I mentioned our local intelligence gathering agencies in my last diary. Mostly, their work doesn't get published in our local press. Recently after the spate of serial bombings and the bumbling of our terrorism watchers they have pointed me to articles, in the NYT, of all places - where more worthwhile stuff seems to get published than anywhere else. I'm not sure if all the gentlemen in the forvm here agree with that.

Living just next to a porous border, I get to meet up with some of our local intelligencewallahs from time to time who are trying to plug a long border to assorted militants extending across four countries.

After single-handedly taking a decision to increase pollution in our part of the world by 100% by inflicting the Nano, Tata Motors is finally doing something worthwhile. A recent visit by my wife to Bangalore got me a sneak preview of the miniCAT.

There is a great crop of talented writers in English just now in South Asia. I've already written about my favourite. Someone who is really hitting the headlines here just now is the Pakistani writer Mohammad Hanif. His debut novel merited an op-ed in Dawn by Afiya Zia

BlaiseP's recent diary on the the problems in this region gives a flavour of the importance of the drug trade in this part of the world.

As much for our two countries' loss of innocence as any other, as, for the first time, we have an embassy bombed.

Not my words - incidentally, don't miss the VW ad

Or, Chuchundra was right.

In a past diary I mentioned studies looking at causes for the current somewhat higher rate of criminality in the USA, searching for pointers applicable in other societies and situations. After Chuchundra’s comment, I have been keeping an eye out in the literature for evidence to back up his comment.

Seeing as the mods have elected not to ban one-line diaries, here's my contribution in the new haiku-diary style.

The least I can do is link the article, and the commentary.

From the commentary

I went back to read tacitus's personal blog after a while. I first started reading and commenting on tacitus's blog the last time I was abroad in 2003 (unfortunately the archives seem to be no longer available, so I'm partly working off memory).

What impressed me, particularly, at that time, was the confidence and consistency with which he approached issues, without necessarily following the motley group of left wing bloggers who formed the majority of the commentariat at kos - particularly his robust and, often incisive defence of his positions in the face of considerable criticism.