Vancouver street racer deported to India

A driver who killed a woman during a Vancouver street race in 2000 has been deported to India, a spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency said Wednesday.

Sukhvir Singh Khosa was ordered deported from Canada to India in April 2003 after he was convicted of criminal negligence causing the death of Irene Thorpe, 51, who he struck and killed in November 2000.

Khosa, a permanent resident who immigrated to Canada in 1996 at age 14 with his family, fought to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds and filed a series of appeals. A Federal Court of Appeal decision allowed him to stay in the country, but the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the original deportation order last month.

Faith St. John, a CBSA spokeswoman in B.C., said Khosa boarded a plane and left Vancouver on Tuesday.

Bahadur Singh Bhalru, the co-accused in the street-racing death, was deported four years ago after being convicted of criminal negligence causing death.

Both Khosa and Bhalru received conditional sentences of two years less a day with house arrest, community service and a five-year driving ban.

In November 2000, Khosa was racing his car at more than 120 kilometres an hour in a 50 km/h zone when he lost control and slammed into Thorpe as she was out on an evening walk on a sidewalk along Marine Drive in south Vancouver.

He fought to stay on "compassionate and humanitarian grounds?" what grounds would he basing that on exactly? personally, I think that is used WAY too much in deportation cases, like COME ON buddy! that along with house arrests, community service I think are handed down as sentences way too often by our justice system here, a 5 year driving ban? that's it? all of that is a slap on the wrist considering he killed someone, and for what? a stupid street race, the street aren't meant for racing, that's why race tracks are built (hence the term "race tracks"????) both of these guys (Sukhvir Singh Khosa was 18 in 2001 and Bahadur Singh Balru was 21) were old enough to know better then to wrecklessly race around city streets, they weren't kids that "didn't know any better" .

Sending him simply back home to India I feel is the easy way out (HE KILLED SOMEONE!!!!) being east indian myself (although yes, admittedly, I've never personally been to India) What's he going to get there? he gets to go home once he's off the plane, go hang out with friends (from how I hear it, life in india, especially if you have some money, which he probably does, at least a little, and a semi decent job you're pretty well set there...the kicker? the job will probably be, working for a company, in Canada, that hires workers in India!!) What should have happened is a deal of some sort worked out with his country (India) if they were going to send him back there, for him to serve time in there prison system for a few years, I hear there prison system isn't the slap on the wrist system we have here, it would have taught him the lesson I feel he hasn't learned yet, because at his age (come on, he's still young) out with buddies, doing whatever, if a lesson isn't pounded into you yet, you're more then likely to make a stupid mistake again, the streets of India are much worse, a hell of a lot busier, where you're sharing the road with buses, rickshaws (not sure I spelt that right) cars, bicycyles, motorcyles, trucks, cows, sheeps, buffalos, people, and whatever the heck else... the rules are a lot more relaxed as well, more like a kill or be killed atmosphere, make it from point A to point B and hope you don't get killed!! can you imagine this guy racing on those streets?

What's worse is, give it a few years for "things to settle down" and this guy will probably try coming back here, show that he's "matured", will probably be let back in, who cares that he took a life his first time around here in Canada... An absolute joke!!

It really makes you wonder how we much value we have for a life in this country! This slapping on the wrist thing needs to end right NOW! THESE INDIVIDUALS TOOK A LIFE! Lock them up in jail for life and throw away the key (or better yet, grind the key up, make a locket out of it, and give it to the family of the person they've killed!)! The Canadian Justice System has moved beyond being a joke, BEYOND!!

Individuals who commit crimes like murder are walking free a few years later after being put on house arrest?! Does this sound right to anyone else?

Hi-tech immigrants heading home to China, India

Tech-savvy, well-educated Indian and Chinese immigrants are packing it up in greater numbers in the United States and heading back home, This, according to Duke professor and Harvard researcher Vivek Wadhwa.

He conducted a survey on why recent returnees elected to go back to India and China for the Kauffman Foundation.

"The majority of people like it better back home," Wadhwa said. "The U.S. isn't everything anymore ... This is great for India and China, but what we've done is export economic recovery."

He estimates that while 50,000 Indian and 50,000 Chinese immigrants returned home in the past 20 years, there will be 100,00 Indians and 100,000 Chinese immigrants leaving the U.S. in the next five years.

The factors driving return were not primarily visa issues, the survey found, but feelings that career opportunities were better at home, a desire to be close to friends and family, and better quality of life.

The survey randomly polled 1,203 Indian and Chinese employees in their home countries who had worked or gone to school in the U.S. and who were members of the social networking site LinkedIn.com.

India to unveil the 500-rupee laptop

The credit crunch computer is set to arrive tomorrow in India when officials unveil the 500 rupee ($12.62 Canadian funds) laptop. In an attempt to bridge the "digital divide" in the country between rich and poor, the government will show off the prototype, low-cost laptop as the centrepiece of an ambitious e-learning programme to link 18,000 colleges and 400 universities across the country.

India has a reputation for creating ultra-cheap technologies, a trend sparked last year by the Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car at Rs100,000 ($2.524.48).

The computer, known as Sakshat, which translates as "before your eyes", will be launched as part of a new Rs46bn "national mission for education". This envisages a network of laptops from which students can access lectures, coursework and specialist help from anywhere in India, triggering a revolution in education. A number of publishers have reportedly agreed to upload portions of their textbooks on to the system.

Prabhakar Rao, vice-chancellor of the university in Andhra Pradesh from where the Sakshat will be launched, said that India was "looking to get the hardware and software cheaper. In a developing country, costs have to be kept low so that the maximum number of students will benefit. That means cheap computers and cheap broadband access, so that students get access to ebooks and ejournals."

Although half of India's 1 billion people are aged below 25, the country has fallen behind in terms of university places, with only 11% of students enrolled, compared with double that in China. India's bigger northern neighbour already has 180 million internet users, five times India's total.

Designed by scientists at the Vellore Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and the state-controlled Semiconductor Complex, the laptop has 2Gb of Ram and wireless connectivity. In an attempt to keep costs low, experts say it is unlikely to use familiar Microsoft Windows software.

Officials are confident that the Rs500 price tag can be met. RP Agarwal, the top civil servant for Indian higher education, told newspapers last week that "at this stage, the price is working out to be Rs1,000 [$25.24] but with mass production it is bound to come down."

The Indian machine would also be considerably cheaper than the "$100 laptop", the lime-green computer known as the Children's Machine or XO that was designed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.

Launched in 2005 in a flurry of praise by Nicholas Negroponte, the former director of MIT's Media Lab, the XO has failed to take off, partly because it costs $250 CAD to make. However it has given rise to low-cost computers that save money by getting rid of hard drives and using cheap screens. The Classmate PC made by Intel, the world's biggest microchip manufacturer, can be bought for $750. Taiwan's Eee PC costs as little as $250.

However, some experts doubt that a laptop at $20 or $10 is commercially sustainable. Rajesh Jain, managing director of Netcore Solutions and a pioneer of low-cost computing in India, said: "You cannot even [make] a computer screen for $20. And India does not build much computer hardware. So where will the savings come from?"

Some bloggers today saw the new laptop as nothing more than a "souped up calculator". The sceptism was summed up by Atanu Dey, whose blog read: "If the government could pull-off a near-impossible technological miracle, does it not imply that the entire global computer industry is either totally incompetent or else it is a huge scam which produces stuff at very little cost and sells them at exorbitant prices."

Officials have been reluctant to talk about the project ahead of the launch, however, one did say that costs have been kept low by using students and researchers to do much of the designing. He said that in 2007 the cost was $47, but further refinements meant it dropped dramatically.

‘Slumdog Millionaire’ delights and angers South Asians

The theaters in New Delhi are packed. While “Slumdog Millionaire” has long since been released in the US, it opened in India last weekend.

The movie depicts the fate of three children who live in terribly difficult conditions in the slums of Mumbai. It follows them as love, violence and a television show changes their fate.

It is a very painful look at the lives of India’s poor through the eyes of the poorest of the poor: children.
Indian film critics are mostly raving about the movie, but everyday South Asians have reacted to the film with a range of emotions from happily entertained to fiercely angry.

There have been a couple of protests over the film since it opened. Some of the people who live in slums — and some who don’t — felt the film was profiting off the suffering of others. Some were spitting mad that a foreign director took the liberty to show everything that is wrong in the country and not much of what's right with it.

Even the name of the film itself has come under fire.

Protesters tore down movie posters in one of India’s poorest states saying the use of the word “Slumdog” to describe people living in slums had again injured the poor. They say it is yet another hurtful name for those already struggling at the bottom.

Back in Delhi when 20-something middle class South Asian movie-goers were asked about their thoughts on the movie, they were frank: “That’s India man, these are some of the realities of life here,” one guy remarked.

Which is why some people said they just didn’t want to see a film about the same sad stories they are faced with everyday.

As the week progressed a visit to the same theater where “Slumdog Millionaire” or “Slumdog Crorepati” (crorepati being the Hindi word for millionaire) was playing. During the week it was virtually empty.

The vast majority of people talked to were disturbed by the movie, saying it was both painful and uplifting. They pointed out faults but in the end recommended it, saying it was an interesting and entertaining film. Some, though, were pretty annoyed the world had seen a movie about India long before it was released where it was made.

The reaction about the movie all over India bring up a question that has long been debated: Do artists, this time filmmakers, have a responsibility to show balance, or should they be able to create their art freely even if it disturbs others?

Thoughts? What do you think?

India rocked by Satyam scam

Chair of outsourcing firm with offices in Canada resigns after revealing profits massively inflated

Ramalinga Raju visited Toronto four years ago to discuss how Indian outsourcing firm Satyam Computer Services Ltd. was using Canada as a beachhead to gain access to the huge U.S. market.

But on Tuesday, the Satyam chair was waving a white flag of surrender after he admitted to a massive accounting fraud that caused the company's stock to plummet by nearly 80 per cent while casting a cloud over India's emerging economy.

Raju, who founded India's fourth-largest software services exporter with his brother and brother-in-law two decades ago, shocked investors and the Indian business community by tendering his resignation and revealing that Satyam's profits had been massively inflated over the years.

He claimed that about $1 billion (U.S.), or a staggering 94 per cent, of the cash on Satyam's books was "artificial" or "non-existent" and apologized to the company and its stakeholders.

"What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years," Raju wrote in his statement of resignation. "Every attempt to eliminate the gap failed. It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten."

He added that no other board member was aware of the financial irregularities at Satyam, which in Sanskrit means "truth."

It is the biggest corporate scandal in India's memory, dubbed "India's Enron" by analysts, and one that has raised questions about regulatory oversight and the role of Satyam's external auditors, global firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

As well, the scandal promises to shake up India's once-booming outsourcing sector while possibly threatening foreign investment.

The fallout could even extend to Canada, where the Indian outsourcing industry had carved out a niche in southern Ontario because of proximity to the U.S. heartland.

"They find a presence in Canada useful because, in addition to doing business with Canadian clients, they also want to do business with American clients," said Bernard Courtois, president of the Information Technology Association of Canada, which counts some of Satyam's competitors as members.

Satyam maintains computer networks and has provided a range of back-office outsourcing services for such blue-chip clients as Citigroup Inc., General Electric Co. and General Motors Corp. The U.S. government has also been a client.

In Canada, Satyam boasts a client roster that includes four of the country's big five banks.
With offices in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary, the company also does business in the Canadian health-care sector and donated $1 million earlier this year to Hamilton's Mohawk College to build "the first working prototype of Canada's national blueprint for electronic health records."

In 2004, Satyam opened its first Canadian development centre in Mississauga with about 100 workers as part of an industry-wide effort to ameliorate concerns some U.S. companies had about the optics of sending jobs overseas. Canada was seen as a "nearshore" compromise with its slightly cheaper labour, English-speaking workforce and attractive tax benefits.

"There are some (U.S.) customers who feel a great affinity to the Canadian market," Raju told the Star in Oct. 2004.

Gary Teelucksingh, Satyam's senior vice-president for the Americas, did not return calls to his Mississauga office yesterday.

Satyam's competitors – Infosys Technologies Ltd., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. – also operate Canadian development centres in Toronto, Mississauga and Windsor.

Outsourcing and, particularly, offshoring of jobs has been a potent political topic in recent years.

"In the U.S., it was this sort of irrational behaviour caused by a mindset that was concerned about illegal immigration and security concerns post-9/11," said Courtois.

But the outsourcing boogeyman never really reared its head in Canada, in part because the country has benefited from jobs shipped north from the U.S. – a trend Courtois expects will continue to accelerate. "I think with the current economic crisis, more people are going to take a look at it," Courtois said.