In wake of gang rape, India sees rise of ‘women only’ taxis, buses and parks

‘Women only’ spaces in India on the rise: As reported sexual violence against women has increased, so have segregated buses, trains and hotel floors.

NEW DELHI — In the months since a gruesome gang rape riveted India, a “women-only” culture has been on the rise here, with Indians increasingly seeking out women-only buses, cabs, travel groups and hotel floors.
One city is preparing to open a women-only park. And in November, the government is launching a women-only bank it hopes will empower women financially.

In a country where reported sexual violence is increasing — despite heightened attention to the problem — many say the women-only spaces are a welcome refuge from lewd looks, groping and unwanted male attention. The concept appeals to women across a broad spectrum of Indian society, including a 60-year-old named Sarita, who recently traveled to New Delhi from a village in Maharashtra by train and said she still had to squabble with male passengers who tried to sit next to her in the women’s coach.
“It’s the ways of men,” Sarita said. “They’re not good. How can we coexist?”
But critics argue that the trend toward separation threatens the gains that women have made in education and access to new career fields over the past two decades, as the economy has rapidly modernized. It’s the men who need to change their behavior, they argue, not women.
“It’s appalling,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economics professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “It’s a way for a patriarchal society to announce it’s not going to protect women. It’s simply going to segregate women and restrict their freedom, instead of securing it.”
“Must banks too go pink?” the headline of an editorial in the Hindu, a leading newspaper, asked recently.
Some women-only spaces — in trains, on Delhi’s Metro system — already had existed before December, when a 23-year-old physical therapy student was gang-raped and injured so severely she later died. The country’s male-dominated culture is rooted in religious customs and societal norms that date back centuries, and the sexes were long kept separate in schools and temples.
But the Dec. 16 rape and subsequent death penalty sentences for the four attackers drew intense attention to the problem of sexual violence against women in India, where reports of rape have increased more than 25 percent in recent years, statistics show.
Some women believe the harsh sentences will have little impact and feel the harassment problem is getting worse, forcing them to retreat.
A scramble for change
After the gang rape, state governments across India scrambled to do something — anything — that would calm a public increasingly agitated about sexual violence. They installed help lines for crime victims, more street lighting, better surveillance cameras.
But it was the idea of creating more safe places for women that really caught the attention of bureaucrats. The city of Coimbatore, in the southern part of the country, announced plans to spruce up a decrepit park and limit it to women, who would also have access to a gym with a female fitness trainer. Localities from Assam to Odisha created women-only bus lines. The ministry of tourism began pushing even small hotels to add female-only floors.

 And the government announced plans for a $161 million banking system exclusively for women, the Bhartiya Mahila Bank, with a predominantly female staff and 25 branches across the country. It is set to be launched Nov. 19, the birthday of Indira Gandhi, the former prime minister and the country’s most revered female icon.
A spokesman for the finance ministry, D.S. Malik, said that the new bank is a “major step” toward correcting the gender inequity in credit and banking in India, where only 26 percent of women have a bank account, compared with 44 percent of men.

But some women’s scholars and advocates don’t believe segregating the sexes is empowering, saying it could have a negative impact in the long run.
“The attempt is to shrink women into limited spaces,” said Ranjana Kumari, the director of the Center for Social Research in New Delhi. “Women still have to come out and walk on the same streets and work in the same offices and shop in the same markets as men.” Limiting such spaces out of concern for women’s safety “is not at all a good message,” she said. “It encourages segregation and more violence.”
‘It’s not really safe’
One recent evening, Aishwarrya Kapoor, 20, a recent college graduate with a sociology degree, wanted to attend a birthday party at a club near a mall in downtown Delhi. As it happened, it was the same mall at which the victim in the gang rape had watched the movie “Life of Pi” with a male friend before heading home on a bus, where the attack occurred.
Kapoor’s mother was adamant: The young woman could go to the party only if she hired a cab driven by a female for the night.
“Because in India, even though we are in the 21st century, with any [male] cab driver it’s not really safe,” the young woman said.
The company Kapoor hired, Sakha Cabs for Women, was founded in 2010 in Delhi and now has 12 female drivers, with 62 others in training. After the gang rape, its founders say, business increased 50 to 60 percent, and they’re often booked several days in advance.
One of the young drivers, a college student who goes by one name, Geeta, 21, said she thinks her female clients feel more secure traveling with her than with a male.
And yet.
“I think it’s horrible women have to find watertight compartments, so to say,” Geeta said as she shifted gears and sped through Delhi’s clamorous traffic, horns honking in her wake. At 4 feet 9 inches tall and 99 pounds, she has to sit on top of a tapestry pillow to see over the steering wheel.
“There should be women in all walks of life and all fields of life,” she said. “Where we don’t feel isolated.”

Suhasini Raj contributed to this report.

Source: WashingtonPost
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Grand Theft Auto Franchise Playfully Flicks Mud at Its Birthplace: Scotland

Grand Theft Auto V. Far from the predatory turf its avatars inhabit, the game franchise was first conceived in Dundee, Scotland.

Since its introduction 16 years ago, the wildly popular video game franchise Grand Theft Auto has been set in some of the most recognizable cities in the United States. There were New York, Miami and San Francisco, and in the fifth installment, released to great fanfare this month, Los Angeles. 

Yet the roots of the game can be traced directly back to Dundee, a former shipbuilding city in Scotland, better known as the humble home of jam and jute, a vegetable fiber used to make rope and burlap. It is a city that has, instead of the raw urbanity celebrated in the video game, a quaint coastline, as well as a population that prizes irreverence and wit.

“There’s a cultural aspect in the U.K. of not taking other people too seriously,” said Brian Baglow, a writer for the series’ first installment and the head of the Scottish Games Network. “That’s a very large part of why G.T.A. works the way it does.”

He added: “Basically, we’re all just sarcastic. There’s a strong tradition of satire here, which is centuries old. I think that in an American studio, you would run the risk of being entirely serious and straight-faced, whereas there is subversion in G.T.A. all the way through. It’s black humor.”

Grand Theft Auto was created in 1995 by four friends — David Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond and Mike Dailly — in a two-room office above a small shop in Dundee that sold baby clothes.

Mr. Dailly, a programmer, had been toying with the idea of creating a “virtual 3-D city” that would allow players to roam freely and choose their actions. The team initially intended the protagonist to be a police officer, but it quickly scrapped the idea in favor of inhabiting a criminal.

“You just can’t go around running over people if you’re a cop — nobody liked playing the cop,” said Mr. Baglow, an early member of the team.

Fascinated by American gangster films like “Goodfellas” and “Scarface,” the four, who ran a company called DMA Design, based the narratives on their vision of the United States. (At the time, none of them had been there.)

“In the 1980s, Dundee was a shadow of its former self — it wasn’t the nicest of places,” said Mr. Kay, who rewrote the game for consoles. “We didn’t think it would be exciting if the games were set in Dundee.”

Creating the game was a form of escapism, he said: “We made a lot of inside jokes.”

And while the game — which has sold more than 125 million units worldwide since its debut in 1997 — satirizes much of American culture, it is also peppered with Scottish references. San Fierro, a fictional city, features a wealthy district called Calton Heights, after the dilapidated Calton area of Glasgow. San Fierro is also home to the Hippy Shopper chain, a twist on Happy Shopper, a grocery chain with stores in Scotland and Britain. In another city, a Saltire, the blue-and-white national flag, flies over a building. And a racehorse named Scotland Nil alludes to the long, humiliating history of goal-less matches by Scotland’s national soccer team.

DMA Design was eventually sold, through a series of complicated takeovers, to Rockstar Games, a label of the American game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software, and the Dundee connection was broken. Rockstar Games has eight studios, including Rockstar North, based in Edinburgh, which is responsible for the creative content of Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar North is one of the biggest game developers in Britain, employing 300 people.

Scotland is now the biggest hub for game developers in Britain and among the biggest in Europe, with around 80 developers huddled around Dundee.

While some consider the game Scotland’s greatest cultural export since “Auld Lang Syne,” the game’s louche tone does not resonate with everyone. David Paterson, a councilor for the Scottish town of Hawick, said recently that he was “absolutely disgusted” at the use of the town’s name for a “druggie hipster” district in its latest installment.

“It is going to destroy the good reputation of this town,” he said.

Still, for those who were there at the game’s beginnings, its sly references to their home bring smiles to their faces.

“These little inside jokes are very clever,” said Mr. Baglow, who is Scottish. “It makes me very happy.” 

Source: Technology News @ NY Times

Government Shutting Down in Impasse

WASHINGTON — A flurry of last-minute moves by the House, Senate and White House late Monday failed to break a bitter budget standoff over President Obama’s health care law, setting in motion the first government shutdown in nearly two decades.

The impasse meant that 800,000 federal workers were to be furloughed and more than a million others would be asked to work without pay. The Office of Management and Budget issued orders shortly before the midnight deadline that “agencies should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations” because Congress had failed to act to keep the federal government financed.

After a series of rapid-fire back and forth legislative maneuvers, the House and Senate ended the day with no resolution, and the Senate halted business until later Tuesday while the House took steps to open talks. But Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, dismissed as game-playing the House proposal to begin conference committee negotiations.

“We will not go to conference with a gun to our heads,” he said, demanding that the House accept the Senate’s six-week stopgap spending bill, which has no policy prescriptions, before negotiations begin.

The Obama administration and the Republican-controlled House had come close to failing to finance the government in the past but had always reached a last-minute agreement to head off a disruption in government services.

In the hours leading up to the deadline, House Republican leaders won approval, in a vote of 228 to 201, of a new plan to tie further government spending to a one-year delay in a requirement that individuals buy health insurance. The House proposal would deny federal subsidies to members of Congress, Capitol Hill staff, executive branch political appointees, White House staff, and the president and vice president, who would be forced to buy their health coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s new insurance exchanges.

But 57 minutes later, and with almost no debate, the Senate killed the House health care provisions and sent the stopgap spending bill right back, free of policy prescriptions. Earlier in the day, the Senate had taken less than 25 minutes to convene and dispose of a weekend budget proposal by the House Republicans.

“They’ve lost their minds,” Mr. Reid said, before disposing of the House bill. “They keep trying to do the same thing over and over again.”

The federal government was then left essentially to run out of money at midnight, the end of the fiscal year, although the president signed a measure late Monday that would allow members of the military to continue to be paid.

“You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job,” Mr. Obama said in the White House briefing room as the clock ticked to midnight.

Mr. Obama called House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, but they spoke for less than 10 minutes, without any sign of progress.

“I talked to the president tonight,” the speaker said on the House floor. He summed up Mr. Obama’s remarks as: “I’m not going to negotiate. I’m not going to negotiate.”

The House’s most ardent conservatives were resigned to seeing through their war on the health care law to its inevitable conclusion, a shutdown that could test voters’ patience with Republican brinkmanship.

Cracks in the party were opening into fissures of frustration.

“You have this group that keeps saying somehow if you’re not with them, you’re for Obamacare,” said Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California. “If you’re not with exactly their plan, exactly what they want to do, then you’re somehow for Obamacare, and it’s just getting a little old.”

“It’s moronic to shut down the government over this,” he continued.

It was far from certain that Republicans could remain unified on their insistence on health care concessions if a shutdown lasted for some time. Asked whether Republicans could hold together through the end of the week, Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia, one of the more conservative members, answered: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Earlier Monday, the Senate voted 54 to 46 along party lines to kill the previous House plan immediately after ending a weekend break. Senators then sent the House a bill to finance the government through Nov. 15 without policy prescriptions.

But House leaders would have none of it, again demanding a significant hit to the health law as a price for keeping the government open.

Mr. Reid laid into Mr. Boehner and put the blame for a shutdown solely on his shoulders. “Our negotiation is over with,” he said.

“You know with a bully you cannot let them slap you around, because they slap you around today, they slap you five or six times tomorrow,” Mr. Reid, a former boxer, continued. “We are not going to be bullied.”

In addition to criticizing Mr. Boehner, Mr. Reid excoriated what he called the “banana Republican mind-set” of the House. He called on the speaker to put the Senate bill up for a vote, which would almost certainly pass in the House because of overwhelming Democratic support and backing from moderate Republicans.

In one of their final moves, House Republicans attached language to a government funding bill that would delay the mandate that individuals obtain health insurance and would force members of Congress, their staffs and White House staff members to buy their health insurance on the new exchanges without any government subsidies.

Conservative activists have portrayed the language as ensuring that Congress and the White House would be held to the same strictures that apply to ordinary Americans under the health care law. In fact, the language would put poorly paid junior staff members at a disadvantage.

Most people buying coverage on the exchanges will receive subsidies through generous tax credits. Most Americans will still get their insurance from their employers, who will continue to receive a tax deduction for the cost of that care. Under the House language, lawmakers and their staffs, executive branch political appointees, the White House staff, and the president and vice president would have to pay the entire cost of health insurance out of pocket.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said junior staff members were “being used as a sacrifice” for a political gambit, driven by Republican hard-liners in the Senate like Ted Cruz of Texas, that will go nowhere.

“They locked themselves into this situation, the dead end that Ted Cruz created,” Mr. King said.

The budget confrontation — which threatened to close federal offices and facilities, idling thousands of workers around the country — stemmed from an unusual push by Republicans to undo a law that has been on the books for three years, through a presidential election, and that the Supreme Court largely upheld in 2012. A major part of the law is set to take effect Tuesday: the opening of insurance exchanges, where people without insurance will be able to obtain coverage.

Republicans argue that the administration has itself delayed elements of the law. They say it should be postponed for at least a year.

Democrats say Republicans are being driven by the most extreme elements of their party to use the federal budget to extract concessions on health care that they could not win through the traditional legislative process. “The scary thing about the period we’re in right now is there is no clear end,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.

Ashley Parker contributed reporting.

Source: NY Times
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UN chief welcomes meeting between Nawaz and Singh

“He (Secretary-General) welcomed the recent talks held between Pakistan and India,” UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said. — Photo by AP

UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the meeting between leaders of Pakistan and India at UN Headquarters in New York on Monday, a UN spokesman said.
Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif held an hour-long meeting with his Indian counterpart Mamohan Singh in New York on Sunday during which they agreed to stop the recent spate of attacks across the Line of Control (LoC) in the disputed Kashmir region in order to advance for peace talks.
“He (Secretary-General) welcomed the recent talks held between Pakistan and India,” Spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
The spokesman added, “He (Secretary-General) thanked India for its significant contribution to United Nations peacekeeping operations and its generous assistance to development of Afghan security, economic and human capacities.”
“He also discussed developments in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Myanmar, stressing the importance of dialogue, inclusiveness and reconciliation, as well as India's regional role.”
 Source: DAWN News
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US government shuts down

Members of the House of Representatives enter the US Capitol before passing a continuing resolution to fund the US government that would also delay enrollment in the Affordable Care Act for one year September 30, 2013 in Washington, DC. — Photo AFP

WASHINGTON: The US government began a partial shutdown on Tuesday for the first time in 17 years, potentially putting up to 1 million workers on unpaid leave, closing national parks and stalling medical research projects.

Federal agencies were directed to cut back services after lawmakers could not break a political stalemate that sparked new questions about the ability of a deeply divided Congress to perform its most basic functions.
After House Republicans floated a late offer to break the logjam, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected the idea, saying Democrats would not enter into formal negotiations on spending “with a gun to our head” in the form of government shutdowns.
The political dysfunction at the Capitol also raised fresh concerns about whether Congress can meet a crucial mid-October deadline to raise the government's $16.7 trillion debt ceiling.
With an eye on the 2014 congressional elections, both parties tried to deflect responsibility for the shutdown.
President Barack Obama accused Republicans of being too beholden to Tea Party conservatives in the House of Representatives and said the shutdown could threaten the economic recovery.
The political stakes are particularly high for Republicans, who are trying to regain control of the Senate next year. Polls show they are more likely to be blamed for the shutdown, as they were during the last shutdown in 1996.
“Somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose,” said pollster Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University poll. “Going in, Obama and the Democrats have a little edge.”
The dollar held steady on Tuesday even though much of the U.S. government was due to start shutting down. S&P stock futures inched up 0.2 per cent, unchanged from earlier price action after the cash index fell 0.6 percent on Monday, while US Treasury futures slipped five ticks.
Most Asian markets were trading higher on Tuesday.
Political Polarization
The shutdown, the culmination of three years of divided government and growing political polarization, was spearheaded by Tea Party conservatives united in their opposition to Obama, their distaste for Obama's healthcare law and their campaign pledges to rein in government spending.
Obama refused to negotiate over the Republican demands and warned a shutdown could “throw a wrench into the gears of our economy.”
Some government offices and national parks will be shuttered, but spending for essential functions related to national security and public safety will continue, including pay for US military troops.
“It's not shocking there is a shutdown, the shock is that it hasn't happened before this,” said Republican strategist John Feehery, a former Capitol Hill aide. “We have a divided government with such diametrically opposed views, we need a crisis to get any kind of results.”
In the hours leading up to the deadline, the Democratic-controlled Senate repeatedly stripped measures passed by the House that tied temporary funding for government operations to delaying or scaling back the healthcare overhaul known as Obamacare. The Senate instead insisted on funding the government through Nov. 15 without special conditions.
Whether the shutdown represents another bump in the road for a Congress increasingly plagued by dysfunction or is a sign of a more alarming breakdown in the political process could be determined by the reaction among voters and on Wall Street.
“The key to this is not what happens in Washington. The key is what happens out in the real world,” said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis. “When Joe Public starts rebelling, and the financial markets start melting down, then we'll see what these guys do.”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed about one-quarter of Americans would blame Republicans for a shutdown, 14 percent would blame Obama and 5 percent would blame Democrats in Congress, while 44 per cent said everyone would be to blame.
An anticipated revolt by moderate House Republicans fizzled earlier on Monday after House Speaker John Boehner made personal appeals to many of them to back him on a key procedural vote, said Republican Representative Peter King of New York.
After Boehner made his appeal, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer called on him to permit a vote on a simple extension of federal funding of the government without any Obamacare add-on.
Fallout
The potential fallout has some Republican Party leaders worried ahead of the 2014 mid-term elections and the 2016 presidential race, particularly given the Republican divisions over the shutdown.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who commandeered the Senate floor for 21 hours last week to stoke the confrontation and urge House colleagues to join him, sparked a feud with fellow Republicans who disagreed with the shutdown and accused the potential 2016 presidential candidate of grandstanding.
“Whether or not we're responsible for it, we're going to get blamed for it,” King told reporters on Monday.

Source DAWN News
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IG KP says Peshawar targeted operation to be launched soon

KP Police stands guard outside a government building in Peshawar - File Phot

PESHAWAR: Inspector-General Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Nasir Durrani on Monday said a targeted operation will be conducted in Peshawar very soon. 

Marketplaces and other public areas of the provincial capital would first be cleared by sniffer dogs and Bomb Disposal Units before being opened for the general public, he said, adding that approval for the measure had already been given by the KP government.
The IG's comments came a day after twin blasts claimed 43 lives in Qissa Khwani Bazaar, one of the oldest market places in Peshawar.
Speaking to reporters at the site of Sunday's attack, IG Durrani said the explosive used in the car bomb targeting Qissa Khwani Bazaar was locally made.
He further stated that the terrorists had changed their strategy of late, adding that first they were targeting the police, whereas, now they had started targeting markets and other public places.
He also stated that the provincial government had ordered the formation of a new strategy to fight terrorism and said the government would combat the menace with cooperation from the public.
The KP government had decided to launch the targeted operation after more than 140 people were killed in a flurry of suicide blasts that took place in Peshawar over the past one week. The decision was taken on Sunday in a high level meeting presided over by KP Chief Secretary Arbab Muhammad Shehzad.
While the meeting clearly defined the formation of a special task force which would combat terrorism, with the help of special intelligence organisations, it also decided to spread awareness against terrorism amongst the people.

Source DAWN News
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Black Holes Lead Galaxy Growth

Gas in Distant Galaxy. VLA image (right) of gas in young galaxy seen as it was when the Universe was only 870 million years old. (Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, SDSS)

Jan. 7, 2009 — Astronomers may have solved a cosmic chicken-and-egg problem -- the question of which formed first in the early Universe -- galaxies or the supermassive black holes seen at their cores.

 Full Story @ ScienceDaily