Gabrielle Giffords Photos: First Images Of Congresswoman Since Arizona Shooting

PHOENIX (Associated Press) -- The first photos of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since she was shot in the head in a mass shooting in Tucson about five months ago were released early Sunday.
The photos appeared on her Facebook page.

The Facebook photos, taken May 17 outside her Houston hospital, are the first clear snapshots of Giffords since the shooting five months ago during a constituent meet-and-greet in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson.
The photos showed how far she has come since she was wounded in the left side of her forehead, but her spokeswoman, Pia Carusone, has cautioned that Giffords still has a long way to go in her recovery.
They show the congresswoman outside, the greenery of the hospital lawn in the background. She smiled directly into the camera in one, while in the other she smiled downward as she sat next to her mother, Gloria Giffords.

Giffords has been in a Houston rehab facility since two weeks after the Jan. 8 shooting. Six people were killed and 13 were injured, including Giffords.

Carusone said Friday that Giffords could be released sometime this month.
She said doctors and family are considering "many factors" while making the critical next-step decision to release Giffords from TIRR Memorial Hermann, the hospital where she has been undergoing intensive daily rehabilitation since late January.
"We're looking at before the end of the month. We're looking at early July," Carusone said. "We don't have a date."
But in an interview published this week in the Arizona Republic, Carusone made clear that Giffords remains a shadow of her former self as she has difficulty stringing together sentences and relies heavily on gestures and facial expressions to communicate. She also faces some difficulty in expressing bigger, more complex thoughts, Carusone said.
While Giffords' release from the hospital after five months of intensive inpatient therapy will mark an important step in her recovery, she still must undergo months of outpatient rehabilitation that will include speech, occupational and physical therapy.
Since the shooting, the only time the public has gotten a glimpse of Giffords was April 27 as she boarded a plane to Florida to watch astronaut husband Mark Kelly launch into space. The grainy footage, taken from afar, showed Giffords slowly but purposefully walk up the airplane's stairs.
The newly released photos, shot by Tucson photographer P.K. Weis just before surgery on her skull, provide a much clearer image.
Last month as Kelly was orbiting Earth, doctors repaired Giffords' skull, finally freeing her from wearing a cumbersome protective helmet that her staff members say she hated.
Since the shooting, Giffords has made remarkable strides, requesting her favorite foods, singing her favorite songs, and relearning how to walk and talk, although she struggles to string sentences together.
In an interview with The Arizona Republic published Thursday, Giffords' Chief of Staff Pia Carusone said Giffords' limited speaking ability has led her to rely primarily on facial expressions and hand gestures to communicate.
"She is borrowing upon other ways of communicating. Her words are back more and more now, but she's still using facial expressions as a way to express. Pointing. Gesturing," Carusone said. "Add it all together and she's able to express the basics of what she wants or needs. But, when it comes to a bigger and more complex thought that requires words, that's where she's had the trouble."
Carusone also said that if Giffords' recovery were to plateau now, "it would not be nearly the quality of life she had before."
"All that we can hope for is that she won't plateau today and that she'll keep going and that when she does plateau, it will be at a place far away from here," she said.
Jared Lee Loughner, 22, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the shooting and is being held at a Missouri facility. A judge declared him incompetent to stand trial, but prosecutors hope his competency can be restored so he can answer for the charges.

Source : huffingtonpost

Young tusker goes on the rampage in Elephant City

A wild elephant charges a security guard in Mysore on Wednesday. The man succumbed to injuries sustained in the attack.

A young wild elephant rampaged through the heart of Mysore early on Wednesday, trampling a man to death and injuring four others. Two head of cattle also died in the elephantine fury.

Straying from its herd, the male elephant, aged between 8 and 10, entered the city along with a 12-year-old tusk-less male (a makhna). But it was the tusker which terrorised people as well as cattle in its six-hour rampage.

The makhna, which was separated from the tusker, fortunately did not attack people. Both elephants — believed to be part of a herd from the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary, some 40 km from here — ran in different directions: one towards the Sewage Treatment Plant near R.S. Naidu Nagar (Kesare) where it stayed put, and the other towards the Shivarampet-Saraswatipuram areas.

Renukaswamy (55), a security guard at a bank ATM at Shivarampet, was gored to death. The attack was filmed live by journalists and amateurs on mobile phones. The hapless man ran into one of the bylanes of this crowded locality, only to be outrun by the animal. The attack was filmed by journalists and amateurs on mobile phones.

The injured, attacked in other residential localities, are Balakrishna (42), Siddamma (80), Velvet (52) and Pavan (24). While the first three were being treated in the K.R. Hospital, the fourth person was treated as an outpatient and discharged, said Commissioner of Police Sunil Agarwal.

The tusker trashed some vehicles also during its rampage, which began in the Bamboo Bazaar area around 5.15 a.m.

Panic gripped the city, whose most famous festival features resplendently caparisoned elephants, as news of the rampage spread. A live telecast drew curious people who turned up in large numbers to watch something straight from When Animals Attack.

Vehicles not spared

The tusker first attacked a cow tethered to a post on New Sayyaji Rao Road around 6 a.m., and fatally injured another in an adjacent neighbourhood. It then marched towards Mission Hospital Road and attacked octogenarian Siddamma, who was too frail to outpace the agitated jumbo.

“The elephants were first noticed at Bamboo Bazaar around 5.15 a.m. They panicked on seeing the crowds,” Satish Naidu, who tracked the young tusker all along its route, told The Hindu.

Anxious crowds began gathering wherever the tusker went. The police gathered in full strength to contain the surging crowds in and around the Saraswatipuram area, where the animal barged into some scrub near Dhobi Ghat.

Efforts were made to tranquillise the animal on two occasions, the first on the Oval Grounds, which failed. The young bull went on to damage some vehicles, including a KSRTC bus, along the main road and on the JSS Women's College premises.

Another dart was fired near Dhobi Ghat, where hundreds had gathered to see the unfolding drama. Jute ropes and shackles were kept ready before elephants from Mysore Palace took control of the situation. The young animal was finally led away around 11.30 a.m.

The makhna, which stayed put in its refuge, was successfully tranquillised in the afternoon. Four Dasara elephants — Arjuna, Abhimanyu, Gajendra and Srirama — which were brought from the forests, then took over. This was around 5.30 p.m.

Ajay Mishra, Field Director, Project Elephant, told The Hindu that the elephants were corralled now and would be safely released into the forests on Thursday.

As soon as the attack commenced in the area, which has a clutch of schools, the district administration declared a holiday for all educational institutions.

Karnataka Minister for Forests C.H. Vijayashankar, who visited Mr. Renukaswamy's house later, consoled the grieving family and promised a job to one of the members. He handed over a cheque for Rs. 5 lakh as compensation (as a special case) to the family.

The Minister later called on the injured in the hospital, where the condition of Siddamma is said to be serious. 

Source : thehindu

M.F. Husain passes away in London

M.F. Husain in front of M.S. Subbulakshmi's portrait in Chennai. Filephoto: V.Ganesan

M.F. Husain, one of the pioneers of modern Indian art and hailed as the "Picasso of India", died in a London hospital on Thursday after a heart attack. He was 95.

Husain, who was forced to leave India in 2006 following death threats from right-wing Hindutva groups over his depiction of Hindu deities, had been living in London and Dubai. Last year, in an unprecedented gesture, Qatar offered him citizenship which he accepted though he insisted that India would always remain his "home" regardless of where he lived physically.

Family sources were reported as saying that he would not be taken to India for burial and his last rites would be conducted in London.

The famously "barefoot" artist, who started his career by painting film hoardings in the 1940s, put Indian art on the world map with his own work routinely fetching millions of dollars in the international market. Only recently one of his paintings fetched Rs. 2.32 crore at an auction at Bonham’s in London.

Born on September 17, 1915 in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, Hussain lost his mother when he was only one and a half years old. His father remarried and moved to Indore where he went to school. In 1935, he moved to what was then Bombay and joined Sir J. J. School of Art. As a young struggling artist he painted cinema hoardings and first came to limelight in the 1940s. He then quickly made his mark as one of the pioneering spirits behind India’s fledgling avante garde movement. In 1947, he joined the Progressive Artists' Group, led by F.N .Souza.

Husain made his international debut in 1952 with a solo exhibition at Zurich and soon established a worldwide reputation becoming one of India’s highest paid painters. Owning his work became a mark of social status. In 1955, the Government honoured him with Padma Shree.

Reputed for his free creative spirit and his sense of adventure, Husain experimented with cinema making his first film "Through the Eyes of a Painter" in 1967. The film was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and won a Golden Bear. He also made two Hindi films, "Gaja Gamini" and "Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities."

Husain, easily recognizable in his trademark flowing beard and white hair, was a familiar figure in London’s art circles and remained active until his last days. Tributes poured in as news of his death spread. His death marks the end of an era in Indian art. 

Source : thehindu