To mom and dad

Holding your cute bundle of joy is the most wonderful feeling in the world. But bringing up your child to become a responsible citizen of this society is itself a huge responsibility. And even though, parenting has seen an enormous transition, but at the end of the day, being parents still remains a tough job. This is where Parent Report comes to the rescue.

The Parent Report is one website which is exclusively related to the intricacies of parenting. Here, you can find information related to bringing up children in forms of articles and radio shows and participate in forums as well.

An important section of this website is ‘Resources’. It is divided in a way that you can either access resources by topics, or by the age group in which your child happens to be. Major topics include behaviour, development, sleep, education, nutrition and travel. The different age groups constitute new-born, infant, toddler, pre-school, early school, pre-teen and teenagers.

Within each section are articles, excerpts from the relevant books and radio shows. If you have a good internet connection, you can easily plug in the headset and listen to the shows. All relevant topics are covered here: the section on behaviour, mainly deals with video game addiction, depression among teenagers and learning and attention disorders; the section on nutrition covers breast feeding, dealing with obese children, and maintaining health during the teen years. The family life section provides help on travelling with kids.

If you prefer, you can access the section on radio shows directly from the home page. Hosted by broadcast journalist, Joanne Wilson, the show features advice from professionals, doctors and specialists on various aspects of parenting. Some of the topics which have been covered on previous shows include communication with teenagers, listening to children, socialisation and much more.

The various forums are the places where you can discuss your concerns and issues with parents from around the world. Some of the more popular topics include sibling rivalry, special children and coping with a newborn baby. You can also subscribe to the newsletter if you want to be informed of new content on the website.

And finally, the website features a comprehensive link that leads to more web-spots on parenting. So, if you feel you have not found what you are looking for, you can always visit the section and see if you can find something relevant.

Even a decade ago, very few people would have thought of logging on to the net to glean information on parenting. Today, more and more parents and parents to-be look towards the internet for anything that would help them in bringing up their child. The Parent Report is just one of the websites which are useful in this regard.

Need no tickets

Summer time and summer vacations both bring a great way to break the monotony of things – Wimbledon! The third Grand Slam of the year, and undeniably the most prestigious award for any tennis player. Wimbledon is held in the last week of June and goes up to the first weekend of July. This year, the tournament will be held from June 23, to of July 6, and even with the acutely-felt absence of Justine Henin it is promising to be a very interesting event to watch out for.

If you happen to be an avid tennis fan, it is quite likely that you would want to keep up to date on everything related to the tournament. And it just is not enough to simply watch the matches, especially with the plethora of websites around in cyberspace to give you an insight to all that is happening to the players, the interesting tidbits of news and views, the opinion and prediction of the experts, and of course, the interview transcripts of the players which are always interesting to read.

The official Wimbledon website where you can visit regularly is http://www.wimbledon.org.Although the selection of news and photographs is limited here, but the section on live scores is the best. However, the section on matches is in progress and will let you know (on a point-by-point basis) how the match is progressing. If you have good internet connection, the page will refresh itself as soon as the player wins a point. Of course, this cannot beat the actual watching of the match on your television, but if TV is not an option, then you can avail the opportunity.

The website also offers you to relive some of the best moments in the past championships, for example, there is a whole collection of videos featuring some of the best played points over the years. There are videos on the Wimbledon legends, highlights of the 2006 championship and loads of more stuff to watch and enjoy, assuming of course, that your internet connection supports streaming content.

For the news and photo galleries, I found the Yahoo! Sports section on tennis http://sports.yahoo.com/ten/ the best. This website not only has media on the Wimbledon Championships, but the French Open as well. You can find loads of photos and news stories from different wires. The best part of course, is the seed report and the mid-term grades by Sports Illustrated staff writer Jon Wertheim. These reports are usually posted in the tennis section of Yahoo! Sports. But you can always log onto Sports Illustrated at http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/tennis/index.html to get the latest and read the reports directly.

The tennis section of Sports Illustrated is also a treat for avid tennis fans, as it features things like top tennis performances of the year, top earning players in tennis singles and win-loss records of different players.

However, there is also a very large selection of articles written by the tennis writers – most of them are opinion pieces and you will find that there is a whole debate going on as to why Justine Henin suddenly retired from tennis while she was the top-ranked player.

Moving on to players, when it comes to Wimbledon, Roger Federer is the person who has been dominating the men’s finals for the past few years. This year, it would be an understatement to say that he is still the favourite to win the title. To know more about Roger Federer and his performance on the ATP tour, you can log onto his official website http://www.rogerfederer.com

On the women’s side, the Williams sisters are always the favourite, considering that they have dominated more times than anyone else in the past few years. However, they are sure to get a very stiff competition from some of the upcoming players like Anna Ivanovic as well as the more experienced ones like Maria Sharapova. To get an insight into the Williams sisters, you can visit their fan website at http://www.williamssisters.org/ as well as their official websites at http://www.serenawilliams.com/ and http://www.venuswilliams.com/. The latter website of course has a lot on Venus’s other activities too.

So there you have it – Wimbledon is no more about sitting in front of your television and watching a match. It is about watching one match, going online to read the reports, post-match interviews of both the players, predicting the outcome, finding out the winning player etc. And of course, if you are a diehard fan of any player, you might want to interact with fans around the world and share views about the different matches of that player.

Sri-Lanka: The Ongoing War

The Tamil Tigers of Eelam have a history of their own, to understand the ongoing war one must start from the very beginning.

The story of Sri Lanka is the oft-told and oft-emphasized history, present and future of many of those nations in the world where there is a strong and well-organized separatist movement. This separatist movement has a history of its own, and is in a state of constant conflict with the contemporary government which is determined to quell it once and for all.

But of course, one must start from the very beginning to make sense of the current volatile situation in Sri Lanka. In this particular country, the separatist movement has been ongoing since 1983 and at the forefront is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, more commonly known as the LTTE or Tamil Tigers. This is mainly a minority group based on ethnicity. Alleging that they are persecuted and discriminated against by the majority ethnic group, the Sinhalese, the Tamil Tigers want a separate, independent state of their own, named Tamil Eelam, in the form of the East and North of Sri Lanka.

As it has been with most nations of the world, yet again, the government of Sri Lanka is not willing to break the state into two to cater to the demands of the Tamil Tigers. And hence, since 1983, the successive governments of Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers have been at loggerheads with one another. Whoever has come into the government has tried its best to crush the movement of the Tamil Tigers using all of the military might that the country possesses. On the other hand, the Tamil Tigers have been resisting quite effectively.

The result of this ongoing internal battle, of course, is that there have been heavy casualties on both the sides. The exact figures of the casualties remain unknown as the media is barred from the conflict areas. Whichever figures are quoted to the media come from either one of the two warring sides. And as can be expected in conflicts such as these, psychological warfare is raging too – each side overestimates the casualties of the opponents and underplays its own figures. Hence, it is impossible to objectively determine who the stronger side is. However, a total of 68,000 people are estimated to have lost their lives since the beginning of this conflict.

Another consequence of this war has been that LTTE is now considered as a terrorist organization by quite a few countries, and the Sri Lankan government as well as most of the international press refers to them as militants. As can be expected, this conflict has also harmed the country’s economy in a significant way.

It is not that there have been no attempts to mediate between the two parties and bring about some sort of solution through dialogue. There have been quite a few attempts and the most significant of them led to the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the two opponents in 2002. However, skirmishes continued even after the signing of the agreement. And as recently as January 2008, the Sri Lankan government formally announced that it was withdrawing itself from the ceasefire agreement as the Tamil Tigers continue to violate the terms and conditions of this ceasefire. Tamil Tigers responded to this by saying that they were willing to abide by the terms of the ceasefire and were quite shocked that the government has withdrawn from the agreement in such a manner.

Since this formal withdrawal, violence has escalated in Sri Lanka. In April 2008, 185 Sri Lankan soldiers were reported to have been killed as they attempted to capture the stronghold of the Tamil Tigers. Fighting between the two continued in different parts of the country, with 25 Tamils losing their lives.

As fighting continues in Sri Lanka, one must ask who the real sufferer is – the answer of course, is that the civilians are suffering. Civilians are routinely killed when there are bomb attacks. Moreover, with the Sri Lankan army engaged in this internal battle, one can imagine that the defense spending must be over-riding the spending on things like health and education. It is about time that there was some international mediation once again to try and restore peace in the region, and to attempt to solve this conflict through dialogue and negotiations.

Caution: Read before you use

World over, people use household products to either speed up their work or make it more efficient. These products have become a regular feature in most houses and are becoming increasingly popular.

However, most of us are blissfully unaware of the reality behind these products. Unsafe Home is a website which discusses in detail the commonly used household stuff, and, on the basis of thorough research, proves that there are some products which pose significant health hazards in the long-run. And these products can be as seemingly harmless as cleaners, disinfectants, household pesticides, perfumes, antiseptics and air fresheners.

The drop-down menu at top of the homepage is the best way to access the required information since it is categorised into various sections.

The first section is the most enlightening — it will give you information on different chemicals that you keep in your house. This section not only carries research on such items, but discusses the basic construction of houses as well. It describes how the material that is used in pipes and kitchen counters can release toxins which are injurious to health.

The best feature about the section is that it has specifically named the chemicals emitted by different types of household material and products, focusing health hazards of each. The next section on House Problems delves deeper with cleaners and the health hazards that they pose.

Another section deals with personal care products. These products are not very safe either, according to this website. Harmless looking antiperspirants and nail polishes may contain chemicals that harm you physically in the long run. You can read through this section to discover what to watch out for in the case of which product.

Moreover, there are many quick facts and figures illustrating the points made — most of them pertain to the US, but they are still alarming.

Overall, this website does not only educate about the risks in your house — it also tries to guide you towards safer choices. If you are in the process of getting your house constructed, you can pay more attention to these minor details to ensure a safe environment for you and your family. If you are the person responsible for stocking up the grocery cupboard every month, then this website will help you decide which products to choose. At the end of the day, it is all about vigilance and how you exercise it.

To find out more about how common household products can harm us, log on to http://www.unsafehome.com

Forward me not

Open your inbox at any given time of the day and night, and there is a likely chance that you will find at least one forwarded email. There is an equally likely chance that you will trash it without giving it a second look.

In spite of the advent of Snopes.com and its resultant attempts to inform email users of the reality and authenticity behind most of the emails doing rounds in cyberspace, these mails are still forwarded. Apparently, there is a still a large number of people who believe that sending mails to all the contacts on their list will earn them a hefty amount in the US dollars from Bill Gates himself. And then, there are those who still seem to harbour the notion that AOL can ‘track’ the number of times an email was forwarded and donate the equivalent amount to a charitable cause.

You may have tried replying to various users to stop sending you chain mails, but do they listen? However, there is no reason why we should give up on trying to educate this lot. Break the Chain is one such attempt to correct people’s mistaken beliefs fostered by forwarded emails. This website discusses the content of forwarded emails and informs users how authentic (or otherwise) they really are.

The website is divided into sections based on the content of forwarded emails. The first section deals with armchair activism — emails which ask you to sign petitions or boycott a certain company for various reasons. Interestingly, the calls to boycott companies are sometimes based on pretty authentic reasons, but this website is quite sceptic about whether or not signing petitions actually serves the purpose. If you are interested, you can read through the different forms of petitions that people have been asked to sign over time.

Sick and Missing Kids is definitely worth a read. Given the number of emails which one receives about missing children and their photographs; or sick children and donations, this section should be an eye-opener. It is interesting to note how these chain letters have evolved over time with more and more gory details added to make them more heart wrenching —something which would ensure that you forward them in the first place, thinking they are true. Hardly any of these emails are authentic.

Virus Warnings are another favourite in this part of the world. Computer security being a primary concern to most people, it is, of course, nothing but consideration for others that makes people forward such virus warnings without haste. However, again, very few of these warnings are actually legitimate. Check out the virus section on this website and read up on the non-existent viruses and all that they can do. The website suggests running a good antivirus frequently to keep your PC free from these menaces.

Health Hazards deal with emails which caution you against using certain products in view of their dangerous consequences. Of course, some of these are authentic but others are simply ridiculous. Other sections include humour, politics and of course, ‘free’ stuff which, by-the-way, is not free at all.

The best way to make use of this website is to log onto it the next time you receive a forwarded email. If the contents of the mail are not authentic, hit ‘reply all’ and let everyone know the reality of the email they have just received. You would be doing a lot of people a big favour.

To get the scoop on what really is behind those forwarded emails you receive, log onto http://www.breakthechain.org

The Imbroglio that is Tibet

At first glance, the story of Tibet seems quite familiar – especially to those who are well versed with international relations and politics. It is a classic case of a smaller and relatively powerless country being overpowered by a stronger one a few decades ago. And now, there is a strong separatist movement within that small piece of land. This movement, whose majority comprises of a strong and motivated force of young people, wants complete independence and is willing to resort to violence if necessary.

However, is this really as simple as it seems? The sequence of events which has taken place ever since the Communist regime of China assumed control of Tibet has been anything but simplistic. In fact, these events prove, without doubt, that without a complete understanding of the underlying history and politics of the country concerned, it is quite easy to be deceived by whatever filters through to the mainstream media.

First and foremost, how did China get control of Tibet? History shows that the People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet in 1950. Being a smaller country with an ill-equipped army, Tibet was unable to defend itself effectively. By signing the Seventeen Point Agreement in 1951, Tibet was officially incorporated into the People's Republic of China.

Of course this version of events is disputed by those who historically prove that it was Great Britain which had given the suzerainty of Tibet to the Nationalist China Party. In 1949, this nationalist party was defeated by the Communist Party, and so, it naturally assumed the suzerainty of Tibet. Suzerainty is a case of a smaller country being a subsidiary of sorts to a larger and more powerful country. The smaller country has some degree of autonomy or self-rule, which distinguishes it from sovereignty.

Irrespective of whichever version of events is more authentic, the fact remains that Tibet has been under China for quite a few decades now. What spurred the current crisis was a rally organized in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on 10th March 2008 to commemorate the revolt that took place against the incorporation of the country into China. The rally per se might not have created so much trouble – however, with emotions running high, the rally became a bit violent. As a result, Chinese soldiers opened fire at unarmed demonstrators and to date, the total casualties are unknown. But one can only imagine that the figure must run very high, considering that protestors were directly fired at.

The events following this violence were quite predictable. Tibetans reacted very strongly against the Chinese authorities. In spite of repeated attempts by their exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, to remain peaceful and solve issues through dialogue, violence has increased to the extent that Tibet now wants its independence from China, and has called on the world to boycott the Beijing Olympics 2008.

Interestingly, the European Parliament has called for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the summer Olympics if China does not start a dialogue with the exiled Dalai Lama.

The stance of Pakistan is diametrically opposed to that of India. President Pervez Musharraf has categorically spelled out that Pakistan considers Tibet as an "inalienable" part of China and has offered help to crush the separatist movement in Tibet. President Musharraf has also condemned what he terms "attempts to politicize the Beijing Olympic Games." India, which happens to be the place where the Dalai Lama is residing, is giving off pro-Tibet vibes. Many exiled Tibetans are using India as their base to launch their activities without any serious retaliation or reproach from the Indian government.

More interesting is the American stance on this issue. At the time of the 10th March Lhasa incident, President, US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi was visiting India. In the aftermath of that incident, she went to visit the Dalai Lama and reassured him that US was fully supportive of the Tibetan separatist movement. American stance seems interesting, but not quite surprising. Should Tibet gain independence, it would surely need the backing of a larger and stronger country like USA to defend itself - this would ensure American presence in a very strategic country in Asia. The unity and stability of China being threatened is an added bonus to the USA as well.

The question which now arises is – does China really fit into the "bad guy" image which the mainstream media is portraying it as? An alternative viewpoint emphasizes that China has carried out immense developmental work in Tibet – this includes the rebuilding of several Buddhist temples, establishing educational institutes as well as hospitals, constructing a highway system and granting freedom of worship to Tibet's Buddhists. What happened at Lhasa was indeed condemnable, but one cannot ignore all that China really has done for Tibet. Similarly, to boycott the Olympics would seem tantamount to supporting the Tibet separatist movement, and with it, backing the American stance on it. The best course of action would be to regard this as China's internal issue, and let them deal with it.

IT's here

Given the information technology and telecommunication boom in the country, it is no surprise that an increasing number of telecom companies are cropping up in the market. To give this a further boost, a local niche on the web has emerged to apprise people about the hot happenings of the industry. So whether you are a part of it, or you wish to learn the nitty gritty, Get IT is the website to visit.

This website has a comprehensive job listings posted in reverse chronological order by date. The main page displays the job title required along with the company which requires the human resource. You can access individual job postings per your interest and expertise.

Those interested in finding out about the events and opinions of the IT world can surf the section on articles. The content is varied where some articles are more technical than others, like marketing techniques through an e-newsletter; and some are meant for light reading like an article on cell phones ringing at every odd time of the day, etc. You can also find articles posted on the Get IT blog.

The news section is also a key characteristic of this website, which features latest happenings in the world of telecommunications, business and technology. News items are categorised into these three main sections so you can access whichever you like.

As with every telecom website, gadgets and gizmos also make their presence felt. You can check out various products and their features which have been launched recently. Moreover, telecom and technology events are also listed here for your convenience along with the details of when and where they will be held.

Furthermore, if you have a good internet connection you can avail an interesting section on videos by downloading the content. These videos feature interviews of Get IT with different professionals in the field, plus the speeches of notable professionals from around the world given on the occasion of an international conference.

You can also either participate in the poll or contribute articles for various sections. The website has instructions on how you can become their regular contributor. For aspiring writers, there are many different aspects of both telecom and technology that you may write on and send to the editor of Get IT.

With telecom and IT both being the buzz words of today, Get IT is a commendable effort to make the information pertaining to the two, relevant for local audiences. It is no longer about the global revolution in telecom and IT — it is all about the one taking place around you. Whether you are a novice or an expert in the field, you will definitely have something to gain from visiting this website.

To read more about the state of IT and telecommunications industry in this country, log onto http://www.getit.pk