Home Updated on February 25, 2004  

South Asia Clips is a free daily newservice that monitors South Asia and South Asian American news in major U.S. media outlets. Production of the South Asia clips is a non-profit effort and are co-hosted by Madison Government Affairs (www.madisongov.net). If you have any questions or would like to subscribe, please contact me at kap . Please note that the clips are also archived at www.madisongov.net under the news section.

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SOUTH ASIA DAILY NEWS CLIPS
 
      February 2, 2004 
 
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Top Stories
 
Pakistan nuclear expert gave info to Iran (USA Today) (Indian Gazette)
Pakistani scientist admits to selling secrets (LA Times - Registration required) (Baltimore Sun)
Key Pakistani Is Said to Admit Atom Transfers (NY Times - Registration required)
Pakistan's Nuclear Hero, World's No. 1 Nuclear Suspect (Christian Science Monitor)
Bush OKs probe of U.S. intelligence (Marin Independent Journal, CA)
Response expected today to mosque's bias suit (Philadelphia Inq.)
 
Business
 
Tech  Job Training Groups Gets $2.9 million to Cut Foreign Worker Use (North County Times) (Contra Costa Times)
Rule Changes Put Borrowers in Tight Spot (Chicago Tribune - Registration required)
 
Commentaries/Editorials/Letters to the Editors
 
Editorial:  Help Wanted at Top (Press & Sun Bulletin, NY)
Commentary: Children in Chains (National Review Online)
 
Defense  
 
Indian Coast Guard Plans New Intelligence Agency (Defense News - Subscription required)
 
Political
 
State work being done in India, newspaper reports (WorkDay Minnesota)
State uses overseas workers (Duluth News Tribune) (St. Paul Pioneer Press)
Ohio lawmakers, staff accepted exotic free trips in 2003 (Newark Advocate. OH)
Protection or Invasion of Privacy (Chicago Sun Times)
In Mich., Democrats focus hopes on jobs (Boston Globe)
 
Other
 
IT Exec Resists Popularity of Offshoring (Buffalo News)
Muslims continue rituals after 244 killed (Times Picayune)
French secularism vs. turbans, other symbols of faith (Christian Science Monitor)
Medical board honors Fremont doctor (Tri-Valley Herald)
Shuttle Crew Hailed as Heroes (Oakland Tribune)
Afghan film star came to role in rags (Sun Sentinel)  
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Top Stories
 
Pakistan nuclear expert gave info to Iran (USA Today) (Indian Gazette)
The founder of Pakistan's nuclear program has acknowledged in a written statement that he sent sensitive technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea to aid their atomic programs, a Pakistani government official said Monday. Abdul Qadeer Khan — long regarded as a national hero in Pakistan — made the confession in a statement submitted "a couple of days ago" to investigators probing allegations of nuclear proliferation by Pakistan, the official told The Associated Press on condition on anonymity. The transfers were made during the late 1980s and in the early and mid 1990s, and were motivated by "personal greed and ambition," the official said.  
 
Pakistani scientist admits to selling secrets (LA Times - Registration required) (Baltimore Sun)
The father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has admitted providing nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, senior Pakistani military officials said Sunday. In a background briefing to Pakistani journalists, officials said they had obtained a 12-page confession from Khan, who had led Pakistan's nuclear program since the 1970s and helped it become the first Muslim nation to possess nuclear weapons. They said that although Khan received money in exchange for the secrets, his main motivation in spreading the technology was to help other Islamic nations become nuclear powers.
 
Key Pakistani Is Said to Admit Atom Transfers (NY Times - Registration required)
The founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has signed a detailed confession admitting that during the last 15 years he provided Iran, North Korea and Libya with the designs and technology to produce the fuel for nuclear weapons, according to a senior Pakistani official and three Pakistani journalists who attended a special government briefing here on Sunday night. In a two-and-a-half-hour presentation to 20 Pakistani journalists, a senior government official gave an exhaustive and startling account of how Dr. Khan, a national hero, spread secret technology to three countries that have been striving to produce their own nuclear arsenals. Two of them, Iran and North Korea, were among those designated by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/international/asia/02STAN.html?ex=&en=e5bdc56b144ed5ee&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
 
Pakistan's Nuclear Hero, World's No. 1 Nuclear Suspect (Christian Science Monitor)
In Pakistan Abdul Qadeer Khan has long been a respected, almost genial, figure - a cross between a CEO and a sports star. Streets, schools, even cricket teams carry his name. He paid for a community center near his home in Islamabad, so elderly neighbors would have a place to watch TV. And it's widely noted in the local media that feeding monkeys is his favorite pastime. But Dr. A.Q. Khan didn't become famous for his quirks or charitable impulse.  http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0202/p25s01-wosc.html
 
Bush OKs probe of U.S. intelligence (Marin Independent Journal, CA)
President Bush will establish a bipartisan commission in the next few days to examine a broad overhaul of U.S. intelligence operations, including a study of the misjudgments about Iraq's unconventional weapons, senior administration officials said yesterday. The panel also will investigate repeated failures to penetrate secretive governments and stateless groups that could try new attacks on the United States......Officials familiar with the discussions over the creation of the commission say that besides the Iraq experience, the commission might examine the failure to detect preparations for the nuclear tests that Pakistan and India set off in 1998, missed signals about how quickly Iran and Libya were moving toward a bomb with the aid of Pakistani scientists, and al-Qaida's focus on an attack on the U.S. mainland. http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24410~1930484,00.html 
 
Response expected today to mosque's bias suit (Philadelphia Inq.)
In this small town on the White Horse Pike, a house meant to be a mosque has stood empty and boarded-up for two years.For the Bangladeshi immigrants who hoarded tiny donations for nearly a decade to buy it, the house represents their hope for a place to worship in their own language. The zoning officials who ruled that they couldn't use the graffiti-marked house to pray said it would cause more chaos at a snarled intersection and mean the loss of tax revenues in their borough. Now the $31,000 triplex, its patio littered with broken glass, is the subject of a lawsuit alleging religious discrimination in Camden County Superior Court. The suit appeals the decision in April by the Clementon Zoning Board. The board is expected to file its response today. http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/7852432.htm
 
Business
 
Tech  Job Training Groups Gets $2.9 million to Cut Foreign Worker Use (North County Times) (Contra Costa Times)
A white-collar job training group is expected to announce Monday that it has received a $2.9 million grant to reduce the technology industry's reliance on foreign workers.The Bay Area Council, a San Francisco-based business development organization, is the newest nonprofit to receive a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. The department has collected nearly $50 million from companies forced to contribute to a job retraining fund whenever they import workers under the H-1B visa program. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service awards H-1B visas to foreign workers when employers demonstrate they can't find qualified Americans. The H-1B holder may work in the United States up to six years, then apply for permanent residence.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/02/02/business/news/2_1_0420_10_57.txt 
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/7851911.htm  
Rule Changes Put Borrowers in Tight Spot (Chicago Tribune - Registration required)
The clock is ticking for Tires Plus, the Waukegan tire and auto repair business operated by Raj Patel and his brother-in-law Sandeep Patel. Time is something they don't have. Their contract to purchase a vacant lot a block from where they are now located on a perimeter road around the former Lakehurst Mall expires at the end of the month. And the owners of the mall, which is being demolished, want the Patels out of the building they are renting so it, too, can be demolished. "We've been hit really hard," said Raj Patel, 35. "I'm still having nightmares at night." They wouldn't be in this position if the U.S. Small Business Administration had simply reinstated the popular 7(a) loan program--after shutting it down for one week in early January because of budget problems--in the same form. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-feb02,1,72092.story?coll=chi-business-hed

Commentaries/Editorials/ Letters to the Editors

Editorial:  Help Wanted at Top (Press & Sun Bulletin, NY)
Memo to IBM Board of Directors re: Senior Management. In keeping with your determination to "outsource" jobs that can be performed more inexpensively elsewhere, we have identified an ideal candidate for the position of Chief Executive Officer of the corporation. Though we cannot reveal his name at present, he holds an MBA from a prestigious American university and has transformed a small business in his native India into a thriving corporation with worldwide connections. He has the intellect, the ability and most of all the vision to lead IBM to greater prosperity. Even more important, he can do this at a fraction of our current cost. He lives in a village near Calcutta and is quite content to remain there, traveling as necessary to various IBM sites and otherwise communicating with you and other corporate officials by e-mail and telephone.  http://www.pressconnects.com/today/opinion/stories/op020204s64981.shtml

Commentary: Children in Chains (National Review Online)
At the airport in Dhaka, Bangladesh, little boys push themselves in front of every well-dressed person. They gesture into theirmouths with grubby fingers and make grunting noises to indicate they are hungry. With the other hand outstretched, they beg for coins. It is a gut-wrenching sight and sound. Confronted by them, I feel compelled toand empty my purse — anything to get them to stop making that pathetic noise.  http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/hughes.aspDefense

Defense

Indian Coast Guard Plans New Intelligence Agency (Defense News - Subscription required)
To combat unknown threats that may approach India from the sea, the country’s Coast Guard is forming plans for a new intelligence branch that would monitor the area from the Indian Ocean to the Arabian Sea. Vice Adm. Sureesh Mehta, chief of the Indian Coast Guard, told DefenseNews.com on Jan. 30 that the service’s proposed intelligence agency would use space-based, electronic and human intelligence assets to assess possible threats to the country. www.defensenews.com

Politics 

State work being done in India, newspaper reports (WorkDay Minnesota)
 Some state services are being performed by workers in India, prompting two Minnesota lawmakers to call for new legislation to stop the practice, the Pioneer Press reported Sunday. Companies that have contracts with the state’s Department of Human Services have shipped some of the work to India, according to a report cited by the newspaper. Calls for lost and stolen food stamp cards used to be taken in Shoreview, Minn., but now are routed to a call center in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India. Another company that has a contract with the state is using Indian software programmers to build a Web-based system to automate eligibility for Medicaid and other health care aid for Minnesotans, the Pioneer Press reported. http://www.workdayminnesota.org/view_article.php?id=ada19b0208f13daa 

State uses overseas workers (Duluth News Tribune) (St. Paul Pioneer Press)
Lost your food stamp card? If you're in Minnesota, the state will probably transfer you to India to straighten it out.   Calls to the state's toll-free number for help with lost and stolen food stamp cards are being routed to a call center in Mumbai, India, under a contract the state has with eFunds Corp., which used to be part of Shoreview, Minn.-based Deluxe Corp.  The deal is one of two multimillion-dollar consulting contracts Minnesota's Department of Human Services has with two companies shipping portions of the work to India. http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/7848712.htm
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/7850051.htm

Ohio lawmakers, staff accepted exotic free trips in 2003 (Newark Advocate. OH)
Some Ohio lawmakers, their spouses and staffs jetted to exotic locales such as Malaysia, Switzerland and India in 2003 while industry and special interest groups paid the bill, according to travel records filed in Congress...... The Institute for Strategic and International Studies paid $6,026 to take Greg Mesack, Robert Ney's legislative aide, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last August. The Confederation of India Industry paid $3,729 to send Ney's policy director, Maria Robinson, to India in April.  http://www.newarkadvocate.com/news/stories/20040202/localnews/337554.html

Protection or Invasion of Privacy (Chicago Sun Times)
n the weeks following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Congress passed a sweeping bill, dubbed the Patriot Act, by overwhelming margins: Only one nay vote was recorded in the Senate, and it earned an 83 percent approval rate in the House. In signing the bill, which broadened police surveillance and detention powers, President Bush noted the "overwhelming, overwhelming agreement in Congress'' and praised "the spirit of bipartisanship." Today, no such unity exists on the act, not between the political parties and not even within the GOP  .... *Chirinjeev Kathuria: Overall, the businessman from Oak Brook has the least enthusiasm for the act among Republicans. "The legislation is extremely complex and was passed far too quickly as a knee-jerk reaction to Sept. 11,'' he said. As a Sikh who wears a turban, the India-born entrepreneur said he has been racially profiled and that some provisions of the Patriot Act "have gone too far in singling out some innocent persons, especially minorities.'' http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-patriot02.html

In Mich., Democrats focus hopes on jobs (Boston Globe)
Yesterday, Dean held a town meeting at a recreation center in Roseville, a blue-collar suburb of Detroit, and drew cheers from a large crowd when he pledged to bring jobs back to Michigan and change trade agreements that he said put American workers at a disadvantage and send manufacturing plants overseas."There will be no more free-trade agreements until we fix the ones we have," Dean said. He promised to insist on imposing environmental standards on manufacturers operating overseas and give unions the right to organize workers at offshore plants."This president has lost 3 million jobs since he became president," Dean said, "and 225,000 of them came out of Michigan. If you make me president next Saturday, we are going to get those jobs back here."Ken Hermonat, a software developer who lives in Ferndale, a Detroit suburb, said it is not only the loss of factory jobs that is creating economic insecurity in Michigan. "When I call a help desk with a hardware question, I reach somebody in India," said Hermonat, who attended Dean's town hall meeting. "I know I'm in a position where my job could be exported overseas." http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/02/02/in_mich_democrats_focus_hopes_on_jobs/

Other
IT Exec Resists Popularity of Offshoring (Buffalo News)
Like many Americans, Michael Prince worries about the economic impact of "offshoring," the trend of sending information-technology jobs to countries like India and the Philippines. But politics isn't why Prince isn't exporting info-tech work at his own company. The IT chief at retail chain Burlington Coat Factory simply isn't convinced it's good business. http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20040202/1027686.asp

Muslims continue rituals after 244 killed (Times Picayune)

Seven more pilgrims died after being crushed in a stampede during the ritual stoning of Satan at the Muslim hajj, bringing the death toll to 251, a Saudi official said Monday......Fifty-four Indonesians and 36 Pakistanis were among the dead, plus about a dozen citizens each from Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, India and Bangladesh, SPA reported. It said other pilgrims to die in the stampede were from China, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and several African countries. http://www.nola.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-11/.xml

French secularism vs. turbans, other symbols of faith (Christian Science Monitor)
Three hundred years ago, the Sikhs in the Indian Punjab renounced the Hindu caste system, and with it the family names that revealed their status: Every Sikh man is called Mr. Singh, and every Sikh woman Mrs. Kaur. Monday, the Sikhs of France are again defying established custom. They are launching a last-ditch defense of their distinctive turbans in the face of a proposed French law banning conspicuous religious symbols that threatens to keep their boys out of school. In doing so, they are asking the French state to reconsider fundamental elements of what it means by national identity. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0202/p01s02-woeu.html
Medical board honors Fremont doctor (Tri-Valley Herald)

Jacob Eapen, a Fremont pediatrician, received the first Physician Recognition Award on Friday from the Medical Board of California. "I feel absolutely honored," he said. "Basically, this honor represents all the children that I see in the state and around the world. This is the greatest honor a physician can get from the medical board." The board, which licenses physicians throughout the state, created a Physician Recognition Task Force last year to begin an annual program to recognize physicians for outstanding service. It presented the award at its quarterly meeting in Sacramento. http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10671~1930320,00.html

Shuttle Crew Hailed as Heroes (Oakland Tribune)

One year after Columbia broke apart and fell in flaming streaks from the Texas sky, NASA workers who launched the shuttle and its seven astronauts and then gathered up the remains stood united in sorrow Sunday at the precise moment of destruction. The first anniversary of the catastrophe was a time for everyone -- rocket engineers, debris searchers, school children, space enthusiasts, even football fans -- to pause and remember .... Youngsters in Karnal, India, Chawla's hometown, recited prayers at the high school where she studied three decades earlier. http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~1930267,00.html

Afghan film star came to role in rags (Sun Sentinel)
A new film with the eye-catching title Osama stars an illiterate 12-year-old found begging in the streets of Kabul, who portrays a girl who poses as a boy so she can work. It's the time of the Taliban; the men in her family are dead, and women cannot leave home unless accompanied by male relatives. The movie is the first feature film made by an Afghan since the ouster of the hard-line Islamic regime two years ago. It was honored this year at several international film festivals, including Cannes, and won a Golden Globe Award for best foreign language film. It screens Tuesday at the Miami International Film Festival. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-liosama-mifffeb02,0,7106755.story?coll=sfla-sports-headlines
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