Viswanathan Anand is the world chess champion again. The Indian maestro won the 12-game world chess championship match against Vladimir Kramnik of Russia 6.5-4.5 with one game to spare on Wednesday. Playing with white, Anand drew the 11th game at the Art and Exhibition Hall here to retain his title.
In a normal world, when something is severely restricted in your country, you would not export it to another country under the pretense that used under certain, very restricted conditions, your product only causes a moderate increase in cancer.
While the federal government projects an image of being a helpful, international Boy Scout on issues ranging from peacekeeping to nuclear proliferation, Canada has a peculiar relationship to asbestos.
globeandmail.com: Asbestos shame
But we don’t live in a normal world, because asbestos is exported from Canada to India where it is added to cement.
Tushar Joshi, a noted New Delhi occupational health expert, is flabbergasted over asbestos sales by a country of Canada’s stature. “As a developed country, you expect more civilized behaviour,” Dr. Joshi says. Canada’s activities are “beyond comprehension,” he adds, calling Ottawa’s promotion of asbestos “a black spot on a sparkling white dress.”
yes, well said. It is very mysterious that asbestos use in India went up in the 1980s just as evidence about its incredibly destructive effects on respiratory systems had curtailed use in most of the first world. Clearly, third world lungs are not as important as Canadian lungs.
Asbestos is one area where Canada lags even behind the US. And Canada’s environmental practices are going to come under increasing scrutiny as climate change unfreezes the great white North and exposes the resources underneath.
Canada, the world is watching.
Tags: Development, Environment, Health, Asbestos, Canada
Umm, CNN, not exactly headline or breaking news, is it? Raja Ram Mohan Roy crusaded against it in the 1800s, Deepa Mehta made a movie about it recently. So, why was this on my cnn front page? God knows…
Shunned from society, widows flock to city to die – CNN.com
Ostracized by society, thousands of India’s widows flock to the holy city of Vrindavan waiting to die. They are found on side streets, hunched over with walking canes, their heads shaved and their pain etched by hundreds of deep wrinkles in their faces.
Homemade Bombs Kill 65 on Indian Train – New York Times
DIWANA, India, Feb. 19 — On an Indian train bound for Pakistan, two homemade bombs exploded at midnight yesterday, trapping slumbering passengers in the flames and killing at least 65 people. The office of the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, today called the attack “an act of terror” and promised to apprehend those responsible. Pakistan swiftly condemned it. The incident comes on the eve of the visit of Pakistani foreign minister, Khursheed Kasuri, to the Indian capital, and two weeks before officials from both countries are to meet for the first time to share information on terror-related activities.
Horrible. The motive is clear, to keep tensions between India and Pakistan high, but it appears that for the first time that I can remember, the Indian government is not taking the bait.
“This is an act of sabotage,” the Indian Railway Minister Laloo Prasad told reporters in the eastern city of Patna, according to wire service reports. “This is an attempt to derail the improving relationship between India and Pakistan.”
Laloo is a notorious politician, but he got this statement exactly right, I remain hopeful that the resolution of the Kashmir issue is only a matter of time.
There had been no security searches before passengers boarded the train. Nodding towards the row of police officers frisking people at the entrance to the station, opening suitcases and checking hand bags, Aslam said: “None of that was there yesterday.”
Boy, that’s not very smart, is it?
Legal wrangle puts India’s generic drugs at risk – health – 29 January 2007 – New Scientist
Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis succeeds in changing India’s patent law, the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday. Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India’s patent law that, if overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily restricting the availability of affordable generic medicines, MSF says.
In 2000, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment cost was estimated at $10,000 per patient annually. But the availability of generic drugs produced mainly in India, allowed costs to plummet to about $70 per patient per year, Mwangi adds.
You’ve got to love the friendly multinational arguing to make extra billions while people die. But I don’t think any Indian judge will overthrow Indian patent law. And there is a national interest exemption built into most patent statutes, per the TRIPs agreements.
No, that is not the title of the next Harri Puttar. It’s how a slavishly devotional fan base that has spent millions of rupees buying your books, watching your movies, purchasing all your assorted paraphrenalia gets repaid. By getting sued when they pay homage to you.
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Harry Potter and the Hindu gods
A community group in the Indian city of Calcutta says it has been sued by JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, for breach of copyright.
The group has been building a huge model based on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as part of celebrations for a Hindu festival.
If you want to know all the ways in which copyrights have gone amok in this society of ours, just go read Dean Baker.
UN committee to review India’s compliance in preventing atrocities on Dalits
A special committee of United Nations working for elimination of all forms of racial discrimination will be reviewing India’s compliance of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in the light of recent incidents of atrocities on Dalits, as highlighted in the Khairlanji killings.
This is sure to elicit howls of “colonialism”, “interference in internal affairs”, and “everybody does it” kind of protests. I am sure that some effigies will be burned. But the caste/class based oppression of disadvantaged communities is still very prevalent in large parts of rural India. Will some international light on this problem fix this? Probably not. But it may force the government to appoint yet another “commission” to study the problem, I guess.
How the other half lives has a good compilation of links on this issue.