India faces a cut in US foreign aid * (ANI)
	India may be among several countries facing a cut in US aid for non-payment of property taxes due to New York City. As much seems evident from the Senate approval of a bill that proposes reduction in assistance by 110 percent of the amount owed, the balance remaining untouched. It is expected to receive a speedy clearance at the House of Representatives also. Charles Schumer, Democrat, moved the bill. The legislation comes after these countries, including Mongolia, Turkey and the Philippines besides India, denied paying property taxes on their consulates on the ground of diplomatic immunity in reply to a lawsuit filed by New York three months ago. But the government alleged that they have been renting out portions of their properties making the property taxable as per the city law. They owe as much as 100 million dollars, something the city would not forgo, according to the Senator. The consulates did not abide by the city law. Its tax exemption rules requires the consulates to file forms allowing the government to inspect their property for violations. But they did not do so.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030714/139/25zqv.html
	AOL to expand India call centre * (Forbes/Reuters)
	Internet media giant AOL Time Warner Inc (nyse: AOL - news - people) said on Tuesday it would add 400 more workers by December to its 1,500 strong Indian call centre, the largest of its eight such global centres. "The run rate target is to double the calls in the next 12 months," Maneesh Dhir, managing director of America Online Member Services India Pvt Ltd, told a news conference to mark the first anniversary of the Bangalore centre. AOL, which employs about 10,000 customer support staff worldwide, has six call centres in the United States and one in Manila. Company officials said the Indian centre was aimed at adding to AOL's global force and not replacing its existing workforce in favour of cheaper outsourcing.
	http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswire/2003/07/15/rtr1024821.html
	US: India's Troop Refusal Will Not Affect Relations * (Voice of America)
	The United States says India's refusal to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq will not affect relations between Washington and New Delhi. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Bush administration had hoped India would accept the U.S. request to send 17,000 troops to Iraq. But he said India will remain an important strategic partner of the United States. Mr. Boucher spoke after Indian officials announced Monday that New Delhi would only send troops if there was a United Nations mandate for a peacekeeping force. Mr. Boucher said U.S. officials believe an existing U.N. Security Council Resolution provides authority for such a force. He said resolution 14-83 encourages U.N. members to contribute to conditions for stability and security in Iraq.
	http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=E5D2FD66-A57B0FC1924D511F

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In a further blow to hopes for rotation, India rejected a request Monday to send a division, or 17,000 troops, for peacekeeping in Iraq. The Bush administration wants to increase foreign military involvement in the occupation to permit U.S. troops to return home. India said it would not make such a commitment without a directive from the United Nations.

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The government here has decided not to contribute Indian troops to a multinational stabilization force in Iraq.The decision was made during a July 14 Cabinet meeting on security, chaired here by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. After the meeting, Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha told reporters that New Delhi can consider the deployment of its troops to Iraq only if there is an explicit U.N. mandate for the purpose. A Ministry of External Affairs official said India is, however, ready to help rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, including health care, education, communications and other systems that meet civilian needs.

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Postponing troops' return to their families for the second time in two months, the Pentagon announced Monday that more than 10,000 soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division would not, as they had been told, be coming home by the end of September. The announcement came as India said it would not send a promised division that would have added 17,000 troops to the forces on the ground, although the Pentagon said there was no connection between the extended deployment and New Delhi's decision. Two-thirds of the division will remain in Iraq "indefinitely," said Richard Olson, a spokesman for the division at Ft. Stewart, Ga., its headquarters. The division, which spearheaded the attack on Baghdad, had expected to receive orders in early June to return to the United States but instead was ordered to tamp down Iraqi resistance in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallouja. On July 7, commanders told the soldiers of two of the high-profile division's three combat brigades that they could expect to be withdrawn from the war zone beginning next month.

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July 14, New Delhi -- India's government Monday rejected a U.S. request for peacekeeping troops in Iraq, saying it would consider such a deployment only under a U.N. mandate. External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha announced the decision after a meeting of Cabinet and security officials, and said many factors were considered. "Our long term national interest, our concern for the people of Iraq, our-long standing ties with the Gulf region, as well as our growing dialogue and strengthened ties with the U.S. have been key elements in this consideration," Sinha said, reading a statement.

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July 14, Washington -- The Bush administration criticized India on Monday for deciding not to send peacekeepers to Iraq but said the South Asian nation remains important to the U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "We would have hoped that India would have made a different choice, that they would be able to do this in Iraq for our interests and what we perceive to be their interests.” Boucher said India "remains an important strategic partner for the United States.” The U.S. had been counting on India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, among other countries, to send peacekeepers to Iraq to give the U.S. presence a more international look. In officially rejecting the idea Monday, the Indian government said it would consider such a deployment only under mandate of the U.N.

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Peter Kerrigan encouraged friends to move to Silicon Valley throughout the 1980s and '90s, wooing them with tales of lucrative jobs in a burgeoning industry. In August 2001, he lost his network engineering job at a major telecommunications company and remains unemployed. Now 43, the veteran programmer is urging his 18-year-old nephew to stay in suburban Chicago and is discouraging him from pursuing degrees in computer science or engineering. "I told him, 'Unless you're planning to do this as a path to technical sales, don't do it,' " said Kerrigan, who lives in Oakland. "He won't be able to have a career designing and building stuff because all those jobs have moved to India." Like many unemployed programmers, Kerrigan blames the sour labor market on offshore outsourcing: the migration of tech jobs to relatively low-paid contractors or locally hired employees in India, China, Russia and other developing countries.

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- A collective cheer erupted in the Valley's East Asian community when the state's first Miss India Arizona went on to win the Miss India USA title last year. Priya Arora's meteoric rise as a first time pageant contestant took her to South Africa in November where the 20-year-old Ahwatukee Foothills woman placed third in the Miss India Worldwide pageant. Now 14 new contestants will compete for the Miss India Arizona 2003 title July 26 in Phoenix, with the winner going on to the Miss India USA contest Aug. 24 in New Jersey. Arthy Kumar-Chadha, who won the Miss Asian Universe Pageant in 1995, organized last year's inaugural event in Tempe. She coached Arora and will help this year's contestants in the contest that focuses on ethnic Indian dress, evening gown demonstration, talent and question-and-answer segments.

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July 14, Islamabad -- A pro-Taliban Islamic leader from Pakistan is going to India to meet members of the Indian branch of his group and press for peace between India and Pakistan, a spokesman said Monday. Maulana Fazl-ur Rahman, head of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam group and a Member of Parliament, was planning to travel Tuesday on a bus service between Pakistan and India that was restarted last week after an 18-month suspension because of bilateral tensions, group spokesman Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said. Rahman was going to India to meet members of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, a branch of his group, which was established in India in 1947 after Pakistan was carved out of India to be a homeland for Muslims of South Asia.

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July 14, Peshawar, Pakistan -- A suspected longtime aide to Osama bin Laden has been handed over to American authorities and flown out of Pakistan, a Pakistani official said Monday. Adil Al-Jazeeri was blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back while he was taken to an American plane in Peshawar late Sunday night in Peshawar, the intelligence official said on the condition of anonymity. The official said he believed the al-Qaida suspect was flown to Bagram, an American forces base in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan officials believe Al-Jazeeri, arrested in Pakistan last month, is a ranking member of bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network.

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July 15, Wagah, Pakistan -- India's new ambassador to Islamabad crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday and said peace was possible after an easing of tensions between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals. Shivshankar Menon, 53, crossed by at Wagah, the only official border post currentlybetween the two countries. Considered one of India's top diplomats, he has served as India's ambassador to Israel, Sri Lanka and most recently China. "My task is to create an environment for peaceful and friendly relations with Pakistan," Menon told reporters, adding that his arrival was a sign of "positive developments."

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July 14, New Delhi -- Suspected rebels set off multiple explosions in eastern India Tuesday, blowing up tracks and derailing three trains, police and railroad officials said. There were no immediate reports of any casualties from the derailments, which took place when the trains were moving slowly, railroad spokesman M.Y. Siddiqui said. All the three attacks came within an hour of each other early Tuesday in the Samastipur region, Siddiqui said. Suspected rebels blew up a 77-yard stretch near Pipra station, derailing three cars of a passenger train. Police also found a bomb on the tracks that had not exploded, local police officer Kamal Kishore said.

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July 14, New Delhi -- The Indian government has rejected demands from Hindu fundamentalists for a law that would allow them to build a temple near the site of a demolished mosque in northern India, news reports said Monday. Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani - considered the voice of Hindu hard-liners in the federal government - said his Bharatiya Janata party doesn't have enough lawmakers in Parliament to pass such legislation, the Hindu newspaper reported. Advani was responding to renewed demands from his party's main ideological ally, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, for legislation allowing construction of a temple near the site of the 16th century Babri Mosque, which was torn down by Hindu activists a decade ago.

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July 14, Washington -- The Justice Department said today that it would defy a court order and refuse to make a captured member of Al Qaeda available for testimony in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. The department acknowledged that its decision could force a federal judge to dismiss the indictment against Mr. Moussaoui, the only person facing trial in the United States in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In court papers, the department said Attorney General John Ashcroft had determined that testimony from the accused terrorist Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a confessed participant in the Sept. 11 attacks, "would necessarily result in the unauthorized disclosure of classified information" and that "such a scenario is unacceptable to the government."

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For the second straight year, the number of immigrants legally admitted to the United States topped 1 million, continuing one of the largest immigration waves in the nation's history, U.S. government statistics released yesterday show. A total of 1,063,732 people were granted legal permanent residency in the 2002 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2002, according to the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Services, the successor of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That number is nearly identical to the Fiscal Year 2001 figures. In fiscal 2000, about 850,000 immigrants were granted legal status. In the 1990s, an average of about 700,000 legal immigrants arrived annually. .... The largest number of immigrants came to the United States from Mexico (219,380), followed by India (71,105), China (61,282), the Philippines (51,308) and Vietnam (33,627)

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A recent article in your business section asked why the unemployment rate was rising while corporate profits and stock values were rising. Hasn't anyone noticed that most of the things you buy in department stores are not made in the USA? Companies are taking advantage of the cheap labor in many countries as well as relocating their headquarters to foreign shores to avoid taxes. All of this makes for good corporate profits but causes job losses. Now our high-tech jobs are moving to China and India, making further inroads into middle-class stability. Coupled with President Bush's penchant for reducing taxes on our richest taxpayers would lead me to believe that within 10 years the United States will become the biggest banana republic in the Western Hemisphere. God save America. -Manuel E. Hernandez

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The Board of Regents voted 14 to 2 for the hike. "This is a big, big, big deal," said Anne Pinto. She is a graduate student in marketing. She comes here from Bombay, India. She gets to campus each day on a municipal bus and says she saved her money for five years so she could study here. "I worked very, very hard to get here," said Pinto, sitting near the McKeldin Library at day's end and waiting for a bus to her off-campus apartment. "I saved all my salaries, and I spent two years filling out application papers, taking exams, making the travel arrangements. "I'm here one year now. It's been an amazing learning experience. I'm in an international program with 200 other students from 25 different countries. We're learning about each other's lives. We're learning about America. It's an amazing country, isn't it?

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William McKenzie's July 2 cybercolumn on religion and politics in Pakistan is extremely incomplete. He stereotypes the Jamaat-I-Islami party in Pakistan as being "extremists," but provides no support for such an assertion. The Jamaat-I-Islami distinguishes between protest and violent terrorism. That is why they seek change through the established political system and not through terrorism. Furthermore, the column fails to articulate another significant reason for the increase in Pakistani intolerant religious fervor: the extremist political leadership of India: the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP has been labeled by studies such as the Global Survey on Religious Freedom as being religiously intolerant. The suppression of religious freedom, and endorsement of anti-Pakistani attitudes filtered from the BJP leadership, is one reason similarly intolerant attitudes are developing in Pakistan. Not education. Favad Bajaria

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              --- South Asian News, July 15, 2003 ---

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