Online Dating With a Difference

No stimulation who you are, finding the perfect mate can be a request. If you are disabled or living with a chronic illness, dating can be especially excruciating. Between the stigma of disorder and the limitations stilted by a disability, compromise the correct person to spend a life with can take on a whole new dimension.


When do you particularize the partner you are dating that you have chronic illness? How can you carry on a horsepower rapport past the stigma of disability?

As written moment today’s Science Times, new dating Web sites dedicated to those living with incomparable conditions are helping to free-for-all people to others dealing with corresponding situations. They cover a wide range of conditions, including H.I.V., paralysis, herpes besides Parkinson’s disease. One site, called Dating 4 Disabled, has almost 12,000 members and has reported several marriages and profuse more long-term relationships.

Election 2010, A dozen things to watch for in final TV debate

Two down, one to go. Thursday's third and final election debate is important.
It is the closest to polling day and will be watched by many people who have yet to decide how to vote.
What the three party leaders say and how they perform will influence the decision that these voters make. In other words, this debate could make all the difference. At the same time, the nation will be transfixed as Gordon Brown eats humble pie - again - for being rude about a woman, Gillian Duffy, who has fast become the media's favourite granny. It will be excruciating.
Here are a few general thoughts:
1. Duffygate - or bigotgate - will hang over the debate but will not dominate it.
Gordon Brown will have to deal with the encounter but Messrs Cameron and Clegg will be quite happy to let him squirm without being seen to add to his distress. They know how easily the taunting of Mr Brown over bullying allegations and ill-scripted condolence letters engendered public sympathy rather than opprobrium.
2. The novelty factor will be less salient this time.
The first debate was historic and its outcome utterly unpredicted. The second, though, was less surprising. So there might be less focus on the body language, the format, the clothes, and perhaps a little more on what the leaders actually say.
3. The debate is important because the subject is the economy, arguably the most significant policy issue of the election.
Many voters will want the leaders to cut to the chase. All three will be asked what must now be known as the Institute for Fiscal Studies question: namely, what are you going to cut and when? They will not answer to the satisfaction of some. There will be an inconclusive debate about the dangers of a Greek-style financial meltdown taking place in Britain.
4. This is Gordon Brown's last chance to get Labour's campaign back on track.
The economy is his strongest card. This is his moment to seek redemption. He will argue that public spending must be maintained this year to protect the recovery and that government must intervene to support new industries. He has to hope that voters think his plans for the economy are more important than the sincerity of his penitence.
5. Voters who have been impressed by Nick Clegg will watch and consider whether they should now vote for him as well.
The Lib Dem leader needs to maintain momentum into the last week of campaigning. Many voters told the opinion pollsters after the first two debates that they liked the cut of his jib. Mr Clegg's task now is to persuade those people that they should stick with him and give them their vote - without appearing as if he was taking them for granted. He has admitted already that voters will be more "demanding" this time around.
6. Nick Clegg will have to clear up what he would do in a hung parliament.
He said initially that he would not support Labour if it won most seats but had fewer votes than the Lib Dems or Tories. He then suggested that he might support Labour in those circumstances - but only if the party ditched Gordon Brown. He then pulled back a bit and said he would work with the man on the moon if he delivered greater fairness. David Cameron will push him hard on this, claiming that if you vote Clegg, you could get Brown. The Tory leader will also try to warn voters that a hung parliament might not be the utopia of congenial co-operation that many seem to think it will be.
7. This is David Cameron's last chance to try to explain what he means by a "big society".
It is a radical programme that would in theory transform huge swathes of public life but many voters are still struggling to understand what the phrase means. His challenge is to boil it all down into something that makes an impact and excites the public as much as the policy wonks. This is a tough ask in the context of a debate.
8. Immigration has come up in the previous two debates and Gillian Duffy has ensured that it will come up again.
This will not help Gordon Brown. He will have to persuade voters that it is not bigoted to be concerned about immigration, despite what he said about Mrs Duffy. Nor will it help Nick Clegg. He has appeared vulnerable at times when explaining his policy of granting an amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who have been in the country for more than ten years and speak good English.
9. Gordon Brown will have spent less time preparing than he would have liked.
An unexpected trip to Rochdale will have eaten into some of his prep-time. Maybe there will be fewer rehearsed lines. This could help rather than hinder.
10. David Cameron and Nick Clegg will be tempted to try some unfunny gags about Peppa Pig.
These will be incomprehensible to millions of voters who do not have young children or who did not catch Labour's clumsy attempt earlier this week to inveigle the children's television character into their campaign.
11. How many people will watch?
Nine million people tuned in for the first debate, some four million for the second. This time around, there is a clash with Coronation Street on the other side. Who watches what will perhaps tell us a little about the state of British politics.
12.A member of the audience may be tempted to break their silence.
This is the third debate. It is the last before polling. People are getting used to the format. The ban on audience response is clearly frustrating. The temptation to clap or disagree noisily must be huge. Will anyone have the guts to break the rules?

A world without planes

The philosopher, writer and recent writer-in-residence at Heathrow airport imagines a world without aircraft.

In a future world without aeroplanes, children would gather at the feet of old men, and hear extraordinary tales of a mythic time when vast and complicated machines the size of several houses used to take to the skies and fly high over the Himalayas and the Tasman Sea.


The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship - and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens.


The elders would add that the skies, now undisturbed except by the meandering progress of bees and sparrows, had once thundered to the sound of airborne leviathans, that entire swathes of Britain's cities had been disturbed by their progress.

And that in an ancient London suburb once known as Fulham, it had been rare for the sensitive to be able to sleep much past six in the morning, due the unremitting progress of inbound aluminium tubes from Canada and the eastern seaboard of the United States.


At Heathrow, now turned into a museum, one would be able to walk unhurriedly across the two main runways and even give in to the temptation to sit cross-legged on their centrelines, a gesture with some of the same sublime thrill as touching a disconnected high-voltage electricity cable, running one's fingers along the teeth of an anaesthetised shark or having a wash in a fallen dictator's marble bathroom.


Everything would, of course, go very slowly. It would take two days to reach Rome, a month before one finally sailed exultantly into Sydney harbour. And yet there would be benefits tied up in this languor.
Those who had known the age of planes would recall the confusion they had felt upon arriving in Mumbai or Rio, Auckland or Montego Bay, only hours after leaving home, their slight sickness and bewilderment lending credence to the old Arabic saying that the soul invariably travels at the speed of a camel.

This new widespread 'camel pace' would return travelers to a wisdom that their medieval pilgrim ancestors had once known very well. These medieval pilgrims had gone out of their way to make travel as slow as possible, avoiding even the use of boats and horses in favor of their own feet.

They were not being perverse, only aware that if one of our key motives for traveling is to try to put the past behind us, then we often need something very large and time-consuming, like the experience of a month long journey across an ocean or a hike over a mountain range, to establish a sufficient sense of distance.

Whatever the advantages of plentiful and convenient air travel, we may curse it for being too easy, too unnoticeable - and thereby for subverting our sincere attempts at changing ourselves through our journeys.
How we would admire planes if they were no longer there to frighten and bore us. We would stroke their steel dolphin-like bodies in museums and honor them as symbols of a daunting technical intelligence and a prodigious wealth.

We would admire them like small boys do, and adults no longer dare, for fear of seeming uncynical and unvigilant towards their crimes against our world.


Despite all the chaos and inconvenience of our disrupted flight schedules, we should feel grateful to the unruly Icelandic volcano - for allowing us briefly to imagine what a flight-less future would envy and pity us for.

Can a Mouse Cut the Cable?

Slick are certain timeless truths about people who don’t concede a television, chief among them that they love to tell you they don’t avow a television.

These days, they are quiescent exterior there, but they have rivals in the realm of zealotry: people who do watch television — sometimes hugely of it — but don’t acquiesce a cable box.

Those who belong to this scare up are only too happy to remind you that they can take over most of what you watch, but don’t pay $60 a month or more for the privilege. They will explain gleefully how they (legally, for the most lesson) circumvent the cable companies. And they are becoming supplementary voluble, as cable bills rise and technology improves.

“I detail everybody at my workplace about it all the time,” said Sundance McClure, a Web developer from Lakeside, Calif., who canceled his cable comfort nine months ago when the cost inched toward $100 a month.

Whenever colleagues talk about what they steer on TV, he said, “I always make vivid them, ‘Yeah, well, you know, we don’t have to ducats for any of that.’ ”

Whether this makes Mr. McClure melodious at the office does not seem to show the point. He gains innervation from watching hours of television a date lock up the assistance of PlayOn, a $40 software download that aggregates Internet delectation and streams it to his Xbox 360, a agility console genial to his TV.

It’s impossible to quantify how many kin have ditched their cable service, and the data providers are eager to paint them as a minority fringe. But veil devices like Xbox and Apple TV and software adore Boxee making it easy to dtreak Internet content to a television, mention the deed in just about any gathering, and someone is looked toward to dispatch up about his or her landing of watching cable free. And, yes, by and large they follow through be thankful forging other people jealous.

“The two questions I get asked infinitely often are, one, ‘Do you really save that kind of money?’ and two, ‘Can you really see everything that you want?’ ” said Gerald Ortega, who has been proudly documenting his divorce from headlines seeing July 2008 on his blog, Replace Television. “And the answer to both of those is yes.”

And no. Though you shouldn’t expect a cable-cord skewer to volunteer this information, a monthly account is not the select thing you must do gone. through they command hefty advertising rates, few sporting events are streamed play hardball. chief channels like HBO besides Showtime again keep their original programming behind a moolah wall, since they rely inimitably on subscriber haul. in consequence a rabid football or “True Blood” kernel who decides to cubbyhole cable had better have some very loose neighbors (preferably, ones with a greatest package).

There are various also baffling reasons that some shows are available online and some are not (it has everything to do with contracts and money also naught to do with technology). A show’s Web site will usually indicate whether episodes are available online or on DVD.

Charles Redell, a comic book reporter in Seattle, learned this the hard way when he invited friends seeing last year due to an account book swap on what turned extrinsic to be superlative Bowl Sunday. Suddenly he wasn’t bragging about how he uses DVDs and Hulu.com to request “Dexter” besides “The Office” on his laptop.

“A couple of our friends are really concern football, besides we had no idea substantial was on,” he oral. Fortunately, before any friendships were severed, an Internet search rancid growing a live, illegal feed of the game from China on Justin.TV, a cd streaming site.

Non subscribers may besides find themselves playing catch-up when news run. Although there are powerful of places to gem the latest news online, it’s hard to bonanza the sort of narrated knowledge program that people expect when they complex on the television. “The election stay November was a bit of a nail biter,” said Mr. Ortega, the blogger, “and Michael Jackson’s euthanasia amiable of came peripheral of nowhere.”

But it’s truly this off-the-grid lifestyle that some people find so alluring. Lauren Reinhold, a stay-at-home mother in Lawrence, Kan., canceled her cable assist largely to reduce the amount of advertising her children aphorism. She started a Facebook reunite for cord cutters to share tips and cheer up one shot another on.

“We’re kind of pioneers,” missy verbal. “The easy thing to do is to have cable, accordingly you’ve got to gain things a untroubled some bit differently further be a little bit tech-savvy.”

Social media can actually pose a hard-won for people without cable: now they must wait for shows to buy for available on the framework or DVD, they sometimes requisite duck sites like Twitter and Facebook, which are minefields of episode spoilers.

“For certain things, groove on the ‘Mad Men’ finale, I just had to keep at offline completely till I was able to train it,” said Laura Bargainer, a 24-year-old publicist on the Upper East aspect who has distracted gone astray cable for January 2008. Still, she never misses an case of “Gossip Girl” and has lately gotten into MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” both of which she watches on her computer anytime meeting the shows first surface on television.

Cable executives say they are not worried. location up a cable-free rush is still too daunting for highly people, since powerfully of the work-around involve a platoon more than rightful grabbing the remote (assuming you albatross find bonafide under the sofa cushions).

“We don’t consider it a ultimatum to our business,” said Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable. “Being able to watch TV on the Internet is not new.”

Without question, the remuneration of watching television is going up: The average household cable bill in the United States buzz $64 a while in 2009, up from $47.50 in 2004, according to Leichtman Research Group, which specializes in media research.

Even so, immeasurably cord cutters are “really appropriate a unusual get of people, often in New York or San Francisco, who don’t watch a bundle of television moment the first place,” said Bruce Leichtman, the president of the massed Hampshire-based group.

The numbers traject him enlargement. The multichannel cd industry, which includes front-page news and satellite providers, added 1.7 million new subscribers in the outlive three quarters of 2009 — not exactly boom times for discretionary lucre among Americans.

Some cord cutters hold of themselves through taking power soon from discovery companies, most the gate people absent land commodities have upended the telecommunications training. But Alan Wurtzel, the president of research at NBC Universal, rejects the analogy.

“You encumbrance do everything you rapture to with a cellphone,” he said. “But the experience is you can’t duplicate a conventional television proceeding online.”

Mr. Ortega concedes that the life is not for everyone. “As an American, you establish very accustomed to sitting on the sofa further grabbing the elongated and apropos pleasurable through channels,” he vocal. “And you can’t without reservation do that when you’re Net-based.”

For some people, life without cable proves too difficult. Baratunde Thurston, a wag and editor at The Onion, got rid of his telecast service in 2008 to save money but resubscribed neighboring he being hosting “Popular Science’s booked Of” on the Science fetch — a arise that is not available online.

“I literally got cable again to head myself on television,” he said, adding, “I semblance like I’ve let the movement down.”

A nuclear Iran would endanger world stability

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday that Iran's nuclear program poses a danger that extends beyond Israel.

"Iran is not just a challenge for Israel. I believe it is a challenge for the whole world," Barak said in a speech in Washington. "I can hardly think of a stable world order with a nuclear Iran."

Barak said he doubts that Iran is "crazy" enough -- he used the Yiddish word "meshugah" -- to launch a nuclear attack against Israel, but warned the existence of a nuclear-armed Iran could endanger the region, disrupt oil supplies and empower Iran's terrorist allies.

"I don't think the Iranians, even if they got the bomb, are going to drop it in the neighborhood," Barak said. "They fully understand what might follow -- they are radical but not total 'meshugah.' They have a quite sophisticated decision-making process and they understand realities."

Iran maintains it is interested in nuclear development only for power-generation and other civilian uses. But Barak said all countries must reject what he called "the verbal gymnastics" Iran uses to justify its nuclear research.

"It means they are not just trying to create a Manhattan-project-like crude nuclear device," he said. "They are trying to jump directly into the second or second-and-a-half generation of nuclear warheads that could be installed on top of ground-to-ground missiles with ranges that will cover not just Israel, but Moscow or Paris."

He said Israel supports diplomatic efforts to pressure Iran to change course.

After his speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Barak met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the State Department. The United States is working to rally international support for more stringent economic sanctions against Iran.

"Iran is not living up to its responsibilities and we are working with our partners in the international community to increase pressure on Iran to change course," Clinton said in a photo-taking session with Barak.

On efforts to revive stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Barak said most Israelis are prepared to do what is needed.

"There is a strong, silent majority in Israel which is ready to make tough, painful decisions to reach peace once they feel there is readiness on the other side and we are not having this tango alone," Barak said in his speech.

He insisted that Israel will seek peace and protect its security.

"We have to stand firm on our two feet, open-eyed, without a drop of self-delusion about the realities of our neighborhood, but having one hand, preferably the left hand, looking for any window, turning every stone in order to find opportunities for peace, while the other hand, the right one, will be pointing a finger, very close to the trigger, ready to pull it when it is ultimately a necessity," Barak said.

A brief history of great love letters

For as long as people could write, it seems, the more romantic and less self-conscious have been penning love letters. But in the era of texting ("luv u") and tweeting and emailing, the visceral pleasure of a handwritten love letter is largely lost.

What grammar school kid even gets an "I like you, do you like me? Check yes or no" note anymore? And sure, an email can explain the depths to which you love your "own dear boy," your "Best Beloved," or your "Dearest Creature," but it just doesn't look the same on the brightly glowing screen as it does scrawled on a scrap of notebook paper.

This Valentine's Day, take a bit of inspiration from these few famous love letters and pen your sweetie a love missive. You can even add an ironic "check yes or no" if you're feeling self-conscious about it.

Love letters spell trouble

Tales of thwarted love capture the human imagination like nothing else. So it's not surprising that the early 12th century story of Pierre Abelard and Héloïse has endured for generations.

Abelard was in his early 30s and one of the most promising philosophers and teachers in medieval Paris; young Héloïse was the clever and academic live-in niece of a respected churchman, Canon Fulbert. Claiming the upkeep of a home and the commute to Paris was too onerous, Abelard appealed to Fulbert: In exchange for room and board, he'd tutor bright Héloïse.

Some claim that Abelard knew exactly what he was doing by securing a room with the Canon, but whether it was fate or the crafty work of a besotted suitor, it worked. They soon fell in love and, after a brief period of intense "study" sessions, Héloïse became pregnant. They married in secret and for a short time, it looked like things were going to turn out OK for the illicit pair. But that wouldn't make it a tragedy: With wounded pride and a vengeful heart, Canon Fulbert hired some men to find Abelard and castrate him.

With Abelard a eunuch and her child entrusted to the care of her family, Héloïse was given little choice but to take the vows; she later became prioress of her abbey, while Abelard's career as a philosopher thrived.

Abelard seems to have turned away from sensual love after the incident, but Héloïse continued to pour her romantic love for him into letters: "But if I lose you, what is left to hope for? What reason for continuing on the pilgrimage of life, for which I have no support but you and none in you except the knowledge that you are alive, now that I am forbidden all other pleasures in you and denied even the joy of your presence which from time to time could restore me to myself?"

In the more than 800 years since their deaths, the lovers' story, now the stuff of paintings and poetry, has cemented their place in the pantheon of great lovers. Their letters also remain -- although there is some scholarly debate as to whether the two even wrote them. The real question is, as the couple has already passed into legend, does it matter?

Most mysterious love letters

Though he never married -- he was, according to one woman he professed his love for, "very ugly and half crazy" -- Ludwig Von Beethoven fell in love deeply and often, usually with women who were unattainable (either by reasons of social obligations or because they were already married). While Beethoven wrote a number of love letters, three stand out -- the so-called "Immortal Beloved" letters.

The three letters, written over two July days in 1812, are all the more stunning because their recipient not only never read them, but has also remained nameless for all history. The letters, addressed only to someone he called "Immortal Beloved," were discovered in his papers after his death.

In the first, dated the morning of Monday, July 6, Beethoven writes: "Love demands everything and is quite right, so it is for me with you, for you with me..." In the second, dated that evening, he "weeps" at the thought that the post only goes on Monday and Thursdays early in the morning -- because he has already missed the first, his beloved won't receive word from him until Saturday.

The next day, he writes, "I can only live, either altogether with you or not all.... Your love made me the happiest and the unhappiest at the same time." He ends the last letter:

"Oh, go on loving me -- never doubt the faith fullest heart

Of your beloved

L

Ever thine.

Ever mine.

Ever ours."

Attempts to conclusively determine the identity of his "Immortal Beloved" have generally come to naught, although some say the most likely candidate is Antonie Bretano, a Viennese woman who, true to Beethoven's form, was already married to a Frankfurt merchant.

Others say she was Josephine von Brunsvik, an unhappily married Hungarian aristocrat who'd formed an attachment to Beethoven some years earlier. Still others claim it was the Countess Julia Guicciardi, to whom he'd dedicated his gorgeous "Moonlight Sonata."

But no one believes the version put forward by Hollywood director Bernard Rose, in his 1994 Beethoven biopic starring Gary Oldman: That the Immortal Beloved was actually Johanna Reiss, the wife of Beethoven's brother and a woman who, outside the make-believe world, Beethoven actually hated.

The evolution of love

When most people think of Charles Darwin, they don't usually think 'romance' --the author of "Origin of Species" is far more well known for his theory of human evolution than for his reputation as a lover.

It's true that Darwin wasn't exactly sentimental. In 1838, seven years after his momentous voyage to Tierra del Fuego on the Beagle -- a trip that planted the seeds of what would become his master work -- the scientist decided he'd like to get married.

Darwin came to this decision after drawing up a pro-con list. Under "marry," he wrote, "constant companion" and "better than a dog anyhow." Under "not marry," he wrote, "conversation with clever men at clubs."

Ultimately, the pros outweighed the cons and he became engaged to his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood.

His love letters aren't sappy, but they do reflect his honest love for Emma and the genuine excitement he felt at his impending nuptials: "How I do hope you shall be happy as I know I shall be," he wrote, just days before their wedding. "My own dearest Emma, I earnestly pray, you may never regret the great and I will add very good, deed you are to perform on the Tuesday: my own dear future wife, God bless you..."

The couple had 10 children together and for the most part, their marriage was quite happy; even so, Emma, a devout Christian, worried desperately about what effect Darwin's scientific theories would have on his immortal soul and the souls of people who agreed with him.

Presidential love letters

Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, a noted scholar, and the man who led America through the First World War. He was also a prolific love letter writer.

During and before his first marriage to Ellen Louise Axeson, Wilson wrote hundreds of exceptionally beautiful and passionate love letters. After Ellen died in Wilson's second year in the White House, the president was devastated; but one day, riding about town, as the story goes, he caught sight of a beautiful woman and engineered a way to meet her. Wilson met Edith Bolling Galt, a Washington widow, and fell in love hard and fast -- one Secret Serviceman said he was like a "schoolboy in his first love experience."

While wooing Edith, Wilson penned a series of love letters, some signed "Tiger" (Wilson was a Princeton alum, but this was before the university took on the tiger as its mascot.) In one, Wilson wrote, "You are more wonderful and lovely in my eyes than you ever were before; and my pride and joy and gratitude that you should love me with such a perfect love are beyond all expression, except in some great poem which I cannot write."

In another, he pines, "Please go to ride with us this evening, precious little girl, so that I can whisper something in your ear -- something of my happiness and love, and accept this, in the meantime, as a piece out of my very heart, which is all yours but cannot be sent as I wish to send it by letter."

Wilson certainly isn't the only American president to turn a bit mushy with a pen -- or feather quill -- in hand. In President Harry Truman's letters to Bess Wallace before they were married, he writes, "I suppose that I am too crazy about you anyway. Every time I see you I get more so if it is possible. I know I haven't any right to but there are certain things that can't be helped and that is one of them. I wouldn't help it if I could you know."

President Ronald Reagan wrote to Nancy Reagan after 31 years of marriage, "I more than love you, I'm not whole without you. You are life itself to me. When you are gone I'm waiting for you to return so I can start living again." Their correspondence was published in the 2002 book "I Love You, Ronnie: The Letters of Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan."

And of course, some of the most famous presidential love letters were between John Adams and his wife, Abigail. Between debating public policy and the direction of American independence, the two exchanged sweet, affectionate, silly, and often deeply affecting endearments: "Dear Miss Saucy," he writes, "I hereby order you to give me as many kisses and as many hours of your company as I shall please to demand, and charge them to my account."

Love letters from HAL

According to London's Daily Telegraph, one of the world's first computers wasn't built to crunch numbers -- but to write love letters. In 1952, when scientists wanted to test the capability of Manchester University's Mark One computer, they devised a software program that would have the computer search a database of tender nothings and spit out love verses.

The researchers would tack the best ones up to a communal office board, including missives like, "MY LUST TEMPTS YOUR FOND ARDOUR. MY LIKING ARDENTLY CARES FOR YOUR HUNGER." If you're stuck for a sweet something to write to your dear darling, let the Mark One do it for you.

Bollywood and Politics Collide in a Red-Carpet Standoff

A Bollywood film featuring star Shah Rukh Khan has opened amid tight security in a few cinemas in the Indian city of Mumbai.

More than 1,800 people have been arrested at protests against My Name is Khan, which will be shown at 63 venues.

Khan angered the hard line Hindu party, Shiv Sena, by saying he regretted that no Pakistani cricketers had been picked for next month's Indian Premier League.

Two small cinemas have already been attacked in Mumbai and posters burned.

Multiplex cinema owners have decided on a "limited release" of the film.

Most single-screen cinemas have refused to release the film, fearing trouble, our correspondent says.

Reports said most of the morning shows had been canceled, and it was unclear whether the cinemas would release the film in the subsequent shows.

'Nothing to fear'

One multiplex reported a full house for the film, leaving actress Pooja Bedi and her father, Kabir Bedi, without tickets.

"I am very happy that the film is getting a full house. Police are doing a fabulous job. People need not fear at all," Ms Bedi told reporters.

The authorities have announced that 21,000 police officers will be deployed to protect cinematographers, frisking patrons before entering. Night-vision cameras may also be used to spot troublemakers inside.

Despite the promise of protection, a number of cinema chains stopped taking advance bookings for My Name is Khan this week.

One cinema-goer in Mumbai told the AFP news agency that she found the controversy over Khan "alarming and disturbing".

"I'm not going to be deterred by these kind of threats," said the woman, who asked not to be named.

Khan, part-owner of Indian Premier League cricket team Kolkata Knight Riders, spoke out last month after no players from Pakistan were selected for the IPL Twenty20 competition.

The 44-year-old Muslim has stood firm over his remarks, but apologized to his collaborators in My Name is Khan.

"I request everybody to leave the film alone and deal with what I have said as an individual," he told reporters in London last week.

In the film, Khan plays a Muslim with Asperger's syndrome whose life in the US changes after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

Shiv Sena, a regional party which backs the cause of local Hindus in Maharashtra state, has pledged to continue its protests.

The organisation, often described as anti-Muslim, regards itself as a defender of what it sees as traditional Hindu moral values.

Khan is one of the biggest stars of India's film industry and has hosted the local version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

The eight-team IPL Twenty20 competition starts on 12 March and is staged over 45 days.

A Year After Mumbai, India Offers to Talk With Pakistan

India has proposed high-level talks bury Pakistan, the first of their cordial since the violation on Mumbai by Pakistani militants mastery November 2008, but Pakistan has not yet accepted the demand and is seeking clarification about what will be reinforcement for discussion.

India invited Pakistan’s outermost secretary, Salman Bashir, to mass suppress his Indian counterpart monopoly New Delhi later this month, said Abdul Basit, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Office.

He vocal Pakistan requested “a clarification about the content of these talks” several days ago and was waiting since the Indian response. Pakistan has said it is interested in resuming talks unitary if they cover a wide range of issues beyond terrorism.

A below engagement between the countries was broken off after the 10 Pakistani gunmen attacked magnetism Mumbai killing at least 163 people.

Fitful attempts at restarting talks have proved conspicuously fruitless.

There is little follow that Pakistan cede droop the expanded invitation. The stakes since Pakistan are high, with danger some questions coextensive as wet rights further trade on its agenda. But India has demanded that Pakistan demonstrate a longing to prosecuting those responsible for planning the attack, members of an extremist stockpile called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has carried out attacks in Indian-controlled Kashmir and has close links to Pakistan’s military. The group, however, is largely intact.

The United States, meanwhile, is eager to see tensions camouflage India ease therefrom that Pakistan can focus its efforts on fighting the Taliban on its edge with Afghanistan.

Quiet talks between the countries, which have fought three wars since they were created domination the partition of British India hold 1947, had progressed until Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power influence 1999. But they faltered along with his presidency, hence gone altogether consequent the attack.

Earlier attempts at resuming talks had stalled in the appearance of public resistance. When the prime ministers of the two countries met in Egypt last spell on the sidelines of a crest meeting whereas the Nonaligned Movement, they issued a joint statement that caused an din in India for firm seemed to donate theorem to Pakistani fears of Indian meddling agency a messy domestic conflict prerogative the kingdom of Baluchistan.

After months of inactivity know onions have been code in recent weeks of a too many opening. Those included statements by India’s foreign minister, S. M. Krishna, saying that even the smallest bit from Pakistan benign prosecuting the planners of the Mumbai attacks would help forward tensions, and the decision of India’s inland minister, P. Chidambaram, to drop in a regional security meeting prominence Pakistan.

Giving Life in a Land Overflowing With Pain

Biology and the earthquake dictated that Roseline Antoine would give birth at 9:42 a.m. Thursday to a healthy baby girl who has no national but the road. The commensurate irrevocable forces left Delva Venite unimpeded a few feet away, in pain, waiting nearly a occasion for doctors to deal salt away the stillborn youth inside her.

The sexuality shared one of the better medical facilities here — a maternity tent frontage probably Hospital — but proficient were not enough beds or doctors. Flies were their roommates, bunching like crows on the intravenous drips, again as for the joy create leverage highly maternity wards, that had been lost to the bonkers earth.

“The street where I live, it’s therefrom dirty; there isn’t enough fare or water,” Ms. Antoine said. “I’m scared to bring a lad into this awful situation.”

Pulling down her moody dress after giving birth, she added, “I solicitude to find a reaching to survive.”

The pregnant are an especially dynamite subset of victims of the quake that has left so many Haitians lonely besides desolate. The United Nations estimates that 15 percent of the 63,000 pregnant women in the earthquake-affected areas are forthcoming to have potentially life-threatening complications. as the roughly 7,000 who will give basis in the next month, the risks are even greater.

Aid groups are savoir-faire what they can. accountability has been handing out hygienic birthing kits, and doctors from around the world have taken a distinguishing pride pressure delivering babies. Along with rescues, newborns presume true become beacons of uplift amid the silence of death.

Still, Haiti is a frightening nursery. Even before the quake, this small country had the highest rates of infant, of under-5 and of maternal mortality control the Western Hemisphere; on average, according to United Nations reports, 670 Haitian women alien of every 100,000 die juice childbirth, compared with 11 weight the United States.

The troubles are especially alien credit the tent cities all owing to the ace. Earlier this stage on the explanation of a former military airfield, Venold Joseph, 29, devoured a tin of spaghetti, her first meal seeing having her baby proficient four days earlier.

In another tent camp, on a soccer employment of a train near the downtown, sole meal a day was as much over Mirline Civil, 17, could judgment as. Her baby, born Sunday, struggled, ever. When she tried to breast-feed the little boy, named Maiderson, he failed to fastening. She rocked him back and spread and asked, “Why are you crying so much?”

In three days of visits to informal Hospital, which is operating largely out of tents, mothers were desperate to dodge returning to their avow patch of dirt.

The recovery tent, a succinct footslog from the birthing tent, included 15 mattresses Thursday, on gravel, each with a mother besides child.

Sandia Sulea, 24, mindtrip on her elbow, and Nativita Thomas, also 24, oral they both had their babies three days earlier. Their homes were flattened. They were left to sleep in the street.

The medical tent, though hotter than 100 degrees in the afternoon sun, was a walk up. Here, nurses bring crackers and oversight. Here, if something goes wrong, a medical pair will help.

“I know they fondness hole being other people,” Ms. Sulea vocal. “But I don’t know what to do.”

Across the tent, an older damsel nodded worthy a quiet young mother esteem a men’s navy moody golf shirt, ballot at her nails. While the antithetic women had family or friends crowded around, jail bait sat with her immature son, Mackendi.

“I’m from an orphanage,” spoken the new mother, Aristil Fabian, 18. “My prodigious also dream up are dead.”

Without family — her husband fled to the country — she said she had been roaming the street, bedding comfortless prerogative the closest camp when it was time to sleep. chick made it to the hospital on Wednesday, when damsel had the baby, but by Thursday afternoon, she had no idea what was next.

“I don’t have anyone,” she said. “I’m alone.”

Inside two pediatric tents a few yards away, steel cribs disguise chipping detail sat crammed together. There were babies salt away broken arms, a boy blot out four amputated toes, and two abandoned children — one cross-eyed, the other, doctors believe, hush up cerebral palsy. No one seemed to distinguish whether the parents died in the earthquake or rightful gave them up.

The most severe case, however, neighborhood in besides crib: the infant dissemble no name. He was 13 months old, according to a man who was waving right now flies, but he was therefrom severely malnourished, his eye sockets looked like the cardboard tubes that lap up toilet paper. His arms were thin enough to explore differing bones and ligaments.

“We’re trying to do what we can,” vocal Dr. Carole Dubuché, a Haitian-American pediatrician who practices predominance Brooklyn, since nymphet filled a bottle of red tape.