The Pakistan government has over 100 nuclear weapons armed and aimed at key Indian cities and installations, as per a US internal report. This has come as a shocker for the US government at a time, when there is a strong possibility of the Taleban terrorist group accessing key Pakistani military weapons, including nuclear war heads.
India must be concerned at the development because , Pakistan has set up these weapons as a second strike option, i.e, these nuclear weapons will be fired into India, in case of any nuclear strike by India on it. That could mean total devastation for the region as a whole.

Crude oil prices are now hovering around the 50 dollars mark due to not many bad news flowing in. The news flow in the last two weeks have been a mixed bag. There were good news like early signals of economic recovery in US, improvement in demand for commodities from China.
There were also quite a few bad news like continuing loss of Europe’s largest bank RBS, falling profits of Nokia and Sony Ericcson and crashing Industrial production in Europe / Japan and India.
Experts tracking the crude oil price trend, expect the prices to remain range bound for another six months. The price range is pegged at 40 dollars to 60 dollars.

Mexico is the first country to get a massive 47 billion US dollars credit , to tide over the massive economic crisis it is facing.
The IMF has started committing new credit lines for struggling countries under the new fast track clearance system which has been put in place recently.
As part of the credit support, the Mexico Central bank has slashed the bank interest rate by 75 basis points. Experts tracking Mexico, say that the loan could help the country to first stop the steep economic downturn it is facing.
If the global economy turns around within the next six to eight months, then there is a likely hood of Mexico turning the corner by 2010 beginning.
Mexico depends on US for over 80% of its trade and thus a reversal of US fortunes is vital. The industrial production fell by a massive 14% last month in Mexico, which is the steepest fall in over a decade.
Just a year back, Mexico has been thriving on the back of a strong US economy, but the sub-prime crisis exposed the danger of depending on a single customer.
Mexico might take longer time to reduce it’s dependence on US because entering other markets may not be that easy in the current economic situation.
There are many European countries which are waiting in queue for IMF bailout.

US and Japan have pledged to provide one billion US dollar each as aid to Pakistan in its fight against the current economic crisis.  These two countries have pledged the fund with a view to help Pakistani people getting into the main stream and avoiding chosing the terrorism route.

The pledge was made in the international donors conference going on in Tokyo, and attended by over 40 countries.

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Indians have a far superior education system compared to the rest of the developing world. That has helped the country to build their communication system in a better way in the last decade or two.

With the privatization of the News channels few years back, India has seen the emergence of high quality national and regional level News channels.

Through these TV News channels, Indians across the nook and corner of the country, have been able to get latest information on sports / politics / business / economy / health etc. This has in turn made the politicians and business people and also sports people more competitive and more responsible.

That could be one of the key reasons for the good economic progress in the last few years for the country.

But, the system needs to improve a lot more in the coming years, because still the news channels are controlled by a handful of dominant players, who may sideline with few businessmen / political parties and provide biased news for selective destruction of the country.

The silent country Italy woke up to a deadly earthquake few days back, and within few hours over 200 people lost their lives under the debris of collapsed buildings and structures.

In spite of great efforts by the rescue team, nearly 207 people lost their lives and over 1000 people were badly injured. Earthquake experts have warned of severe after shocks in the coming weeks in the same area, and asked the people to move to safer places.

US housing sector was the key driver of the US economy for the last two decades. The massive increase in housing sector lead to great growth rates across sectors, and the entire US economy grew astoundingly in the last ten years or so.

But there were analysts who were shouting that the US housing bubble will bust anytime, but nobody was listening to them.

And in the beginning of 2008, the sub-prime mortgage crisis started showing its color and the entire housing industry came to a halt. The housing prices across US started crumbling because banks were reluctant to lend for housing, and lot of home buyers started defaulting on their loan repayments.

Over the last few quarters, the US housing prices have declined by over 30% year on year and more and more existing houses are added to the sales inventory.

And with interest rates ruling at all time low, there are no takers for new housing loans because people are expecting housing prices to crash further.

And with more job losses happening every month, we can only expect the housing inventory to go up further, adding to the pricing pressure.

So do not expect the US housing sector to revive at least till 2010 , say experts. The argument looks logical , and we also believe that the US housing sector might stay weak till 2010 beginning.

All the three top US banks have sounded optimistic about their business prospects for the current quarter. The Citi group, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley heads have confirmed that the business growth in the first two months of this year have been positive and they have started making profits after a long gap.

That has brought cheers to the US and global markets in the last few days. How far this will be sustained, god only knows.

Crude oil prices have come down by over 60% from their all time high figure of 147 dollars to a barrel just few months back. There are lot of experts who feel that the crude oil prices may not go up dramatically in the near future, due to following reasons :

The world’s largest market, US, is facing its worst recession in the last four decades. The unemployment rate is at all time high of 8.5% and more and more jobs are being lost in Government and private sector every month.

The second largest market, Europe , is facing far worse situation, and most of the major European countries are in deep recession (closer to depression?).

Japan is seeing its economy shrink by over 10% in the last quarter. China and India are also hit badly due to global recession impact.

OPEC countries are fighting amongst themselves to pump in more crude oil than what they have committed in their monthly meeting, just to meet their massive budget deficits. Their budget plans for 2008 estimated the price to be at least 80 to 90 dollars, whereas in the last six months, the crude prices have averaged only 45 dollars a barrel.

The above issues cannot change over night, and might take at least four to six quarters to reverse.

Thus , it will be fair to assume that the crude oil prices may stabilize in the 40-70 dollars mark over the next few quarters.

Mumbai is the financial capital of India, the world’s second most populous country. The financial capital city woke up to a bad morning last week, when three of their prominent buildings, including the Taj Heritage hotel, was under the seige of trained militants from Pakistan.

The militants held the buildings hostage for over three days and were finally killed by the elite commandos after the loss of over 150 Indians including 20 police personnel.

Only one militant was captured live and has been taken to undisclosed location for interrogation and further course of action.

The Indian government has accused the Pakistan intelligence wing ISI, for training the terrorists and sending them to India.

The terrorist network in Pakistan has been working over night to carry out terrorist activities throughout India. Few months back, they carried out serial bomb blasts in few other Indian cities which left over 60 Indians dead.