India's June exports rise on U.S., Europe orders * (Reuters/Yahoo)
	India's exports surged 10.95 percent in June, boosted by steady orders from its key markets of the United States and the European Union which account for almost half the country's annual shipments. Economists expect the momentum to continue in the months ahead because of an expected revival in the global economy but Indian industry groups say exports could become uncompetitive unless the central bank halts the rupee's rise against the dollar.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030801/137/26ja5.html
	US needs to keep India, not Pak in good humor: Expert * (ANI/Yahoo)
	Urging the Bush Administration to keep the United States broader security interests in mind, a senior member of a think tank here has recommended that it would be in Washington's interest to keep India rather than Pakistan in good humor. "America's long-term interests in Asia require a partnership with India, not Pakistan. India is not only the leading power in South Asia; it is a rising great power with a reach beyond that region," says Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. In his study titled "Peace and Freedom: Foreign Policy for a Constitutional Republic," Carpenter said: "India can be a stabilizing force in the Persian Gulf as well as a strategic counterweight to China. Both of those developments would benefit the United States."
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030801/139/26jg0.html
	US pressures Pak to send 6000 troops *(ANI/Yahoo)
	Fresh moves have been initiated by the United States to get Pakistan and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) to send 6,000 and 20,000 troops respectively to Iraq. Quoting a defence official at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, The News said this pressure on Islamabad and European allies was being put to ensure legitimacy for the recently appointed Governing Council in Iraq and relief for tired American troops there. He also confirmed that Washington had shelved its plan to involve Indian troops in the peacekeeping mission in Iraq.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030801/139/26jcy.html
	Pak has a right to arms; defence relations with US bright: Myers *(ANI/Yahoo)
	Describing defence relations between the United States and Pakistan as very bright and progressive, General Richard Myers, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, has said Islamabad has a right to arms and Washington will be responsive to its needs in this regard. In an interview with Geo TV on Wednesday shortly before his departure for Afghanistan, Myers said: "Oh, I think the future is very bright. I am old enough to remember when Pakistani military and U.S. military were very, very close. I think our cooperation on war on terrorism and in other military-to-military forums is very, very strong. My view is that it will only grow stronger with time.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030731/139/26iel.html
	Stop cross-border terrorism, US tells Pak *(ANI/Yahoo)
	The US has supported India's demand for erecting fences along the Indo-Pak border and the Line of Control to stop infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir. At a regular briefing, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, the US view of Indian fence along the Indo-Pak border was not the same as that of the Israeli fence on the West Bank, which it considered "bad". " These are two different fences. The fence, which Israel is putting up, involves seizing land and may prejudice the outcome of future discussions," he said, adding that because the US considered Israeli fence a problem does not mean that all fences are wrong.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030731/139/26iqh.html

HEADLINES
 

STORIES
 

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July 31, Washington -- Investigators have traced the funding for the Sept. 11 attacks to al-Qaida accounts in Pakistan, a top FBI counterterrorism official told a Senate panel. Officials did little to clarify the Saudi role in the funding. John S. Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, said Thursday that investigators have ``traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known al-Qaida operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the U.S.'

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Aug 1, Jammu, India -- Suspected militants searching for an army informer in India's insurgency-ridden Jammu-Kashmir state beat his young daughters, killing one, police said Friday. Three other people were killed in a separate gunbattle. Four gunmen entered the house of Nissar Hussain in Khablan village on Thursday, but Hussain escaped out the back, leaving his two young daughters alone in the house, said a police officer in Rajouri, the district where the village is located. Police quoted neighbors as saying the men then beat Hussain's daughters, Nazia, 9, and Shazia, 12, to find out his whereabouts.

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July 31, Kathmandu -- Nepal's Maoist rebels agreed on Thursday to resume stalled peace talks with the government, which welcomed the move aimed at ending a seven-year revolt that has claimed more than 7,200 lives. Maoist chief Prachanda's announcement came three days after the government freed three rebel leaders and provided information on guerrillas missing in the revolt, meeting some of the key demands to begin fresh talks. The rebels control large chunks of the Himalayan nation's countryside, but they have suffered most of the 5,500 deaths in the last 20 months. The revolt began in 1996. The Maoists had given the government until Thursday to also curb army operations and get a commitment from King Gyanendra to authorize government negotiators to talk.

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July 31, New Delhi -- India's top leaders referred to Pakistan while talking about terrorism -- a sore point between the nuclear-armed rival countries struggling to take cautious steps toward better relations. ``Friendship between India and Pakistan is very essential,' Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said Thursday in Parliament. ``However, we can't compromise on terrorism. We will have to fight it out.' Vajpayee has in the past linked Pakistan to terrorism, accusing it of sponsoring terrorist acts, particularly by Islamic militants in India. Islamabad denies the charge.

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July 31, New Delhi -- India's president has rejected a plea for a pardon from a British arms dealer who was sentenced to life in prison for smuggling weapons to a rebel group in eastern India in 1995, a news report said Thursday. Peter Bleach, from Yorkshire county in England, sought a pardon for the second time in three years, arguing that the Indian government had discriminated against him when it pardoned five Russians convicted in the same case. ``The president of India again, after carefully considering your petition, rejected the same on merits under the Indian constitution,' Press Trust of India quoted a letter from Venu Gopal, a home ministry official, as saying. Bleach's first petition was dismissed in 2001.

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July 31, Lucknow, India -- A special court deciding whether to try two Indian Cabinet members for a Hindu mob's destruction of a mosque in 1992 has viewed hours of videotapes, but none of the ones that show the leaders giving speeches before the attack, those attending the closed court sessions said. Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani is among eight people accused of encouraging Hindu activists to tear down the 16th century Babri Mosque, an act that led to nationwide riots in which 2,000 people died.

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Aug 1, Lucknow, India -- Thousands of weeping devotees Friday circled the garland-wrapped body of a Hindu priest who died after trying for half a century to build a temple on the site of a famous Muslim mosque. Ramchandra Paramhans, who claimed to be 93 and pioneered the campaign to build a temple to the god Ram where the 16th century Babri Mosque stood in the northern town of Ayodhya, died Thursday after a two-year battle with liver disease.

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Aug 1, Colombo -- Sri Lankan police said Friday they have arrested the mastermind behind an alien smuggling ring that involved Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans. ``It is a major breakthrough and we hope the arrest will lead us to low-level operatives,' said D.S.Y Samaratunga, a senior police investigator. Jayaruwan Nanayappa Hewage Munasinghe, a Sri Lankan, used his ship for smuggling and charged 300,000 rupees (US$3,125) for each would-be migrants. Sri Lankan authorities last month arrested more than 650 people, mostly from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, on suspicion they were heading for Europe as illegal migrants.

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July 31 -- Seeking to create a cost-efficient, customer-friendly unemployment claims system, New Mexico state officials agreed to upgrade a computer network and develop an Internet process to assist the jobless. They awarded the $6 million contract to a company that relies on a software development center in India for 70 percent of its work. The computer system will help the unemployed, but may add to the ranks of the unemployed. The New Mexico experience is just one example of a "mega-trend" in the information technology industry, with highly skilled, well-paid IT jobs being shifted overseas. The movement comes at a time when the IT industry, once viewed as an economic sector with a virtually limitless horizon, is slumping

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Aug 1, Chandler -- Monks at a Hindu cultural center interpreted graffiti scrawled on windows and a school bus as a chilling warning. "KKK," "Satan" and other graffiti was spray-painted in black sometime after 11 p.m. Wednesday and before 5 a.m. Thursday, when monks from Nepal discovered the vandalism and called police. "It's hate and harassment," said Dasarath Das, a Hindu priest and director of the Bhakti Vedanta Cultural Center. "If you have a problem, say it to somebody's face." Vijaya Gauinga, the monk who discovered the vandalism, said he considered the "KKK" graffiti a warning after someone explained to him that it stands for Ku Klux Klan and White supremacy.

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Aug 1 -- Dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and Cubs hat, Mohammed Ali Khan walked up to the ticket counter at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas last year to take his return flight home to his wife and three children in suburban Chicago. But rather than receiving a boarding pass, Khan was questioned in front of other passengers, paraded through the airport by police, detained in a back room and later interrogated by the FBI. Even though he was released without being charged, Northwest Airlines allegedly refused to let him board his flight and instead put him on another airline leaving hours later. On Tuesday, Khan, who is CEO of an investment banking firm and the national treasurer of the American Muslim Council, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Nevada, alleging that Northwest Airlines, the Las Vegas police department and the FBI violated his civil rights.

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The second in command of the U.S. Air Force, Gen. Robert Foglesong arrived July 31 in Islamabad, state media reported. Foglesong visited Pakistan’s Air Force headquarters and met with the acting chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Tanvir Mehmood Ahmed, the Associated Press of Pakistan said, to exchange views on matters of “mutual professional interest.” Foglesong is the latest high-ranking U.S. official to visit Pakistan, following a trip Tuesday by Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a recent visit by Gen. John Abizaid, new commander of the U.S. Central Command. Details of Foglesong’s talks with his Pakistani counterpart were not immediately available, but a military official described the visit as a routine trip. Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in the campaign against terror, and the two countries have worked together to root out remaining members of the al-Qaida terrorist network and remnants of Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban militia in the region bordering Afghanistan. Pakistan has provided at least three air bases to the U.S.-led force, while its security forces have rounded up some 500 al-Qaida suspects in the past 20 months.

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Big business welcomes globalization -- but only when big business benefits.

Item: The House passes legislation allowing consumers to import cheaper drugs from Canada.

Item: IBM plans to move thousands of computer programming jobs to India.

Question: Aren't both events logical consequences of globalization of commerce?

Answer: Not if you're big business, which loves moving cheap jobs offshore but hates competing with cheaper imported drugs.

India symbolizes both sides of this debate. If you get into a conversation with a billing representative of your credit card provider or your phone company, you may notice a faint Indian accent. The services industry is shifting more backroom operations to India, where wages are a fraction of ours.

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Aug 1 -- What's on the mind of executives running the booming Indian IT firms kept busy by the shifting of work from the West to India? Not the political controversy, but whether India can produce enough talent to fill the huge demand for workers the trend has fuelled. "Businesses outsource to India because of our emphasis on quality. The challenge for us now here is whether we live up to these expectations - can we train more people and have enough educated workers to maintain the quality?" said Girija Pande, regional director for India-based IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Asia-Pacific. Previous reports have said that given current trends, India's schools may not be able to produce enough IT graduates to meet demand in the coming years.

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Globalization and the high-tech revolution drove the U.S. economy to new heights in the 1990s, and many white-collar workers particularly enjoyed the ride. But those same forces are now serving to prolong workers' misery. More college-educated executives and managers have been cut from payrolls during this recession than during previous ones. And it's taking them longer to find new jobs. More worrisome to them, however, is that the jobs may never come back. The economic churn – so familiar to displaced blue-collar workers in decades past – has shaken up the managerial ranks. Improvements in technology mean that software code or tax forms can be written or processed in India or elsewhere, at a substantial savings.

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              --- South Asian News, August 1, 2003 ---

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