:: REAL VOICE ::

Interesting article on renaming the most-talked about city in India, published in NY Times. You Say Bangalore, They Say Bengalooru By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India, Nov. 1 — In Boston, San Jose, London or elsewhere, if you were being “Bangalored,” it meant your job was being shipped half a world away to someone who would toil for a tiny fraction of your salary. Even the local politicians had come to resent the global attention. The commercial focus was westernizing Indian culture too quickly for them. So Wednesday, officials in this city changed its name to Bengalooru, the vernacular original, and the sparks are flying. The change is actually part of a trend in India and a sign of its newfound confidence. As the economy blazes ahead at growth rates of more than 8 percent, the local governments in India are trying to shed the country’s colonial names, adopting local language names instead. Bombay is now Mumbai, for instance, and Madras has been quietly renamed Chennai. But turning Bangal...

Copyright: Washington Post Anna gave her best to this world, till three bullets put an end to her life. The cowards who murdered Anna is trying to silence the voice of freedom, decency and dignity. Anna, there is a place for you in heaven -- in the hearts and minds of people, who will remember you forever as a brave woman who had the courage to demand truth and justice. Mosnews.com reports: The Moscow prosecutor’s office says they’re investigating her death as a possible murder. Would we be surprised if the prosecutor told us that Anna shot herself thrice? This is how the Economist reported. A suspicious death in Russia Oct 8th 2006 From Economist.com Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, was shot dead on Saturday October 7th, aged 48 SHE was brave beyond belief, Anna Politkovskaya, reporting a gruesome war and a creeping dictatorship with a sharp pen and steel nerves. It may be a chilling coincidence that she was murdered on President Vladimir Putin’s birthday, but her friends and...

About 8,000 foreign students are studying in India. In Australia, on the other hand, there are about 350,000 — and remember, we add to our numbers every year more than the total population of Australia. Nor is it just that foreign students studying in India are less than a fortieth of those studying in Australia. The number of students who come to India has actually been going down: according to government figures, in 1990/91, there were over 12,765; last year there were 7,745! (By contrast, the increase in 2004 in the number of foreign students studying in China was three times the total number of foreign students that came to India: China hosted 141,087 foreign students in 2005.) We could be educators to the world — just as we could be surgeons to the world. But here is another opportunity missed: while Dubai, Singapore, Australia, to say nothing of distant US, etc. are positioning themselves as education hubs, we remain mired in that bog — the HRD Ministry. It isn’t just that we are...

Should the Government of India kill one of it's citizens? Aren't we civilized enough to abolish Capital Punishment? Today is Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. What happened to Gandhi's India? What happened to the India I love so much? What do we achieve by hanging a man? In 1989 the Indian Government killed Kehar Singh for conspiring to assassinate Indira Gandhi. Yes, for conspiring to. We haven’t even heard Afzal’s story Nandita Haksar Mohammad Afzal has been sentenced to death by hanging for the offence of conspiring to attack the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. The news that the date for his hanging has been fixed for October 20, 2006, has been greeted by most of the media with approval, if not celebration. But before we endorse the decision to hang Afzal we need to inform ourselves of the hard facts of the case without emotion. It is important to remember that we are not discussing whether Afzal was or was not a part of the conspiracy to attack the Parliament. He ...

CHAVEZ (through translator): "Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it. Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, 'Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States.'" [Holds up book, waves it in front of General Assembly.] "It's an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what's happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet. The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered readin...

Conn. hedge fund loses billions The $4.6-billion loss by Amaranth Advisors may spark activity by Congress or regulators. Thursday, September 21, 2006 BY KATHERINE BURTON and MATTHEW LEISING Bloomberg News Amaranth Advisors LLC, the Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund whose wrong-way bets lost about $4.6 billion this month, reached an agreement yesterday to transfer all of its energy trades to an unidentified third party, according to a letter sent to investors. Nicholas Maounis, Amaranth's founder, said in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News, that more details will follow "shortly." The firm was in negotiations with Citadel Investment Group LLC as of late yesterday, two people with knowledge of those talks said. Amaranth was forced to unload the trades after swings in natural-gas prices last week turned it into the biggest hedge fund meltdown since Long-Term Capital Management LP's 1998 collapse. By transferring the bets, Amaranth would stem its l...