Thai protesters today tightened their hold on Bangkok airport, where two people were wounded in a blast and thousands of travellers left stranded by demonstrators vowing to topple the government.
Two grenade attacks elsewhere in the capital deepened the sense of lawlessness after demonstrators stormed the airport last night, dramatically stepping up their campaign against Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat.
Suvarnabhumi Airport, a major Southeast Asian hub for millions of passengers, was closed down as guards from the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) protest movement sealed off roads to the facility.
‘I have been informed by Thai Airways that 3,000 passengers are stranded at the terminal now,’ airport director Saereerat Prasutanont told AFP, adding that 78 outbound and incoming flights were affected.
‘Protesters refused to negotiate with anyone except the prime minister,’ said Saereerat. Police said 8,000 demonstrators, most wearing yellow clothes in a traditional symbol of loyalty to the revered monarchy, had camped out at the three-billion-dollar airport overnight.
Another 1,500 were moving towards the terminal from Government House, the prime minister’s office in central Bangkok which demonstrators have occupied since August, paralysing the government.
‘It’s not fair,’ said Vanessa Sloan, 31, from Florida, who arrived at the airport last night and was supposed to fly on to the northern city of Chiang Mai today. ‘We spent the night here after all the check-in staff ran away,’ she said. ‘No one is here to help.’
Former ASI V V Augustine who investigated the Abhaya case during the initial days committed suicide. Augustine who was interrogated by the CBI yesterday, was found dead at his residence in Chalachirra at Chingavanam. His body was recovered from the backyard of his residence with wrist slit. The police have also recovered a suicide note from beside the body blaming CBI for the suicide. Augustine was also subjected to narco- test earlier.
Augustine who was ASI then at Kottayam West Station prepared the inquest report of the Abhaya murder case. It was alleged that Augustine who reached first at the Pious Xth Convent after Abhaya’s death, also involved in destroying many of the crucial evidences. It was estimated that the present CBI team was also planning to include him in the accused list.
Infosys co-Chairman Nandan Nilekani feels India can do a lot better with the use of Information Technology as it has a vibrant and growing democracy than its most talked about rival China.
“Technology is extremely powerful as a liberal force in its ability to empower citizens and minimise sway of the state. It would strengthen India’s advantage as an open, democratic society and would ensure that information knowledge and services flow unimpeded,” says Nilekani in his book ‘Imagining India, Ideas for the New Century’, which was released on Monday.
Nilekani’s China reference though not direct is evident from his frequent use of the world ‘open society’. He has quoted Tom Friedman, noted ‘The New York Times’ columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning author, who says, “I don’t think that this century can belong to a country that censors Google.”
Friedman was replying to a question if he saw China as the emerging superpower of the century.
Nilekani says this speaks ‘multitudes of how critical information technologies have become to a country’s economic strength and how India’s particular advantage – its combination of open society and its positive attitudes to IT — can transform our country in the coming years’.
“India’s potential here to become an open, wired economy, unregulated by any kind of ‘intellectual licence permit raj’ can be a strength difficult to beat in today’s information age,” says the best-known global face of Indian IT industry.
But there are conditions, according to Nilekani, to achieve this success rate from the usage of IT.
“Our open society is the ideal ground for the IT-led transparency in governance. But to realise this vision we have to take IT-led transformation from the sidelines of public policy and make it the centre-piece of our development and reform strategy,” he suggests.
Nilekani has put a lot of faith in the talent of this country. The talent that made India the centre of global delivery in IT over the last 15 years has now developed the skills and experience it needs to apply these learnings at home, he says.
“In the next 15 years, these very skills can help us build the kind of politically and economically inclusive environment that can take India into a second phase of dramatic, technology-driven growth,” he said.
The book outlines Nilekani’s vision for a resurgent India, both economically and politically. It lays out the challenges and the opportunities that face us even as we stand in the cusp of…
American International Group says it has completed a $40 billion preferred stock sale to the US Department of Treasury under TARP.
Says to use proceeds to reduce borrowings under original credit agreement with Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
New York: Chandrayaan is on its way to the moon, regarded by many Indians as a god, but ‘devout Hindus - many of them, no doubt, rocket scientists - see no disharmony between ancient Vedic beliefs and contemporary scientific practice’, according to a New York Times opinion article.
A week before India’s moon mission was launched Oct 22, millions of Hindu women embarked on a customary daylong fast of Karva Chauth, meant to ensure a husband’s welfare, broken at night on the first sighting of the moon’s reflection in a bowl of oil, Tunku Varadarajan wrote in the NYT Wednesday.
Reverence for the moon, he said, extends to the website of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which carries this verse from the Rig Veda, a sacred Hindu text that dates back some 4,000 years: ‘O Moon! We should be able to know you through our intellect,/ You enlighten us through the right path.’
The seeming contradiction between religion and science, between reason and superstition is resolved in India by its ‘modernity of tradition’, Varadarajan writes, borrowing the phrase from the political scientists Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph.
Varadarajan is a professor of business at New York University and the opinion editor at Forbes.com.
He notes that the Hindu astrological system is predicated on lunar movements, but clarifies: ‘The genius of modern Hinduism lies in its comfort with, and imperviousness to, science.’
He relates how days after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, a model of the lunar module was placed in a courtyard of the most venerable temple in Varanasi, the holy city.
‘The Hindu faithful were hailing man-on-the-moon; there was no suggestion that the Americans had committed sacrilege,’ Varadarajan writes, adding - with a caveat against exaggeration - that science sometimes struggles to co-exist with faith in the US in ways that would disconcert many Indians.
The opinion piece writer then also concedes that India’s first lunar mission is no doubt a grand political gesture - space exploration in the service of national pride.
‘This kind of excursion may provoke yawns at NASA, but judging from round-the-clock local coverage it has received, the mission has clearly inflamed the imagination and ambition of Indians. Yes, even moon-worshipping ones.’
IANS
Washington: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Wednesday approved a new programme to provide emergency loans to countries facing serious cash shortages in the wake of the ongoing financial crisis.
Countries with a ‘track record’ of solid economic policies can now apply for three-month loans without the usual conditions attached, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.
Typical IMF loans are linked to often-strict policy requirements, such as privatising industries or reducing subsidies. Countries with shaky economic pasts, such as Argentina, would not be eligible for the new loans, Strauss-Kahn said.
He said that ’some’ countries had already expressed interest in the so-called Short-Term Lending Facility, which was approved by the IMF’s 24-member Executive Board.
The IMF has faced pressure to step up its efforts to help struggling countries that are struggling with a credit crisis that has moved well beyond developed economies.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick earlier this month said that about 30 countries could be facing balance of payment problems.
To date, the IMF has been operating on an ad-hoc basis, providing emergency loans to Iceland, Ukraine and Hungary, where governments have all faced serious cash shortfalls. The new programme fills a ‘gap in the fund’s tool kit of financial support,’ Strauss-Kahn said.
About $200 billion are available in total, and countries can borrow up to five times what they put into the 185-country institution. Strauss-Kahn would not say how much he expected the fund to pay out, but the board will meet for a review if the programme tops $100 billion.
Strauss-Kahn acknowledged that the IMF could need a cash infusion of its own, to help the Washington-based crisis lender dole out aid amid the financial turmoil. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called this week on emerging economies like China to meet the shortfall.
New Delhi: Crucial allies of India’s ruling coalition Wednesday condemned the lynching of a labourer from Uttar Pradesh in Mumbai, with Railways Minister Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) threatening to cancel trains in violence-hit states and the Lok Janshakti Party demanding President’s rule in Maharashtra.
‘If this violence continues, we will have to consider that in future we might have to cancel trains in states where these incidents occur,’ Lalu Prasad said.
Dharamdev Ramnarain Rai, 25, was lynched in a running suburban train by a gang in Mumbai Tuesday night, a day after a Bihar youth, Rahul Raj, was shot dead by the police in a Mumbai public transport bus after he attacked the conductor and fired at a passenger.
Describing the killing of Rai as brutal murder, RJD chief Lalu Prasad sought a probe by a sitting judge into the incident. ‘It is a brutal murder.’
He said he had taken up the matter with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
‘The situation is becoming worse… The people of north India are really worried. I also spoke to Maharashtra Chief Minister (Vilasrao Deshmukh). Tough action is needed,’ Lalu Prasad said.
He alleged that Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and his nephew and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) leader Raj Thackeray were trying to break up the country.
Reacting sharply against the attacks on non-Maharashtrians and the state government’s failure to control the violence, Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh said: ‘Maharashtra has become a Banana Republic. The north Indian parties should speak up against such incidents.’
LJP chief and central minister Ram Vilas Paswan demanded the dismissal of the Congress-led government in Maharashtra and President’s rule in the state.
He said Raj Thackeray and Bal Thackeray should be tried on charges of murder and sedition in view of their anti-north Indian campaign.
Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government has asked the state chief secretary to probe into the lynching incident.
The incident prompted the union home ministry to seek a report from the Maharashtra government on the circumstances leading to the death and also on the security of non-Maharashtrians in the state.
Washington: As Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama launched a multi-million dollar media blitz projecting himself as an agent of age in the final days of the campaign, Republican rival John McCain questioned Obama’s ability to lead.
With six days to go for the Nov 4 poll, Obama’s campaign spent more than $3 million to air a 30-minute infomercial on seven networks simultaneously as the White House race tightened to three points Wednesday in major opinion polls.
Several polls including Rasmussen and Gallup polls, each of which had Obama up five points a couple of days ago, now have him 50 to 47 percent ahead. Obama still leads by five to six points among independents, but 18 percent of them remain undecided.
Obama appeared at one Florida rally with his running mate, Joseph R. Biden, and another with former president Bill Clinton as local news shows went live in the crucial battleground state.
The campaign also unleashed its first advertisement critical of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as Obama addressed big crowds in Florida and North Carolina, where he hopes to snap a Republican run.
In a day capped with a taped interview on Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show’, the Democrat also cautioned his supporters against overconfidence despite his lead in most polls. He told them: ‘Don’t believe for a second this election’s over.’
In the 30-minute advertisement, which McCain dismissed as a ‘gauzy, feel-good commercial’, Obama aimed to etch a portrait as a candidate who understands the economic toll the nation is enduring and who would turn the page on the current administration.
He introduced voters - a group carefully selected by his campaign that cut across geography and racial lines - and discussed their struggles with mortgage payments, access to health care and fears of a losing a job.
The programme ended with two minutes of live footage of Obama speaking to 20,000 cheering supporters in South Florida, where he hopes to stockpile votes in a state in which polls show him with a slender advantage.
As the national audience tuned in, Obama said: ‘In six days, we can choose hope over fear and unity over division. The promise of change over the power of the status quo.’
Likening Obama to an infomercial salesman, McCain told a crowd in Riviera Beach, Florida: ‘He’s offering government-run health care, an energy plan guaranteed to work without drilling… and an automatic wealth-spreader that folds neatly and fits under any bed.’
Sharpening his critique of Obama’s ability to serve as commander in chief, he argued in a speech in Tampa that the Democratic nominee’s economic policies would ‘undermine our national security’ and in a ‘Democratic-dominated Washington’, national security and the economy would both suffer.
‘Raising taxes and unilaterally renegotiating trade agreements as they have promised would make a bad economy even worse, and undermine our national security, even as they slash defence spending,’ McCain said.
The Republican National Committee also issued ads that called Obama unready for the White House. One called him ‘risky’.
Another airing frequently in North Carolina shows stormy seas and asks: ‘What if this storm does get worse?’
A McCain spot argued that the Democrat is not ready for the White House ‘yet’. The ad also mocks Obama’s Internet-savvy campaign by finishing with the words, ‘Barack Obama: untested’.
Alappuzha:Finance Minister Thomas Isaac said that the interest rate towards treasury investments will be raised. In case of investments for more than three years the interest rate will be raised from 10 to 11 percent and for senior citizens that would be 11.5 percent. The interest for investment from 2 to 3 years would be raised to 10.5 percent from 9.5 and those of one to two years that would be from 9 to 10 percent, he said.
The interest rate of investments for 180 days would be raised to 8.5 percent from 8 percent. The new interest rate will come into effect from October 29.
Minister also said that the global financial crisis would affect Kerala too. The present raise in interest aims to change the capital investments, he said
Bangalore: Chandrayaan-1, India’s first lunar orbiter, continued its long journey to the moon as operations planned by the Indian Space Research Organisation scientists for raising its orbit went on satisfactorily today, ISRO sources said.
‘The health of the spacecraft is normal,’ an ISRO official told PTI here.
The orbit-raising operations were carried out by scientists at ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), here, the nerve centre of the mission, along with experts from ISRO centres.
Chandrayaan-1 was yesterday placed into an elliptical orbit with a perigee (nearest point to earth) of 255 kms and apogee (farthest point from the earth) of 23,000 km by the PSLV-C11 which blasted off from the spaceport of Sriharikota.
ISRO scientists plan to repeatedly fire the onboard Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) at opportune moments and the spacecraft is expected to settle into the lunar orbit on November 8.