| Getting back to basics
His career as a professional hockey player had stalled and Duncan Milroy knew he had to do something to jump start it again. So when Hamilton Bulldogs head coach Don Lever suggested to him at the end of last year that the best thing he could do to impress the Montreal Canadiens was to start by getting in the best shape of his life, Milroy took the message to heart. The 23-year-old Edmonton native spent two months this summer in St. Louis working with the Blues strength and conditioning coach Nelson Ayotte. His weight is down about eight pounds but Milroy has added muscle and reduced his body fat by about 4 per cent. The new, svelte, Duncan Milroy says he feels better both as a person and as a hockey player. "That's the reason he got in a game in Montreal during training camp," said Lever, who feels that Milroy has to continue to build on his apparent new commitment to his career.
FEATURE - India's downtrodden disabled find power in the law
BANGALORE (Reuters) - When disabled Hindu worshippers in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu were blocked from entering temples with their wheelchairs and crutches, Meenakshi Balasubramanian knew she had the law on her side. The disabled rights activist, who herself has polio, sued the temple authorities in the state's high court, and won. Today, she said, temples must provide wheelchairs to disabled visitors if they ban them from bringing in their own medical equipment on the basis the devices are ritually impure. "I do feel it's our right, a religious right, a fundamental right," Balasubramanian said. "We need to be allowed to worship the way we want to." Tired of waiting for the government to safeguard their rights to pray, work, learn and travel, India's 22 million disabled people are increasingly turning to the courts.
All sides feel anxiety over Dial-A-Ride
With a low, hydraulic whir, a Dial-A-Ride van extends a black steel welcome mat to Vivian Armendariz outside her apartment in northeast Fort Collins. A push of a joystick later, the 34-year-old Armendariz, who has spina bifida, backs her wheelchair onto the ramp, which lifts her into the van for an afternoon shopping trip to Target. .
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