On May 28, an overnight passenger train en route to Mumbai derailed, roughly 55 miles southwest of Kolkata. It was then hit by a freight train barreling along the parallel track, killing over a 100 people and injuring over 200 passengers.

The incident is believed to be the latest in a rash of violent attacks by left-wing Maoist rebels, also known as the Naxalites. As investigators try to ascertain whether an explosive was used to blow up a section of the tracks or whether tracks were removed by the miscreants manually, the Indian government is devising strategies to contain the growing insurgency. More…

From Australian singer Kylie Minogue to Mexican actress Babara Mori it seems like artists outside of India who are in Bollywood films are becoming more and more common.   So who’s the next foreigner to join a b-town flick?  It’s Argentine musician Gustavo Santaolalla .   The singer is set to work on the music for Aamir Khan’s wife  Kiran’s debut film Dhobi Ghat. More…

“Scandal” and “controversy” are the middle names of ISKCON.

Weighed down by the dum maaro dum bestowed inflicted on it by Bollywood, the cult has been accused of being a CIA outfit; its gurukuls have been infamous for sex scandals, child abuse, molestation and homosexual abuse; there have been whispers of its founder being murdered.

It falls to a pattern, therefore, that ISKCON’s proposed Krishna Lila theme park on Kanakapura Road in Bangalore, for which the bhumi pooja took place today (in picture), should have been begun on a litigious note, with charges of land grabbing flying around between ISKCON and the Congress’ D.K.Shiva Kumar.

Money for the 28 acre, Rs 350 crore “family edutainment” theme park inspired by Disneyland, and aimed at weaning Indian kids away from western comic-strip icons Superman and Spiderman, will be raised by developing a “heritage township” on the 42.5 acres near the hillock.

Cayetano Ordóñez—or El Niño de las Palmas—on whom Ernest Hemingway modeled Pedro Romero in The Sun Also Rises, sired a son named Antonio. After his father, Antonio was perhaps the greatest bullfighter of the 20th Century. Hemingway followed Antonio’s battle with Luis Miguel Dominguín in the summer of 1959, and wrote a fine book about it called The Dangerous Summer. Antonio’s son, Francisco “Paquirri” Rivera, was killed by a bull in Pozoblanco in 1984. Paquirri’s sons, both quite fine looking, now fight bulls in Spain. More…

An Air India Express Boeing 737-800 aircraft arriving from Dubai with 167 on board 2010 tragically crashed at Mangalore International Airport at 6.30 am today (22 May 2010). It is reported that the plane overshot the runway while landing and fell over a cliff resulting in this disastrous crash. Very few are known to have survived this horrific crash.

This was no accident, but the direct result of deliberate failure of officials at the highest level in the Director General of Civil Aviation, Airports Authority of India, Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Government of Karnataka for allowing this 2nd runway to be built in criminal negligence of applicable norms and standards. Such a strong charge is being made as the likelihood of this kind of a crash (the worst case scenario) was predicted. A series of Public Interest Litigations were fought by the undersigned to stop the construction of this 2nd runway in Mangalore airport on grounds that the design simply did not conform to the most basic national and international standards of airport design. The PILs also highlighted that the airport does not conform with the most minimum safeguards for emergency situations – particularly during landings and takeoffs, and could not have emergency approach roads within a kilometre on all sides of the airport as required. More…

In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that’s inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard.
You’ll generate your own electricity with the box and it’ll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid, the way the laptop moved in on the desktop and cell phones supplanted landlines. It has a lot of smart people believing and buzzing, even though the company has been unusually secretive

K.R. Sridhar, founder of the Silicon Valley clean tech start-up Bloom Energy, says he’d like to see his company’s Bloom Box fuel cell technology lighting up most American households within the next 10 years. More…

The world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, got its first first landmark tenant this week — an exclusive hotel by designer Giorgio Armani.

Armani Hotel Dubai, the Italian couturier’s first foray into the world of luxury living, occupies 10 levels of the 800-meter, 160-storey tower and has 160 rooms.

The upscale design includes walls decorated with handmade Florentine leather, Japanese tatami on the floors and bathrooms featuring green Brazilian marble.

Of course, if you want to live the Armani dream you’ll need a fashionably large bank balance: Prices range from $760 a night for a room to more than $2,500 for some suites.

More…

Yonatan Gher and his partner, who are Israeli, plan eventually to tell their child about being made in India, in the womb of a stranger, with the egg of a Mumbai housewife they picked from an Internet lineup.  The embryo was formed in January in an Indian fertility clinic about 2,500 miles from the couple’s home in Tel Aviv, produced by doctors who have begun specializing in surrogacy services for couples from around the world. 

 “The child will know early on that he or she is unique, that it came into the world in a very special way,” said Mr. Gher, 29, a communications officer for the environmental group Greenpeace.  An enterprise known as reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding business in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have recently been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe, as word spreads of India’s mix of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices. More…

The Bahrain GSM network, Batelco has launched a new service that allows mobile users to operate two mobile phones with the same number. Such customers will no longer need to swap SIM cards between the two mobile sets or have two different numbers.  

Commenting on the introduction of the new service, being marketed as Thunaii, a Batelco spokesman said, “Thunaii is an exciting new development, which will undoubtedly prove to be very beneficial to our customers. It brings an added dimension in convenience and ease of use.” Customers simply activate the mobile phone to which they would like incoming calls to be directed, as only one phone will receive calls even when both phones are operational. Activation of a mobile phone occurs when the customer makes an outgoing call from that phone or dialing *43# SEND.

To benefit from this service, existing PostPaid customers need only replace their SIM card with two Thunaii enabled cards, available for purchase at any Batelco Customer Sales & Service Center. Even though Thunaii customers will have two SIM cards, they will be billed in the same way as a single SIM Card owner.’”

The top-rated U.S. news program “60 Minutes” says gold and other minerals mined in the DRC pay for weapons used in “The deadliest war since World War II,” killing five million people so far.
A report aired nationally on the television news magazine “60 Minutes” Sunday by CBS News called for the monitoring of conflict gold in the Democratic Republic of Congo, based upon the already established Kimberley Process for conflict or blood diamonds.
In a recently released statement, the Jewelers of American organization warned the piece would “‘attempt to call the integrity of the entire gold jewelry supply into question, ‘portraying the jewelry industry as having failed to act responsibly in the face of a well-documented, ongoing crisis.” More…

Istanbul is a 100km megalopolis that is home to almost 15 million people, doubling every decade. In 2007 there were 48 regeneration areas listed in Istanbul, which will result in the demolition of 1 million buildings, relocating huge numbers of people in order to make room for expensive residential developments and office and retails complexes.

Self-taught photographer and architecture graduate Ali Taptik has taken to the streets of his hometown to capture a city in flux. Here are images of the neighborhoods of Sulukule, Tarablasi, Gulensu-Gecekondu and the new high rise landscape in Atasehir. More…

It is said that all good things must come to an end, but we figure that “good” can also be replaced with “tacky,” “strange,” or “just plain bad” and still remain applicable. So it is in Dubai where it appears that the end of the absurd building boom there has begun to come to an end (or at least slow to a pace more suitable to common sense). Following a recent plunge in Dubai’s economic markets, layoffs have swept through the many development firms and projects have been placed on immediate hold. So it looks like we won’t get to look forward to many more iPod towers or dynamic buildings by highly suspect doctors anymore.

Adrian Smith‘s Burj Dubai tower might be the tallest building in the world, but what use is the title if no one can even enter it? A while back, we’d heard that the Burj was set to open in September. Then that was moved back to early December. And now the latest update puts its opening on January 4th, delayed to help mark the anniversary of Dubai’s ruler’s appointment as head of the emirate. Given their track record, we’re not going to hold our breath. In other Dubai news, despite what has seemed like a total collapse of their economy, with construction stopping and developers fleeing and the aforementioned ruler of the emirate calling for massive investigations into bounced checks, Dubai has announced that they will begin discussing putting in a bid for the 2020 Olympics. Seems like maybe not the wisest move, considering all the troubles they’ve had over this past year and a half, but they certainly do have ample lodging available…..

THE rickshaw driver pulls in to the side of the road to allow us to take shelter from torrential rain. There, under a shop’s awning, a small crowd is waiting for the weather to break. The group includes Sapna Sharma and her brother-in-law, Sanjay. Sanjay is holding his 18-month-old nephew, Anshul, who has kohl-rimmed eyes and silver bracelets on his ankles.

As we stand talking, some of the people start pointing to the child’s hands and feet while speaking animatedly to us in Hindi, and then Sapna explains through our translator that her son was born with 12 toes and 12 fingers. More…

An old saying goes that the time to live in New York is when you’re young and poor, or old and rich—otherwise, you’re better off somewhere else. That wisdom is getting an update this week from a study by the Empire Center for New York State Policy that shows middle-class people leaving the state in droves.

Between 2000 and 2008, the Empire State had a net domestic outflow of more than 1.5 million, the biggest exodus of any state, with most hailing from New York City. The departures also have perilous budget consequences, since they tend to include residents who are better off than those arriving. Statewide, departing families have income levels 13% higher than those moving in, while in New York County (home of Manhattan) the differential was even more severe. Those moving elsewhere had an average income of $93,264, some 28% higher than the $72,726 earned by those coming in. More…

The face of Ernesto “Che” Guevara is one of the most reproduced images of all time. It’s instantly recognisable, a bearded, beret-wearing revolutionary, staring into middle distance from millions of T-shirts and walls. The eyes are determined, even fierce, but also soulful. The long hair inevitably suggests Jesus Christ, Che’s only serious competitor for worldwide brand penetration. Unlike Christ, Che doesn’t have a globalised bureaucracy doing his PR. Instead, he achieved ubiquity because … well, why exactly? More…