– Australia foils terrorist attack

Last updated on: November 8, 2005 at 12:54 pm By Desh Kapoor

This is the only way to preempt the attacks. Quick action on good timely intelligence! Australian authorities arrested 17 people on Tuesday on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack, raiding homes in Melbourne and Sydney less than a week after parliament passed tougher anti-terror laws. One man was shot in the Sydney raids and the police bomb squad was examining a backpack at the scene. Outspoken Muslim cleric Abu Bakr, who has voiced support for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was among those arrested in Melbourne. Prime Minister John Howard last week said Australia received intelligence about a "terrorist threat" and amended anti-terror laws making it easier for police to arrest suspects. Read more

– Ranbaxy eyes scaled-up Tamiflu output

Last updated on: November 8, 2005 at 12:21 am By Desh Kapoor

well.. I was a bit late! hmmm.. .here Ranbaxy is at it already! Indian generic drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. (RANB.BO) has already worked out how to make a copycat version of Roche Holding AG's (ROG.VX) drug Tamiflu, in short supply as governments build bird flu stockpiles, and could scale up production by mid-2006. Ranbaxy's Chief Executive Brian Tempest told the Reuters Health Summit on Monday that the company was currently talking to Switzerland's Roche about producing the drug, which the Indian drugmaker has so far only produced at a laboratory scale. "We did the chemistry some time ago," Tempest said. "By the time we are through with this it would be the mid-part of next year." Read more

– India wakes up to avian flu

Last updated on: November 8, 2005 at 12:18 am By Desh Kapoor

Prior to this century.... the Indian IT firms seized the once in a millenium opportunity provided to them by the Y2K!! They sent armies of software programmers to Western companies.. and by the time Y2K was well past us.. they had made serious inroads into the Fortune 500! I believe that if this pandemic strikes.. which everyone and his bro is saying it will... then the BEST suited to profit from it - if you will - will be the Indian Pharma companies.. if they are alert to it!! They just need to get around the patenting issue. Even if that does not happen... they should be ready with enough capacity and talent.. ready to ramp up the production in matter of days! Because try as it might.. Roche or any other company is in capable of doing it on its own.. and when the crunch comes.. they will turn to the Indian Pharmas to fill the gap! So, if these Indian companies have their own indigenous drug by then.. great.. otherwise.. the opportunity will lie in bearing the burden of production for the Roche's! Read more

France Rioting

Last updated on: November 7, 2005 at 10:24 pm By Desh Kapoor

– Rioting Spreads to 300 Towns in France

Last updated on: November 7, 2005 at 5:16 pm By Desh Kapoor

300 TOWNS??!!! Thats a MAJOR RIOT!! In India I have seen a LOT of riots.. but never to this scale of geographic spread! A firefighter extinguishes a truck in Cenon, near Bordeaux, southwestern France, Sunday night, Nov.6, 2005 on the tenth day of unrest. Vehicles and buildings were torched by youths in largely immigrant areas began rampaging after two of their peers were electrocuted last week at a power substation while hiding from police they feared were chasing them. (AP Photo/Bob Edme) Read more

Change

Last updated on: November 7, 2005 at 2:54 pm By Desh Kapoor

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. Read more

– Natwar Singh thrown out!

Last updated on: November 7, 2005 at 2:53 pm By Desh Kapoor

Real Action or another ploy??? Seems latter with Singh still holding the Cabinet post... India's Natwar Singh, facing allegations of corruption after being named in a United Nations report, has been stripped of the foreign affairs portfolio, said Sanjaya Baru, media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The UN report by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker named India's ruling Congress party and Foreign Minister Singh as illegally benefiting from a UN program that was designed to allow Saddam Hussein to sell oil to buy food, medicine and other goods. The Volcker report said as many as 2,253 companies worldwide and other individuals paid illegal kickbacks to Iraq to win business from the $69.6 billion program, created and designed by the United Nations as an exemption to oil-trading sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Read more

– Nobody loves a Torturer

Last updated on: November 7, 2005 at 2:47 pm By Desh Kapoor

Fareed Zakaria is an astute observer of the Middle east politics. And I think he is right... the moral ground has been lost.. and badly by the US. Although I dont have much sympathy for the terrorists either.. for they do not and will not stop at any point in torture themselves... but anyone who claims a moral high ground .. also has the onus of creating the differentiation in terms of different and higher standards! That is something that the ex-Irish lady PM was trying to say on Bill Maher.. when this MSNBC commentator was all over her .. with "My country-Your UN" arguments.. little realizing that its BECAUSE OF UN like bodies and treaties that US and other Western countries could have a peaceful time. It was their "first line of defence".... but now the situation has changed.. instead of multi-lateralism being the first response... Violent strikes by own forces have taken up that role... DISASTROUS STRATEGY! Read more

– Swaminarayan temple opens in Delhi

Last updated on: November 7, 2005 at 2:36 pm By Desh Kapoor

The Swaminarayana sect has built a lot of multi-million dollar temples all around the world... Houston also got one last year. While the Houston temple was exquisitely built .. it lacked some basic stuff taken care off. Hopefully things would improve in that direction. Also, I feel it would have been better to spend so much money on alleviating the lot of the poor as opposed to spending millions on structures! Anyways, each to his own... Read more

– America 'is facing a pensions crisis'

Last updated on: November 7, 2005 at 8:33 am By Desh Kapoor

With the deficits and the wars looming etc... here is a scenario that is pretty scary on the economy! AMERICA is on the brink of a pensions crisis of “grotesque” proportions, in which 28 million households across the United States have no savings for retirement, the Prudential’s US arm has said. The warning came as Britain’s second-largest listed insurer tried to convince investors of the rationale of keeping its American subsidiary, Jackson National Life (JNL). Clark Manning, the JNL president and chief executive, said that a combination of under-saving, sharply rising healthcare costs and social security payments barely above the poverty line had created a generation of baby-boomers “grossly” unprepared for retirement. Read more