STORIES
 

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A court-appointed psychiatrist examined a Mesa machinist twice and concluded that Frank Roque was not insane when he shot and killed a Sikh gas-station owner in retaliation for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Roque's defense attorneys are using a guilty but insane defense in his death-penalty trial, expected to start Tuesday, arguing that the balding 49-year-old defendant is schizophrenic and heard voices from God telling him to kill Arabs.

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Throngs of Hindu pilgrims waiting to bathe in a holy river in western India surged over a flimsy bamboo fence, triggering a stampede that killed at least 39 persons and injured 125. Worshippers spilled to the ground as the fence collapsed and were trampled by the thousands of others pushing toward the Godavari River outside the town of Nasik, about 110 miles northeast of Bombay. Many of the dead were women. "Old women were crying, 'Take me out. Help me,' " said Lalji Mistry, a 35-year-old pilgrim who got away in time. "People, even women, were pushing forward. Due to the weight of the crowd, people started falling down."

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Aug 27, Ghalanai, Pakistan -- Villagers in this rugged part of northwestern Pakistan know they're often suspected of hiding Taliban guerrillas and al-Qaida fugitives who have been launching raids into neighboring Afghanistan. But as Pakistani soldiers stood within earshot, the farmers and tribal elders told reporters taken on a tour of the region by the military Wednesday they would never help protect insurgents and terrorists in their village of Ghalanai, about 30 miles from the Afghan border.

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Aug 27, Islamabad -- U.S. Ambassador Nancy Powell believes al-Qaida remnants might be hiding in Pakistan's remote and rugged tribal areas that border Afghanistan, a U.S. Embassy official said Wednesday. The diplomat also thinks that Pakistan has been giving U.S. forces ``excellent support' in trying to track down the terrorists, Bruce Kleiner, an embassy spokesman, told The Associated Press. Local media cited Powell as telling Pakistani reporters on Tuesday that there was a strong possibility al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had sought refuge in the mountainous tribal regions in northwest and southwest Pakistan.

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Aug 27, Dhaka -- Bangladeshi authorities ordered extra police and paramilitary troops to secure the streets of the capital and 60 other major cities and towns ahead of an opposition-sponsored nationwide general strike on Thursday. The country's main opposition party, the Awami League, called the dawn-to-dusk shutdown to protest the killing of a regional leader Monday in the southwestern Bangladeshi city of Khulna, 136 kilometers (85 miles) from the capital, Dhaka. Gunmen killed Manzurul Imam, 65, a leader of Awami League's Khulna chapter, on Monday. Two other bystanders also died in the attack.

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Aug 27 -- Interpol Wednesday offered to help India in apprehending those involved in the twin bomb blasts in Mumbai which killed 52 people. Secretary General of Interpol Ronald Noble telephoned India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director P.C. Sharma and expressed his sympathy for the victims of the blast and offered " all possible help" in tracing those behind the incidents, a CBI release said.

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Aug 28, Srinagar, India -- India's deputy prime minister said on Thursday that car bombings in Bombay and a spate of attacks in Indian Kashmir could hurt a peace process with Pakistan. Indian police have blamed an outlawed Indian students' group and a banned Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant group for the twin blasts in Bombay on Monday which killed 51 people.

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Aug 27, Lahore, Pakistan -- Pakistan's foreign minister said on Wednesday that the deadly bombings in India this week were the work of terrorists who might be trying to wreck efforts to improve India-Pakistan relations. Khursheed Kasuri also warned India's leaders against ``leveling baseless allegations' about Pakistan being involved in Monday's attacks, which killed more than 50 people in the Indian financial center, Bombay. By accusing Pakistan, the Indians ``are in fact helping those who might be trying to sabotage the ongoing peace process,' Kasuri said.

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Aug 27, Kathmandu -- Maoist rebels in Nepal have declared an end to a cease-fire following the collapse of peace talks over a disagreement on the role of the monarchy. Rebel leader Prachanda issued a statement Wednesday, saying there's no point to further talks since the government has "failed to meet our demand for a constituent assembly," the BBC reported. However, he left the wayfor talks in the future.

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Aug 27, New Delhi -- In a surprise move, Maoist rebels withdrew from peace talks in Nepal today and declared the end of their seven-month cease-fire, prompting the government to put soldiers and police officers on high alert. But the rebels signaled that they might resume talks if the government gave in to a principal demand. The Maoists' announcement fueled fears of the resumption of a six-year insurgency that has killed more than 7,000 people and paralyzed the country's tourist-dependent economy.

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Aug 28, Kathmandu -- A Nepal army officer died in hospital on Thursday after being shot by suspected Maoist rebels a day after they walked out of peace talks and said they would end a seven-month truce. The officer was shot at his home in an upmarket residential area of the capital, Kathmandu. He was the most senior army officer to have been killed since the rebellion was launched in 1996. ``Maoist rebels entered Colonel Kiran Bahadur Basnet's house and shot at him at close range. He received five bullets and died in hospital,'' the army officer, who did not wish to be identified, told Reuters.

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Aug 27, Srinagar, India -- Suspected militants set off grenades in Kashmir's main city Srinagar Wednesday and exploded a crude bomb in another town as Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee began a two-day visit to the region. Soldiers were hunting for suspected militants thought to be hiding in a hotel next to a government telegraph office where two policemen were wounded in a grenade attack. The attack was followed by gunshots, a spokesman of the Border Security Force said. It was not clear who had fired the shots, he said.

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Aug 28, Srinagar, India -- Indian troops killed two militants in a hotel in Kashmir's main city on Thursday after a night-long gunbattle which coincided with the arrival of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Three other people including a former state legislator died in the shootout, some three miles from the building where Vajpayee and state chief ministers were holding a meeting meant to highlight a return to normalcy in Indian Kashmir.

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Aug 28, Mumbai, India -- Hindu activists plan a series of small protests on Thursday over this week's twin car bombings in India's financial capital, as the death toll rose to 52. India's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and hardline ally Shive Sena are organizing sit-ins in Bombay and in villages and towns across Maharashtra state. BJP official Vinod Pawde said he expected hundreds of people to join the protest at Bombay's Azad Maidan (Freedom Park), the site of many anti-British protests during colonial rule.

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Aug 28 -- Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French-Jewish philosopher and intellectual, was in Karachi for not more than an hour — riding in a taxi from the airport to his hotel — when his driver turned to him and said: "And your religion? What is your religion?" For a moment Lévy was baffled. Lévy was in Pakistan to write about the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Pearl's last words were captured on film: "My father's Jewish," Pearl said. "My mother's Jewish. I'm Jewish." Pearl was then beheaded. With that in mind, Lévy decided it wouldn't be prudent to announce his Judaism to the cab driver.

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Aug 27 -- Pakistan is losing foreign investment because of official corruption and weak courts that fail to enforce business contracts, says the U.S. ambassador to the South Asian nation. Ambassador Nancy J. Powell told a recent anticorruption conference that foreign money is invested more in other parts of Asia as Pakistan falls short of its "obvious potential." She added that the "security situation" — a reference to crime and terrorism — scares away some investors, but most complain about the poor business climate.

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A powerful explosive favored by Islamic guerrillas in Kashmir was used in twin bombings in Bombay this week, police said yesterday, bolstering India's assertion that Muslim militants carried out the terrorist attack. At least 51 people were killed and 156 injured in the explosions Monday outside the Gateway of India, a historical landmark, and Zaveri Bazaar, a gold and diamond market. Police Commissioner Ranjit Sharma said yesterday that preliminary investigations indicated the explosive RDX was used in both blasts. "Forensic reports are awaited but we suspect that a small quantity of RDX is responsible for creating this damage," Sharma told the Associated Press.

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Aug 28 -- I am puzzled by persistent demands from Washington that other countries should do more in Iraq ("U.S. Wants U.N. to Press Members to Send Troops to Iraq," news article, Aug. 21). I thought it was a rule taught early on to children that if you create a mess, you clean it up. It is surely a bit excessive when countries like India are being pressured to shoulder responsibility for an action taken in utter disregard of international law and world opinion. I wonder if Americans realize how brazen their government's demands appear to the rest of the world.

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Aug 27, Imphal, India -- In the dimly lighted basement restaurant of one of the city's few hotels, the jukebox pumps out Cat Stevens singing "it's a wild world." Outside, an armored personnel carrier lumbers through the street, while beyond the city, soldiers in black bandannas patrol the road through the paddy fields, keeping a wary eye on the menacing jungle covering the nearby mist-shrouded hills.

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Aug 28 -- In a December 2002 poll in the Times of India, 400 students from India’s most prestigious colleges were asked to select the ideal leader India needs most. Independence leader and spiritual icon Mahatma Gandhi led with 23 percent. Current Prime Minister Vajpayee finished second with 20 percent. In third place, with 17 percent, was Adolf Hitler. One respondent, 18-year-old Phalguni Das of the National College in Bombay, said: “[Hitler] may not have been the best of human beings, but he possessed high leadership qualities. He had the unique ability to make people follow him forcibly and nearly conquered the world.” When we look at government-issued textbooks in India, these results should not surprise us. In a Standard 9 textbook for the western state of Gujarat, Hitler is cited as a man who gave “race pride” to his people. There is no mention of his ghastly treatment of Jews. In the chapter “Problems of the Country,” the first subsection is entitled “Minorities” in which Muslims, Jews and Christians are called “foreigners in India.”

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Aug 27 -- A quick look at any business section, and sometimes even the front page, tells you in an instant: American jobs are disappearing. As the political season heats up, you're going to hear it more and more. "We need to protect jobs, create jobs, and maximize worker pay." This implies that American jobs are racing to other parts of the world. Increasingly, India, China, and Mexico have replaced Japan and Taiwan as the countries most identified as taking jobs from the United States. All of this is true, to a degree. But there is a much, much greater culprit -- a force that has destroyed millions of jobs in manufacturing, agriculture, even high tech. This job vacuum cannot be found on any map.

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Aug 28 -- Whenever an expert touts a totally new theory, invention or miracle medicine, a healthy dose of skepticism is called for. The recent writings of Paul Craig Roberts fit the mold. He claims that two centuries of economic thought in support of free trade, dating back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo, have been overturned by new developments and his own unique insights. But reality is more straightforward, and far less ominous, than he depicts. In his Aug. 6 column, "Seeking Jobs in the U.S.A.," he claims that American workers face an unprecedented threat from low-wage countries such as China and India, where an endless supply of workers can now substitute for millions of middle-class American workers at a fraction of the wage.

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Aug 27 -- Bikram Choudhury is a flamboyant and controversial native of India who began teaching yoga classes in California in the early 1970s. Not one given to modesty, Choudhury says on his Web site that what he offers is "the most exciting, hard-working, effective, amusing and glamorous yoga class in the world." Choudhury seems to make no bones about the fact that his aggressive marketing and promotion have allowed him to live in fancy houses and to drive expensive cars.

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Aug 27, Mumbai, India -- The blood has been washed off the gray stone courtyard in front of Gateway of India, the giant colonial-era archway that stands as a symbol for this bustling, commercial city on the edge of the Arabian Sea. Waves crash against its embankment and drench a dapper man sitting on the parapet, drawing suppressed laughter from lunchtime strollers. Pigeons peck at a carpet of grain spread near a police kiosk.

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              --- South Asian News, August 28, 2003 ---

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