The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Columbia University in collaboration with the Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center at the University of California-Santa Cruz and the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles present a series of films by the Grand Master in NY .
Details of screening here
Long before the Slumdog Millionaires of the world , Ray burst onto the international scene with Pather Panchali, which would be the first in the Apu trilogy. You can see that film as well as other …

Our favorite rapper has named her offspring. Born to M.I.A and fiance, musician Benjamin Bronfman, the child is named – hold your breath – “Ickett”
What do you think was behind this decision?*
- Honoring the game of Cricket ?
- Homesickness for the sight of Ikat?
-  A concatenation of “Ice Buckett” ?
-  A dimunitive for “Half-Tickett”?
Send us your best guesses!
For the lil’ one’s sake I hope he and other weirdly named celebrity spawn  : Moses and Apple (Gwyneth Platrow’s kids)  Mars Merkaba (Erykah Badu’s daughter), Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa (Lisa Bonet’s son) …

Breakthrough, a human rights media org, sends us this story of a gay HIV+ South Asian immigrant and the harsh struggles he experienced while in detention.

Über Desi received this email from Akshaya Patra. We’re reproducing it verbatim.
Akshaya Patra is a non-profit organization providing midday meals to school children in India. Akshaya Patra’s “Feeding 1 Million Children Daily” project idea has advanced to the final round of the American Express Members Project.
Akshaya Patra has a chance of winning $1.5 million in funding from Amex if it wins. Amercian Express card members are eligible to vote and voting ends on October 13th. Please visit http://www.membersproject.com/ and vote by clicking
on “Feeding 1 Million Children Daily.” Card members are …

Cricket Council USA is holding a Twenty 20 cricket tournament in the Washington DC area. The event will feature 4 homegrown teams: Royals, Washington Bengals, JBSA and Washington Tigers.
We received this email from Cricket Council USA.
The DC T20 Cricket Tournament ‘08 is another initiative undertaken by
Cricket Council USA and its Chairman & CEO Mahammad “MAQ” Qureshi.
CCUSA is the Main Sponsor and it is working closely with the Washington
Tigers CC to stage the Inaugural DC T20 Cricket Tournament. This Tournament
will showcase the best Cricketers in the greater Washington DC Metropolitan
in an …

Traveling between US and Canada with your personal or office notebook computer? Think again. Homeland Security has issued broad and sweeping powers to border security agents empowering them to seize travelers’ laptops and other electronic devices without suspicion of any wrongdoing for an unspecified period of time. It is unclear at this stage if this also extends to immigration checkpoints within the country at airports (JFK, Atlanta, for instance) but certainly seems like a possibility. [Reuters]

Rejoice all you word freaks on Facebook. Your favorite game is back, albeit in a new avatar.
In case you have been living under a rock or something, Rajat & Jayant Agarwalla pulled their popular Scrabble like app off Facebook last week (Pssst.. check out Scrabulous.com), after they were sued in US federal court in New York, by Hasbro Inc.
After months of uncertainty, Hasbro (who signed a deal last year with video game maker Electronic Arts to develop digital versions of the classic board games including Monopoly, Scrabble and Yahtzee), …

We received this email from Akshaya Patra volunteers and are reproducing it verbatim. For more details look up the Akshaya Patra USA website or email tapf.nynj@gmail.com

For those of our UD readers who have been here some time you know ( from our FAQ) :

Q. Where do you guys get your material from?
A. Al Gore created this tool called the Internet. No seriously, we just go through the daily news clippings, blogs, tabloids, editorials. You name it. We blog it.

A big thumbs down to AP
original artwork of Uberdesi.com. Free (unlike AP) for use to anyone and everyone in exchange for linklove
Thats right , dear readers. For your viewing pleasure, your intrepid UD bloggers troll through so …

Of interest to our NRI readers in the US:
A bogus IRS letter and Form W-8BEN (Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding) asked non-residents to provide personal information such as account numbers, PINs, mother’s maiden name and passport number. The legitimate IRS Form W-8BEN, which is used by financial institutions to establish appropriate tax withholding for foreign individuals, does not ask for any of this information. [IRS Alert] (tip Karthik via email)