| Visa to India |
|
Have you ever stopped to think about the
tribulations of obtaining a visa all those would
be travellers to the USA or to Western Europe
have? Well our Paris correspondent experienced
it this week at the Indian Embassy in Paris.
Arriving at 9.30am, visa application opening
time, he found a line of more than 200 people
waiting in the cold. |
|
After one hour the line started to break up…it
was necessary to have a ticket. How do you get a
ticket? You must arrive before 7am! The next day
arriving at 7.20am there was already fifty
people in line. At 9.30am there was a line of
300 people. Refugees? Immigrants? No, tourists,
businessmen, ONG staff etc. About 100 tickets
were handed out and the rest not even informed
of how the procedure functioned. |
|
At 10.30 our now very cold correspondent with
ticket number 42 finally passed the entrance
door to have his application form checked by a
severe matronly woman. All in order he proceeded
to the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’, a small room,
where he and 50 others visa applicants waiting
packed for 2 hours. |
| At
12.30 he left having finally completed his
demand. The next day he returned at 3pm, one
hour before the opening of the visa withdrawal
time, luckily for him, as the was already 20
people in line. More than one and a half hours
later they were admitted into the building,
there was now more than 150 people waiting,
including Indian nationals waiting for renewed
passports. Finally at 5.30 our happy
correspondent left with his passport and visa
clutched in his hand, though somewhat dubious
about what he was to expect on arrival in India
for his Christmas vacation. |
|
| Bad
News for US Economy |
|
Signs that a slowdown in US
economy are threatening new jobs and
investments. Consumers are thinking before
spending. Banks are refusing loans to
businesses, afraid to risk scarce capital in a
time of uncertainty. Homebuilders are cutting
prices faced with falling sales.
Banks and financial institutions are concerned
by their potential losses from bad mortgages,
credit card debts, auto loans and the fall out
from hidden hedge fund losses. |
|
“It’s a sucker’s rally,” said Nouriel Roubini, a
former Treasury official who runs an economic
consultancy, RGE Monitor. “The market is
essentially hoping the Fed can rescue the
economy. But they are discounting the onslaught
of really lousy economic news.” “The market is
realizing how much of a train wreck the economy
is right now," said John Kilduff, an energy
analyst at MF Global in New York.
The forces eating away at the
economy continue to undermine confidence, and
appear to be intensifying. Personal income grew
at a seasonally adjusted rate of 0.2 percent in
October compared with September, the Commerce
Department reported. That was only half the rate
expected. Consumption grew a paltry 0.2 percent,
dropping from the 0.3 percent increase
registered in September. Construction spending
plummeted at double the anticipated pace.
Recession could mean “we’re going to lose a
million jobs over a two-year period,” said Alan
D. Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price
Associates in Baltimore. |
|
Our
only adds are for charitable organizations
So why not donate
a dollar or two as we approach the festive
season to one of these charities! |
|
| Tokelau the centre of the
World |
| To get away from
the stress of the world why not try Tokelau this
small group of islands in the South Pacific? |
| Away from Christmas and
consumerism, away from subprime and
financial woes! |
|
|
Russian
Elections |
|
This weekend
Vladimir Putin's United Russia party is
sure of a landslide victory. The Russian
economy is growing at a rate of more
than 8% annually and the dollars and
euros are rolling in from the sale of
oil and gas by the biggest energy
exporter in the world. Who would have
thought of this turnaround ten years
ago? The other side of the coin is an
authoritarian and threatening
government, putting down all opposition
with the exception of the Communist
Party, and sabre rattling as George Bush
proceeds with his missile system. |
|
|
A
popular hero Daredevil Evel Knievel Dies at 69 |
|
Anyone who remembers the
seventies remembers Evel Knievel's the
hard-living motorcycle daredevil, whose
bone-breaking, rocket-powered jumps and stunts
made him an international icon. Evel Knievel
died Friday at the age of 69, a surprise to many
who at the time thought he would never survive
his crazy stunts. His son Kelly aged 47, said ‘I
think he lived 20 years longer than most people
would have.’ Knievel was best known for a failed
attempt to jump an Idaho canyon on a
rocket-powered cycle, but his parachute
malfunctioned and deployed after takeoff and the
wind blew the cycle into the canyon, landing him
close to the swirling river below. He also made
a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las
Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before
he retired in 1980. Evel Knienvel said, ‘Made
$60 million, spent 61. ...Lost $250,000 at
blackjack once... Had $3 million in the bank,
though.’ |
|
|
Israeli Palestinian Talks Hopes |
|
The Israeli prime minister
has warned that failure to create a two-state
solution with the Palestinians could threaten
Israel's survival. Ehud Olmert's comments were
published two days after the American-sponsored
peace conference at Annapolis, where he and the
Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, pledged to
launch formal peace talks. Both leaders agreed
to try to agree on a peace treaty and create a
Palestinian state by the end of 2008 - an
ambitious target in view of past difficulties.
"If the day comes when the two-state solution
collapses, and we face a South African-style
struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon
as that happens, the State of Israel is
finished," Mr Olmert is quoted saying in Haaretz
newspaper. Further can the process work without
the participation of Hamas? |
|
(Reuters)
- The Treasury Department and mortgage industry
leaders are putting the final touches on a plan
that could save struggling homeowners from
foreclosure by freezing interest rates before
they reset sharply higher. |
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York Times will be pleased to receive your
articles and comments. Please contact our
editorial desk at the following address
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and we shall Endeavour to answer you promptly. |
|
|
Khartoum Demonstrates |
|
Khartoum - After
Friday prayers yesterday, demonstrators
took to the streets after a British
teacher Ms Gibbons was convicted of
allowing her class of 6 and 7-year-olds
to name a teddy bear Mohamed. Newspapers
bearing pictures of Ms Gibbons were
burnt and the mob called for her
execution. They chanted ‘No one lives
who insults the Prophet’. Ms Gibbons
faced up to 40 lashes or a year in
prison under Sudan’s legal code. The
British Embassy fears for her safety if
her location is disclosed. When the mob
spotted a group of foreign reporters
they began slashing their fingers across
their throats. Police intervened as they
advanced down the road. Sheikh Abdul-Jalil
al-Karuri, the imam of Abu-Shahid mosque
and an adviser to President el-Bashir on
cultural and religious matters, said
that he had told his faithful that 15
days was an insufficient punishment for
such a grave offence. “This happened on
September 15 at the start of Ramadan,
making it even more offensive,” he said.
The Sudanese Government has been happy
to encourage anti-Western sentiment in
part to resist efforts from the West to
lecture Sudan about Darfur and deploy
peacekeeping troops in the war-torn
region. |
|
|
Books |
| The Legacy of
Solomon is the latest novel from John
Francis Kinsella. The story takes place in
Israel where a writer investigates the
archaeological story behind the work to
discover the site of the Jewish Temple, the
biblical legend, against
a background of conflicting evidence and the
conflict between Israel and Palestine. |
|
