The King of Chess

From the Times of India.

Vishwanathan Anand became the world chess champion on Saturday, after winning the global tournament in Mexico. In doing so, he replaced Vladimir Kramnik of Russia as champion, winning the tournament on points after tying a match with Hungarian Peter Leko on the 14th day of the contest, which he dominated from the start.

The tournament saw eight of the world's top chess brains battle it out in the competition, from which Anand came out unscathed.

The 37-year-old Indian had previously won the world championship in 2000, but the achievement was valued less since at the time the chess world was split between two rival world titles.

While I'm a prolific Correspondence chess player(Over 1,000 games lifetime with over 100 going at present), I don't follow the world chess scene much anymore. Much like my baseball viewing habits, I knew the status of the game(sport) much better twenty years ago. Like many US chessplayers my age, I can tell you all about Bobby Fischer. My familiarity with his successor, Anatoly Karpov, is almost as strong.(We both like to play a certain Caro-Kann variation. I've played it over 70 times, Only Karpov and four other have played it as often or more). Only by sheer fluke, do I know anything about what Annad likes to play. A 2003 Golden Knights game of mine following one of the World Champ's 1999 games for 25 moves. Opening databases are wonderful aren't they? Till your game leaves them, then you're on your own. I barely managed a draw in the 2003 game.

The way the World Championships are conducted has changed. For 25-30 years starting in 1964, the champion was determined via a series of Interzonal tournaments followed by elimination matches. This method put into place after some said the old Candidates tournaments were too prone to Soviet cheating. Now we've come back to a system much like the one used from 1948-1962.

Congratulations to Annad. Now are Indians prouder about Annad winning the World title again or Team India winning the recent Cricket Championship

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Going bananas

Some news from India. May I suggest Colace or Fibercon next time?

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KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Indian police forced a thief to gobble down 40 bananas in a few hours, hoping they would force him to excrete a gold necklace he had snatched and swallowed.

Sheikh Mohsin, 35, grabbed the 45,000-rupee (546 pounds) necklace from a woman in the eastern city of Kolkata on Friday and popped it into his mouth when police and local residents caught him.

"He denied swallowing it at all, but an X-ray conducted in a hospital revealed the necklace was very much in his stomach," Ajay Kumar, a leading city detective, told Reuters.

"Doctors advised us to feed him with bananas as it worked like a natural purgative," another officer said, trying to keep awake after staying up all night monitoring Mohsin's motions.

Mohsin visited the lavatory three times early on Saturday and was also forced to vomit but the necklace has failed to appear.

"We will have to look for other stronger purgatives now," the yawning police officer added.

The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Ganpat Singh Verma. He gets the award for the following.

Lucknow, July 24 (IANS) A man running a maternity centre has been arrested in Uttar Pradesh's Aligarh town after he teamed up with his daughter-in-law to perform a surgery that led to a woman losing her uterus.

According to a report lodged with the police, Lata, who was five months pregnant, was taken to a private maternity centre July 5 with acute abdominal pain.


While diagnosing that she was carrying a dead foetus, the centre's owner, Ganpat Singh Verma, advised her husband Dinesh Kumar that immediate removal of the foetus was necessary.


Verma reportedly got his daughter-in-law Mithilesh Verma, said to be a schoolteacher, to assist him in the surgery that left Lata bleeding profusely, Dinesh Kumar told the police.


'Realising that something had gone wrong, we rushed Lata to another private nursing home where it was discovered that her uterus had burst and its removal was therefore imminent,' Kumar was stated to have added in his report.


Aligarh District Magistrate Bhuvnesh Kumar said: 'It is a clear-cut case of cheating and negligence. We have arrested Verma not only for cheating but also for violating medical laws that do not permit surgery by anyone not duly qualified for the job.

'Even Verma, who is an Ayurvedic physician, could not furnish the requisite qualification to perform a gynaecological surgery, which makes him liable for committing a cognisable offence under medical laws.'

The police are also looking for Mithilesh, who is absconding.

This is the second recent instance of an Indian doctor allowing someone unqualified to perform surgery. What gets into the head of these so called educated people?

Whatever the motive was, it wasn't the safe care of his patient, and that makes Ganpat Singh Verma today's Knucklehead of the Day.

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From the Silly News Desk

Some news from India. I can only imagine what the Monkey will do with the subpoena if he's ever issued one.

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LUCKNOW, India - A South Korean tourist has filed a formal complaint against a monkey he says stole his reading glasses during his visit to the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in northern India.

Kim Dang Hoon says he opened his hotel room window for fresh air when the monkey made his move.

"He headed straight to the table where my glasses were kept and took it away," Kim said in the statement.

Part of the frame later was recovered by hotel staff and Kim said he filed the report so he can make a damages claim on his travel insurance.

Thousands of wild monkeys roam Varanasi, dotting the trees on the banks of the Ganges River and scampering through the city's many temples, where they are venerated as manifestations of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.

On Tuesday, police combed Varanasi's alleys searching for the monkey.

"It is difficult to trace the monkey but I am trying my best to locate the rogue," investigating officer Inspector Govind Singh said from Varanasi, some 185 miles southeast of Lucknow.

Problems with monkeys harassing tourists in the city are common, Singh said.

"But we can't do anything. We cannot shoot them or beat them as Hindus worship monkeys," he said.

The July 4th Knucklehead Marathon Part Eighteen

Today's eighteenth winners are Urmila Kalra and Abhilasha Gupta. They get the award for the following.

LUCKNOW, India (AP): Two doctors in northern India were suspended after refusing to deliver the baby of an HIV-positive woman, forcing her husband to handle the delivery, officials said Saturday.

Doctors Urmila Kalra and Abhilasha Gupta of the gynecology department at Lala Lajpat Rai Medical College in the north Indian city of Meerut were charged with dereliction of duty, state government spokesman Diwakar Tripathi said.

"Investigations have proved that the doctors did not perform their duties and refused to give treatment to an HIV-positive lady who was in the last stage of labor,'' Tripathi said.

The Medical Council of India has set up a panel to investigate the case, and if the doctors are found guilty they will be stripped of their licenses, said Dr. Debashish Ganguli, a council official.

In tradition-bound India, AIDS is a subject of taboo and shame, and infected people face tremendous discrimination.

Gupta and Kalra refused to help Sunita Abbas, 28, when she came to the hospital Wednesday to deliver her fourth child, her husband Raees Abbas said.

"I pleaded to the doctors to come and help me and my wife. They refused, saying that my wife Sunita is HIV positive,'' he said. Raees, a painter, said doctors sent him and his wife to a filthy room with a soiled mattress and torn sheets.

The doctors explained how to deliver the baby, and after the boy was born asked him to collect the waste and burn it behind the hospital, he said.

Urmila Kalra and Abhilasha Gupta should be drummed out of medicine for their failure but first I make them today's 18th Knuckleheads of the Day.

The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Dr. K. Murugesan of Manaparai India. He gets the award for the following.

NEW DELHI — The 15-year-old son of two doctors performed a filmed cesarean section birth under his parents' watch in southern India in an apparent bid to gain a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest surgeon.

Instead, the boy's father could be stripped of his licences and may face criminal charges, officials said Thursday.

Dr. K. Murugesan showed a recording of his son performing a cesarean section to an Indian Medical Association chapter in the southern state of Tamil Nadu last month, said Dr. Venkatesh Prasad, secretary of the association. The video showed Dr. Murugesan anesthetizing the patient.

“We were shocked to see the recording,” Dr. Prasad told The Associated Press, adding that the IMA told Dr. Murugesan that his act was an ethical and legal violation.

Dr. Murugesan owns and runs a maternity hospital in the city of Manaparai, Dr. Prasad said in a telephone interview from Manaparai. The family could not be immediately reached for comment.

Dr. Murugesan, who could possibly be prevented from practising and face criminal charges for allowing his son to perform the operation, expressed no regret and accused the Manaparai medical association of being “jealous” of his son's achievements, Dr. Prasad added.

“He said this was not the first surgery performed by his son and that he had been training him for the last three years,” said Dr. Prasad.

Dr. Murugesan told the medical association that he wanted to see his son's name in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Dr. Prasad said that his team had reported the surgery to the state's top medical association in state capital, Chennai.

State health secretary V.K. Subburaj told reporters Thursday that the government would investigate.

Murugesan should lose his license for what he did. Getting a Guiness world record by endangering someone's life is an act of incredible stupidity. Anyone remember the Aeroflot 593 plane crash that happened after one of the flight crew allowed their children to use the plane's controls? There are activities that children aren't meant to do and A. Murugesan should have known better and therefore he is today's Knucklehead of the Day.

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On the roof

Some news from India. My maternal grandfather used to say that is where the complaint department was located.

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KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - A prisoner who went missing from a jail in eastern India for almost 24 hours was found by prison guards snoring on the roof of the jail, officials said on Friday.

Raju Gaji, 19, arrested for banditry and theft and sent to a jail in Kolkata earlier this month, told police he was bored with the prison routine and wanted to catch up on some sleep.

"We had sounded the alarm and were looking for him everywhere, but he could not be traced," B.D. Sharma, a senior police officer told Reuters.

On Thursday afternoon, prison guards heard loud snoring from one of the buildings.

"They climbed on top of the roof and found Gaji sleeping," Sharma added.

A groggy Gaji seemed surprised when he found himself surrounded by guards pointing rifles at him, a senior jail official said.

Get out and push

Some news from India. Did the passengers get at least a partial refund?

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PATNA, India - A stalled train in India got a helpful nudge from hundreds of railway passengers in eastern India, a railway official said Wednesday. The train stalled in the Buxar district of the state of Bihar on Tuesday when an electrical connection snapped, railway spokesman A.K. Chandra said.

The driver then asked the passengers to push the train to the next electricity pole about 60 yards away, where the train was able to restart and resume its journey, he added.

The electric passenger train was traveling between Banahi and Raghunathpur.

India has one the world's largest railway network that carries more than 14 million passengers daily, but railway stations and tracks are often poorly maintained resulting in accidents and a poor safety record.

The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is India's Ministry of Personnel. They get the award for the following.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Female civil servants in India are furious with new government guidelines that force them to list intimate details, including their menstrual history, in appraisal forms, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The All-India Services Performance Appraisal Rules 2007 -- which apply to senior government workers -- ask female employees to record their last menstrual period, as well as when they last took maternity leave, the Hindustan Times said.

"The questions are too intrusive and have no bearing on our work," Seema Vyas, a senior bureaucrat in Maharashtra state, was quoted as saying.

India's Ministry of Personnel, which drew up the new appraisal guidelines, says it has not received any complaints and the addition of such questions was based on advice from health officials.

"I assume this will help evaluate the officer's fitness," Satyanand Mishra, the ministry's most senior bureaucrat, told the newspaper.

But women officers said it was "insensitive" and "irrelevant", adding they planned to protest.

The last time a woman menstruated is irrelevant and none of these(or any other) bureaucrat's business. For invading the privacy of its female employees, India's Ministry of Personnel is today's Knucklehead of the Day.

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Chess scandals

Some chess news from India-

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian chess player has been banned for 10 years for cheating after he was caught using his mobile phone's wireless device to win games, chess officials said on Wednesday.

The player, Umakant Sharma, had logged rating points at a rapid pace in the last 18 months and also qualified for the national championship, arousing the suspicion of officials and bemusing rivals.

Sharma was finally caught at a recent tournament when officials discovered that he had stitched a Bluetooth device in a cloth cap which he always pulled over his ears.

He communicated to his accomplices outside the hall, who then used a computer to relay moves to him, Indian chess federation secretary D.V. Sundar said on Wednesday.

"We have banned him for 10 years," he told Reuters. "We wanted to send a clear message to such people."

Some may say Sharma should be banned for life. If that was done in the case of US Correspondence Chess, I'd make a bet we would lost a dozen or more players. Its TFM's suspicion that computers are used for making moves by more than a few of correspondence chess opponents.

Talking about US Chess, we have a small scandal of our own.

A chess master who coaches at 10 East Valley schools resigned this month from the U.S. Chess Federation executive board following a November reprimand alleging ethics violations.

Robert Tanner, who helped put Gilbert on the map as the federation’s “Best Chess City” in 1999, received the reprimand following allegations that he fabricated or manipulated tournament results in the early 1990s to regain the master title that he first earned at legitimate events in 1987.

“It is apparent from his entire record that Tanner, frustrated with his inability to make master the hard way, decided to do it the easy way,” a written complaint filed July 20 says.

Tanner has denied wrongdoing and referred the Tribune to the written responses he submitted to the federation’s ethics committee.

His Dec. 4 resignation letter indicates he stepped down so the board “could continue its important work without being distracted unduly by this affair.” The longtime coach also said he wanted to focus on reactivating himself as a serious chess player.

“This I consider an important factor in speeding the healing within the chess community and for my own personal reputation and rehabilitation,” Tanner wrote.

Sam Sloan, the U.S. Chess Federation board member who filed the complaint, said Tanner delayed his resignation until other board members threatened to oust him.

*****

Sloan’s complaint alleges that Tanner achieved the titles of master and “original life master” by playing repeated games in 1992 and 1993 within a closed group of friends who traveled together and gathered in remote places such as Teton, Wyo., Wendover, Nev., and Ceres, Calif.

Original life masters must hold a master’s rating for at least 300 tournament games.

Sloan said the players in the group shared Tanner’s home address, and none of the nine men except Tanner ever competed outside the group.

“They are quite clearly fake people,” Sloan said from his New York home. “They don’t exist.”

Tanner maintains he did nothing illegal. He said the matches actually occurred, and the ethics committee supported his claim that the opponents were real people.

However, Tanner acknowledges in his Sept. 15 response to the committee that he circumvented the “spirit of the regulations” in the early 1990s while working to regain the master title. He also acknowledges that none of the opponents mentioned in the complaint were legitimate masters or even expert-level players.

Disclosure- I have strong reason to believe Robert Tanner is the same Corr. Chess player I once played in the 1990's. Both players live or lived in Arizona.

Chess is supposed to be a gentleman's game and a battle of intellects. It is sad that there are those who feel a need to cheat and ruin the game for others.

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