The title's a bit of a misnomer, actually. Beauty queens, by definition, are false in the strictest sense of the word, for the most part. There's not much under that gown, or indeed, under the bikini, that's au naturel, let alone the award-winning answers of noble aspirations of feeding the poor and the hungry.

So why the big hue and cry about Miss Universe's crown princess of this year? Allegedly, this year's Miss Universe Leila Lopes used falsified documents to gain entry (Gasp! Who woulda thunk?) and win the contest (Double gasp! Sacrilege!) To be precise, she obtained documents that suggested she was a student of a British business school, even though she's never lived outside her home country, Angola, to enable her to participate in the beauty contest.

Beauty pageants, even those that have garnered a loyal following over decades now find themselves mired in scandals and controversies, thanks to overambitious aspirants who will not let a small thing like their citizenship, risque

If Omar Abdullah isn't in the news for his tweets on current affairs, he's in the news for his tweets on his, well, current affairs.

Sorry about that.

J&K's flamboyant chief minister has had to quell rabid rumours about his personal life via his chosen mode of communication, Twitter, as breathless speculation continues unabated, as is its wont, in the media, given to Page 3-ness, as is its wont, about his remarriage to someone who, well, might not really exist.

Meteoric rise of stupidity, one would think.

I guess it's pointless to ask what gives us the right to sit in judgement on the personal lives of public figures. Because, you know, the time-tested argument of 'the moment people choose to be in the public sphere, their personal affairs become issues of national importance' continues to hold sway, sometimes taking precedence over all other issues that continue to plague the nation. Right?

Speculation and theorising are not new to media houses, honour-bound that they are to

This piece should really be called mera something hain Japani? After all, what is that talking point that runs off, just skirting our headline radar in a heavily mediated world? Something that often eavesdrops on our collective cynicism with its quieter can-do-ness. Leaving one with an exasperated wow from the confines of a busy day. Or reminding the journalists that a human interest story often begins with one  human, struggling to be so.

The September 11 date, with its spate of  quiet and graphic remembrances, converged on another more recent anniversary. 6 months since Japan's March 11 earthquake-tsunami-nuclear situation. While the media megamart chronicled it with a powerful sense of the phenomenal from ground zero (remember  NYT's before and after satellite imagery), I turned my distant empathy from Indian shores to a different sense of the interactive soon enough. Japanese voices that spoke compellingly of their own tribulations through these six months.

There was a Osakan vegan

Before Parkinson's disease quieted Muhammad Ali, he made great copy. He still does, apparently, in retrospect.

His taunting, his prophesying, his racist jibes, his questionable patriotism, his refusal to kowtow to Americana. He was a photographer's talisman: He made menacing eyes that popped back at the mob of flashbulbs with orchestrated, theatrical malice. His acerbic tongue inflicted damage equal in insult and injury to the blows that his padded fists delivered. He became, effortlessly, the most recognizable sportsperson in America, more than Joe DiMaggio, more than Michael Jordan and, arguably, more than Tiger Woods. Forget America, he is perhaps still the most recognizable sportsperson in the world, representing the glorious sunshine moment of a sport that has now fallen on dim days.

September 15 marked 33 years since Ali brought down Leon Spinks to become the first and only boxer to win the lineal world heavyweight championship title three times. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr