Coke, Pepsi to chart aggressive drive to woo back customers *(IANS/Yahoo)
	U.S. multinationals Coca-Cola and Pepsi are set to embark on an aggressive marketing drive to win back customer trust after getting the Indian government's clean billing to their soft drinks brands. A fortnight after a report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) alleging that 12 soft drinks brands of Coca-Cola and Pepsi contained pesticides badly hit their sales, the companies are going all out to rev up sales. "We will do everything in the days ahead to restore customer confidence in our products," said Sunil Gupta, vice president of public affairs and communications for Coca-Cola India.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030822/43/277fg.html
	'American Desi' cast is back in 'Green Card Fever' *(IANS/Yahoo)
	Here comes another comic yet touching take on Indian immigrants in the U.S. "Green Card Fever", a film about a young immigrant from Hyderabad who overstays his U.S. visa, was released in 37 theatres in North America Friday. "Green Card Fever" marks the directorial debut of Bala Rajasekharuni, who earned his master's degree in direction from the University from Wisconsin, Madison. It is the first to be produced by India-educated Vijay Vaidyanathan, chairman of Net Effect Media and who has been an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030822/43/277cg.html
	Israel says could sign India radar deal next month * (Reuters/Yahoo)
	Israel is close to signing a deal to sell India a more than $1 billion strategic airborne radar system in the biggest arms deal since diplomatic ties were established 11 years ago, a defence official said on Thursday. India had ordered three of the plane-mounted Phalcon early-warning radar systems from state-run Israel Aircraft Industries for a total of $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion, the Israeli official said.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030821/137/2757d.html

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Aug 21, New Delhi -- Pakistan's new ambassador in New Delhi says his country is ready to discuss India's concerns about terrorism, a news report said Thursday. ``Let the Indian delegation sit across the table and talk about these things ... We'll find out what cooperation they need and what cooperation Pakistan can or has extended,' The Hindu newspaper quoted High Commissioner Aziz Ahmed Khan as saying in an interview. Khan didn't elaborate. In recent months, Indian and Pakistani leaders have proposed talks to discuss the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir and other issues.

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Aug 22, Kabul -- Pakistan has proposed increasing intelligence ties with Afghanistan after a wave of attacks by Taliban insurgents suspected of operating from Pakistani territory, Pakistan's foreign minister said Friday. Khursheed Kasuri also said that he has suggested more cooperation to prevent misunderstandings along Pakistan's long and porous border with Afghanistan, scene of cross-border firing in recent weeks.

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Aug 21, New Delhi -- India and China have agreed to resolve one of their key disputes — rival claims over parts of the Himalayan region of Sikkim, bordering Tibet, an official said Thursday. Foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said the agreement was reached during Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's June visit to China. He did not comment on how the dispute would be resolved. There was no immediate comment from Beijing. ``Sikkim is an integral part of India and (that is) a fact that cannot be altered by anyone,' Sarna told reporters.

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Aug 21, Colombo -- The government put one town under curfew and plans to recruit hundreds of police officers in the nation's east after Muslim protesters threatened to take up arms against Tamil Tiger rebels over recent murders and kidnappings. Tensions have risen since Tamil militants were accused of fatally shooting four Muslims during the past week in Ampara, 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of Colombo. They are also accused of abducting two others this week in the eastern town of Kalumnai, where officials imposed a curfew after protests erupted.

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Aug 21, Lucknow, India -- A special court will begin the trial of India's deputy prime minister next month on charges of inciting Hindu mobs to demolish a 16th century mosque, a judge said Thursday. Lal Krishna Advani, the No. 2 leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that leads India's ruling coalition, was present at the sprawling ground in the northern city of Ayodhya on Dec. 6, 1992, when tens of thousands of Hindu activists razed the ancient Babri Mosque with spades, crowbars and their bare hands.

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Aug 21, Islamabad -- The founder and spiritual leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas said on Thursday that America was trying to trick Pakistan into recognizing Israel, a move he warned would be a ``disaster.' Sheik Ahmed Yassin made the comments in a recorded speech aired on loudspeakers at a rally of nearly 10,000 Islamic students at a university in the capital, Islamabad. Pakistan has no diplomatic ties with Israel, but President Pervez Musharraf has encouraged a national debate about whether Islamabad should recognize the Jewish state.

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Aug 21, New Delhi -- The Indian government Thursday said soft drinks sold by Pepsi and Coca-Cola companies in India are safe by the "domestic standards." An environmental group had said earlier this month the Indian versions of the U.S.-based soft drinks contained a cocktail of pesticides several times higher than acceptable by European Union standards. India's federal Health minister Sushma Swaraj told lawmakers pesticides in some of the soft drink samples exceeded the norms laid down by the European Union but were well within the safety limits prescribed for packaged drinking water.

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Aug 22 -- Two Pakistani men raised terrorism alarms at Sea-Tac Airport earlier this month after they tried to pay cash for one-way tickets to New York and were arrested. But yesterday, it became apparent the two men may have simply been at the wrong place at a time when the nation is nervous about terrorism. Federal prosecutors charged the two men with only minor immigration violations yesterday. One of the men, his attorney said, simply wanted to drive a cab in New York to make money. The other wanted to seek asylum in the United States.

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Aug 22, New Delhi -- Tae Min Hun, the dour captain of the North Korean freighter Kuwolsan, glared icily from the bridge as tempers around him soared in the midday heat. On June 30, 1999, as customs agents in India's northwestern port city of Kandla waited impatiently to board the vessel, Tae received urgent instructions from Pyongyang: At all cost, let no onethe cargo boxes. The Indians tried to look anyway, and a melee erupted. Tae and his crew rained blows on inspectors and barricaded the doors with their bodies, according to witness accounts and video footage of the encounter. A few agents who managed to slip into the cargo bay were horrified to find North Koreans sealing the hatches, trapping them inside.

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Aug 22 -- A top Al Qaeda operative plotted to smuggle weapons into New York Harbor in the shipping containers of a Garment District firm, the Daily News has learned. Days before he was captured in Pakistan in March, suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed met in Karachi with the owner of a W. 35th St. clothing importing company and his son, law enforcement sources said. Al Qaeda's No. 3 man offered to invest $200,000 in International Management Group in exchange, federal authorities now believe, for access to IMG's Port Newark-bound shipping containers, sources say.

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Aug 21 -- Hamilton Gulf service station owner Sammy Oliver and one of his mechanics, Ali Zulfikar, were arrested by customs officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services Thursday morning (Aug. 14) at their place of business, at the corner of Walnut and Bay roads. Although the Hamilton Police Department was not involved in the arrests, it is Hamilton Police Chief Walter Cullen's understanding that the arrests were made as the result of a call by a patron of the service station who, a couple of months ago, thought one of the men bore a resemblance to someone wanted by the FBI.

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Aug 21, Islamabad -- His face was hidden behind the loose end of a black turban, his Kalashnikov lay by his side. He fidgeted with the paper on which his message was written. The voice on a videotape of "your brother in faith, Abu Nasir Mahmood from inside Afghanistan," was strong and clear as it issued the latest in a series of threats and warnings purportedly from al-Qaida or likeminded militants calling on the faithful to target "Christians and Jews." Such messages, surfacing with increasing frequency, may be meant to reassure or instruct would-be recruits or "sleeper terrorist cells," says John Thompson of the non-profit Mackenzie Institute in Canada, which studies terrorism and political extremism.

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Two Pakistani men arrested at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport earlier this month on charges of illegally entering the U.S. have no ties to terrorist groups, their lawyer said Thursday. The men had allegedly paid immigrant smugglers to help them cross the border from Canada and were headed for New York, one to get a job driving a taxi and the other to link up with friends and avoid deportation from Canada. The two men say they did not know each other. "These guys are totally terrified. They are both simple village guys," their immigration lawyer, Ijaz Khan, said after learning his clients' initial immigration hearing had been canceled in lieu of a hearing in criminal court.

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Aug 19 -- Dan Gillmor and others are worried that we are outsourcing our future. Let's begin by clearing away some underbrush. First of all, the number of jobs in the United States is not set by what happens on the sea lanes--on what exports and imports the container ships carry from port to port. The number of jobs is set in the Eccles Building, by the Federal Reserve, which tries to hit the sweet spot: high enough demand to produce effective full employment, without so much demand that vacancies become so abundant as to lead inflation to run away. Sometimes the Federal Reserve does a good job and is lucky, and we have full employment with price stability. Other times the Federal Reserve is unskillful or unlucky, and we have accelerating inflation or high unemployment. It is certainly true that what happens in international trade affects employment in America. But the Federal Reserve can and does offset and neutralize impacts of trade that push employment away from where the Federal Reserve thinks the sweet spot of full employment is.

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Critics say government's religious agenda shows through in books' treatment of beef-eating, caste, non-Hindus, history & more.

Aug 21, Washington -- A top Indian minister recently said the country's scientific community should shed its skepticism and use astrology to predict earthquakes and other natural disasters. "It .. (is) scientific fundamentalism to dismiss warnings from Indian astrologers," said Murli Manohar Joshi, India's Human Resources and Development minister. He was inaugurating a workshop on "Predicting Earthquakes and Calamities" in New Delhi. "Scientists with advanced computers sometimes fail to predict major earthquakes," he said. "Ancient Indian astrology does have the tools to roughly foretell the time and sometimes even the exact date and time of an earthquake."

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              --- South Asian News, August 22, 2003 ---

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