By Prasun Sonwalkar
Harrods has apologised to customers for selling underwear bearing images of Hindu gods and goddesses.
The store, owned by Dodi al Fayed, withdrew its underwear and swimwear range following protest by Hindu Human Rights, a Hindu pressure group.
The group said that the garments created by Italian designer Roberto Cavalli insulted the religion.
Harrods spokesperson said: ?We apologise to those customers who have been offended or distressed by the situation.?
Hindu Human Rights had lodged a complaint with the store, seeking the removal of the range.
?When we heard that Harrods was selling such garments, we registered our protest. We cannot bear the insult to our religion,? said spokesperson Sheila Church.
?Our goddesses are revered by millions of Hindus. How can somebody use them for such purposes? We sent Harrods a large number of signatures protesting against it.?
The summer range has been on sale for some time but the controversy started on Sunday when an Indian executive, Amitabh Soni, saw mannequins wearing the brightly coloured bikinis.
?I was shocked to see them,? he told the BBC.
?When we see any image of goddesses, we bow our heads with respect and here they were displayed in such an insulting way,? Soni said.
The group is also protesting against the new film by Ismail Merchant, Shakti, in which rock singer Tina Turner plays Goddess Kali.
Last year, another department store had to apologise for selling toilet seats with images of a Hindu deity.
Karan Bilimoria is role model for Scottish students
Guess who is the role model for budding Scottish entrepreneurs?
Not Richard Branson or Bill Gates, but Indian whizkid Karan Bilimoria, whose Cobra Beer has become a fast-growing beer in Britain.
A survey of Scottish students with a flair for entrepreneurship has revealed a shift away from time-honoured role models.
The finding emerged from a poll conducted by the Scottish Institute for Enterprise, which covered 700 student entrepreneurs from Scotland's13 unive-rsities.
Bilimoria polled 42 per cent of the votes. The students believed that Bilimoria, originally from India but now based in the UK, ?triumphed through his tenacity and strong belief in his vision?.
Sharon Bamford, Director of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise, said: ?Scottish universities are providing an excellent primary base for aspiring entrepreneurs, and it is significant that we are seeing substantial numbers from the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East and the Far East, alongside native Scots and other UK citizens, pushing to start their own businesses.
?However, I do believe that there is a risk of Scotland missing out on the long-term benefits of these overseas business creators unless we are more active in encouraging them to set up their businesses here.?
Bamford added that the move announced in February by the Scottish executive, the devolved government for
Scotland, to allow all overseas students from the summer of 2005, who graduate from Scottish universities, to stay an additional two years was important.
?I think we need to do more to retain this talent that we are helping to nourish, with greater co-ordination between higher education bodies and private-sector-funding sources helping to ease the transition from working in the university environment to full commercial practice.?
A new dinosaur species and its India connection
A wrinkly faced, meat-eating dinosaur recently discovered in Africa has given scientists new clues about the creation of the world'scontinents and the
separation of Africa, America and India.
As well as filling gaps in Africa'sfossil record of carnivorous dinosaurs, the Saharan find has revealed how Africa, South America and India separated millions of years later than thought.
A new species, some 95 million years old, has been named Rugops primus which means ?first wrinkle face?.
About 30 feet long, the animal had a short, round snout and small, delicate teeth, according to a description published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences.
The head of Rugops had a covering of armour and was riddled with arteries and veins, leaving a criss-cross of grooves on the skull.
Scientists who found the fossil skull believe the creature was not designed for fighting or bone crushing, and it probably scavenged rather than hunted for food.
Two neat rows of seven holes along the dinosaur'ssnout might have been used to anchor an ornamental crest of horns, speculates Paul Sereno, from the
University of Chicago, who led the expedition.
?This may have been a scavenger with headgear,? he said. ?It'sreally a beautiful intermediate species of the group that later evolved into the first horned predators.?
Rugops provides fresh evidence about the splitting apart of an ancient continent consisting of what today is Africa, Madagascar, South America and India.
The fossils of a group of southern carnivorous dinosaurs, called Abelisaurids have been found in South America and India, but were almost unknown in Africa.
This led some experts to suggest that Africa had fully split from the original ancient ?supercontinent? of Gondwana as early as 120 million years ago.
But Rugops, and another older relative, Spinostropheus gautieri, also discovered by Sereno in the same region, provide evidence that Africa and the other southern continents drifted apart about 100 million years ago.
Co-author Jeffrey Wilson, from the University of Michigan, said: ?Until the continents fully separated, dinosaurs like Rugops and other animals used narrow
land bridges to colonise adjacent continents and roam within a few degrees of the South Pole.?
(The writer is a UK-based journalist and can be contacted on sprasun@hotmail.com)
