Speaking of the situation in Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama said June 26, “We don’t yet know how any potential dialogue will have been affected until we see what has happened inside of Iran.” On the surface that is a strange statement, since we know that with minor exceptions, the demonstrations in Tehran lost steam [...]
Starlets from United Kingdom are reportedly “invading” Bollywood for better opportunities, less competition and higher payout. According to reports, about 1,000 British actresses-dancers are working in Bollywood, with each making around $1700 a day. British recession, high Bollywood demand for white skin, Slumdog factor, too much competition in United Kingdom, are reportedly some of the [...]
Entertainment icon Michael Jackson had a special bond with India and Hinduism. According to reports, he was reading India’s first Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s poems during the last days of his life. When Oscar winner Indian musician A. R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) met him after the Oscars few months back in Los Angeles (USA), Michael [...]
Hindus and Jews have asked for a thorough probe by European Union into the recent reported racist attacks on the Indian Community Centre and Romanians in Belfast in Northern Ireland. Rajan Zed, acclaimed Hindu statesman; and Rabbi Jonathan B. Freirich, prominent Jewish leader in Nevada and California in USA; in a statement in Nevada today, [...]
In days of economic struggle and rising gas prices, this cuddly little car brings the added advantage of being able to park just about anywhere. (Above): Exterior view of the 2008 Smart ForTwo. At first glance, this little presumptuous thing looks a bit like an oddity, but it doesn’t take long to fall in love [...]
In a poignant autobiographical story, poet and folklorist Ved Prakash Vatuk writes of a childhood visit to a fair, the realization of an impossible dream due to the desperately poor circumstances of his childhood. (First installment of a two-part series.) Laying on his little cot on the roof on their mud house, he looked at [...]
Cricket used to be a game of grace and subtle beauty, exemplified by legendary artists of the sport like Frank Worrell, Don Bradman, Garfield Sobers, Imran Khan and Sunil Gavaskar. Sadly, a new breed of hucksters have taken over cricketing bodies like India’s BCCI. They have brought their finely honed art of zero-ethics profiteering to [...]
Downturn Quadrilemma: Untenable Contradictions Four forces — globalization, free-market principles, democracy, and national policy independence — are so contradictory that they defy reconciliation, posing policymakers with a daunting challenge as they try to grapple with a global economic crisis, writes Ashok Bardhan. In their effort to explain the global crisis analysts have identified lax regulation [...]
After making inroads in the U.K. and U.S., Indian films are now becoming popular in France, Germany and Poland, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has said. The Bollywood heartthrob, who was here for the release of the soundtrack of his new film Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, told reporters that the film, scheduled to be premiered [...]
In 1979, when we were still young and starry-eyed, a revolution took place in Iran. When I asked experts what would happen, they divided into two camps. The first group of Iran experts argued that the Shah of Iran would certainly survive, that the unrest was simply a cyclical event readily manageable by his security, [...]
