March 26, 2007
India Attracts Universities From the U.S.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
CHENNAI, India — It was an unusual university entrance interview.
Late one recent evening here in steamy southern India, Vijay Muddana sat in a mercilessly air-conditioned room, leaning forward in his chair and talking to the wall. There, projected on a screen via videoconferencing equipment, were administrators from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where an early morning snowstorm had caused a power failure, delaying the interviews by an hour. The Indians found it funny that even in Pittsburgh, there were power failures.
Mr. Muddana, 21, was among a dozen ambitious young Indians hoping to get a graduate degree in information technology offered jointly by Carnegie Mellon and a small private college here.
The exchange was one of the many ways in which American universities, eager to expand to markets abroad, are training their sights on India. Some 40 percent of the population is under 18, and a scarcity of higher education opportunities is frequently cited as a potential hurdle to economic progress.
The American universities are just testing the waters, because the law here is still vague on how foreign educational institutions can operate. But that may soon change.
[The Bush administration’s envoy for public diplomacy, Karen P. Hughes, is visiting India this week with a half-dozen American university presidents to promote Brand America in Indian education. The United States wants an easing of rules under a draft law on foreign investment in Indian education, which is to be introduced in Parliament in April.]
If the law is approved, foreign institutions would be exempt from strict rules that currently apply to all government-accredited universities in India on fees, staff salaries and curriculums. The government has already proposed setting up an expert committee to review the standards and reputation of foreign universities that want to establish independent campuses here.
The growing American interest in Indian education reflects a confluence of trends. It comes as American universities are trying to expand their global reach in general, and discovering India’s economic rise in particular. It also reflects the need for India to close its gaping demand for higher education.
Among Indians ages 18 to 24, only 7 percent enter a university, according to the National Knowledge Commission, which advises the prime minister’s office on higher education. To roughly double that percentage — effectively bringing it up to par with the rest of Asia — the commission recommends the creation of 1,500 colleges and universities over the next several years. India’s public universities are often woefully underfinanced and strike-prone.
Indians are already voting with their feet: the commission estimates that 160,000 Indians are studying abroad, spending an estimated $4 billion a year. Indians and Chinese make up the largest number of foreign students in the United States.
Madeleine Green, vice president for international initiatives at the American Council on Education, calls India “the next frontier” for American institutions, many of which have already set up base in China.
“The pull factor is the interest of India and the opportunity that India now presents,” she said. “The push is from American institutions saying, ‘There’s a world out there and we need to discover it. It’ll make our grads more competitive.’ It’s part of their push to internationalize.”
At the moment, however, instead of setting up satellite campuses as was done in China, Singapore or Qatar, most American institutions are opting to join hands with existing Indian institutions.
Columbia Business School, for instance, started a student exchange program earlier this year with the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad. The institutions teamed up to write case materials devised to teach American students about doing business in India.
“For us it’s market access; for them it’s access to a bigger business school,” said R. Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School.
Columbia is the latest of several foreign business schools to tie up with the Ahmedabad campus, reflecting what its director, Bakul Dholakia, sees as a growing appetite to train future executives about India. “Companies out there need managers now who have a unique Asian perspective,” he said.
The Americanization of Indian education is following a variety of approaches. Champlain College, based in Burlington, Vt., runs a satellite campus in Mumbai that offers degrees in one of three career-oriented subjects that college administrators have found to be attractive to Indians: business, hospitality industry management and software engineering. A 2005 study commissioned by the government found at least 131 foreign educational institutions operating in India at the time, a vast majority offering vocational courses.
However, Champlain’s degrees are not recognized by the Indian government, something that is still typical here. One government official who looks after private education estimated that at least 100,000 students graduated from entirely unaccredited private institutions. The study found that students did not consider unaccredited college degrees to be a hindrance to getting jobs in the private sector.
California State University, Long Beach, has agreed to help start American-style, four-year degree programs at state-run Lucknow University in northern India. Its vice chancellor, R. P. Singh, said the California institution would help draft the curriculum and train faculty.
Cornell University, whose president is among the American university officials visiting India in recent months, is seeking to expand research collaborations, particularly in agriculture and public health.
Rice University envisions faculty and student exchanges, particularly in technology. “What’s in it for us is opportunities for our students, opportunities for our faculty in terms of research collaboration,” said David Leebron, the university president, who was in India in February. “At this stage we think we are best served by developing partnerships with Indian institutions.”
For its part, Carnegie Mellon offers its degree in partnership with a small private institution here, the Shri Shiv Shankar Nadar College of Engineering. Most of the course work is done at relatively inexpensive rates here in India, followed by six months in Pittsburgh, at the end of which students graduate with a Carnegie Mellon degree.
The arrangement circumvents most of the usual Indian government restrictions. The curriculum is devised in partnership with Carnegie Mellon, and students are chosen jointly by faculty from both schools.
There are no affirmative action requirements for student admissions, as there are in accredited colleges. Fees are not regulated by the state. It is expensive by Indian standards, though nearly all of the students are subsidized by scholarships financed by Shiv Nadar, the college’s founder and chief executive of HCL Technologies, one of India’s leading technology companies.
The applicants on the recent evening in Chennai were eager to please the gatekeepers from Pittsburgh. They addressed them politely with a series of “yes, sirs.” Asked what they could contribute to Carnegie Mellon, some of them became flummoxed. One young man said he wanted to develop software designed for the “global citizen,” by which he meant a way to transfer money across continents using a mobile phone.
Mr. Muddana, who had a bachelor’s degree in information technology and had spent the past eight months as a software developer for an Indian firm, said he saw the program as a cost-effective ticket to an American degree and a chance to work for a few years in the United States.
His father, he said, failed to grasp his ambitions. Why would he quit a secure, well-paying job to go back to school, his father wanted to know. Mr. Muddana said his father taught at a government school in a rural district in neighboring Andhra Pradesh State. He earns today roughly what his son makes fresh out of college. Mr. Muddana said his father was bewildered by his dreams and by how much it would cost to get a master’s degree.
“He’s presently thinking only of the investment,” Mr. Muddana said, “not the outcome.”

Raikkonen wins Australian GP in Ferrari debut
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Kimi Raikkonen won in his first race for Ferrari, dominating the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Sunday for his 10th Formula One victory.
Raikkonen started from pole position, and led almost throughout the race to edge world champion Fernando Alonso, who was making his McLaren debut.
RACE RESULTS: Australian Grand Prix
"It is special moment with a new team, everything is new, new to win in the first race ... to win straightaway," Raikkonen said. "I am really happy with the team and the way things are going. It couldn't be any better than it is now."
McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton, F1's first black driver, finished third.
Raikkonen's Ferrari teammate, Felipe Massa, finished sixth after starting the race from the back of the grid.
Raikkonen ensured Ferrari maintained its momentum after leading winter testing. The Finn, who previously drove for McLaren, joined Ferrari to replace seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher, who retired after finishing second on the drivers standings last year.
Raikkonen completed the 58 laps of the 3.295-mile Albert Park circuit 7.2 seconds ahead of Alonso, with the rookie Hamilton 18.5 seconds back.
Hamilton became the first rookie to make the podium in his debut since Canadian Jacques Villeneuve took second at the 1996 Australian GP.
"To lead into my first Grand Prix was a fantastic feeling," Hamilton said. "To be in my first Grand Prix, something I have been working for for so many years. The hard work has just paid off.
"I am just extremely happy for myself and the team. I was ecstatic ... I still am."
Raikkonen's win was all the more impressive given the Finn drove without radio communication with his team throughout the race.
"I lost my radio with the team just before the start. But we had a plan and knew what we wanted to do before the race," he said, adding that the team kept him up to date the pit boards as he came by the finish line.
Alonso won last year's race here in a Renault.
Hamilton and Alonso were looking to give McLaren its first victory since the Japan GP in October 2005.
"Second place is a good place to start the season, we have to work a bit more," Alonso said. "We showed today good potential and we're looking forward to the next one."
After 10 laps, Raikkonen led by 8.1 seconds over Heidfeld with Alonso in fourth at more than 12 seconds back. Raikkonen went to the pits after 19 laps, allowing Hamilton to take the lead briefly, until he too pitted.
At the halfway mark, Raikkonen led Hamilton by 17.4 seconds, before the Ferrari driver posted the fastest laps of the race to extend his lead by about a second a lap.
Raikkonen pitted a second time with 16 laps remaining and almost a 19-second lead.
Hamilton entered the pits a lap later, but was overtaken by Alonso, who stayed out two laps longer and needed to take on less fuel for a shorter pit stop.
With 10 laps to go, Raikkonen had a 14-second lead over Alonso and coasted to the victory, slowing to salute his new team as he passed the line.
The next race is the Malaysian GP on April 8.

March 13, 2007
Vital Signs
At Risk: A Potential Drawback to That Daily Aspirin
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Men who take daily doses of aspirin, acetaminophen or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen may slightly increase their risk for high blood pressure, a new study reports.
After adjusting for age, smoking, physical activity and family history of hypertension, researchers found that compared with nonusers, men who took either acetaminophen or anti-inflammatory drugs six or seven times a week increased their risk for high blood pressure by more than one-third. The same use of aspirin increased the risk by 26 percent. The study appears in the Feb. 28 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine.
Researchers studied more than 16,000 men beginning in 2000. None had high blood pressure at the start of the study, and their average age was 65. Over the next four years there were 1,968 newly reported cases of hypertension.
The exact mechanism for the results remains unknown, but the authors point to the various known effects of these analgesics on the blood vessels.
The authors write that the results depend on self-reports of high blood pressure, which are not always reliable.
Dr. Gary C. Curhan, the senior author and an associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said that people at risk for heart disease who are taking a daily aspirin should continue to do so. But Dr. Curhan added: “Those who are not at high risk need to understand that there are potential risks in taking these medicines on a regular basis. What is causing you to take these medicines? Maybe there are other ways to reduce or eliminate your pain so that you don’t have to take them.”

Brazil: In Search of a New Girl from Ipanema
Written by John Fitzpatrick
Sunday, 07 November 2004
“The Girl from Ipanema” is the most famous Brazilian song in the world. It has been covered by dozens of singers and countless versions have appeared in several languages. Probably the best-known English version is by Astrud Gilberto in which the Brazilian singer’s husky voice is offset by Stan Getz’s super smooth musical accompaniment.
Frank Sinatra also made a famous cover version using the same English version. If you understand Portuguese you will see immediately that these lyrics, written by Norman Gimbel, bear little direct connection. Even the very first word—“tall”—shows poetic license since there is no reference to the girl’s height in the song.
Other parts such as: “When she walks, she's like a samba/That swings so cool and sways so gentle/That when she passes, each one she passes goes—ooh” simply do not exist in the original Portuguese.
According to fellow Brazzil columnist and musical expert, Joe Lopes, Gimbel did not speak Portuguese but he knew Tom Jobim. Since Jobim, who wrote the music, and Vinicius de Moraes, who wrote the lyrics, had both lived and worked in the US, their English must have been pretty good.
Presumably they both approved of the version by Gimbel who, incidentally, wrote several well-known songs, including the Roberta Flack hit "Killing Me Softly With His Song", which also has rather idiosyncratic lyrics. In any case, Gimbel’s is the version that swept the world when the song was first released in 1962.
Personally I think it was Getz’s musical arrangement and Astrud Gilberto’s sexy voice, which made this song so striking and captivating. I have never liked Gimbel’s lyrics although I do not blame him for not using a more literal translation.
At the risk of offending some Brazilian readers, I also feel the original lyrics in Portuguese are pretty banal even though Vinicius de Moraes was a celebrated poet.
A version, which is more faithful to the Portuguese lyrics was produced by someone called Jason Brazile.
As you will see, the lyrics are clumsy and stilted and the literal translation does not convey any of the movement or sensuality of the Gimbel version.
I think it’s time we had a new English version. Any Brazzil readers willing to try and produce one?
Look at this thing, most lovely most graceful It’s her, the girl that comes, that passes with a sweet swinging walking to the sea Girl of the golden body from the sun of Ipanema Your swaying is more than a poem It’s a thing more beautiful than I have ever seen pass by Ah, why am I so alone Ah, why is everything so sad The beauty that exists The beauty that is not mine alonethat also passes by on its own Ah, if she only knew that when she passes the world smiles fills itself with grace and remains more beautiful because of love Caymmi and Amado—Magicians of Bahia
It would be interesting to know how many Brazilian songs have been translated into English. I imagine there are not many. Many foreigners find Brazilian Portuguese to be an attractive language and prefer to listen to the original even though they may not know what the song is about.
A song like “The Girl from Ipanema” could be a world success because it was universal in its theme—a middle-aged man admiring an unattainable young girl. However, there are many other singers whose music requires a deeper cultural knowledge from the listener.
One example is Dorival Caymmi who was born in Bahia in 1914 and started composing when he was 19. He is one of Brazil’s greatest songwriters and musicians and it is fair to say he has influenced every singer and writer of note over the last 50 to 60 years.
Caymmi was a musical equivalent of the novelist Jorge Amado. They both took Bahia as their main theme and their works were inspired by the mixture of cultures and the history of that state, which probably has the strongest cultural identity in Brazil.
However, whereas Amado’s books could be translated, Caymmi’s lyrics are almost impossible to put into English. Songs like “São Salvador” and “Maracangalha”, for example, would sound like children’s nursery rhymes if translated in a literal fashion and convey nothing of their cultural richness.
One of my favorite Caymmi songs is “Oração de Mãe Menininha”. There have been many versions of this, including a joint effort by Gal Costa and Maria Bethania, but the version by D. Ivone Lara is spectacular.
Listen to it and you will be swept off to a beach in Bahia, studded with palm trees and a big yellow moon shining on the sea. If anyone can turn these lyrics into a comprehensible English version then the worldwide success of “A Garota de Ipanema” could be repeated.

March 6, 2007
Bush to Set Out Shift in Agenda on Latin Trip
By LARRY ROHTER
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, March 5 — President Bush arrives here on Thursday with an energy partnership plan to create jobs and decrease poverty and inequality, a marked shift in Washington’s priorities for Latin America aimed at countering the challenge posed by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
Since 1990, when Mr. Bush’s father was in the White House, United States policy toward the region has focused on free-trade agreements and related economic measures, with a secondary emphasis on drug interdiction.
But the growing leftward and anti-American trend in regional politics, led by Mr. Chávez — who plans a countertour to coincide with Mr. Bush’s trip — has led to a modified agenda and a renewed effort to rebut complaints by Latin Americans that the president has ignored their concerns in favor of the campaign against terrorism.
“When something isn’t working after 15 years, that’s a sign there are insurmountable obstacles and it’s time to change direction,” said Rubens Ricupero, a Brazilian diplomat and former secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in an interview here. “This is a very intelligent initiative on the part of the U.S., because there’s no point in tying the whole relationship to something that has only produced frustration and stagnation.”
The Bush administration has also signaled a new willingness to consider including workers’ rights guarantees in trade accords. [Page C1.]
Mr. Bush’s trip will be his longest to the region. But his promises of American support and assistance are likely to fall short of what Mr. Chávez, with his oil wealth, has been delivering recently.
On Monday, in a speech in Washington to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Bush said ties between the United States and Latin America had helped advance peace and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere. But he also appeared to acknowledge the need to reach out more to America’s southern neighbors. “The fact is that tens of millions of our brothers and sisters to the south have seen little improvement in their daily lives,” Mr. Bush said, “and this has led some to question the value of democracy.”
Mr. Bush’s first stop will be here in Brazil’s industrial capital. He and the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding for a recently negotiated program that calls for the countries to promote the production and use of ethanol, a renewable fuel that Brazil manufactures from sugar cane. Mr. da Silva, a former labor leader who controls the leftist Workers Party, is also scheduled to visit Mr. Bush at Camp David at the end of the month.
But the convergence of strategic interests of the Western Hemisphere’s two most populous countries clearly goes beyond energy. Brazil fancies itself, not Venezuela, as South America’s natural leader. It has also recently shown signs of alarm at Mr. Chávez’s substantial arms purchases and irritation with his involvement in neighboring Bolivia, including providing military assistance and support for the nationalization of Brazilian-held energy assets there.
“I don’t think Brazil will accept the idea of being any type of American surrogate in the region, or to moderate or contain Chávez,” said Felipe Lampreia, Brazil’s foreign minister from 1995 to 2001. “But the United States wants to bolster Lula as a counterweight, to show that you can have a leftist government with a strong focus on social issues, income distribution and poverty reduction, without being radical.”
Mr. Bush will be sending much the same message at his second stop, Uruguay, which signed a trade and investment framework agreement with the United States in January. There, he and President Tabaré Vázquez, a physician who leads a leftist coalition called the Broad Front, plan to meet at the presidential ranch to commemorate Uruguay’s emergence, with American help, from a fiscal crisis in 2002 and to discuss how to expand commercial ties.
Dr. Vázquez’s government includes former Tupamaro guerrillas; the guerrilla group kidnapped and killed an American official in Montevideo in 1970. But Dr. Vázquez, like Mr. da Silva, has migrated toward the center and largely abandoned the kind of fiery rhetoric that is Mr. Chávez’s specialty.
“One must be pragmatic,” Dr. Vázquez said in an interview last year. “Uruguayans want jobs that provide dignity, an adequate salary, and security. To have that, you must have economic growth, which is achieved only through production and investment.”
Mr. Bush’s itinerary also includes stops in Colombia and Guatemala, two countries where political scandals have recently erupted, weakening the pro-American governments there. He will end his trip next week in Mexico, where the agenda is sure to include immigration, a constant source of tension in relations between the two neighbors.
As a candidate in 2000, Mr. Bush vowed that “should I become president, I will look south, not as an afterthought but as a fundamental commitment.” But after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States quickly relegated Latin America to the ancillary role it played during most of the cold war, creating openings that Mr. Chávez, China and even, more recently, Iran have moved to exploit.
Now, however, “there is a sense that things are not going well for the U.S. in the region,” said Peter Hakim, president of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy research and advocacy group. “There has probably never been so much anti-Americanism and so little confidence in U.S. leadership since the cold war.”
That trend has been aggravated, he said, by the emergence of “such a vehement and reasonably effective adversary” in the form of Mr. Chávez.
An overwhelming majority of government officials and academic analysts in Latin America take it as a given that the United States has been jolted into action by the inroads Mr. Chávez has made. But American officials dispute that notion.
“We are aware of the shortcomings of the Venezuelan government and the kind of unhelpful role it has played in certain countries in the region,” Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte said in a recent interview. “I think the president’s intent is to accent the positive, and talk about the positive, things we want to get done in the relationships with the countries that he is visiting rather than to call undue attention to this issue, which is Venezuela.”
And when asked at a press briefing Monday if Mr. Bush’s trip was “an anti-Chávez tour,” Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said, “It’s really not.”
But Mr. Chávez is acting as if the trip, which he mocks as doomed to failure, is aimed solely at combating his influence, and has responded with a maneuver of his own. While Mr. Bush is in Uruguay on Friday and Saturday, Mr. Chávez plans to be leading anti-Bush demonstrations just across the River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he has cultivated an increasingly friendly relationship with that country’s Peronist president, Néstor Kirchner.
There, as elsewhere in the hemisphere, Mr. Chávez has used Venezuela’s oil riches to win friends and influence. He has bought more than $1.5 billion in Argentine bonds, flown poor slum residents to receive medical care abroad and proposed a new regional development bank to make low-interest loans.
In contrast, American assistance for the region has lagged far behind. Mr. Hadley said that the United States has nearly doubled aid to the region since President Bush took office to $1.6 billion annually, although he acknowledged that figure was slated to drop next fiscal year. But recent research by the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that is often critical of American policy in the region, found that the largest portion of money has gone to Colombia for military and counterdrug assistance, that Congress has consistently trimmed aid requests, and that not all funds authorized have been disbursed.
On Monday, Mr. Bush announced several relatively small new initiatives that he would ask Congress to finance. They included $75 million for a new education program promoting study in the United States, $385 million for programs promoting home ownership for low income families, and the development of a health care training facility in Panama to serve all of Central America.
“In the short term, Chávez has more to offer because our aid is peanuts,” said Riordan Roett, director of the Latin American studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. “We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he’s tossing around a billion here and a billion there.”
Mr. Bush’s shift away from an almost exclusive focus on free trade, with its calls for austerity and sacrifice in return for access to the American market, also reflects domestic political realities. His trade promotion authority expires in July, and there are doubts about Congress’s willingness to approve free trade agreements that have been signed with Colombia, Peru and Panama.
“It would not be realistic to expect much” from Mr. Bush’s visit, said Mr. Lampreia, the former Brazilian foreign minister. “But there is a fresh look at Latin America, very much derived from the fact Chávez is there, and a new approach that is positive, which is a good thing.”
Thom Shanker and Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting from Washington.

To all the Brazilians who vote to LULA

Thursday, 01 March 2007

Brazil's economy expanded 2.9% last year compared to 2.35% in 2005 according to the latest official release on Wednesday. In the fourth quarter GDP increased 1.1% over the third quarter and 3.8% over the same period in 2005, reported the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.
The percentage is higher that the 2.7% anticipated by a panel of experts from the private sector but still is the smallest growth in South America. Brazil's economy has been growing less than the Latinamerica average (5%) and way below similar emerging economies in Asia.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promised an average annual growth of 5% for his second four year mandate.
In related news, the Brazilian Central Bank reported that international reserves reached a historic record of over 100 billion US dollars for the first time ever. Based on the international liquidity concept reserves totaled 99.7 billion US dollars Monday.
International reserves have been increasing for months following the Central Bank's policy of purchasing US dollars in the domestic market in an attempt to contain the appreciation of the local currency real, which is now in the range of 2.1 reais to the greenback.
When Lula first took office in 2002 the exchange rate was almost 4 to 1. Brazilian exporters are groaning that the "overvalued" real is increasing costs in US dollars and cutting into profits.
Last week, the US dollar in the Brazilian market dropped to 2.08 reais, its lowest level since May 2006, but following strong US dollars purchases by the Central Bank the exchange rose to 2.12 Reais.
The Central Bank last January intervened in money markets absorbing US$ 4.8 Billion and is estimated to end the year's first two months with US$ 9 billion. At the end of January, international reserves stood at US$ 91 billion, compared to 85.8 billion in December 2006.
Reserves have been increasing to historic levels in Brazil since last September when for the first time since 1998 they reached US$ 74 billion. However at the time the bank decided to let the real float and this was followed by an abrupt hemorrhage of reserves in coincidence with the Asian and Russian financial crisis.
Central Bank president Henrique Meirelles said that in spite of the latest international turbulences the bank will continue to buy US dollars in local markets. "We have a reserves accumulation policy which was decided January 2004, and that policy has been steered with great success".
Mercopress