The United States is in a huge foreign policy muddle in the Middle East. It wants to dominate and control Iran but requires the support of the world community to accomplish its aims. Diplomacy and sanctions require only a low level of support. On the other hand, to launch a military attack or green-light one by Israel, the United States needs far more backing. This support does not appear to exist, and recent U.S. foreign policy actions are eroding that support even further. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on August 13 that the United States refused to give the go-ahead to Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities in talks between Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Could it be that the Bush administration finally knows when it is licked?
Israeli officials acknowledge that it would be difficult to launch such an attack without approval from Russia, China, and India, something that the United States would have to lobby those nations to achieve. The chances at present are extremely slim that any of the three will acquiesce. U.S. condemnation of Russia’s military action to defend the breakaway region of South Ossetia, combined with the determination of the Bush administration to install missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, virtually guarantee that Russia will not do anything to help the United States foment more violence in its neighborhood.
Beijing owns much of the U.S. debt, continues to be one of Tehran’s largest trade partners, and is not about to be dictated to by Washington. India has defied the United States by entering into a pipeline deal with Iran. Exhaustive three-year nuclear treaty negotiations between the United States and India are utterly stalled. If the treaty is not presented to Congress in September, it will be dead. More
Five people have been quarantined with symptoms of bird flu in India, in what could turn out to be the country’s first human cases of the disease. The eastern state of West Bengal is currently undergoing its third outbreak of bird flu since 2006, and more than 100,000 birds have already died from the disease. In an attempt to contain the outbreak, the government has ordered two million ducks and chickens killed. According to the animal resources minister for West Bengal, Anisur Rahaman, the state is “determined to cull all poultry in the districts in three or four days, otherwise the state will face a disaster.” Five people experiencing clinical symptoms of bird flu, including cough, fever, muscle ache and sore throat, have been quarantined and are undergoing tests. Health officials are also analyzing blood samples from another 150 people who reported fever symptoms. More
Early this month, Valero Energy in Texas got the unwelcome news that Mexico would be cutting supplies to one of the company’s Gulf Coast refineries by up to 15 percent. Mexico’s state-owned oil enterprise is one of Valero’s main sources of crude, but oil output from Mexican fields, including the giant Cantarell field, is drying up. Mexican sales of crude oil to the United States have plunged to their lowest level in more than a dozen years. The same week, India’s Tata Motors announced it was expanding its plans to begin producing a new $2,500 “people’s car” called the Nano in the fall. The company hopes that by making automobiles affordable for people in India and elsewhere, it could eventually sell 1 million of them a year.
Although neither development made headlines, together they were emblematic of the larger forces of supply and demand that have sent world oil prices bursting through one record level after another. And while the cost of crude has surged before, this oil shock is different. There is little prospect that drivers will ever again see gas prices retreat to the levels they enjoyed for much of the last generation. Unlike the two short, sharp oil jolts of the 1970s, the latest run-up has been accelerating over several years as ample supplies of crude oil have proven elusive and the thirst for petroleum products has grown. The average price of a barrel of oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries doubled from 2001 to 2005, doubled again by March this year and jumped as much as 40 percent more after that. More
NPR— More and more U.S. companies are outsourcing jobs overseas to cut costs, and that includes newspaper groups. Employees in India are doing everything from writing ad copy to copy editing to writing weekend supplements for U.S. and British newspapers. Co-host Renee Montagne talks to Robert Berkeley, CEO of Express KCS, a company that outsources to India. More
Nearly four million trucks have gone off India’s roads after their owners began an indefinite strike to protest against rising fuel bills. The soaring global price of crude oil has forced the Indian government to cut subsidies and raise prices. Truck operators say they have been hit hard by oil prices which have risen by 40% since the beginning of the year. Trucks carry food and other essential commodities in India. The strike is likely to push up their prices. Analysts say this will add to the double digit inflation and slow down growth in the country. A similar week-long strike in 2004 slowed down the annual growth in industrial output to 7.9% from 8.4% in the previous month as the strike disrupted shipments. More
Bus and truck drivers protest against diesel tax and rising fuel costs in Hong Kong while calls for strikes in India evoke mixed response.
In the eastern Indian state of Bihar people in capital Patna seemed as angry about the proposed shutdown as about the higher fuel prices. In small towns and the countryside communist supporters stopped cars and buses by throwing burning tyres on highways. In the neighbouring state of Jharkhand the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) called for a shutdown.
(AP) — Protests broke out in India and Malaysia on Thursday as consumers reacted angrily to sharp fuel price hikes that could undermine governments in both countries.With global oil prices soaring, authorities in the two countries said a day earlier they were slashing fuel subsidies that were draining government coffers.In Malaysia, gasoline pump prices jumped 41 percent overnight and diesel prices surged a stunning 67 percent.The gasoline price hike in India, the second this year, was smaller - about 11 percent in the capital, New Delhi - but will still weigh on consumers. India also raised prices on diesel and cooking gas. More news world
Rediff India
In the wake of the Jaipur blasts and subsequent threats to Muslim clerics for raising their voices against the strikes, leading Islamic seminary Darul Uloom, Deoband, on Wednesday said campaign against terrorism will continue even as a mass rally has been convened in Delhi later this month in this regard.
Condemning the terror attacks carried in the name of religion, Darul-uloom Vice Chancellor Moulana Ahmad Khazir Shah said: “Islam is a religion of peace and to give it a bad name, unscrupulous elements are carrying acts of violence and bloodshed, which is highly regrettable.” Read more
The Poultry Site
The animal rights group says that in the midst of avian flu outbreak in Darjeeling, they released undercover video footage of crowded and filthy conditions on chicken and egg factory farms, which leading health experts believe causes the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
The findings were sent to the West Bengal government last year, and the government was warned about how unsanitary conditions on factory farms could lead to an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus. Because of the conditions that many chickens raised for meat and eggs are forced to endure, disease is rampant. On its website, the Environmental Defense Fund explains that “[a]ntibiotics are routinely fed to healthy livestock and poultry to make them gain weight faster and to compensate for unsanitary living conditions”, reports PETA.
According to researcher Malati Puranik, who conducted a study of chickens sold in Mumbai, “[W]e realised that poultry sold under such unhygienic conditions is a serious health hazard. Pathogens such as campylobacter and salmonella proliferate, causing severe bacterial contamination”. During the evisceration process, chicken carcasses easily become contaminated with faecal material when the intestines are cut or torn and the contents leak out during extraction. Read more
Sudha Ramachandran Asia Times Online
The serial blasts that killed 80 people and injured 200 in the western Indian city of Jaipur on Tuesday occurred less than a week after a major infiltration attempt by militants was thwarted on the international border with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir state.
That incident set off a heavy exchange of fire along the border, the first major flareup since an India-Pakistan ceasefire took effect in 2003.
Intelligence contacts have told Asia Times Online that while there is “no direct cause-effect link” between the incidents on the border and the Jaipur blasts, the former indicate that “infiltration from across the border in Pakistan will increase as summer progresses and more attacks like the ones at Jaipur can be expected”. Read more
Jill Fordham SkyNews
Shocking statistics reveal that as many as 10 million girls in India have been killed by their parents either before or immediately after birth, over the past 20 years. Many parents crave a boy to become an heir in the family. In an attempt to wipe out the practice of female foeticide and female infanticide, Renuka Chowdhury, the Minister for Women and Child Development, has introduced a ‘Cradles Plan’ for unwanted girls. “We will have cradles strategically placed all over the place so that people who don’t want their babies can leave them there. They will be collected and put into homes. There are plenty of existing homes and we will be adding some more also.”
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Bird flu is continuously spreading to different regions of the country. Anisur Rehaman, West Bengal’s Animal Resources Development (ARD) Minister confirmed a new H5N1 virus outbreak in the Darjeeling region of eastern India. The bird flu attack in Darjeeling district brings the total number of West Bengal regions that have been hit by the virus in the existing year to 15.
The minister confirmed that the blood samples of dead birds picked up from the Himalayan foothills of West Bengal were infected with the highly pathogenic bird flu virus. He also said that culling would begin shortly in the region. Read more
India successfully test-fired Wednesday a nuclear-capable missile that can hit targets from Beijing to Baghdad, the Defense Ministry said.
It was the third test of the Agni III missile. The first attempt failed two years ago, but last year’s was a success. Wednesday’s repeat performance reaffirmed India’s place in “the select band of countries who have such surface-to-surface intermediate range ballistic missile capability as a deterrent,” said Indian air force Group Capt. R.K. Das, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry. Read more
The Telegraph has an engaging story of three English housewives who, in the 1950’s, embarked on a 16,000-mile drive to India and back, and a 300-mile trek on foot into Zanskar, the remote Tibetan Buddhist kingdom. “Five months later the women returned to England and resumed their lives as diligent wives. They packed their adventure away, along with the maps, and these intrepid explorers were largely forgotten.
Now, to mark the expedition’s 50th anniversary, the women are appearing in a short film. Made by the photographer Martin Salter, it draws on their own cine footage - the only visual record of Zanskar before 1975. One of the trip’s sponsors, Ovaltine, had given the women a cine camera to film an advertisement, but the result was too dark for commercial use. When Salter tracked down the women he found the film in a box on top of Davies’s wardrobe and persuaded them to bring their story up to date.”
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