Good morning my fellow sabasearchers, over the weekend I was doing some reading when I came upon an article:

Kumari Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, has emerged as the most important low-caste politician in India’s history, and she is asserting herself as a rainbow coalition leader, a woman whom all Indians can trust to be their prime minister one day.

I think that is great news, the next Hilary Clinton for India no doubt, and here is the most interesting point - she is unmarried. Her forward thinking has lead to her campaigning for an eight lane superhighway (a 600-mile, $7.5 billion highway stretching across the state) as well as better policing and private investment as a means to ease poverty. Some of her rivals might say that she is ostentatious and corrupt and would strike deals with anyone who will advance her political ambitions. Sounds like she is ready to come to the big leagues.

Others would summarize her as this; “She is an original,” said Ajoy Bose, author of a largely sympathetic political biography of Mayawati published recently by Penguin Books India. “She is someone who is obviously going to play a major role in our lives.”

Well we are a few weeks away from the final voting and I can’t wait to see the outcome. Read the article and see what else she has done to help the development of India.

Read the full article here

India tourism from the United States rose 10% from 2006 to 2007. Check out why this may be in the CNN article below.

Keith Lotman went to New Delhi on a two-week business trip. But a quick day of sightseeing in India’s capital city left him enthralled and ready to see more of the country.
“I have about a hundred different places that I’d like to visit,” said Lotman, 31, a business executive from Philadelphia, as he checked out the world’s largest Bahai temple in New Delhi. “A hundred different kinds of experiences.” He added: “It’s very different from any place I’ve traveled to before. Culturally very different. I’d definitely like to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal next.”

Read the entire article here.

Looks like Brad Pitt is investing some major money into the Dubai real estate market. He has teamed up to build a 5 star hotel in Dubai. Here is an excerpt from the original article from Variety.com.

Brad Pitt has been bitten by the Dubai real estate bug.

Thesp is part of a team of consultants designing an 800-room, five-star hotel in the emirate, it was announced Monday by U.A.E.-based property developers Zabeel.

L.A.-based architecture firm Graft, which worked with Pitt on developing 150 environmentally friendly homes for families in New Orleans displaced by Hurricane Katrina, is designing the hotel and leisure development.

The Dubai hotel will be an environmentally friendly and socially conscious building. Its costs and construction dates were not revealed by Zabeel execs.

Read the full article here.

Ever think about studying abroad?  Paris, Rome, and even India are very popular places for students to experience life outside the United States.  What if I told you that the Middle East is now also an option?

Two of the biggest schools in Texas have agreed to create a new university in the Middle East.  Texas A&M University already has an engineering school in Qatar, and now they have joined with the University of Texas to create a university in Saudi Arabia.  This region has raised a lot of money due to the high demand of oil and is reinvesting that money into developing the area.  They have already built upon their infrastructure (buildings, highways, etc) and now want to create better educational opportunities.  Hopefully these efforts will open doors for students in the Middle East as well as students in the US who want to learn more about this region.  We applaud these universities for taking initiative to provide better education to different parts of the world.  Hopefully this will continue and we will see new schools in other countries as well.

Source

I just finished reading an article on ABC news website. This article talked about the changing times happening in India. Nisha Mehta, a tough, independent, and strong business minded 21 year old, has five people - all older than she is - working under her. And her boss says the sky’s the limit. What really triggered my interest is the fact that India is seeing change happening in a country where in the past women had been restricted to traditional family roles. India’s exploding middle class is estimated to be roughly 300 million people, almost the size of the U.S. population. We are witnessing something ground breaking with the rise of jobs as well as commerce for the Indian people. The reason that I think this is very interesting is maybe one day the India will share the stage with the United States by becoming a super-power. What do you think? Can India become as powerful as the U.S.? If so, will those changes happen in the near future, or is it too early to even think about?

Source:  India’s Future: Balancing Old and New Worlds

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Yesterday, 7 bomb blasts rocked the city of Jaipur.  An eighth bomb was difused by authorities, but the damage was already done.  80 people were killed and more than 100 were injured.

Today, sources claimed they are looking for a woman, who had tried to lure a rickshaw driver into executing the blasts for Rs 100,000. 

Here is a brief excerpt from the Times of India article:

“We are looking for a woman, identified as Meena, who tried to lure a rickshaw puller, Vijay, to carry out the attacks,” a police officer said on the condition of anonymity.

Vijay, a resident of Mumbai who suffered minor shrapnel injures, told the police that Meena lives near one of the blast sites. No further details of the woman’s role in the bombings were available.

According to the police, the first blast took place around 7.15 pm (local time) in the crowded Johari Bazaar. Within 15 minutes seven more blasts occurred in adjoining areas of the walled city.

The sites were near a Hanuman Mandir, which was milling with devotees, near the tourist attraction Hawa Mahal, at Badi Chaupad, Tripolia Bazar as well as Chandpole.

Please feel free to leave your comments and thoughts…

A constable made an unusual discovery after pulling over a man in Darwin, Australia.  In the back seat of his car was a 30-can case of beer strapped down by a seat belt in between two adults.  If that was not unusual enough, there was a 5 year old child sitting on the floor in the back seat!  I guess the father was more concerned for the safety of his beer than his own child! 

The driver was fined 750 Australian Dollars (around 710 USD) for driving without registration, insurance, and common sense for failing to put a seat belt on a child.  The valuable lesson to be learned here is that an idea that sounds good in your head doesn’t mean that it really is - throw the beer in the trunk and put a seat belt on your kid!

Source

China suffered its worst earthquake in three decades yesterday.  The death toll is over 12,000 and will most probably rise.  It is unbelievable that two catastrophic events have happened in the world within a span of only 2 weeks.  The following is a portion of an article from MSNBC.com.

“DUJIANGYAN, China - Rescue workers were digging through flattened homes and schools Tuesday in a desperate search for victims of China’s worst earthquake in three decades. Authorities said nearly 12,000 people were killed and more than 18,000 are missing. The official Xinhua News Agency said Chinese rescue workers reported that 18,645 people remain buried under debris in Mianyang city. Mianyang neighbors the epicenter of Monday’s massive, 7.9-magnitude quake. Xinhua said that 3,629 people have been confirmed dead in Mianyang. It was immediately clear whether those figures are included in the official death toll of 11,921 so far.

Earlier Tuesday, state media said rescue workers had reached the epicenter in Wenchuan County — where the number of casualties was still unknown But rain was impeding efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a mission to the area due to heavy storms, Xinhua reported. At least 4,800 people remained buried in Mianzhu, 60 miles from the epicenter, Xinhua said, citing local authorities. The casualty figures were expected to rise and remained uncertain due to the remote areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims.”

To read more please log onto http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24589987