White Christi

Corpus Christi, snowed over

As Oscar J. Garza will tell you, there?s snow and there?s snow. After all, the 23-year-old Texan had scooped up snow from his yard and posted it on the Internet auction site eBay. Snow in Texas is a rare event. In fact, after 1895, this was the first instance of measurable snow in the state. And prompted by Garza, others have also started auctioning the historic snow on the Web. One intrepid seller has set his mark at $250,000 for a bowl of fresh snow from Corpus Christi in Texas. No one fell for that one. But Patricia Lucas, an 18-year-old student, struck lucky. Her ball of snow fetched a bid of $1,225. Like Texan oil, Texan snow comes in grades. Apparently, her snow is ?in great condition, very clean, bright, white?.

You?ve seen him in Malcolm in the Middle, now get ready to see more of Frankie Muniz ? with hooves, stripes et al. Muniz is doing the voiceover for Stripes, the lovable zebra who thinks he?s a throughbred in Racing Stripes. Neigh!

Nude awakening

Picture this. You log on to the Net, open your e-mail inbox, see this naughty new year card and decide to open it. Instead of a message,what spills out is a stealthy virus called Wurmark-D. It lodges itself in your system, and turning off the antivirus mechanism, gnaws at the stored addresses and sends itself to them. According to antivirus company Sophos, the worm actually hides behind an image of a group of naked men and women, with their bodies contorted to form the message ?Happy New Year?. More at risk are those who?ve come back after the holiday season to find hundreds of mails in their inbox and open mails without properly checking their source. The poor things will never do that again ? nor ever entertain a dirty thought.

Playing it up

The Violin Brothers ? Jyoti Shankar and Deb Shankar ? are gearing up for some more action after their successful tour of France last year. Two French musicians, Ollivier Le Roy and Sylvain Baron, have come down to India to record with the Bengali group. Way to go, guys!

Home run

Amrita Hunjan (centre)

This must be the perfect homecoming gift for Amrita Hunjan. The 19-year-old dentistry student from the UK was crowned Miss India-Worldwide ? a contest for Indians from across the globe. There were participants from 14 countries this year round. Amrita, the Miss India-United Kingdom, was crowned in a gala ceremony at the Tulip Star Hotel in Mumbai. She impressed the judges ? Dino Morea and Sanjay Suri among others ? particularly with her singing talent. Miss India-Netherlands Reshma Vliet and Miss India Singapore Thebashini Jeevan bagged the second and third spots respectively. Kiss, kiss, kiss.

AWARD OF THE WEEK

Goes to the sexual harassment committee of Delhi University which has come out with a handbook to help students cope with such problems ? right from understanding the act to lodging a police complaint against it.