Shobhit Mathur’s Home Page

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3159998/Russian-president-Dmitry-Medvedev-calls-for-Europe-to-freeze-out-US.html

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 6:33PM BST 08 Oct 2008

President Medvedev blamed Washington’s ‘economic egotism’ for the world’s financial woes Photo: AP

Confident that a spat with Europe prompted by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August was over, Mr Medvedev arrived in the French spa town of Evian determined to woo his fellow leaders into creating an anti-US front.

Gone was the kind of war time rhetoric that saw Mr Medvedev lash out at the West and characterise his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili as a “lunatic”. Instead Mr Medvedev spoke of a Russia that was “absolutely not interested in confrontation”.

Yet there was little doubt that Mr Medvedev was playing the divide-and-rule tactics of his predecessor Vladimir Putin by seeking to pit the United States against its European allies.

Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON — Pakistani and American ground troops exchanged fire along the border with Afghanistan on Thursday, a top American military official said, ratcheting up tensions as the United States increases its attacks against militants in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas.

The clash started after the Pakistanis fired shots or flares at two American helicopters that Pakistan says had crossed its border.

The two American OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters were not damaged and no casualties were reported.

But American and Pakistani officials agreed on little else about what happened.

American and NATO officials said that the two helicopters were flying about one mile inside Afghan airspace to protect an American and Afghan patrol on the ground when the aircraft were fired on by troops at a Pakistani military checkpoint near the Tanai district in Khost Province. The officials said small-caliber arms were used.

In response, the American ground troops shot short bursts of warning fire, which hit well shy of the checkpoint, and the Pakistanis fired back, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the United States Central Command.

But a spokesman for the Pakistani Army, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said Pakistani forces fired warning shots at the American aircraft after they crossed into Pakistan’s territory in the area of Saidgai, in the Ghulam Khan region of North Waziristan. “On this, the helicopters returned fire and flew back,” General Abbas said. The general’s statement did not address the account of ground fire.

Local residents said that one of the two helicopters had entered inside Pakistan territory by about a mile, while the other hovered on the Afghan side of the border.

“When our forces fired warning shots, we were a little scared of a possible retaliatory fire from the helicopters,” said one of the residents, Hajji Said Rehman Gorbaz. “But we were happy to see the helicopter flying back into Afghanistan. We were happy that our forces fired at the helicopter.”

Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, said Thursday that his nation’s military had fired only flares at the helicopters, seeming to draw a distinction with warning “shots,” which usually refers to bullets or other ordnance that could more seriously damage the helicopters.

“They are flares,” Mr. Zardari said as he sat down to meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the United Nations. He said the flares would alert the pilots that they had crossed the border, which he said is rugged and poorly marked.

Ms. Rice agreed that the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was “very, very unclear.”

But the encounter drew immediate protest from Pentagon officials in Washington. “The flight path of the helicopters at no point took them over Pakistan,” a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, told reporters.

Mr. Whitman said United States and NATO military officials were speaking to their Pakistani counterparts to determine what happened and to ensure there was no repeat, adding, “The Pakistanis have to provide us with a better understanding of why this took place.”

General Abbas, the Pakistani spokesman, said the clash had been reported to NATO headquarters in Kabul and was under investigation by Pakistani and NATO officials.

Military officials and diplomats said the episode showed there was a risk of a much more serious, and lethal, misunderstanding along the border.

Pakistani civilian leaders have denounced an incursion by American Special Operations forces into Pakistan on Sept. 3, which was authorized under orders given by President Bush in July, and the Pakistani Army has vowed to defend its border.

Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, told reporters on Wednesday, “We will not tolerate any act against our sovereignty and integrity in the name of the war against terrorism.”

The United States says its goal is to stop attacks on troops in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda and by Taliban militants based in Pakistan.

The latest clash on Thursday comes after a week of claims by Pakistani intelligence officials that American helicopters had strayed across the border, and that an American remotely piloted surveillance aircraft had crashed, apparently because of a mechanical failure, in Pakistani territory.

American officials denied these claims, saying they were being manufactured by Pakistani officials in response to rising anti-American sentiment in Pakistan after the increased American activities in the border area.

Threatened by a “financial tsunami,” the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday.

The commentary in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LEH.P) “may augur an even larger impending global ‘financial tsunami’.”

The People’s Daily is the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, and the overseas edition is a smaller circulation offshoot of the main paper.

Its pronouncements do not necessarily directly reflect leadership views, but this commentary by a professor at Shanghai’s Tongji University suggested considerable official alarm at the strains buckling world financial markets. Read the rest of this entry »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7611721.stm

Five civilians and seven militants have been killed in north-west Pakistan in a suspected US missile attack, local officials say.

Missiles hit two buildings near Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

It has emerged that President Bush recently authorised US raids against militants in Pakistan without prior approval from Islamabad.

There is growing concern in Pakistan over unilateral US military action.

Early reports said all, or nearly all, of the dead were Taleban fighters killed by one missile.

But later reports from the scene said missiles hit two buildings – in one three women and two children were killed, and in the other seven Taleban militants died. Read the rest of this entry »

MOSCOW — Russia could point missiles at strategic US targets in central Europe, including planned American missile shield sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, a senior Russian general said Wednesday.

“I can’t exclude that if such decisions are taken by our military-political leadership, the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic and other such objects could be chosen as designated targets for some of our intercontinental ballistic missiles,” General Nikolai Solovtsov said, quoted by Interfax. Read the rest of this entry »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7284196.stm

Explore the facts and figures behind the rising price of food across the globe.

Rising oil prices and fears over climate change have seen a massive rise in the use of maize to make bio-fuels, pushing up food prices

There will be billions more mouths to feed by 2050, making an increased demand for food a long-term trend

Rising prices will improve the trade balance of major food exporters, but major importers stand to see a greater deficit

The following interview, conducted by Louis James, a senior analyst and editor with Casey Research, appeared in the March 08’ edition of Casey’s International Speculator.

Louis James (LJ): The first question we think most readers will want to know about is this: if the U.S. is headed for recession – if not already sliding into one – do you really think we’re facing more inflation in the near future, or could falling spending power cause deflation?

Bud Conrad (BC): There are strong deflationary pressures in a credit collapse because as housing prices drop and defaults rise, some of the ability to buy new items is lost. Traditional analysis suggests that we could have deflation such as that which occurred in the Great Depression in the U.S. in the late 1920s, early 1930s. I would point out, however, that in the Great Depression the dollar was linked to gold, limiting the amount of money printing that could be done, a limitation that does not exist today. In addition, with $100 oil it is hard to argue for deflation. My base prediction is that we are heading into an inflationary period.

LJ: If there was any doubt about inflation vs. deflation, has it been settled by the central banks of the world as they responded to last summer’s credit crunch with greater liquidity?

BC: Yes. That is the point. The governments and their central banks have no limit on how much money they can create since there is no tie to gold or anything else. It is only logical to expect them to take the easy road and print money. The result is predictable. New government bailouts for whatever problems arise are going to continue.

LJ: With war spending, ballooning entitlements, a crisis of confidence in the U.S. financial system stewing, along with many other woes, do you think there’s any chance that the U.S. will not try to inflate its way out of its current economic predicaments? Read the rest of this entry »

Many farmers have stopped growing traditional crops, such as millet

Over the last century about 75% of the world’s crop varieties have been lost, data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggests.

UN researchers say that we now rely on just three crops: wheat, rice and maize.

The fact that poorer nations are almost twice as dependent on these cereals as richer nations has led to the question: are we now too reliant on too few crops?

The Kolli Hills in Tamil Nadu, southern India, is home to about 40,000 people.

Scientists have visited the area to see if ancient traditions offer any clues to finding a way out of a future global food crisis.

Changing landscape

“First of all, I think the environment is going to be more unpredictable,” Sayed Azam-Ali, professor of tropical agronomy at the University of Nottingham, UK, tells the Television Trust for the Environment’s Earth Report programme.

“So we need crops that are going to be safe,” he said.

For centuries, farmers of the Kolli Hills harvested millet

“We can’t rely on importing and moving crops around the world indefinitely.

“I think we have to be more reliant on locally sourced food.”

Until the first road was built in the 1960s, the Kolli Hills were cut off from the outside world.

Farming families had been harvesting millet for centuries, and it was their main source of nutrition.

“This was the only food crop they could depend on,” explained Dr S Bala Ravi, a researcher from the Swaminathan Research Foundation.

“There was no communication system; there was no public distribution system, so this was the only dependable crop for them which could be grown in the hills.”

However, the construction of the road presented an opportunity for some farmers to switch to more profitable crops.

One such crop is cassava, also known as tapioca.

One farmer explained that until 20 years ago he used to grow millet, but tapioca offered a better return and a better standard of living.

Growing demand

The demand for relatively few crops has left experts worried that traditional knowledge of how to harvest millet will die out; something they have called “cultural erosion”.

A project to reintroduce the crop has begun to have some success.

Researchers believe the high nutritional value and its resilience means millet offers a more secure future for farmers, rather than growing cash crops and buying cheap rice to eat.

Thirty-two of the 250 villages in the hills are growing millet again, but Professor Bala Ravi knows more is needed; farmers need to be able to sell it for cash too.

The farmers’ millet products are finding their way into more stores

“We want the farmers, instead of selling the raw harvest at a low rate, to enhance its value by various processing methods.

“We are supplying the various machineries and increasing the capacity for processing,” he added.

“We have created a market line so that they can bring out their own entrepreneurship and enhance it.”

Kolli Hills millet products are now on sale in 34 stores in the region, and sales have increased by 300% over the past year.

Mixing minor crops, such as millet, into the major farming system could be the future for food, locally and globally.

But researchers warn that the success of this type of venture still hangs in the balance.