Sameera Reddy gifts a sari to Oprah

Shobha Warrier in Chennai

Sameera Reddy is on a high. Her Pongal release Vettai is a hit and her village belle act in the film was widely appreciated.

But that's not all.

The actress, an Oprah Winfrey fan, got to meet the celebrity talk show host at socialite Parmeshwar Godrej's party.

The actress recounts her Oprah experience from Singapore, where she is currently holidaying:
Parameshwar Godrej had organised a fantastic party to welcome Oprah Winfrey in India. She had called lots of people from Mumbai and I was among the invited guests.

I was promoting Vettai in Chennai and was scheduled to leave for Singapore after that. But when the party invitation arrived, I made sure that I was present in Mumbai to attend as I'm a big fan of Oprah. 

She is one of my favourite talk show hosts and an inspiration to me. I am sure she must have inspired many to educate and empower women. I told her when I met her that I was a quiet, shy girl and she had a lot to do with my metamorphosis. Her words were inspiration to me to come out of the shell.

Image: Oprah Winfrey and Sameera Reddy

UAE Cops Deny mom killed child

Dubai, Jan 17 (ANI): UAE Police have denied that a 30-year-old Indian woman, who survived a suicide bid, has confessed to helping her husband kill their daughter before he hanged himself.

A 32-year-old man Rijesh, and his daughter Avanti, were recently found dead inside their apartment in Dubai while his wife Sreesha was hospitalised in a critical condition.

Reports on Monday suggested that the woman spoke briefly with the police and confessed that she had held down her daughter while her husband smothered the five-year-old with a pillow.

Brigadier Khalil Ebrahim Al Mansouri, Director of Dubai Police's Criminal Investigation Department, however, denied these reports and said the woman did not speak at all.

"The woman has been moved to the psychiatric ward in the hospital, and her mental condition does not allow questioning," Gulf News quoted Al Mansouri, as saying.

According to Al Mansouri, the woman will be charged with attempted suicide, but it is up to the Public Prosecution to decide the final charges upon completing investigations.

As per the UAE laws, attempting to commit suicide is a criminal offence that mandates a fine of up to Dh5,000 and/or six months imprisonment.

If proven that she had taken part in suffocating her daughter, the woman may also face charges of murder.

The incident has sent shockwaves across the community as residents are baffled by what could have pushed the young family, from Kerela, to take such extreme measures.

According to the report, Rijesh was working with a consultancy firm and recently moved to an electronics company and his wife Sreesha was working with a private company. The daughter was attending kindergarten at an Indian school. (ANI)

Wenger: Arsenal-United clash still huge

Arsene Wenger is adamant that Arsenal's encounters with Manchester United remain as one of the Premier League’s most explosive clashes in the English football calendar.

While Arsenal versus United fixtures were a benchmark of the explosive pace and passion of the Premier League in the late 1990s and early 2000s when both teams were at the pinnacle of English football, the emergence of other genuine title contenders such as Chelsea and Manchester City recently have somewhat diluted the tie.
However, Gunners supremo Wenger has bristled at suggestions that his side's matches with the Red Devils have lost some of its glamour and standing.
"It's still the same. It is not the only game anymore because you have Chelsea and Man City coming in, with Liverpool still there. But it is a game that is watched all over the world," he told Arsenal Player.
"We do [lift ourselves], we think we are on a similar level. I still think that when we have everybody available we are a strong force in this league. That's why it is important that we fight very hard [in order] not to drop points."
Despite his side's embarrassing 8-2 thrashing at the hands of United at Old Trafford in last August's league tie, Wenger is confident that his side can pick up maximum points against Sir Alex Ferguson's charges.
"They sometimes have a very compact midfield to kill our passing game and get us on the counter-attack. They do that very well," he said.
"I believe that sometimes it works for them, although last year we beat them 1-0 [at the Emirates] in a convincing way. It depends on how well we play on the day, how well we pass the ball through their lines - no matter how many are in there."

NHL: Red Wings seal shoot-out win

Red Wings

The Detroit Red Wings proved themselves kings of the shoot-out once again with a 3-2 victory over the Phoenix Coyotes on Thursday.

Todd Bertuzzi scored in regulation and then made a brilliant backhand shot in the shoot-out as the Red Wings won their fifth in a row.

Three of the wins in Detroit's streak have come in shoot-outs, two of them over Phoenix by identical scores.
No shootout was necessary in Columbus, where the Nashville Predators eased past the Blue Jackets 3-0.

Pekka Rinne saved 38 shots for his fourth shut-out, while Martin Erat, Mike Fisher and Shea Weber scored for the Predators, who won for the ninth time in 11 games.

Elsewhere, Nathan Horton and Gregory Campbell scored in a 35-second span in the third period as the Boston Bruins claimed a 4-1 victory at the New Jersey Devils.

That was also the scoreline in New York, where the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Rangers with the assistance of 30 saves from Marc-Andre Fleury, and in Philadelphia, where the New York Islanders saw off the Flyers.

Evgeni Nabokov made 40 saves as the Islanders won for the third time in their last four games, and for the first time in Philadelphia since April 7, 2007.

Jaroslav Halak made 15 saves for his second straight shut-out as the St Louis Blues beat the Edmonton Oilers 1-0, while there was yet another 4-1 scoreline in Toronto as the Maple Leafs enjoyed a
comfortable win over the Minnesota Wild.

The Buffalo Sabres were also on the wrong end of one more 4-1 defeat, losing their franchise-record 11th straight road game at the Winnipeg Jets.
 nd Nik Antropov scored for Winnipeg, while Drew Stafford replied for Buffalo.
Amazingly there was another 4-1 scoreline as the Ottawa Senators beat the San Jose Sharks at HP Pavilion.

The Senators scored through Colin Greening (two), Kyle Turris and Eric Karlsson to claim their ninth win in their last 11 games and a first over the Sharks since October 18, 2003.
In the day's final game, the Calgary Flames beat the Los Angeles Kings 2-1 after a shoot-out, with Mike Cammalleri scoring what proved to be the winner.

Microsoft Rejiggers New File System Windows Server 8

Microsoft Rejiggers File System for Windows Server 8

By Richard Adhikari
TechNewsWorld
01/17/12 3:00 PM PT

Windows Server 8 will feature a new kind of file system: Resilient File System, or ReFS. It's designed to auto-correct data, provide resiliency when paired with Storage Spaces, and optimize for extreme scaling. Data stored on ReFS will be accessible through the same file access APIs on clients that are used on operating systems that can access NTFS storage volumes.

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Move over, NTFS -- Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has announced a newly engineered file system, ReFS, for Windows Server 8.

ReFS, or Resilient File System, builds on NTFS, including many of its features but leaving out others.
It will be introduced only as part of Windows Server 8, in line with Microsoft's standard approach for putting out new file systems.
ReFS will verify and auto-correct data, optimize for extreme scale and provide a full end-to-end resiliency architecture when used in conjunction with Storage Spaces. The two were designed and built together.
"I like the idea of trying to make everything as compatible with NTFS while trying to scale up something large-scale underneath it," Wes Miller, a research analyst at Directions on Microsoft, told TechNewsWorld.
"An NTFS replacement was overdue," said Murray Ellis II, director of engineering at Digistor.
Microsoft spokesperson Lacretia Taylor pointed to the company's blog post on ReFS but declined further comment.

What ReFS Is About

Further, REFS was designed so users won't have to take the file system offline.
Features and semantics ReFS inherits from NTFS include BitLocker encryption, access-control lists, USN Journal, change notification, volume snapshots and file IDs.
Data stored on ReFS will be accessible through the same file access APIs on clients that are used on operating systems that can access NTFS storage volumes.
Below the NTFS features, ReFS's code base uses a newly architected engine that implements on-disk structures such as the Master File Table to represent files and directories.
This new on-disk storage engine handles and manipulates on-disk structures. It uses B+ trees as the single common on-disk structure to represent all information on the disk.
A B tree is a tree data structure optimized for systems that read and write large blocks of data. It's commonly used in databases and file systems. B+ trees are one variant.
Trees can be very large and multi-level or really compact, having just a few keys, and embedded in another structure. This ensures extreme scalability up and down for all aspects of the file system, Microsoft said.

Reliability and ReFS

To maximize reliability, Microsoft uses an allocate-on-write approach that writes metadata updates to a different location in an atomic fashion instead of updating metadata in-place. Transactions are built on top of the allocate-on-write approach.
All ReFS metadata is checksummed at the level of a B+ tree page, and the checksum is stored separately from the page. This lets users detect all forms of disk corruption.
ReFS also offers an "integrity streams" option. When this is enabled, ReFS checksums files automatically and writes file changes using the allocate-on-write method. This ensures there's always a verifiable version of the file available to check for corruption if power is lost.
ReFS was designed to plug into the storage stack just like another file system. Microsoft expects it to work seamlessly with most file system filters.

Testing, Testing

ReFS has been tested with tens of thousands of tests that have been developed for NTFS. However, Microsoft apparently hasn't developed any new tests specific to ReFS.
That's not a problem, Directions on Microsoft's Miller suggested.
"The number of developers, especially in this country, that focus in on the file system and do the level of testing you need to do ... is so small that Microsoft has probably been doing plug fests with them ... the EMCs and StorageTeks," Miller said.
"Microsoft's coming up with a way that they can bring this new thing out and have it running while not breaking anything," Miller added.
There are no plans right now to make ReFS available on PCs, only on Windows Server 8 clients.
"ReFS would be used by an application, like Sharepoint, and the client would not change," Digistor's Ellis told TechNewsWorld. "There's nothing very satisfying."

Twinkling, bejewelled Indian wedding cards - got one yet?

  New Delhi, Jan 17 (IANS) They could be Swarovski studded, they could match the bride's trousseau, they could come in multiple folds and, yes, they might just cost Rs.100,000 (about $2,000) each. Welcome to the world of the big fat Indian wedding card!

The country's wedding market is said to be worth about Rs.1,500 billion (about $30 billion) - and growing at about 10-15 percent every year; so little surprise that marriage invites are getting to be a glitzy and exclusive affair.

NRIs, especially, are a major constituent of this market. The wedding in 2004 of Britain-based Indian steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal's daughter was said to have been a 30-million pound sterling affair.

"It's been studied that NRIs based in the US, Britain, Canada, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand want their marriages to be complete Indian affairs and this desire propels them to visit India for the selection of cards, jewelleries and venues," Gourav Rakshit, the business head of shaadi.com, told IANS.

The latest fad is exotic invitation cards.

Kapco Press Pvt Ltd CEO Neeraj Kapoor, who has been in the business for 26 years, told IANS that "people from around the globe are splurging on wedding cards like never before".

"This has added to the growth of designers, manufacturers and paper importers. Since cost and variety have gone up, there is no end to innovation," he said.

"People no longer want simple designs. More designers are entering. Prices have skyrocketed. Everyone, including the NRI, asks for the fanciest and most exclusive design even if it's not worth the amount spent. Some even say Indian designs are simply outstanding and can't be found anywhere else," he said.

Triveni Bakshi, a Canada-based NRI, is completely in awe of Indian designs.

"Yes! It's true that Indian wedding cards have no match. I personally like a lot of bling, something which has to do with fabrics or metal. Indian designs have so much variety - scroll with silk fabric and traditional Indian fonts or silver plated wedding card with embossed content," Bakshi had told IANS while she was here to attend the Celebrating Vivaha exhibition.

There are other designs too - from an oversized envelope with Lord Ganesha's picture drawn over with details about the wedding to an exquisitely worded invitation. The invites sent out are designed to wow guests.

"Innovation is the key and keeping this in mind ethnic designs have made a comeback. Also, personalised and handmade cards are a big trend nowadays as many people feel these add an emotional touch to the entire occasion," said wedding card designer Raj Kapoor.

Known for his brand Kaypee, Kapoor said, "There are people who ask for multi-folded cards which can be made to order, while others ask for scrolled out cards with matter printed on it."

Prices have also gone up.

"The price of wedding invitation cards depends on the materials used. A simple wedding card starts at Rs.30 per piece and it goes into lakhs for the Swarovski embellished multi-folded cards with box attached to it," said Shalini Punj, who runs wedding card company Vivaahsutra.

When it comes to the most sought after designs, striped, bejewelled motifs, bold colours, and vintage patterns matching the design of the bride's wedding trousseau are on the priority list.

"Vertical, horizontal and multicoloured stripes are termed as one of the most sought after trends this season. Also, embellishing the invitation with small rhinestones, pearl-toned beads or Swarovski crystals makes a low-key invitation style fashionable. The list is endless," said card-designer Piyali Rana.

"What is also gaining popularity are motif patterns. Brides ask to create a pattern on wedding cards inspired by her lehengas or saris. For instance, a ring of rosettes, a square of lace applique, or bead work."

Fancy boxes made of cardboard, hard plastic or even pure silver are also sent out as invitation cards.

"There are some cards which are given in fancy boxes made up of cardboard or hard plastic. They are decorated in such an elegant manner that after marriage it can be used as a jewellery or make-up box. So cards today are not restricted to only paper with details about wedding, but they have taken a different mould altogether," she added.