Indians are voting in the first round of the country's 15th general elections.

Voters in 124 constituencies are taking part in the ballot. There has so far been a steady turnout, marred by several attacks from Maoist insurgents.

More than 700 million Indians overall are eligible to vote for seats in the lower house of parliament.

The incumbent Congress-led coalition government is facing a challenge from the main opposition BJP-led alliance.

The two main blocs are also competing against a "third front" of communist and regional parties in a poll that is too close to call.

A new Danish report provides a fresh proposal for halting the wave of piracy off the coast of Somalia that has plagued global shipping channels. It calls for the establishment of a coast guard that would stretch across the Greater Horn of Africa. The method, the think tank argues, has been successful in southeast Asia.

Could a pan-African coast guard help stop the plague of piracy around the Horn of Africa? The Danish Institute for Military Studies (DIMS) has concluded in a new report that the best way to stop piracy off the coast of Somalia would be to introduce a regional coast guard that would operate from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south.

The report, which is to be presented at an international conference in London on April 27, suggests that the countries around the Horn of Africa cooperate in a regional coast guard.

"This coast guard service should address piracy, rescue operations, fishing inspection and environmental protection," DIMS Researcher Lars Bangert Struwe told politiken.dk.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is telling CIA officials who used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects that they won't be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Senior administration officials told The Associated Press that Attorney General Eric Holder will release a statement Thursday giving the first definitive assurance to the CIA officials that they are legally in the clear.

As they struggle to find political footing, rump Republicans, (even the formerly mainstream among them) are beginning to dabble in right wing extremism. That's not hyperbole. Indeed, you need look no further than Texas Gov Rick Perry, who seems to have gotten a bit carried away yesterday at a Tea Party Protest in Austin. "We've got a great union," Perry said, "There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it."

But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

This comes less than a week after Perry appeared with sponsors and supporters of a Texas House resolution affirming the state's claim of sovereignty under the 10th Amendment. "I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state," Gov. Perry said.

Latin American leaders have told Venezuela's Hugo Chavez not to confront Barack Obama at a major summit marking the US President's first encounter with the region.

There is concern the volatile leader is planning to grab the headlines at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, which starts on Friday, with a grandstanding attack on the US embargo on Cuba, or a personal insult towards Mr Obama at what will be their first meeting.

The self-styled champion of anti-Americanism has made some conciliatory noises towards the new White House occupant, but alarm bells started ringing when Mr Chavez recently called Mr Obama an "ignoramus" for accusing Venezuela of supporting Farc, the Columbian rebel group listed as a terrorist organisation by the US and the European Union.

President Barack Obama on Thursday highlighted his ambition for the development of high-speed passenger rail lines in at least 10 regions, expressing confidence in the future of train travel even as he acknowledged that the American rail network, compared to the rest of the world's, remains a caboose...

"What we need, then, is a smart transportation system equal to the needs of the 21st century," he said, "a system that reduces travel times and increases mobility, a system that reduces congestion and boosts productivity, a system that reduces destructive emissions and creates jobs."

And he added, "There's no reason why we can't do this." ...

The government has identified 10 corridors of 100 to 600 miles in length with greatest promise for high-speed development.

They are: a northern New England line; an Empire line running east to west in New York State; a Keystone corridor running laterally through Pennsylvania; a southeast network connecting the District of Columbia to Florida and the Gulf Coast; a Gulf Coast line extending from eastern Texas to western Alabama; a corridor in central and southern Florida; a Texas-to-Oklahoma line; a California corridor where voters have already approved a line that will allow travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours; and a corridor in the Pacific Northwest.

Only one high-speed line is now operating, on the Northeast corridor between Washington and Boston, and it will be eligible to compete for funds to make improvements.

Neglected pools become breeding grounds for disease in the US | Guardian | 16.4.09

Pool owners and their neighbours may be swatting more mosquitoes this summer as financially strapped homeowners cut swimming-pool maintenance from their budgets.

People are turning off pool pumps and filters, buying fewer chemicals and cancelling pool services, mosquito-control officials say.

As a result, more pools have turned green and become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, including those that carry West Nile virus.

The exiled Thaksin and his in-country media operatives had before the recent street chaos achieved some success in selling to international audiences their UDD movement as a pro-democracy cause. They have consistently claimed Abhisit's elected coalition government was installed by behind-the-scenes military maneuvering and that a wider aristocracy has long retarded Thailand's democratic development.

That message has been dutifully perpetuated by Thaksin's foreign media advisors, including the Hong Kong-based Samuel Moon, who claims on Thaksin's Building a Better Future Foundation's website to have worked for the Economist, Dow Jones and, through his own company, in partnership with Businessweek. Certain of those media groups have shown strong editorial sympathy for Thaksin's supposed democratic cause.

One UDD organizer told this reporter that he had "virtually written" The Economist's critical cover story about the Thai monarchy, which was banned by authorities from entering Thailand. The same source had previously worked as a fixer for foreign broadcasters in Thailand, including al-Jazeera, and has been in consistent contact with Asia Times Online to provide the UDD's side of breaking news events.

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Longer-term observers have rightly couched Thaksin's pro-democracy claims within the former leader's established anti-democratic history, including his propensities for cracking down on the press, bypassing parliamentary processes and undermining the independent checking and balancing institutions by the 1997 constitution he and his supporters now claim to promote. Thailand's conflict is more accurately portrayed as a struggle between competing elites, both able to mobilize disruptive masses to their political calls, jockeying for position ahead of an uncertain royal succession.  (My bold.)

Bolivia's President Evo Morales says three foreigners have been killed after he ordered police to thwart a planned assassination attempt against him.

Security forces killed three alleged international mercenaries in the city of Santa Cruz, Mr Morales said.

He said intelligence reports had warned of an assassination plot by a group comprising foreign attackers.

Arriving in Venezuela for a summit, Mr Morales said two people had been arrested over the alleged plot.

...There were conflicting reports about the nationalities of those killed, with some reports saying they were from Hungary while others said they were from Romania and Ireland.