Outsourcing jobs in India to increase seven times by 2008 * (IANS/Yahoo)
	The number of workers in India performing computer jobs for U.S. companies will increase seven-fold from 177,000 in 2002 to 1.2 million in 2008, says a new study. A typical casualty of this growing trend of outsourcing jobs to India is the northeastern state of Connecticut - part of the Tri-State area - where the job market is expected to be the hardest hit, says the study done by Economy.com, a Westchester, Pennsylvania based firm. "In the new world order, jobs are increasingly transportable, and will migrate to low-cost regions in order to boost corporate profits and business productivity," said Don Klepper-Smith, economist at New Haven, Connecticut-based Scillia, Dowling & Natarelli Advisors -- a prestigious law firm.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030826/43/27ad8.html
	Indian American to run for city council poll in California *(IANS/Yahoo)
	Indian American entrepreneur Paul Randhawa, a Democrat, has announced his candidacy for the poll to a city council seat in California. Randhawa will contest for one of two seats on the Fairfield city council for which elections are scheduled in November. "This election will determine if our city plans and implements an adequate response to changing demographics, meets the challenges of growth and provides enhanced support to local people," Randhawa said in a press release. A resident of Fairfield for the past 18 years, Randhawa said he was among seven candidates in the fray, but the response he had been getting was encouraging.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030826/43/27abl.html
	US to sell Pakistan six C-130s despite Indian protest *(ANI/Yahoo)
	The United States plans to sell six C-130 aircraft to Pakistan soon, a State Department official told Dawn on Monday. The US has rejected the Indian protest over the proposed sale. "There's nothing exceptional about this sale. Pakistan already has C-130s in its inventory," said the official when asked to comment on the Indian protest. Asked how long would it take to deliver the planes to Pakistan, he said: "Not that long as we already have the planes." Under the foreign military finance programme, he said, the US would provide 75 million dollars needed to buy the six Lockheed Martin, C-130 Hercules aircraft.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030826/139/27aga.html

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Aug 26, Bombay, India -- At least 46 people were killed and more than 150 were injured Monday when twin black taxicabs loaded with explosives tore into busy parts of Mumbai, India's financial center. The bombings rippedthe wounds between Hindus and Muslims and threatened the region's relative calm between nuclear powers India and Pakistan. The attacks did not clearly discriminate by religion, however. The first bomb struck in a packed shopping district, leaving scores dead from both religions and body parts swinging from charred tree limbs.

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Aug 25, New Delhi -- There have been several incidents of major violence in India in recent years.

MARCH 13, 2003 12 people are killed and 75 are wounded when a bomb explodes in a commuter train in Bombay.

SEPT. 25, 2002 Indian commandos storm Akshardham Temple in western Gujarat, ending a siege and killing two gunmen who had massacred 28 people and wounded more than 70.

MAY 14, 2002 Suspected Pakistani Islamic militantsfire on a bus, then attack an army camp in Kashmir, killing 34 men, women and children before being shot dead.

FEBRUARY-MARCH 2002 A man sets fire to a train, killing 59 Hindu activists. At least 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, are killed in the ensuing violence.

DEC. 13, 2001 Gunmenfire in India's Parliament complex. Nine people are killed; five gunmen also die.

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Aug 25, Bombay, India -- Raju Ghosh had just settled down for a tea break after sweeping a busy street in India's financial capital, Bombay, when he heard the deafening explosion. ``I looked up and saw smoke everywhere and people screaming. I started running toward a taxi that had exploded into pieces,'' said the 24-year-old cleaner. ``I saw people thrashing around on the road. There were chunks of flesh like mutton pieces all over. I picked up 12 bodies, with legs, hands and heads blown off. My head was spinning and I was trembling, but I continued carrying the bodies.''

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Aug 25, New Delhi -- When bombs go off and innocents are killed, Indian officials are quick to focus suspicion on Muslim militants and longtime rival Pakistan. Those accusations returned Monday after twin car bomb attacks in Bombay killed at least 44 people. But with India and Pakistan closer than they've been in two years, neither side wants violence to sink nascent peace talks.

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Aug 26, Bombay, India -- India stepped up security nationwide on Tuesday to head off any Hindu-Muslim violence as grieving families of the victims of twin car bombings in the financial capital Bombay prepared to cremate their dead. Police have blamed the bombings, which killed 48 people, on an outlawed Muslim students group, acting along with a Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.

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Aug 26, Ahmedabad, India -- India's volatile western state of Gujarat was on a high alert on Tuesday as it prepared to receive the bodies of eight Hindu pilgrims who were killed in twin blasts in the country's financial capital Bombay. The victims had finished a pilgrimage to the town of Nasik where thousands of Hindus have been gathering for a holy dip in a river, and were on a sightseeing trip in Bombay when they were caught in the explosions.

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Aug 26, Bombay, India -- Hindus and Muslims alike mourned on Tuesday for victims of the worst terrorist attack in a decade in India's financial heart of Bombay, while the death toll from the twin car bombings rose to 46, with 150 people wounded. As relatives went to morgues to claim their dead or visited the injured in hospitals, investigators of Monday's bombings focused their probe on Muslim militants. These included groups that Hindu-majority India alleges are backed by Muslim Pakistan -- sparking fears of increasing tensions just when relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors appeared on the mend.

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Aug 26, Bombay, India -- India blamed Islamic militant groups Tuesday for twin car bombings in Bombay, the worst terrorist attack in a decade in the country's financial heart which killed 46 people and left 150 wounded. The bombs planted in two taxis exploded minutes apart Monday, ripping through a crowded jewelry market, the Zaveri Bazaar, and in front of a colonial-era tourist attraction, the Gateway of India.

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Aug 25, Washington -- The State Department condemned on Monday the terrorist bombings in India and said it hoped the perpetrators would be brought to justice quickly. Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha to voice his outrage and to extend condolences to the Indian government and people. Car bombs in Bombay killed several dozen people and wounded at least 150 others.

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Aug 25, Lucknow, India -- Archaeologists have found that an ancient structure existed at a religious site that is claimed by both Hindus and Muslims and has been the cause of thousands of deaths, lawyers said Monday. But the experts were divided over whether the structure was a Hindu temple. The report on the Ayodhya site added a new layer of dispute to an issue that has been a flashpoint in India's Hindu-Muslim divide. Hours, after its release, twin car bombings blasted through a jewelry market and a tourist site in the city of Bombay, killing 44 people. It was not immediately known whether the blast was connected to the Ayodhya dispute, which has caused hundreds of deaths in the past. Bombay has seen other bombings blamed on Islamic militants seeking revenge in the dispute.

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Aug 25, Lucknow, India -- A much-anticipated archaeological report says an ancient structure existed at a religious site claimed by both Hindus and Muslims, lawyers said Monday, though there was fierce disagreement about whether it was a Hindu temple. A lawyer representing Hindu groups said the report indicated there had been a Hindu temple at the site, in the town of Ayodhya, though a lawyer for Muslims said it only indicated there had been ``a structure' there. The report was released to lawyers for both sides in the long, bitter dispute, though not to the public or the media.

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Aug 26, Alexandria -- Three of the 11 men accused of training to join an overseas terrorist group have pleaded guilty to conspiracy and gun charges. Yong Ki Kwon, 27, admitted in federal court Monday that he trained with firearms in northern Virginia in preparation for possible fighting missions with Muslim extremists abroad. Yong told U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema that the group possessed a variety of weapons and practiced military tactics while playing paintball in the countryside near Fredericksburg. When asked by Brinkema why the group trained in secret, Yong said, ``We didn't want any undue attention, and we didn't want any trouble with the government.''

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Aug 25, Islamabad -- Pakistan has accused its rival India of trying to poison its relations with Afghanistan. Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan on Monday claimed Indian consulates in Afghanistan of conducting ``activities which are directed against Pakistan and which aim at disrupting relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.' Khan said there were ``a large number of Indian diplomats and non-diplomats' in Afghanistan.

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Aug 25, Colombo -- In an apparent breakthrough, Tamil Tiger rebels on Monday agreed to reconsider their refusal to dismantle a guerrilla camp in a government-controlled area, a cease-fire monitor said. ``They (Tamil Tigers) have agreed to discuss the matter with their leadership and we are expecting an answer in a week,' said Agnes Bragadottir, spokeswoman of a European cease-fire monitoring team, after a meeting with the rebels that she described as ``fruitful.' Relations between the Tigers and the monitors have been strained since the militants refused to dismantle a camp the monitors say has recently been constructed in government-held territory.

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Aug 25, Karachi, Pakistan -- Security concerns have prompted authorities to close a weekly used-book bazaar near the U.S. Consulate and the consul general's home in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, a police official and a newspaper said Monday. The popular book market, usuallyon Sundays, was shut down for several months last year after a suicide bomber blew up a car at the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 Pakistanis and wounding dozens of others.

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Aug 25, Khulna, Bangladesh -- Police fired tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters who attacked government buildings and vandalized shops after an opposition politician was killed Monday in the southwestern Bangladesh city of Khulna. The protesters took to the streets after unidentified gunmen killed Manzurul Imam, a local leader of Bangladesh's main opposition Awami League, police and witnesses said. Imam, 65, was riding a rickshaw when he was attacked outside his house in Khulna, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, said local police chief A.B.M. Bazlur Rahman.

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Aug 25, Katmandu -- Maoist rebels on Monday renewed their threat to pull out of peace talks unless the government accepts their demand for a new constitution. The two sides have had three rounds of peace talks since a January cease-fire in the seven-year insurgency by the communist rebels. But the latest round ended last week without a breakthrough. A date for a fresh round of talks was to be decided this week.

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Aug 25, Katmandu -- A former prime minister who ordered the army in 2001 to fight a Maoist insurgency was attacked Monday while touring western Nepal but escaped uninjured, officials said. Bullets struck vehicles carrying Sher Bahadur Deuba and his security guards, who were also unharmed, near Amakhoya village, said police official Keshav Adhikari.

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Aug 26 -- It was just around lunchtime, and the streets of Bombay were emptier than usual. Still, Hanif, an ice-cream vendor near the Gateway of India, was feeling hopeful. A busload of Hindu pilgrims on their way back to Rajasthan had stopped here for a look at the city's most famous landmark, a gigantic stone arch overlooking the Arabian Sea which had been built by India's British rulers to commemorate the 1911 visit of King George V. The pilgrims were hanging over the sea wall, looking at the water or posing for pictures. Soon, he thought, they would want something cold.

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Bangladesh promotes itself as a "moderate, progressive and democratic Muslim country," but a leading human rights activist from the South Asian nation says it is a land of terror for many of its Hindu, Buddhist and Christian citizens. Rosaline Costa, director of Hotline Bangladesh, yesterday told correspondent Julia Duin that in the Bhola islands on the southern coast of the country, 98 percent of Hindu women interviewed had been raped by Muslim thugs. A former nun, Miss Costa has won awards for her campaign a decade ago to abolish sweatshops that employed Bangladeshi children to make garments for U.S. clothing outlets. She has turned down offers to emigrate for her own safety, saying she prefers to stay in the land of her birth and monitor what she says is a rising tide of killings, maimings, beatings, land grabs, destruction of homes, vandalism, extortion.

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Aug 26 -- Worried Indians telephoned home yesterday to check on their loved ones' well-being after learning that two consecutive bomb explosions in Bombay, India's financial and film capital, had killed 46 people and injured nearly 150. "I think it's terrible. Things like this shake you up," said Lata Malhotra of Irvington, who was born and raised in Bombay and makes at least two trips back home every year. "My first reaction was to pick up the phone and see if everyone was OK." The explosions were the latest in a series that have rocked the southeastern Indian city in the past year. Ten years ago, serial blasts on a single day in Bombay killed 257 and injured 713. Police linked the explosions to Islamic militants seeking revenge for the destruction of a 16th-century mosque by Hindu extremists in northern India.

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Aug 25 -- The vibrations of two deadly explosions in Bombay were felt in the Indian immigrant community in Queens Monday, with many spending the day talking to relatives back home. While it's not the first time Bombay has been a target of such attacks, many say the magnitude of the bombings that killed at least 44 and wounded more than 150 was a shock. "It is a terrorist activity, I believe it, because these types of bombings are not regular in our country," said Vasantrai Gandhi, former president of the Jackson Heights Merchants Association who once ran a jewelry store in his native Bombay.

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Archeologists have found that an ancient structure once existed at a religious site that has been the cause of thousands of deaths in Hindu-Muslim clashes, lawyers say. But the experts are divided over whether that structure was a Hindu temple. The report on the Ayodhya site, released yesterday, adds a new layer of dispute to an issue that has been a flashpoint in India's Hindu-Muslim divide. Hours after the report's release, twin car bombings blasted through a jewelry market and a tourist site in the city of Mumbai, killing scores of people. It was not immediately known whether the blasts were connected to the Ayodhya dispute. Ayodhya, a Hindu holy city 340 miles southeast of New Delhi, housed a Muslim mosque from the 16th century until 1992, when Hindus tore it down. They said the Babri mosque had been built over a Hindu temple marking the 7,000-year-old birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. More than 2,000 died in the nationwide violence after the mosque's razing. Last year, riots killed nearly 1,000 Muslims in the western state of Gujarat after Muslims incinerated a train car carrying 60 Hindu pilgrims from Ayodhya.

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Two car bombs exploded in the heart of India's financial capital Monday raising concern that a cycle of violence between Muslim and Hindu extremists might be flaring up again. The bombings were the worst attack in Bombay (Mumbai) since 1993, when a series of bombings killed 260 people. At least 44 people were killed Monday and nearly 150 injured when two almost simultaneous explosions took place - one near the Gateway of India, a popular foreign tourist attraction, and the second in the densely packed streets of Zaveri Bazaar, Bombay's gold and diamond district."There are many jihadi groups out, let loose by the enemy country," said Ranjit Sharma, a Bombay police commissioner. The "enemy country" was a clear reference to Pakistan, India's longtime rival. Such an accusation could threaten to increase tension between the nuclear-armed neighbors. Pakistani officials immediately condemned the attack and expressed sympathy for the families of victims.

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Aug 26 -- Only last week, a global terrorism index listed India as one of the 10 countries most vulnerable to an attack. Yesterday the latest -- and most deadly -- in a series of bombings in Bombay proved that prediction sadly correct. At least 40 people were killed and more than 150 wounded when two bombs exploded in the heart of India's financial capital. The explosions came in the wake of several other blasts in the city in recent months, which have seen bombers target buses, trains and a McDonalds restaurant in a crowded railway station. Although other religious motives cannot be ruled out -- yesterday saw the release of a controversial report on a mosque that has triggered Hindu-Muslim violence -- Bombay police say they suspect the latest bombings were the work of the two Islamic extremist groups who have been linked to the earlier attacks.

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              --- South Asian News, August 26, 2003 ---

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