is this where india is headed? read on, it’s from the hindustan times:

“Rural families in China, where there is a traditional bias for boys, are being offered cash incentives to stop aborting baby girls and help correct a sex imbalance, the China Daily said on Thursday.

Under the “Care for Girls” pilot programme, girls would be exempted from paying school fees, insurance would be given to households until their daughters grow up and families with just one daughter would enjoy housing, employment, education and welfare privileges, the newspaper said.

…The problem is particularly acute in the poverty-stricken countryside, where some governments have responded by plastering villages with posters reading: “Daughters are as good as sons!”

Mohini reaps the rewards of intensity and seniority:

Mohini Bhardwaj’s already impressive story just got a little better. Bhardwaj, who is one of the oldest female gymnasts in the Athens Games at 25, was selected as captain of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team. “From a year ago, if you had taken odds on her making our Olympic team — even the odds of making it to nationals — she just continues to impress,” USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi said Wednesday.

I’ve been following her pint-sized Rocky story for awhile.

It’s a bit of a surprise since she was one of the last chosen for the team, but only ex-Cuban gymnast Annia Hatch outranks her in seniority (Bhardwaj is 25, Hatch is 26). Both are the oldest female U.S. gymnasts in the Olympics in 40 years.

The singular invocation they were chanting during their Brooklyn rehearsal began, “Oh lordy, please say it’s not broken, please say she was kidding,” before diverging into specifics: “And please send me a hot guy who’s young and athletic and not married or secretly gay.” “But lord, what do I have to do to get a new job and my credit card approved?” “Am I truly a bad person because I wish my upstairs neighbor would get hit by a truck or struck by lighting every now and then?”

from the New York Times

And you know what? I’m fine with that. I know it sounds strange to hear them and see them, but … Continue reading →

who among us suspect-looking brown kids hasn’t been yanked aside for a full-cavity seach at the airport? no? not you?? but i always get…

hmmm.

anyway, after annie jacobsen’s bullshit article in Women’s Wall Street, airline security has been on a lot of people’s minds (and some of them weren’t even bloggers).

how DO you balance a genuine need for vigilance with respect for people’s dignity? how else do we solve ANY problem in this country? why, throw money at it!

this article from Steven E. Landsburg for Slate provides the details:

“Being detained and questioned is a burden; it’s inconvenient and it’s demeaning. But there’s no reason that burden has to be borne entirely by the detainees. To spread the burden, all the airlines have to do is give each detainee a $100 bill for his trouble. If Northwest had had a policy like that on Annie Jacobsen’s flight, it would have paid out $1,400 to the 14 Syrians. Assuming there were another 200 passengers on that board, they could have covered that cost with a $7 hike in ticket prices.”

The underlying logic here is probably just too complex for this ABCD to decipher –

AMRITSAR, India (AP) — Villagers in northern India briefly detained 37 foreign tourists, most of them British, to protest the kidnapping of three Indian workers in Iraq, police said Friday.

The tourists, traveling in two buses, were stopped Thursday night near the village of Santoshgarh, the home region of two of the three Indians who are among seven truck drivers, who all work for the same Kuwaiti company, being held hostage by unknown kidnappers in Iraq.

The tourists — 22 Britons, two South Koreans, a Japanese, an American, a Canadian, two Swiss, two Poles, a Dutch citizen, three Tibetans and two others of unknown nationality — were returning to New Delhi from the Himalayan town of Dharmsala, said police officer Bimal Gupta.

To protest foreigners taking our people hostage… we’ll take other foreigners hostage?

Amric Singh Rathour, a New York cop who happens to be Sikh, can now wear a turban as part of his official uniform. Sikhs have a long tradition of police and military service in the Mounties, UK police forces and regiments during the British Raj. Congrats to attorney Ravi Bhalla, a friend from UC Berkeley, for the legal victory, one of a ceaseless tide for religious freedoms.

“It’s the first time New York City will see turbaned Sikh officers,” said Amardeep Singh, the legal director for the Sikh Coalition. “This is like our Rosa Parks, our first big civil rights victory in this country.”

Continue reading →

“The escalator that ate a child.” Sounds like an urban legend, or a punchline to a joke about the silly things that children are afraid of, right? Unfortunately, this is real, and not at all funny.

The apex consumer court has ordered Airports Authority of India (AAI) to pay Rs 16.5 lakh as compensation to parents of a seven-year-old girl who died after being trapped in the escalator at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here five years ago. Jyotsna Jethani had come to India from Dubai on December 13, 1999 for her uncle’s wedding. But she met with a horrifying death soon after landing when she was sucked into a hole at the base of the escalator, which is maintained by AAI. The comb plate sliced her face and her body was crushed.

[Source: Times of India]

Looks like criminal negligance to me, but I’m doubtful that anybody will be held accountable.

Some african countries, their own health systems crippled by brain drain, begin to outsource cardiac surgery to India. “Heart operations are comparatively inexpensive in India compared to the West. Open heart surgery in a private Indian hospital typically costs around $4,000, compared to $30,000 abroad.”

Walter Russell Mead, in his widely praised book Special Providence, described 4 different “personalities” in American Foreign Policy. He paid special note to the “Hamiltonians” –

Those who denounce (or, in the case of Continental realists, admire) Hamiltonians for there presumed hard-nosed, realist approach to promoting the national interest have misunderstood the synthesis of principles and interests that does so much to define the Hamiltonian mind. Business is the highest form of philanthropy; commerce is the fastest road to world peace.

If you buy it (and I certainly do), then this interview describing future Indo-Pak trade prospects should be very heartening –

At the moment bilateral trade between Pakistan and India ranges from $300 to $400 million. However, there is enormous trade potential between the two nuclear-armed countries in every field. The bilateral trade between Pakistan and India could surpass $10 billion within a few years.

The venerable Ambassador car is being imported into the UK as a soft-top model.