JXTC GENRE : DECEMBER 08 TEMPLATE

Sainthia: Home Minister P Chidambaram has said the "slow response" to the train accident in West Bengal earlier this week is unacceptable. Two passenger trains collided early on Monday morning, killing close to 60 people.

The accident took place at the Sainthia station, 190 kms from Howrah. "I was informed that the first relief team reached two and a half hours after the mishap, and the second team reached seven hours after accident...the delay was due to the fact they had to travel 220 kms by road," said Chidambaram. The accident was caused by a speeding train, the Uttarbanga Express, which rear ended the Vananchal Express as it was pulling out of the Sainthia station. Villagers in the area were quick to organise rescue operations.

Their efforts have been praised by both Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee and Chidambaram. Banerjee herself has been attacked by political opponents, who claim the accident highlights that the Railways Minister is too distracted by the politics in her home state of West Bengal to closely supervise the Railways. In May, nearly 150 people were killed when the Gyaneshwari Express derailed in Jhargram.

Patna: Microphones, chairs and desks were thrown by the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly - their "protest" they say against a corrupt government.

When slippers were hurled at the Speaker on Wednesday, marshals or security guards evicted 17 Opposition MLAs.

Amid the chaos, Jyoti Singh, a woman MLC belonging to the Congress, threw several flower pots around. She claims she was manhandled by marshals.

Shoaib Malik, Pakistan's former cricket captain, is to marry Sania Mirza, India's top women's tennis player, in an unprecedented cross-border sporting union between South Asia's nuclear arch-rivals. The two families confirmed last night that the couple – who are both Muslims – would be married next month after meeting in February while Ms Mirza was playing in a tournament in Dubai.

"Thanks for all your support. And the news of me marrying to Sania is true. Inshallah [God willing] will get married in April," Mr Malik, who captained Pakistan between 2007 and 2009, wrote on Twitter. Ms Mirza's father, Imran, said that the couple would be based in Dubai, where Mr Malik has residency. RELATED LINKS Waqar shocked as Pakistan hand out bans Game, set and Islam for Mirza Stalemate as India and Pakistan resume talks Mr Mirza said that his daughter would continue to play tennis after she had recovered from a wrist injury, according to The Hindu newspaper.

"This is a unique case where the husband and wife will represent their respective countries in sport," another Indian newspaper quoted Mr Mirza as saying. Ms Mirza's mother, Nasima, was quoted as saying: "Marriages are made in heaven. As parents, we are delighted with her choice." The announcement has caused a stir in India and Pakistan as cross-border marriages – especially unarranged ones – are rare between the South Asian neighbours which have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

It is all the more sensational as Mr Malik, 28, and Ms Mirza, 23, are among the most popular sporting and youth icons in the two countries, and have both been embroiled in a series of personal and professional controversies. Ms Mirza – currently ranked 27th in the world – broke off her engagement to Mohammed Sohrab, a childhood friend, in January, and has been criticised in the past for wearing revealing outfits on court, disrespecting the Indian flag, and advocating safe sex.

In 2008, she withdrew from the Bangalore Open tennis tournament, saying she would no longer play in India to avoid generating further controversy. Mr Malik, meanwhile, has been involved in a long-running marriage dispute with another Indian woman, Ayesha Siddiqui, whom he also met in Dubai. Ms Siddiqui, who was working in the Gulf state as a teacher, has said that she met Mr Malik in a hotel there in 2000 when he returned the keys she had accidentally left in a restaurant. Reports that they had married started circulating when her family, who are from the Indian city of Hyderabad, hosted a lavish reception for the Pakistan team when it toured India in 2005. In 2008, however, Mr Malik said he had split with Ms Siddiqui because their families could not agree on the terms of their marriage. Her father, Mohammad Ahmed Siddiqui, then announced that Mr Malik had married his daughter in 2002 over the telephone, because she could not get a Pakistani visa.

Although the groom had been in Pakistan and the bride in India, he said that the ceremony had been conducted by an Islamic cleric in front of several witnesses and therefore complied with Sharia. "Shoaib Malik is rejecting my daughter Ayesha as she has become fat," Mr Siddiqui said at the time, threatending legal action. He was not immediately available for comment this morning. Mr Malik is also facing controversy on the sporting front, as he has been banned for one year by the Pakistan Cricket Board for poor performance and indiscipline during Pakistan's recent tour of Australia. He has appealed against the ban.

NEW DELHI: Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will have to put their plan to start medical education on hold as the health ministry has decided against allowing these elite engineering schools to start courses in medicine. In a high level meeting of experts chaired by health secretary K Sujatha Rao — the first to discuss this controversial issue — the health ministry decided to write to the HRD ministry suggesting that "IITs should start courses on health information technology, biomedical engineering and e-health rather than running a hospital or starting MBBS courses".

The health ministry will ask IITs to partner with renowned medical colleges like AIIMS and PGI (Chandigarh) in jointly running these new courses. IITs' plan to offer medical courses rejected Medical Council of India, which had come out in support of IITs' proposal to start medical degrees while talking to TOI on Monday, did a volte-face in the meeting and staunchly opposed the plan. "IITs wanted to start MBBS courses in a couple of years and wanted to be exempted from MCI's control. The MCI then joined health ministry officials to staunchly go against the proposal to let IITs even start an MBBS programme," sources who attended the meeting told TOI. Strangely, MCI chairman Dr Ketan Desai on Monday had told TOI, "We welcome the move. We know that if IITs start medical schools, they will have the same standard as their other courses. They will ensure they have the best faculty as their reputation will be at stake."

Experts who attended the meeting said IITs should focus on what they do best — engineering education — and that "imparting medical education wasn't IITs' core domain". Experts also said that except IIT Kharagpur which was planning to start its own hospital and medical college within its premises, all other IITs were planning to tie up with existing private hospitals to provide students with complicated cases. "Can private hospitals have as many footfalls as a government hospital? Can a private hospital deliver the variety of difficult cases required for under-graduate medical education. This was another important reservation of experts," a health ministry source said.

Those who attended the meeting included directors of AIIMS, PGI (Chandigarh), Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute (Lucknow), JIPMER, NIMHANS, National Institute of Communicable Diseases, National Institute of Paramedical Sciences and principal of CMC Vellore. Some IITs, like Kharagpur and Hyderabad, had already started working on starting a medical school in about three years. IIT Kharagpur has supposedly signed an MoU with University of California, San Diego, to set up a hospital which will offer graduate, post-graduate and research programmes in medicine and bio-medical engineering.