Pak-American cabdriver run over, killed by passenger
FEB 5: After Haroon Paryani's friend, a fellow Pakistani immigrant and cabdriver, was killed in his cab in April 2003, an always cautious Paryani stepped up his safety measures while working, his family said. One of those was to confine his 12-hour overnight shift to North Side neighborhoods he believed were safe, said his daughter, Heena, 25. Paryani, 61, was working the increasingly upscale Lakeview neighborhood early Friday when he argued with a passenger in the 500 block of West Briar Place, near Belmont Avenue and Broadway, police said. Shortly after midnight, the rider knocked Paryani to the ground in front of the cab, got in the cab and repeatedly ran over Paryani, police said. Paryani, who suffered head and neck injuries, was rushed to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was declared dead, police said. He had a wife and four children ages 16 to 32. Illinois Masonic was the same hospital where Mohammad Rafiq Haroon, 60, Paryani's friend and also the father of four children, died April 16, 2003, after his throat was slashed in his cab in the 3500 block of North Albany Avenue. A man has been charged with murder in his death. After running over Paryani, the passenger drove off in the cab, crashed it a short distance away, got out and hailed another taxi near Belmont and Cambridge Avenue, about a block from where Paryani was killed, police said. Paryani had been driving for Seven Day Cab Co., which uses Koam Taxi Service Inc. as a dispatch service, for about two years, said Mohammad Dawood, owner of Seven Day. Paryani drove his taxi from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., sometimes working 70 hours a week, Dawood said. "He was really nice," Dawood said. "He was a really hard-working guy." In recent weeks, Paryani had been robbed in his cab, and last year a passenger fled without paying a $29 fare, Dawood said. Steve Wiedersberg, president of the Chicago Professional Taxi Cab Drivers Association, said, "It doesn't matter what the neighborhood is. It matters who the people are you pick up." Paryani's wife, Sharifa Paryani, from whom he had been separated for eight years but saw "once in a while," said her husband came to Chicago from Karachi by himself in 1971 to attend college. He quit after one semester but found work. The Paryanis brought the rest of the family to live in the United States because their only son at the time was deaf and could get a better education. Paryani became a U.S. citizen, she said. He became a cabdriver about 20 years ago, she said. "He was very talkative, very outgoing," his daughter said. (Chicago Tribune)
Indian beheaded in Saudia
Riyadh, FEB 5: An Indian convicted of burning a compatriot alive was beheaded on Saturday in Assir in southwest Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said. Kotam Yurat Rama Krishna "sprayed Madrasa Iqbal, an Indian, with an inflammable product while he was sleeping and set him on fire, leading to his death," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency. The execution brings to 10 the number of beheadings announced this year by Saudi authorities. Thirty-five people were beheaded in Saudi Arabia in 2004, according to an AFP tally based on official statements. Executions are generally carried out in public in the conservative kingdom, which applies a strict form of Sharia, or Islamic law. The death penalty is meted out for murder, rape, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking.
Indian American probing 19th century artist's death
NEW YORK: An Indian American doctor is trying to crack the mystery of how French neo-impressionist Georges Seurat died over a century ago. According to Setu Vora of New York Weill Cornell Medical Centre: "The circumstances of Seurat's untimely death are not clearly understood and deserve medical scrutiny." Doctors believe that Seurat (1859-91), founder of the pointillist technique of painting in tiny dots of pure colour, died of suspected diphtheria - a respiratory bacterial infection. According to Vora, the painter need not have died since Paris in those days was a leader in medical research and the artist could have been saved with a tracheotomy, a procedure that requires a tube to be inserted down the throat. The diseases that affected many of Seurat's contemporaries have been well documented, including the neuro-psychiatric illness of Van Gogh and blindness of Edgar Degas. "The circumstances and cause of Seurat's untimely death are not clearly understood and deserve medical scrutiny," Vora wrote in the latest issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Seurat's major works are "Baignade" (Tate Gall, London), and his masterpiece is "Un Dimanche à la Grande Jatte". In March 1891, Seurat displayed his unfinished painting "The Circus" "as if he had a premonition of death," wrote Vora. "On March 26, he suddenly fell ill with fever and weakness. On March 27 Good Friday morning, he moved to his mother's apartment in the boulevard Magenta, supported by a friend and accompanied by pregnant Madeleine and their 13-month-old son. His illness was diagnosed as infectious angina or quinsy, and he was confined to bed. After a short crisis marked by fever and delirium, Seurat 'choked to death' on Easter Sunday, March 29, at 6 a.m. "His son Pierre George died of a similar illness on April 13 and was buried alongside Seurat in Père-Lachaise cemetery. Seurat's father died on May 24, cause unknown. Three generations of the Seurat family died within a span of two months," Vora said. Vora argued that Seurat was not a struggling or impoverished artist "who could not afford medical care". "At a time when the average industrial worker was paid 150 francs a month, Seurat received a monthly allowance of 400 francs. He wore expensive top hats and black suits, which led Edgar Degas to dub him 'le Notaire' (the Notary). "In spite of comfortable means and access to medically advanced Paris, Seurat chose to go to his mother's house and die there instead of going to a hospital where tracheotomy ... might have saved him from asphyxiation. "No record is available of Seurat's medical care during his lethal illness and no autopsy was performed. We will never know what Seurat's achievements might have been if he had received medical treatment and lived to ripe old age, nor will we know if his son could have been a great artist himself," Vora said. (New Indian Express)
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