Toyota India unveils the Etios & the Liva

Finally the much awaited Toyota's made for India Sedan ETIOS is launched. Work of 4000 engineers for last 4 years being showcased to the world, for the first time.

Mr Yoshinori, Chief Engineer behind ETIOS explained how an extensive market research which lead to the design of the new sedan. The research revealed that India is a very cost conscious but image conscious also. Mileage, Price and Style the 3 important factor for the Indian buyer. Toyota decided to leverage on their strong point of Quality and then attack the cliche of being a premium market product company, that Toyota is associated with.

ETIOS stands for Spirit and Principle.

All new design for India and then for the world, its a true Sedan design not a hatch redesigned to be a sedan. Spacious inside and compact outside, smiling front, flat rear floor pan, side skirts, smooth C pillars, chrome boot guard etc

Dash design inspired from aircraft design. Interesting to note that the design won the Good design award in Japan in 2010.
 

ARAI rating of 17.6 KMPL should be music to ears for the Indian customer.

Specific for Indian conditions, points to note are the: anti corrosion steel, Rocker mould (thats the ruff thingie on the running board), protection for fuel and brake lines.  

• Dealership increased from 97 in Dec 09 To 150 by Dec 2010
• Brand ambassador AR Rahman
• USP Premium product at affordable price
• Hatchback planned for launch in April 2011. LIVA depicting Full Of Life.
• TV commercial being aired starting tomorrow
• Booking open today @ 50k and delivery by Jan 2011.

The 1.5-liter gasoline-powered Etios sedan will cost Rs. 496,000 ($10,870) for the base variant at showrooms in New Delhi. The top-end version will cost 686,500 rupees. Suzuki's Swift Dzire sedan costs 488,558 rupees for the base model, while Tata Motors Ltd.'s Manza sedan is priced at 512,732 rupees.

Toyota's decision to make the global launch of the Etios in India, where rising incomes of the country's estimated 300 million middle class is fueling demand for new vehicles, reflects the importance of the world's second-fastest growing major economy for auto makers.

The Toyota team posing with the car.

70% of parts for the Etios are sourced from vendors in India.

Toyota will also introduce the Liva, a hatchback version of its Etios sedan, in India next April.

The hatchback will help Toyota tap small-car buyers, the biggest segment of India's auto market, and compete with Suzuki, which controls about half of the country's car market with its eight small car models.

Nearly two-thirds of the cars sold annually in India are small cars, which has encouraged other auto makers such as Ford, Volkswagen and Nissan to start selling their small cars in the country.

Honda, which currently sells the Jazz hatchback, is expected to introduce its newly-developed Brio hatchback model in India in 2011.

Huge boot 590 liters

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Khushwant Singh launches his book The Sunset Club

The chilly winter Delhi evening was dominated by two unique individuals. And could there have been a greater contrast between these two personalities? He, the 'dirty old man,' touching an unbelievable grand age of 97 ("If I make a century I will be lucky"), in a wheelchair and a black ski hat, his glass of Scotch beside him.
She, a sober, dignified lady, elegant in pearls and a beautiful blue silk sari, her manner modest and gracious.

Khushwant Singh, writer, and Gursharan Kaur, the prime minister's wife.
"She is a crowd-puller! I discovered she could draw as many people as a star from Hollywood," Singh says, explaining why he always invites Mrs Manmohan Singh to his book launches.

"Sometimes she comes uninvited," he adds, mock grumbling. The witty Sardar explains that he unabashedly uses his Gursharan Kaur connection and often shows off to friends when flowers arrive from the prime minister's home for him.

This time around, Gursharan Kaur is far from a gatecrasher. She is the chief guest. She released Singh's "last book" The Sunset Club at the postmodern-decor Meridien hotel, New Delhi, on Tuesday.


"I have been saying it is my last book and I said that about my last six books. I don't know how long I can carry on... I am now trying to learn how to do nothing," Khushwant Singh, who edited The Illustrated Weekly, Asia's oldest English magazine, in the 1970s, New Delhi magazine and the Hindustan Times in the 1980s, said. Sunset Club is a poignant tale of three crotchety but hugely lively, fantasy-driven eighty-something Delhiites, of varied backgrounds. They meet every evening at dusk in the capital's Lodhi Gardens to share life's experiences and views, be it religion or sex or lust or Ayodhya or Valentine's Day or Varun Gandhi.
The sensitive tale seems to have bittersweet autobiographical strands, reflecting bits and pieces of Singh's life and that of his friends and relatives.
Gursharan Kaur pointed out, "It is typical Khushwant Singh, hilarious, open and scandalous. I enjoyed it (what she has read so far) as I enjoy his columns that are informative, refreshing, honest and very transparent."
"Khushwant Singh tried hard to convert me into an author," the prime minister's wife added, "but who has the time and the will to write? I think his talent is inborn. He cannot put his pen down."
Gursharan Kaur added that there was already a writer in the family, her daughter.
Daman Singh, her second daughter, has written two well-reviewed novels. Her elder daughter Upinder Singh, a professor of history in Delhi, has written several books of history. Amrit Singh, her youngest daughter, is a distinguished New York-based lawyer, who took on George W Bush's administration at a time when her father and the US president were allies and friends.

The prime minister's wife, in her simple, unaffected way, was the true host of the evening, solicitously looking after Singh, even as she spent time with others in the room, chatting, autographing books, posing for cameras. Arrogance? Not a trace of it. Style? Trademark, low-key friendly grace.
At 96, Khushwant Singh is frail, confined to a wheelchair, sensitive to bright light and even more soft-spoken. As far as spirit and spark go, if anything the legend has gotten crustier and sharper.

He recalled drolly how he got into the business of earning money from needling others in print, "I decided upon a three word formula: Inform, amuse and provoke. With provoke, I found that anytime I write something about people, they took me to court!

Among those who attended the event were sculptor Satish Gujral; India's first lady chief justice Leila Seth (whose son Vikram is one of two Indian writers Khushwant Singh admires; the other is Amitav Ghosh); India's Ambassador to Israel and author Navtej Sarna; Pakistani High Commisioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan; journalist Nalini Singh; Le Meridien owner Bubbles Charanjit Singh and Khushwant Singh's daughter Mala Dayal.

The launch of the final book of an author whose tart wit and frank take on Indian life has enthralled Indians for decades was an intensely sentimental occasion.

Editor-in-chief and publisher of Penguin Ravi Singh reminisced about an important Delhi event -- evenings with Khushwant Singh.

For decades the writer -- whose father Sir Sobha Singh was arguably Delhi's biggest builder through the 1930s -- has run an open house at his Sujan Singh Park home where anybody and everybody was welcome to stop by and have a drink, discuss politics, national affairs and just about anything under the sun with him as long as they made an appointment and left within their designated time or they were sweetly told to "bugger off."
 

Among those who attended the event were sculptor Satish Gujral; India's first lady chief justice Leila Seth (whose son Vikram is one of two Indian writers Khushwant Singh admires; the other is Amitav Ghosh); India's Ambassador to Israel and author Navtej Sarna; Pakistani High Commisioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan; journalist Nalini Singh; Le Meridien owner Bubbles Charanjit Singh and Khushwant Singh's daughter Mala Dayal.

The launch of the final book of an author whose tart wit and frank take on Indian life has enthralled Indians for decades was an intensely sentimental occasion.

Editor-in-chief and publisher of Penguin Ravi Singh reminisced about an important Delhi event -- evenings with Khushwant Singh.

For decades the writer -- whose father Sir Sobha Singh was arguably Delhi's biggest builder through the 1930s -- has run an open house at his Sujan Singh Park home where anybody and everybody was welcome to stop by and have a drink, discuss politics, national affairs and just about anything under the sun with him as long as they made an appointment and left within their designated time or they were sweetly told to "bugger off."

Ravi Singh recalled that Khushwant Singh has spent a lifetime cultivating his crusty, malice-to-all, not-a-nice-man dirty old man persona and "a bigger lie we will not hear." The publisher said he has not met a more "generous, sensitive, genuine and principled man... (with) the extraordinary courage to call a spade a spade, no matter what the consequences."

Penguin Books India had organised a film of tributes, some touching, some amusing, from some of the people who know Khushwant Singh best: Editor-writer M J Akbar, his tailor Saimuddin, journalist and editor Nandini Mehta, his long-serving cook Chandan, editor Vinod Mehta, writer Vikram Seth, his typist Lachman Das, his neighbour Reeta Devi Verma, among others.   

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Religion / Spirituality : The Difference

Religion is spiritual and spirituality can also be considered religious. One tends to be more personal and private while the other tends to incorporate public rituals and organized doctrines. The lines between one and the other may often not be clear or distinct depending on the interpretation.

Religion is an institution established by man for various reasons. Exert control, instill morality, stroke egos, or whatever it does. Organized, structured religions all but remove god from the equation. You confess your sins to a clergy member, go to elaborate churches to worship, told what to pray and when to pray it. All those factors remove you from god. Spirituality is born in a person and develops in the person. It may be kick started by a religion, or it may be kick started by a revelation. Spirituality extends to all facets of a person’s life. Spirituality is chosen while religion is often times forced. Being spiritual to me is more important and better than being religious.

True spirituality is something that is found deep within oneself. It is your way of loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around you. It cannot be found in a church or by believing in a certain way.

In favour of the spiritual path:

* There is not one religion, but hundreds.
* There is only one type of spirituality.


* Religion is for those who want to continue rituals and the formality.
* Spirituality is for those who want to reach the Spiritual Ascent without dogmas.


* Religion is for those who are asleep.
* Spirituality is for those who are awake.

* Religion is for those that require guidance from others.
* Spirituality is for those that lend ears to their inner voice.

* Religion has a dogmatic and unquestionable assembly of rules that need to be followed without question.
* Spirituality invites you to reason it all, to question it all and to decide your actions and assume the consequences.

* Religion threatens and terrifies.
* Spirituality gives you inner peace.

* Religion speaks of sin and of fault.
* Spirituality encourages "living in the present" and not to feel remorse for which has already passed. Lift your spirit and learn from errors.

* Religion represses humanity, and returns us to a false paradigm.
* Spirituality transcends it all and makes you true to yourself.

* Religion is instilled from childhood, like the soup you do not you want to take.
* Spirituality is the food that you you seek, that satisfies you and is pleasant to the senses.

* Religion is not God.
* Spirituality is infinite consciousness and all that is. It is God.

* Religion invents.
* Spirituality discovers.

* Religion does not investigate and does not question.
* Spirituality questions everything.

* Religion is based on humanity, an organization with rules.
* Spirituality is DIVINE, WITHOUT rules.

* Religion is cause for division.
* Spirituality is cause for union.

* Religion seeks you so that you create.
* Spirituality causes you to seek.

* Religion continues the teachings of a sacred book.
* Spirituality seeks the sacredness in all the books.

* Religion is fed fear.
* Spirituality is fed confidence.

* Religion lives you in your thoughts.
* Spirituality lives in your conscience.

* Religion is in charge of the "to do"
* Spirituality is in charge of the "to BE."

* Religion is a dialectic.
* Spirituality is logic.

* Religion feeds the ego.
* Spirituality makes you transcend.

* Religion makes you renounce yourself to the world
* Spirituality makes you live with God, not to renounce Him.

* Religion is adoration
* Spirituality is meditation.

* Religion is to continue adapting to the psychology of a template.
* Spirituality is individuality.

* Religion dreams of glory and paradise.
* Spirituality makes you live it here and now.

* Religion lives in the past and in the future.
* Spirituality lives in the present, in the here and now.

* Religion lives in the confinement of your memory
* Spirituality is LIBERTY in AWARENESS.

* Religion believes in the eternal life.
* Spirituality makes you conscious of all that is.

* Religion gives you promises for the after-life.
* Spirituality gives you the light to find God in your inner self, in this life, in the present, in the here and the now…

May peace, happiness and universal love continue growing in your heart. You are all that is.

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EU launches antitrust probe into alleged Google abuses

The European Commission has launched an investigation into Google after other search engines complained that the firm had abused its dominant position.

The EC will examine whether the world's largest search engine penalised competing services in its results. 

The probe follows complaints by firms including price comparison site Foundem and legal search engine ejustice.fr.

Google denies the allegations but said it would work with the Commission to "address any concerns".

Earlier this year the attorney general of Texas launched a similar investigation following complaints from firms including Foundem. 

The objections in both cases are from competitors which allege that Google manipulates its search results. 

"The European Commission has decided to open an antitrust investigation into allegations that Google has abused a dominant position in online search," the body said in a statement. 

It said the action followed "complaints by search service providers about unfavourable treatment of their services in Google's unpaid and sponsored search results coupled with an alleged preferential placement of Google's own services."

The Commission's investigation does not imply any wrongdoing by Google.

"Since we started, Google we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry," said the firm in a statement.

"But there's always going to be room for improvement, and so we'll be working with the Commission to address any concerns."

Google offers two types of search result - unpaid results produced by the firm's algorithms that are displayed in the main body of the page and "ads", previously called sponsored links.

The investigation will try to determine whether the firm's method of generating unpaid results adversely affects the ranking of other firms, specifically those providing so-called vertical search services.

These are specialist search providers, and can include sites that offer price comparison, for example.

Foundem alleges that Google's algorithms "remove legitimate sites from [its] natural search results, irrespective of relevance". It also says that the firm promotes its own services over those offered by competitors.

"Google is exploiting its dominance of search in ways that stifle innovation, suppress competition, and erode consumer choice," Foundem said in its complaint filed in February 2010.

But Google argues that there are "compelling reasons" why these sites are "ranked poorly".

For example, it said, Foundem "duplicates 79% of its website content from other sites."

"We have consistently informed webmasters that our algorithms disadvantage duplicate sites," the firm said. 

The Commission will also look into allegations that Google manipulated elements of its system that determine the price paid for ads from these sites.

Finally, the investigation will also probe how the company deals with advertising partners.

Advertising is the core of Google's business.

Google is alleged to impose "exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their web sites, as well as on computer and software vendors," according to an EC statement.

In addition, the EC said it would also look into "suspected restrictions on the portability of online advertising campaign data to competing online advertising platforms."

Google says it already allows customers "to take their data with them when they switch services" adn that its contracts "have never been exclusive".

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Honda's Hatchback Brio unveiled

Honda BRIO Prototype makes World Premiere at the 27th Thailand International Motor Expo 2010. The new hatchback is developed for Asian markets and scheduled to be introduced in India in 2011. 

Honda BRIO further advances Honda’s “man maximum, machine minimum” concept. Being developed as a commuter vehicle which is easy-to-use even in urban areas, the Honda BRIO prototype adopts an easy-to-handle compact body (length 3,610mm x width 1,680mm x height 1,475 mm).

Honda will develop unique versions of the mass production model for India and Thailand to reflect different customer needs in those markets. Moreover, with this vehicle, Honda will utilize local sourcing of parts and materials such as sheet steel. Localisation target is 80%. 

Fuel economy of more than 100km / 5 liters will be targeted to be classified as an "eco car" by the Thai Government.

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Gay Pride Parade Delhi 2010

Under Delhi's beautiful November afternoon sun, nearly two thousand young men and women marched on Sunday to mark the city's third Queer Pride parade.
This year's colourful and celebratory parade starting at the end of Barakhamba Road near Connaught Place and ending next to Jantar Mantar -- was the first march after last year's Delhi high court verdict that struck down the antiquated Article 377 of Indian Penal Code.

"I am always reminded of my school days in the 1960s," said 57-year-old artist Sunil Gupta as he observed the marchers gather at Barakhamba Road. Gupta has attended all the three Delhi parades.
"It seemed it would never happen in my lifetime. What's surprising is that the rate of change has accelerated. The first year there were fewer people wearing more masks, and today there are more people in fewer masks," he observed.

There were many masks, but a lot of people wore them more to add colour to their looks, and less to hide their faces. As a lot of people observed, this year's parade, with over 2,000 boisterous marchers, included many youngsters - gays, lesbians, transgenders, but also straight people.
"There is a real change this year," said Gautam Bhan, an activist and one of the organisers of the parade.

"At the first pride parade there were four of us who gave interviews to the media. The numbers of supporting crowds have increased. There are new faces and new people talking to the press and that's fantastic," he said.

In the pride parades of the West, everything appears more orderly, and marchers are represented by ethnic, national, and other political and social groups. But here it was one big party along Delhi's Tolstoy Marg, with many people dancing to the beats of drums. And the cooler weather made it easier for people to break into dance.

The first pride parade in Delhi had about 800 marchers. Last year's parade, held a few days before the high court judgment, had nearly 1,500 marchers. The number was far higher this year.

Gay and lesbian pride parades around the world are held in the month of June -- marking the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York City.
But after last year's Delhi parade, held on a very hot afternoon in June, the organisers decided to shift the march to November, said activist and organiser Mohnish Kabir Malhotra.

Apart from the masks and the colourful costumes, the marchers carried a number of placards. Some read: 'Closets are for Clothes', 'Queer Right are Human Right', 'No Need for Homophobia, Lesbian Suicides, Forced Marriages', 'Jab Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kaya', and 'Out of the Closets and Into the Streets'.
And perhaps the most touching placards were carried by the mother and grandmother of a young gay man.

The mother's placard read: 'God Blessed Me with 2 Sons. 1 of Dem is Gay and I Love Both of Dem Equally!' The grandmother's placard read: 'I Am Proud to Say My Grandson is Gay!'.

There were many foreigners among the marchers -- including a white couple with a biological son and what appeared to be a South Asian adopted daughter. An African American man wore a T-shirt that read in Hindi: 'Aadmi Hoon, Aadmi Say Pyaar Karta Hoon (I am a man, I love a man)'.
Many marchers holding a giant rainbow coloured flag were heard shouting: 'Hum Sab Ka Yeh Naara Hai, Homo Hoona Pyaara Hai'!.

The rainbow colours, an internationally recognised symbol of gay and lesbian identity, were also seen on the scarves, smaller flags and also a few umbrellas carried by the marchers.

Along the way there were many passersby, car and bus drivers who watched the parade with a smile and did not seem to mind that the event was causing a massive traffic jam on Sunday afternoon. Delhi policemen and women also watched the parade, often with smiles on their faces.

"The cops have been really nice," said Rahul Sharma, one of the organisers.

Unlike in the West, there were no counter protests against the march. "The few passersby seem curious," Gupta said as he walked in the parade.

"Actually, this part of Delhi is very quiet on a Sunday so you will have to be dedicated to come to protest. But that kind of opposition in an organised manner happens in the US a lot, because of the lobbying groups," he said.

"One thing is that India doesn't have is homophobia, because Indians do not discuss sex," he added.
"Even the casual homophobia doesn't happen here. If more such parades happen, then a few years down the line, there might be protests," said Gupta.
 

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WikiLeaks reveals how US snoops on friends and foes

Nearly 250,000 classified United States documents procured by WikiLeaks give detail about a wide variety of secret diplomatic episodes and incidences of backroom bargaining, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The confidential cache of US cables released to the paper by the whistleblower website was described by the Times as the one that unlocks the secrets of American diplomacy. The newspaper made public the details contained in the documents on Sunday, some time after WikiLeaks said its website was under a cyber attack.

"A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats," The Times said in its lead story. 


US-Pak stand-off over nuclear fuel

More eminent newspapers across the globe are expected to follow suit, even as WikiLeaks on its Twitter account said that it is "currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack". It added that even if its website goes down, a number of newspapers will go ahead and publish the documents.

These documents, according to NYT, reveal a dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel. Since 2007, the US has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.

In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, "if the local media got word of the fuel removal, they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons, he argued".

China on a hacking spree

Besides, they also provide an insight into a global computer hacking effort initiated by the Chinese government. China's politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems, a Chinese contact told the American embassy in Beijing in January, according to one cable.

The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government.

They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, the cables said.

The White House immediately condemned the release strongly, saying it risked the lives of thousands of diplomats and officials and endangered its relationship with friends and allies.

 WikiLeaks exposed rights abuse in Iraq

Top officials of the Obama administration called up several countries including India and warned them about the imminent release of such classified US documents.

The Pentagon condemned what it called a 'reckless' act, and said it has initiated measures to prevent such leaks in the future ahead of the imminent release. The State Department asked it to return the 'illegally obtained' papers, insisting that their leak would "endanger the lives of countless individuals."

The Twitter message by WikiLeaks earlier said that El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian and New York Times newspapers will publish many US embassy cables on Sunday night, even if WikiLeaks goes down.

The website has earlier released thousands of documents on the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In October, WikiLeaks released four lakh secret US files on Iraq war detailing abuse of Iraqi prisoners in US custody, rights violations and civilian deaths.
Earlier in July, the website had published tens of thousands of secret documents on the war in Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday said the soon-to-be released classified US documents will cover 'every major issue' in the world.

Late on Saturday, Washington rejected talks with WikiLeaks, saying the website was holding the cables in violation of US law. However, Assange has rejected the claim that the release would put to harm many lives.

The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked 'top secret', the government's most secure communications status.

 China hacks Google, US spies on allies 
The NYT reported that details contained in the released documents include plans to reunite the Korean peninsula after the North's eventual collapse and bargaining over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The cables also detail fresh suspicions about corruption in Afghanistan and Saudi donors financing Al Qaeda. Many more cables name diplomats' confidential sources, from foreign legislators and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning to Washington: 'Please protect' or 'Strictly protect'.

The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world.

They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the US Consulate, the daily said.

"They show American officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of painstaking effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal," it said. 

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