Home Updated on June 22, 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.
 
SOUTH ASIA DAILY NEWS CLIPS
 
    Ma y 28, 200 4 
 
Breaking News 
 
Sri Lanka, US host peacekeeping exercises (IANS/Yahoo):  Sri Lanka and the US will together host a three-week multinational peacekeeping exercise in southwest of the island nation early next month, Xinhua reports. More than 270 personnel from Bangladesh, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the US, and the UN Training Assistance Team will begin the exercise code named Sama Gamanaat (Peace Walk) at Kukuleganga in southwest Sri Lanka June 5, the American embassy here said in a statement. The exercise, the first to be conducted in Sri Lanka, will be inaugurated by Sri Lankan chief of defence Lionel Balagalle and US Army Pacific Commanding General James Campbell.  http://in.news.yahoo.com/040528/43/2dcwz.html
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Top Stories
 
Key Figure in Nuke Trafficking Arrested (Duluth Superior/AP) 
US urges caution in Pakistan (Washington Times/UPI) 
Lawyer with NJ ties elected to Parliament (NY NewsDay)
Lawyer leaves adopted US to help govern his motherland of India (Newark Star Ledger)
Walk to help homeless shelter (Arizona Republic) 
Assembly Bill Sets Offshoring Limits (Pioneer Press/Mercury News) (Mercury News)
Lawmakers approve bill limit offshoring in state contracts (Fort Wayne Sentinel/AP) 
Undocumented Immigrants To Get a Second Chance (Contra Costa Times/Mercury News)  
An Unconvential Convention (The Weekly Standard)
Pakistan ties figure to Pearl slaying to assassination attempts (Boston Globe) (Chicago Tribune) (Myrtle Beach Sun News/AP)
 
Business
 
Microsoft campus going up in the heart of high tech India (Seattle Times) (Seattle P.I.)
Qualcommng R&D Center in India,  citing Growth Potential (San Diego Tribune) (Miami Herald/AP)
Thumbs Up for New Policy in India (CNN) 
A Growing Appretite for Outsourcing (Business Week)
 
 
Commentaries/Editorials/Letters to the Editors
 
Editorial: The Challenges for India (Fort Wayne Sentinel/Knight Ridder/Chicago Tribune)
 
Defense
 
N/A
 
Political
 
Many Arab Leaders Prefer a Bush Victory (Washington Times/UPI) 
 
Other
 
The Maharani of Muck (The Nation)
Concert Promotes Goodwill (Star Telegram) 
20-year sentence for fatal stabbing (Chicago Tribune - registration required) 
Muslims From the Metro-East (Belleville News-Democrat)
When no mosque is near (NY Times - registration required) 
Hamtrack in the Glare - Call to prayer spurs angry noise (Detroit Free Press)
Local NAACP host forum on minority education gap (Gwinnett Daily Post, GA)
"Supernatural" Sophomore  (Andover Townsman)
Former Scottrade Employee indicted on federal charges (St. Louis Biz Journal)
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Top Stories
 
Key Figure in Nuke Trafficking Arrested (Duluth Superior/AP) 
A Sri Lankan businessman accused of brokering black market deals for nuclear technology was arrested Friday in Malaysia, government officials said. Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, who allegedly worked with disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to sell nuclear secrets to rogue states, was detained for threatening Malaysia's national security, officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Tahir is the most senior known member of Khan's network to have been arrested since details about its operations to sell nuclear know-how and equipment to Libya, Iran and North Korea came to light earlier this year. Khan was pardoned by Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf after admitting wrongdoing and pleading for clemency.
 
US urges caution in Pakistan (Washington Times/UPI) 
The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan Thursday urged Americans to defer traveling to the country, and said those already there should review security precautions. The embassy said Wednesday's car bomb attack on a Karachi school with an American name was a reminder that terrorists continued to look for "soft" targets to hit. One policeman was killed and 26 people were injured in the attack on the Pakistan-American Cultural Center, a local school with no links to any U.S. organization, government or private. http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/r.htm
 
Lawyer with NJ ties elected to Parliament (NY NewsDay)
During the daytime, he listens to poor people's grievances in his drought-hit southern Indian Parliament constituency. At night, he takes calls from clients in the United States with immigration and job problems.  Madhusudhan Goud Yaskhi, 44, is one of many Indians who have been elected to the country's state and national legislatures after returning home following long stays abroad. He has permanent U.S. residency status. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-nj--india-parliament-0527may27,0,3293092.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire
 
Lawyer leaves adopted US to help govern his motherland of India (Newark Star Ledger)
Over the past nine years, Edison businessman Madhu Yaskhi's immigration law firm has helped thousands of Asian-Indians gain legal residency in the United States. Now, Yaskhi's goal is to get them to go back home. Yaskhi, 44, a legal permanent U.S. resident from India, was elected last month to a seat in the Indian parliament amid an upset victory that swept the ruling party from power.  It is common for Indians to be elected to the state and legislatures after long stays abroad. But Yaskhi says he will become the only nonresident Indian, or NRI, in the lower house of parliament, called the Lok Sobha, or House of the People, when he is sworn in Wednesday. http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-6/.xml
 
Walk to help homeless shelter (Arizona Republic) 
A coalition of Asian organizations based in the East Valley wants to help a Phoenix emergency homeless shelter established by Mother Teresa in 1989. 
Jagdish Sagar, director of the Indo-American Foundation, joins with the India Association of Phoenix to lead 17 other Indian organizations in hosting a 3.2-mile charity walk at 7 a.m. Saturday at Tempe Town Lake. The groups have worked with each other on relief projects in their native India, but it is the first time they will join together in supporting a local charity.  http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0528evcharitywalk28.html
 
Assembly Bill Sets Offshoring Limits (Pioneer Press/Mercury News) (Mercury News)
Reacting to the politically charged issue of job flight overseas, the California Assembly approved legislation Thursday that would ban the offshoring of state government service jobs when state agencies sign new agreements with private contractors. The bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-South Pasadena, is aimed at addressing controversial situations such as the use of customer assistance call centers in India and Mexico by a contractor to the state's food stamp program. ``We're talking about food stamps for people who we really want to put back in the job market, so it's very ironic that we're sending jobs they might be able to do overseas,'' Liu said. Liu's bill was approved 44-26. It now goes before the state Senate, where Liu doesn't anticipate trouble with passage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn't indicated where he stands on the issue, Liu said. http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/technology/8784169.htm?1c
 
Lawmakers approve bill limit offshoring in state contracts (Fort Wayne Sentinel/AP) 
Trying to stem the tide of jobs going to foreign countries, the Assembly approved a bill Thursday that would ban state contractors from offshoring jobs. The bill would prohibit contracts such as the one California has with a company operating a call center in India for welfare and food stamp recipients, said Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-La Canada Flintridge. Liu's bill would require all contractors and subcontractors to certify that the "contract work will be performed by people in the state of California," she said. Opponents said the bill was shortsighted because outsourcing jobs keeps those contracts cheaper. http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/business/8777676.htm
 
Undocumented Immigrants To Get a Second Chance (Contra Costa Times/Mercury News)  
About 150,000 undocumented immigrants, including several thousand in the Bay Area, who were denied the chance to apply for amnesty under the immigration reforms of 1986 now have a second chance to live permanently in the U.S. A new one-year application period that began Monday is part of a recent settlement of two longstanding federal lawsuits filed in 1987 and 1988 in California against the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. The agency has since been split into three agencies under the new Department of Homeland Security. "When you don't know what will happen, you can't really carry on with your life," said Grumk Singh Maude, a Hayward resident who entered the U.S. illegally in 1981 via Vancouver.
 
An Unconvential Convention (The Weekly Standard)
BEGINNING THURSDAY NIGHT, May 27, and continuing through Sunday, Washington's Wardman Park Marriott Hotel will host one of the most remarkable events of recent months: the second annual convention of American Shia Muslims, organized by the Universal Muslim Association of America (UMAA). The most extraordinary aspect of this convocation, which is expected to draw 5,000 participants, is that a majority who will attend are firm supporters of the Coalition's operations in Iraq. American Shia Muslims claim two million adherents in the United States and Canada, mainly drawn from India, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, with a sprinkling from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, and the Balkans. Iraqi Shias are concentrated in Dearborn, Michigan, and Los Angeles and are expected to be well-represented at the gathering this weekend.  The first such convention, held in the nation's capital last year with 3,000 delegates, featured a surprising banquet speaker: deputy Defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz. While this year's banquet program had not been fixed by Thursday afternoon, UMAA media representative Agha Shawkat Jafri said the delegates have received hundreds of calls from Iraqi Shias expressing hope that the convention can draw the attention of the Pentagon to their concerns, which are centered on the need for forcible action against rebel Shia leader Moktada al-Sad.  http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/142efcio.asp
 
Pakistan ties figure to Pearl slaying to assassination attempts (Boston Globe) (Chicago Tribune) (Myrtle Beach Sun News/AP)
An Islamic militant who played a central role in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002 was also the mastermind of two failed attempts to assassinate General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, last December, three senior Pakistani officials said yesterday.  The first of the attempts, on Dec. 14, involved more than a dozen low-ranking air force technicians, the officials said. They said some of the military technicians placed large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive beneath a bridge used by Musharraf's motorcade in Rawalpindi, about 10 miles from Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. The technicians were recruited and supplied with the explosives by Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a Pakistani militant with links to Al Qaeda, said the officials, who are involved in the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity. They also identified Farooqi as having helped force Pearl into a vehicle when he was kidnapped in Karachi on the night of Jan. 23, 2002. Farooqi was present when Pearl was beheaded by his captors, the officials said
 
Business
 
Microsoft campus going up in the heart of high tech India (Seattle Times) (Seattle P.I.)
In a sign of Microsoft's ambitious plans for India, the company is building a huge campus complete with a cricket field on the outskirts of this high-tech boomtown. About 600 engineers and administrative staff are expected to be based at the Although Microsoft has steadily expanded its product group in India since 1998 in rented space, the campus signifies it plans to be here permanently and that it may expand dramatically in the future. It has reserved 42.5 acres, enough to build several more buildings and house several thousand employees.  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/_microindia28.html
 
Qualcommng R&D Center in India,  citing Growth Potential (San Diego Tribune) (Miami Herald/AP)
Hoping to spur the growth of its wireless technology, Qualcomm has set up a research and development center in India.  The San Diego-based company said yesterday that it will begin hiring engineers to help design mobile phone chips and provide technical support to its Asian clients.  The India market is seen as an important one for Qualcomm because it has a large population and very low cell-phone penetration rates.  "India is the hottest growth market for Qualcomm. It is also where a lot of talent is available," Brian Dunphy, Qualcomm's director of business development, told reporters in Bangalore, the center of India's high-tech industry.
 
Thumbs Up for New Policy in India (CNN) 
The new Congress-led coalition under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh unveiled its policies Thursday, saying it aims to achieve an annual economic growth rate of at least 7 to 8 per cent over the coming decade. Economic analyst Professor Shubashis Gangopadhyay, Director of the India Development Foundation in New Delhi, told CNN on Friday that this level of growth was achievable, but the key question was whether it could be sustained. India, the world's 12th largest economy, grew 8.1 percent for the year that ended March 31, following a spectacular 10 percent year-on-year jump in the December 2003 quarter. http://www.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/05/28/india.economy.policy/
 
A Growing Appretite for Outsourcing (Business Week)
The information-technology sector is at the heart of the debate over outsourcing and offshoring, the growing trend toward moving or contracting out production -- and its associated jobs -- to lower-cost countries.  The trend shows no sign of slowing down, amid rising fears of job losses in the U.S. and politicians' election-year jitters, according to William Martorelli, principal analyst with Forrester Research, who headed a panel at CeBIT sponsored by the Business Council for the U.N. If anything, the movement is accelerating. Forrester's long-term forecast is unchanged at 3.3 million U.S. jobs exported by 2015. But the current number, 540,000, is a bit more than expected. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2004/tc20040527_9068_tc_169.htm
 
 
Commentaries/Editorials/ Letters to the Editors
 
Editorial: The Challenges for India (Fort Wayne Sentinel/Knight Ridder/Chicago Tribune)
When India's left-leaning Congress Party won an upset victory in the recent national elections, Indian stock markets took a dive. Investors clearly feared the new government would abandon the valuable economic reforms that have boosted growth and created an expanding middle class. But things have turned out better than skeptics could have expected. Last week, India got a new prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who is not a friend to economic reform but something better: its father. http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/8783558.htm
 
 
 
Defense
 
N/A
 
Politics 
 
Many Arab Leaders Prefer a Bush Victory (Washington Times/UPI) 
Despite opposing the U.S.-led war in Iraq, many leaders in Arab and Muslim countries would prefer to see President Bush rather than Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry in the White House for the next four years.  Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, in an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month, defied both diplomatic etiquette and conventional wisdom when he all but endorsed Mr. Bush. "We are lucky with the Republicans that the president, his secretary of state, the vice president and the secretary of defense all have a personal relationship with Pakistan," Mr. Jamali said. Although noting that it is up to American voters to decide, he said the Bush administration "is a much better bet as far as Pakistan-American relations are concerned."  http://washingtontimes.com/world/r.htm
 
 
Other
 
 
The Maharani of Muck (The Nation)
Perched elegantly on an exotic throw pillow in her seaside Bombay apartment, the Arabian Sea breeze gently ruffling her long black hair, Shobhaa De looks like one of the seductresses of her many novels: women who buy and sell their way through a world of extraordinary luxury and moral decay; women who sleep their way to the top; women who always win. That is, until you zoom in on her teenage daughters gabbing on the phone and, in a nearby room, blasting Bryan Adams out of the family computer. De loves putting this dichotomy of her life on display; it's her best defense against the thirty years of bad press she's endured for talking dirty and exposing the nasty side of India's rich and gorgeous. "I have a perfectly, boringly normal life," she laughs. "That disappoints some people."  http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20040614&s=kennedy
 
Concert Promotes Goodwill (Star Telegram) 
Rehan Siddiqi was tired of hearing news about violence between Indians and Pakistanis. If the two countries are to achieve peace, he decided, maybe it needs to start here in Texas. Siddiqi, 25, is president of Asian Media Worldwide, a company that runs KBIS/1150 AM, a local South Asian radio station. On Saturday, Siddiqi is holding the Friendship Concert, a mix of Indian and Pakistani performers, at the Dallas Convention Center.
 
20-year sentence for fatal stabbing (Chicago Tribune - registration required) 
A Park City man was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday for the stabbing death of a man in 2002. Ramesh Swamynathan, 28, of the 4100 block of Greenleaf Court pleaded guilty but mentally ill in Lake County Circuit Court last month to killing Romarao Chittiprolu, 28, a co-worker. Swamynathan was distraught over losing his job at a computer service firm and blamed Chittiprolu, authorities said. He killed Chittiprolu, who lived in the same apartment complex, in September 2002, authorities said. Swamynathan spent almost a year undergoing treatment at a state mental health center in Downstate Chester, authorities said. He initially was declared unfit to stand trial. Swamynathan is a citizen of India and feared that he would be deported when he lost his job, authorities said. After he serves his sentence in Illinois, Swamynathan will probably be deported, said Assistant State's Atty. Michael Mermel.
 
Muslims From the Metro-East (Belleville News-Democrat)
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, Imran Rao is afraid to tell people he is a Muslim. The way he sees it, people think all Muslims are terrorists. "I don't let it get to me," said Imran, who has grown accustomed to racism from both sides of his biracial ancestry. "I've had to deal with racism from Pakistani people because I'm half white." His father is a Muslim from New Delhi, India, and his mother is white, of German ancestry and a member of the Unitarian church. The family lives in Belleville. Imran doesn't quite fit the stereotype of a Muslim. "There was a long time when I was younger when I didn't call myself a Muslim," Imran said. "I was one of these kids who ran around with torn jeans. I was totally into that grunge scene." http://www.belleville.com/mld/newsdemocrat/8778488.htm
 
When no mosque is near (NY Times - registration required) 
You drive a cab, wafted across the city on the whims of your fares. But you are Muslim, and must pray five times a day - which involves ablutions, facing east and a series of prostrations in submission to God. What to do? With the age-old ingenuity of immigrants adapting to a new world, Muslim cabbies in New York - by one estimate, half of the city's 40,000 taxi drivers - have devised a jury-rigged system. The drivers congregate in South Asian restaurants that provide prayer space in basements or back rooms. They have an imprint of the city's mosques in their brains, at the ready wherever a fare may take them as prayer time closes in. Using a small carpet kept in the trunk, they pray in the back seat, or even on the side of the road.
 
Hamtrack in the Glare - Call to prayer spurs angry noise (Detroit Free Press)
When the call to prayer finally issues from the loudspeakers atop the little mosque in Hamtramck today, the sound is likely to be drowned out not so much by organized opposition as by the noise of the city itself. The collision of cultures in the 2.1-square-mile city jammed with shops and homes has already turned the busy cross streets of Caniff and Jos. Campau -- steps from the mosque -- into a deafening echo chamber.  Church bells ring out hymns. Trains whistle. Trucks roar and squeal their breaks. Seagulls scream as they vie for litter. Hip-hop booms from cars. Janis Joplin belts out rock tunes from the door of the Record Graveyard, a trendy secondhand music shop. Boys under a basketball hoop in St. Ladislaus Catholic Church's parking lot yell, "Shoot! Shoot!"  And Wednesday, a vanload of tough-looking men who had driven more than five hours from southern Ohio spilled onto Caniff outside the Al-Islah Islamic Center to protest the mosque's plan to broadcast the call to prayer for the first time today. http://www.freep.com/news/religion/call28_20040528.htm  
 
Local NAACP host forum on minority education gap (Gwinnett Daily Post, GA)
An education forum to discuss issues facing minority students will be hosted on Friday by the  Gwinnett Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which made segregation illegal in schools, local minority leaders will join with representatives from Gwinnett County Public Schools to talk about closing the academic gap in Gwinnett. John Stewart Jr., president of the Gwinnett NAACP, said the group hopes to start a dialogue with the school system. “The people on the panel are solution-oriented. They are looking for the best practices and they have the power to encourage others,” Stewart said.  Panel members include representatives from the Latin American Association, the Indian American Council, the NAACP, and other organizations in Gwinnett. http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/GDP/archive/article48B8AF620B674E128481CD00FE8291CF.asp
 
"Supernatural" Sophomore  (Andover Townsman)
Teen actor Kunal Sharma has one foot in Andover and the other in Los Angeles. The Andover High School sophomore just finished filming for The Voodoo Dancer an independent film shot in Andover and North Andover. Sharma will spend the summer in Los Angeles where he already has an agent and a manager.   The Voodoo Dancer is a supernatural thriller about a boy possessed by the ghost of a teenage dancer. Eyedea Productions describes the film as exploring "how far a grandmother will go to save her teenage grandson's life, threatened by a ghost of a female dancer." Sanjay Kaul of Andover plays the boy's father.  Sharma said after reading the script he knew the part of the boy was for him. "It is very challenging character (with) a wide range. I had to do this," he said.   The film finished shooting early last Friday morning, May 21, after a night shoot that had Sharma working from 1 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. Sharma said the hours fly by when he is on set. "It's so awesome (that you can't tell) how much time passes by," he said.  http://www.andovertownsman.com/news/20040527/AE_001.html
 
Former Scottrade Employee indicted on federal charges (St. Louis Biz Journal)
.... Bhaveshkumar C. Patel, aka Bob Patel, 34, of Des Peres, was indicted by a federal grand jury on two felony counts of interstate transportation of stolen property. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine per count. While Patel was employed at Scottrade, he operated a business called Eclipse Internet Services, through which he agreed to supply Scottrade with Compaq servers. Between February and April 2000, Scottrade paid Patel more than $890,000 for servers that were never delivered, according to the indictment. The checks were deposited into Patel's personal account. He then issued two checks from his St. Louis account totaling $150,000 into an investment account in New York.  http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2004/05/24/daily69.html 
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