 |
National News National News UPA wins trust vote, WTO negotiators relieved | UPA wins trust vote, WTO negotiators relieved |
| Wednesday, 23 July 2008 | |
|
Geneva: There is relief among Indian officials at the WTO talks in Geneva, and also among other negotiators here, that the UPA government has won the trust vote as a lame duck government would not have been able to make commitments that would bind the country for the next several years, though Commerce Minister Kamal Nath had told Network 18 that he would attend regardless of the outcome and the Indonesian trade minister had made light of a negative vote. Officials from Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, Thailand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong congratulated their Indian peers in the hall where the talks are being held. Kamal Nath can now negotiate with authority, unlike the US delegation. Susan Schwab, the United State Trade Representative was asked at a press conference whether her government would be able to get the US Congress to approve her offer of capping trade-distorting farm subsidies to $15 billion a year. Congress had recently voted a large increase in subsidies, over-riding President George W Bush. The US delegation is projecting the offer as a major concession, though $15 billion dollars is double the amount of bad subsidies that the US now offers its farmers, including those earning as much as $2.5 million a year, or owning more than 1,000 hectares. In return for this, and for an 82 per cent cut in cotton subsidies, which might be politically difficult to make, Schwab wants emerging economies like China to open up their cotton market and to make deep cuts in import duties on farm produce and industrial goods. That is the price she expects to extract to get Congress to approve her offer. Kamal Nath has been saying that giving concessions to the US in return for a cut in bad subsidies is like rewarding a driver for not-violating traffic rules. India is prepared to accept a formula that would require developing countries to cap import duties on industrial goods at 18 percent provided it is allowed to exempt, without qualification, just five percent of items from duty cuts, to protect industries like auto components. Indian car makers, including those of foreign origin, have told the Commerce Ministry that protection from cheap imports is necessary, not so much to keep European cars out, as to guard against cheap Chinese imports. While the US and the grudge developing countries the protection they seek for their sensitive industries, and for the most vulnerable farmers (but preventing imports of certain “special” products and by imposing special duties to control import surges) they themselves are unwilling to limit import duties on politically sensitive farm produce at 100 per cent, as demanded by Brazil. Canada, for instance, has around 600 per cent duty on pork and fowl, Japan imposes duties ranging from 700 per cent to 1700 per cent on broken rice, peanuts, gain, peas and vegetables, the European Union levies over 200 per cent duty on butter milk and grape fruit and frozen ham can be imported to Norway only at five times the price. The US has also said it could not agree to an Indian proposal (and of 109 other countries) to amend the intellectual property agreement to make disclosure of traditional knowledge mandatory in patent applications, obtain prior consent of the communities holding such knowledge and sharing the economic benefit of the patent with them. A delegate, presumably from India, told the negotiators that if Indians could not export bananas, they would grow marijuana that faces no export restrictions. Heady stuff indeed, like the UPA winning the trust vote that has already charged up Kamal Nath who has announced his press conference ahead of his arrival! |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Telugu MP3
Hindi MP3
Hindi Mp3 Audio
Telugu Mp3 Audio
Dream Reviews
'Rainbow' Review: Beaten Story And Obsolete Narration
Film: Rainbow Rating: 2/5 Cast: Rahul, Sonali Chouhan, Dharmavarapu, Prakash Raj, Paruchuri Venkateshwara Rao, SS Rajamouli, Sindhu Menon, Samudra, Kodi Rama Krishna, Deekshit etc Editing: MR Varma Camera: Santhosh Srinivas Music: Nihal Screenplay, Direction: VN Aditya Released On: 2nd October 2008 Story: Shyam aka Shyamala Rao (Rahul) is a professional hoarding painter of a painting company. Swapna (Sonali Chouhan) is an aspiring actress. Shyam likes Swapna and he helps her lot to achieve her dream. When a producer attempts to molest Swapna, Shyam fights with him and gets injured. In later diagnosis it will be known that Shyam got affected by color blindness due to that injury. Hence he becomes unable to see any color except white and black. And Shyam, being an orphan, lives in the house of Kamala (Sindhu Menon), who is dumb by birth. She loves Shyam. Finally how this triangle love story ends? Who marries whom? That forms the rest of the story. Performances: Rahul did a completely different role from that of 'Happy Days'. He needs to work hard on expressions and body language. Sonali Chouhan is ok with respect to face value but as per physique she is looking like a patient with zero-voluptuousness. Sindhu Menon looked well on screen. Prakash Raj's presence didn't elevate the range of the movie due to poor background score and energy-less character. Theatre Deekshit appeared with real life name. Same is the case with SS Rajamouli who acted as a professional actor in real life role for quite long time. Coming to technical departments the only saving grace in the film is cinematography, music and lyrics. Editing is average and direction is poor. Direction also suffered some ups and downs. Direction Mistake: The first producer who gives an opportunity to the heroine asks her to come to 'Touch' Pub. But she comes to 'Bottles and Chimneys' and the entire scene was shot there. VN Aditya didn't bother about the B & C that appeared prominently on the door heroine opens to come in.
Chintakayala Ravi Review
Cast: Venkatesh, Anushka, Mamata Mohandas, NT Rama Rao (special appearance), Venu Thottempudi (guest appearance), Chandramohan, Sayaji Shinde, Pradeep Shakti, Sunil, Brahmanandam, Ali, Ajay, MS Narayana, Ganesh, Venumadhav, Raghubabu, Srinivasa Reddy, Lakshmi, Arthi Chabria and others Music: Vishal-Sekhar Lyrics: Chandrabose Camera: K. Ravindrababu Editing: Srikar Prasad Presents: Bhavya Producer: Nallamalupu Srinivas (Bujji) Story, Dialogues, additional screenplay: Kona Venkat Screenplay & Direction: Yogesh. Banner: Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Productions Date of Theatrical Release: October 2, 2008 NonstopCinema Rating : 3/5 Venkatesh-type comedy with a touch of sentiment Chintakayala Ravi (Venkatesh) is a mother’s pet. In order to please his mother Seshumamba (Lakshmi), he doesn’t mind to do anything. He manages marks in education, and goes to the US to undertake a course in software there. Though he did not work in any software company, he pretends to be working as software engineer and his mother continues to believe it and tells everyone in the village that her son is a software engineer in the US. However, Ravi struggles hard to survive in the US by working as the head bartender in Cyber Wave, a bar and restaurant, where software engineers generally frequent. Seshu finds an alliance to Ravi in Mamidikayala Lavanya @ Love (Mamata Mohandas). The girl, who has a fascination of moving in luxurious cars in the lavish streets of the US agrees to the alliance. Love contacts her friend Sunita in the US to enquire about Ravi. The accidental introduction between Ravi and Sunita make the latter believe that Ravi is a womaniser. Later, Sunita finds that Ravi is working as a bartender and informs the same to Love. This spoils the entire alliance process. Ravi’s father (Chandramohan) gets a slap by Love’s father Bhupati (Sayaji Shinde) for allegedly cheating them. Ravi learns that it all happened due to Sunita and decides to take revenge against her. He spoils her alliance in the US too, which results in the hospitalisation of Sunita’s father (Chalapati Rao). However, Ravi’s friend also admits in the same hospital after an accident and Sunita learns how big gentleman Ravi is. A doctor working in the hospital reveals that Ravi sacrificed his career to save the life of a person, whom he met immediately after his landing in the US. This makes Sunita realise her folly and get her closer to Ravi. Their friendship turns love. At this juncture, Ravi’s friends contact the person (Venu Thottempudi) whose life was saved by Ravi and make him explain everything to Love’s father in India. As the clouds fade away, the sky turns clear and Bhupati sends his brother and Ravi’s father to the US to bring Ravi for marriage. What happened to the love between Sunita and Ravi? Did Seshu come to know that her son is not working as software engineer? What was her reaction? What about Lavanya? Did she agree to sacrifice her prospective groom to her friend? Answers to all these questions form part of the climax. It was Venkatesh all the way in the entire film. The film could not be thought without Venkatesh. He not only gave a tremendous performance in the flick with excellent and perfect comedy timing, but also impressed the family audiences with his superb performance in the second half, especially in sentimental scenes. Though most of the songs are not very impressive, a couple of tunes were catchy and foot tapping. It is worth mentioning here that Venkatesh would always in the forefront to shed his image and ready to live in a particular character. The audiences could find the same in this film too by presenting himself as a bartender. Another speciality is that Anushka was so far used by the directors as a glamour doll, who used to move around the heroes as a romantic and chivalrous girl. This time, she got a lot of scope for performance and she proved herself that she too could perform given a chance. Mamata Mohandas’ role was restricted to dance with the hero in a couple of duets in the first half. Other senior artistes including Chandramohan, Sayaji Shinde did justice to their roles, while Lakshmi reproduced the same old senimental mother’s role of ‘Murari’ in this film again. Though the number of comedians is heavy, which include, Brahmanandam, Venumadhav, Srinivasa Reddy, Dharmavarapu Subrahmanyam and others, none of them could bring smile on the face of audiences. Ali also played the same old ‘Nachimi’ character of Chiruta fame in this film too. Sunil tried to play a novel role as a comedy villain but failed to live to the expectations. There are three surprises in the film. Venu who appears like a flash in a couple of scenes left a nice impact on the audiences with his role. Ajay, who is emerging as a good villain in Telugu films played a very soft and innocent role in the flick. The last but not the least, NTR joins the party hosted by Ajay in the film and shakes his legs with Venkatesh in a song which goes like ‘Tavva Tavva…’. Kona Venkat scripted the story and dialogues for the flick and it is really a tailor-made subject for Venkatesh. It appears Venkatesh, in order to keep his identity alive and to prevent the damage by giving a flop to his career, is trying to choose safe subjects, instead of going for novel subjects. Besides story and dialogues Kona Venkat also scripted additional screenplay and assisted in running the movie with a good tempo. Chandrabose failed to impress the audiences with his songs and they remained average. Only two or three songs are good to listen and their choreography is also fine to some extent. Vishal-Sekhar duo could not attract the audiences with their tunes. Moreover, the bit song before the climax was almost a lift from their popular film ‘Om Shanti Om’. Background score by Manisharma is okay. Camera work by Ravindrababu is impressive and he was able to capture the lifestyle and beauty of the US well. Editing by Srikara Prasad is adequate. Director Yogesh showed good improvement in performance from his earlier films. However, with has no mass masala scenes or action scenes in the film to attract the mass audiences the movie may not attract mass audiences. The production values of Nallamalupu Bujji are good and the film remind the audiences of Venkatesh’s entertainers like ‘Nuvvu Naaku Nachav’ and ‘Aadavari Maatalaku Ardhale Verule.’ Though the storyline is a routine, the director gave it a novel treatment. Had the director overcome the poor run of screenplay, the film would have been further better.