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Weekly Update
Bhangra dance workout is a sweaty fitness celebration
NEW YORK: Sarina Jain tells her students to pretend they are dancing at her wedding. And as her class steps, claps and sweats to the pulsating sounds of Indian drumbeats, she encourages them to “Celebrate! Celebrate! Celebrate!”
Jain is not getting married, and the T-shirts and workout pants worn to her class are nothing like wedding finery. But the moves she is teaching are usually seen in banquet halls and Bollywood films, not New York City gyms.
Jain is the creator of the Masala Bhangra Workout, a fitness programme that blends aerobics with Bhan-gra, a type of folk music and dance that developed in Punjab. It has morphed into a modern pop dance sensation.
“Its vigour and vitality just make you move,” said Jain, a California native whose parents were born in India.
Jain, dubbed the “Indian Jane Fonda” by her students, teaches at several gyms in New York, adding Bhangra to an extensive list of dance-based fitness classes that draw upon genres as diverse as African dance, ballet, hip-hop, belly dancing, salsa and mambo.
Experts say incorporating music and dance into exercise routines can help people enjoy their workouts more.—AP
Eight wickets just another day’s work for Muralitharan
NOTTINGHAM: There aren’t many bowlers in the world who can take eight wickets in an innings and have that performance rated only somewhere among their top 10.
At one point on Monday, it looked as though Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan might become only the third bowler in cricket history to take all 10 wickets in an innings — after former England spinner Jim Laker and India legspinner Anil Kumble.
The charismatic Muralitharan ended up with 8-70 to help bowl out England for 190 in its second innings and hand Sri Lanka a series-leveling 134-run victory in the third test at Trent Bridge.
It was Muralitharan’s 53rd five-wicket haul in tests and, added to his 3-63 in England’s first innings, made it the 16th time he’s taken 10 wickets or more in a test.
The offspinner has 635 wickets from 106 tests, second only to Australia’s Shane Warne with 685 from 140.
Asked where Murali-tharan’s latest feat rated, his captain Mahela Jayawar-dena said: “It’s probably one of the best but there are quite a few. He’s done this on quite a regular basis, it’s not the first time I’ve seen it.”
Muralitharan’s best innings is 9-51 against Zimbabwe at Kandy in January 2002.—AP
Man lost in jungle found
KUALA LUMPUR: A man who disappeared in the dense jungles of central Malaysia three weeks ago has been found alive
by three brothers from a tribe that live deep in a forest reserve, news reports and police said on Wednesday.
Mohamad Nordin Omar, a land surveyor, went missing on May 15 while working in the Lojing Highlands rainforest bordering Kelantan and Pahang states, about 300 km northeast of Kuala Lumpur.
Police and rescue teams had been scouring the forest for Mohamad Nordin for nearly three weeks, but with little progress.
Mohamad Nordin was severely dehydrated when the brothers found him late Tuesday and too weak to make the six-hour trek back to their village in the dense jungles of Pahang.—AP
Two frog species feared extinct found
OSLO: Two frog species feared extinct have been rediscovered in Colom-bia, a boost for scientists battling to save rare amphibians.
“These finds show there is still hope... a lot of these species were pretty much written off,” Claude Gascon, a senior vice-president at Conser-vation International in Washington, said.
Scientists have found the Santa Marta Harlequin frog and the San Lorenzo Harlequin frog, rated critically endangered after no sightings in 14 years, in a reserve in the Sierra Madre de Santa Marta massif on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
The rediscovery of another species — a painted frog — in Colom-bia, was announced last month.
Some scientists say amphibians are on the front line of what may become the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.—Reuters
Breakthrough in growing human organs
SYDNEY: Australian researchers have grown beating heart tissue in the laboratory in a world-first breakthrough that could lead to the creation of entire human organs, scientists said.
The team of Australian scientists and surgeons said their work aimed to grow organs, including parts of the heart, using patients’ own stem cells to avoid the problems of immune system rejection of transplanted organs.
BANGKOK: Two elephants play before the screening of the Thai animation movie Kan Kluay in Ayuthaya province, about 80km north of Bangkok on June 5. The movie tells the story of a young Thai wild elephant who, while looking for his father, becomes the war elephant of the Thai King fighting against Burma and restored Thailand's ancient Ayuthaya empire that existed about 400 years ago.—Reuters
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