1. Blacks account for 13% of the U.S. population but about 50% of the two million prisoners. Writing in Sunday’s New York Times, Harvard professor Orlando Patterson attributes this “virtual gulag of racial incarceration” to unfair law enforcement, draconian mandatory sentencing, retreat from rehabilitation, far higher crimes committed by blacks and the catastrophic state of black family life.

2.  According to Nancy Benac of the Associated Press, 40% of Americans - a whopping 116 million - have never lived when there wasn’t a Bush or Clinton in the White House, either as President or Vice President. To all those Indians who whine about the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty’s hold on power, take heart. Things in America ain’t no better.

3. When you read that 23% of cars sold in the U.S. are manufactured elsewhere (mainly Japan, South Korea, Germany), you begin to realize why the American auto industry is going down the toilet. Just watch, things are only gonna get much worse for U.S. auto workers when the American car companies GM, Ford and Chrysler start importing cars from China and other low wage countries.

4. About 47 million Americans do not have health insurance. This means most of them cannot afford to visit a doctor unless they are unlucky enough to be struck with a catastrophic illness in which case they become bankrupt.

5. According to the New York Times, the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 is projected to hit $800 billion by the end of 2008.

Much as we love Jamie Foxx, it was the Israeli actor Ashraf Barhom who commanded our attention in Peter Berg’s new action flick The Kingdom.

As the Saudi colonel Faris Al Ghazi responsible for guarding a bunch of FBI Special Agents investigating a horrific attack in Saudi Arabia in which many American lives were lost including an FBI colleague, Ashraf Barhom brings an intensity to his character that Foxx - who plays an FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury here - never seems to achieve.

I suspect we’ll be seeing and hearing a lot more of Ashraf Barhom in Hollywood productions.

A geopolitical action thriller with car chases and its twin siblings bombings and kidnappings, The Kingdom is not in the same league as that edge of the seat, steroid-laced thriller of this summer Bourne Ultimatum.

Simply put, former CIA operative Jason Bourne trumps FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury in every department - story, action and pace.

But don’t get us wrong.

The Kingdom is still a decent movie compared to any of the currently running Bollywood nightmares at the Indian theatres in New York, New Jersey or California.

Against the wishes of the wimpy Attorney General Gideon Young (Danny Huston) and the State Department, four FBI agents land in Saudi Arabia to investigate a deadly attack.

With just five days to complete their difficult mission, the FBI agents led by Foxx meet with a hostile reception in Saudi Arabia both from the local U.S. State Department fellow Damon Schmidt (Jeremy Piven) as well as from their Saudi hosts.

Saudi colonel Faris Al Ghazi is responsible for their security and also for ensuring that the FBI agents do not step out of line in a country where for much of the local population Osama bin Laden is the hero and the Americans are the villains.

Saudi Arabia is a harsh terrain in every way - language, culture, anti-American sentiments and other prejudices stymie the FBI agents at every turn.

Although the story is not gripping in its entirety, The Kingdom has a lot of good moments.

Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper as the other FBI agents and particularly Ali Suliman as the Saudi Sergeant Haytham do an adequate job.

Much of this geopolitical thriller was actually shot - literally and figuratively in this case - in Arizona though it’d hard to figure that out if you didn’t know it already.

Even in the land of Khushboo a.k.a the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, thin is apparently in these days.

Besides the voluptuous yesteryear actress Khushboo (for whom devoted fans once built a temple), several prominent Tamil heroines like Jyothika, Ramya, Nagma, Sripriya  and Nayantara have been rather plump by Hollywood - and even Bollywood - standards.

But according to the hacks at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), plump is out of fashion these days in India.

Gone with the wind are the days of yore when plump, fleshy heroines were the stuff of every young man’s fantasies. A WSJ feature item takes note of this new phenomenon in the Friday edition of the paper: 

In the home of the country’s Tamil-language film industry, full-figured heroines used to be the hottest stars. Until a few years ago, actresses considered too chubby for the country’s mainstream Hindi-language Bollywood movies could find roles easily in this city. No more.

Well, that’s a bit of exaggeration considering that full figured Tamil actresses like Nayantara and Meera Jasmine still have the young uns - and, ahem, quite a few old ones too like yours truly - drooling.

Hooey, say the folks at the WSJ. They argue that for a new generation of young women in India, weight reduction, yoga, diet and thin are the new shibboleths.

In a country where full figures have long represented the ideal for feminine beauty, thin is increasingly in. An influx of glossy international fashion magazines and a growing number of opportunities for women in the work force are prompting a move toward fitted Western-style fashions and away from flowing national garb. Now, weight-loss clinics are proliferating in urban centers.

Well, count us out among the new fans of the thin, svelte Indian babes.

Not for us the Shreyas and Asins. We’ll stick with the Jyothikas and Nayantaras, thank you.

Today’s New York Times features a puff piece on Indian entrepreneur Sunil Bharti Mittal tooting his horn about his recent deal with Wal-Mart to set up a wholesale distribution system.

Amidst all his prattle about the cold chain, the trucking, storage  etc, what caught our attention in the NYT story was Sunil Mittal’s juvenile boast that India

can become a food supplier to the rest of the world.

What is Sunil Mittal smoking? Come, on India is a country that still can’t feed all its citizens let alone becoming food supplier to the rest of the world.

More than 60 years after Independence, Indian media sources periodically report starvation deaths in different corners of the country.

India’s million-plus small retailers and their employees rightly fear the entry of huge chains like Wal-Mart will drive them out of business. Without a safety net, where will these folks go?

In many parts of the U.S., mom-and-pop stores have been wiped out because of chain stores like Wal-Mart. After the public outcry against Wal-Mart, some cities in California, Illinois and New York have been reluctant to let Wal-Mart open outlets in their localities.

Wal-Mart also has a shabby trackrecord vis-a-vis its employees in the U.S., many of whom are poorly paid and rely on the government for their medical care because of their low wages.

Do we really need companies like Wal-Mart in India?

Recently, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati did the right thing in shutting down 10 Reliance Industries superstores after protests by small traders and political activists.

The folks at local search engine AskLaila have snagged $10 million in a Series B round of funding, according to VC Circle.

Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round in AskLaila’s parent Bangalore-based Four Interactive.

Silicon Valley Bank and return investor Matrix Partners India also participated in the latest round.

Matrix invested $2 million in the startup seven months back.

We did a quick check of AskLaila’s service and found it still has ways to go. The service is currently restricted to Bangalore but the company plans to extend it to the other major Indian cities.

AskLaila’s peers include JustDial and the 800-pound gorilla Google. JustDial did better than AskLaila in our quick search of restaurants in Bangalore.

The big question is how all these Indian local search fledglings plan on making decent money at the end of the day. After all, as the dot com boom in the U.S. proved any idiot can start a company. Few can sustain it and fewer still make decent money off it.

AskLaila is the brainchild of Kiran Konduri and Shriram Adukoorie.

Amazon.com’s new online music store Amazon MP3 offers songs in several Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi and Kannada.

We checked the Amazon store for songs from old and new Hindi and Tamil movies including Aradhana, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Dhoom and Ilamai Oonjaladigirathu (Tamil). Guess what, we found ‘em all there.

A preview option lets you listen to the songs for a short while before making the purchase.

Most of the Hindi and Tamil songs we checked were priced at 89 cents each while some were 99 cents.

The good news for buyers - the songs are available in MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

This means that customers can enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device including PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens, iPhones, RAZRs and BlackBerrys.

Buyers are also supposed to be able to organize their music using any music management application such as iTunes or Windows Media Player and burn songs to CDs.

Amazon’s new music download service is offering a total of two million songs from 180,000 artists in a wide variety of genres.

Will Amazon.com be able to make a dent in the face of the Apple iPod juggernaut? Watch this space.

Starting with the browser, Microsoft has been one of the biggest failures and laggards on the Internet side of the computer industry.

Microsoft’s latest and biggest failure is, of course, on the search front where Google has taken all the glory and all the money.

Despite throwing in hundreds of millions of dollars, Microsoft’s MSN search engine struggles to gain user acceptance in the face of a far superior service from Google.

But MSN Search is not the only Microsoft failure on the Internet side.

In fact, the history of Microsoft’s Internet initiatives is littered with the carcases of failures - online advertising, MSN Internet access, CarPoint, MSFDC bill presentment and payment service, LinkExchange Banner Network, HomeAdvisor home buying service, Passport Express Purchase online shopping service, Electronic Wallet, MoneyCentral and more.

AOL crushed Microsoft’s Internet access service Continue Reading…

What’s all this hullabaloo about IT company EDS paying $720,000 in bribes to Indian officials?

We just don’t understand all this sound and fury and gnashing of teeth. It’s all much ado about nothing.

After all, taking and giving bribes is a great Indian tradition.

Scores of Bollywood movies show ministers and officers demanding and taking lakhs of Rupees - as they say in the Hindi movies these are not bribes mind you but a small something to buy candy for the kids.

Remember the Swedish gun manufacturer Bofors‘ huge bribes to Indian officials. In two decades of investigations has anyone been caught despite all the noise?

Tehelka showed pictures of high officials taking money. What happened - Tehelka was crushed.

Yes, EDS paid at least $720,000 to senior officials of two Indian public sector companies between 2001 and 2003 who had apparently threatened to cancel a major contract. The bribes were in the form of cash, gifts and services.

Bribes were paid. And the contract continued.

Everything would have been just fine and we would’ve gone on drinking our Lattes and Lassis without wasting time on blogging this story.

Except that the matter came out, caught the SEC’s attention and EDS now has to pay a fine of $490,902 for the various violations.

And poor Chandramowli Srinivasan, the former president of EDS’ erstwhile unit A.T.Kearney India has to pay a fine of $70,000 although he neither denied nor admitted to the bribery.

No, we really are not desperate to know the names of the two Indian public sector companies involved, the identity of the officials who received the bribes or what Chandramowli Srinivasan is doing now.

Struggling with its online initiatives in the face of the Google onslaught, Microsoft is in talks to pick up a 5% stake in social networking site Facebook at the same time that Google is also considering investing in Facebook, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

If it goes through, the Microsoft investment could be in the range of $300 million-$500 million and value Facebook at about $10 billion, a huge valuation for a start-up that’s expected to report revenues of just $150 million this year.

Reporting on the preliminary discussions between Microsoft and Facebook, the Journal said:

Microsoft’s approach to Facebook in recent weeks with proposals to invest in the fast-growing site is part of the software giant’s effort to catch up with the Internet rival Google. If successful, Microsoft’s talks with Facebook could give it an up-to-5% stake in the closely-held startup — a stake potentially valued at roughly $300 million to $500 million.

Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has attracted funding of $40.7 million from a bunch of marquee investors including Founders Fund, Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.

Under an existing relationship, Microsoft currently serves display ads on Facebook’s web site that’s supposedly used by some 40 million people.

India won the Twenty20 World Cup final beating arch enemy Pakistan by five runs in a nail-biting finish this evening in the South African city of Johannesburg.

Batting first, India ended up with a modest 157 for five wickets.

The highlight of India’s batting was Gautam Gambhir’s fine 75 scored off 54 balls with eight boundaries and two magnificent sixes.

Although Pakistan had a Continue Reading…

EXCLUSIVE

Indian beauty queen and Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai is in the final stages of obtaining a U.S. trademark for her name from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Most likely, Aishwarya Rai will be the first Bollywood star to get the coveted USPTO trademark.

Getting the Aishwarya Rai trademark from the USPTO is important as the actress steps up her involvement in Hollywood films.

The USPTO trademark will also deter others from profiting on the Aishwarya Rai name online or offline and make it easier for the actress to take legal action against alleged infringers.

Recently married to Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai is considered one of the world’s most beautiful women although her acting talents can only charitably be described as pathetic. But in fairness to Aishwarya Rai, most Bollywood actors including her father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan, husband Abhishek Bachchan and current superstar Shahrukh Khan merely go through the motions of acting.

Aishwarya Rai, or Ash, as she is popularly known in India, is obtaining the trademark from the USPTO in two broad categories - advertising and entertainment services (personal appearance by a celebrity fashion model).

Aishwarya Rai applied for the Service Mark (to use the correct term) on March 28, 2006.

Aishwarya Rai’s application was published for opposition in February this year and notice of allowance mailed in May after receiving no oppositions.

The Serial Number of Aishwarya Rai’s trademark application with the USPTO is 76657645.

Last month, the USPTO completed processing the Statement of Use application, which was filed by Aishwarya Rai’s agents electronically in July.

The next steps in the lengthy USPTO registration process are Continue Reading…

In America, it seems everything is for sale.

Now you can even buy convincing lies, with a nice alibi to back you up when you face some of life’s sticky situations.

Want to get off for a weekend with your girlfriend without the wife knowing, skip a boring office conference, justify missing an event, a fake hotel or airline reservation? No problem. Help is at hand.

Just get your credit card out.

There’s a company called Alibi Network that sells alibis for a price. On its web site, Alibi Network declares its mission statement:

To invent, create and provide personalized virtual alibis for people wishing to anticipate and justify absences.

Just in case, you are not smart enough to understand its raison d’être, the Chicago-based company makes its goal explicit in a lengthy Q&A:

We provide alibis, or a way to justify absences from home, work,  family events, etc. The basic concept is rather simple: we invent, create and provide alibis and excuses for people wishing to justify absences. These alibis can take various forms: a telephone call simulating work emergency or car accident, an invitation to a classical music event, a letter documenting your participation in a sales seminar, a Dallas Cowboys football game or a Britney Spears concert ticket… It is up to you to choose an alibi appropriate to your own circumstances, lifestyle, needs, etc.

Of course, there’s no free lunch. Besides the annual membership fee of Continue Reading…