Sunday, November 15, 2009 LEEUWARDEN: The eleventh edition of Domino Day, organized by Endemo Netherlands together with Robin Paul Weijers, known as "Mr Domino", has come to a successful conclusion. The world record for toppling dominoes has been broken, with 4,491,863 dominoes biting the dust. The standing world record was 4,345,027 dominoes, also set by Mr Domino in 2008. This year's event involved displays representing different continents. Mr Domino laboured for a year over the various patterns and techniques. A team of 90 builders from 14 European countries worked for two months to set the stage in a hall in the northern Netherlands town of Leeuwarden. They came from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Germany, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Croatia and Switzerland. The task called for total concentration and no little discomfort, as team members placed the dominoes in position. With each millimetre counting, they used rulers and tweezers to ensure each stone was in its exact spot. The first stone toppled just after 2000GMT (2100 local time) triggering a one-and-half-hour-long chain reaction, during which dominoes climbed stairs, unveiled paintings and set off a variety of surprise events.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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