No country's territory should be used to sponsor terrorism: U.S. *(IANS/Yahoo)
	The U.S. has reiterated that no country's territory should be used to sponsor terrorism against its neighbours. Speaking at a briefing here Wednesday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said cross-border terrorism remained a "very important issue to us". "It remains one that we follow very closely and we continue to discuss with the parties because we do think it's important to stop the terrorism in this area and stop the camps, and to make sure that nobody's territory is being used as a place to sponsor terrorism against its neighbours," Boucher said. Commenting on a suggestion that the U.S. should at least push the Indians to place a U.N. observer group on their side of the border in Jammu and Kashmir to have an objective assessment of the border situation, Boucher said the U.S. had supported the U.N. Security Council resolution on this subject in the past.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030731/43/26ifd.html
	Tributes paid to first Indian American Congressman *(IANS/Yahoo)
	Tributes were paid here to the pioneering spirit of Dalip Singh Saund, the first Indian American to become a member of the U.S. Congress in the late fifties. Congressman Saund was known as a strong civil rights advocate and an active member of the House International Relations Committee. Among his leading contributions was the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He served in the House of Representatives from 1957 to 1962. He retired from public life after suffering a stroke in 1962. Copies of 'Congressman from India,' an autobiography of Saund, were presented to the Congressmen present at an event organized by the Indian American Centre for Political Awareness (IACPA).
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030731/43/26i7z.html
	U.S. food sells fast in Pakistan despite boycott * (Reuters/Yahoo)
	Walk out of the airport in Pakistan's port city of Karachi, and the first thing you notice is a giant McDonald's billboard and restaurant. Walk along the seafront, and a giant Kentucky Fried Chicken competes with the golden arches for your custom. American foreign policy might be deeply unpopular in Pakistan, but U.S.-style food is selling fast, confounding a boycott call from the country's hardline Islamist parties. Outside the restaurants, burly private security guards brandish pump-action rifles to make sure their diners are safe. Inside, girls in tight jeans and T-shirts queue next to women shrouded in head-to-toe veils. Bearded men in the traditional Pakistani shalwar kameez, the baggy shirts and trousers worn by tens of millions here, rub shoulders with youngsters in the latest Nike trainers. "I am not bothered about politics, or boycotts," said teenage college student Nadra Osman, as she ordered a chicken burger, french fries and Pepsi at a KFC restaurant in Karachi. "We are here because we enjoy this stuff."
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030731/137/26i2e.html

HEADLINES
 

STORIES
 

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July 31, Bangalore, India -- A two-year-old Pakistani girl whose successful heart surgery in India came to symbolize peace efforts between the nuclear-armed rivals left hospital on Thursday. Noor Fatima came to India on July 11 with her parents on a cross-border bus service between Lahore and New Delhi that was resumed after an 18-month suspension. The same bus service will take her home to Lahore from the Indian capital on Friday. Wearing a frilly purple frock and a huge straw hat, Noor Fatima left the Narayana Hrudayalaya heart hospital in the southern city of Bangalore, and her beaming father told reporters doctors said her progress was satisfactory.

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July 31, Bombay, India -- Six people were killed and 26 injured in India on Thursday when a blast ripped through the home of a man who supplied explosives to film units, a police official said. The police said the explosion, which severely damaged at least 15 houses in a crowded working-class area in Bombay's northwestern suburb of Jogeshwari, appeared to be an accident. ``Five people were killed on the spot and one girl died in the hospital,'' Ahmad Javed, joint commissioner of police, told Reuters.

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July 31, Bombay, India -- An Indian leader suggested an explosion that killed six people and injured 25 in a slum housing complex in Bombay Thursday may have been related to terror, and suggested that terror is the state policy of India's neighbor, Pakistan. The comments by Deputy Prime Minister Lal K. Advani were the first referring to Pakistan as a sponsor of terror since April, when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee began a process of reducing tensions between the nuclear armed neighbors.

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July 30, Colombo -- Japan's senior vice foreign minister, Tetsuro Yano, is expected to issue a special statement on Sri Lanka's stalled peace talks during his visit to the island starting Sunday, the Japanese embassy said Wednesday. Yano is expected to travel to the Tamil-majority Jaffna peninsula on Monday where he is expected to issue the statement. He will also discuss the peace process with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando in the capital Colombo, the embassy said in a statement. Yano's two-day visit comes as Sri Lanka's government tries to persuade Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam rebels to return to peace talks aimed at ending a 19-year civil war.

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July 30, Katmandu -- An international media rights group on Wednesday condemned the murder of a Nepalese columnist this week in a brazen daylight shooting. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, in a letter to Nepalese prime minister Surya Bahadur Thapa, also urged the government to identify those responsible for the July 27 abduction and murder of Amar Lama. Lama was a columnist with Tajakhabar, a weekly newspaper published out of Katmandu. He wrote mainly on politics. Police officials said they didn't know why he'd been killed.

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July 31, Quetta, Pakistan -- Suspected tribesmen fired rockets at a base housing paramilitary forces in southwestern Pakistan, causing no injuries or damage, an official said Thursday. The three rockets hit a deserted area on Tuesday close to the base near Kohlu, a tribal town about 350 kilometers (210 miles) east of Quetta, capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, said Mohammed Ramzan, a government official in Kohlu. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but Ramzan said tribesmen were to blame.

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July 31, Karachi, Pakistan -- The jailed spouse of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was acquitted on charges that he twice tried to take his own life while in prison, with his lawyer saying the charges were meant to cover up torture at the hands of jail authorities. ``These acquittals prove that the cases filed against Asif Ali Zardari are fabricated and politically motivated,' said Zardari's lawyer, Farooq Hameed Naek. Despite the acquittal, Zardari will remain in jail, where he is serving a 7-year sentence on corruption charges. He has also been implicated in 14 other criminal cases that are pending before the courts. Police accused Zardari of attempting suicide twice in jail in 1999. They said he tried to cut his tongue off and slit his throat with broken glass.

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July 31, New Delhi -- Ramchandra Paramhans, a Hindu spiritual leader at the forefront of efforts to construct a temple on the ruins of a disputed 16th-century mosque in northern India, died early Thursday, a news agency said. He was 93. Paramhans, who had been suffering from liver cancer, had been in a hospital in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, for the last two months. He returned to his spiritual retreat in the town of Ayodhya on Tuesday but died two days later, Press Trust of India said. Paramhans was a forceful advocate of the campaign by Hindu nationalist groups to build the temple at the site of the destroyed Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, 550 kilometers (345 miles) east of New Delhi.

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July 31, Lahore, Pakistan -- Authorities dismissed a city police chief and his deputy and arrested three prison officials following a violent uprising last week at a jail that left eight people dead, including three judges who had been held hostage, the government said Thursday. The judges and five rebellious prisoners died when police commandos stormed the Sialkot Jail in eastern Pakistan on Friday to end the standoff. A special probe held Sialkot police chief Malik Iqbal, his deputy and three other jail officials responsible for ``making haste in ordering the operation,' said Shoaib bin Aziz, a provincial government spokesmen.

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July 30, Islamabad -- Sohail Khan thinks he knows all he needs to know when it comes to Pakistan's larger, predominantly Hindu neighbor, India. "Hindus cannot be trusted," the 15-year-old said firmly. "Since the day Pakistan got independence, India has been trying to destroy us any way they can with the help of other infidel nations." Dismissing renewed efforts by both countries to reconcile their bitter and bloody 55-year-long rivalry, he insisted, "Talk of peace hides a different plan that only they know." Young Khan's harsh words - echoed widely in varying degrees by Pakistanis across the social and political spectrum - are hardly surprising, because they are the product of a government-endorsed curriculum taught in public schools around the country.

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July 30, Pittsburgh -- A man who practices the Sikh faith says a local nightclub stopped him from entering because he was wearing a turban. Harpeet Grewal said the incident happened last week at Touch in the 1400 block of Smallman Street in Pittsburgh's Strip District. Grewal said a manager told him he had to remove his turban. Grewal tried to explain that he could not remove the item because it is an article of his faith, but the manager wouldn't listen. The Sikh faith is based in northern India and requires men to keep their heads covered. Touch managers told Action News that Grewal was turned away as part of an even-handed dress code. "Like golf courses, we have a policy," said a club spokeswoman. "No hat, no shoes, no shirt, no service ... Michael Jordan came in Friday and he had to take off his ball cap." Giani Sucha Singh, religious leader of the Sikh temple in Monroeville, told WTAE's Chris Glorioso that nightclubs should be more sensitive because turbans are not a fashion statement.

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During the past year and a half, the U.S. government has been selectively enforcing immigration laws that were for many years overlooked. Before the September 11, 2001, attacks, immigration officials said publicly their focus was on catching and deporting illegal immigrants who committed crimes, not those who merely overstayed visas. But since then, law enforcement agents have been seeking out undocumented men from countries thought to have a history of al-Qaeda presence. Several thousand Arab and South Asian immigrants have been deported, and many feel double-crossed.

July 30 -- When Ajaz Ahmad first got a visa to come to the United States, he rode his bicycle home with his passport in his shoe. "I don't want to lose that passport! I don't want to lose it," he explained. Ajaz's father died when he was 16. His family was poor and Ajaz was making only about $30 a month. There were bills to pay, weddings for his brothers and sisters to finance. So when Ajaz finally got his visa at age 24, he left for New York in a hurry. Within days of arriving, he got an off-the-books job working overnights at a Yonkers gas station. He tuned the radio in his booth to station WKTU 103.5. It was 1994.

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July 31 -- Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.... We may ignore him at our own risk.

With those words, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged Mohandas Gandhi as the inspiration for King's own nonviolent resistance movement in the United States. The words are now part of the co-mingled history of Gandhi and King and part of a video segment in the Gandhi exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum. That history of nonviolent resistance is the inspiration for an official visit to Memphis Friday by India's ambassador to the United States. Ambassador Lalit Mansingh, a member of India's foreign service for 40 years, will hold an inauguration ceremony for the Gandhi exhibit installed in April for the 35th anniversary of King's death.

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July 31 -- In the 1970s, professionals and businessmen of Indian origin came to New Orleans in droves -- perhaps partly because the Southern weather that was similar to that of back home. But the other reason was the opportunities for jobs in the fields of medicine, academics, engineering and in the hospitality industry. Little did they know at that time that one day they would be boosting one of their own for the highest position in the state. Many legislators who have been supported by Indian businesses and organizations have asked Indians to run for political office. When Piyush "Bobby" Jindal of Baton Rouge decided to run for governor of Louisiana, the announcement excited 1.5 million people in Indian communities in the United States. Monetary and moral support have come from all quarters.

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July 31, Katmandu -- Monsoon rains triggered landslides in Nepal that blocked a key highway, buried houses and killed at least 27 villagers over two days, an official said Thursday. The new fatalities took the death toll across South Asia to 794 in floods, landslides and lightning strikes caused by the monsoon rains in the past month. There have been 333 deaths in India, 181 in Bangladesh, 112 in Nepal, and 168 in Pakistan. Millions are homeless across the subcontinent. A landslide in Nepal on Thursday destroyed at least eight houses and killed 19 sleeping residents in Manakamana village, 75 miles west of the capital, Katmandu, said Lekhnath Pokhrel of the government's Natural Calamity and Disaster Management Center in Katmandu.

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As the Indian and Pakistani governments seek to ease tensions between the two countries, computer-hacking clubs on both sides of the border, with names such as "Spy" and "Snakes," are engaged in a cyber-war with attacks and counterattacks on official Web sites. Indian Spy, a hacker claiming to represent Indian Hackers Club (IHC), said this week his group defaced several Pakistani sites and posted messages therein challenging and ridiculing pro-Pakistan hackers who had been targeting Indian Web sites. On one defaced Pakistani site, Indian Snakes, considered the most active Indian hacker group, recently threatened to unleash Yaha-Q virus — the latest in its Yaha series — again if Pakistani hackers did not cease attacks on Indian sites. Between March and May, the group paralyzed Pakistani government sites for five weeks with Yaha-series viruses.

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July 30, Badin, Pakistan -- Pakistani authorities raced against time Wednesday to rescue tens of thousands of people stranded after the worst floods in a decade hit the south of the country, killing at least 100 people. As the rain stopped, army, navy, police and civil aid workers fanned out across villages in the southern province of Sindh trying to reach people marooned without food and shelter for up to six days. "More people will die from (lack of) food, if it is not delivered on time, than from drowning," said ambulance service official Faisal Edhi.

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July 30 -- It is absolutely shocking to note that the Government of India has extended an invitation to Mr. Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, to pay an official visit to India. This fact was first revealed by Mr. Brajesh Mishra, India's 'National Security Advisor', on 8 May 2003 in New York, while addressing the gathering at the Annual Dinner held by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a rabid Zionist organization [1]. Promoting better relations with the people of Israel is one thing but trying to white-wash the heinous crimes of Ariel Sharon, and those of the fascist Likud Party he represents, is quite another. By extending an invitation to Ariel Sharon to visit India, the Indian Government has committed the cardinal sin of bestowing honour on a war-criminal, who is deeply detested by the vast majority of the global community because of his unsavoury reputation.

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July 30 -- If you get into a conversation with a billing representative of your credit card provider or phone company, you may notice a faint Indian accent. That's because the services industry is shifting more back room operations to India, where labor costs are a fraction of those in the United States. IBM, likewise, will soon move several thousand computer programming jobs to India, where programmers get far lower salaries. This decision has angered IBM employees and is contributing to a rare unionization drive at the high-tech giant, a company that once prided itself on never laying anyone off. In these cases, industry defends the moves as cost-effective and economically logical. If productive English-speaking workers in India can perform the jobs, why not move the work there and pass the savings along to shareholders and consumers? Most economists, enthusiasts of free commerce, agree that these shifts help both India and the United States.

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Myths and facts of white-collar out-sourcing

July 30 -- Last week in a story one-part Pentagon Papers and three-parts Fucked Company, The New York Times jumped into a debate that has been simmering for several years in tech circles—the off-loading of jobs to places like India. You can bet that more stories and plenty of political interest will follow. Relying on smuggled-out tape of a con-call between top IBM managers, the Times gets credit for taking the story beyond bulletin boards, happy hours, and places like Fucked's sister site, InternalMemos. The Times also wrangled some absolutely jaw-dropping quotes that indicate corporate honchos expect to be able to bluff their way past questions about moving high-paying jobs offshore without anyone calling them on it. It is a dangerous gambit which could produce the worst of all possible worlds: some sort of government hurdle requiring companies to demonstrate a "need" to out-source. Take this howler from IBM spokeswoman, Kendra R. Collins, "It's not about one shore or another shore. It's about investing around the world, including the United States, to build capability and deliver value as defined by our customers."

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              --- South Asian News, July 31, 2003 ---

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