers in the State administration. However, just as the State’s history has been strife-torn, so has the life of its women, who have borne the worst consequences of the instability and violence that had marked the region.

The years when the Mizo National Front (MNF), an underground movement, was actively agitating against the government were particularly difficult. Earlier known as the Mizo National Famine Front, formed to help ease the immense suffering of the local people during the severe Mautam Famine of 1959, the organisation renamed itself the MNF in 1961. The State’s inaction during famine led to a wave of secessionist uprisings during the 1960s.

Sangkhumi’s father, one of the key leaders of the MNF, was killed during the peak of the movement. A year later, in 1965, she went for higher studies to Shillong on a scholarship. All the while that Pi Sangkhumi was coping with her personal struggles she was acutely aware of the difficulties being faced by other women.

An incident involving the brutal gang rape of two young women by army jawans in 1966 is a case in point. On a fateful November night, the MNF attacked a convoy of Army personnel advancing towards the Champhai village in east Mizoram. In retaliation the Army herded the villagers together and set fire to their homes. The two women, the daughters of prominent community leaders, were held separately in a small hut where soldiers allegedly took turns in raping them. After 47 years, a compensation of Rs five lakh each has recently been announced. It was such crimes that prompted various women’s groups to come together and fight for their collective rights. The MHIP was created in 1974 when Mizoram was still a Union Territory and it literally means binding women together. One of their main challenges has been to convince people to change traditional systems and customs that suppress women.

Pi Sangkhumi is of the opinion that while “Mizo women are definitely a part of the work force now, they are still not the decision-makers.”

The practice of quoting a “bride price” irks Pi Sangkhumi no end. According to her, the “bride price” custom started around half a century ago and was meant to be “a phuahchop”, or a practice introduced temporarily. But over the years, it has become a ‘tradition’ that is faithfully being followed. “A regressive practice should be prohibited by the legal system,” she argues.

Bandh Affects Normal Life in Mizoram

Aizawl, Sep 10 : A bandh called by the opposition Mizo National Front to demand resignation of state health minister Lalrinliana Sailo for his alleged involvement in drug smuggling disrupted normal life in the state on Tuesday.

Government offices, educational institutions, shops and business establishments remained closed in Aizawl and other seven district headquarters due to the 12-hour bandh beginning 5 AM.

Aizawl district SP L.R.Dingliana Sailo said no untoward incident has been reported.

Aizawl city wore a deserted look with no vehicles, except those carrying the sick to hospitals, and people ventured on the streets.

The MNF called the bandh to pressurise Sailo to resign for his alleged involvement in drug smuggling through the drug licence of his under-aged son.

The opposition party also said that the bandh was in protest against price rise of essential commodities, bad conditions of roads across the state and financial crisis due to alleged financial management by the Congress government.

Inner Line Permit A Legacy of British Rule: Meghalaya CM

By Naresh Mitra

Guwahati, Sep 10 : Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma on Monday categorically said that the concept of inner line permit (ILP), which various organizations, including student bodies, are demanding in Meghalaya, has become "outdated" and has no relevance in the present-day context.

"It (ILP) is no longer an effective mechanism to check influx of illegal migrants. It is a concept that was initiated during the British rule and has outlived its efficacy. So, implementation of the ILP is not going to help anything," Sangma said on the sidelines of the North East CleanTech Summit here.

Sangma's Monday remark has sent a clear message to pressure groups that the Meghalaya government is determined not to budge from its stand against the ILP demand. Rather, the chief minister made it clear that his government is in favour of exploring other "effective" mechanisms for preventing illegal migrants settling in the state.

Though pressure groups in Meghalaya have been raising the ante for the implementation of the ILP system to check illegal migrants, the state government has been persistently maintaining its stand that it did not favour the mechanism.

As a tribal state where non-tribals cannot purchase land, Sangma reiterated that the government is working on a mechanism to integrate existing laws and customary authorities in the state to further check influx.

"We are also in favour of making the tenancy legislation stronger and making it functional in close coordination with the customary authorities in the state. Also, there is the National Population Register, which will help in determining and checking influx," Sangma said.

The ILP system, at present, is enforced in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. Along with Meghalaya, various organizations in Manipur too are demanding implementation of the ILP. Though Manipur is not a tribal state, activists demanding the ILP system argued that there are non-locals settling in the state and getting voter identity cards.

With northeastern states vying for investments from across the country and abroad, many corporate leaders are not so enthusiastic about the ILP system.

On Monday, Sangma inaugurated the summit, organized by the Indian Chamber of Commerce in association with Canada's department for foreign affairs, trade and development.

"My government is very eager to engage in tapping the renewal energy potential of the state. We are looking for partners in synergizing tapping of power with a green concept. We will ensure that this is done in a hassle-free manner," Sangma said.

Experts from Canada, corporate leaders, technology providers, scientists, senior government officials from the Centre and the northeast and stakeholders deliberated on ensuring energy security in the region through sustainable and eco-friendly technologies.