U.S. to renew request for Indian troops *(IANS/Yahoo)
	A top U.S. general is visiting New Delhi to renew Washington's request for Indian troops for peacekeeping in Iraq, undeterred by the earlier rejection of the request. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, would meet his Indian counterpart and navy chief Admiral Madhvendra Singh, who is also chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Committee, soon after his arrival Monday evening, diplomatic sources said. Myers, who is coming from Iraq, will also hold talks with army chief, General N.C. Vij, and air force chief S. Krishnaswamy. He will also meet National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra before leaving for Pakistan Tuesday afternoon.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030728/43/26fsa.html
	Fresh US pressure on Pak, India for troops to Iraq (ANI/Yahoo)
	Ignoring demands for getting a UN mandate for sending additional troops to Iraq, the Bush Administration is reported to be mounting pressure on Pakistan and India to expedite the process. According to The News, Islamabad and New Delhi have been placed on Washington's priority list in spite of the two countries unwillingness to comply. Pentagon and U.S. State Department officials have also approached countries affiliated to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) for sending troops to join the war weary allied forces already in Iraq. India is expected to maintain its stance on having a UN mandate for sending its peacekeeping force to Iraq in spite of the pressure likely to be generated by the visit of General Richard B. Meyers, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to New Delhi from today.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030728/139/26fr7.html
	Indian woman files sexual harassment case against Oracle * (ANI/Yahoo)
	An Indian woman employee has filed a case against software giant Oracle Corp, alleging that she was repeatedly sexually assaulted, harassed and discriminated against, by her former male supervisor and the company did not intervene to help or protect her. The lawsuit alleges that the Oracle management was blind to the discriminatory attitudes toward the woman, because the supervisor was technically proficient and Oracle did not want to lose technically proficient male employees at the cost of jeopardising Oracle's women employees. The lawsuit which was filed in California superior court in Alameda County on July 18, does not reveal the plaintiff's real identity in order to protect her privacy. Instead, she is identified as "Barbara Doe". The suit names Oracle and Mahesh Anand as respondents, with the latter having quit his job. The plaintiff, a 33-year-old senior applications engineer, has been employed by Oracle at the company's San Mateo office in Bay Area since 2000 and had been employed under Anand's supervision since November 2000.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030726/139/26eqf.html

HEADLINES
 

STORIES
 

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The parliament here voted July 24 not to give the United States permanent military bases in India. Vinod Khanna, the minister of state for external affairs, told the parliament’s upper house July 24 that “recently there have been speculative and misleading commentaries on a report prepared by a private agency for the U.S. Department for Defense”. A Ministry of External Affairs official told DefenseNews.com July 24 that Khanna’s reaction was to a report, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense, that indicated the United States wants Indian bases and military infrastructure. The April report, “The Future of Indo-U.S. Military Relations,” was prepared by consulting group Booz Allen Hamilton.

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July 28, Islamabad -- A top U.S. military official was to visit Pakistan to discuss ``issues of mutual interests,' a Pakistani army spokesman said Monday. Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers was set to arrive in Islamabad Tuesday, Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press. Myers was to meet with his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Aziz Khan, and other officials, Sultan said. U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Linda Cheatham confirmed the visit but wouldn't provide details. Sultan said Myers would be in the country for only one day. His visit is the second in less than a week by a top U.S. military official to Pakistan.

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Robert D. Blackwill, the retiring American ambassador to India, praised U.S.-Indian cooperation in the war on terrorism in his final policy speech before returning to Harvard University to resume his teaching career. "The United States and India must have zero tolerance for terrorism. We will win the war on terrorism, and that war will not see victory until terrorism against India is ended once and for all," he said. India repeatedly has blamed Muslim guerrillas from Pakistan for terrorist attacks in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Mr. Blackwill, addressing a luncheon of the Confederation of Indian Industry earlier this month, recounted the transformation in U.S.-Indian relations under President Bush but expressed disappointment at India's refusal to send troops to help the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

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July 28, Madras, India -- Two Chinese taken prisoner during the 1962 Sino-Indian war have been released and reunited with their families after 41 years — much of it spent in a mental asylum in eastern India. The release of the two POWs was conceived as a goodwill gesture and set in motion during a summit in China last month between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, Indian Foreign Ministry sources said. Yang Chen and Shih Liang had been held as spies in a New Delhi jail for three years before being transferred to the Central Institute of Psychiatry [CIP], a mental asylum in Ranchi in eastern India, where they had remained until their release at the beginning of this month. Both men are in their 60s. CIP administrators said officials from the Chinese Embassy arrived at the asylum last month accompanied by Indian Home and Foreign Ministry officials to conduct the release.

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Katmandu, Nepal -- Maoist rebels in Nepal set a Thursday deadline for the government to meet their key demands, saying failure to do so would amount to breaking a six-month-old cease-fire. In a letter sent through the peace talk brokers, the rebels demanded the government bring army troops back to their bases, free jailed rebel supporters and disclose the whereabouts of missing guerrillas. Padma Ratna Tuladhar, one of the peace talks facilitators, confirmed that they had received the letter from the rebels and handed it to the government on Monday.

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July 28, Jammu, India -- Police said they suspect separatist militants abducted the sister of a temporary police recruit and hanged her in a forest in northwest Jammu-Kashmir. The woman was abducted on Sunday and found hanged from a tree, police said Monday. No one claimed responsibility for the murder. Police in the central control room of India's northernmost state said they suspect the woman was targeted because she is the sister of a special police officer. Such officers a temporarily recruited to help police in anti-militant operations.

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Did the government let bin Laden’s trail go cold?

July 28 -- One day this past March, in Langley, Virginia, there was jubilation on a little-known thoroughfare called Bin Laden Lane. Analysts at the C.I.A.’s Counter-Terrorism Center, a dingy warren of gray metal desks marked by a custom-made street sign, were thrilled to learn that, seven thousand miles away, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, colleagues from the agency had helped local authorities storm a private villa and capture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man believed to be the third most important figure in the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. At last, the stalled hunt for Al Qaeda fugitives had gained momentum. The authorities in Pakistan had obtained Mohammed’s laptop computer and satellite phone; this breakthrough, they hoped, would help them track down the organization’s leader, Osama bin Laden. Analysts in Washington speculated that news of Mohammed’s capture might even prompt bin Laden into fleeing his current hideout. According to an F.B.I. official, in the weeks before his arrest Mohammed had been moving from one place to another in Baluchistan, a lawless province that borders Afghanistan and Iran. Bin Laden, it was thought, was probably in the same area.

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Forget sweatshops. U.S. companies are now shifting high-wage work overseas, especially to India

July 28 -- Little by little, Sab Maglione could feel his job slipping away. He worked for a large insurance firm in northern New Jersey, developing the software it uses to keep track of its agents. But in mid-2001, his employer introduced him to Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software company. About 120 Tata employees were brought in to help on a platform-conversion project. Maglione, 44, trained and managed a five-person Tata team. When one of them was named manager, he started to worry. By the end of last year, 70% of the project had been shifted to India and nearly all 20 U.S. workers, including Maglione, were laid off. Since then, Maglione has been able to find only temporary work in his field, taking a pay cut of nearly 30% from his former salary of $77,000. For a family and mortgage, he says, "that doesn't pay the bills." Worried about utility costs, he runs after his two children, 11 and 7, to turn off the lights. And he has considered a new career as a house painter. "It doesn't require that much skill, and I don't have to go to school for it," Maglione says. And houses, at least, can't be painted from overseas.

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Offshore outsourcing is today perhaps the most emotional and least-understood business practice in the world. To be sure, in a lot of cases it is and will continue to be wrenching and deeply disruptive for not only many individuals but also large groups of professionals caught on the wrong side of this trend.

July 28 -- Offshore outsourcing is today perhaps the most emotional and least-understood business practice in the world. To be sure, in a lot of cases it is and will continue to be wrenching and deeply disruptive for not only many individuals but also large groups of professionals caught on the wrong side of this trend. An example of free-market capitalism at its most coldly impersonal and even merciless, offshore outsourcing is today touching not just some anonymous groups of people in some far-off locale in some obscure industry; rather, it has hit many of us increasingly closer to home: relatives, friends, and colleagues whose jobs have been transferred to other people in other countries. But beyond the understandable emotional reactions to these displaced jobs, there's still a lot of fog and myth shrouding the true nature of offshore outsourcing. Lots of people still believe it's nothing more than paying lower wages for lower-quality work.

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              --- South Asian News, July 28, 2003 ---

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