Hyderabad, Jun 12(PTI)A youth who dated and cheated as many as 22 girls by collecting money from them using his fake matrimonial profile has landed behind bars, police said today. After receiving complaint from a victim, Cyber Crime sleuths in the Crime Investigation Department arrested Ravi Kishore Bojanki from Masab Tank here yesterday, Superintendent of Police (Cyber Crimes) U Ramamohan said. On interrogation, Ravi confessed that he had created a profile on a matrimonial site falsely stating that he did IIT in Mumbai and MS from University of California and was presently working with a IT major here, the senior police officer said. "Upon seeing his impressive profile, many girls including the complainant contacted him and subsequently developed close relationship with him online and even fixed matrimonial alliance," Ramamohan said. However, Ravi, taking advantage of the situation and to earn easy money squeezed huge amounts from these girls by exploiting them emotionally with false stories like his father was undergoing surgery or his mother met with an accident, the police officer said, adding the accused extracted about Rs 12 lakh from the victims and was leading a lavish life. The accused confessed that he was a B Tech graduate and was making his earning by cheating girls and that he was in touch with 54 girls online, of whom he took money from 22 girls.
Source: ibnlive.in.com
Volunteers pit their wits against the controversial Kent 11-plus - thisiskent.co.uk
AS DEMAND for places continues to soar for already over-stretched grammar schools across West Kent, pressure is increasing for pupils taking the controversial 11-plus.
Amid mounting criticism from parents and education groups over the strain the exam is piling on pupils at such a young age, the Courier invited a group of volunteers to try it out for themselves.
-
BACK TO SCHOOL: Our volunteers sweat it out at Courier House
-
EXAM PRESSURE: Volunteers sit the 11-plus at Courier House. Pictured are Amanda Manuel, Teresa Stevens, Jo Paine, Amy, and Graham Naismith TWGF20120525C-006_C
-
EXAM PRESSURE: Volunteers sit the eleven plus exam at Courier House, Tunbridge Wells.
-
EXAM PRESSURE: Volunteers sit the eleven plus exam at Courier House, Tunbridge Wells.
-
EXAM PRESSURE: Volunteers sit the eleven plus exam at Courier House, Tunbridge Wells.
-
EXAM PRESSURE: Volunteers sit the eleven plus exam at Courier House, Tunbridge Wells.
They ranged from parents striving to get their child into their school of choice to teachers keen to experience the ordeal their pupils are put through.
The group took three practice papers – mathematics, plus verbal and non-verbal reasoning – under exam conditions.
Father-of-three Graham Naismith was one of those inviting ridicule from his children by taking part.
He said: "I think it is wrong for a ten-year-old to be spending the summer revising. I accept the system, I just think it's too early."
He is going through the appeal process with his daughter, who passed the 11-plus but failed to get a grammar place.
Former maths teacher Teresa Stevens was a borderline 11-plus case and failed to get a place at a grammar school when she took the test 50 years ago.
She had strong views, saying: "I'm against the 11-plus and against dividing children at 11. I have taught children that come into their own much later and some who stop developing at 11.
"I just think it's madness to push children into exams when they should be enjoying their youth."
The Kent pass rate is about 25 per cent and this year 61 children who did pass still missed out on a grammar school place. Of these, 40 were from West Kent.
Margaret Tulloch, secretary of Comprehensive Future which campaigns for a fair admissions policy, slammed the system which makes many children feel like "failures", adding: "It puts needless stress on children and the majority get the message that they are failures. It's ridiculous.
"We should be opening doors for children, not closing them."
Critics say the 11-plus and division of children does not lead to better results or a more successful schooling system.
Michael Pyke, from pressure group the Campaign for State Education, said the top international schooling systems were all based on a comprehensive system.
He added: "Selection does not produce better all-round results. The most efficient education system is that which educates the most people. Systems that are elitist are inefficient."
Nevertheless, many parents turn to private tutoring to secure a place at a super-selective school, which allocates places due to scores, such as Judd School, Tonbridge Grammar School and The Skinners' School.
Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School and Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys allocate places to children who pass the test and live within a catchment area.
Chair of governors at the boys' school, Michael Reidy, defended the testing process, saying: "The pass rate doesn't really justify the criticism of the exam.
"We have got children in West Kent clamouring for places. It's not unreasonably challenging for them but it's a filtering process."
But mother of two and chairman of Sevenoaks Action for Community Education campaign group Amanda Manuel said the admissions process was "flawed" and welcomed a county council review.
Pass marks...
The Kent 11-plus pass mark was 360 last year
This year, Judd School in Tonbridge wanted 418, The Skinners' School in Tunbridge Wells wanted 414 and Tonbridge Grammar School wanted 412 for children out of area and 409 for children within the area
The Kent pass rate is about 25 per cent
There are 164 selective schools in the UK
36 out of 152 LEAs have a selective system or some selective schools
The results...
Name: Graham Naismith, of Hazelbank, Langton Green
Age: 44
Occupation: IT
Reason for volunteering: Father of three, his daughter recently passed the 11-plus but missed out on a grammar school place so he is currently appealing
Score: 99 per cent
Reaction: "I thought it would be a mental challenge, timing and technique play a massive role in the 11-plus. "I'm frustrated I got a couple of questions wrong."
Name: Teresa Stevens, of Lower Green Road, Pembury
Age: 61
Occupation: Former maths teacher
Reason for volunteering: Took the 11-plus 50 years ago, was a borderline case and didn't get a spot at grammar school
Score: 82 per cent
Reaction: "It's what I expected.
"I was very slow on the non-verbal reasoning paper, I think it was that paper I originally fell down on.
"My maths is fast but I'm a slow thinker and it takes me a while to absorb it.
"I was curious to sit it again."
Name: Jo Paine, of Tristan Gardens, Rusthall
Age: 44
Occupation: School secretary
Reason for volunteering: Her daughter is due to take the 11-plus in September
Score: 96 per cent
Reaction: "I thought it would be supportive to try the 11-plus, my daughter thought it was hysterical.
"I'm hugely surprised by my result.
"The questions were fine but I think some would be tough for an 11-year-old.
"If you are trying to do it quickly it's really easy to misread it."
Name: Amanda Manuel, of Wickenden Road, Sevenoaks
Age: 41
Occupation: Businesswoman
Reason for volunteering: Mother of two and chairman of campaign group, Sevenoaks Action for Community Education
Score: 93 per cent
Reaction: "I have never seen an 11-plus paper, my children aren't at that age yet and I come from out of the county so it's not something I am familiar with. I thought it would be interesting.
"The first question on the verbal reasoning paper took me forever to get my head around but once I worked it out it wasn't too bad.
"I messed up several maths questions from not reading it properly.
"If we go down this path with our children I will make sure my son knows to read the question carefully, check his answers and write out the maths."
Name: Amy De-Keyzer, resident of Sevenoaks
Age: 23
Occupation: Reporter
Reason for volunteering: Born and brought up out of county and unfamiliar with the 11-plus
Score: 82 per cent.
Reaction: "Having gone through lots of exams in relatively recent years I was optimistic about the test.
"Some of the questions seemed tough and I made a major mistake in answering more questions than necessary because I didn't follow the instructions."
Source: www.thisiskent.co.uk
The marriage of church and state is anything but gay - The Guardian
The relationship was never on. The two of them hated each other and bickered from the start. There have been rows, bust-ups, trial separations and expensive lawyers, but they are irreconcilable. It is time to call a halt. The marriage of England's church and state is anything but gay.
Henry VIII's leadership of the church made sense at the time. It freed England from the religious bonds of Rome. But 1535 is not 2012. This week's Home Office document on gay marriage proposes that same-sex civil partnerships be called marriages, like the others. We can ask why, at these of all times, David Cameron should want to stir this episcopal hornets' nest. He apparently has debts to pay the gay community. But he is adamant for change, insisting at the same time that "no religious organisation will be forced to conduct same-sex marriages". They will be legally exempt.
If any proof were needed for church disestablishment, it is the capacity of canon lawyers to find quarrels in straws. What consenting adults do in private should be of no concern to governments, and that applies to worship as much as sex. If grownups want to dress in Tudor costume, douse babies in water, intone over the dead and do strange things with wine and wafers, it is a free country. But for a Christian sect to claim ownership of the legal definition of a human relationship is way out of order.
The church has a dreadful record on marriage. Rome placed chastity and celibacy as the highest state of man (and woman), while marriage was for the fallen. As Milton said, the church regarded matrimony as a state of disgrace, "a work of the flesh, almost a defilement". Only when medieval bishops saw where the money was did they declare marriage "so sacramental that no adultery or desertion could dissolve it".
Throughout the middle ages the church struggled to gain control of what had been an essentially secular contract between men and women. It was not until the 13th century that weddings had to be hallowed by a priest, even if this meant little more than an exchange of vows in a porch. Churches tried to bribe couples to the altar, as by giving them sides of bacon (hence "bringing home the bacon"). Common law marriage in England was not outlawed until 1753.
The current argument over gay marriage is near incomprehensible, except in terms of Anglican conservatism. All sexes can now be legally wed in registered premises and call themselves married. The word has changed its usage to embrace them. Gay people are now demanding the social status of "marrieds" and, more controversially, that the church be allowed to marry under licence.
The first demand is for lexicographers and seems harmless. The second is a matter between gay people and the church authorities. The government is not insisting on anything. It is specifically providing for churches to be exempt from any requirement of access for gay people. Yet the church seems desperate for a fight. It behaves like an elephant bitten by a gnat.
Given that only a quarter of weddings take place in Anglican churches, the number of gay couples wanting such a service must be small. Some churches already "bless" gay civil partnerships, as they do divorcees. Yet the church's lawyers claim that any exemption "could be challenged" by some litigious and theologically apostate homosexual under the European convention on human rights.
Anything these days can be challenged, but such a case is unlikely to prevail, given the convention's defence of religious freedom. The church has long refused to marry divorcees, and a local church can deny marriage to those with no parochial connection. I am not aware of any being dragged to a European court by irate suitors.
Canon lawyers protest that, even so, exemption would create a conflict between "separate categories" of civil and religious marriage. That is a difference, not a conflict, and hardly more terrible, as "senior church figures" tell the Daily Telegraph, than "any rift since the reign of Henry VIII".
This difference arises only because the Anglican church has long enjoyed a peculiar legal privilege of being able to register weddings in its own buildings. But such ritualising of a legal contract can now can take place in most stately homes. The church may moan about an offence to family tradition, but given its casual readiness to marry the absurdly young, it is hardly an ideal matrimonial counsellor. As for its complaint that gay marriage "raises the sort of problems that no one has had to address before", it should try joining the 21st century.
The church has been on the reactionary side in almost every political and social reform of the past two centuries. It opposed popular enfranchisement, secular schooling, easier divorce and legalised homosexuality. It continues to defy the law on gender equality in respect of bishops. This may be lovably fuddy-duddy to some, but the claim to parliamentary and legal privilege is an anachronism.
The government is proposing no more than to remove what in secular and civil terms is a terminological distinction between men and women. If the church wants to make this a Thomas Becket issue, that is its affair. The issue should not condition the action of government.
The Anglican church emerges from this row as absurdly pedantic. It wants to sustain an antique religious bond to a modern democratic state, with the outrageous claim that this should be a partnership of equals. The days when bishops could deny the franchise to Irish Catholics or demand a veto over the 1944 Education Act are over.
The government has honestly tried to meet theological objections to "marrying" gay couples through exemption. The church may fear a quarrel with the human rights lobby, but that is not the state's business. The only alternative is to strip the church of its special licence to register weddings altogether, and have done with "by law established".
The church has kept its 16th-century status for years by ducking and weaving whenever the going gets rough. It will presumably do so again. The government should take at face value the bishops' claim that gay marriage "snips the thread" between church and state, and toss establishment into the bin.
• Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Margate GP told patient 'his only hope was Jesus' - BBC News
A Kent GP said to a vulnerable patient that he would "eternally suffer" if he did not put his faith in Jesus, a medical watchdog has been told.
The General Medical Council (GMC) heard Dr Richard Scott, whose surgery is in Margate, told the 24-year-old patient that he would not give him medication.
A GMC panel in Manchester heard that the patient was told "his only hope of recovery was through Jesus".
Dr Scott disputes the account of the consultation in August 2010.
The remarks were said to have made at the end of a consultation at the Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate.
After discussing medical matters Dr Scott said, as a committed Christian, he had simply offered the patient the chance to talk about the role faith may have in helping with his problems.
At the four-day-hearing, Andrew Hurst, counsel for the GMC, claimed the doctor had told the man, known only as patient A: "He did have a cure, which would cure him for good.
"His one and only hope of recovery was through Jesus.
"If he did not turn to Jesus and hand him his suffering he would suffer for the rest of his life."
Anonymous witnessDr Scott disputes the account given by the patient, described by the GMC's own lawyer as a man with a "troubled psychological history".
When the case was first heard in September it was adjourned after the patient refused to give evidence.
The GMC heard that the patient had agreed to give evidence by phone on condition he was given anonymity and without the public or press present at the hearing.
Dr Scott said he was being denied a proper hearing after the GMC agreed to the patient's request on Monday.
An application by Dr Scott's lawyers for an adjournment to seek a judicial review to try to overturn the rules was rejected by the GMC's Investigation Committee.
Radio transcriptsMr Hurst pointed the GMC committee to transcripts of comments made by Dr Scott on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show and on Nicky Campbell's show on BBC Radio 5 live, speaking of his faith and its use in treating patients.
He said medical rules stated doctors "must not express to your patients your personal beliefs, including political, religious or moral beliefs, in ways that exploit their vulnerability or that are likely to cause them distress", and good medical practice stated the "first duty" of a doctor is the care of a patient".
The GMC was criticised over its alleged "persecution" of Christians after the case was first heard last September - which it rejects.
Mr Hurst said the GMC did not have any bias for or against any religion either way and medics could talk about faith - but Dr Scott had simply "crossed the line" and gone too far.
"The GMC's position is not one that is hostile or opposed or biased against Christianity or any other religion," he said.
"Nor does it seek to promote a wholly secular society."
He was then asked by the chairman of the committee who had prepared the transcripts of the radio programmes to be used in evidence against Dr Scott.
"The National Secular Society," Mr Hurst replied.
The case continues.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Aerial footage of West Sussex floods - BBC News
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment