JAKARTA — Senior Indonesian officials say they are looking for an island to accommodate some 10,000 asylum seekers and refugees waiting for resettlement in the country, as they have become a “burden.”

Asylum seekers flock to Indonesia from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, hoping to reach Australia. But Indonesia’s southern neighbor has recently announced that all refugees registered at the Jakarta office of the UNHCR refugee agency from July 2014 will now automatically be banned from resettlement in Australia.

Australia’s immigration minister Scott Morrison compares the ban to “taking the sugar off the table,” and says it’s in Indonesia’s interest. “We’re trying to stop people thinking they can go to Indonesia and wait around till they get to Australia,” he told Australia’s ABC Radio late November. “This is designed to stop people flowing into Indonesia. It will help Indonesia.”

But Indonesian authorities don’t see it that way. “It’s Australia’s right, but it’s creating a burden for us,” said Indonesia’s Justice and Human Rights minister Yasonna Laoly on Australia’s ABC News. “There are 10,000 foreign citizens, which becomes a burden for us.”

As a signatory to the United Nations’ Refugee Convention, Australia is bound by international law to protect refugees. Indonesia has not signed the treaty.

Several high-ranking Indonesian officials have now reportedly suggested to president Joko Widodo that these refugees should be moved to one of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands.

“If the Australian government cannot handle them, we suggest placing them on an empty island, so they don’t disturb the public,” Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno told local media late November.

It’s not the first time this option has been put on the table.

In the early 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees were placed on Galang Island, in the northwest of Indonesia. In 2013, a plan to forcibly resettle refugees on the impoverished and isolated Sumba Island, in the eastern part of the archipelago, was finally abandoned.

“Now we have started thinking again about this policy,” Laoly told The Australian. “We only need to find the island.”

While Indonesian officials have suggested UNHCR could be involved in handling the refugees’ cost of living, the agency’s Indonesian representative Thomas Vargas told GlobalPost he hasn’t been contacted on the matter. He did not want to comment on this specific proposal, but said UNHCR would “certainly not encourage” this kind of option. Placing refugees and asylum seekers on an island “is probably the costliest and the most ineffective way” to deal with the situation, he said.

New asylum seekers arrive in Indonesia every week. Many sleep on the pavement, in front of the UNHCR gates in Jakarta. Tolosa, an 18-year-old Ethiopian, says he made it to Indonesia just two months ago, before Australia announced its new policy. But he says he would have come anyway. Like many here, he says he has nowhere else to go. Tolosa was hoping to get to Australia, but he’s happy to be resettled anywhere.

Actually, even the idea of an empty Indonesian island doesn’t seem to bother him much. “If I go back to my country I might die, so I’m OK with staying on an island,” he said. Other asylum seekers agree. Faisal, a 23-year-old Somalian who calls Australia’s policy “inhumane” and “cruel,” says even an empty and isolated island “is better than going back home and dying there.”

Ahmad, 18, is from Pakistan. He has registered in UNHCR’s office in Jakarta more than a year ago, and hopes he will still get to resettle in Australia. He worries though, as Australia has announced it will also reduce the quotas of resettlement for refugees who registered before July 2014. Soon, Ahmad won’t have any money left. He says he might present himself to one of Indonesia’s overcrowded and run-down detention centers. “Many people try to get into detention centers, even if it’s like prison, because they don’t have money,” he says.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s anti-immigration “Operation Sovereign Borders” was launched shortly after he took office late 2013, and has created tensions with Jakarta. Indonesian authorities haven’t been happy with Australia towing back boats of migrants en route to Australia towards Indonesian waters.

Thomas Vargas says Australia, one of the only signatories of the Refugee Convention in the region, should set the example. But Australia’s current policies, he says, are “certainly not in the spirit of the Refugee Convention, and not in the spirit of regional cooperation.”

“Unilateral action by states is not going to work,” he says, calling for all affected countries to work together on a solution that meets the protection needs of refugees and asylum seekers.

Compared to other religious festivals, Christmas is quite a small festival in India, due to the number of people who are Christians (about 2.3%) compared to people who belong to other religions. Having said this, the population of India is over 1 Billion, so there are over 25 million Christians in India!

One of the largest Indian Christian Communities in a city is in Mumbai. A lot of the Christians in Mumbai (previously known as Bombay) are Roman Catholics. In India’s smallest state, Goa which is on the west of India, about 26% of people are Christians. Many of the Christians in Mumbai came from or have roots in Goa. The states of Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram (all on the very east of India) have high populations of Christians as well.

Midnight mass is a very important service for Christians in India, especially Catholics. The whole family will walk to the mass and this will be followed by a massive feast of different delicacies, (mostly curries) and the giving and receiving of presents. Churches in India are decorated with Poinsettia flowers and candles for the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass service.

Many different languages are spoken in India. In Hindi Happy/Merry Christmas is ‘Śubh krisamas’ (शुभ क्रिसमस); Urdu it’s ‘krismas mubarak’ (کرسمس); in Gujarati it’s ‘Anandi Natal’ or ‘Khushi Natal’ (આનંદી નાતાલ); in Sanskrit it’s ‘Krismasasya shubhkaamnaa’; in Bengali ‘shubho bôṛodin’ (শুভ বড়দিন); in Tamil it’s ‘kiṟistumas vāḻttukkaḷ’ (கிறிஸ்துமஸ் வாழ்த்துக்கள்); in Punjabi it’s ‘karisama te nawāṃ sāla khušayāṃwālā hewe ‘ (ਕਰਿਸਮ ਤੇ ਨਵਾੰ ਸਾਲ ਖੁਸ਼ਿਯਾੰਵਾਲਾ ਹੋਵੇ); in Kannada it’s ‘kris mas habbada shubhaashayagalu’ (ಕ್ರಿಸ್ ಮಸ್ ಹಬ್ಬದ ಶುಭಾಷಯಗಳು); in Konkani it’s ‘Khushal Borit Natala’ and in Malayalam it’s ‘Christmas inte mangalaashamsakal’. Happy/Merry Christmas in lots more languages.

Instead of having traditional Christmas Trees, a banana or mango tree is decorated (or whatever tree people can find to decorate!). Sometimes people use mango leaves to decorate their homes.

In Southern India, Christians often put small oil burning clay lamps on the flat roofs of their homes to show their neighbors that Jesus is the light of the world.

Christians in Goa to celebrate it Christmas! It has lots of ‘western’ customs as part of it as Goa has historical connections with Portugal. Most Christians in Goa are Catholics. People like to go carol singing around their neighbors for about a week before Christmas. Christmas Trees are also very popular as is a ‘traditional’ rich fruit Christmas Cake! Lots of local sweets are also eaten at Christmas in Goa. Favourite sweets include neureos (small pastries which are stuffed with dry fruit and coconut and fried) and dodol (like toffee that has coconut and cashew in it). These are other sweets are often part of ‘consuada’ when epople make sweets before Christmas and give them to their friends and neighbors. Most Christian families also have a nativity scene with clay figures in it. On Christmas Eve Christians in Goa hang out giant paper lanterns, in the shape of stars, between the houses so that the stars float above you as you walk down the road. The main Christmas meal is also eaten on Christmas Eve and is also ‘western’ with roast turkey or chicken being popular! After the meal, Christians head to Church for a Midnight mass service. After the service the church bells ring to announce that Christmas Day has arrived. Many Christians in Goa also celebrate Epiphany and remember the Wise Men visiting Jesus.

Christians in Mumbai use many Christmas traditions from Goa including the star lanterns and manger scenes (people like to make sure they have the best the nativity scene!).

In north-west India, the tribal Christians of the Bhil folk, go out night after night for a week at Christmas to sing their own carols the whole night through. They go to surrounding villages singing to people and telling the Christmas story.

In South West India, in the state of Kerala Were, 22% of the state’s 33 Million population are Christians and Christmas is important festival. Traditional Catholics fast don’t eat from 1st to 24th of December – until the midnight service. Every house will be decorated with a Christmas star. During the start of the Christmas season, almost all the stationary shops will be filled with new and variety Christmas stars. People make cribs in their homes and Churches.

In India, Father Christmas or Santa Claus delivers presents to children from a horse and cart. He’s known as ‘Christmas Baba’ in Hindi, ‘Baba Christmas’ in Urdu (both of those mean Father Christmas); ‘Christmas Thaathaa’ in Tamil and ‘Christmas Thatha’ in Telugu (both of those mean Christmas old man); and ‘Natal Bua’ (Christmas Elder Man) in Marathi. In Kerla Were state, he’s known as ‘Christmas Papa’.

Infopark here has attracted investment worth Rs 3000 crore and generated over Rs 2350 crores of software exports revenue, Infopark CEO Shri Hrishikesh Nair has said.

The park has attained all milestones in terms of IT space, employment generation and software exports, Nair said at a function organised as part of Infopark anniversary yesterday.

“We have attracted over Rs 3,000 crore worth of investment and generated over Rs 2,350 crores of software exports revenue,” he said.

Over the last decade, the growth of Infopark has been spectacular both in terms of world-class IT space and employment generation, he said.

The park has now 4.5 million sqft technology workspace with state-of-the-art infrastructure. The 100-acre Kochi campus is currently home to 200 plus companies, including some of the big names in the industry such as TCS, Wipro, Cognizant and UST Global, he said.

The park which currently employs around 24,000 IT professionals has almost finished its Phase-I development, with the construction of IT campuses by TCS and Brigade Group nearing completion.

Work on the Rs 2500-crore Phase II project, spread across 160 acres, is progressing quickly and is expected to be ready for operations by 2020, he said.

A mother-son duo were killed when their car rammed into a stationary truck due to dense fog in Sarojini Nagar area, police said here.

Abhishek Shukla (40) and his mother Urmila (62) were seriously injured when the car in which they were travelling rammed into the truck last night due to fog near Daroga Khera, they said.

They were rushed to a hospital where doctors declared them dead, police said.

Holding that FIR is a public document and should not be kept out of public domain, Himachal Pradesh High Court today issued directions to police to upload the FIRs on its website within 24 hours from January 26, 2015.

The court was hearing the plea of a 70-year old man, retired Assistant Excise and Taxation Commissioner, who had appeared in person in the court complaint that he was not being supplied the copy of the FIR as the matter pertained to senior police officer.

Single Bench consisting of Justice Tarlok Singh Chauhan observed that the accused was entitled to get a copy of the FIR at the earliest under Section 207 of the CrPC.

“The copies of FIR, unless reasons recorded that the offence is sensitive in nature, should be uploaded on the Himachal Pradesh Police website within twenty-four hours of lodging of the FIR so that the accused or any person connected with the same can download the FIR and file appropriate application before the court as per law for redressal of his grievances,” Justice Chauhan directed.

The bench further directed that, “The decision not to upload the copy of the FIR on the website shall not be taken by an officer below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police and that too by way of a speaking order. A decision so taken by the DSP shall also be duly communicated to the Area magistrate.”

Further the word ‘sensitive’ apart from the other aspects which may be thought of being sensitive by the competent authority would also include concept of privacy regard being had to the nature of the FIR.

In case the copy of the FIR is not provided on the ground of sensitive nature of the case, a person grieved by the said action, after disclosing his identity, can submit a representation with the Superintendent of Police who shall constitute a committee of three high officers and to deal with the said grievance within three days from the date of receipt of the representation and communicate it to the grieved person, the order said.

BMW has agreed to demands from the government to replace driver’s-side air bags across the entire US.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been pushing companies to recall older cars with air bag inflators made by Takata Corp. They can explode with too much force and spew shrapnel at drivers and passengers. At least five deaths have been blamed on Takata inflators.

The decision affects 140,000 BMW 3 Series cars made between January 2004 and August 2006. It says no problems with BMW vehicles have been reported.

Earlier this year the company recalled 574,000 cars in the US.

Several automakers have been slow to expand the recall.

Ford Motor Co joined the list last week, and was quickly followed by Chrysler.

BMW is the last automaker to agree to replace air bags in all affected cars nationwide. About 15 million cars have been recalled in the US in total. Initial recalls were limited to states with high levels of humidity, as the NHTSA says the air bag inflator propellant, ammonium nitrate, can burn faster than designed if exposed to prolonged airborne moisture.

When that happens, the propellant can blow apart a metal canister meant to contain the explosion.

Takata has refused the agency’s request for a nationwide recall of driver’s side inflators, about 8 million in total, and it says it has tested more than 1,000 air bag inflators from other regions without a single failure. But the company will still make replacement parts for the automakers that are expanding their recalls. It hasn’t been decided whether Takata or the automakers will pay the extra costs involved.

In total, 10 automakers have models with Takata driver and passenger air bags. There could be as many as 30 million with the air bags nationwide.

(This article was published on December 23, 2014)

A record 17,000 anti-Islamic protesters rallied for their tenth demonstration in as many weeks in eastern Germany, celebrating the rise of their far-right populist movement by singing Christmas carols.

Germany has for weeks grappled with the emergence of the “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident” or PEGIDA, whose ranks in the city of Dresden have swelled rapidly from just a few hundred in October.

About 4,500 counter-demonstrators marched through the city yesterday under the slogan “Dresden Nazi-free”, warning that there was no space for racism and xenophobia in the country that perpetrated the Holocaust.

Most PEGIDA followers insist they are not Nazis but patriots who worry about the “watering down” of their Christian-rooted culture and traditions. They often accuse mainstream political parties of betraying them and the media of lying.

Braving cold and wet weather, they gathered outside the historic Semperoper concert hall for their pre-Christmas recital. Police put their numbers at about 17,500, up from the previous high of 15,000 a week earlier.

The management of the opera house signalled its distaste by turning the building’s lights off and flying flags outside that read: “Open your eyes”, “Open your hearts”, “Open doors” and “Human dignity is sacrosanct”, the first line of the national constitution.

The Protestant bishop of Saxony state, Jochen Bohl, said the PEGIDA followers, by singing Christmas carols, were seeking “to exploit a Christian symbol and a Christian tradition” for political purposes, German news agency DPA reported.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, of the centre-left Social Democrats, called for concerned citizens to launch a “rebellion of the decent” against the anti-foreigner movement, saying “that’s the kind of public reaction we need now”.

PEGIDA, born in a city that was part of communist East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, has spawned copycat groups in western areas which have failed so far to attract similar crowds.

Smaller clone groups rallied yesterday in the western cities of Bonn, Kassel and Wuerzburg, but they only drew up to 200 followers each and were all vastly outnumbered by counter-demonstrations that drew 20,000 nationwide.

Police reported no major violence but said eight people were temporarily detained after confrontations in Kassel, reported DPA.

The biggest anti-PEGIDA march was held in the southern city of Munich, where at least 12,000 rallied under the banner “Make space — Refugees are welcome”.

Hyderabad: Three students were killed and 14 others, including an autorickshaw driver, sustained injuries when their three-wheeler collided with a school bus in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district on Monday, police said.

The accident occurred in Chilakur town of Nellore at 8.40 am when the autorickshaw carrying 15 students to the school collided head-on with a school bus which was on its way to pick up students, DSP B Srinivas said over phone.

“In the mishap, two children died while undergoing treatment at a hospital while three other students were seriously injured. Eleven others, including the auto-driver, sustained minor injuries,” the DSP said.

The deceased children were identified as D Vamsi. M Venkateshwarlu and Pavan, all aged 7 and students of second standard, another police officer said.

A probe was on into the mishap, police added.