A nun at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix recently had to choose between religion and humanity, and ended up choosing ethics over faith.

In defiance of the dictates of her faith, thus, she ordered the abortion of a 11-week-old foetus. This led to her being excommunicated from the faith she had chosen to serve, a faith that unconditionally treats abortion as sin.

The ruling by the bishop seems to have considered only the action, and not the cause that led to it — for if Sister Margaret McBride hadn't authorised the emergency abortion on the 27-year-old pregnant woman who arrived at the hospital due to complications and an illness that threatened her life, she could well have died.

The story forces you to think: If caught in such a situation, how will you choose, and what will your choices be based on? And will it be a blind choice, or one where you actually have to think to make the choice?

In the 2004 film Vera Drake, Oscar-nominee Imelda Staunton gives a bravura performance as

I got a tweet asking me to spread the word about Africa Launch in the hope of integrating African entrepreneurs into the global economy. It says they hope to "help change the public's perceptions of the continent, and spread the word about the vitality and sophistication of Africa's entrepreneurs and start-up companies."

The site caters to investors looking at African markets. Why am I writing about it since I don't know how authentic the site actually is? I'm not even an investor or someone with other interests in Africa. It's purely to share an image of Africa that is not always clear.

Our view of Africa is clouded by the images we see on TV, of abject poverty, of dictatorships, of internal strife. This site posed a different view. A continent and a people trying to shed the prejudices that comes with the word "Africa".  That in itself was worth writing about. A small group doing their bid to push for a life sans humanitarian aid. By helping themselves through promotion of

Hot on the heels of an aggressive brand campaign and the much hyped Polo launch, Volkswagen has unveiled the Polo sedan in India, but with the Vento nameplate instead. Officially unveiled at the Moscow Motor Show recently, the Vento is expected to hit the Indian market by August-September with a price tag of Rs. 7-9 lakhs.

Most of us must have cribbed about the lack of rear legroom in the Polo, but the sedan sibling comes with more space inside, thanks to the 50mm longer wheelbase. Except for a different grille and lights, the Vento is more or less similar to the Polo up to the B-Pillar. Boot space is said to be somewhere near 500 litres with a split seat option on offer.

It will be available in two trim levels including Trendline, Highline. The interior is equipped with storage compartment in front doors for bottles, sunglass storage inside glove box, foldable roof handles with coat hooks, front and rear centre armrest,  cupholders and "Livon" fabric upholstery. Outside, the

Besides live coverage of various sports, ESPN also has segments devoted to extreme sports — and in my book, none is more 'extreme' than the annual Scripps Howard Spelling Bee. [This year's live coverage is hosted by Chris Harrison; besides on TV, you can follow the simulcast live on ESPN's website and also through the Scripps Twitter feed here].

Precocious kids learning dictionaries-full of words they will likely never again use in their lifetime was not my idea of spectator sport. I'd watched the live telecast in 2003 — but that was work. I was in New York at the time, and working for India Abroad, a newspaper owned and operated by Rediff. The paper was focused on the daily doings, the triumphs and occasional tragedies of Indian Americans; the Bee that year, as in fact has been the norm every year through the 2000s, was packed with kids from the community, so I watched as part of our coverage.

Sai Gunturi of Dallas, Texas, won the title that year, making it two in a row as

It's the day I once prayed for — my Alma mater St Xavier's College, Mumbai is now autonomous. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has granted the college academic autonomy for five years starting from this year. This makes it the first autonomous college under Mumbai University. The only regret — I wish it happened in my time.

Why am I celebrating?

From now on, St Xavier's will be able to formulate governing and academic bodies and control examinations on their own without interference from the university. The college will also have full academic freedom to frame their syllabus. No longer will a student's three-year-long Bachelor's degree depend upon a single written examination conducted by the University, where rote learning is the only key to success. Cross-disciplinary studies will also be encouraged from now on, so students who have a passion for both geology and Tennyson  no longer have to choose between.

Unlike most Mumbai colleges, the average Xavierite goes to

The story goes that sometime in mid 1959, a 60-year-old film-maker fed up of helming big budget productions wanted to try something different — a taut, edgy thriller with a lesser known cast powered by creative sensibilities adopted from television. He chanced on a story written by a prolific short story/novel writer who had established himself as a specialist in the horror genre, bought up the screen rights to the book for $9000, and then went around surreptitiously buying up all the copies of the book he could find in the market, to preserve the surprise of the ending.

June 16, 1960, Psycho hit theaters in the United States. And, as David Thompson pointed out in his book The Moment of Psycho: How Hitchcock taught America to love Murder, everything changed.

It was not as if cinema audiences were unused to horror — the genre had been in existence since 1915, with The Golem being credited as probably the first ever film in the genre. Hitchcock himself had set his stamp on the

This fever is dangerous and in fact more contagious than the H1N1 Virus; the most vulnerable ones are the football buffs. The virus spreads faster than anything and only days before the kick-off, I got hit by this deadly thing. It travelled all the way from South Africa and manifested itself in the form of 'mehendi' on my palm. Crazy I say, but love is blind — whether it's a person or the game.

Symptoms vary from person to person — from haircuts to tattooing. When Beckham was in his prime, we had many lookalikes of the English star trying to copy his trademark mohawk. For me, it was limited to playing K'naan's 'Waving Flag' , Ricky Martin's Cup of Life, collecting posters and applying the World Cup logo mehendi. I even placed a cute little football in my messy cubicle. That's Football World Cup! The 4 year-long wait fuels your frenzy.

Football is more than a game — it's a religion of the masses where people worship and adore their idols. For Argentines, Messi is their

Earlier this week, the New York Times — in the 'business', not 'fiction', section — suggested that India could become the next big hub for gay tourism.

The NYT pegged its Panglossian optimism largely on the fact that a year ago, in July 2009, the Delhi High Court put a coda to an eight-year-long battle for gay rights in a landmark judgment struck down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, arguing inter alia that "sexual orientation is a ground analogous to sex, and that discrimination on sexual orientation is not permitted under Article 15."

And about time, too — the law, which had earned India considerable condemnation [also read full text of a Human Rights Watch letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh], was based not on Indian sensibilities but on those of the British circa 1860, when Lord Macaulay deemed that "Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment