Trailing Technology

Finalist for the Livingston Award in International Reporting

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sun, 04 May 2008 08:29:00 +0000

A couple days ago learned that I have been selected as a finalist for the Livingston Award in International Reporting for my piece in WIRED titled "The Bone Factory: India's Underground Trade in Human Remains."[link] Every year 50 young journalists are selected as finalists by a star committee of veteran media players. The wikipedia entry on the competition says that "the Livingston Awards are among the most competitive and prestigious reporting prizes in American journalism."

My name on the list of finalists is wedged between two reporters for the New York Times and shares space with some of the best up and coming journalists in America. So, I know it's cliché, but it's an honor just to be nominated. The winner gets a $10,000 cash award, and a trip to New York to mingle with the panel of judges. The awards will be announced on June 6th.

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Also, just in case you missed it. I had another story on NPR a few weeks ago, but didn't end up posting about it on this blog. It is about a new transgender talk show host here in Chennai who is stirring up the community with provocative questions about sex and marriage. Check it out here: "Transgender Talk Show Host Tackles Taboos in India."

Scarlett Keeling: Goa's Lost Innocence

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:29:00 +0000

About a month ago the half-naked body of a 15-year old British girl was found on a Goa beach. Initially police said that Scarlett Keeling was only the most recent casualty of Goa's live fast and die partying lifestyle. Their initial crime report siad that she had dies of a drug overdose and drowning.. It took two weeks of agitating by her mother to get the police to preform a second autopsy. Their findings were that Scarlett had been drugged, raped and left to die. The mother has accused the police of taking part in a massive cover-up of her daughter's murder.

Nerlon Albuquerque, the sub-inspector who initially led the investigation has been suspended from duty, while the BBC reports that a senior police official hints and a broad internal conspiracy.

"It is a very complicated story. It has wider ramifications," a senior police official, who prefers anonymity, said.
He hints at influential local politicians being involved in the flourishing drug trade on the beach. - [via BBC]

Yesterday the police announced that they had solved the Keeling case and arrested two men who were said to have been in compromising positions with Keeling before her death. Placido Carvalho and Samson D'Souza have both been arrested. MSNBC reports

"The first arrested accused D'Souza has confessed to his role and has also named four others involved in the murder," Kumar said. The others named by D'Souza would be arrested after evidence against them was established, Kumar said.

But despite the confession, several questions remain--not the least of which were if the interrogations were fair, or if D'Souza confessed only under duress. Sources on the ground in Anjuna tell me that local people believe that D'Souza is only a scapegoat being used to pacify the media interest.

In a few hours I am catching a plane to Panji to report on the Keeling case and dig up whatever I can. For now, at least, the Goan Paradise seems to be lost.

Chennai's Great Newspaper Throw-Down

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:02:00 +0000

Chennai is gearing up for a newspaper slog fest that promises to leave journalism by the wayside and more billboards on the roadside. In the next month or so, the Times of India is coming to town with a major advertising campaign and super-low introductory rates. Its move into an already crowded media market is forcing the current players to reevaluate their positions.

Part of the reason, of course, is that the Times of India arrives full coffers and is already poaching the best reporters from the established Chennai papers. Indian Express's Jaya Menon--an extraordinary journalist in her own right--will be heading up the office as bureau chief and star reporters from the New Indian Express, the Hindu and Deccan Chronicle have been lured to the new offices by higher salaries and promises of plush assignments.

But no matter how talented the Times of India's editorial team might be, the future of the paper won't hinge on the stories that they break. Chennai is India's last great media market before the big newspapers start duking it out in second tier cities. For the next couple years, papers will be competing for readers as fiercely as possible before the losers are forced to close up shop.

And what sells newspapers better than sex?

When the Deccan Chronicle entered Chennai in 2005 it learned that the quickest way to turn a buck wasn't to fund an outstanding reporting team, rather all it had to do was paper the city with pictures cute Indian babes cavorting on the beach. Under the tag line "News Made Exciting" the paper ran high on celebrity news and sex scandals (and some occasional good reporting from senior staff) and its circulation in Chennai alone rose to more than 300,000 in just three years.

Former Rediff and Tehelka reporter and current assistant editor at the Council on Foreign Relations Basharat Peer laments that Indian editors consistantly bury hard hitting stories in favor of tabloid fluff in order to move newspapers

Privately, editors in India will say that cover stories about how Indian men and women behave in bed after age thirty sell more copies than cover stories about torture. [link], via sajaforum.org

It is unlikely that Chennai will be able to support four major English language papers over the long haul, and editors that I've spoken with are nervous about what happens next. As talent migrates towards the Times of India, papers like The New Indian Express are trying to differentiate themselves before the shakeup. For the last couple months the paper has included a sexed up 40-page Friday supplement called Indulge and has lately been winning the design wars for best above the fold layouts.

Even with some positive signs, the paper has the most to lose when the Times of India enters the market. With its drab offices far outside the city in Ambattur it has to work hard to keep talented people from fleeing to greener pastures--among them Sushila Ravindranath, Sunday Express editor has shifted to the Deccan Chronicle.

All that aside, for readers, this is a great time to be in Madras. For the next couple years the industry is going to be full of energy as the papers try to out-compete themselves for your attention. Lets just hope they run some actual news stories next to the full-page babe inserts.

The New York Times Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:24:00 +0000

It's the gold standard for newspapers. It has a daily circulation of more than 1.1 million and its staff columnists collect Pulitzer prizes like carnival trophies. The stories that it runs on its front page set the agenda for every other news organization. The New York Times is a news behemoth. And this is something of a problem.

We've all heard about the New York Times Effect on restaurants and movies. Journalist Seth Godin writes that when the Times wrote a positive review of his neighborhood cafe business spiked and the line of customers pushed past forty. The spike in business lasted more than a week. A good review can make a business soar, a bad one can push it into the gutters. But the Times has a different effect on journalism. The newspaper has something of a monopoly on stories and it sets the rules about what stories can and cannot be told.

In order to convince a magazine or newspaper to devote precious page space to a story, the idea first needs to jump through several difficult hurdles. First the piece needs to be relevant to the readership and to be genuinely interesting. Second the story has to feel fresh--this means that other major news outlets shouldn't have covered the subject recently.

The first barriers is hard enough to get across. Editors have very definite ideas about what sorts of topics are relevant to their readers. Many stories get killed in their infancy before they even start. But the second barrier can be even more troublesome. Since many news stories are interrelated, how does an editor decide the bar for what counts as fresh?

Last week I pitched a story that aimed at exploring kidney scandal in Delhi where a notorious organ broker kidnapped unsuspecting workers and stole their kidneys. Other publications had already covered the scandal, but I had new information from the WHO that two American insurance companies were paying for organ transplant surgeries abroad—an issue that raises important ethical questions about the future of transplant surgery.

I got two responses from editors. An editor at a major business publication said:

“And I could swear I read a story like this recently in the NYTimes, although I could be hallucinating. It’s a great idea for someone, though, and a very well-considered pitch.”

And another from a top technology magazine said that the editors loved the idea, but the story seemed too familiar:

"BTW this is becoming a common problem. People in this office are
longstanding voracious readers. Everything is too familiar."

I had seen Amelia Gentleman's coverage in the New York Times of the kidney trade, but so many publications had been writing about the subject that I had to double check to see if indeed, she had covered the width and breadth of the issue in the article's 1000 or so words. The article is quite good, but is little more than day one coverage. There is no investigation into the very sinister international side of the crime. Certainly there was no reference to insurance companies that might have footed the bill for the expenses.

The problem isn't actually the fault of the Time's reporting staff, rather it's the weight that people put on Times articles. In my years as a reporter I have had more stories rejected because of previous NY Times coverage than because of prior coverage in any other publication. It doesn't seem to matter as much if TIME magazine or or Newsweek run cover stories on a subject, just so long as the NYT hasn't sent reporters to the field.

For reporters on the Times staff, the situation is precisely the reverse. They can cover any story they want, not matter how tired the subject is. Right now the Times is running a series of stories on sports scholarships which is basically the same exact article written over and over again by different reporters. Last week, Amelia Gentleman covered the sharp increase in Indian surrogate mothers selling pregnancy. The issue had already been a cover of TIME magazine in Asia, Marie Claire, The Christian Science Monitor, the BBC, a major special on the Oprah Winfrey show and dozens of other publications. I'd known about this story for more than two years before the NYtimes reported on it. It is such a familiar story that it should have never gotten past an editor's scrutiny.

The heart of the problem is that every editor I know reads the NYtimes religiously. No matter what their beat is, they see the paper as a direct competitor of their own publication. The times, on the other hand, thinks that it is peerless and can run any story it wants to. In the end, all this does is reinforce the NYT's position as a canonical newspaper. It gets to recycle the best original content from other publications, and then, once it has done so, stops the news coverage of that particular subject.

As an independent journalist, it is hard to always be in the shadow of the New York Times Effect.

My Shower: Where Electricity and Water Really Shouldn't Mix

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:35:00 +0000

There is a glaring contradiction between the skyrocketing price of real estate in Chennai and abysmal quality of construction and infrastructure. We've had out share of problems with the state supplied electricity to our apartment--ranging from city-wide brown outs to meter men from the Electricity Board and telephone pole explosions right outside my window. But once you take a look at the wiring inside the apartment you finally get a real picture of how on the verge everything is to collapse.

Take a look at the construction of my shower. You can see in the picture above that the pipe that leads to the spout connects to a small hole in the concrete where there are three different circuit breakers. Inside the wall, the pipe splits into at least two different pipes, and I believe that the stains around the windows show that there is at least some leakage inside.

The circuit breakers were installed to power the electric water heater and also shunt power into my bedroom to power an air conditioner and my computer setup. The water heater isn't particularly energy efficient, I've noticed that when I keep it on, the electricity meter downstairs starts moving at three or four times its normal rate.

So now I have to wonder if the shower that I've been using for the last two years, is actually some sort of crude execution device simply biding its time until the inevitable. Lettering imprinted on one of the breakers says "15 AMPs 256 VOLTS". I wonder if that is enough to give me a gentle stimulating shock, or enough to fry me instantly into a tandoori kebab.

The thing is, I've seen setups like this in apartments across the country. A photographer friend of mine in Delhi had a small house fire when his water heater exploded during one of the humid months. Even brand new places keep electric circuits perilously close to the water supply. We've got roughly a year and a half to go living here in Chennai. Any bets on whether we make it out?

Back to India for the Children of Immigrants

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 07:58:00 +0000

Preetha Narayanan moved back to India for a year and a half on a scholarship.

Thousands of Indians born in America have found a new home in the land that their parents abandoned. This week for NPR I reported on a new trend among second generation Indians to return to India in search of opportunity. Part of the draw is that Indians born and raised in the states often feel conflicted over their identities--on one hand they feel like they feel set apart from the American mainstream, while on the other they aren't sure how well they they fit into India, either. Inevitably, when they move to India, many in the second generation find that they have more in common with other Americans than they do with local people. And some people, find that disheartening.

But there are some clear advantages to moving. In addition to new visa schemes like the PIO and OCI cards that allow people to cross borders and work without too much government hassle, returning Indians also find that they can seriously advance their career. S. Mitra Kalita, a newspaper editor at Mint in Delhi, says that simply moving to India threw her into the ranks of senior management almost immediately. It would have taken her years to get to the same position working at newspapers back home.

And it's not just the second generation moving back. I'm increasingly meeting people here in Chennai and Bangalore who have been educated in the United States and even worked there for a few years who have decided that moving back makes a lot of sense. In the 1970s and 1980s most people assumed that moving to America would lock them into the west--returning wasn't even on the table. Now, it seems, many people are able to bridge both worlds.

Here's the story on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87884391

The Hindu's Front Page "Real Estate"

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:37:00 +0000

This is the front page of The Hindu today, February 29, 2008. It's a full page ad hocking a new real-estate scheme. For more than a century The Hindu has been considered one of India's best newspapers, but selling its front page to an advertiser is nothing less than editorial treason.

And it's just the most recent offender in a long line of terrible advertising ploys that undercut the credibility of journalism in India. Earlier this year the Decccan Chronicle pull a similar shenanigan when they thought no one would notice.

It's true, newspapers do need to support themselves on advertising dollars, but in order to retain credibility there is usually a wall between editorial and advertising. Reporters need to have free reign to write the stories they want, and the paper sells on the basis of those stories. By putting a full page advertisement on the front page the newspaper ceases to be a news source. It makes it the trash that delivery men leave on my doorstep.

I don't think I am going to read The Hindu anymore.

Back to India on Sub-Prime Wings

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:39:00 +0000

In the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and fall of the US greenback against the rupee, it makes me wonder how many Indians in America have decided to pull up stakes and return to home. In November, NPR ran a story about a new movement of India doctors to come back to elite-multispeciality hospitals in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai where they don't earn as much money, but can have a higher standard of living. I've heard similar stories about Indian filmmakers who were trying to make it in the Hollywood have retreated to Mumbai where they have more opportunities. It's probably happening in the IT sector, as well.

Earlier this week a publication contacted me to write a story about Indians who have spent time in the United States, only to realize that they can live better back at home. I have a few people in mind to feature, but there are probably hundreds of stories out there of returnees and I would love your help to find them. Maybe it'd be a good time to vent about the failure of one particular American dream.

Send tips to sgcarney@gmail.com

Traffic, Congestion, City Planning and...the Nano

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:06:00 +0000

What do you think about traffic in India? I want to know.

As far as infrastructure is concerned, the next decade is going to determine the long term future of India. The number of vehicles on the roads is growing by orders of magnitude. According to statistics on the Bangalore Traffic Police website, in 1987 the IT capital of Bangalore had only 400,000 cars on the road. By 2005 there were more than 2 million. As India metropolises continue to grow the mileage of roadways doesn't even come close to keeping pace leading to traffic jams, and worse, gridlock.

Next year automakers are going to release 14 new car designs onto Indian roads. New players Volkswagen and Nissan are preparing for major releases while TATA motors has announced an ultra-cheap "people's car" that cost barely more than a motorcycle. I'm working on a story about the future of Indian cities--the plans to make things better, and the downfalls of quick development and I'd like to get people's opinion of what they think the future holds.

Also, does anyone know of any cutting edge initiatives in city planning, or civic management that are prepared to deal with the traffic influx? In your opinion, who are the biggest and brightest minds in the field?

The Shakti Center talks about Sex

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:34:00 +0000

Sex is taboo in Chennai. Like any place in the world everyone here is having sex (well most people, anyway) but to admit it out loud makes people angry. A couple years ago the actress Kushboo said that unmarried women should have access to birth control and get occasional AIDS tests and was attacked by local politicos for "dishonoring tamil women". And let's not even get started about homosexuality. When sun goes down Marina and Elliots beaches turn into brothels and married men cruise for sex in just about every public park. But the next day no one says a word. But that could change.

The Shakti Center is addressing rift between what people talk about, and what goes on behind doors. The group's philosophy is simple: provide a space for people to talk about sex in the city and things will start to get better. To do that Shakti has a lot of projects in the works. There are host free weekly films--ranging from Tamil flicks to the latest Quentin Tarrantino release--followed by discussion groups. They also run sex-ed curriculums in local schools, have a blog, a zine, and resources for people to use to develop other dialog fostering projects. They're open to anything that will get people talking. Eventually the blog will become a repository for stories from local people to voice their own experiences negotiating the rough cultural waters around sexuality and gender.

Padma Govindan, my wife, is a founding member of the group and is eagerly looking for other people to come in and help out. Just about everyone in Chennai has a story about coming to terms with their own sexuality. There are strong opinions about who should and should not be having sex and what it means to be gay (or transgender) in a city that won't think out of a straight box.

If enough people get talking, maybe the next time someone like Kushboo suggests people should use condoms people will listen rather than threaten to throw her in jail.

For more information about the Shakti Center, or to get involved, go to the website http://www.shakticenter.org

Carnatic Music Season

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:06:00 +0000

Every year thousands of classically trained musicians descend on Chennai in hopes of making a name for themselves. There aren't a lot of venues for south Indian music and dance, but if you want to make a living through music then the first pre-requisite is to be a smashing success during the local concert season.

In December I traversed music halls across the city and met legendary musicians and up and coming artists for NPR. Listen to the radio story here.

The Bone Factory: India's Underground Trade in Human Remains

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:17:00 +0000

Manoj Pal: Dom and Cadaver Deflesher

It is pitch black and raining when I first meet Manoj Pal: a man who makes his living defleshing rotting cadavers. I am a hundred kilometers outside of Calcutta in a small village called Purbasthali where police confiscated more than 100 bright white human skeletons. The bones they found were on their way along a two hundred year old pipeline for human remains. The smugglers route begins on the banks of Indian rivers and ends in the sacred halls of medicine in Western countries. The skeletons Pal prepared could have fetch as much as $70,000 on the black market.

Manoj Pal is grunt labor for the industry. As part of the dom, or grave tending, caste his job is the most grim. Day and night he recovers bodies from a nearby cremation ghat. He binds the corpses in mosquito netting and soaks them in the river for a week. When the bodies are waterlogged and mostly consumed by fish and stray dogs he scrubs off the remaining flesh, dumps the bodies in a boiling solution of caustic chemicals and lets them dry in the sun.

Before he was arrested Pal's boss, Mukthi Biswas would sell bones to a medical supply company in Calcutta called Young Brothers for a few thousand rupees. From there the bones were wired together into free hanging skeletons and sold both domestically and abroad.

I spent three months piecing together the path that human bones take from Calcutta to the Western world for WIRED magazine. I found suppliers and buyers in well respected companies and universities across the United States. When I brought this to the attention of police in Calcutta they told me that they do not view grave robing as a serious crime. On the rare occasions that the police catch a grave robber, they mostly just let them off with a slap on the wrist.

The bone business dates back to colonial times when British doctors needed a steady supply of human skeletons to stock anatomy classes in England. Before they had set up a reliable system for preparing human skeletons on a mass scale there was an extreme shortage of bones available for study. It drove some British doctors to rob graves in their own neighborhoods. Some cemeteries were so notorious for skulduggery that there were frequent fist fights between grieving families and shovel-carrying medical students.

A bag of leg bones confiscated on the Bhutan Border

But with the advent of colonialism doctors began to look to Calcutta for fresh body supplies. By the mid 1800's Calcutta Medical College was sending hundred of bodies abroad every year. The trade continued to flourish until the 1980s. At its peak every aspiring doctor in the world bought a box of bones along with their first year's medical textbooks for about $300. Calcutta was exporting more than 60,000 skeletons a year making it a multi million dollar business.

But it couldn't last forever. In 1985 rumors began to surface that the bone dealers had run out of skeletons in Calcutta's graveyards and were killing children for their skeletons. Child skeletons are rarer than adult skeletons and fetched a higher price on the market. A man was arrested for exporting more than 1,500 child skeletons. A member of the legislature accused him of murder and put the nail in the coffin for the legal industry. By 1986 exports had all but stopped. The 13 original bone exporters all seemingly shut their doors. Medical schools in the West began relying on model skeletons for their anatomy instruction needs.

What no one knew was that at least one company was still exporting human bones. They had rekindled factories across West Bengal and had clients all over the world.

The most active bone exporter is Young Brothers. It's a medical supply company that sits between one of Calcutta's most active morgues and its largest cemetery. In 2001 neighbors complained that the warehouse stank like the dead. Some people reported seeing bones drying on the roof. When the health department chief Javed Ahmed Khan heard the reports he raided the facility and found bones boiling away in cauldrons and export invoices for orders all over the world. It was proof that the business was violating the export ban. But when Khan took the case to the police the owner of Young Brothers, Vinesh Aron, only spent one night in jail. The case was thrown own over a jurisdictional dispute and the business given a subtle nod that it could continue.

Since then Young Brothers has been more discreet about its business affairs, but it hasn't exactly shuttered his doors. In October I met Aron's in law in yet another medical supply company in Chennai. He told me that Vinesh Aron is the only man in the family with "guts". To prove it he pulled a fetal skull off the shelf and offered to sell it to me for $400.

In the meanwhile bones are still being smuggled though illegal channels in Singapore and Paris. I found a reseller in Canada who says that he still sells Indian bones across North America.

For more about the global trade in human bones check out this month's issue of WIRED magazine in a story called "Inside India's Underground Trade in Human Remains". I have also produced a shorter radio segment for NPR titled "Into the Heart of India's Underground Bone Trade".

For more photos of the bone cache check out these two galleries: mine and NPR's

National Geographic: Inside the Body Trade

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:21:00 +0000

National Geographic Explorer just aired an hour long documentary on the global market for human body parts. In the program they interviewed a Chinese doctor who helped remove organs from executed prisoners and transplanted them into foreign medical tourists. It also documented the painful lives of people awaiting organ transplant in the United States and flew out to Chennai to interview the donors and brokers who have made this coastal metropolis the worlds most famous organ farm. I worked with the documentary team for a month and helped coordinate the India piece of the puzzle. My job was to locate a donor and a broker who could give a personal look at the kidney trade. Much of the research I did was based on the WIRED News series that released in May. Here's a clip from the documentary.

What isn't mentioned in this clip, but is talked about in the larger documentary is that Mallika isn't only the victim of a predatory broker and corrupt medical institution. Her son is a victim as well. A year after her surgery her son Kannan came down with a bad case of jaundice that destroyed his kidneys. Unable to giver her remaining kidney, now she has to watch her son suffer and possibly die because he has no way of getting a donor organ.

The program aired on November 11th and 15th at 8:00 PM. But I'm sure you will be able to catch a rerun some time.

And you didn't catch it: The "National Geographic Safe House" in Chennai was my apartment.

Did a Comet Cause the Great Flood?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:26:00 +0000

In January I flew back to the United States to interview a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (where they designed the nuclear bomb) who says that he has found evidence that 5000 years ago most of humanity was almost wiped out when a comet smashed into earth and caused a global cataclysm. Years of painstaking research have led Bruce Masse has compiled a list of creation myths around the world that mention floods and fire that he says actually record a historic event. According to Masse the Biblical tale of a great flood that nearly wiped out humanity is actually the same event as a South America myth that mentions fire falling from the sky and nearly ending life on that continent. He has tracked similar myths in India, China, Africa, Europe and Austrilia. But what sets Masse apart from just some another guy with an interesting tale to tell is that he has involved the broader scientific community to corroborate his claims. Now members of a team on three continents have gone through geologic data and core samples from the bottom of the ocean to locate a crater off the coast of Madigasgar that just might be ground zero for the beginning of this age of civilization. Everything before that, argues Masse, is just ash.

My story appears in this month's issue of Discover Magazine. Excerpt below:

The serpent’s tails coil together menacingly. A horn juts sharply from its head. The creature looks as if it might be swimming through a sea of stars. Or is it making its way up a sheer basalt cliff? For Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, there is no confusion as he looks at this ancient petroglyph, scratched into a rock by a Native American shaman. “You can’t tell me that isn’t a comet,” he says.

In Masse’s interpretation, the petroglyph commemorates a comet that streaked across the sky just a few years before Europeans came to this area of New Mexico. But that event is a minor blip compared to what he is really after. Masse believes that he has uncovered evidence that a gigantic comet crashed into the Indian Ocean several thousand years ago and nearly wiped out all life on the planet. What’s more, he thinks that clues about the catastrophe are hiding in plain sight, embedded in the creation stories of cultural groups around the world. His hypothesis depends on a major reinterpretation of many different mythologies and raises questions about how frequently major asteroid impacts occur. What scientists know about such collisions is based mainly on a limited survey of craters around the world and on the moon. Only 185 craters on Earth have been identified, and almost all are on dry land, leaving largely unexamined the 70 percent of the planet covered by water. Even among those on dry land, many of the craters have been recognized only recently. It is possible that Earth has been a target of more meteors and comets than scientists have suspected. . .

Continue reading on Discover's website here.

Can a tattoo stop a bullet?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:50:00 +0000

Today NPR is running a story a trip I took to Thailand last week where I searched out several famous tattoo artists who have mastered the art of Sak-Yant. The tattoos they put on people's back are said to be able to stop bullets. At the end of one interview with Ajarn Sua blessed me. Then he took out a standard issue box cutter and started slashing away at my arm saying that his blessing had protected me from harm. When I left there were lots of cat-like scratches on my arm, but no blood.

Click here to listen to the NPR story

Click here for more photos

For centuries Thai soldiers have covered their bodies in protective tattoos called Sak Yant. Today, the ancient ritual is booming and thousands of people, in Thailand and beyond, are flocking to master artists to have the powerful designs inked on their bodies.
The Wat Bang Pra Buddhist temple, about 30 miles west of Bangkok, is one of the most highly esteemed locations for Sak Yant. Dozens of monks and master artists, who have spend years perfecting the art, can be found there.

One afternoon, a group of men – many already covered head to toe with tattoos — discuss, in the courtyard, how best to use the canvas of their skin. The dirty, dilapidated campus, covered with cobwebs, may not immediately invoke an aura of prestige, but these Sak Yant devotees are less interested in the buildings than the designs that will soon cover their bodies. Many have traveled from far reaches of Thailand. A tattoo from this temple, they say, can protect them from danger or even death.

Chakkrapad Romkaew, one of the devotees, says that his first tattoo altered his outlook on the world, made him braver and encouraged him to become a soldier. His back is covered in elaborate geometric patterns and Buddhist prayers. In a week he's being sent to the south of Thailand as part of an anti-terrorist squad. He wants to get another tattoo so, he says, he will be more fully protected before the bullets begin to fly.

"There are so many dangers waiting down there," he says. "Before I got a tattoo, I never wanted to be a soldier. But when they got into my skin, my desire to be a soldier got stronger."

The Process

Master artist Ajarn Sua prepares to place a tattoo on the young soldier by sharpening a two-foot-long needle. Often, the tattoo is simply a series of dots created when the needle passes through the skin. After the pattern has been drawn, the monks rub ink into the wound and say a prayer to empower the charm hidden inside the tattoo.

There are hundreds of traditional designs, many of which revolve around animal figures. One of the most powerful, according to the tradition, is a tiger that spans the whole of a person's lower back. An unprepared person can suddenly find that their whole life is turned around after being inked, a monk named Suntotn Prapagaroe explains.

"If a person has a tiger spirit, he will act like a tiger. He cannot control himself, the spirit controls him," Prapagaroe says. "He will spread his hand like this, and roar."

Although the tattoos may ultimately protect believers from suffering, pain is an inherent part of the process.

"It's like being jabbed by a needle a thousand times," says Paul Davies, a British Internet entrepreneur who also has come to the Wat Bang Pra temple for a tattoo.

Modern Technologies

Not all Sak Yant masters rely on the traditional needle methods. The master Ajarn Sua, who has a studio just north of Bangkok, says that a number of people coming to him for tattoos have urged him to adopt the electric tattoo needle.

Modernization does not necessarily mean canceling out tradition, however. After inking one man's back, Sua places his hand over the man's face and forces his head backwards. He draws a ritual knife across his neck and then stabs him lightly in the back.

"No person with this tattoo will ever be hurt by bullets or knives," he says.

The Parlor to the Stars

Although Sak Yant has existed for thousands of years, it began to expand in new directions several years ago due to one extremely famous devotee: Angelina Jolie. In 2004, the actress flew to Bangkok to meet with venerated tattoo master Ajarn Noo Kanphai, who placed a large tiger on her lower back — and a string of Thai script on her left shoulder.

Ajarn Noo's studio — known as the parlor to the stars — contrasts sharply with the Wat Bang Pra temple. Simple worn walls are replaced with photos of high rolling Thai celebrities and American CEOs. One recent afternoon, two well-known Thai comedians and an actor from the Cannes film hit Om Bhat waited for designs.

Tattoos, Kanphai says, can give a person courage to face the difficulties of their life. They can multiply wealth and protect from harm. "Many people have come to me with drug problems, but after I give them a tattoo, the problems go away," he says. A tattoo can really change your life."

REQUEST: Need Matrimonial Detective Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 04:59:00 +0000

I'm working on a story about arranged marriages in India and need stories from people who have hired a private detective to do a background check on a prospective spouse. There are lots of stories of people who fake their backgrounds on websites like Bharatmatrimony.com and Shaadi.com to either get dates, marry a second spouse or other sorts of shenanigans. I need to speak with anyone who has hired a detective (whether or not the prospective spouse was in the end ok or not). The story will appear on the radio and in print. I can change names if people want their identities protected. You can contact me via e-mail at sgcarney@gmail.com or via phone at +91-9380185773

So please, forward this on to whomever you know.

Salwa Judum and the Missing AK-47s

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:48:00 +0000

About a month ago I went on assignment with BBC:The World to cover a story about a civilian counter insurgency movement in central India. For the last 40 years a communist insurgency known as "Naxalism" has been waging all out war against the government. They have killed government officials, attacked mines and skirmished with police on hundreds of occasions. Naxals are a serious threat to the government in 13 Indian states. The government has had such a hard time dealing with the Naxals that they have begun to fund a counter insurgency movement in the state of Chhattisgarh known as Salwa Judum.

The Salwa Judum are armed with government issued AK-47s, .303 rifles and a range of other small arms. They lead the police deep into Naxal territory and are said to be effective in routing the communists. However, backing the Salwa Judum has come at a terrible cost to local security. As the Naxals pull back the Salwa Judum fill the void with their own brand of warlordism. They burn villages to the ground, rape women and forcefully conscript children into their ranks. Lacking in any ideology other than violence and profit, the Salwa Judum are a far more serious threat to local security than the Maoists that they fight.

The story will air on BBC radio some time in November, but in the mean time take a look at an interview that I did with Xeni Jardin at BoingBoingTV earlier this month about my experiences in Chhattisgarh.

When I went to Chhattisgarh I was interested in tracking down some of the missing Iraq weapons that were reported MIA in September. The American arms lost as many as 180,000 AK-47s, pistols and rifles that were supposed to be distributed to the Iraqi security forces. People have speculated that the arms have entered into informal terrorist arms networks and could have fanned out across the world into the hands of militants. My plan was to track down serial numbers from the weapons that police had confiscated from the Naxals and track them back through their point of production. But I was not able to collect enough serial numbers to get any useful data, and it seems that most of the weapons used by naxals have actually been won through battles with police. I am not searching out other possible arms links with the LTTE in Sri Lanka.

Chennai Kidney Doctor Arrested in Mumbai

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:30:00 +0000

Almost five months after authorities in Chennai abandoned any attempt at prosecuting the kidney scandal that has rocked this city, police in Mumbai have arrested a renowned kidney surgeon who has admitted to arranging organ transplants for patients from all over the world. Most of the operations took place at St. Thomas Hospital in Chennai. The Mumbai police say that Palani Ravichandran has preformed between 40 and 100 of the illegal operations every year since 2002.

KN Arun of The New Indian Express reported today that:

A large number of recipients on whom he had preformed kidney transplants were rich patients from abroad, especially the Persian Gulf countries and Malaysia, whom he charges Rs. 10 lakh to 15 lakh ($25,000 - $35,000) each.

Kidney transplants have been a huge problem in Tamil Nadu in the last few year. According to government statistics released by Tehelka, over 2000 people a year sell their kidneys in the city. In most cases brokers offer them several thousand dollars for their donations, but end up swindling the donors out of the lion's share of the cash. I have written extensively about the issue on this blog and on WIRED News.

But Ravichandran is a different sort of kidney transplant surgeon. His methods are much more sinister than the typical Chennai doctor. It appears that for the last several years he has worked with two local brokers identified by my sources as Bandana Rai and Dipen Rai who rent a string of houses throughout the city to hold potential donors while they await their operations.

Ravichandran and the Rais have been able to escape detection for so long because they do not use local kidney donors. Instead they travel to Nepal and bring back young men and women who are willing to sell their kidneys for cheap. After trafficking the would-be donors across the border near Siliguri, West Bengal, they take a train to Chennai and spend about a week getting the necessary tests for surgery. Afterwards they are promptly send back to Nepal.

Deepak Adhikari who writes for Nepal Weekly, recently wrote a blog post about the Nepal end of the network.

This recent arrest should be a wakeup call to the Chennai authorities who have so far been lackadaisical about pursuing cases of brokered kidney transplants. Police claim that they do not have the legal authority to arrest brokers for violating the Transplantation of Human Organs Act of 1984--and claim that only the department of health and family services has that power. This is, of course, simply an excuse to maintain the status quo.

The truth is that the Chennai police and local government are perfectly happy to let the kidney trade continue because there is political pressure from across the medical spectrum to provide organs for people needing transplants. The government has sheepishly admitted that they are more concerned about wealthy patients than poor kidney donors who get scammed in the transactions.

There are also rampant allegations that members of the police and transplant authorization committee receive large bribes to approve surgeries. One source I spoke with who gave her kidney six months ago said the bribe was $25,000 per committee member--or about $700.

It is also telling that it was the Mumbai police who arrested Ravichandran--it appears that while he has enjoyed a startling amount of immunity from police while he has been working in Chennai.

Survivors of Acid Violence Speak Out

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:21:00 +0000

Haseena Hussain at the CSAAAW protest in Bangalore

Last week a young woman from Mysore was doused with a bottle of hydrochloric acid and then forced to drink a mixture of acid and alcohol. No one was surprised. Her husband had abused her for years, she had even lodged a series of complaints with the police in the months before the final attack. Two days ago Hina Fathima died in a Mysore hospital.

Acid violence is increasingly common across South Asia and cases like Fathima's are common enough that they often don't even make the front page of local newspapers. The Campaign and Struggle Against Acid Attacks on Women, or CSAAAW, has recorded 61 acid attacks in Karnataka since 1999. While most of the women die from their injuries or from suicide some survivors have come out to try to change local laws that make acid cheap and easily available at any corner grocery store. The women who do survive often have to bear terrible medical costs and often lose their eyes, noses, ears and any semblance of facial expression.

Last week I traveled to Bangalore to meet with the founding members of CSAAAW and do a short story for NPR about the prevalence of acid violence and interviewed key people in the campaign. So far the government isn't really taking the problem seriously. They contend that only a handful of women who are victims of these attacks are not a pressing enough problem. The state sponsored fund meant to pay for the women's medical care is hardly enough to cover the costs of two or three patients, let along the scores of women in the state who desperately need treatment.

The real danger of acid violence isn't only the effects that it has on victims, but in the role that it plays in Indian society as a threat. The mainstream media often shows angry men threatening their lovers with acid. Many women I know live in fear that they could be targets of some acid wielding assailant. For 18 rupees anyone can buy a bottle of acid that is 32% concentrated--it's a weapon that just about anyone can afford and ruing someone's life is as easy as splashing it in their face.

Click here to listen to the NPR story

I have also posted a small gallery of photos that I took while at the protest that show the range of activists and survivors who have come out to support CSAAAW. I am thinking of taking another trip up to Bangalore to take more photos of these women.

If you want to get in touch directly with CSAAAW contact Sanjana at csaaaw@redifmail.com.

India's 60th Independence Day

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 02:05:00 +0000

Tomorrow is India's 60th birthday. This morning Padma and I a long conversation about how far the nation has come since booting the British out of the country. Economic gurus are heralding that India will be one of the world's next economic super-powers and the country still produces far more English language poetry than any other nation on earth. There are still huge challenges facing the country: chief among them equity for the hundreds of millions of people who live in abject poverty and caste oppression. However in for such a short span of time India has sloughed off much of its colonial baggage to become a world player. And in a colorful, if unfair, example of colonial chickens coming home to roost, The TATA group, an Indian company out bid every other major player in a successful take over of the one of the largest steel companys in the world--the Anglo-Dutch Corus Group in a $4.3 billion deal.

In other unfair comparisons I would like to point out that India's Gross Domestic Product is $4.165 trillion: more than twice England's $1.96 trillion.

Happy Birthday India.

Vannakkum You're on Rainbow

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:22:00 +0000

I love the radio in Chennai. When I'm driving around the city I always tune into FM rainbow and listen to a daily game show called Aantakshri. The game is really simple. One caller starts singing a few bars of a song. They stop and then repeat the last sound from the last line of the song. The second caller starts singing some other song that starts with that last sound. It's sort of like musical chairs, but with singing.

A few weeks ago I convinced the good people at NPR that it would be a good idea to let me play parts of the show on American national radio. I interviewed the show's host and a couple other people around the city about why a show like that would become so popular. I also dropped in on a sound studio in the Amirami Mega Mall in Purusawakkam that lets people come in off the street and get a a quarter of an hour of studio time to hear themselves sing. I took some photos of the sound booth, it's pretty professional, check it out.

The show aired today all across the United States. If you missed it you can download it off the NPR website here. One word of caution for the Tamil purists who read this blog: when I was setting up the sound for the piece I didn't have any popular Tamil music on my computer, so the background music is all Hindi.

Gekos: Pets or Pests?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:56:00 +0000

Gordo the Geko: Baron of my Kitchen

When my wife and I moved into our apartment in Chennai no one ever said that we would be the only inhabitants. Besides the two of us there are an inordinate number of gekos who line the walls and keep us company. At first we were elated. The little green lizards are ferocious mosquito and ant predators and more or less leave us alone. We were happy to have a couple of them patrolling the apartments borders for pests. Sure they leave there little lizard dungs on the walls when nature calls, but shit happens it's part of the great cycle of life. We learned to live with it.

For almost a year we more or less peacefully co-existed. Sure there were a couple incidents where an over eager lizard tried to gobble up a giant cockroach and ended up choking on it and dying on our floor with bug half sticking out of its mouth. Or the time when a baby geko died mysteriously and a swarm of ants found it and bore it away up the wall like a hundred thousand pall bearers. But events like that were few and far between.

But things began to change in the spring when the gekos began to breed. I'm not sure where they keep their nests, or where they lay their eggs, but during season changes the apartment gets inundated with dozens of micro-lizards half the size of my pinky. They're much faster than the adult gekos and scatter like vermin when the lights go on. The baby lizards resemblance to insects make them much less lovable than their larger counterparts. I guess you could say that their children turned me against them.

However in time the geko kids get eaten by other lizards or grow up enough to take their place on the walls of my apartment. But as they breed more and more gekos have taken up residence in my house. There's Gordo, the extremely fat baron of my kitchen. Hank a lizard who freakishly has two tails, and a bevy of lesser known apartment denizens.

When we first moved in the lizards and I were on good standing, but their reputation is beginning to fall in my eyes. Some day soon I may have to evict them.

Dadua Slain. Is Banditry on the Wane?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 04:41:00 +0000

The only known picture of Dadua

I did a short interview for NPR yesterday on the last stand of the feared bandit Dadua in Uttar Pradesh last week. Special forces surrounded the dacoits position and lobbed grenades at him and ten of his armed colleagues.

I'm interested in doing some more research on banditry in India. Unlike the various revolutionary movements across South Asia, there is something romantic--if unnerving--about the dozen or royal dacoits who have spend decades resisting the government. Unlike the Naxals men like Dadua, Veerapam, and Man Singh didn't have grandiose political aims, but were unwilling to live by conventional morality. It almost that the most powerful dacoits in India are the inheritors of India's long dead feudal traditions.

Dadua survived in the ravines and jungles of Uttar Pradesh for so long because he fashioned himself as a patron of the rural downtrodden. He got the vote out for political parties, and paid dowry money for families who could not afford to get their daughters married off. He was half-magnanimous monarch and half cold blooded killer with over 150 murder cases attributed to him by the police.

Man Singh, the notorious bandit king who was gunned down in a similar manner by the police in the 1950's, has risen to god like status in Madya Pradesh. Today a score of temples in rural areas include his bust along with the pantheon of Hindu gods. Even 60 years after his death local people see him as a benefactor.

Yet the central government seems to be stepping up operations against bandits and I wonder if soon there won't be any place for these sorts of figured in India's IT future.

I'd like to find out more about Dadua. Perhaps I'll take a trip up to UP and visit the temple he consecrated.

Listen to the NPR story here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12255575

Hello, Indian Helicopter

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 04:07:00 +0000

I really can't tell you how many times I've walked down a crowded tourist streets and a rickshaw driver pulls up next to me in a bumble-bee colored taxi pod and says "Hello, Indian Helicopter"? It's a pretty lame way to entice some to visit an emporium, after the burping and sputtering rickshaws are nothing like helicopter rides. But it must work on some people. Indeed one rickshaw-wallah in Mumbai has taken the sales pitch to the next level and modded his shaw for maximum tourist bilking.

I wonder if I would jump in if this guy pulled up next to me. I'd like to think that I would.

Link via Calamur on Flickr and Neatorama

When Media Conglomerates Steal

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Carney) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:24:00 +0000

Front page of WIRED News

Yesterday I had a story published on WIRED News about a group of calligraphers in Chennai who are writing the last handwritten newspaper in the world. This morning I wanted to see how people were reacting to the story and checked Google to see how many people had linked to it. The story seemed to be well received. However, that was not all that I found. It turned out that so many people liked it that ABC News decided to publish the story for themselves and throw their copywrite logo underneath it to say they owned it. They retitled it, edited it lightly and threw a photo from Reuters on top of it. They even used my byline to make it look like they commissioned the piece.

The story on ABC's website

Now for those of you not steeped in media politics, freelance writers like myself make our living by selling stories to media outlets and we get paid in return for our work. We are usually allowed to resell a story after a certain amount of time to make a little more money for our labor. Still, most freelance writers barely scrape together a living, but do it out of love for the job. So when I found out that one of the largest media conglomerates in the world had decided to publish my writing without seeking my permission first (or offering to buy it) I sent a note out to them to see what was going on.

This is just one of many ways that big media companies try to take advantage of the people who actually produce the content that they depend on. ABC doesn't have a correspondent in Chennai, it wouldn't be practical for them to afford one, so when a story comes up that they want to print, it would seem fair that they would at least have the decency to support the people who write.

No response from them yet. More to come.

UPDATE: Following a reader's comment I've added a Digg button below if you want to spread the word about what ABC is up to.