FEMALE civil servants in India are furious with new government guidelines that force them to list intimate details, including their menstrual history, in appraisal forms, a newspaper reported today.

The All-India Services Performance Appraisal Rules 2007 – which apply to senior government workers – ask female employees to record their last menstrual period, as well as when they last took maternity leave, the Hindustan Times said.

"The questions are too intrusive and have no bearing on our work," Seema Vyas, a senior bureaucrat in Maharashtra state, was quoted as saying.

India's Ministry of Personnel, which drew up the new appraisal guidelines, says it has not received any complaints and the addition of such questions was based on advice from health officials.

"I assume this will help evaluate the officer's fitness," Satyanand Mishra, the ministry's most senior bureaucrat, told the newspaper.

But women officers said it was "insensitive" and "irrelevant", adding they planned to protest.

"Health problems or aberrations are generally mentioned to assess the officer's physical fitness," said Chandra Iyengar, a senior civil servant.

Source: news.com.au

Goosey's Gabbings...

Officials have taken note of the obvious disdain for the menstrual questioning. They have therefore changed the wording on the questionnaires to the following:

"Do you tend to bloat up like the Michelin man and eat gallons of Haagen-Dazs while watching the Lifetime channel?"

"Do you use more than 3 rolls of toilet paper a day for a week?"

"Does even your mother think you are 'overdoing it, dear'?"

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CALCUTTA, India (AP) - An Indian Airlines flight from Bangkok to New Delhi made an emergency landing in Calcutta in eastern India on Wednesday after a passenger said he had a bomb in his bag after a scuffle with another passenger, an airline spokesman said.

The passenger, identified as a Mexican man, was drunk and became involved in fight with another passenger, said airline spokesman Pulak Mukherjee.

When the crew tried to subdue him he shouted that he had a bomb in his bag, Mukherjee said. The crew informed the pilot who decided to make an emergency landing.

The passenger was arrested and the plane was being searched by police, Mukherjee said.

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PORT BLAIR, India (Reuters) - Thousands of people are flocking to a policeman's house in India's remote Andaman Islands to pray in front of two portraits of Jesus Christ, which are said to have been "bleeding" for the past two weeks, police and witnesses said.

Eric Nathaniel, a police radio operator, found red fluid trickling down a portrait of Jesus in his house two weeks ago which he believed was blood.

"We lit candles and prayed all night and a little later the blood dried but it soon started trickling down from the hands and heart of another portrait in the house," Nathaniel told Reuters in the islands' capital Port Blair on Wednesday.

Officials said red paint used in the portraits could be melting in the extreme humidity, but islanders and priests were coming in boats from remote parts of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago to pray.

"This is indeed a miracle and shows that Jesus was in pain because of our sins," said John Chrysostom, a priest at the Anglican Church of Port Blair.

One portrait was temporarily moved to the local bishop's house for public viewing after police found it difficult to control swelling crowds.

Goosey's Gabbings...

Nobody seemed to notice the man whose ear was stapled to the other side of the portrait going, "Ummmm....Hellooooo!"

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