US NEWS SOURCES -August 29 thru September 1, 2003

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Archives

TOP STORIES
*	Indian consulate in Afghanistan attacked
	Aug 31, Peshawar, Pakistan -- Attackers hurled a hand grenade at the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's eastern city of Jalalabad, damaging a wall of the building and shattering windows, Afghan police said Sunday. No injuries were reported. The drive-by attack occurred late Saturday in the city, capital of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, Gul Karim, the provincial police chief, said by satellite telephone. Witnesses spotted four people driving by the consulate in two cars. The hand grenade was tossed into the building from one of the cars before they sped away, Karim said.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6319-2003Aug31.html
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030831_000551-search,00.html
	http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Afghan%20Consulate%20Attack
	http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/6662241.htm
*	India says it prevented terrorist attack
	Aug 31, New Delhi -- Weekend actions by authorities against terrorists prevented a "spectacular" attack by a Pakistan-based militant group in India's capital, police said Sunday. Police killed two suspected members of the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammed group in a park in New Delhi late Saturday, hours after explosives were seized in two separate raids and three people arrested.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6963-2003Aug31.html
	http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Terror-Arrests.html
	http://www.journalstar.com/nw.php?story_id=76738
	http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/6663596.htm
	http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-sep01,1,2499466.story
*	Gunbattle in Indian Kashmir wounds nine
	Aug 30, Srinagar, India -- Gunbattle between security forces and suspected Islamic militants in India's portion of Kashmir on Saturday wounded eight paramilitary soldiers and a civilian, police said. The battle broke out after Border Security Force soldiers surrounded a house in a Srinagar suburb where militants were taking refuge, a police official said.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3114-2003Aug30.html
*	Suspected Islamic militants die in India
	Aug 30, New Delhi -- Two suspected Islamic militants were killed Saturday in a battle with New Delhi police, while security forces said they killed the mastermind behind the deadly attack on India's parliament in 2001 that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. Indian police claimed to have killed Ghazi Baba, the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group, during a fierce gun battle in Srinagar, the summer capital of India's portion of Kashmir.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5368-2003Aug30.html
	http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-aug31,1,205699.story
	http://www.adn.com/24hour/world/story/983986p-6907615c.html
	http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V6494.AP-India-Gunfight.html
	http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-india-gunfight,0,1154844.story
*	India police say they've killed terror mastermind
	Aug 30, Srinagar, India -- Security forces in India's portion of Kashmir killed an Islamic guerrilla leader suspected of masterminding a deadly attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, an official said Saturday. Ghazi Baba, chief of the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed in India, was killed in a gun battle in Srinagar, said Vijay Raman, inspector general of the Border Security Force.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4758-2003Aug30.html
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030830_000109,00.html
	http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/6661754.htm
	http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-aug31,1,1516422.story
	http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-india31aug31,1,577446.story
	http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/_wdig31.html
	http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/rhtm
*	Five killed, 3 hurt in Kashmir shelling
	Aug 31, Muzaffarabad, Pakistan -- Pakistani and Indian troops traded heavy weapons fire in Kashmir on Sunday, killing five people and wounding three others in Pakistan's portion of the Himalayan region, police said. A 15-year-old girl was hit by shrapnel from an Indian artillery shell that landed near her home in Nakyal, about 160 miles south of Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir, said Raja Ghulam Sarwar, a police superintendent in Muzaffarabad.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8633-2003Aug31.html
	http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Kashmir-Shelling.html
	http://www.adn.com/24hour/world/story/985245p-6915444c.html
	http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V8243.AP-Kashmir-Shellin.html
*	Explosives found in Indian train station
	Aug 30, New Delhi -- Police patrolling New Delhi's main railway station on Saturday found an abandoned bag packed with a huge amount of explosives, police said. The bag contained 150 sticks of gelatin explosives weighing 47 pounds. The platform was cordoned off and a bomb disposal team brought in. "These were dangerous explosives and had the potential to cause extensive damage," Neeraj Kumar, a top police official, said on Star Television.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3546-2003Aug30.html
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030830_000090,00.html
*	U.S. rules out U.N. commanders in Iraq
	Aug 29, Washington -- The Bush administration is optimistic it can attract peacekeeping troops for Iraq from at least India, Pakistan and Turkey by placing the operation under the U.N. flag. As tentative drafts of a U.N. Security Council resolution were circulated Friday among administration officials, however, the State Department had yet to attract a consensus among them for expanding the U.N. role in Iraq.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2221-2003Aug29.html
*	Violence casts shadow on India-Pakistan peace bid
	Aug 31, New Delhi -- Police in New Delhi said on Sunday they had killed two Muslim militants from a Pakistan-based Kashmiri rebel group, the latest in a spate of violence expected to turn India wary in a new bid for peace with Pakistan. Saturday night's shootout came at the end of what has been a bloody week for India, which began with two car bomb blasts Monday in the financial hub Bombay that claimed 52 lives and also saw a surge in violence in disputed Kashmir.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6662-2003Aug31.html
	http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-southasia.html
*	Pakistani forces detain Iraqi al Qaeda suspect
	Aug 31, Chaman, Pakistan -- Paramilitary forces on the Pakistani border with Afghanistan have arrested an Iraqi national suspected of links to the shadowy al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, a senior security official said Sunday. The regional head of the paramilitary force, Fazal Bari, told Reuters that the Iraqi national, Jasim Ibn-e-Hatim Baqi, had been arrested two days ago while trying to enter Pakistan through the Chaman border crossing in the southwest. Bari said the border security force had arrested the al Qaeda suspect, who had then been transferred to Quetta, Baluchistan's provincial capital.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6535-2003Aug31.html
	http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-alqaeda.html
*	Canada's antiterror laws debated in detention of 19 suspects
	Aug 30, Toronto -- As government lawyers argued this week for the continued detention without charges of 19 Pakistani and Indian students and refugees, they suggested that the group was connected to Al Qaeda and interested in attacking both a nuclear power plant and the CN Tower. In discussing the case this week, however, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner, Giuliano Zaccardelli, said, "I can assure you there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that there's any terrorist threat anywhere in this country related to this investigation."

	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/international/americas/31IMMI.html
*	Pakistan probes army officers for suspected links to Islamic extremist groups
	Aug 31, Islamabad -- Pakistani authorities have detained at least three army officers for questioning about suspected links to Islamic extremist groups, an army spokesman said Sunday. Three or four officers, including a lieutenant colonel, are being investigated by military officials for violation of discipline, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press. The officers were not named, and Sultan did not say which extremist groups they are suspected of supporting.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_d8ba000358033cd6
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030831_001040-search,00.html
	http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=0E191B54-FC7A-4616-AC4DD05FDC558B37
*	Sri Lankan rebels draft proposal aimed at breaking deadlock in peace talks
	Aug 31, Colombo -- Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels have drafted a counterproposal for a power-sharing deal with the government in an attempt to restart stalled peace talks, officials and a news report said Sunday. A team of rebel leaders flew to Paris on Aug. 20 to meet with legal experts and formulate their response to a government proposal that offered the Tigers administrative authority in the minority Tamils' homelands.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_78f600042294a639
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030831_000541-search,00.html
*	Bangladesh opposition party calls nationwide strike for Sept. 25
	Aug 31, Dhaka -- Bangladesh's main opposition party, the Awami League, called Sunday for a nationwide anti-government strike on Sept. 25. Opposition leader Sheikh Hasina announced the strike to protest Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's leadership. ``We must unite to protest the misrule and failure of this government,' Hasina, a former prime minister, told supporters at a party rally in the capital, Dhaka.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_046c000138e486cb
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030831_000575-search,00.html
*	Pakistani officials arrest 26 suspected Taliban, seize big cache of weapons
	Aug 30, Quetta, Pakistan -- Pakistan's paramilitary troops detained 26 suspected militants on suspicion they were involved in recent Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, a law enforcement official said Saturday. Pakistani security forces also seized a large cache of weapons and ammunition during a Friday raid on a house in Chaman, a border town about 150 kilometers (90 miles) northwest of Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, Col. Abdul Basit of the Frontier Constabulary told reporters.

	http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR_14610001f87da2f6
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030830_000108,00.html
*	India wants to ban slaughter of cows
	Aug 30, Calcutta, India -- India's leather industry is worried about the ruling party's efforts to ban the slaughter of cows nationwide. The cow is sacred to most of India's Hindus, who make up 85% of the population. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads the federal coalition, wants to ban cow slaughter. Last week, coalition partners forced postponement of such a bill, but the party plans another attempt.

	http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-reldigests30.4aug30,1,7979372.story

EDITORIALS / OP-ED
*	A democracy that has room even for violence
	Aug 31, Mumbai, India -- Americans can count on one hand the incidents of large-scale political violence in the last 10 years: the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and on the federal building in Oklahoma City. The most recent major racial disturbance was in Los Angeles in 1992, the last sustained period of broad upheaval in the 60's and early 70's. Indians, in contrast, lost count of such incidents long ago. For decades, they have lived with left-wing and Islamic insurgencies, ethnic and geographically based separatist movements, communal riots and terrorism. In the last two decades, they have lost two prime ministers - Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv - to assassination. In the country's northeast, militants fighting Indian rule marked the eve of India's Independence Day this month by killing at least 34 people.

	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/weekinreview/31WALD.html
*	Taliban finds new strength in Pakistan
	Aug 31 -- A revitalized Taliban army is drawing recruits from militant groups in Pakistan, including Al Qaeda loyalists, as it fights an escalating guerrilla war against U.S. forces and their allies across the border in Afghanistan. These fighters are answering the call from Muslim clerics to wage jihad, or holy war, against U.S.-led forces, according to Taliban members and supporters as well as Pakistani militants interviewed on both sides of the border. The Taliban is also exploiting the alienation felt by ethnic Pushtuns in Afghanistan because of continued insecurity, a scarcity of development projects and ongoing U.S. military operations.

	http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-taliban31aug31,1,3997269.story
	http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-taliban31aug31,1,3997269.story
*	That other war
	The Taliban are back—but then, they never really went away. Protected in Pakistan, the fundamentalists have had a busy summer and pose a real threat to the U.S.-backed Afghan government of Hamid Karzai. Aug 31 -- In the mountains of Afghanistan, summer is the season for fighting. The past three months have seen more than their usual share of it as remnants of the Taliban, ousted from power by U.S. and coalition forces in 2001, have regrouped, attacked remote government outposts, held positions for a few days—and then, usually, vanished at the first whup-whup of approaching U.S. Blackhawk helicopters. Not last week. After ambushing a small garrison in Zabul province, several hundred Taliban fighters hid in a needle-thin gorge known as Moray Pass, waiting to attack U.S. troops and their Afghan allies. Shielded by overhanging rock, the Taliban were protected from U.S. bombers and helicopters, and fighting raged for several days. Local villagers reported seeing Taliban fighters scrambling up the hillside carrying their dead and wounded.

	http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,,00.html

BUSINESS / TECHNOLOGY / DEFENSE
*	Virus writers are a varied, global group
	Aug 29, San Francisco -- The arrest on Friday of 18 year-old Jeffrey Lee Parsons of Hopkins, Minnesota for making a copycat version of the notorious Blaster Internet worm has shed new light on typically anonymous virus writers. Some of the more notorious writers have run the gamut from two brothers in Pakistan looking for a new marketing method to a Bulgarian teen with a penchant for heavy metal music to a Taiwanese Army sergeant out for revenge.

	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1790-2003Aug29.html
*	Critics: Foreign labor will 'kill the profession'
	Aug 31, Danville -- Pete Bennett first noticed the market for his services as a software contractor was fading away about three years ago. First, he lost out to a Malaysian competitor in bidding for a large software project, for which Bennett wanted to charge $150,000. The overseas rival bid around $50,000, he said. Then, a large bank canceled a programming contract because of an abrupt change in its budget, Bennett said. He later found out through the grapevine that the company had shortly thereafter brought in foreign workers on temporary work visas. "What I always noticed was I was getting beat out by the cheaper labor," said the 47-year-old Bennett, who lives in a modest one-story house in Danville with his wife and two sons. The experience has turned Bennett into an activist who is strongly critical of American companies bringing in foreign workers and sending jobs overseas. And he is not alone. As tales multiply of American high-tech workers losing their jobs, unions, Internet activists and some members of Congress are seizing on the issue.

	http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~1602992,00.html
*	America's latest tech export: jobs
	Aug 31 -- When Riccardo Pigliucci was planning to expand Discovery Partners International, he looked to India. Like many other San Diego biotechnology executives whose companies burn through cash, Pigliucci is feeling the pressure to keep costs down. In India, chemists with doctoral degrees and other technology workers make one-fifth of what Discovery Partners and other U.S. companies pay their domestic high-tech workers. Even with the added expense of phone calls and travel to India, Pigliucci said, the company would save 50 percent by hiring the overseas workers. The practice, known as "offshoring," is the latest evolution of the rush of electronics and automobile manufacturing jobs overseas that began decades ago.

	http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/_1n31jobs.html

OTHER STORIES
*	Bus with 40 plunges into river in India
	Aug 30, Amritsar, India -- A bus carrying 40 passengers plunged into a river in a remote hilly area in northern India on Saturday, a government official said. There was no immediate word on casualties. Rescuers were sent to the scene of the accident in the Solan district of Himachal Pradesh state, said A.R. Rizvi, deputy commissioner of Solan. The bus was headed from the town of Nalagarh in Solan to the city of Ropar in neighboring Punjab state when it fell into the Sirsa River, Rizvi said.
	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3767-2003Aug30.html

	http://www.adn.com/24hour/world/story/983856p-6906745c.html

	http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V6115.AP-India-Bus-Accid.html

*	Indian desert state turns green after monsoon bounty
	Aug 30, Mathania, India -- Fateh Lal has bandages on his swollen feet and still has hundreds of miles and many days of walking to reach his goal. But after five years of devastating drought, the 42-year-old farmer from India's desert state of Rajasthan will let nothing stop him from completing his pilgrimage to a shrine to give thanks for this year's bountiful monsoon. "The rain gods have shown mercy. I have cultivated my field after five years," he says, resting under a tree with a group of 20 men and women on their way to the Ramdev shrine in the Thar desert, 310 miles from their village of Kekri.
	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3380-2003Aug30.html

*	Philosopher on the trail of Daniel Pearl's killer
	Aug 29, Paris -- Bernard-Henri Lévy does nothing that goes unnoticed. He is an intellectual adventurer who brings publicity to unfashionable political causes. He is also a handsome man married to a glamorous actress; he and his wife, Arielle Dombasle, are regularly mentioned in French gossip magazines. Now 55, Mr. Lévy is well used to celebrity. For 25 years he has been known here simply by his initials, B. H. L. Not that everyone takes him seriously. His carefully cultivated public persona, which includes black suits, unhiddened white shirts and long, dark hair, is frequently mocked on a televised puppet show, and he is often hit with pies by a Belgian who claims to target the self-important. The satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné once asked of him, "Rimbaud or Rambo?"
	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/30/books/30BHL.html

*	Spirits may motivate Hindu god to answer one's prayers
	Aug 31, New Delhi -- Bhairon has different tastes from most other gods in the vast Hindu pantheon. While offerings at temples across India are usually limited to cash, food and flowers, devotees bring this god bottles of Scotch, rum, vodka and moonshine. Bhairon, viewed as a demon god or an incarnation of the destroyer god Shiva, likes his alcohol. His idol shares a marigold-covered shrine at a temple in New Delhi's Old Fort area with a statue of Kali, known variously as the goddess of strength, fear, life and death — even the goddess of a thousand names.
	http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-adfg-divine31aug31,1,5324821.story

*	Past glory of India’s tribal kings fades
	Aug 31, Shillong, India -- Balajied Singh Syiem conveys such timid resignation that it is hard to picture him wearing his royal turban and silken robe as a tribal king in an exotic corner of northeastern India. And it's nearly impossible to imagine this mild fellow fulfilling his regal duty once a year: raising his sword to behead two dozen sacrificial goats, each of which must be killed in one stroke. His first time killing goats, when he was 20, he was not sure either that he could do it.
	http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-tribes31aug31,1,2018135.story