DJ - Today we're going to being the process of connecting the dots on current events. That is a way of thinking and expressing that we're going to gain some perspective on current news events that come from the locations where our route will take us from Peking to Paris and we have for you a series of news dispatches that report a variety of subjects that we ourselves are monitoring and we share with you all as part of the experiential learning.

This past weekend on August 10th, Sunday, flooding and a landslide at Katmandu, Nepal, triggered by heavy rains there, killed at least 20 people in eastern Nepal on Sunday. One can surmise that the highways will be affected and washed out as a result of rains of that magnitude. We are told that while the majority of roads on the route from Peking to Paris are paved, a good percentage of the roads, 30-40% are not and that they are subject to constant change in large part because of the flowage of water off of the Himalayan Mountains on both sides.

Further down the road in Pakistan, in the city of Lahore, thousands of troops fanned out through the Punjab province on Sunday to combat a wave of religiously motivated killings. Troops were taking up positions around the province after a day of violence in which 16 people, mostly Shiite Muslims were slain by unidentified assailants. The attacks were the latest in religious fighting this year between the militant Sunni and Shiite Muslims that has left 200 people dead in this region of Pakistan.

India is receiving a lot of attention in the American press. The New York Times on Sunday featured a travel article about India. The purpose and the timeliness of the article has to do with the recognition of the 50 years of freedom and independence being observed by India in the month of August. It was in fact on August 14, 1947 that the transfer of power from the Monarchy to the independent nation of India took place. August 14, 1997 is the 50 year anniversary date of the shift of that significant event in India's history. There was another event that began the independence drive and it's an event that history says a British General by the name of Dyer ordered troops to open fire on a protest gathering in April of 1919 killing some 400 people and wounding hundreds more. That event lead to the momentum for a freedom movement that was never lost and was not finalized until August of 1947. The significance of that event is that it took place in a city of Amritsar, near the Pakistani border, 250 miles northwest of Delhi. Amritsar is the only border crossing on the India/Pakistan border and is a place our travel will take us on the route from Peking to Paris. We'll also give you a weather report from Amritsar in just a bit. One can't help but wonder if the intense summer weather might contribute to the mood of the people there. The Chicago Tribune also has a front page story about India's thirst for progress. It reports that India has nuclear power, but is a country of contradiction because many people remain illiterate. Modern India is a diverse nation brimming with contradictions, according to the report which focuses on the 50th year anniversary of independence for India. 33% of the population is urban and 40% is rural. About 300 million Indians lives below the poverty line, that's in excess of the entire population of the United States. It's expected that by the year 2000 the population of India will swell to one billion people, that compares to approximately 285 million population in the United States. So India is certainly a staggering and extraordinary place on the planet and one that will hold great fascination for us as we drive across the northern part of India.

Getting back to the beginning spot of the journey, China. We'll be spending upwards of 10 days in China and one hears story about the bureaucracy of China and of the difficulty of dealing with the Chinese system which has been part of the experience of organizing the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge. But on a more practical level, Ameritech, the regional telephone company in the Midwest of the United States, announced this week that it's abandoning its efforts to do business in China, saying that regulatory delays are making it too difficult to get a return on its investment. In August of 1995, two years ago, Ameritech unveiled a joint venture with the Chinese Communications System Company to provide management and consulting for phone services in China. Ameritech said this week it was pulling out of the venture and would look for investment opportunities in other parts of Asia. To outside observers to see a bureaucratic organization like Ameritech withdraw from a bureaucratic society like China certainly says an awful lot about the realities of how the bureaucracies exist in China when one of America's largest bureaucracies found it very difficult, if not impossible to deal with that reality. There's a new report out of London this week confirming what has been speculated about in the past, and that is the remarkable projection that China's economy will become the world's largest by the year 2030, a little more than 30 years from now. The economy of China is expected to surpass that of the United States and the significance of this report is that this is the first time an official Chinese institution has forecast China's continuing strong economic growth and has publicly acknowledged that it will carry it past the United States within a generation. Most recent estimates are that the Chinese economy has been growing at the official rate of 8.3 to 9.0 percent and by the year 2010, a forecast average growth rate of 8 to 10 percent will leapfrog China past Japan, and by 2030 it will be the largest economy in the world. Quite a stunning economic forecast and reality of the transformation of China. Something that we expect to see firsthand on our extensive trip across China.

Finally, we'll share with you the weather forecast for this week for some of this region. It's a rather foreboding weather forecast. We can only hope that there'll be some moderation and some changes by September and October. We'll begin first in Amritsar, which is the city on the Pakistani Indian border that is the only border crossing between those countries. The forecast there is quite amazing. For Monday through Wednesday of this week, partly sunny, very hot and very humid. The temperatures are expected to range from 95 degrees to 106 degrees and the low temperature is forecast to be between 76 and 82 degrees. We're seeing from that region humidity figures in the upper 80s and low 90s percentile. In New Delhi, the temperatures for this week are to range between 91 and 99 degrees and the forecast is for showers, hot and very humid. So the monsoons are underway in that region at this time. In Katmandu, the elevation being 4500 feet, the temperature is a bit more moderate. It's in the mid 80s - 83 to 86 degrees. And the forecast there is for rain for five days in a row which would give confirmation of the floods that we have now heard about. The weather forecast indicates rain, warm and very humid for the Katmandu valley of Nepal. Shifting back to the Pakistani city of Lahore which we reported on earlier as the source of military troops quailing violence in that region due to religious fighting. Lahore in Pakistan has an incredible weather forecast that says rain, very humid, very hot. The high temperature early in the week was forecast to be 107 degrees with the lowest temperature this week to be 94 in terms of the daytime highs. The overnight low temperature in this region is 78 to 86 degrees. Again, those humidity figures are ranging in the high 80s and the low 90s.

Well we've begun now to watch current events and to begin to connect the dots to round out the picture to create an expectation of this extraordinary area that we're going to be guests in for nearly two months.

A representative of the United States is currently in China this week. The Security Advisor to the White House, US National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, is visiting through Wednesday of this week in Beijing, China and that has been the source of the clamp down by the government of dissidents in the Chinese capital. And so travel causes one to pay greater attention to current developments, current trends, current events in regions that seem so distant and so far away. That's today update. Thanks for coming along on this verbal portion of our journey. We're continuing our planning and our preparation and all appears to be going well at this time as we get ready to undertake the real travel from Beijing to Paris during September and October. See you next time.