links to chennai conference photos

The links of all the 3 days Conference Photos are below. Please forward this link to all other delegates who have attended the conference. Shankar Sneha, Chennai https://picasaweb.google.com/107400905199789436228/BIConf2011Day102?authkey=Gv1sRgCP2V7IWQhZvr3wE# https://picasaweb.google.com/107400905199789436228/BIConf2011Day2?authkey=Gv1sRgCO-u49ziwurWXA https://picasaweb.google.com/107400905199789436228/BIConf2011Day3?authkey=Gv1sRgCPXTmO7y3uTH5QE

Suicide Watch

Suicide watch is an intensive monitoring process used to ensure that an individual does not die by suicide. Usually the term is used in reference to inmates in a prison, hospital, psychiatric hospital, or military bases. Individuals are placed on suicide watch when it is believed there is a good chance they will attempt to cause bodily harm to themselves. Contents [hide] 1 Forms 1.1 Periodic suicide watch 1.2 Intense suicide watch 1.3 Video suicide watch 2 Conditions of suicide watch 3 Controversies 4 References [edit] Forms Various forms of suicide watch exist. These generally involve the subject being under continuous or very frequent watch of a guard, such as a prison officer or orderly, who will intervene if they attempt to harm themselves. The main forms are: [edit] Periodic suicide watch Periodic suicide watch, known at many facilities simply as suicide observation or suicide watch, involves the subject being monitored through frequent periodic checks [edit] Intense suicide watch Intense suicide watch or observation, involves the subject being observed continually by a person who may be employed in one of several possible capacities, sitting or standing in direct sight or arm's reach of the subject. [edit] Video suicide watch In some places, video suicide watches are performed, in which the subject receives video monitoring via closed circuit television from a remote area of the facility. [edit] Conditions of suicide watch People under suicide watch are put into an environment where it would be difficult for them to hurt themselves. In many cases, any dangerous items will be removed from the area, such as sharp objects and some furniture, or they may be placed in a special padded cell, which has nothing outcropping from the walls to provide a place for a ligature to be attached, and with only a drain-grill on the floor. They may be stripped of anything with which they might hurt themselves or use as noose, including shoelaces, belts, neckties,[1] bras,[2] socks, suspenders, other clothing, and bed sheets.[2] Such precautions are taken because people have attempted suicide with those items. In extreme cases the person may be undressed entirely. [edit] Controversies Suicide watch regimes, particularly in prisons, have been criticized for being too restrictive and dismissive of privacy, socially functioning as a form of legal torture rather than being in the interest of the detainee.[citation needed] Inmates are often placed naked in suicide cells, which are usually bare concrete, often without bedding (to prevent hanging by using bed sheets), and under frequent or continuous observation by guards. Unsanitary conditions are also common since toilet paper, underwear, and tampons (all potential means of choking) are restricted. Being exposed without any way of covering oneself, coupled with being under constant observation can aggravate mental distress, particular if the inmate has been a victim of sexual abuse in the past. These harsh conditions came to light in 1998 when Elizabeth B., an inmate of Framingham prison in Massachusetts, USA, called a radio talk show to describe how she had been treated while on suicide watch: I was ... put on eyeball status, stripped of belongings, clothing, placed naked in a room with nothing but a plastic mattress on the floor. Watched 24 hours a day by a man or woman. I was on my period but because of my status not allowed to have tampons or underwear. I was very humiliated, degraded. Being on eyeball status with male officers, my depression intensified. I didn't want to be violated any more than I already was, so I put the mattress up against the window. When I did that I was in violation because they couldn't see me. The door was forced open, I was physically restrained in four point restraints - arms, legs spreadeagled, tied to the floor, naked, helmet on head, men and women in the room.[3] [edit] References ^ "'Standing Up to Ezra Pound'", New York Times, September 29, 1991, webpage: NYT-591 ^ a b "NYC Board of Corrections - Rules - Variances", NYC.gov, 2011, webpage: Nrul ^ "Here and Now" program, station WBUR, Boston University, 16 October 1998. Amnesty

repeated threats of suicide is valid grounds for divorce

Suicide threats ground for divorce: SC Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN | Oct 1, 2011, 02.02AM IST Article Comments (49) Read more:Supreme Court|Repeated threats to commit suicide|Haryana High Court 49 NEW DELHI: Repeated threats to commit suicide is a ground for divorce, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday and dissolved the marriage of a couple from Punjab after the husband proved that he was traumatised by his wife's incessant suicide threats. A bench of Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan said: "Giving repeated threats to commit suicide amounts to cruelty. When such a thing is repeated in the form of sign or gesture, no spouse can live peacefully." The court departed from judiciary's traditionally lenient approach towards an estranged wife mainly because of the glaring facts of mental and physical hardship and humiliation faced by Pankaj Mahajan at the hands of his wife Dimple. The trial court had granted divorce to Mahajan in April 2006, but the Punjab and Haryana High Court by its August 6, 2009 order set aside the divorce decree. Appearing for the husband, senior advocate Nidesh Gupta placed material to prove before the apex court that Dimple used to give repeated threats to commit suicide. On one occasion, she also tried to commit suicide by jumping from the terrace. Accepting his arguments, the bench said cruelty in marriage meant that the treatment meted out by one spouse made the other apprehend danger to his life and limb while living in a conjugal relationship. "The acts of the respondent wife are of such quality or magnitude and consequence as to cause pain, agony and suffering to the appellant husband which amounted to cruelty in matrimonial law," said Justice Sathasivam, writing the judgment for the bench. Making out 12 grounds of cruel behaviour on the wife's part, the bench said: "She caused grave mental cruelty to him and it is not possible for the parties to live with each other, therefore, a decree of divorce deserves to be granted in favour of the husband." The court directed the husband to pay Rs 2 lakhs to the wife and deposit Rs 3 lakhs in the name of the couple's minor daughter, who is living with the mother.

Fatal slip or Suicide? mystery behind RPF constable's death

Fatal slip or suicide? Mystery over RPF constable’s death Cops say Bhagwan Panda fell from Byculla rly hospital; his colleagues believe he jumped Jyoti Shelar Posted On Saturday, October 01, 2011 at 02:07:17 AM An RPF constable, Bhagwan Panda, fell from the second floor of Byculla railway hospital on Wednesday, and died a day later during treatment. Though the police believe this a straightforward case of accidental death — a man slipped and fell — some of his colleagues suspect that he attempted suicide. They claim an allegation of theft levelled against him had pushed him into depression, and this may be the reason behind the step. Panda, who lived in Kurla, was blamed for a theft of goods worth Rs 1 lakh from the Panvel railway station on July 2. A chargesheet was also filed against him. For the past few months, the 41-year-old was under a lot of work-related stress and appeared to be suffering from chronic depression. On Wedne-sday morning, he was admitted to the railway hospital. “He was kept under observation as he had inflicted injuries on himself,” a nurse said. On Wednesday night, he went into a bathroom on the second floor of the hospital, and moments later he was found in a pool of blood on the ground floor. Panda was rushed to KEM Hospital, where he died on Thursday night. Another staff member at the railway hospital said it appeared that he slipped from the bathroom window. “The bathroom door was locked from inside,” he said. Doctors at KEM said that Panda’s pelvic region was severely injured in the fall. “He had serious injuries on parts of the body, too,” a doctor said. Panda’s son, Anand, said that he learned about the incident from his uncle. “I spoke to my father on Wednesday night, and went out for a walk. When I returned, my uncle told me that he had fallen from the bathroom window,” he said. Panda’s colleagues said he went into depression after he was handed the chargesheet over the theft. “He started behaving oddly after facing scrutiny from seniors,” a colleague said. The RPF constable was sent to Solapur for training on September 1. He, however, ran away from the training centre in just a few days, an RPF official said. “He was traced to Barsi recently,” the official said. • Panda became depressed after he was accused of stealing goods from Panvel railway station

Amy winehouse, comments by friends

Amy Winehouse did not care about fame, says Dionne Bromfield Friday, September 30 2011, 15:51 BST 1 By Daniel Sperling, Entertainment Reporter Email this story Bestival 2011 - Rolling Gallery © Bestival 2011/Ian Taylor Dionne Bromfield has declared that the late Amy Winehouse never wanted to be famous. The 15-year-old jazz star insisted that her godmother and mentor intentionally shunned the limelight, as she was more interested in helping Bromfield launch her own career. "If I didn't have Amy I wouldn't be where I am today," she told Look. "Amy never tried to take anything from me. "The only gig she did with me was Strictly Come Dancing. She wanted the spotlight to be on me, she didn't want it on her." Despite being thankful for Winehouse's input, Bromfield said that she would never allow herself to become dependent on drink and drugs like the 'Rehab' star. "I'm a clever girl. I know what's right and what's wrong and I've got my mum keeping a close eye on me," she explained. "She's my biggest supporter and there with a pin to pop the balloon if it's getting too big." Bromfield revealed in August that she would like to record a tribute album for Winehouse. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digital Spy Home Headlines Forums Video Blogs Play & Win Showbiz Music Movies TV Soaps Reality TV US TV Cult Gaming Comics Bollywood Odd Media Tech News Celebrities Photos 10 Things DS Icons Celebrity Birthdays Showbiz Forum Home > Showbiz > Amy Winehouse 1983 - 2011 > News Monday, October 3, 2011 Showbiz Compcov Amy Winehouse 1983-2011 Amy Winehouse knew she was about to die, says Tony Bennett Friday, September 30 2011, 21:22 BST 10 By Daniel Sperling, Entertainment Reporter Email this story Amy Winehouse in the studio with Tony Bennett Tony Bennett has claimed that Amy Winehouse knew her body was "in a lot of trouble" before her death. The 85-year-old collaborated with the 'Love Is A Losing Game' singer on the track 'Body & Soul', which featured on his Duets II album and would prove to be Winehouse's last recording before her passing in July. Speaking to The Daily Show, Bennett claimed that Winehouse had accepted she would not be able to undo the damage of her drink and drug addictions. "She knew that she was in a lot of trouble, that she wasn't gonna live. It wasn't drugs, it was alcohol till the end," he said. Bennett, who previously described Winehouse as "one of the great jazz" stars, added: "She was the only singer that really sang what I call the right way." Winehouse's father Mitch said earlier this month that the 27-year-old was responsible for her own death, as she did not properly listen to health care professionals before trying to detox herself. > Tony Bennett becomes oldest living artist on Billboard Hot 100 Watch Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse duet on 'Body & Soul' below: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dionne Bromfield: 'I still can't believe Amy Winehouse death' Tuesday, August 9 2011, 15:21 BST 5 By Daniel Sperling, Entertainment Reporter Email this story Amy Winehouse with her Goddaughter Dionne Bromfield. © WENN / WENN.com Dionne Bromfield has revealed that she has not yet accepted the death of her godmother and mentor Amy Winehouse last month. The 15-year-old jazz star found fame under the guidance of Winehouse's record label and the 'Back To Black' singer made her final public appearance at one of her gigs. Bromfield told BBC Radio 1's Breakfast Show: "I still don't believe it, it's not sunk in. At Amy's funeral it hit me hard. But now I hear about her a lot, you see pictures of her, she's on the radio, so it's like she's there, but you can't physically see or feel her. "The last time I saw her she was fine. I think that was the best time I've ever seen her... It's such a shame to know she was at her best moment and three days later she was gone." Bromfield also opened up about the first time she heard of Winehouse's death, minutes before she was due to begin a show in Cardiff. "No-one wanted to believe it. The whole atmosphere went from being happy to everyone just quiet," she recalled. "You think it's just some sick rumour, you're waiting for someone to say it's not true. "People were saying, 'Don't do it, if you don't want to do it', no-one was pressurising me, but I knew Amy would want me to do it, she was one of my biggest fans. I didn't want to be sitting there crying. I thought, 'Amy loved to see me perform, do it for Amy'." Bromfield paid tribute to Winehouse during the Big Chill festival on Saturday, where she sang an emotional cover of the 27-year-old's song 'Love Is A Losing Game'. Watch Amy Winehouse and Dionne Bromfield sing 'Love Is A Losing Game' below:

Suicide, emigration and unemployment plague Greece

By RACHEL DONADIO (Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting. ) Published: September 24, 2011 ATHENS — Sitting in the modest living room of the home she shares with her parents, husband and two teenage children, Stella Firigou fretted about how the family would cope with the uncertainties of an economy crashing all around them. But she was adamant about one thing: she would not pay a new property tax that was the centerpiece of a new austerity package announced this month by the Greek government. Stella Firigou, 50, said she could not pay a property tax. “I’m not going to pay it,” Ms. Firigou, 50, said matter-of-factly, as she lighted a cigarette and checked her ringing cellphone to avoid calls from her bank about late payments on a loan. “I can’t afford to pay it. They can take me to jail.” While banks and European leaders hold abstract talks in foreign capitals about the impact of a potential Greek default on the euro and the world economy, something frighteningly concrete is under way in Greece: the dismantling of a middle-class welfare state in real time — with nothing to replace it. Since 2010, the government has raised taxes and slashed pensions and state salaries across the board, in an effort to rein in the bloated public sector that today employs one in five Greeks. Last week, the government announced it would put 30,000 workers on reduced pay as a precursor to possible termination and would cut pensions again for nearly half a million public-sector retirees. A clerk in her local town hall, Ms. Firigou, like all public-sector workers, took a precipitous pay cut last year — in her case to less than $1,300 a month from $2,000 a month — as the government slashed wages to meet the terms of its foreign lenders. Her husband, who sells used car parts, has seen his commissions drop. Her mother’s pension was cut to about $800 a month from around $920. Like many families here, the Firigous cushion the impact of such cuts and the rising cost of living with property acquired in the past. Her grandfather built the two-story apartment house in this Athens suburb, Psychiko, where the six now live, starting in the 1930s and finishing it after the Second World War. And so the new tax, probably in excess of $2,000 per year for the Firigous, stings particularly hard. “The house is the only thing we have left,” she said. There is a lot for Greeks to swallow. Beyond the public-sector wage cuts, in recent months the government has also imposed a “solidarity tax” ranging from 1 to 4 percent of income on all workers and an additional tax on self-employed workers, who make up the bulk of the economy. It has also raised its value-added tax on many goods and services, including food, to 23 percent from 13 percent. The economy is flagging, and it is not uncommon for even private-sector workers to see pay cuts of 30 percent or more, sometimes in exchange for a reduction in working hours. The so-called troika of foreign lenders — the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund — is increasingly playing hardball with the Greek government, insisting it meet its deficit-reduction goals before it decides whether to release the next installment of $11 billion that Greece needs to meet expenses starting in mid-October. Many Greeks fear a vicious circle: a death spiral of more austerity measures, further economic contraction and correspondingly lower tax revenues, making it that much harder to make a dent in the debt, pushing the country toward default in spite of the austerity. Unions have called general strikes for Oct. 5 and Oct. 19, and tensions are building. Economists say the measures are necessary to bring down debt and modernize Greece’s economy. But the cuts have come far faster than the modernization, and the social fabric is starting to fray — if not tear. The unemployment rate, already at 16 percent, and emigration are increasing; the birth rate is dropping; and the rate of suicide is rising. The education minister recently apologized that public schools lack textbooks, and the country’s morale is flagging. “The government is increasingly at war with the citizens,” said Jens Bastian, an economist at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in Athens. “It is taking decisions whose consequences are not only squeezing the middle class, but threatening its very existence.” Some private-sector workers say they have not been paid in months. “It’s illogical and unfair,” Aphrodite Korogiannaki, 38, a speech pathologist at a center for intellectually disabled youth, said of the property tax as she participated in a peaceful demonstration in Athens last week. “If I haven’t been paid for two months, how can I pay?” A growing number of Greeks are asking that question, and increasingly their anger is focusing on the proposed property tax, the one that Mrs. Firigou insists she cannot pay. The government has said it expects to raise $2.7 billion through the tax, which would affect an estimated 5.5 million homeowners. (There is no precise number for Greek homeowners since the country still lacks a comprehensive land register.) According to the Hellenic Property Federation, an association representing Greece’s homeowners, the tax would cost an average family between $1,200 and $2,000 extra per year. Last week, the Socialist prime minister, George Papandreou, implored Greeks to accept the measures. “There is no other path. The other path is bankruptcy, which would have heavy repercussions for every household, for every Greek citizen,” he said. “We know it will be difficult, but now is the time for the most decisive battle of all.” The tax would be levied through electricity bills, another source of frustration here. A failure to pay would result in the power being shut off, but the powerful union that represents the workers of the public power company has said it will refuse to cooperate, jeopardizing its implementation. A growing chorus of members of Mr. Papandreou’s Socialist Party is opposed to the tax, and a vote on the measure scheduled to be held in Parliament this week is widely expected to be close. Critics say the country has failed to adequately crack down on tax evasion among the wealthiest segments of society — and failed to carry out more focused cuts because it is reluctant to take on some public-sector unions that protect a small, powerful cadre of workers who have deep ties to the governing Socialist Party. “I don’t think they know what to do,” Nikos Panoutsopoulos, 38, an archaeologist who works at the Culture Ministry, said as he participated in a demonstration in Athens last week. “Instead of fighting” the electric company union, or the train company union, he added, “they just cut salaries horizontally.” Some of the short-term unemployed will still be expected to pay the new property tax. Faced with that prospect, a woman who gave her name only as Antonia as she waited in an unemployment center in downtown Athens burst into tears, a day after losing her job as a cleaner for the Ministry of Education. “My husband is a construction worker, he has hardly had any work this month now due to the collapse of the construction market,” she said. “My son is 20 years old and also unemployed.” Such stories are common in Greece today. Yet even as the country bleeds, it is not meeting the deficit-reduction targets set as terms for its bailout. According to data released by the Finance Ministry on Thursday, net revenues were $4.7 billion off target and expenses $1.35 billion higher than projected in the first seven months of 2011. Back in her living room, Ms. Firigou said she had not seen it coming. “No one warned us,” she said. “I have no hope, not for myself, not for my children, and I am only 50.” But she said some things still make her laugh. “I can’t get it into my mind that my life is such a mess,” she said. “It’s a joke.”

dowry demand leads to suicide

Demand for dowry drives woman to hang herself Published: Saturday, Oct 1, 2011, 8:00 IST By DNA Correspondent | Agency: DNA A thirty-year-old housewife, identified as Deepmala Singh, committed suicide by hanging herself at her residence in Malad (west) after her husband and in-laws allegedly demanded Rs1 crore from her father to buy a new flat. Malwani police have registered a case of dowry harassment against her husband and in-laws. According to police, the deceased used to live in a joint family with her husband, Vijay Singh, five-year-old son, father-in-law, mother-in-law and brother-in-law in a 3-BHK located on Marve Road.“The deceased hanged herself on a ceiling fan with her dupatta on September 27. None of the family, except her grandfather-in-law, were at home,” said a police officer. The deceased’s father, Mahendra Pratap Singh has registered a complaint against her husband and in-laws, stating that her in-laws had allegedly demanded Rs one crore to buy a new flat,” said Vaibhav Patil, police sub inspector, of the Malwani police station.Police sources also said: “Vijay was pressurising Deepmala to take money from her father so that they could buy new flat and live separately, but she refused.” “The post mortem report revealed that she died due to strangulation, but we have sent her dupatta and other belongings to the Kalina forensic laboratory for chemical analysis,” said a police officer. Deepmala’s father has lodged case of dowry harassment. The Singhs have filed an anticipatory bail application in the court.