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| Salman Rushdie
twenty years after 'India' the question
is has India changed. It is worth
lokking at his book again and comparing
it with the same country today. Yes -
things have changed for some, but the
vast majority are still living in the
conditions described by the writer in
the late eighties. How will India face
up to climate change, energy costs and
fuel prices? |
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| by John
Minihan, "the man who shot Beckett",
so-called because of his uniquely
personal, black-and-white portraits of
the Irish playwright. Of the 20 works in
this quiet side-show, part of the Celtic
Heart Festival, the three of Beckett are
magnetic character studies among more
informal portraits of Irish writers.
During Beckett's Waiting for Godot
rehearsals at Riverside Studios in 1984,
Minihan followed him into rehearsals - a
tall, slender, aquiline figure, hands
behind his back and one long thumb
upturned - and produced close-up head
shots revealing the elegant beauty and
character in his extraordinary face; he
even drew a slightly bemused smile. The
unmistakable crest of badger hair frames
small eyes as alert as a suspicious
small mammal's, tuned to the mysteries
of human existence. After rehearsals,
Minihan stopped him outside, wrapped in
a cool suede coat, satchel over one
shoulder, and the writer projects a
resigned smile onto a photographer
almost as intense as his subject. A year
later, Minihan's self-portrait on a
Paris street while Waiting For Beckett,
reveals the anxiety of hoping for the
perfect shot. Like his portraits of
Beckett, the image fits his credo: "Good
photography is good literature." |
| Gore Vidal's
novel published in 1948 was one of the
first to speak openly of homosexulaity
in the USA. Sixty years later this
highly recommendable novel is still a
good read even the the theme no longer
shocks most Western minds. |
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'Death in Kovalam' by John Francis Kinsella
Tom Barton, a City mortgage broker, arrives
in Kovalam, India, after abandoning his business in
the wake of the subprime crisis. In his luxury hotel he meets Emma, the wife
of Stephen Parkly, the CEO of a London bank,
West Mercian Finance. Stephen Parkly falls gravely ill with a
mysterious infection and is hospitalized in
a local clinic.
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The disease is diagnosed as
cholera, panic sets in when tourists start to
fall ill with the deadly infection, just as the
tourist season is getting into full swing. |
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| WALL
STREET IN BEAR MARKET |
| There have been tremendous economic
dislocations during the present bank
crisis. Initially written off as a
sub-prime crisis, leading policy makers
said the crisis was contained. It has
since spilled over into Jumbo mortgage
rates, Collateralized Debt Obligations
(CDOs), all asset backed securities,
High Yield bonds, SIVs, the inter-bank
market, commercial paper, money market
funds, the auction rate market hedge
fund losses, and a massive housing bust
and the real economy. Banks and
financial institutions from around the
world are writing down billions of
dollars of losses. Housing markets are
falling in the US, the UK, Spain and
Ireland. This crisis is truly global. |
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| Barclays Capital said in its closely-watched
Global Outlook that US headline inflation would
hit 5.5pc by August and the Fed will have to
raise interest rates six times by the end of
next year to prevent a wage-spiral. If it
hesitates, the bond markets will take matters
into their own hands. "This is the first test
for central banks in 30 years and they have
fluffed it. They have zero credibility, and the
Fed is negative if that's possible. It has lost
all credibility," said Mr Bond.
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EURO2008 |
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Spain victorious over
Germany in EURO2008 |
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The Independent New
York Times will be pleased to receive your
articles and comments. Please contact our
editorial desk at the following address
sumpinein@gmail.com
and we shall endeavour to answer you promptly. |
| Murray crushed by
powerful Nadal. British hopes evaporated when
their hope was quickly seen out in three
straight sets by Raphael Nadal in the
quarter finals of Wimbledon 6-3 6-2 6-4. Federer
will play against Safin in the quarter final and
Nadal against..... |
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| Even if a character
who vaguely resembled the fabled leader did
exist, he would probably have been a Welshman
with strong connections to Brittany and whose
sworn enemies were the Anglo-Saxons. The organisers of a
conference and exhibition to be held at Rennes
university in northern France next month said
they will provide ample evidence that the
Arthurian legend has continually been updated,
often as a sop to English nationalists
attempting to revive the Age of Chivalry. Typical was the Victorian Poet Laureate
Alfred Lord Tennyson, who at the height of the
British Empire portrayed Arthur as a thoroughly
decent Englishman whose manly virtues and trusty
sword, Excalibur, were directed towards
establishing heaven on earth. Sarah Toulouse, curator of the Rennes
exhibition, said: "King Arthur is a mythical
character who was invented at a certain point in
history for essentially political reasons. "If he had really existed there would be more
concrete historical traces of him.The earliest fragments of the
tales can be traced back to Wales in the seventh
century. But by the 13th century stories based
on the Arthurian legends were being told right
across Europe. The tale of a knight repelling the hated
Anglo-Saxons from Britain's West Country in
around AD500 has always been popular in northern
France, with Arthur and his Knights of the Round
Table particularly popular with the Bretons. Sir Lancelot, the best known of Arthur's
Knights of the Round Table, was said to have
been raised in the mysterious Broceliande forest
in the heart of Brittany by Viviane, the Lady of
the Lake who kidnapped him as a young child. Arthur's diabolical half sister, the
sorceress Morgan Le Fay, also had a secret
hideaway on the Brittany coast. Some texts even suggest that the mystical
Island of Avalon, said to be Arthur's final
resting place, is in fact the Isle of Aval in
northern Brittany. Referring to the most popular myth, Mrs
Toulouse said: "Arthur was an English King who
united all of the Britons - in the British Isles
and in Brittany - against the Saxons." Arthur's Camelot is said by many to be
Cadbury castle, an Iron Age hill fort in
Somerset. Stonehenge is said by some to have
been built by Merlin, Arthur's court magician.A striking feature of the exhibition
is just how quickly the tales of Arthur and his
knights spread across Europe to places as far
apart as Iceland and Italy, or Spain and
Scandinavia.The oldest known images of the king can be
found not in Britain but at the Cathedral of
Modena in Italy in a bas-relief dating from
around 1120. |
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Iran rockets target
Israeli nuclear
facilities reports The
Times |
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U.S.
officials say Israel carried
out a large military
exercise this month that
appeared to be a rehearsal
for a potential bombing
attack on Iran's nuclear
facilities, The New York
Times reported on Friday.
Citing unidentified American
officials, the newspaper
said more than 100 Israeli
F-16 and F-15 fighters took
part in the manoeuvres over
the eastern Mediterranean
and Greece in the first week
of June. It said the
exercise appeared to be an
effort to focus on
long-range strikes and
illustrates the seriousness
with which Israel views
Iran's nuclear program.
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Iran has moved ballistic
missiles into launch positions,
with Israel’s Dimona nuclear
plant among the possible
targets, defence sources said
last week. The movement of Shahab-3B
missiles, which have an
estimated range of more than
1,250 miles, followed a
large-scale exercise earlier
this month in which the Israeli
air force flew en masse over the
Mediterranean in an apparent
rehearsal for a threatened
attack on Iran’s nuclear
installations. Israel believes
Iran’s nuclear programme is
aimed at acquiring nuclear
weapons. The sources said Iran was
preparing to retaliate for any
onslaught by firing missiles at
Dimona, where Israel’s own
nuclear weapons are believed to
be made. Major-General Mohammad Jafari,
the commander of the
Revolutionary Guard, told a
Tehran daily: “This country
[Israel] is completely within
the range of the Islamic
Republic’s missiles. Our missile
power and capability are such
that the Zionist regime –
despite all its abilities –
cannot confront it.” The Bush administration
has launched a "significant
escalation" of covert
operations in Iran, sending
U.S. commandos to spy on the
country's nuclear facilities
and undermine the Islamic
republic's government,
journalist Seymour Hersh
said Sunday. White House, CIA and
State Department officials
declined comment on Hersh's
report, which appears in
this week's issue of The New
Yorker. Hersh told CNN's "Late
Edition with Wolf Blitzer"
that Congress has authorized
up to $400 million to fund
the secret campaign, which
involves U.S. special
operations troops and
Iranian dissidents.
President Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney have
rejected findings from U.S.
intelligence agencies that
Iran has halted a
clandestine effort to build
a nuclear bomb and "do not
want to leave Iran in place
with a nuclear program,"
Hersh said. "They believe that their
mission is to make sure that
before they get out of
office next year, either
Iran is attacked or it stops
its weapons program," Hersh
said. Iran's parliament
speaker, Ali Larijani,
warned other countries
against moves that would
"cost them heavily." In
comments that appeared in
the semi-official Mehr news
agency Sunday, an Iranian
general said his troops were
digging more than 320,000
graves to bury troops from
any invading force with "the
respect they deserve."
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UK house
prices fall for ninth straight
month http://www.capitaleconomics.com
Capital Economics, forecasts a
35 per cent decline in house
prices by the end of 2010, with
a mortgage drought that means
that just 750,000 transactions
will be completed in 2008 - down
almost 40 per cent on last year,
and the weakest figure on
record. |
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Home owners are taking
a record length of time to sell their
houses, according to the latest gloomy
house price survey. The Land Registry says
that in the year to March the number of
homes sold at between £1m and £1.5m fell
by 23 per cent. For homes priced from
£1.5m to £2m, the drop was 28 per cent. The average length of
time for a home seller to receive an
offer is now 10.3 weeks, up from 6 weeks
this time last year, according to
Hometrack, the leading property research
firm. According to Hometrack the number of
new buyer registrations – the number of
people registering with an estate agent
–has fallen by 52 per cent since the
start of the credit crisis.
Housebuilders, the most forced of all
forced sellers, are set to resort to
drastic action to stay afloat in the
wake of the lowest house sales figures
seen since the 1970s. |
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| WALL
STREET GLOOM SETTLES IN |
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Spot the bubble -
Shanghai Composite Index
2004-2008 by Bloomberg
27 June. The main
Chinese index is looking
grim as it continues its
long plunge as the
Olympics approach. It's
normal, after all who
buys Chinese goods - the
USA stupid! |
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The Dow Jones
dived a further 350 points
Thursday, giving America’s key
economic benchmark its worst
June performance since the Great
Depression, as oil hit a record
and analysts said that the
fallout from the credit crunch
was far from over. With crude
hitting a new intraday high at
$142.99 a barrel, the market
grew increasingly worried about
the impact of surging
commodities prices on consumers.
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Britain's
biggest mortgage
lender disclosed
yesterday that
it has almost £5
billion of
problem home
loans on its
books as it gave
a downbeat
forecast for
this year's
housing market.
HBOS predicted a
9 per cent fall
in property
prices this
year, up from
its previous
predictions of a
“mid-single
digit” decline,
and wrote down
£100 million on
its own
investments in
the troubled
housebuilding
sector.
The price of a
crude oil in New
York barreled to
a record of
$139.64 as Libya
threatened to
cut its output
and Chakib
Khelil, the Opec
president, said
that oil could
hit $170 a
barrel over the
summer if, as
expected, the
European Central
Bank increases
interest rates,
in a move that
would further
depress the
dollar. |
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Mandela rocks whilst Mugabe kills |
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The Bradford & Bingley plunges into a Northern Rock
crisis as shares fall once again. |
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The largest consumers
of oil are, for now at least, the
world's advanced economies.This year
developed economies, or those members of
the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, are
expected to consumer 56pc of the roughly
87m barrels per day (bpd) used each day,
leaving the rest of the world to use the
rest. In 2008, the US alone is expected
to consume a little over 20m bpd,
followed by China with 7.9m bpd and
Japan at 5m bpd. The European member
countries of the OECD consume 15.3m bpd
of oil-related products. |
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| Meanwhile as Congress prepares for the vacations in
the USA...it is estimated that more than 8,000 homes go
into foreclosure every day with more than three million
borrowers in distress. |
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