Mumbai under terrorist attack

Indian commandos fought gun battles on Thursday with terrorists who continued to hold scores of hostages after sneaking into Mumbai from the sea and attacking landmark targets in the country’s most brazen terror strike that has killed at least 101 people.

Police in Mumbai said the shootings at a number of high-profile locations in the main tourist and business district late on Wednesday were co-ordinated terrorist attacks.A previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahedeen has said it carried out the attacks.

Another 327 people were wounded in the attacks, including seven British, three American and two Australian citizens.

This cartoon published in Kumudam magazine (India) tells that current Tamil Nadu Cheif Minister not taking stern/proactive actions against Sri Lankan goverment about those Tamils  suffering because Sri Lankan goverment military actions on LTTE.

Apple unveils iPhone 3G

Apple introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again.

The iPhone will be released initially in 12 countries, including Hong Kong, India and Mexico for the first time. In later months, Apple plans to expand iPhone's reach to some 70 countries. For the initial 12 countries, which includes the UK, Apple will make the iPhone 3G available on 11 July, slightly more than a year after the first iPhone debuted in the US.

Smart sensors built into iPhone are two small but intelligent sensors that pick up cues from the environment and adjust the screen accordingly. These sensors both work to maximize the battery life and improve your iPhone experience.

iPhone 3G pictures taken from Apple site.

what is happening around the world??

Picture Source: Nasa TV

Two astronauts spent their Saturday night assembling a giant robot outside the International Space Station (ISS), wrangling with stubborn bolts to attach the machine's two massive arms.

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Picture Source: TechRepublic

China has blocked access to Google News and YouTube in an apparent attempt to stop the spread of video footage related the rioting going on in several cities in Tibet, including the capital Lhasa. Demonstrations in the city started on March 10, a day commemorating the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule after which the spiritual leader of the country, the Dalai Lama, fled to India.

U.S. to Attempt to Shoot Down Faulty Satellite

U.S. to Attempt to Shoot Down Faulty Satellite

By THOM SHANKER

Published: February 15, 2008

Military officials laid out a plan to shoot down a spy satellite before it tumbles to Earth carrying toxic fuel.The military will try to shoot down a crippled spy satellite in the next two weeks, senior officials said Thursday. The officials laid out a high-tech plan to intercept the satellite over the Pacific just before it tumbles uncontrollably to Earth carrying toxic fuel.

President Bush ordered the action to prevent any possible contamination from the hazardous rocket fuel on board, and not out of any concern that parts of the spacecraft might survive and reveal its secrets, the officials said.

The challenging mission to demolish the satellite on the fringes of space will rely on an unforeseen use of ship-based weapons developed to defend against ballistic missile attacks.

The effort will be a real-world test of the nation’s antiballistic missile systems and its antisatellite abilities, even though the Pentagon said it was not using the effort to test its most exotic weapons or send a message to any adversaries.

The ramifications of the operation are diplomatic, as well as military and scientific, in part because the United States criticized China last year when Beijing tested an antisatellite system with an old weather satellite as a target.

Full story here.

M'sian teacher chided for making Hindu students shave beards

Posted by Raja Petra
Tuesday, 29 January 2008

A TEACHER in Muslim-majority Malaysia has been reprimanded for forcing six Hindu schoolboys to shave their moustaches and beards, which they were growing for a religious ritual this month, a news report said.

The Star newspaper on Tuesday quoted State Education Director Hussain Harun as saying that the teacher in the northern Perak state was enforcing school regulations that require students to be clean shaven.

However, he was guilty of being insensitive to the students' feelings, and has been told off, Mr Hussain was quoted as saying. The teacher also forced the students to remove religious wristbands to enforce a rule that no ornaments be worn in school.

'If need be, the teacher would have to apologise ... for hurting their feelings by being insensitive to their religious and cultural needs,' The Star quoted Mr Hussain as saying. 'The best way is to ask for their forgiveness.'

The students were growing their hair as part of a ritual for the Thaipusam festival that was celebrated on Jan 23. Many ethnic Indians, who form 8 per cent of Malaysia's 27 million population, let their hair grow for a certain period and have themselves shaved on Thaipusam day.

The Star did not identify the teacher's religion.

The incident is a reflection of growing racial friction, which threatens to unravel the country's carefully nurtured ethnic and religious pluralism.

About 60 per cent of the population is Muslim Malay, and the minority Indians and Chinese are concerned that a pro-Muslim tilt in the civil service and judiciary is eroding their religious rights.

Ms Lok Yim Pheng, secretary general of the National Union of the Teaching Profession, slammed the teacher's actions.

'Of course, we don't want the boys' beards to be too long, but we must understand these particular boys' religion,' she said. 'The teacher should be more sensitive ... They must act professionally. They cannot act out of emotions.' -- AP

Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008

China and India Try to Make Up

By Ishaan Tharoor

Having been propelled to the center of the global stage by their booming economies, China and India will have to set new terms for their long troubled relationship. And the prospects looked positive on Tuesday as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh left Beijing with 11 memorandums signed and a renewed spirit of goodwill forged between the two titans of Asia. "We are at an exciting point in history when the center of gravity of the world economy is moving towards Asia," Singh told the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences earlier in the day. The agreement of principles adopted by the two sides was titled "A Shared Vision for the 21st Century."

But plenty of differences remain to cloud that shared vision, and will need many more such diplomatic exchanges — and a change in the political climate — before they're fixed. China and India have regarded each other more as foe than friend for much of the past half century. A border dispute following a wintry war fought in 1962 looks no closer to being resolved, and wasn't even on the agenda for Singh's visit. Many in India's policy circles still blame China for arming highly combustible Pakistan with nuclear weapons, and grumble at their eastern neighbor's efforts to historically stymie India's quest for nuclear technology — those this week's events pointed to a softening of Beijing's stance against India being allowed to acquire such technology. Indians also warily eye China's expanding influence in smaller nations throughout South Asia such as Nepal and Bhutan. Beijing, for its part, was upset by India's joint military exercises with the U.S. and Japan in the Bay of Bengal last November, which China saw as part of a U.S.-led effort to contain China's growth as a regional power. As both begin to flex their growing geo-political muscles, China and India find themselves uneasily locked in competition for resources and influence around Asia and, increasingly, the globe.

What brings both sides together, however, as it has done for generations, is commerce. The previous round of Sino-Indian talks in New Delhi last year set a goal of boosting bilateral trade to $40 billion by 2010 — that figure is likely to be eclipsed two years ahead of schedule, and was pumped up after this week's meetings to $60 billion. Business leaders on both sides are pressing for further measures to integrate their booming economies. Even on that front, significant obstacles remain. The Chinese despair over India's bureaucratic hurdles that stifle foreign investment; many in India, on the other hand, resent the country's spiraling trade deficit with China — nearing $10 billion — and pin it on the unfair advantages China's government affords its manufacturers. Two-thirds of India's exports to China are in bulk commodities and raw materials such as iron ore. "India is like a supplicant, and it's unsustainable," says G. Parthasarathy, a strategic analyst and former Indian diplomat.

Singh and his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, made all the right noises this week about bridging divides. "Our systems are different," said Singh, "but people in both countries are united in their aspirations for a better future." He stressed India's need for "strategic autonomy" in order to allay Chinese suspicions of undue American influence. Wen did his part too, proudly declaring: "When China and India work together, it is good for peace and development in Asia and the world."

Others may be less sanguine about Sino-Indian consensus. The two countries, whose emerging markets are still driven by coal-fired industry, quickly found common ground on climate change — agreeing that the onus of curbing carbon emissions was not on them. And with vital energy interests of both countries vested in Burma's military junta, neither exerted much pressure on the regime during last October's brutal crackdown on dissent.

Although neither country wants confrontation with the other, friction will inevitably accompany the simultaneous rise of both China and India. But the pragmatic message of concord and cooperation crafted in Beijing this week reflects a shared preference for avoiding rancor. During his visit, Singh hailed the planning of Beijing's 2008 Olympics as "an inspiration." Chinese officials swiftly responded, offering aid and expertise for what's imagined as India's own coming-out party, the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Such symbolic confidence-building gestures and painstaking summitry may be more reminiscent of 1970s Cold War thaws than of exchanges between entrepreneurial powerhouses, but they are essential if the rivalry between India and China is to become a relic, rather than a harbinger, of a bipolar world.

Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1704401,00.html

Edmund Hillary, first atop Everest, dead at 88

Sir Edmund Hillary

In 1953, Hillary — a beekeeper by trade — and his team reached the mountain's south peak. But, exhausted by the altitude, most team members could go no farther. Only Hillary and a native Nepalese climber, Tenzing Norgay, continued on till the top of Everest.

Picture from AFP

New strain on Malaysia's ethnic ties

New strain on Malaysia's ethnic ties

By Robin Brant BBC News, Kuala Lumpur

Relations are not good right now between the Malaysian government and the two million plus people living here who are descended from Indian migrants.

There is confusion over exactly what has happened in recent days, but if the government really has decided to tighten up its visa policy for all Indian migrant workers, it would be a startling diplomatic gesture.

Just as political leaders across the world are lining up to do deals with India, Malaysia appears to have gone the other way.

It is unexpected, to say the least.

India and Malaysia have a long history of close cultural, economic and political ties.

Indians migrated here in their thousands in the 1800s, to work the rubber plantations. There are now more than two million Malaysian Indians.

The big problem here that we have is that nobody trusts each other anymore Manjit Bhatsia

But dissent has been brewing. It boiled over with a public protest last November - a rare thing here.

Thousands took to the streets to demonstrate, in defiance of a police ban.

The cabinet decision to suspend visas is proof that the event, with images of riot police and water cannons beamed around the world, has shaken those at the top of government.

They are worried - worried about instability and what it might do to the economy, and worried about the delicate coalition that is modern-day Malaysian society.

'No trust'

Indians are one of the three dominant groups here.

The Chinese established communities over centuries. Together with the Malays they all make for a fragile but mostly harmonious mix.

This mix is in trouble now, though, according to Manjit Bhatsia, an academic and writer who was born in Malaysia but now lives and works in Australia.

"The big problem that we have is that nobody trusts each other anymore," he said.

"There's a working relationship, a very strong working relationship at the top level of society, but at every other level of society it just doesn't work.

"That's the problem, this administration needs to understand that it has created a monster."

The root problem is the years of discrimination some Malaysian Indians say they have endured, accusing ethnic Malays of enjoying preferential treatment.

The underlying problems that we have can easily erupt between the communities Deputy PM Najib Tun Razak

A government strategy to lift the majority Malays out of poverty has ensured discounts on housing, quotas for civil service jobs, and places at university for the bumiputera, the "sons of the soil".

Malaysia is riding high on an oil-fuelled boom.

Ethnic Indians see Malays enjoy the spoils of political domination and the Chinese reap economic rewards.

They feel left behind, and some are demanding change.

The men who organised the march in Kuala Lumpur six weeks ago are in prison now.

They were arrested and detained indefinitely under stringent security laws, having been deemed a threat to national security.

"It's a very delicate situation in Malaysia," the country's deputy prime minister told me when I interviewed him last weekend.

In a blunt assessment of the fragility of the ethnic mix here, Najib Tun Razak said: "The underlying problems that we have can easily erupt between the communities."

As for the demonstration, illegal under Malaysian law, he said: "If we allow street demonstrations to take place on a regular basis, it will in fact entice or aggravate other sections of the community who want to respond to it."

There is a history of racial violence in Malaysia. In one incident in 2001, six men died in a week of clashes between Malays and Malaysian Indians in an area west of Kuala Lumpur called Kampung Medang.

It started when a man kicked over a chair as he passed a wedding celebration.

Some of the victims were hacked to death.

International message

With a general election approaching, there is a fear, even an expectation among some, that the clashes in Kampung Medang could be repeated.

I have walked around the new estate which has since risen up to replace the squats in the Kampung Medang.

One simple image conveys the divide.

On one side of a road, running through the low-rise tower blocks, I saw a Malaysian Indian making roti - thin fried bread - in a restaurant.

On the other side of the road, a Malay man was chopping chicken to order as a Malay woman in a headscarf selected fish from an ice-packed polystyrene box.

They live side by side but most people will tell you that they do not share their lives.

I interviewed one of the men who organised the protest in November just before he was arrested.

P Uthayakumar said the public demonstrations would go on.

"What else can we do?" he said. "We've exhausted all avenues."

The government has made it clear it will not tolerate any more marches. The organisers are locked up, indefinitely.

The decision to tighten visa controls for Indian workers wishing to come here was a message sent on the international stage but to a domestic audience - along the lines of: "Stop what you are doing or we will make life difficult for your friends and relatives seeking to join you".

As Malaysia prepares to elect a new government, the stakes are high.

Malaysia is oil-rich and developing quickly. Stability is the key.

At the moment, Malaysia is in a rare state of instability.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7178709.stm

Published: 2008/01/09 18:39:30 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

Just a wrap up about recent happenings around the world on Hindraf issues!!

Candlelight Vigil - The police used water cannon to disperse a crowd who had earlier defied a ban and successfuly held a short candlelight vigil at Dataran Merdeka.

— PHOTO: AFP

Palay, 23, said he planned the fast to last exactly five days -- one day for each detained member from Malaysia's Hindu Rights Action Force. Singaporean had ended a five-day hunger strike in support of Malaysian Hindu rights activists detained under a tough internal security law(ISA).

Picture grabbed from Rajoorox Blog.

Hindraf leader sues Government, IGP and A-G for RM100m
Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) legal advisor P. Uthayakumar has filed a RM100mil defamation suit against the Government and its two high-ranking officers for allegedly linking him with terrorist groups.


Protect Hindus in Malaysia, BJP tells Govt
The BJP statement said the party believes that India has a moral obligation to take up the case of injustice and persecution of Malaysian Hindus and PIOs (People of Indian Origin) with the authorities in Kuala Lumpur. “The UPA government cannot shirk from this responsibility either out of its commitment to anti-Hindu pseudo-secularism or under the pretext that this is an internal matter of Malaysia." Thanks Hindustan Times.

Dr M nominated for Nobel Prize

Four non-governmental organisations in Bosnia and Herzegovina have nominated Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for the Nobel Peace Prize 2007.

They are the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, the Congress of Bosnik Intellectuals and two Christian organisations – the Serb Civic Council from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croat National Council.