COBRA X NEWS

Korea to use taekwondo for overseas peace mission

2010-05-12T04:46:00.001-07:00

World Friends Korea, the local version of the Peace Corps of the United States, unveiled a plan Wednesday to use taekwondo, a traditional Korean martial art, to promote peace and friendship in underdeveloped countries around the world.

The measure reflects a growing interest in Korean culture in Asia and Africa and the country's strengthening economic and cultural ties with the regions.

In a report to President Lee Myung-bak at Cheong Wa Dae, the organization, run by the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), said its top priority this year is to enhance mutual understanding of culture and lifestyles between Korea and countries in need.

One of the ideas is to teach taekwondo to the younger generation. It has formed a group of young martial artists to demonstrate their abilities in the countries.

The organization said it will also open the door to senior citizens who are interested in goodwill activities overseas.

"It is very meaningful to help less-developed nations fight poverty and promote economic growth. It is our obligation and it is our privilege," President Lee said in a congratulatory message. "I hope you will become good friends of the countries and help them better understand Korean culture and people."

The expansion of overseas volunteering is one of the 10 projects the Presidential Council on Nation Branding adopted last year to help the country become a more responsible member of the international community.

The council, headed by former Korea University President Euh Yoon-dae, was created in January last year at the instruction of President Lee.

World Friends Korea was launched in May last year as the unified organization for the country's overseas volunteer activities. Until then, ministries and government agencies organized their own volunteer programs.

This year, Korea plans to send about 2,500 volunteers around the globe. Including those who belong to civic and religious groups, the number of Korean volunteers overseas is expected to surpass 3,000.

They will work with governments, schools, non-profit organizations and business people in various areas, including education, the environment, agriculture and information technology.

Currently, the U.S. is the only country that sends more than 3,000 volunteers abroad annually.

Disney to build new 2,000-room Art of Animation Resort

2010-05-12T04:22:00.001-07:00

Walt Disney World is about to begin building its first new hotel in seven years, a 2,000-room resort that will open in 2012.
Disney’s Art of Animation Resort will feature 1,120 suites with room for as many as six people each and another 864 traditional hotel rooms, with a design theme based on four of the company’s most popular animated movies.
The complex will be priced as a “value” hotel, at the low end of Disney World’s scale, similar to Disney’s Pop Century and All-Star resorts, where standard rates begin at $82 a night.
The announcement is one of the strongest signals yet from Disney that it thinks a sustained recovery is under way from the long travel slump brought on by the global recession. Disney executives, who have been weighing construction of a family-suites hotel for several years, finally approved the project in January.
But in deciding to add another lower-priced hotel, Disney also appears to be betting that travelers will continue the frugal spending habits many adopted during the downturn. Disney has been relying on discounts to sustain attendance during the past year, and executives acknowledged Tuesday that consumers are still searching for deals even as Disney attempts to return to pre-recession prices

Deepika all set to sashay down Cannes red carpet

2010-05-12T04:20:00.001-07:00

For those involved in cinema the world over, the annual Cannes Film Festival is without question the most happening place to be.
So, later this week, when Deepika Padukone [ Images ] sashays down the red carpet at the 63rd annual Cannes [ Images ] Film Festival, she'll know she's reached new heights!
Even more interestingly, Deepika will be wearing a sensuous sari designed by Indian designer Rohit Bal. Lucky Deepika, because it's Bal's first work since falling ill with a heart ailment and having surgery earlier this year.
Speaking on the issue of whether Deepika should don a Western or Indian garment at the event, Bal revealed in an interview to an Indian daily newspaper, that, 'There's a lot of criticism on why Indian women wear Western outfits at red carpets of premiere events. This year Deepika will show the world how beautiful saris are. She will be wearing a beautiful, super sexy saree.'
In another interview, Bal clarified that the sari would be 'ivory' in colour!
For her part, Deepika seems really, really excited. "It is a great honour to walk the red carpet representing India [ Images ] in Cannes and it's a great joy to work with Rohit again," she told the Indian daily newspaper.
Unfortunately, due to her super busy schedule, she'll only be in Cannes for one day, for the premiere of French film Tournee (On Tour), directed by Mathieu Amalric, which is competing for festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or.

2010-05-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

More than 5% of Scots are alcohol dependent

In this week's Scrubbing Up, Dr Catriona Morton says drastic measures are needed to save Scottish drinkers from themselves.
In order to curb dangerous drinking, supermarkets must be prevented from selling cheap alcohol and awarding loyalty points with purchases, she says.
We are facing a new pandemic - alcohol as a major risk factor for poor health.

In Scotland, the majority of adults are exceeding recommended drinking limits and 5% (probably more) are alcohol-dependent.
Voluntary codes, hazard-labelling and NHS health promotion efforts are simply not working - so we need to hit the drinking culture at the heart by introducing minimum pricing, and removing supermarket loyalty points for alcohol.
Scotland now has the world's eighth-highest level of alcohol consumption.
We need to do something now to protect not only the health of Scots but the NHS.

I have teenage patients admitted from casualty as they are too alcohol-intoxicated to safely go home: occasionally they have to be put on a ventilator in intensive care

Pandemics require robust, evidence-based policies.
The doubling of alcohol consumption in the last 40 years reflects a marked reduction in relative price: some alcohol now costs less than bottled water.
A feature of young people's binge drinking is that they 'pre-load', by relying on shop-bought alcohol.
The home is the commonest drinking location for 75% of Scots.
Supermarkets are therefore crucial, because of their 'special deals' around cheap alcohol.
Our society doesn't allow loyalty points on cigarette purchases, as it seems perverse to have additional incentives to buying harmful toxins.
Loyalty points do, albeit indirectly, make alcohol cheaper.
Unlike cigarettes, alcohol does not necessarily harm at "low doses", but our epidemic is because of pervasive high levels of intake, and this is more than sufficient to justify restricting both price and points.
Working as a GP in a Scottish urban practice means that I have teenage patients admitted from casualty as they are too alcohol-intoxicated to safely go home: occasionally they have to be put on a ventilator in intensive care until the alcohol wears off.
And many GPs will have witnessed the devastation families face when adults in their thirties and forties - some with relatively young children - die of liver failure or cancer, due to alcohol.

The Scottish Government needs to urgently take action on this - by supporting minimum pricing and dropping loyalty points and encouraging the UK government to follow suit

Following the Scottish smoking ban in enclosed public places, there has been a 20% drop in heart attack admissions in non-smokers ( and a 17% year-on-year drop overall).
Whilst not all of this may be attributable to smoking behaviour, the ban has clearly had a major impact. In people from smoke-free households, the level of nicotine by-products in adults fell by almost half, as their exposure to passive smoke fell - and perhaps most important of all, by a third in children.
Prior to the smoking ban, there was good public health evidence to support it - we now face the same scenario in relation to alcohol.
The Scottish Government needs to urgently take action on this - by supporting minimum pricing and dropping loyalty points and encouraging the UK government to follow suit.
Such a move would be welcomed by health professionals both north and south of the border.
The financial burdens to Scotland of this continued level of drinking are commensurate: over �400 million NHS costs, �170 million for social work and all told, an estimated �2.25 billion a year. There are the terrible costs to people's lives too - six alcohol deaths per day in Scotland, a reflection of our world-leading rise in cirrhosis.
Alcohol is severely undermining the well-being of Scotland and we should again support a sensible, proportionate, and life-saving public health measure.

Biomass Energy Market in China

2010-05-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/8b3504/biomass_energy_mar) has announced the addition of the "Biomass Energy Market in China" report to their offering.
With an ever increasing importance in energy reservation, there has been rapid development in the Chinese biomass energy market in the past few years. Evidence is mounting that the ass energy industry in China will enjoy promising prospects in the long run.
At present, technology bottlenecks and insufficient grain feedstock supply are two major obstacles for the development of biomass energy products, including liquid biofuel, biopower generation, solid biofuel and biomass gas.
Rapid economic development of China would drive the demand for energy to rise continuously. However, since fossil fuel has already been in short supply, China would vigorously promote the development of biomass energy industry instead. Besides, China boasts abundant biomass resources such as rice/wheat straw, corn cob, etc., which would further advance China's motivation in this field.
To facilitate the sustainable and sound development of biomass energy industry, Chinese government released a series of policies to set medium and long target for each biomass energy product and provide fiscal subsidy for some important products.
To figure out the current situation and prospect of biomass energy and the limitations for future development in China, the report covers the information on feedstock and their production situation, marketing channels, consumption situation, and future forecast etc. Among them, the feedstock supply and current technology of each biomass energy product are especially given an insightful analysis.
Besides, the authors provide you with an insightful analysis on these other questions:

What is the situation of raw material supply and its influence on biomass energy production in China?
Who are key active and potential players in China's biomass energy industry?
What are the key factors affecting each Chinese biomass energy product?
What is the competition situation in Chinese biomass energy industry?
What is the trend of each Chinese biomass energy product in the near future?
How about the policies and incentive for biomass energy industry in China?
Where are the opportunities in the Chinese biomass energy industry?

China's first 8-speed automatic transmission launched

2010-05-11T23:55:00.001-07:00

Shanghai, May 12 (Gasgoo.com) China's first 8-speed automatic transmission, developed by Shengrui Transmission Co., Ltd. (located in Weifang city Shandong province), has been launched to the market.

It is China's first 8-speed automatic transmission, with independent intellectual property rights, and the first FF (Front-engine Front-drive) 8-speed automatic transmission in the world as well.

The automatic transmission, as one of the core automotive powertrain components, is an integration of machinery, electricity, fluid and electronic control and a technology-intensive product, with high added value.

In early 2007, Shengrui Transmission Co. started to cooperate with Chemnitz University of Technology, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and many other units at home and abroad to develop the FF (Front-engine Front-drive) 8-speed automatic transmission that has independent intellectual property rights and has reached the international advanced level.

On an individual enterprise basis, the cooperation started among industries, universities and research institutes, taking advantage of superior resources domestic and overseas.

At present, the prototype of this 8-speed automatic transmission has been completed and tested, with all testing results meeting its design target.

Taiwan Mobile, China Unicom Co-Provide Low Rate Roaming Service

2010-05-11T23:54:00.001-07:00

Taipei, May 12, 2010 (CENS)-Taiwan Mobile Corp. and China Unicom Communications Group Co., Ltd. will jointly launch a mobile roaming service that is advantageous to travelers in Taiwan and mainland China.

The service, according to the companies, will charge the travelers on local-connection basis, not on international-connection basis, which is currently the principle on which mobile-service providers charge roaming-service customers.

The service is estimated to halve the NT$12-13 per minute currently for mobile calls delivered across the Taiwan Straits.

Industry executives expect Taiwan`s other mobile-service providers including Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., Far EasTone Telecom Co., Ltd. and Vibo Telecom Inc. to follow suit soon after the Taiwan Mobile-China Unicom deal.

According to statistics recently released by Tourist Bureau of Taiwan`s Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), last year alone approximately 4.48 million Taiwanese travelled to the mainland and around 970,000 mainland Chinese travelled to Taiwan. The mainland traveler number represented a 195.3% increase from a year earlier.

Taiwan Cement Aims to Rank Among Top-3 Producers in China

2010-05-11T23:53:00.003-07:00

Taipei, May 12, 2010 (CENS)--After acquiring Prosperity International with 400 million Hong Kong dollars, Taiwan Cement has become the largest cement producer in southern China, as well as aiming to expand presence in other parts of China.

Taiwan Cement noted it would increase investments in Sichuan province, southwestern China. The acquisition of Prosperity International results in Taiwan Cement having a cement plant in Chongqing of Sichuan province, which will resume mass production by the end of this year.

In addition, Taiwan Cement has invested 800 million renminbi to set up a cement kiln in Guangan of Sichuan province which is capable of rolling out 45 million tons of cement, with the plant expected to begin mass production sometime in 2011.

C.C. Huang, vice president of Taiwan Cement, said his company will see annual production capacity in China reach 50 million tons in 2012, ahead of schedule.

After acquiring Prosperity International, Taiwan Cement has expanded presence from Southern China to southwestern and northeastern China. For instance, the company has a joint-venture cement plant with Kunming Steel in Yunnan province, in which Taiwan Cement holds 35% stake, that can produce six million tons of cement per year.

The company`s newly established plant in Lianing of northeastern China will begin mass production sometime this month, with annual capacity of two million tons.

Taiwan Cement will have 43 million tons in annual production capacity in China by the end of this year, making the firm a top-3 in China.

7 children killed in latest attack at China school

2010-05-11T23:53:00.001-07:00

BEIJING — An attacker hacked seven children and one teacher to death Wednesday and wounded 20 other people in a rampage at a kindergarten in northwest China, the latest in a string of savage assaults at the country's schools.
The slayings occurred despite a countrywide boost in security at schools, with gates and security cameras installed and additional police and guards posted at entrances.
The attack happened at 8 a.m. (0000 GMT) at a kindergarten in Nanzheng county of Hanzhong city, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It did not give the ages of the victims or say who attacked them.
Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the propaganda department of Hanzhong city, confirmed that seven children and one teacher were killed and that about 20 others had been wounded.
"The murderer killed himself afterward," Liu told The Associated Press. He said he did not have any other information.
A Nanzheng county resident reached by phone said crowds had gathered outside the kindergarten, but information was spotty. He said the assailant was believed to have been a local villager surnamed Wu, aged in his late 40s, who owned the house in which the kindergarten was located.
"I saw him before and he looked quite normal," said the man, who would identify himself only by his surname, Li.
The attack is the fifth major incident at schools and kindergartens since late March, sparking security fears among parents, officials and educators.
In Hanzhong, an industrial city of 3.72 million people, nearly 2,000 police officers and security guards had been detailed to patrol public schools, kindergartens and surrounding areas beginning last week, according to a statement posted on the city government's official website.
Sociologists say the attacks reflect a lack of support for the mentally ill and rising stress resulting from huge social inequalities in China's fast-changing society. Such issues have largely been ignored in state media's reporting on the attacks, which have focused instead on increases in security in an effort to quell public fear and potential unrest.
The assaults began with an attack on a primary school in March in the city of Nanping in Fujian province where eight children were stabbed and slashed to death by a former community clinic doctor with a history of mental health problems.
The man convicted for that crime was executed on April 28, the same day a 33-year-old former teacher broke into a primary school in the southern city of Leizhou in Guangdong province and wounded 15 students and a teacher with a knife.
The following day in Taixing city in Jiangsu province, a 47-year-old unemployed man armed with an 8-inch (20-centimeter) knife wounded 29 kindergarten students — five seriously — plus two teachers and a security guard.
Just hours later, a farmer hit five elementary students with a hammer in the eastern city of Weifang before burning himself to death.
The government has sought to show it has the problem under control, mindful especially of worries among middle-class families who, limited in most cases to one child due to population control policies, invest huge amounts of money and effort to raise their offspring.

India: Muslim representation in Indian Civil Services – An Analysis

2010-05-11T23:51:00.001-07:00

Among 875 selected candidates, this year, 21 are Muslims. Last year, out of 791 selected candidates, 31 were Muslims. Hence, from around 4% in 2009 the Muslims’ selection in the Civil Services Examination, popularly known as IAS exams, has come down to around 2.5%. Only remarkable achievement this year is that the topper is a Muslim, Shah Faesal, coming from Kashmir.

Before Faesal, the IAS topper from the community was Amir Subhani of Bihar in the year 1987. Jawed Usmani of UP was IAS topper in 1977. Syed Shahabuddin, ex-Member of Parliament and, presently, the President of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, was the first Muslim from Bihar to get second rank in civil services exam in 1958. That was then the highest rank a Muslim got since Independence. In 2001 Shahla Nigar, also from Bihar, became the first Muslim woman to get second rank, the highest ever in 50 years for a Muslim woman.

Many of the analysts are observing that since the percentage of Muslim graduates works out to be nearly four per cent, their selection is not much below this ratio. This analysis is based on half-truth, illogical, misleading and totally wrong notions. There is also an attempt to dilute the demand of Muslims' reservation in government services by convincing the people that graduates among them happen to be lower, hence lower representation. Scientifically, until the proportion of non-Muslim graduates is taken into account, a logical analysis cannot be carried out.

According to Sachar Committee Report, the proportion of Muslim graduates, during 2004-05 was 3.4 per cent. Among the 'General Hindus' it was found to be 15.3 per cent, among 'SC/ST Hindus' it was 2.2 per cent, among 'OBC Hindus' it was 4.4 per cent and among 'other minorities' it was 8.9 per cent. In short, roughly 7.7 per cent of non Muslims were found to be graduates as against 3.4 per cent among Muslims. (Page 67, Sachar Committee Report)

We don’t have detailed data on the above social sections. However, one can broadly conclude that this 7.7 per cent of non-Muslim graduates could corner 96 per cent and 97.5 per cent of seats in the Civil Services Examination in the year 2009 and 2010 respectively, leaving 4 per cent and 2.5 per cent for Muslims in the respective years. That means the ratio of success among non-Muslim graduates was more than twelve times of the ratio of graduates among them, whereas, for the Muslims it was almost at par.

Therefore, to analyse the issue of gross under-representation of Muslims in the Civil Services, the whole issue needs to be studied in to-to. Hence, the reasons for under-representation are not only those that meet our eyes!

‘CSIR, DRDO, ISRO labs should help solve India's problems’

2010-05-11T23:50:00.001-07:00

New Delhi: Former President A P J Abdul Kalam today emphasised on collaboration between various research labs of CSIR, DRDO and ISRO to find out solution to the major challenges confronting the country.

Speaking at Technology Day function, organised by Ministry of Science and Technology, Kalam said the country faces a number of challenges including the gap in quality of life in urban and rural areas, poor quality water and dismal healthcare facilities.

He said CSIR has 37 laboratories while DRDO has about 50 labs and the ISRO has a number of labs which need to come together to address the problems.

"Each lab has a technical core competence. They should come together to have an integrated system," he said at the function attended by Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan.

Energy scarcity and poor quality drinking water are among the major problems faced by people in the country, he said.

Chavan said the Technology Day celebration was started in 1998 when India was lagging behind in development of technology. However, the situation has changed and India has achieved a lot in development of technological know-how, he said.

Kalam distributed awards to organisations for successful commercialisation of indigenous technology.

India for international terrorism convention

2010-05-11T23:48:00.001-07:00

UNITED NATIONS: Calling terrorism a global threat to democracy and development, India has called for the early adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT).

"Terrorism poses an extremely serious threat to all states and all societies," Hardeep Singh Puri, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, said Tuesday during a Security Council debate on the work of three committees set up to support efforts to combat terrorism.

Noting "terrorism threatens democracy and democratic values" and "aims to destroy lives and reverse development," he said India has an abiding interest in expeditiously concluding the CCIT.

"The backdrop of the latest terrorism related incidents once again underscore that terrorism is a global threat and requires a coordinated and concerted global response," Puri said.

"An early adoption of CCIT is in the interests of all Member States and would provide impetus to multilateral and collective action to countering international terrorism efforts," he said.

Noting almost, all the elements of the proposed CCIT have passed muster by legal experts, Puri said: "What is required now is the necessary political will to ensure the early adoption of the CCIT."

Reiterating that India will continue to work closely with the counter terrorism mechanisms established by the Security Council, he said it welcomed efforts to use open dialogue as a means to build closer cooperation within the international system.

"What we need is the necessary political will accompanied with concerted and resolute action to effectively combat the scourge of terrorism," Puri said.

"There are deep concerns about the potential nexus between clandestine proliferation and terrorism and the ever-present danger of such weapons or vulnerable nuclear materials falling into the hands of non-state actors," he said adding, "International solidarity and shared determination are absolutely imperative to combat this scourge effectively."

The heads of the three committees set up by the Security Council to support the efforts of Member States to combat terrorism also reported increased cooperation within the past six months among their respective bodies and their expert groups, and voiced the need for the Council's guidance to better coordinate future efforts.

"Cooperation is a crucial element in efforts against the threat of terrorism, in particular in relation to the use of nuclear arms, chemical and biological," said Ambassador Claude Heller of Mexico, in a joint statement on behalf of three panels.

DP World’s $1 Billion India Container Port to Challenge Colombo

2010-05-11T23:47:00.002-07:00

DP World Ltd. said as much as $1 billion may be invested in the first Indian port able to handle the largest container ships as the company tries to challenge Colombo’s grip on India’s maritime trade with Europe and China.

“What we are trying to do is compete in the regional and international market,” Anil Singh, the company’s India head, said in an interview in Mumbai yesterday. “It will change the logistic pattern of the country.”

The new terminal in Kochi, south India, which is due to open in August, will be able to handle the 13,000-container capacity ships commonly used on Asia-to-Europe routes. Presently, these long-haul vessels are unable to stop in India, which forces the nation’s importers and exporters to spend an extra $150 million a year ferrying goods to and from Colombo, Singapore or Dubai, Singh said.

DP World, controlled by Dubai World, spent about 13 billion rupees ($288 million) on the first phase of the new Kochi facility, which will have an initial capacity of 1 million twenty-foot equivalent containers a year, Singh said. The remainder of the investment will cover a second phase, which will add another 3 million boxes of capacity within five years, he said. Container Corp. of India Ltd. is among three other partners in the terminal venture.

London Listing

DP World will pay for its share of the investment using its own funds, Singh said. Financial difficulties at Dubai World have had no impact on expansion plans, he said. DP World, which is preparing to sell shares in London, has risen 12 percent this year in Dubai trading.

The Indian government is also dredging Kochi port and building rail links to help boost traffic, Singh said. The government has also agreed to reduce port fees that are presently more than eight times higher than Colombo’s for larger ships to help boost traffic, he said. These fees are separate from terminal charges.

Kochi aims to lure large container vessels from Colombo, which presently handle as much as 40 percent of India’s transshipment trade, according to Singh. Indian shippers use the Sri Lankan port because of lower costs, deepwater facilities and looser regulations.

Sri Lanka, some 31 kilometers (19 miles) southeast of India, is also boosting its port facilities to tap growing Asia- Europe trade and rising intra-Asia traffic. Colombo is set to build a fourth container terminal, while Hambantota port is also planning to add facilities.

8 Million Containers

DP World already handles almost half of India’s 8 million annual container volume at five ports across the country, Singh said. The company, which has spent about 80 billion rupees in India, is pursuing further projects and expansion plans in the country, he said.

Worldwide, the port operator runs terminals in 31 countries from the U.K. to China. It handled 43.3 million containers at 50 ports last year. The company, now the world’s fourth-largest container terminal operator, began services about 35 years ago with one port. In 2006, it bought Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. for $6.8 billion.

Dubai World, the state-owned holding company that owns 80 percent of DP World, is seeking to restructure as much as $22 billion of debt. The company has said that DP World isn’t a part of its debt restructuring.

China steel ripe for consolidation: ArcelorMittal

2010-05-11T23:47:00.000-07:00

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China's steel industry is ripe for consolidation in coming years, but the process elsewhere has largely run its course, the head of ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, said on Tuesday.
Lakshmi Mittal
The ArcelorMittal chief said he believed China, the world's largest producer, would have companies making an annual 50 to 70 million tonnes in four to five years. China's largest steelmaker Baosteel shipped some 35 million tonnes in 2008.
ArcelorMittal, with some 8% of the world market, shipped 110 million tonnes in 2007 before the economic crisis forced it into production cuts.
Mittal also predicted continuing growth of investment in India, which could lead overall production there to double to some 120 million tonnes.
The World Steel Association has forecast the BRIC countries—the Middle East and Africa—will consume about 60% of steel in 2010 from about 50% in 2007. The developing world made up some 60% of global steel output in 2007.
Mittal said that output in the developed world would recover to pre-crisis levels in about three years, but he did not see major growth in volume afterwards.
Steel operations in North America and Europe would continue to lead product development, making steel lighter, stronger and more environmentally friendly.
Mittal said global trends had reinforced ArcelorMittal's strategy to focus investment on emerging markets as well as to increase its self-sufficiency in iron ore and coal.
The latter has become even more important after a switch to shorter-term pricing by the world's big three iron ore miners — Vale, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.
Mittal said the move from annual contracts meant steelmakers would have to redraw deals with their customers to pass on raw material price changes.
"We are in discussions with our customers that they will have to change their business model too," he said.
told the company's annual shareholders meeting he expected developing countries to make up 70% of global output in four to five years. The developed world would still lead product development.
"Outside China the steel industry is well consolidated. I really do not see major consolidation transactions in the steel industry, albeit there could be smaller opportunities available," Mittal said.

HTC launches Windows-based HTC Mini in India for Rs.23,490

2010-05-11T23:46:00.000-07:00

HTC Corp launched on Tuesday a new touchscreen handset named. HTC Mini in the Indian market. The handset is windows-based and makes use of HTC Sense technology.

“The HTC HD mini fulfils a desire from some customers to bring the capabilities and experience of the HTC HD2 to a more compact design,” said Ajay Sharma, Country Head, HTC India. “The integration of HTC Sense and Windows Phone on HD mini and HD2 gives customers an additional choice for an advanced Windows mobile phone that is sleek, well crafted and easy to use.”

The handset is also positioned around its design and looks including a bright yellow structure under the battery cover which promises to offer surprise when the phone is opened. The phone also has HTC Peep allocation which allows user to Tweet using the mobile phone.

It supports Microsoft Office as well as Adobe PDF.

The model is available for a price of Rs.23,490/.

Pakistan Needs To Do More To Combat Terror: U.S.

2010-05-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

American Ambassador to India Timothy J Roemer has said his country is co-operating at the highest level to provide India access to the accused in the 2008 Mumbai attacks--Pakistan-born naturalilzed American David Headley, alias Dawood Gilani, even as it says Islamabad has to do more to fight terror to ensure that India and America are safe.

"India is an indispensable ally of the U.S...we share information on security issues and work together in places around the globe, like in Afghanistan," he told reporters Tuesday after paying tributes to the 26/11 attack martyrs at Marine Drive in Mumbai.

Asserting that Washington has been providing indirect access to sharing intelligence for months about that acquired information, he said now the door was open and the opportunity existed for New Delhi in the weeks ahead to get direct access in the appropriate way and at the appropriate time to Headley.

"We work together in historic ways on providing access to people like David Headley where the U.S. is co-operating at the highest level to eventually provide access to this person who helped pull off the savagery of the attack on Mumbai on 26/11," he added.

Acknowledging Pakistan's contribution to fight terror, he said Islamabad needed to do a lot more to combat the menace to ensure that India and America were safe.

"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments underscore that while Pakistan has done a lot (to fight terror), it needed to do more to help protect countries like the U.S. and India from terrorist attacks," he said.

Roemer's strong message to Pakistan came a day after Clinton rapped the Islamic country for not revealing enough on Osama bin Laden and just days after she warned Islamabad of "severe consequences" if the May 1 aborted terrorist bomb attack in the Times Square, New York, were to be traced to Pakistan.

On India's concerns over the alleged diversion of U.S. aid to Pakistan to fund terror activities directed at it, Roemer said the Obama administration would ensure that Pakistan used the American aid properly.

On the scheduled meeting of the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in mid-July, he said "it is important that India and Pakistan talk."

Drawing parallels with two policemen who had laid down their lives in the U.S. while protecting those working at the Capitol Hill during an attack and the sacrifice of the Mumbai policemen, Roemer said President Obama asked him to go to Indian financial capital to pay respect to the police officers and men who laid down their lives protecting the city and its people from attack.

Sarosh Homi Kapadia: The new Chief Justice Of India

2010-05-11T23:43:00.001-07:00

The 62-year-old Justice S H Kapadia has been sworn as the Chief Justice Of India by President Pratibha Patil today at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh along with former Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and other VIPs attended the swearing ceremony.

The tenure of Justice Kapadia would continue till September 29, 2012. He is a very knowledgeable man with intense wisdom over various issues. He has also received great compliments for his tax laws knowledge. Huge responsibility awaits the CJI as he has to reduce the pending cases from various high courts and trials.

Justice Kapadia wrote in a letter to V R Krishna Iyer, former Supreme Court Judge as a reply to his congratulatory letter saying, "I come from a poor family. I started my career as a class IV employee and the only asset I possess is integrity. Even as a judge of the Supreme Court, I have used my knowledge of accounts and economics for the welfare of the downtrodden including tribals and workmen. I hope to fulfill my obligation to the Constitution in the matter of achieving the goal of inclusive growth."

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2010-05-11T23:37:00.000-07:00

Thousands of factory workers and owners jointly took out protest rallies, blocked the traffic on Sheikhpura Road and Millat Road and burnt an office of Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (Fesco).

Thousands of textile factories of value-added textile sector observed strike on Tuesday and demanded complete ban on export of yarn and cotton from the country reported by A Pakistan News.
At various places police resorted to baton charge to maintain law and order, and more than two dozen protestors were arrested. The strike was observed by 300 home textile manufacturing units, 450 textile printing mills, 1100 hosiery units, 300 dyeing units, 400 sizing units, 500 stitching units and hundreds of small ancillary unit.
Thousands of workers of these units came out of their factories in Khurrianwala industrial belt carrying black flags and holding banners and placards with slogans like ‘Save the value-added industry’, ‘Save the country’ and ‘Immediate ban on export of yarn and cotton’.
Chanting slogans, the protest rally marched towards Millat Chowk and joined the hosiery workers’ rally. These rallies blocked traffic and burnt tyres. Police restored to baton charge, injuring 10 workers and taking into custody 20 workers. From Millat chowk, the rallies marched towards District Council Chowk where rallies from other parts of the city like Jhang Road, Sammundri Road, Sargodha Road and Jaranwala Road also joined.
At District Council chowk, sit-in and a demonstration were held. Chairman of Pakistan Textile Exporters Association Khurram Mukhtar said that cotton and yarn were the basic and most essential raw material of the value-added sector constituting 40 percent of total input. The value-added textile industry is unable to operate if this basic raw material is not available.

US air campaign in Pakistan zeros in on North Waziristan, Bahadar

2010-05-11T23:33:00.001-07:00

The controversial US air campaign in Pakistan’s tribal areas has continued unabated in 2010, and is on track to exceed the number of strikes carried out in 2009. So far this year, the US has carried out 35 strikes, just 18 shy of the 2009 total. With six and a half months left in 2010, the 2009 total should be surpassed sometime in July at the current pace. The strikes continue to target top leaders of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and allied jihadist groups based in the tribal areas, as well as the jihadist infrastructure and operatives used to carry out attacks against the Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the West.
Some interesting trends have developed since the beginning of 2010. North Waziristan, the hub for the Taliban, al Qaeda and allied jihadists, has become the primary focal point of the attacks. More than half of the strikes have taken place in the tribal areas controlled by North Waziristan Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadar, while attacks against the Haqqani Network’s sanctuaries have decreased. And the strikes continue to hit a wide variety of targets.
North Waziristan is the eye of the storm
The shift in focus from South Waziristan to North Waziristan that began in September 2009 has continued, with 100 percent of the 35 strikes so far this year occurring in North Waziristan. Miramshah has been the most frequently targeted region within North Waziristan, accounting for nearly more than a third of all strikes so far this year, (13 of 35 strikes, or 37 percent). The Datta Khel region, a known haven for al Qaeda's military and command, is second on the targeting list, accounting for a quarter of the strikes (13 of 35 strikes, or 23 percent).
Hafiz Gul Bahadar’s territory is most hit
So far in 2010, more than half of the Predator strikes (19 of 35 Predator strikes, or 54 percent), have hit targets in territory controlled by Hafiz Gul Bahadar, far more than any other Taliban commander. Looking at the last 10 strikes, eight of those have taken place in Bahadar's areas. And the last seven strikes have hit targets in Bahadar's areas. The concentrated focus on Bahadar represents a significant shift in targeting priorities -- prior to 2010, Bahadar's territory had only been targeted four times in the past 5 years. At the end of 2009, the Haqqani Network was the primary focus of US strikes in Pakistan.

January 2010 saw the largest number of strikes since program began in 2004

The 11 strikes in January 2010 represented the highest single-month total in terms of frequency of Predator strikes since the program began in 2004, surpassing the 10 strikes that occurred in October 2008. The strikes were ramped up after a Jordanian al Qaeda operative and double agent carried out a suicide attack at Combat Outpost Chapman in Afghanistan's Khost province in late December 2009. The bomber killed seven CIA officials, including the station chief, and a Jordanian intelligence officer.

After the Dec. 30 suicide attack, the US hunted Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who took shelter in North Waziristan. Hakeemullah appeared with the Jordanian suicide bomber on a martyrdom tape that was released shortly after the attack. Hakeemullah was rumored to have been killed in a strike on Jan. 14, but he later appeared on a videotape that was produced on April 19 and released on May 2, just one day after the failed car bombing in Times Square, New York City. On the tape, Hakeemullah threatened to carry out attacks inside the US.
High Value Targets
Over the past year, 20 top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders and operatives have been killed (between April 1, 2009 and April 1, 2010) by Predator strikes in Pakistan. This accounts for 44 percent of the total High Value Targets confirmed to have been killed since 2004. Among those killed since April 1, 2009 include: Abdullah Said al Libi, the top commander of the Shadow Army; Zuhaib al Zahib, a senior commander in the Shadow Army; Saleh al Somali, the leader of al Qaeda's external network; Qari Mohammad Zafar, a leader of the al Qaeda and Taliban-linked Fedayeen-i-Islam; Mansur al Shami, an al Qaeda ideologue and aide to al Qaeda’s leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu Yazid; Haji Omar Khan, a senior Taliban leader in North Waziristan; Mohammed Haqqani, a military commander in the Haqqani Network and brother of Siraj; and Sheikh Mansoor, an al Qaeda Shadow Army commander [see LWJ report, “Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2010” for the full list of leaders and operatives killed].
Purpose of strikes
Much of the media's reporting on the air campaign continues to focus on the deaths of senior al Qaeda leaders. But the campaign has more than one objective. Certainly the US is targeting al Qaeda's senior leadership in an effort to disrupt the overall command and control of the terror group, but the attacks are also aimed at hitting al Qaeda's external operations network and disrupting the Taliban's operations in both Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
First and foremost, the primary objective of the air campaign has been to disrupt al Qaeda’s external network and prevent the group from striking at the US and her allies. The campaign has targeted camps known to house foreigners as well as trainers and leaders for the network. Al Qaeda operatives known to have lived in the West and holding foreign passports have been killed in several Predator strikes. One such strike on an al Qaeda camp in South Waziristan on Aug. 30, 2008, killed two Canadian passport holders as they trained in the camp. Also, since May 14, 2008, the US has killed three of the leaders of al Qaeda’s external operations branch: Abu Sulayman Jazairi, Osama al Kini, and Saleh al Somali. Other senior operatives involved in a Qaeda’s external operations network have also been killed in the attacks.
Another major objective has been to disrupt the Taliban and al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan. The Taliban in Afghanistan receive significant support from within Pakistan. Taliban groups that are very active against Coalition forces in Afghanistan, such as the Haqqani Network, the Mehsud Taliban, and Mullah Nazir, have flourished in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. The US has targeted both Taliban leaders and fighters during these strikes. The Haqqani Network, for instance, is the most heavily targeted group because it both conducts operations in Afghanistan and harbors al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. Several large Taliban training camps that are known to train fighters for the Afghan front have been the targets of attack. For instance, a training camp in Kurram operated by an Afghan Taliban commander was hit on Feb. 16, 2009. As noted Said al Libi, the top commander of the Shadow Army, and Zuhaib al Zahib, a senior commander in the Shadow Army were killed during a strike in December 2009. The Lashkar al Zil is al Qaeda's military unit that partners with the Taliban on both sides of the border.
Along with targeting al Qaeda's external operations network and the Taliban's Afghan operations in Pakistan, the US has also targeted Pakistani Taliban commanders who threaten the stability of the Pakistani state. The US hunted Baitullah Mehsud for a year before killing him in a strike in early August of 2009. Several of Baitullah's deputies have also been killed this past year. And Hakeemullah was the target of US strikes in January. The US only stopped targeting as it was thought he was killed. The US has an interest in preventing nuclear Pakistan from becoming a failed state and also needs to keep its supply lines open through Pakistan and into Afghanistan. More than 70 percent of the US and NATO supplies travel through Pakistan's northwest.

Pakistan's Privatization Minister to attend 6th WIEF in Malaysia

2010-05-11T23:32:00.003-07:00

Kuala Lumpur : Pakistan's Minister for Privatization, Senator Waqar Ahmad, will represent his Prime Minister, Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, at the 6th World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) here next week.
In a statement here Tuesday, the Pakistan High Commission (embassy) said Pakistan would set up a pavilion at the WIEF exhibition to showcase its products, including mangoes, handicraft, women's garments and traditional jewellery.
It said Pakistan would also be represented in the Businesswomen's Forum and the Young Leaders' Forum.
The two-day WIEF, starting May 19, would focus on forging co-operation among the member states in areas such as tourism, small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs), water management, branding, technology for education, entrepreneurship and business ethics, innovation and Islamic banking.
The forum is expected to be attended by a number of heads of state and government.

Commodities Buzz: Cotton Crisis Sparks Rallies In Pakistan

2010-05-11T23:32:00.001-07:00

Global production of cotton is down due to poor weather in China and the U.S. It has also been hurt as more farmers in the U.S. have switched to crops such as soybeans. China has turned to Pakistan to meet its shortage of yarn. Pakistan yarn producers cut local supply contracts and exported to China, where prices were higher, local textile producers say.
World raw-cotton production is set to fall short of demand in the current crop year that ends July 31. The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects cotton mills to consume 115.9 million cotton bales this year while production will only be 102.9 million bales. This will lead to stockpiles being drawn down and further shortages of cotton and yarn, such as what Pakistan is already suffering.
Thousands of Pakistani textile and garment workers took to the streets Tuesday to call for an immediate ban on yarn and cotton exports, as a global cotton shortage has forced some textile factories into bankruptcy. The industry organizations that called for the rally estimated that 50,000 people protested in Faisalabad, a city in Punjab province, which is the heart of Pakistan's textile industry. In Karachi, a southern port city, 5,000 people rallied. Organizers said they need a two-month government ban on yarn and cotton exports to protect the industry after a poor global harvest of cotton this year led to a shortage for textile and garment makers. A number of Pakistani factories have shut and others are running below capacity after their yarn costs soared by almost 100%, throwing people out of work in a country where poverty levels are already high.
Yarn exports should be immediately banned, said Mohsin Ayub Mirza, a textile manufacturer in Karachi and chairman of the Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporter's Association. He said 20 to 30 big yarn producers in Pakistan were making huge profits by exporting to China, while the local textile industry was suffering. Zafar Mahmood, Pakistan's commerce secretary, declined to comment on the protests or whether the government plans to meet the protestors' demands.
The textile sector is key for Pakistan's economy: It accounts for 55% of the nation's $20 billion in annual exports and employs 17 million people. In Faisalabad alone, 600,000 people are employed in the textile and garment industry. The country's economy is expected to grow between 2% and 3% this year, but that forecast could be unattainable if the textile sector woes continue, economists say. Earlier this year, Pakistan's government imposed temporary export quotas on yarn. But these have failed to stop the shortage, textile producers say.

Kasab's confessional statement presented before Pak Supreme Court

2010-05-11T23:31:00.001-07:00

Islamabad, May 12 (ANI): The confessional statement of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks was presented before the Pakistan Supreme Court.

Khawaja Sultan Ahmed, lawyer for Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, a suspect in the Mumbai terrorist attacks case, presented the statement on Tuesday before a three-member SC bench - comprising Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The apex court bench adjourned the hearing for two weeks after receiving Kasab's statement, which is in English and Hindi.

The court observed that it required time to go through the long confessional statement, the Daily Times reports.

The bench was hearing an appeal filed by Lakhvi, one of the seven suspects being tried by an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi.

In his confessional statement, Kasab named Lakhvi as the ringleader in connection with the Mumbai terror attacks.

Ahmed however argued that Kasab's confessional statement had no legal value in Pakistan.

"The statement was not given in a Pakistani court, so Lakhvi cannot be named as a co-accused in the case or be tried," he said.

US says studying Pak, China nuclear deal

2010-05-11T23:30:00.002-07:00

WASHINGTON—The United States has said it was carefully reviewing China’s plans to build two civilian nuclear reactors in Pakistan, urging all nations to respect non-proliferation commitments. The China National Nuclear Corporation has agreed to finance two more civilian reactors at the Chashma site in Pakistan.
US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said that discussions were underway about the issue and the United States has not “reached a final conclusion.” “But it’s something we’re obviously looking at very carefully,” Steinberg said in response to a question at a forum at the Brookings Institution.
“I think it’s important to scrupulously honor these non-proliferation commitments,” he said. “We’ll want to continue to engage on the question, about whether this is permitted under the understandings of the IAEA.”
Analysts believe that China was emboldened to go ahead with the deal after the United States in 2008 signed a landmark nuclear agreement with Pakistan’s arch-rival India. Pakistan, a frontline state against extremism, has also been pressing the United States for a nuclear deal similar to India’s. US officials have promised to look into it.
The United States says it has identified a group in Pakistan that may be expanding its focus from the region to a more global situation and would want to see Pakistan take steps to eliminate this threat.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said this while replying to a volley of questions about the threats given by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Pakistan and Attorney General in the aftermath of botched Times Square bombing. He said there’s a clear link between what happened in Times Square and Pakistan.
“We’re trying to understand fully what that means. And to the extent that Pakistan is already taking aggressive action against the Pakistan Taliban, we’ll evaluate whether additional steps are warranted”.
To a question, the spokesman said the US government has recognized for some time that we are not immune to the same developments and trends that we’ve seen elsewhere. “There is the potential for homegrown threat. We’ve seen it in this instance and others and we are reacting accordingly”. Mr Crowley said the US has been focused on the extremist threat from South Asia and more specifically from Pakistan for some time. There have been global implications to these groups and individuals that have a link to Pakistan, but this is another manifestation that the threat is not staying there.
He said the as they have seen for some time, the threat has links to the United States. We’ve seen now at least two or three recent attacks that have a clear link to Pakistan and the consequences are felt inthe United States, whether it’s Fort Hood, whether it’s Chicago, and now Times Square.
He said the US is not ignoring the threat in Pakistan. “We’ve been focused on the threat in Pakistan as it remains primarily of a regional issue, and we should always remind ourselves that notwithstanding the near misses that we have seen here or the tragedy that happened at Fort Hood, it is Pakistan itself that probably arguably has suffered the greatest from extremism in the region”.
The spokesman said as they learn more about a group that appears to be broadening its sights and specifically focused on the United States, they draw implications from that and will adjust their strategy going forward and would look to Pakistan to do the same.

US Reacted With Applause On The Advancement Indo-Pak For Dialogue On July

2010-05-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

Reacting to the India and Pakistan’s advancement for further talks on July after the telephonic session between the two nation’s Foreign Ministers SM Krishna and Mahmoud Qureshi respectively, United States appreciated the move on Wednesday.

Highlighting on the session of telephonic round of talks between Quershi and Krishna which headed for a meet on July for a better development into the process of creating stronger ties between the nations, the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, PJ Crowley appreciated, "We always welcome dialogue and better relations between India and Pakistan, they do have some meetings coming up in the near future. We certainly welcome that dialogue.”

The outcome result of the talks entirely depends on both the countries, Crowley sighted, “but the pace, the scope and the character of that dialogue is obviously of the Indian and Pakistani governments to decide.”

Since US shares good relationship with both India and Pakistan, they want that the both the nations to be cooperative in all undertakings that enhances their relations, US assistant secretary highlighted, "We have a strong relationship with India. We have a strong relationship with Pakistan. We have encouraged better relations between the two countries. But the nature of that relationship is ultimately up to them. They are neighbours.”

Hillary’s statement like Indian outbursts

2010-05-11T23:28:00.002-07:00

The United States has also started talking in India’s tone and terror on the issue of terrorism besides hurling identical threats to Pakistan. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has, in a TV interview, threatened Pakistan with ‘very severe consequences’ if any more terror plot like the failed Times Square bombing was traced to its tribal territory. The threat is, of course, not different from New Delhi’s warning of dire results should another Mumbai like incident take place in India. Like Indian outbursts, Hillary’s statement is also totally uncalled for since she has, in the same breath, acknowledged Pakistan’s positive role in the fight against terror. It’s rather provocative in view of Pakistan’s predicaments that it has long endured due to its support to the US military operations in Afghanistan.

Hillary’s statement was backed by US Attorney General Eric Holder. ‘If Pakistan fails to take appropriate action against the Taliban, the US will’, he said. He, however, played down the prospect of a direct US military action in Pakistan by saying that ‘Islamabad has been cooperative with us and we have been satisfied with the work they have done’. There is, however, glaring contradiction in the statements of the Obama administration and US military officials on the issue of accused Faisal Shahzad’s conduct. Gen David Petraeus, chief of the US anti-terror war in Afghanistan and Iraq says that Faisal was the ‘lone wolf’, who was ‘inspired’ by militants in Pakistan but doesn’t have direct contact with them. His view was endorsed by Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. But Attorney General Eric Holder and Chief counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan have taken a totally different stance. Holder firmly said that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan was behind the failed attack. ‘We have now developed evidence that shows the Pakistani Taliban were behind the attack…we know that they helped facilitate it, they helped finance it and that he was working at their direction’, he said.

Interestingly, The New York Times has termed this contradiction as a calculated measure to increase pressure on Pak army to attack the Taliban’s bastion in North Waziristan. It’s evident from the contradictory statements that the incident is being used as a pretext to intimidate Pakistan to make it submit to the persistent US demands for military action in North Waziristan agency that the Pak Army has hitherto hesitated in order to avoid opening of new fronts since the forces are already committed in several areas in the Tribal Areas. It’s disgusting that that the United States has opted to play tricks with Pakistan even after a decade of its unwavered cooperation in its war against terror during which Pakistan has rendered more sacrifices than any other country in the world. The casualties suffered by Pakistan’s military and civilian population are far more than the NATO forces in Afghanistan. It has also committed more troops in the anti-terror war than the combined strength of the NATO forces. Yet it’s being pressured to ‘do more’ in utter disregard to the objective realities.

The truth is that Faisal is not a Pakistani citizen even by descent. He is US citizen and has nothing to do with the Pakistani Taliban. He has never received bomb making training in Waziristan as alleged in the after-thought assertions by the Obama administration officials contrary to Gen Patearus’s categorical statement that he was the ‘lone wolf’ inspired by the terrorists in Pakistan. The ugly aspect of the situation is that Pakistan is being made scapegoat for no rhyme or reason. Hillary Clinton’s threatening tone talk is totally uncalled for. The people of Pakistan have obviously been dismayed at her statement as they had the presumption that she is an ardent supporter of truth. Their presumption has unfortunately been shattered. No one knows better than the US Secretary of State herself that Pakistan itself is the victim of terrorism. It has also amply proven through its conduct over the past decade that it’s opposed to the menace of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.

Islamabad has had enough of the bitter consequence of its support to the US invasion of Afghanistan as well as its war against al-Qaeda in the landlocked country. It has long endured death and destruction at the hands of terrorists, who have not spared even the places of worship and killed Pakistan’s men, women and children mercilessly in the pursuit of their heinous agenda. Pakistan has fought bravely against the terrorists. Its recent military operations in Swat and SouthWaziristan agency have been acknowledged worldwide as its unequivocal commitment to weed out the menace from its soil. Yet the threat of ‘very severe consequences’ in case of an incident like the one at Times Square is simply regrettable. It’s a brazen attempt to focus as if Pakistan is directly involved in the incident with no justification whatsoever. The people of Pakistan don’t mind such outbursts from the India that is yet to reconcile to the existence of Pakistan as a sovereign country, but a statement of this kind from US Secretary of State is totally unwarranted.

It’s rather offensive. Pakistan’s tragedy is that it’s not only being targeted by the terrorists and militants but is also being subjected to unabated drone attacks by the United States resulting in massive civilian casualties. There have been 34 missile strikes so far this year, at least two every week, according to figures compiled by the New America Foundation. This compares to 53 for all of last year and 30 during the last year of the Bush administration. It’s also reported that the size of the drone fleet deployed over Pakistan has been doubled since Obama took office in January 2009. Civilian deaths caused by Western arms are a source of deep anger in Pakistan. Indeed, while claiming that only a handful of civilians have been slain in the missile attacks, US officials acknowledge that the CIA does not know the names of the more than 500 people it admits to have been killed. According to the New America Foundation, of the up to 247 people reported killed in attacks carried out so far in 2010 only seven have been publicly identified as militants.

Pakistan ambassador to Tehran survives attack

2010-05-11T23:28:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN: Pakistan’s ambassador to Tehran was injured and taken to hospital on Tuesday when he was attacked by an Afghan national, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman told state-run television.
“The Pakistan ambassador’s car has been attacked by an Afghan. The ambassador has been injured and he is in hospital. The Afghan national has been arrested,” the spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying. Foreign Office spokesman, Abdul Basit has also confirmed the attack on ambassador to Iran, Mohammad Bakhsh Abbasi and said he is safe. He also quelled rumors that the ambassador’s two guards were killed in the attack, saying that the attacker tried to stab Abbasi, but was stopped by the guards.
However, Tehran police chief said the ambassador was injured in a confrontation. “The ambassador went to a gym several times a week without his bodyguards. This afternoon while he was on his way he had a clash with a 21-year-old Afghan, he was injured on the head and fell,” police chief Hossein Sajedi-Nia told ISNA news agency. “Policemen appeared on the scene after phone calls by people and arrested that person,” he said. “The ambassador is well now and the detained man is being interrogated.”
The ambassador’s nephew Jaffar Abbasi, told Express 24/7 that the diplomat was in the hospital sustained minimal injuries. He also confirmed that Abbasi’s guards were uninjured. He said there were no further details yet, on the motivation of the attack. Abbasi has been a banker prior to his appointment to this diplomatic assignment. He is believed to be close to President Zardari. In the past he was once tipped to be made Governor of the State Bank.

Pakistan frees man held over Karachi airport security scare

2010-05-11T23:27:00.002-07:00

KARACHI — Pakistan police Tuesday released a man who was detained at Karachi airport as he tried to board a plane for the Middle East with batteries and an electrical circuit in his shoes, police said.
Faiz Mohammad, a 30-year-old civil engineer, was held on Sunday when a scanner sounded an alarm as he proceeded towards boarding a Thai Airways flight to Muscat.
Mohammad, who not carrying any explosives, told police his footwear had an inbuilt massage system.
Police and intelligence agencies questioned him extensively before clearing him of trying to commit any terror activity in the plane, Karachi's chief police investigator Niaz Khoso said.
"The joint investigation team extensively questioned and in the end found him innocent," Khoso told AFP. "The man has been released," he said.
"We also engaged our experts and people in the market who confirmed that the shoes he was wearing were for massage comfort and easily available in the market," Khoso said.
He said that as it was the first such incident "it made all of us alarmed."
Karachi's Airport Security Force spokesman Mohammad Munir on Sunday called the discovery of four batteries, a circuit and an on-off button in Mohammad's shoes as "worrying".
Khoso said the detention was not a mock exercise by the airport authorities to check their security efficiency.
"It was certainly not a sort of mock exercise. The problem was just that no passenger in the past had earlier been seen with such shoes," he said.
Mohammad told investigators that he was travelling to Muscat, where he had worked for a construction company, to set up his own business.
Pakistan suffers from chronic violence at the hands of Islamist militants. Bomb attacks across the country have killed 3,300 people since July 2007.
A British man, Richard Reid, tried to blow up a transatlantic jet in December 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes.

United States rules out any cut in aid to Pakistan

2010-05-11T23:27:00.000-07:00

Washington, May 12 (PTI) The US has ruled out any cut in its assistance to Pakistan in view of the recent revelation that Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is responsible for the failed Times Square bomb attempt, as demanded by certain American lawmakers.

"Well, as the Secretary (of State, Hillary Clinton) said in that very interview (to CBS news), we are satisfied with the cooperation that we have received from Pakistan in this investigation," Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P J Crowley said.

"As she said, we have seen a sea change in change of attitudes within Pakistan over the last couple of years, but that we want and expect more from Pakistan going forward," Crowley said.

A day before, Special US Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke too had ruled out that there was any such move to cut the aid to Pakistan.

India-Pakistan Polemics

2010-05-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

The prime ministers of India and Pakistan agreed in Thimphu, Bhutan, recently that the two countries should have foreign minister-level talks, the dates of which are to be worked out through diplomatic channels. India is wary of talks with Pakistan for fear of getting into another Sharm al Sheikh-style trap. New Delhi, meanwhile, doesn’t see any utility in carrying on with the so-called composite dialogue process under which the two sides have been holding talks on eight specific issues for well over a decade. Islamabad, on the other hand, wants business as usual.
Pakistan made known its penchant for the composite dialogue process when Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi addressed the National Assembly on May 4. He said Pakistan had returned to its ‘historical’ stand on Kashmir and that the dialogue with India will not be referred to as a ‘composite dialogue’ but will henceforth be a ‘comprehensive dialogue’ as Pakistan had originally wanted it to be called. Though he said one should not worry too much about changes in nomenclature as long as such changes don’t indicate a turnaround in Pakistan’s foreign policy, he hastened to add that the eight points specified in the previous format would continue to be addressed as before. He also once again referred to Kashmir as the core issue that needs to be addressed in such a way that the people of the state are included in the peace process, whatever the mutually agreed format.
To those that don’t follow India-Pakistan relations on a day-to-day basis, this all just means that the two sides are continuing to put their shoes on the wrong foot. India has never agreed to a tripartite format of talks (India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir). India’s consistent stand—and a government in New Delhi reverses this trend at its own peril—has been that Kashmir is a bilateral dispute and so there’s no scope for a third party’s involvement.

Prince Of Persia The Forgotten Sands 2010 Official Soundtracks Listen Online Hot And Exclusive

2010-05-04T13:41:00.001-07:00

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is an upcoming multiplatform videogame developed by Ubisoftdue for release on May 18, 2010, in North America and May 20 in Europe.The game is a latest installment in the Prince of Persia series, and will mark a return to the storyline started by Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The Wii and PSP versions are being developed by Ubisoft Quebec; the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows are being handled by Ubisoft Montreal with the help of Ubisoft Singapore, while the DS version is being made at Casablanca.

Listen The Prince Of Persia The Forgotten Sands Soundtracks Below

1 Garden

2 Camros

3 Zahrah's Sacrifice

4 Sacred Ascent

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Microsoft's Dream.Build.Play 2010 winners announced

2010-05-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

Dream.Build.Play is a competition where semi-pro and indy game developers are asked to create innovative video games for Xbox 360 using XNA Game Studio. This year the four winners got their piece of $75,000 in cash as well as the opportunity for their game to show up on XBLA.
Microsoft says that there were over 350 games submitted from 110 countries for this year's contest. Only four won:

Nicolas Daures, France, won $40k for Lumi, a 2D action/puzzler
Nenin Ananbanchachai, Thailand, won $20k for A.R.E.S, a 2.5D run-and-gunner
Yoichi Hayashi, Japan, won $10 for Prismatic Solid, a rail shooter
Norman and Steven Hunt, UK, won $5k for Beat Hazard, a twin-stick shooter

If you take the time to watch the gameplay footage (above and below the jump) from all the winners, I'm sure you'll be impressed. The first place entrant, Lumi, as seen above, looks great. Killer art and music. I'm more into 3rd place pew-happy Prismatic Solid, though.
As a bonus this year, Old Spice teamed up to offer up a prize called the Old Spice Challenge. The community voted, and the winner is an action-adventure called Newton vs. The Horde. Graham Stewart and his dev team take home $60,000 for the win. To celebrate, they're giving away copies of the game to the first 8,000 people that visit the Old Spice page on Xbox Live.
Congrats to all the winners. I'm looking forward to playing all of these!

Video Games | Beat Hazard | Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Bill Gates on Microsoft’s Pen-based Tablet Projects, Steve Jobs and iPad

2010-05-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

Now things are taking a U-turn again, or sort of anyway. If you thought that Microsoft has buried the Courier project somewhere in their labs, you might be wrong, as it now looks like that some parts of that ambitious Courier project may return in the upcoming Tablets from Microsoft. Recently, Bill Gates in an interview said that Microsoft is working on Tablets which would use a pen-based input method (as opposed to finger-only mechanism in Apple iPad) which would go mainstream in students.

Now whether Courier is born again, or if it will be now used as a reference for the future devices is yet to be seen. But if these words of Bill Gates are anything to go by, we might see some of it in action soon.

Microsoft has a lot of different tablet projects that we’re pursuing. We think that work with the pen that Microsoft pioneered will become a mainstream for students. It can give you a device that you can not only read, but also create documents at the same time.

Bill Gates also praised Steve Jobs and Apple on their successful Tablet attempt – the iPad:

Buffett: “Steve Jobs has done a terrific job. And there will be companies that excel. And occasionally they will excel because of luck, but usually they excel because of brains.”
Gates: ‘Yes, I think both in general and in the specific, Apple’s done a great job.”

If anything, this statement of Gates proves that Microsoft didn’t ditch out the Courier entirely. The emphasis on a pen-based input for Tablets to create documents does relate to the Courier in one way or the other, see our previous post here on the Courier and you’ll know what we’re talking about. Now it makes us wonder, what will the Tablet look like? Is it the Courier after all? Was killing the Courier project part of plan to cover up for something which Microsoft has been working on for ages, and Gates just blurt it out? We can’t say for sure, but Bill Gates’ statement does point out to something cool which Microsoft is working on, and we can’t wait to see what it is. And of course the biggest question of all is: will it be good enough to compete with the iPad?.

Google's Browser Trumps Microsoft's

2010-05-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

Chrome's increase in market share was nearly equal to security-prone Internet Explorer's drop in usage share, according to NetApplications

May 04, 2010 | 03:58 PM

Google's Chrome Web browser continued to gain market share in April, grabbing most of the increase at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, a monthly report released Monday showed.
As of the end of April, Chrome was used by 6.73% of the people visiting the 40,000 Web sites monitored by NetApplications for its customers. The number marked an increase 0.6% from March.
Chrome's increase was nearly equal to Internet Explorer's drop in usage share, which fell 0.7% month-to-month to 59.95%. It was the first time NetApplications had shown IE falling below 60%.
Chrome's usage share has grown steadily since its release in December 2008, according to NetApplications. IE, on the other hand, has been losing share for years, mostly because of security problems and a failure to keep up with the competition.
However, Microsoft is not ready to give up the browser battle. The company last month released a preview of Internet Explorer 9 at the MIX10 conference in Las Vegas.
At the time, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer at Microsoft, characterized IE9 as "the first browser to take standard Web patterns that developers use and run them better on modern PCs through Windows."
Among the many new elements supported in IE9 includes HTML5, the evolving next-generation standard for Web pages, including CSS3, Scalable Vector Graphics, XHTML parsing, and tags for H.264/MPEG4 and MP3/AAC codecs. The browser also includes support for hardware acceleration to speed up the rendering of graphics and text.
In the latest NetApplications usage share, Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari each saw a gain of 0.07%, rising to 24.59% and 4.72%, respectively. Opera fell by an equal amount to 2.30%.

Asian countries ahead in green investment

2010-05-04T13:11:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK, May 4 (UPI) -- Asian nations -- particularly China and South Korea -- are ahead of other major world economies when it comes to the "green" investment portion of economic and employment recovery plans, says a new book co-published by the United Nations.

In his book, "A Global Green New Deal: Rethinking the Economic Recovery," Edward Barbier, a leading economist and consultant to the U.N. Environmental Program's Global Green New Deal/Green Economy Initiative, urges Group of 20 countries to unite to promote a sustainable global economic recovery.

"Without a long-term vision on how to further catalyze and embed the environment within the economy, Barbier said in a release, "there is a real danger that many of the G20's green stimuli will wither and simply go to waste."

When the UNEP launched its Green New Deal policy brief during its annual gathering of environment ministers in February 2009 it recommended that each country spend 1 percent of gross domestic product on green initiatives.

With the exception of several Asian economies, U.N. Undersecretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, "there remains a gap between ambition and action."

China and South Korea each spend 3 percent of GDP on environmental sectors, Barbier's book reports. That compares with the United States' green stimulus, which accounts for 0.7 percent of GDP and the European Union, which represents 0.2 percent of GDP.

"The problems of energy insecurity, climate change, environmental degradation and global poverty will only worsen if we fail to green our current global economic recovery efforts," warns Barbier, an economics professor at the University of Wyoming.

Barbier notes in the book that China, the world's second biggest energy consumer, spent more than one-third of its stimulus package -- 3 percent of GDP -- on initiatives such as high-speed rail systems as well as boosting the country's already-accelerating growth in wind and solar power and energy-efficient lighting.

China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

With a renewable energy sector valued at $17 billion, China is the leading global producer of solar cells, wind turbines and solar water heaters, employing nearly 1 million people.

As for South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest energy consumer and polluter, it is allocating 95 percent of its fiscal stimulus -- also 3 percent of GDP -- for environmental sectors, including low-emission vehicles.

When opening a global environment summit in Seoul last month, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak cited the $19.8 million restoration of South Korea's four major rivers as a "representative" Green New Deal project aimed both at protecting the environment and fostering economic growth.

Puducherry bags pride of place at Shanghai expo

2010-05-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

The Puducherry Pavilion at World Expo 2010 Shanghai. Photo: Special Arangement

Exhibits its unique urban initiatives at a separate pavilion

Puducherry is now part of a major innovation at the ongoing World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

For the first time in the history of the World Expo, besides the national pavilions, select cities across the world are being showcased for their best practices that could offer solution to some of the pressing urban issues. Puducherry is one of the 32 cities to exhibit its unique urban initiatives and has a separate pavilion in the Urban Best Practices Area (UBPA). The other Indian city to share the honours is Ahmedabad.

Based on the recommendations of the World Bank, the Shanghai Expo Committee invited the Puducherry Municipality to exhibit its Asia Urbs integrated program for urban environmental management and heritage preservation.

Heritage conservation

Between 2002 and 2004, the Puducherry government, along with INTACH Puducherry, implemented the Asia Urbs Programme to improve the quality of life in the old city through heritage conservation.

Many buildings were restored through a matching grant scheme that shared as much as half the costs of the project. A participatory conservation practice was also initiated and important public spaces in the city were taken up for improvement.

European Union provided a grant of Euro 700,000 and two European cities, Urbino (Italy) and Villeneuve-sur-Lot (France), partnered in this project.

Inspiring example

Ajit Koujalgi, INTACH Coordinator, in an e-mail interview from Shanghai told The Hindu that the programme implemented in Puducherry could serve as an inspiring example to many historic cities in the developing world that were struggling to save their heritage.

“Panels and video screens in the pavilion display salient features of the projects and a small shop and a cafe bring Puducherry closer to the visitors — to taste, feel and take home.

The main message of the Puducherry pavilion is that the heritage preservation requires the participation of building owners, civil society and serious commitment from governments to provide financial assistance and enact legislation to protect heritage buildings and precincts,” Mr. Koujalgi said.

Components shipped

The Department of Tourism, Puducherry, took up the pavilion project and it was built by a Chinese contractor in Shanghai based on the designs provided. Some of the components for the pavilion were shipped from Puducherry. The INTACH Puducherry Chapter acted as the facilitator.

The Shanghai World Expo was inaugurated on April 30 and will be open to public till October 31. The Puducherry pavilion is in Case Joint Pavilion 1, UBPA Section.

Made in China: Cyber-spying system, with focus on India

2010-05-04T13:06:00.001-07:00

NEW DELHI: Reports of a China-based cyber spy network targetting the Indian military and the consequent alert sounded by Army authorities may be only the tip of the iceberg -- investigations have revealed a fully dedicated India-specific espionage system aimed at business, diplomatic, strategic and academic interests.

The detailed research and investigations carried out by Canada-based authors of the report 'Shadows in the Cloud' and experts from India's NTRO have pointed to a command and control system that used free web-hosting services and social networking sites like Twitter, Baidu blogs and Google. These accounts were manipulated by a "core" of servers based in Chengdu in China.

The report, released in early April, received fairly wide publicity but its fuller implications are only now beginning to sink in. The largely India-centric cyber warfare system is described as "son of ghost net", an allusion to a Chinese effort to infiltrate the Tibetan exile community. The current investigations also began in Dharamshala but revealed a larger intent linked to an underground hacking community in Chengdu.

An email used in ghostnet turned up in the Shadows probe as well and is identified as losttemp33@hotmail and was associated with Xfocus and Isbase, two popular Chinese hacking forums and possibly was a student of master hackers Glacier and Sunwear. The individual is believed to have studied at University of Electronic Science and Technology at Chengdu in Sichuan.

The Canadian team used a domain name system (DNS) sinkhole to turn IP addresses into domain names by grabbing suspect servers abandoned after ghostnet investigations. The list of compromised Indian computers is disturbing: machines at Indian missions at Kabul, Moscow, Dubai, Abuja, US, Serbia, Belgium, Germany, Cyprus, UK and Zimbabwe were infected.

A machine at the National Security Council Secretariat was tapped as were computers at military engineering services at Kolkata, Bangalore and Jalandhar. Computers linked to the 21 Mountain Artillery Brigade, the Air Force Station at Race Course Road opposite the PM's residence, the Army Institute of Technology at Pune and Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering at Secunderabad were also compromised.

Thinktanks such as the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and publications like India Strategic and FORCE were also targeted as were corporations like DLF Limited, Tata and YKK India. Computers at the National Maritime Foundation and Gujarat Chemical Port Terminal Compnay were also hit.

On-ground investigations at Dharamshala, where the Tibetan exile community is headquartered, showed that computers were beaconing with server 'jdusnemsaz' in Chongqing in China. Interestingly, while Chengdu has a military research bureau, Chongqing is host to several triads -- criminal networks with connections to the Chinese government and Communist Party.

In a lucky break, the Canadian team was able to recover data being removed by attackers and discovered a list of compromised computers. Registering and monitoring four of the domain names revealed by the earlier ghostnet probe, they reached those used in the shadows network like www.assam2008.net, aaa.msnxy,net, sysroots.net, www.lookbyturns.com and www.macfeeresponse.org.

The investigations showed that the infected email or social networking accounts were infiltrated with malware which then allowed the compromised computer to receive more sophisticated software through attachments. All through, there was a core of master servers based in China that kept a close check on infiltration of computers and transfer of all sorts of documents from personal details to missile analysis to safe drop zones.

China, India expected to sign more long-term uranium contracts: Cameco CEO

2010-05-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

FILE-- Cameco CEO and President Jerry Grandey gestures in Saskatoon, Sask. in this May 16, 2007 photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Geoff Howe"

China and India are expected to begin signing more long-term contracts for uranium to supply their rapidly growing nuclear power industries, creating huge opportunities for suppliers like Cameco Corp., says the uranium giant's CEO.

"The ever-increasing projections regarding the size and scope of nuclear power generation in China and India are driving the global nuclear renaissance and will create great opportunities for suppliers," Jerry Grandey said Tuesday on a conference call with analysts.

"We expect these countries like others will sign long-term contracts for future needs. This of course includes China which so far has not been very active in the long-term market."

Uranium, like many commodities, is sold through both negotiated long-term contracts as well as on shorter-term spot markets. Grandey acknowledged that weak spot prices have characterized the uranium market for months, but said he doesn't expect this to last for long.

The weak prices — which fell to US$41.75 a pound in April from a high of $136 a pound in June 2007 — reflect the fact that most utility companies have already secured uranium for the next few years. However, with 90 new reactors forecast to come online in the next decade, demand is expected to soar.

"In today's nuclear power market, utilities like to see spot market bargains, but their main goal is to seek security of uranium supply and that comes through long-term contracts," Grandey said.

"In Europe and the U.S., where nuclear power development has been on a long hiatus, things are changing. There and elsewhere, nuclear power is increasingly seen as the right answer to supply an energy-hungry world while at the same time reducing energy's carbon footprint."

Besides traditional markets like Europe and the U.S. and rapidly developing markets like China and India, Grandey said he also sees supply opportunities in countries like Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Kuwait.

Cameco is aiming to double its uranium production by 2018 to meet this burgeoning demand. Grandey said the troubled Cigar Lake project — of which it owns half — will be the most important asset to the company's long-term production plans.

The Saskatchewan mine sat flooded for three years while Cameco worked to find the source of the water and seal it off. Crews were able to successfully enter the mine in February and are now inspecting, assessing and securing the underground development. This will be followed by restoration of the mine's infrastructure.

Cameco expects Cigar Lake to begin producing in 2013 and then ramp up to annual production of 18 million tonnes a year over three to four years.

"While there's been an understandable focus on the increased development and operating costs projected for this deposit, let me be clear: Cigar Lake remains a robust project that has an attractive net present value to Cameco and its partners, not to mention significant upside potential. If we didn't own it, we'd be trying to acquire it," Grandey said.

The company is also working on several other exploration and development projects, including the Kintyre project in Australia, Inkai in Kazakhstan and Millennium in Saskatchewan.

Earlier Tuesday, Saskatoon-based Cameco reported a first-quarter profit of $142 million, up from $82 million in the same period a year earlier, even as uranium prices and sales volumes declined.

The company said its earnings amounted to 36 cents per share, versus 22 cents per share in the year-earlier period. Quarterly earnings benefited from a $31-million after-tax gain on unrealized mark-to-market gains on financial instruments, whereas Cameco had posted a similar loss of $24 million in the comparable period of 2009.

Stripping out the impact of one-time items, Cameco's adjusted earnings rose eight per cent to $111 million or 28 cents per share, driven by higher profits from its fuel services and electricity businesses. Revenues declined two per cent to $485 million in the quarter.

Cameco said its uranium production volume rose 27 per cent to 6.1 million pounds but sales volume dropped seven per cent to 6.6 million pounds while the average spot price fell six per cent to US$41.79.

Cameco is one of the world's largest uranium producers, with uranium mines, mills, conversion plants and exploration projects in Saskatchewan, Ontario, the United States and Australia. Cameco is also a key partner in the Bruce Power nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Huron in southwestern Ontario.

Shares in the company added 21 cents to $24.99 in afternoon trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

China Takes Special Measures For Expo IPR

2010-05-04T13:04:00.001-07:00

Gan Shaoning, the deputy director of the China's State Intellectual Property Office, has disclosed to the media that SIPO will provide two relief channels for intellectual property protection for the World Expo 2010.
According to Gan, the first relief channel is judiciary relief, which is to protect the intellectual property rights of the World Expo through civil or criminal litigation, and the second is administrative relief which means that the copyright departments will protect the intellectual property of the World Expo according to the relevant laws.
It is said that eight Chinese departments including SIPO, the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the National Copyright Administration of China, have jointly released a circular on the special campaign for the protection of the intellectual property of World Expo 2010. To make sure the circular is obeyed in full, the General Administration of Press and Publication and SIPO have issued another document asking for a rapid response system to be set up for the protection of intellectual property rights relating to the World Expo.

Commodities Plunge on Concern for China Growth, European Debt

2010-05-04T13:00:00.000-07:00

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- Commodity prices plunged the most in two months as slowing Chinese manufacturing and budget gaps in Europe spurred speculation that the global economic recovery will slow, curbing demand for raw materials.

The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials fell 2.3 percent to 271.65 as of 2:38 p.m. in New York, heading for the biggest slide since Feb. 4. Nickel, silver, gasoline and aluminum led the declines. Crude oil dropped the most in three months and copper fell to the lowest price in nine weeks.

Manufacturing in China, the world’s biggest metals user and second-largest consumer of energy, fell to a six-month low, an industry report showed today. U.S. equities dropped the most since February on concern that Europe’s debt crisis will spread beyond Greece and derail growth.

“The two issues causing concern are China and Europe,” said Brian Hicks, who helps manage about $1.5 billion at U.S. Global Advisors in San Antonio. “These events are shocking the commodity markets. People are fleeing from risk and looking to get to the sidelines.”

A surging dollar also eroded demand from investors who buy commodities as an alternative. The greenback rose as much as 1.2 percent against a basket of six currencies and reached a one- year high against the euro.

“Most of the commodities are down today because of the strength in the dollar,” said Bruno Lima, a risk-management consultant at FCStone in Campinas, Brazil. “The Greece factor is weighing heavily.”

Nickel plunged as much as 7.2 percent on the London Metal Exchange, leading today’s declines. After gaining 42 percent in the year through yesterday, the biggest gain among commodities tracked by the CRB, the metal is poised to decline as world supplies climb at the fastest pace in a decade.

Fourteen of the 19 raw materials tracked by the index dropped today. Wheat posted the biggest gains, rising as much as 1.2 percent, on speculation unusually cold weather may damage crops.

--With assistance by Anna Stablum in London and Glenys Sim in Singapore. Editors: Steve Stroth, Michael Arndt.

METALS-China, debt worries push copper to 2-month low

2010-05-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

 * China raises bank reserve requirements again

 * Lead, zinc, nickel fall more than 6 percent

 * Fears over Greek debt contagion linger

 * Coming up: U.S. April nonfarm payrolls on Friday
 (Recasts, add comments, closing prices, adds NEW YORK to
dateline, second byline)

 By Frank Tang and Pratima Desai

 NEW YORK/LONDON, May 4 (Reuters) - Copper tumbled to two-month
lows under $7,000 a tonne on Tuesday as China's monetary
tightening sparked demand fears and a global equities sell-off
prompted investors to dump industrial metals due to liquidity
concerns.

 Sister metals zinc and lead hit multi-month lows, falling more
than 6 percent, against the backdrop of the fall in copper and
rising London Metal Exchange inventories. Nickel also sank more
than 6 percent as stocks increased.

 The S&P 500 .SPX index fell 2.5 percent.

 "You have the belt tightening in China and it looks like this
is going to continue as concerns about their property bubble are
developing elsewhere," said Sterling Smith, a senior analyst at
Minnesota-based brokerage Country Hedging Inc.

 "China is one of the main drivers of keeping copper prices up
where they are. If the Chinese are not buying, you're going to be
able to build surplus very quickly, prices are going to be
vulnerable to downside moves."

 Earlier this week, China -- the world's largest copper
consumer -- raised the proportion of deposits that lenders must
keep in reserve at the central bank, another step in its
months-old campaign to remove excess cash from the economy at a
time when inflation is on the rise. [ID:nTOE64100Q]

 Benchmark copper CMCU3 on the London Metal Exchange closed
at $7,030 a tonne in kerb trading from $7,430 on Friday, having
earlier touched $6,998, its lowest since Feb. 25.

 Copper posted its biggest one-day percentage fall -- about 5
percent -- since June 23, 2009, on the LME's electronic trading
system Select MCU3=LX. It has also broken through the 100-day
moving average of $7,330.

 The euro tumbled to a one-year low against the dollar on
Tuesday on fears aid for Greece may not prevent debt crises in
other euro zone countries. A stronger dollar makes dollar-priced
metals costly for non-U.S. buyers. [USD/]

 "People are very scared about the impact of potential
contagion from Greece. If it's inflationary, commodities should go
up (but) at the moment, the deflation camp is winning the
argument," said Lars Steffensen, managing director at UK fund
Ebullio.

 Data out overnight showed HSBC's China Purchasing Managers'
Index (PMI) dropped in April to a six-month low of 55.4 from 57.0
in March as output, putting further pressure on copper.
[ID:nBJL002020]

 "Copper is still up 100 pct year on year, if we are heading
into a period with tighter monetary policy in China then we might
see some further corrections," said Martin Vorgod, a trader at
Danske Bank.

 On Tuesday, July copper's relative strength index (RSI) on a
14-day basis fell below 30, traditionally seen as oversold,
technical analysts said.

 U.S. July copper futures HGN0 settled down 11.50 cents, or
3.5 percent, at $3.1785 an ounce.

 STRONG WAREHOUSE DATA

 On the plus side, there is a longer-term trend of falling
stocks in LME warehouses for some metals. Copper stocks are down
more than 58,000 tonnes since the middle of February to 496,975
tonnes, while aluminum stocks are down 111,200 tonnes since
hitting a record high above 4.640 million tonnes on Jan. 21.

 Aluminum CMAL3, used in transport and packaging, ended at
$2,165 a tonne from $2,255 a tonne on Friday and zinc CMZN3 at
$2,148 a tonne from $2,282. Earlier zinc hit $2,141, a level not
seen since late February.

 Zinc prices are under pressure from rising stocks, which at
559,475 tonnes are the highest since August 2005.

 Battery material lead CMPB3 ended at $2,060 a tonne in kerb
trading from $2,230 on Friday, having earlier hit $2,067.25 on
Select, its lowest since late March.

 Tin CMSN3 ended at $17,850 a tonne from $18,200 and
stainless steel material nickel CMNI3 ended at $24,650 from
$26,300, having earlier hit $24,500, it's lowest since early
April.
Metal Prices at 2:09 p.m. EDT (1809 GMT)
 Metal            Last      Change  Pct Move   End 2009   Ytd Pct

                                                         move
 COMEX Cu       316.90      -10.95     -3.34     334.65     -5.30
 LME Alum      2165.00      -90.00     -3.99    2230.00     -2.91
 LME Cu        7015.00     -415.00     -5.59    7375.00     -4.88
 LME Lead      2055.00     -175.00     -7.85    2432.00    -15.50
 LME Nickel   24350.00    -1950.00     -7.41   18525.00     31.44
 LME Tin      17650.00     -550.00     -3.02   16950.00      4.13
 LME Zinc      2130.00     -152.00     -6.66    2560.00    -16.80
 SHFE Alu     16085.00     -125.00     -0.77   17160.00     -6.26
 SHFE Cu*     58080.00     -570.00     -0.97   59900.00     -3.04
 SHFE Zin     18060.00     -305.00     -1.66   21195.00    -14.79
** 1st contract month for COMEX copper
* 3rd contract month for SHFE AL, CU and ZN
SHFE ZN began trading on 26/3/07
 (Additional reporting by Marcy Nicholson in New York and Maytaal
Angel in London)

China must seek NSG exception, says U.S.

2010-05-04T12:57:00.001-07:00

China will first have to seek an exception from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) before it can go ahead with its plan to export two nuclear power reactors to Pakistan, a top United States official has said.

China last month announced it would set up two civilian nuclear power reactors in Pakistan. The deal has triggered debate in India and the U.S. on nuclear proliferation, as the NSG guidelines disallow the transfer of nuclear equipment to countries who have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

While the Chinese government has insisted its agreement with Pakistan followed international guidelines, U.S. Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake said on Tuesday the U.S. government's position was the deal could not go ahead unless China first obtained an exception from the NSG. “I would just say that we are aware of those reports [of the deal] and to the extent that China does want to try to provide additional reactors to Pakistan, that would require an exception of the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” he said in Beijing, when asked about the deal. “So it would be important that China seek the exception from the NSG.”

He added: “I don't want to prejudge what the outcome of such a discussion would be, but I think that is our position.”

Beijing, however, maintained that the deal “respected international obligations”, Asked by The Hindu if China would seek an exemption, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “In recent years, China and Pakistan have been cooperating in the field of civilian use nuclear energy. This cooperation respects international obligations, for peaceful purposes, and accepts the International Atomic Energy Agency's regulation and supervision.”

China's largest operator of nuclear power plants, the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), revealed last month that China and Pakistan had signed a $2.375-billion agreement for two 340 MW power reactors. The CNNC has already set up two nuclear power reactors in Pakistan — the 325 MW Chashma-1, which became operational in 2000, and Chashma-2 which will go online next year.

Chinese officials and analysts have argued that the deal for Chashma-3 and Chashma-4 was part of the earlier agreement for C-1 and C-2, which the NSG had granted exception to. But this position has been questioned by officials and analysts in India and the U.S., who say the deal for C-3 and C-4 was not included in China's declaration of its nuclear commitments to the NSG in 2004.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday did not answer questions from The Hindu on whether China had indeed earlier notified the NSG of the deal for C-3 and C-4, or if it had now sought an exception. The NSG's guidelines prevent the sale and transfer of nuclear equipment to countries who have not signed the NPT and do not have a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA. India was granted a special waiver to this requirement for the civilian nuclear deal with the U.S.

Are fears of China’s overheating overdone?

2010-05-04T12:55:00.001-07:00

Much of the commentary following China’s announcement of an11.9 per cent GDP growth rate for the first quarter of this year has dwelt on the spectre of dangerous overheating. However, alternative readings support the thesis that a cooling process is already underway.
A China Confidential survey of 50 auto dealerships in more than 10 cities across the country shows that new vehicle orders, especially for smaller models with less than 1.6 litres in capacity, were down considerably in the first half of April from the 71.78 per cent year-on-year sales growth recorded in the first three months.
The cooling of the auto market, if it persists for several months, would have a palpable effect on the wider economy because the extraordinary car bonanza of 2009 – when 13.6m vehicles were sold, outpacing the US – was a key catalyst of China’s rebound from the financial crisis. Inventory at dealerships in several parts of the country is now mounting as pent-up demand from last year dissipates and the effects of a tax hike on vehicles smaller than 1.6 litres take their toll, several dealers said.
Incipient trends in the real estate market also challenge the sense of a bubble that is wobbling before it pops. Data compiled from the filings of city land bureaux showed that residential property prices were mixed in different cities in the first half of April, while transaction volumes have moderated in the second half of the month in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Such evidence contrasts with the news that home prices rose 11.7 per cent in March, their highest monthly year on year rise since records began in 2005, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Meanwhile, land prices – a barometer of the enthusiasm of developers for future projects – fell 31 per cent in 70 cities in March over February, according to the China Land Surveying and Planning Institute. Beijing, however, remains keen on cooling the market further, announcing this month that it will boost the area of land supplied for residential development or redevelopment this year to 180,000 hectares, up 135 per cent from last year.
The biggest source of concern for bears such as Jim Chanos, a US hedge fund manager who declared at the start of this year that China was “Dubai times 1,000”, has been the pace of new lending by Chinese banks. Not only has this pace eased from the frenetic levels of 2009, but real constraints on credit expansion loom.
The first of these is that the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) appears set for now on enforcing a de-facto capital adequacy ratio (CAR) of 11.5 per cent, forcing the “big three” state-owned banks to seek upto around Rmb270bn from capital markets this year, while other smaller banks are likely to try and raise roughly a further Rmb300bn. Without these infusions to their capital bases, banks may slip below the CAR requirement and be constrained from lending. Yet it is far from certain that capital markets can satisfy such a high demand for capital this year.
Another credit constraint comes in the form of deposits. With the one-year benchmark 2.25 per cent deposit rate falling below consumer price inflation for two consecutive months, deposit growth is decelerating, prompting concerns that Chinese banks may start to risk losing a safe level of deposit cover for their lending.
These constraints make it unlikely that China will see anything approaching a repeat of 2009’s Rmb9,600bn splurge in lending. In fact, if the CBRC maintains its currently stringent attitudes, new loans may fail to reach the consensus forecast of between Rmb7,000bn and Rmb7,500bn in this year. In March, local currency loans were Rmb511bn, down sharply from Rmb700bn in February and Rmb1,400bn in January.
Inflation remains a source of overheating concerns, but here too the prices of consumer goods show a somewhat moderating trend. The consumer price index, a leading measure of inflation, rose 2.4 per cent year on year in March but the all-important month-on-month reading fell back 0.7 per cent in March compared to February.
The respite here may be only temporary, however, as rising producer prices convince many analysts that inflation has become structural in nature and may well stage a resurgence later this year. The producer price index, an indicator of industrial input prices, rose 5.9 per cent year on year in March, up 0.5 per cent month on month.
Though it is too early to call time on Beijing’s battle to tame its hot economy this year and forestall overheating, several trends suggest that the outlook for the second quarter is one in which cooling forms the dominant direction. This does not mean that the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, will avoid raising interest rates during the quarter but it does suggest that any monetary tightening that takes place may be rather mild in nature.

China Shifts to High Gear to Tighten Campus Security

2010-05-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

China's central and local governments have shifted to high gear in a campus security clampdown after a string of school and kindergarten attacks.
Campus safety will be a critical factor in assessing the work of local governments administered by central China's Hubei Province. The government's achievements will be nullified if any serious campus security breach occurs, said Yang Song, deputy head of the provincial committee of comprehensive management of public security, Monday in a telephone conference.
The province will hold government officials and school management accountable for any campus security breach and would enforce stern punishments, Yang added.
Hubei is among 18 provinces, regions and municipalities that have made similar pledges.
Provincial-level officials of north China's Hebei and Shanxi provinces on Monday inspected the security work of primary schools and kindergartens in provincial capitals of Shijiazhuang and Taiyuan cities, urging strict enforcement of campus security requirements.
The education authorities of 14 provinces, regions and municipalities held conferences to discuss how to improve campus security.
Senior officials of Beijing, Tianjin, Tibet, Hebei, Hubei, Shandong, Henan and many other provinces and regions on Tuesday inspected local schools in a bid to reduce campus security gaps.
Provincial governments ordered more police patrols near campuses, 24-hour ID checks at school gates and guards to be stationed in campuses.
Some larger cities took even stricter measures. In southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, professional security guards with batons, handcuffs and pepper spray are now stationed in schools and kindergartens, according to a statement from Chongqing's public security department.
In many provincial capitals, security cameras had been installed in campuses and guards now had better equipment, according to statements from municipal governments.
These actions come after Zhou Yongkang, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said campus security was a "major political task" on Monday at a conference on maintaining stability.
At the conference, Zhou called for a national clampdown on campus security entailing more police patrols near the campuses, better-equipped campus guards and a system that holds headmasters and officials accountable for security breaches.
He called on public health and civil authorities to improve treatment and management of people suffering from mental disorders as some of the campus attackers were found to be mentally ill.
Zhou urged local governments to listen to the needs and complaints of the people and relieve their dissatisfactions in time to prevent violence, especially campus attacks.
Zhou's words came after a string of attacks on school and kindergarten children last week.
On April 30, five kindergarten children and a teacher were injured when a man attacked them with a hammer before killing himself at a school in Weifang City, east China's Shandong Province.
On April 29, 29 children and three adults were injured by a man armed with knife at the Zhongxin Kindergarten in Taixing City, in eastern Jiangsu Province.
And 16 children and a teacher at a primary school in Guangdong Province were attacked on April 28.

China urges tough Internet laws

2010-05-04T12:50:00.001-07:00

One of China's top propaganda officials has urged lawmakers to push through tough legislation to stop "hostile forces" abroad using the Internet to achieve their aims, state press said Tuesday.
China needed laws that would step up monitoring for "harmful information" and block "overseas hostile forces from infiltrating through the Internet," Wang Chen, vice head of propaganda, told lawmakers last week.
The measures would help enhance an ongoing crackdown on online pornography, gambling and fraud, Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.
China's online population, already the largest in the world, reached 404 million last week, accounting for almost a third of the country's people, official data showed.
The government in Beijing operates an extensive system of Internet censorship -- sometimes dubbed the "Great Firewall of China" -- aimed at filtering out any information deemed politically sensitive or harmful.
China's web users have nevertheless turned the Internet into a forum for citizens to express their opinions -- some of them anti-government -- in a way rarely seen in a country where the traditional media is under strict control.
Wang, who also heads the cabinet's information office, further urged the National People's Congress to adopt an "Internet Administration Law," the Southern Daily reported.
The parliament should amend the nation's criminal and civil laws to better define illegal activity on the Internet, while also better defining rules on the administration of the mobile phone industry, it said.
Last Thursday, China tightened its controversial state secrets law, holding Internet and mobile phone operators responsible for informing on their customers.
The law, which has in the past been used to jail high-profile dissidents, stipulates that Internet and mobile phone operators must cooperate with the demands of the police, reports said.
Wang said the key to the nation's Internet laws must lie in the registration of Internet and mobile phone users, allowing for the government to identify those passing on illegal information, the Southern Daily said.

China's Systemic Risk

2010-05-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

Borrowing by China's local governments threatens to saddle banks with nonperforming loans.

A Chinese financial newspaper last month reported a case in which a Shanghai township took two billion yuan ($293 million) in loans intended for a new railway and instead used the money to repay other debts and invest in real estate projects. While the large sum involved may be unusual, such tales of misappropriation have become more common since Beijing began encouraging bank-financed spending on infrastructure a little over a year ago. Evidence is mounting that the problem of local government debt is already extremely serious and could eventually threaten the country's financial stability.
Victor Shih, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote in these pages in February that his research put the level of borrowing by local government investment entities between 2004 and the end of 2009 at 11.4 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion)—or about one-third of annual GDP. That figure stirred up a lot of controversy, with regulators insisting that the loans stood at six trillion yuan.
Beijing has since asked banks for an updated accounting of such debt on their books, however, and it's looking more and more like Mr. Shih was on the right track. The government has revised up its estimate to 7.8 trillion yuan, and more revisions may come as the banks continue to report. A new report from Goldman Sachs last week implicitly supports Mr. Shih's calculations.
But the total figure is only important in the context of the trend of new lending and the quality of the loans. And here things get even murkier.
So far Beijing has clamped down on lending to county-level governments, but city and provincial entities continue to have no trouble getting credit. The counties were always a small part of the total, probably less than 20%. Total new bank lending in the first quarter of this year dropped off significantly compared to the same quarter last year, but at 2.6 trillion yuan it was still pretty spectacular. So it's safe to assume that the headline number continues to grow, albeit at a slower rate.
What we're learning about those loans doesn't inspire much confidence, either. The China Banking Regulatory Commission has brought out a new requirement that loans to local government investment vehicles be better collateralized. It turns out that the banks were only demanding collateral worth 40% to 50% of the loans.
Local government loans tend to be particularly corrupt because of the collusion among local officials, bank managers and regulators. Cases abound in which the three groups all took their cut out of new lending. And even at the national level, nobody is interested in revealing the true level of the banking system's nonperforming loans, which have been officially capped. This is a rerun of Japan in the 1990s and the crisis of the jusen housing loan companies; the government is complicit in allowing the banks to "evergreen" loans by continually rolling them over.
Mr. Shih thinks about one-quarter of the local government loans could eventually go bad. China is in the process of creating a huge moral hazard problem, as all the players feel free to abuse the highly liquid banks safe in the knowledge that the central government with its massive foreign exchange reserves and capacity to borrow will bail everybody out when the bills come due. This attitude has real costs and eventually causes systemic risk.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, paramount leader Jiang Zemin delegated Premier Zhu Rongji to be the enforcer of economic discipline, making sure that corruption, lending and investment didn't get out of hand. It's troubling that today's top leaders seem to lack their predecessors' political will.

North Korea in First Expo as Kim Jong-Il Visits China

2010-05-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

The China Pavilion is seen at night at the Shanghai World Expo in Shanghai, 03 May 2010

Reclusive North Korea is one of several nations participating in a World Expo for the first time. Its participation comes as the country faces a grave economic crisis, and its leader is on a rare visit to China.
North Korea's pavilion is nestled in a corner of the Asia section at the World Expo, next to Iran.

The design is modest. The outside of the rectangular building features a large mural of blue skies and a photo of Pyongyang's Chollima statue, a horse that is said to symbolize the heroic and unconquerable spirit of the North Korean people.

Tourists walk past North Korea Pavilion at the World Expo site in Shanghai, 2 May 2010

Inside, there is a replica of Pyongyang's Juche Statue, a small waterway that represents the North's Taedong River, a traditional bridge and large fountain with colored lights.

On top of the fountain, a group of white marble statues of naked boys encircle two others. One boy holds the other up in the air as he lifts a dove into the sky.

In one corner, there is a small cave that contains a reproduction of a mural from the North's Koguryo Tombs, a World Heritage site.

Along a wall, beneath the phrase "Paradise for the People," a row of television sets plays videos depicting everyday life in North Korea.

Some of the videos show North Koreans leisurely bowling, playing golf and ice skating. Although some of the footage appears to be recent, other shots seem to be decades old.

Many who visited the pavilion Tuesday say that aside from the fact that there were no lines to get in, they wanted to visit because, as they put it, North Korea is so mysterious.

Gu Nan and Chen Gaoxiang, say they are not particularly impressed with what they saw.

Gu says the pavilion is pretty small. Chen adds that it is rather simple inside.

Kim Yong Nam, left, president of the Presidium of the North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, stands with Chinese President Hu Jintao, center, and his wife Liu Yongqing at a welcome ceremony for foreign leaders before the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Shanghai, China, 30 April 2010

But both say they would like to visit North Korea, regardless of Pyongyang's image in the international arena.

Gu says he does not really care about what other countries might think of North Korea and that for him there are really no obstacles to interaction between people of other cultures and of other countries.
North Korea is considered to have one of the most repressive governments in the world, and its economy is failing. It also is under United Nations sanctions for its nuclear weapons programs.

Neil Zhao is a high school student from central China who has traveled to the border with North Korea. He says the display at the pavilion is quite different from what he saw when he looked into North Korea.

"There are not many lights [on the North Korean side] at night and you can contrast that with China and in Changbai [Korean Autonomous County], that's opposite from there [North Korea], you can see there are many buildings and lights and there [in North Korea] it is just dark," Zhao said.

Regardless, Neil says he would like to visit North Korea some day to see for himself. He also feels that with China's growing influence in international affairs, it could play a role in helping the North develop more.
North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-II is currently in China on a rare trip that has prompted speculation that he is seeking help to rescue his country's economy.

China is a major ally of North Korea and its most important source of food and energy. Even before Pyongyang bungled a currency reform late last year the country was suffering from power outages and food shortages.

The currency move closed food markets, triggered sharp inflation and sparked rare signs of discontent with the government.

Smile Song, a university student, says the rest of the world should not be concerned with conditions in North Korea.

Song says that one's happiness really is not something for other people to decide. What really matters is how one feels and whether they are happy or not.

Like others, Song felt it would best to go and see North Korea herself. She said that there was a higher chance now of doing that, since China recently opened up tourism across the border.

The World Expo is typically an opportunity for countries to showcase their products and experiences. But North Korean officials said they were not interested in an interview with VOA.

India’s duty hike to hit China’s steel mills

2010-05-04T07:54:00.002-07:00

BEIJING (Commodity Online): China’s steel mills, which depend on iron ore imports from India and Australia, will face major problems in the coming days as India and Australia have hiked export duty on the commodity.

Last week, India raised the export tax on iron ore lump variety to 10 percent from 5 percent, and levied a 5 percent tax on iron ore fines.

Currently, the average price of Indian ore with 63.5 percent iron content quoted at around $80 per tonne. China’s mills depends heavily on iron ore imports from India.

Indian iron ore exports more than doubled in October to 9.325 million tonnes from 4.26 million tonnes a year ago, largely due to a pick-up in Chinese demand, data from FIMI showed.

Following this development, Chinese steel mills have been told they can break rank by signing separate iron ore agreements with the world’s top three miners as collective price talks drag on.

According to a report in the China Daily, this is the first time the China Iron and Steel Association has allowed its members to negotiate directly with iron ore miners before a nationwide benchmark price has been agreed.

According to the report, a number of unnamed firms have already signed deals. Early this month, CISA urged steelmakers to stop buying iron ore from Rio, BHP and Vale in protest at an alleged price monopoly after the miners said they had abandoned annual contracts in favour of a short-term pricing system.

China is the world’s largest importer of iron ore and the industry group wants to maintain the long-term contract price system to avoid large price fluctuations.

Over 1,500 swine flu deaths in India, says Azad

2010-05-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

New Delhi: As many as 1,501 people have died in India due to swine flu, but the influenza A (H1N1) has now shown signs of abating, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

Minister of Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad said the H1N1 cases have dropped in the past few weeks.

Fresh swine flu case in Hyderabad

Till May 2, there have been 1,501 laboratory confirmed deaths due to the pandemic, while 30,581 people have been affected with the virus in the country, he said.

India reported its first swine flu death on Aug 4, 2009, while the first case was recorded on May 16, 2009.

'Government took a series of actions to prevent morbidity and mortality due to pandemic influenza A (H1N1) and to mitigate its impact,' the minister said.

Swine flu scare was exaggerated: WHO

Azad said they took various steps to check the spread of the flu in the country by screening passengers at 22 international airports. 'Over one crore passengers were screened,' he added.

He said that the laboratory network in the country was strengthened with 45 laboratories carrying out clinical tests.

Also, India procured 40 million capsules of Oseltamivir, an anti-viral drug, of which 21 million were given to states. The retail sale of the drug was later allowed in some selected outlets.

Uranium no bar to India deal: Crean

2010-05-04T07:52:00.001-07:00

A FREE-TRADE AGREEMENT with India could increase Australia's gross domestic product by $45 billion over the next 20 years, a feasibility study has found.
The Trade Minister, Simon Crean, said he hoped negotiations on a deal would start soon and acknowledged Australia's ban on uranium sales to India was likely to figure in any talks.
"What the FTA does is open up the opportunity to talk about a whole range of issues," Mr Crean said in New Delhi yesterday.

"Comprehensive means comprehensive. We have a policy constraint [with uranium exports to India] but, if we are being serious, people can put on the table what they want and see if we can work through to resolve it."
The Rudd government will not allow the export of uranium to India because New Delhi has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Mr Crean said there had been no change in the government's position and denied that it would stand in the way of a trade deal.
"Our political positions are well known on it and well understood,'' he said. ''We agree to disagree on it but it's not the stumbling block to concluding an FTA. In many senses having an energy chapter in the FTA might facilitate something of a dialogue in that direction. It's another way for them to address the question if they want to do it."
The two-year feasibility study said a free-trade agreement would lead to a substantial increase in the trade of goods and create potential for further trade in services and investment.
Modelling conducted for the study by the Centre for International Economics showed a deal could result in a net increase to Australia's GDP by up to $45.5 billion and India's GDP by up to $48.3 billion over 20 years.
''What the feasibility study highlights is there are benefits to both countries - it can be a win-win outcome," Mr Crean said.
Opinion polling released separately in New Delhi yesterday by the public affairs firm Hawker Britton revealed strong support in Australia for a trade deal with India: 47 per cent of respondents in favour and 28 per cent opposed.
"Interestingly, support for a free-trade agreement with India was just about as the same as support for a free-trade agreement with the United States when we did a similar poll in 2004," said Bruce Hawker, the managing director of Hawker Britton.
Mr Crean said government consultations with Australia businesses also revealed broad support for a trade pact with India.
India is already Australia's fastest-growing major trading partner and its fourth-biggest export market. Two-way trade grew by 55 per cent in 2008-09, reaching nearly $22 billion. Over the past four years two-way trade has grown an average of 25 per cent.

Car used in Times Square bomb sold to Pakistani man by college girl

2010-05-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

New York, May 4 (IANS) The vehicle used in Saturday's failed Times Square bombing attempt was sold by a 19-year-old Connecticut college student through internet, The New York Post reported.
Peggy Colas of Bridgeport recalled that the buyer of her 1993 model Nissan Pathfinder "talked very softly, and he said he was just going to drive around and visit friends in New York", the young woman's brother told The Post Monday.
New York police has already identified the buyer as Shahzad Faisal, a naturalised American of Pakistani descent.
Authorities believe that Colas sold her sports utility vehicle (SUV) to Faisal April 28 for $1,300. The man, who lives about 20 minutes from her, in Shelton, Connecticut, reportedly paid her in $100 bills.
Later that day, Colas posted a message on her Facebook that read: "I'm soooo happy I got a new car."
But by late Sunday, she was clearly upset, posting: "OMG! I HAD A CRAZY DAY... IT'S OFFICIAL. I HAVE BAD LUCK. SMH I HOPE THEY FIND THAT BASTARD."
CBS News, without naming Colas, reported that she told investigators the buyer was Middle Eastern or Hispanic.
Colas, a student at Post University in Waterbury, was questioned by federal authorities in Bridgeport Sunday after they traced the SUV to her through its ID number.
She lives about 15 minutes from the Stratford junkyard where a truck's licence plate was stolen and put on the SUV.
She was fingerprinted by investigators and the "for sale" sign that had been posted on her Pathfinder was taken by police so they could check it for other prints, Colas' family told The Post.
Colas was again questioned by authorities Monday.
She refused to comment to The Post when she came back home, saying only: "How do you know I sold the car?"
"My daughter's nervous," her mom said. "She doesn't want this guy coming after her."
Man of Pakistani origin held for Times Square bombing bid
Washington, May 4 (IANS) US authorities have arrested a naturalised American citizen from Pakistan, minutes before he was to flee to Pakistan, for a failed car bomb attack at Times Square in New York City.
The man, Faisal Shahzad, 30, was arrested at 11:45 Monday night on board an Emirates Airlines plane at JFK International Airport, Attorney General Eric Holder announced at a rare middle-of-the-night news conference here early Tuesday.
"It was clear that the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans," he said.
CNN citing a law enforcement official said Shahzad's final destination was Pakistan. It cited another federal law enforcement source as saying Shahzad nearly made it out of the country.
"They just caught him at the last second," according to the CNN source, who said Shahzad was on board the flight to Dubai and the jetway had been pulled back when the plane was called to return to the gate.
Two other passengers were also removed from the plane, the New York Times said citing Emirates, but it was unclear whether they were connected with the bombing attempt.
Shahzad was believed to have recently bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that was found loaded with gasoline, propane, fireworks and fertiliser in the heart of Times Square, it said citing a person briefed on the investigation.
Charges against Shahzad, who had returned recently from a trip to Pakistan, were not announced, but he was expected to be formally charged Tuesday in a federal court.
Shahzad was taken into custody after he was identified by the Department of Homeland Security's US Customs and Border Protection, according to a joint statement issued by the office of the Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the southern district of New York, the FBI and the New York Police Department.
CNN citing a source familiar with the investigation, said investigators believe the plan was an intended terrorist attack to set off explosives in the heart of midtown Manhattan Saturday night, but the individuals didn't have the expertise to detonate their device.
A federal law enforcement official cited by CNN said the information gained from the vehicle's sale was the linchpin in the case.
Shahzad became a US citizen April 17, 2009, which aided investigators in the case, the federal law enforcement source said.
Because of his recent change in status, authorities had his picture and were able to show it to the seller of the vehicle, who identified Shahzad as the purchaser.
An FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force had taken over the investigation Monday amid growing indications of a possible international connection, the Washington Post said, citing US officials and law enforcement sources.
Investigators and agents also were scouring international phone records showing calls "between some of the people who might be associated with this and folks overseas," it said citing a US official who has discussed the case with intelligence officers.
At Shahzad's former home in Shelton, Connecticut, just outside Bridgeport, a neighbour told the New York Times that Shahzad and his wife, Huma Mian, spoke limited English, and kept mostly to themselves. The couple had two young children, a girl and a boy, the neighboor, Brenda Thurman, was quoted as saying.
Thurman said the couple had lived at the grey, two story colonial-style three-bedroom house for about three years before moving out last year. Shahzad left around May, she said, and his wife followed about a month later.
DPA adds:
The US sought help from Islamabad Tuesday to investigate the alleged involvement of the Pakistani immigrant in the failed bombing attempt.
US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson made the request during a meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
Abdul Basit, a spokesman for Pakistan's foreign ministry, said Qureshi had assured the US ambassador that Pakistan would cooperate fully with the investigation.
"Our cooperation with the US against terrorism is a constant and ongoing process, and if the US needs our assistance on this particular issue we will do all we can," Basit said.

26/11 case: Kasab guilty, 2 acquitted

2010-05-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

(TV GRAB) Sabahuddin and Fahim Ansari who were acquitted by a special court in 26/11 terror attack case in Mumbai on Monday.

Exactly 525 days after he landed on the city’s coast, with nine other gunmen, and mounted attacks that killed 166 people, a special court on Monday held Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab (22) guilty of murder and waging war against the country.
Fahim Ansari (36) and Sabauddin Ahmed (25), the alleged Indian co-conspirators, were acquitted for lack of
evidence.

To convict Kasab, the court primarily relied on his confessional statement and held that he had confessed voluntarily. Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said he would recommend to the state to appeal against their acquittal.
In a courtroom packed with media persons and policemen, special judge ML Tahilyani convicted Kasab on a total of 80 charges that include being a member of a terrorist organisation (Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyeba), committing a terrorist act, smuggling arms and setting off bomb blasts in the city.
To convict Kasab, the court primarily relied on his confessional statement and held that he had confessed voluntarily. “His retraction at a later date was only for the sake of it and without reason,” the court said. It also relied on 111 eye-witnesses, two FBI agents, forensic evidence and data provided by Indian and foreign telecom firms.

"The evidence against him [Kasab] proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is not a case of simple murder but a case of waging war,” Tahilyani said, observing that “the resistance put up by the accused is indicative of [waging a] war”.
Reading from the 1,522-page verdict, Tahilyani said the trial had found that the handlers of the 10 attackers were based in Pakistan. Kasab, wearing a white kurta-pyjama, sat in the dock with his head hung low throughout the three-and-a-half hour proceeding.

Govt policies to make private sector engine of growth: Gilani

2010-05-04T07:44:00.002-07:00

ISLAMABAD, May 4 (APP) - Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani Tuesday said the government clearly recognizes the private sector as the engine of growth and is taking necessary policy measures to unleash its full potential. In his opening statement while chairing a meeting of the Council of Businesspersons here at Prime Minister House this afternoon, he said the government takes the business community as a partner in the national development, as both work in their own spheres for the betterment of the common man and for the greater welfare of the society.

The Ministry of Finance has been asked to provide immediate relief to the common man, he said, adding the government would extend full support to the business community.

The prime minister said the Annual National Budget is the most important policy document, which sets into action the policy priorities of the government for the coming year.

He observed that the National Budget also influences the private business environment in many ways and determines its pace and direction during the year.

“Therefore, my interaction with the distinguished leaders of the business community today comes at the right moment,” he added.

The premier assured that the government is fully committed to making the domestic environment business friendly.

He said the Trade Policy, the Textile Policy, the Investment Policy, the Energy Policy and other policies are aimed at attracting greater private participation and support development of private capital in the country.

Prime Minister Gilani stated that as a result of bold policy measures taken over the last two years, macro-economic stability has been restored, manufacturing has begun to pick up, business climate is improving and exports are on the rise.

He observed that challenges remain but the worst is over.

The prime minister acknowledged that the business community in this country works in the most challenging environment.

He said regulatory over-burden, energy shortages, high cost of doing business and security of life and property are yet some of the issues that confront the business on a daily basis.

He assured that the government is committed to resolve these problems which were both structural and long term with support and cooperation of the business community. Reposing his confidence in the business community, he said, “together, we will make Pakistan prosperous and stronger.”

Welcoming the suggestions of the business community, the prime minister assured them that the government would consider their inputs seriously.

He observed that there is no point in making policies without taking the beneficiaries on board. He said consultation and consensus is the hallmark of the present government and through this policy of building consensus, the government have addressed long term structural issues such as 7^th NFC Award, 18^th Constitutional Amendment, Provincial Autonomy and very recently Energy Road Map which came out of the Energy Summit.

Prime Minister Gilani said the government is facing multiple challenges both economic and non-economic.

He observed that the government’s primary responsibility is to ensure protection of life and property and to create a sound regulatory environment for private business. He believed that the business community of Pakistan has huge potential which promises a better and a stronger Pakistan.

The prime minister expressed his firm belief in the destiny of his great nation. He observed that in the coming months and years, the structural problems will be finally eliminated.

He asked the Advisor on Finance and his team to consider the Council’s proposals seriously and to ensure broad based and extensive consultation on budget proposals.

He expected the business community to make recommendations keeping in mind the challenges being faced by the government.

He also asked the finance advisor to make the next budget business friendly and supportive of industry. He observed that future of this country is in industrialization and value addition as subsistence farming is not enough to sustain rapidly expanding population.

Therefore, he directed that the next budget must support the growth momentum in business and industry.

The prime minister also reminded the business community of their responsibility to undertake business operations in nationally and socially responsible manner. He sought active support of the business community to implement the government’s development agenda including energy conservation.

He said the government also expects the business community to contribute to government revenues through taxes at a time when the country needs more financial resources to fund expenditures on security and settlement of IDPs.

Concluding his statement, the prime minister invited the business leaders to share their budget proposals with the government.

Finance advisor apprised the meeting that interaction of Ministry of Finance with the Business Advisory Council representatives was very fruitful and encouraging. He said the deliberations were in depth and comprehensive covering all aspects of economic activity.

Tariq Saeed, President FPCCI appreciated that this is the first time prime minister himself is interacting with the Business Council. He assured that the business community is with the government during these difficult times.

He opined that the discussion would help in improving tax collection, eliminating red tapism and expanding industrial base consequently decreasing unemployment.

He suggested that the existing power plants should be renovated to meet the immediate energy needs as well as power situation should be reviewed on weekly basis. He observed that they were losing Rs.230 billion per annum due to energy shortage and US $ 2.3 billions are being lost in exports.

The representatives of the business community said that the government should give tariff incentives to the businessmen on the pattern of Malaysia and Indonesia. They said the entire focus had been on the agriculture sector but now the government should give preference to the engineering sector as well.

They suggested that the agro-based industry should be promoted in under developed areas as the labour in these areas is only trained.

They also suggested that the banks need to revise their mark up policies according to area and nature of industry.

They opined that efforts be incurred to expand trade with Central Asia and African countries.

They also proposed that the training institutions be opened in all areas and special incentives be given to expatriates remitting foreign exchange from abroad. They also suggested that the public dealing offices and banks should not be closed on Saturdays.

They also demanded that the procedures for putting up new industry be simplified. The business representatives also proposed that the mining industry should be encouraged. With value addition, minerals and precious stones could enhance exports to earn foreign exchange.

They also demanded that the war torn region of the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) should be exempted from the General Sales Tax.

Pakistan vows to expose Bhutto killers

2010-05-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

Pakistan vowed on Tuesday to expose those involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Benazir Bhutto after a damning UN report said the former prime minister's death was investigated inadequately.
A meeting chaired by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, and attended by cabinet ministers, reviewed progress made by a new fact-finding committee, the government said.
Gilani formed the three-member committee last week to determine whether the then director general of military intelligence ordered that the scene of the 2007 killing be hosed down.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik briefed the meeting on progress made so far, Zardari's spokesman Farhatullah Babar said in a statement.
"The fact-finding committee will also question some more people before submitting its report to the prime minister," Babar said.
"The committee reaffirmed its resolve to pursue investigations in the light of the UN report to expose all elements involved in the conspiracy to assassinate... Bhutto," he said without elaborating.
Pakistan removed senior police and intelligence officials from their posts after last month's UN report.
Bhutto, the first woman to become prime minister of a Muslim country, was killed after addressing an election rally in Rawalpindi.
The new fact-finding committee visited the scene of the December 27, 2007 gun and suicide bomb attack in the garrison city and questioned those who were police officers at the time.
It has twice summoned former director general of military intelligence, Major General Nadeem Ijaz, but he denied that he ordered the site hosed down, destroying valuable evidence, media reports said.
The UN panel said it believed police deliberately failed to probe the killing effectively and that the government of then military ruler Pervez Musharraf failed to provide Bhutto with adequate protection.
Bhutto, who twice served as prime minister, returned from exile to stand for election two months before she was assassinated.
Her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, led her Pakistan People's Party to election victory in February 2008 and he is now head of state.
The UN panel said its investigation was severely hampered by intelligence agencies and other officials who impeded "an unfettered search for the truth".

Pakistan welcomes ‘revival of composite dialogue’, wants Kashmir resolved

2010-05-04T07:42:00.002-07:00

Islamabad/New Delhi, May 4 (IANS) Pakistan Tuesday welcomed what it termed the revival of the “composite dialogue” with India, a formulation New Delhi has avoided after the talks in Thimphu asking Islamabad to move beyond nomenclature to “chart the way forward”.
“The revival of the composite dialogue between Pakistan and India was the result of our successful foreign policy,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, in Islamabad.
Holding that Pakistan wanted “result-oriented talks with India”, Online news agency quoted Qureshi as saying: “The Kashmir issue is in the agenda for dialogue with India. Pakistan would narrow down its priorities in talks with India and core issues need to be dealt with first.”
“We are taking action against those responsible of Mumbai attack and their trial is underway in the court and our courts are independent,” Qureshi said while alluding to talks between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on the margins of the SAARC summit in Thimphu April 29. Manmohan Singh has urged Gilani to expedite the trial of the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attack in the interests of better relations.
After the Manmohan Singh-Gilani talks, India has studiously avoided any mention of “composite dialogue”, saying both sides should move beyond nomenclature to introspect on the trust deficit entrenched in their relationship and chart the way forward.
The two leaders mandated their foreign ministers and foreign secretaries to work out the modalities of restoring trust, paving the way for substantive dialogue covering all issues between them.
Qureshi’s insistence on calling the decision to revive talks at the level of foreign ministers composite dialogue in Thimphu may not go down well in India.
New Delhi feels that since the composite dialogue was premised on Pakistan honouring its anti-terror pledge, it was no longer possible to carry on the same track.
The composite dialogue, the way New Delhi sees it, has outlived its utility and must give way to more focused talks addressing its core concerns on cross-border terror.
A new format is likely to shape up as the foreign ministers and foreign secretaries of the two countries meet in the days ahead.
According to Qureshi, water was an important issue “and it could not be resolved through statements but it through implementation of the Indus river treaty”.
“India tried to store 0.3 million acre feet water in Wullar barrage but we took up the issue in a constructive way and held 13 meeting with India in this respect and now no work is underway at this project,” he said.
Qureshi also said former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s policies have damaged the Kashmir cause but the present government will continue its diplomatic and moral support of the Kashmiri people for a peaceful settlement of the issue.
Musharraf’s policies had “extensively harmed the Kashmir cause”, he said, adding: “We are trying our level best to overcome the loss inflicted over Kashmir during the previous government’s rule.”
“Kashmir has been the keystone of the foreign policy of Pakistan and we will continue the diplomatic and moral support of the Kashmiri people for peaceful settlement of the issue,” the minister said.
“We will take the Kashmiri leadership into confidence before holding talks with India on the Kashmir issue”, Qureshi added.
Noting that Pakistan’s point of view on Kashmir was akin to a resolution adopted by the UN, he said: “The peaceful resolution of Kashmir sans inclusion of the Kashmir leadership in the talks is impossible.”

China-US hold 'consultations' after Beijing's N-deal with Pakistan

2010-05-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

Beijing: China and the US today held crucial "consultations on South Asian region" ahead of their bilateral strategic dialogue here later this month as Beijing plans to deepen nuclear cooperation with Pakistan by building two new atomic reactors for its "all weather" ally.

Robert Blake, the US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, is currently visiting China for "consultations on South Asian region", said Jiang Yu, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, declining to go into details of the "consultations" on the Indian sub-continent.
Blake’s talks with the Chinese leaders was part of the preparatory meetings for a crucial bilateral strategic dialogue to be held here on May 23 to be attended by the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
China's commitment to build two nuclear power plants for Pakistan was announced by China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). In a brief statement on its website recently, CNNC said it had reached an agreement "with the aim of developing an overseas nuclear power electricity market".
Last week, Jiang tacitly acknowledged China's commitment to build two 650 mw nuclear power plants for Pakistan, saying that the two countries have been cooperating in the field of nuclear energy.
"This cooperation respects international obligations, for peaceful purposes and accepts International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) regulations and supervision," she had said.
The Sino-US strategic dialogue was expected to cover all aspects of South Asian region, including the India-Pakistan relations.
China has already built two reactors with capacity of about 350 MW at Chashma in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
Under the new agreement, Chinese companies will build at least two new 650-MW reactors at Chashma. The revelations of China’s decision to go ahead with the two reactors comes weeks after the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington attended by Chinese president Hu Jintao.
A Pakistani official was quoted by the Financial Times as welcoming the deal, saying: "Our Chinese brothers have once
again lived up to our expectations. They have agreed to continue cooperating with us in the nuclear energy field."
While the deal was seen here as confirmation by China to continue with its policy to regard Pakistan as a "all weather" strategic partner, there is still no information on how Beijing plans to build the reactors without the approval of the the IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the multinational body seeking to control trade in atomic materials.

Pakistan link in Times Square bomb case

2010-05-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

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Arrest in Time Square bomb case

A Pakistani man believed to be the driver of an abandoned SUV is taken into custody by officials while trying to leave the US.

A MAN believed to be the driver of a sports utility vehicle used as a car bomb in a failed terror attack on New York's Times Square has been arrested by federal and local police while trying to leave the country.
Faisal Shahzad, a naturalised US citizen from Pakistan, was believed to have recently bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that was found loaded with petrol, propane, fireworks and fertiliser. He was identified by customs agents at John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to officials.
He had recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan but was not apparently headed back there, they said.
Police said Mr Shahzad bought the SUV from a Connecticut man about three weeks ago and paid cash. Police said the bomb could have produced a ''significant fireball'' and sprayed shrapnel with enough force to kill pedestrians.

The SUV was parked on a packed street lined with restaurants and Broadway theatres.

The vehicle identification number had been removed from the Pathfinder's dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine and investigators used it to find the owner of record.

''The discovery of the VIN on the engine block was pivotal in that it led to the identifying of the registered owner,'' said Paul Browne, chief New York Police Department spokesman.

Officials said the owner, whose name has been withheld, was not considered a suspect in the bomb scare.

Investigators tracked the licence plate found on the back of the vehicle to a used car parts shop in Stratford, Connecticut, where they discovered the plate was connected to a different vehicle.

Investigators initially had wanted to speak to a man in his 40s who was videotaped taking off his shirt near the Pathfinder, but they backed away as the buyer became clear. The man had not been considered a suspect.

On Monday there was a sweeping response to the attempted attack, including an increased police presence and vehicle inspections. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Saturday's attempted bombing was a terrorist act.

The motive remained unclear. The Pakistani Taliban appeared to claim responsibility for the bomb in three videos.

New York officials said police had no evidence to support the claims. It is unclear whether the suspect in custody has any relationship to the group.

The vehicle was parked near offices of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central. The network recently aired an episode of the animated show South Park that militant group Revolution Muslim had complained insulted the prophet Muhammad by depicting him in a bear costume.

The vehicle was captured on video crossing an intersection at 6.28pm local time on Saturday. A vendor pointed out the Pathfinder to an officer about two minutes later. Times Square was shut down for 10 hours. A bomb squad dismantled the explosive device and no one was hurt.

The device had alarm clocks connected to a 450-gram can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to detonate the gas cans and set the propane on fire in a chain reaction, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

A metal rifle cabinet placed in the cargo area was packed with fertiliser, but NYPD bomb experts believe it was not a type volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertiliser used in previous terrorist bombings.

Cures That Are Worse Than The Disease

2010-05-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

May 4, 2010: Despite determined, and deadly, resistance, India is pushing forward to capture or kill over 10,000 armed Maoist rebels operating in rural areas. The Maoists have become increasingly powerful in the past seven years. Back in 2003, only about nine percent of 626 districts had a Maoist problem, but now it's 36 percent of districts. The Maoists use terror to raise money, obtain weapons and intimidate local police. The Maoists aggressively recruit teenagers, and terrorize those who try to leave once they have joined. The Maoists are all about attacking corruption and feudal practices out in the countryside (where there is a lot of it.) But in many districts, the Maoists have become more of a bandit problem and are considered a cure that is worse than the disease.

Pakistani security forces continued to hammer Taliban forces in Orakzai, causing over a hundred casualties a week. In the last two months, over two thousand Taliban and Islamic terrorist fighters have been killed, wounded or captured in the Orakzai area (which is south of the Khyber Pass, an 1,800 square kilometers patch of mountains inhabited by 450,000 tribals). This area has long hosted the Haqqani network, an Islamic radical group long supported by Pakistani intelligence. The Haqqani network mainly operated in Afghanistan, but has used its muscle in Pakistan as well. Now the security forces are finding and destroying Haqqani bases. But it is believed that this is mostly for show, and that Pakistani intelligence has persuaded the army to leave the main Haqqani bases alone.

Several thousand pro-Taliban tribesmen had fled to Orakzai, after the army offensive in South Waziristan earlier this year. Most of the rest fled to North Waziristan, where the army is preparing to go after them. In support of that, the army had done the unthinkable and pulled 100,000 troops from the Indian border, and moved them to Waziristan. The army is under increasing pressure to crush the Taliban, and other Islamic radical groups responsible for terrorist attacks (although most of these are in the tribal territories). Although the targets are often government officials or the security forces, most of the victims are civilians. Thus the Islamic terrorists have little public support. But the army is also wary of triggering a general tribal uprising. While the army has greater firepower and numbers (about 200,000 troops are now concentrated in the tribal territories, the largest non-tribal fighting force to be there in centuries), a general uprising would spill over into the more densely populated lowlands of Punjab and Sind and, in general, be a mess. So far, the army has been able to negotiate deals with key tribes to allow troops to go after nearby Taliban fighters. But such permission has been hard to get in North Waziristan, which is where the Taliban are preparing to make a last stand. The Taliban and al Qaeda are also using North Waziristan as their terrorism base, and it's where many of the terrorist attacks are coming from. So the army is under increasing popular pressure to "root the terrorists out."

Taliban and al Qaeda have tried to disperse to other parts of Pakistan, but an increasingly hostile population has made this very difficult. As is usually the case, the use of terror bombings causes lots of civilian casualties, and a collapse of support for movements (Taliban and al Qaeda) which are fighting corruption and injustice. While most Pakistanis would like to see clean government and justice, they are now less convinced that the Islamic radicals will deliver. The intolerance of the Islamic groups, and their hostility to secular education, has angered many potential supporters. Although some Islamic radical leaders back a softer approach, at least until the government has been defeated, the Islamic groups have not been able to alter their suicidal trajectory.

The U.S. and Afghanistan are trying to get Pakistan to crack down on the corruption that enables truckloads of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to reach the Afghan border. Truckers pay bribes of over $800 a truck to accomplish this, with police and local politicians splitting the cash. Taliban in Afghanistan use the fertilizer (which is now illegal in Afghanistan) to make roadside bombs.

A Pakistani man, Shahzad Faisal, living in the United States as a naturalized citizen, was arrested for involvement in a recent New York City bombing attempt. He was picked up at an airport, trying to fly to Dubai, in the Persian Gulf. Faisal had recently visited Pakistan.

May 2, 2010: A video appeared on the Internet, in which the Pakistani Taliban took credit for yesterday's failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in New York City. But within 24 hours, known Taliban officials denied they were involved. At the same time, another video of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud was revealed. In it, Mehsub vowed revenge against the United States for attacks on himself and other Taliban leaders. Mehsud was thought to have been killed by an American missile attack last January. But rumors have persisted that he survived the attack, and this video apparently confirms it. So the hunt for him is on again.

April 29, 2010: Pakistani intelligence believe that Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud survived wounds received during an American missile attack last January.

April 28, 2010: Indian police have arrested an Indian diplomat who served in Pakistan, and charged her with spying for Pakistan. The 53 year old career diplomat was unmarried. It turned out that most of the secrets she provided Pakistan were not secret. The female diplomat was believed the victim of a "honeytrap" (using romance and sex to recruit a foreigner for espionage.) Both countries use such techniques for recruiting spies.

April 27, 2010: In eastern India (Jharkhand state), Maoist threats shut down train traffic for a day or so, as the communist rebels tried to intimidate local governments to release imprisoned Maoist leaders.

China to financially help Pakistan overcome energy crisis

2010-05-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD, May 4 (APP): China on Tuesday assured to provide more financial assistance and cooperation to Pakistan to resolve energy crisis through hydel and other power generation sources. This was stated by Huang Xilian, Deputy Chief of Mission of Chinese Embassy in an exclusive interview with APP, during his visit to the news agency’s headquarters.
Huang Xilian said China, being a close friend of Pakistan has been providing assistance and cooperation to provide energy through different sources, including peaceful use of nuclear energy.
The Deputy Chief of the Mission said China is already assisting Pakistan and over 120 projects are underway in Pakistan, where over 13,000 Chinese are working.
Referring to energy crisis, he said, China has been working on the projects of civil nuclear energy in Pakistan to resolve the energy crisis of the friendly country.
He said Chinese assistance in the peaceful nuclear energy in Pakistan is in accordance with rules and regulations of IAEA and other relevant international organizations under the policy that China supports for peaceful nuclear use.

Deputy Chief of Mission of Chinese Embassy, who has just arrived after working in Washington said, China is also ready to provide loans to finance the projects for hydel power generation in Pakistan to resolve the energy crisis.
Regarding Pak-China strategic relations, he said, “We have to strengthen and substantiate our cooperation to make our relations more stronger.”

He said Pakistan is a major player in the region and working hard for peace and stability in this part of the world. Appreciating the efforts of Pakistan to fight extremism and terrorism, he said, “We have also been working closely with Pakistan government to ensure peace and security in the region.”
He said, “We are providing necessary assistance to Pakistan in the fight against terrorism and extremism.”
Replying to a question on Pak-India relations and role of China to play in revival of dialogue process between the two nuclear rivals, Huang Xilian said Pakistan and India are the two major players in the region and have an important role in the international affairs, therefore it is imperative for them to improve their relations in their own as well as regional interest.
He said despite strong, good, higher than Himalayas, deeper than sea and sweeter than honey Pak-China relations, there is still scope for promoting trade and economic activities especially in the field of energy and science and technology.

Huang Xilian expressing satisfaction on the deep and cordial relations with Pakistan said such relations are a model of Chinese relations with the other countries.
Referring to strong relationship between the two countries, he said, he felt at home, when he arrived in Islamabad on his new diplomatic assignment.
He said both the counties are also enjoying cordial relations in the media and a number of Chinese journalists are working here.

Referring to visits of President Asif Ali Zardari to China, he said it is a proof of strong relationship and had further strengthened the bilateral ties.
He said China is also looking forward to President Zardari’s next visit to China.
Replying to another question about Shanghai World Expo, he said, it took eight years to prepare for this expo and appreciated Pakistan’s pavilion design in the expo.
He urged the Pakistani community to visit the ongoing Shanghai World Expo, that is an important venue to see the progress of China and the world progress at one place.
Pakistan’s pavilion at Shanghai Expo, is a replica of famous and historic Lahore Fort.
Later, he held talks with Managing Director of Associated Press of Pakistan, Mohammed Riaz and discussed the opportunities for enhancing cooperation in media interaction.
They also discussed to improve the cooperation in the field of electronic news gathering, besides improving the existing cooperation between the official news agencies of the two countries.

Pakistan vows full cooperation with U.S. investigation

2010-05-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan on Tuesday vowed full cooperation on U.S. enquiries into a Pakistani-American held over an attempted bombing in New York, throwing the spotlight back onto international terror plots in the country.

U.S. officials said Faisal Shahzad, a naturalised U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, was arrested for allegedly driving a car bomb into Times Square that narrowly failed to explode on Saturday night.

News reports said Mr. Shahzad, 30, lived in Connecticut and returned recently from a five-month trip to Pakistan, including Peshawar, a known transit point for Al-Qaeda and Taliban recruits near the Afghan border.

US police arrested Mr. Shahzad as he was trying to flee to Dubai on Emirates flight EK202, with CNN reporting that Pakistan was his likely final destination.

Attorney General Eric Holder said additional evidence had been gathered and investigators were seeking information on "overseas" terrorist groups.

In Islamabad, the Pakistani government, which is dependent on US assistance as it battles Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants blamed for bombings that have killed thousands, was quick to pledge assistance.

"Pakistan and the U.S. have ongoing, robust cooperation on counter-terrorism. If required, we will extend the fullest cooperation to the US," foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP.

One official confirmed there had been "initial discussion" on Mr. Shahzad at talks between US ambassador to Islamabad Anne Patterson and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi but declined to reveal further details.

Pakistan's Taliban, the country's premier national security threat which experts see as increasingly close to Al-Qaeda, has been the only group to claim responsibility for the attempted bombing.

Its leader -- the ruthless, energetic and youthful Hakimullah Mehsud -- threatened to attack U.S. cities with suicide bombers, seemingly back from the dead in videos that emerged two days after the attempted bombing.

"The time is very near when our fedayeen will attack the American states in the major cities," said Mehsud, in the video released by monitoring groups.

It was his first apparent appearance since U.S. officials believed he was likely killed in a U.S drone strike in northwestern Pakistan on January 14.

IntelCenter, a US-based group that monitors Islamist websites, warned that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) "may have underway a multi-staged attack involving differing attack times and multiple cities".

"Messaging analysis and other indicators are increasingly pointing to a high threat of additional strikes... most likely focusing on mass casualties, in the days and weeks ahead," IntelCenter warned.

Although the TTP claim was widely dismissed and security officials doubt its capacity to attack the United States, Mr. Shahzad's arrest highlighted the nerve centre of international militancy rooted in parts of Pakistan.

"There will be renewed pressure on Pakistan after arrest of Faisal Mr. Shahzad," Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani expert on militant groups, told AFP.

"This will give Washington an opportunity to say that terrorism is originating from Pakistan and that it should do more to curb insurgency and terrorism," he added.

The United States has put Pakistan on the front line of the war on Al-Qaeda and branded its border area with Afghanistan the most dangerous place in the world, where militant groups are believed train recruits from around the globe.

London has said the majority of extremist plots which Britain faces have links to Pakistan. Neighbouring Afghanistan also blames Pakistani militants for attacks on Afghan and US-led NATO troops fighting a Taliban insurgency.

In India, a judge found a 22-year-old Pakistani, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, guilty this week of murder and waging war against India during the siege.

India blamed Pakistani-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba for the 2007 Mumbai attacks, which Indians liken to the September 11, 2001 attacks, which suspended peace talks with Pakistan and which left 166 people dead.

Pakistan not consulted by US on Time Square terror plot; says Malik

2010-05-04T07:28:00.001-07:00

ISLAMABAD, May 4 (APP): Minister for Interior A Rehman Malik Tuesday said the US authorities had not made any request to Pakistani authorities regarding the whereabouts of Faisal Shehzad, the suspect in Time Square attack bid. “We are receiving sketchy information about the suspect through media. Until and unless we are not provided proper information trough proper channel, I can not verify the involvement of any Pakistani citizen in the New York attack plot,” he told media here at Parliament House.

However, the minister vehemently made it clear that Pakistan would extend full cooperation with the US authorities when they seek so.

“Let me reiterate the strong resolve of Pakistan that no one would be allowed to use Pakistani soil for terrorism in any part of the world,” he added.

Rehman Malik also said the plot could be a conspiracy hatched against Pakistan with nefarious designs. However, he said if any Pakistani was found involved in plotting the terrorism bid, strict action would be taken against the perpetrators.

China’s Manufacturer Opens New Headquarters in LA

2010-05-01T11:22:00.001-07:00

It was seen lately that China’s carmaker are planning to sell autos in US by the End of the year and would open its new North American headquarters in Los Angeles.
It was told by the City officials that arrival of BYD Inc. of Shenzhen, China, would pay big money to the new managers, designers and engineers who would be hired. According to the officials, several hundred new jobs would be expected in United States in the related industries involving service and sales.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that the green energy programs was paying off and was attracting high-tech, clean-energy companies. This green energy program helps in reducing pollution and usage of oil.
"As I've always said, what is good for the environment is also good for the economy", said Schwarzenegger in a news conference at City Hall. In the conference BYD officials were received by him, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, company's Chairman and Founder, Wang Chaun-fu.
BYD was started in 1995 by Wang and now it is the world's major producer of rechargeable batteries for cell phones and laptop computers.
The people employed in the company are 150,000 and they produce solar panels, lighting systems. They are working on the technology which would be used to store solar energy.

Governments, businesses to discuss cybersecurity threats

2010-05-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

Government officials and business leaders from around the world are meeting in Texas this week to discuss what all agree is an area of common and growing concern: cybersecurity.

The Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit, hosted by the EastWest Institute (EWI), opens in Dallas on Monday and will feature three days of discussions on ways to protect the world's digital infrastructure from electronic threats.

Among those scheduled to address the gathering, being held in the wake of sophisticated cyberattacks on Google which the Internet giant said originated in China, are President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor James Jones and White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt.

The EWI, a non-partisan think tank, is bringing together 400 government officials, business leaders and cybersecurity experts from China, France, Germany, India, Russia, the United States and nearly three dozen other countries to "map the dangers and areas of cooperation" in cyberspace.

"The skyrocketing severity and frequency of cyberattacks against businesses, governments and other institutions globally pose an ominous threat to the stability of the international economy and peace itself," according to the EWI.

"Nations have well established rules of the game on land, sea, air and in outer space," it said. "There is a significant lack of such rules in the fifth common domain -- cyberspace."

Ahead of the meeting, the EWI and Public Strategies conducted a survey of government officials, business leaders and cybersecurity experts on their perception of the dangers in cyberspace.

Thirty-four government officials and 103 business executives or experts, many of whom plan to attend the cybersecurity summit in Dallas, responded to the April 19-26 survey, for which they were guaranteed anonymity.

When asked to rate the cybersecurity threat to governments and businesses on a scale of one to 10 with nine or ten representing a "profound threat," more than 80 percent of both groups agreed that the threat ranked a six or higher.

Forty-eight percent of both groups said they faced a "profound threat" while only three percent from each category said they faced "no threat."

Only four percent of the government officials and eight percent of the business leaders and cybersecurity experts rated the security of government computer systems and those of businesses as "very secure."

Sixty-seven percent of government officials said their computer grid was "not very secure" while 33 percent of business leaders and experts said the computer systems of businesses in their country were not very secure.

"The consensus on threat levels is quite high," said EWI vice president Andrew Nagorski. "There's a general understanding that if there are major cyberattacks this is going to have a major economic impact."

Participants in the survey also agreed that international tensions are likely to escalate if concerns over cybersecurity are not addressed.

Sixty-seven percent of the government officials said that if current cybersecurity policies prove ineffective, "deteriorating relations, angry recriminations and growing distrust" could result among countries such as China, India, Russia and the United States.

Fifty-one percent of the business leaders and experts expressed the same fear.

"This survey demonstrates how much more we need to do to implement policies that keep pace with the breakneck speed of technological advances," said EWI president and chief executive John Edwin Mroz.

"We need private-public partnerships and we need international cooperation to make cyberspace safe and secure," he said. "These results point to an urgent need to build trust, not only between countries but also between governments and businesses on a global level."

Hero Honda Karizma-R: The Safety net bike

2010-05-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

Bajaj Pulsar 220 DTS-i

Men/women plus money plus a product(s) to choose is a potent combination for confusion. Why, you might ask. I suggest, take a look at your girlfriend or wife, with the former being preferable in this case.

What happens when you have the terrible misfortune of going out with your/a girlfriend? Let’s assume that you’re solvent enough to spend about INR 2000 on your lady’s shopping excursion to buy a hand bag. What happens then?

The lady, if you’ve got the luck of a gambler betting on India defeating Afghanistan at T20 cricket, will go about choosing a handbag that costs well within your budget. No sir, you can’t have more luck than that. So, your girlfriend will certainly be stuck up with an in-decision making process that involves an indeterminate number of choices and this is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow morning from the east.

A similar, though to a degree much lesser than the dilemma listed above happens when a bloke has about INR 1 Lakh to spend on a motorcycle in the Indian market. That is, if you have money/access to money beforehand, which in my opinion simply makes it difficult to decide.

One of our readers sent us an email asking for our help in enabling him decide on a motorcycle for himself. Here’s what he sent us.

Can you help me with two things? 1) I have planned to buy a 180cc+ vehicle. My list has P220, RTR180 and ZMR. Then i decided to go in for RTR180 but it vibrates a lot. I dont wanna buy r15 cause it is not comfortable for me and also to ride in city traffic. P220 i dont like its look and also ZMR. I wanted to know is there any 180cc+ bike going to be launched? If yes when will it be launched. Also wen is RTR 200/220/250 going to be launched? Please help me out in this issue and also suggest me a good bike. I need good power, pick-up, mileage not lesser then 35km/lt, good looks & should be 180cc and above. Thanks again.

: Yamaha R15

This man is a bright chap. He’s eliminated most of the stuff that he doesn’t like. For example, the R15 gets the boot for the lack of low end torque and the crouched, somewhat uncomfortable riding position. The RTR180 is out of the window because at certain rpms it can cause your dental fixtures to fall out. The Pulsar 220 looks bad according to this particular reader and we simply cannot disagree as motorcycles, are like the women we choose for ourselves. One size/look doesn’t fit all. The ZMR, which is honestly in the ugliest thing only surpassed by maybe, Rakhi Sawant, thankfully isn’t an option. Now, if you’re a Rakhi Sawant fan, this is the least, I repeat, the least you deserve.

: TVS Apache 180 RTR

So what are your options that will be fast, that won’t be an alternate to a dildo and that will still manage to deliver about 35 Kmpl a liter. The Apache 200/220 might be the answer but that isn’t an option we would lean on until we get a confirmation on it’s launch. Yes, there has murmurs of the Apache 200/220 being launched in the next two months going on across the Indian auto blogosphere, but every two months, the previous two months are being replaced by the next two. So, we simply cannot count on the Apache 200/220 although we know for a fact that the motorcycle has been homologated at ARAI.

: Hero Honda Karizma-R

If I were to face this particular dilemma and go for a motorcycle that is reasonably fast(read a genuine top speed of 125 Kph), has a great upright riding posture and rides well, looks reasonably good or in the least better than the miss ugly ZMR and still delivers above 35 Kmpl, I would simply go out and buy the Karizma-R. What this motorcycle gives me is a unstressed bullet proof engine that might well, outlast the Apache and the Pulsar 220 put together. A riding position that might make a Splendor rider/uncle also happy. Acceleration and top speed that will more or less show most motorcycles a clean pair of heels. Then you also get the brilliant quality that Hero Honda or should that read, Honda offers. All this at a price of under INR 85 thousand makes it a sweet deal that you simply can’t go wrong with. Safety net, that in other words is what at Hero Honda Karizma-R is.

On the other hand, if you pick a motorcycle that you’d really love to own, even before you have enough Gandhibacks in the bank, it becomes pretty easy. You can start saving up, and then buy the motorcycle of your dreams when you’ve mustered enough cash. It’s really that simple and I’d certainly go with this option.

US warns of 'imminent' attacks in India

2010-05-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

A foreigner passes through a metal detector as she enters an area frequented by tourists in New Delhi.

The United States has warned its citizens of possible "imminent" attacks by militants on New Delhi, as the Indian police are put on high alert.

"There are increased indications that terrorists are planning imminent attacks in New Delhi," said a statement on the US embassy's website.

On Saturday, the Canadian and Australian missions in India followed similar warnings, cautioning their nationals against visiting certain parts of the country and avoid crowded shopping areas.

The new warnings suggest that a terrorist attack could be carried out in busy market places within the coming days or weeks.

The Indian Home Ministry says it is aware of the threats while the government has put its police force on high alert.

New Delhi has often blamed Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for aiding militant groups carrying out attacks in India. Islamabad has denied the charges.

The old rivals have a history of mistrust and have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.

Musharraf soon to return in country: Afghan

2010-05-01T11:12:00.002-07:00

CHAKWAL (SANA): Former law minister Dr Sher Afghan Khan Niazi has said that former President Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf will soon return in the country.
He said it is the wrong understanding of PPP and PML-N that former President Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf will not return in Pakistan.
This he said while in a telephonic talk with the representatives of Chakwal Press Club, adding that Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan’s statement that Pervez Musharraf is a coward man and will never returned to Pakistan is like a buttering of President Asif Ali Zardari for grabbing of some big post in the government.
Sher Afghan Niazi said that Pervez Musharraf have become a monster for PPP and PML-N.
He said Pervez Musharraf had given the right of appointments in the higher judiciary to the Chief Justice of Pakistan through 17th amendment but present government through 18th amendment included the government involvement in the appointments of the judges’ in higher judiciary, which shows that the Musharraf era was better than present government ear.
He said that Musharraf is pioneer of electronic media in Pakistan, adding that today media is big power in Pakistan which is the result of Musharraf’s polices.
Afghan further said that instantly after the registration of All Pakistan Muslim League, the schedule for the Musharraf return will be announced.
He said there is no hurdle in the return of Musharraf, adding that Musharraf is ready to tackle every kind of situation after his return to Pakistan.
He said that strong leadership could bring out the country out of this present situation.

Madhuri Gupta claims she is being framed

2010-05-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

Madhuri Gupta, a junior Indian official arrested on the charges of spying for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), told a court here on Saturday that she was being framed.

According to a police official, Madhuri Gupta, 53, said she was not a senior officer and could not have passed on sensitive information to her contacts in Pakistan where she was posted in the Indian High Commission. Madhuri, who had been in police custody for five days, also said she had revealed the identities of Indian undercover agents in Pakistan. According to court sources, the police wanted to extend her remand for two more days as they claimed she was changing her statements time and again in order to mislead them. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kaveri Baweja refused to grant this demand and remanded her to 14-day judicial custody. The officer, a specialist interpreter in Urdu, was posted in the media and information wing of the high commission. She came under the scanner after she showed “extraordinary” interest in areas beyond her role in the information wing of the mission. Central security agencies then involved senior MEA officials by briefing them about her activities in Pakistan, which included supplying of sensitive and classified documents related to Indian activities in that country and Afghanistan. A promotee officer of Ministry of External Affairs, Gupta has worked in the mission for nearly three years. The Special Branch of Delhi Police will charge Gupta with offence under the Official Secrets Act of 1923. The Act says that any person charged with disclosing information that is likely to affect the security of the State is punishable by law. Gupta, a second secretary at the Indian mission in Islamabad, was arrested here on April 27.

India keen to engage ‘empowered' Gilani

2010-05-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

APPrime Minister Manmohan Singh with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani during a meeting on the sidelines of the 16th SAARC summit in Thimphu. File Photo:

After Thimphu, trust building key to emerging dialogue template

The recent empowerment of Pakistani prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and his favourable disposition towards peace were important factors in India’s willingness to put the dialogue process back on track.

Providing the first detailed account of the meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan and Mr. Gilani in Thimphu on April 28, senior officials said the question of ‘who India should talk to’ had been answered by the 18th amendment to the Pakistani constitution which enhanced the authority of the prime minister.

But personal equations between the two principals also mattered. “They do manage to communicate well with one another”, an official said. “There is a certain chemistry”. Last year, when Dr. Singh was under fire following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, Mr. Gilani batted for him by telling reporters that what the Prime Minister had said in Parliament about the controversial joint statement ‘is what we agreed’. Dr. Singh had put an Indian spin on the terror-dialogue delinking issue but the Pakistani PM chose not to score points. “We remember that”, an Indian official told The Hindu. “He seems to be favourably disposed towards peace”.

India is prepared to move ahead on the basis of Mr. Gilani’s latest assurances because the 18th amendment had legally empowered him, the sources said. “In fact, Gilani told us, ‘I’ve come with the authority. I have the support of everyone’.” The sources also appreciated the fact that his statements on India had always been relatively restrained. “Until you show him a door, he has no incentive to start doing anything [about our concerns]. And you give your enemies the chance to say, ‘Look, India is not prepared to budge even a bit’.” Why should we allow them to fuse all Pakistanis behind them, the officials asked.

The sources said India and Pakistan came to Thimphu with constraints but agreed to lower the pitch. “We have opened the door to dialogue. The purpose is to restore trust. That’s what the foreign ministers and foreign secretaries have been tasked to do … This is not a dialogue to solve all issues immediately but to restore trust”.

The officials said Dr. Singh made it clear it is terrorism from Pakistan which has been preventing dialogue. “One of the most important things to restore trust is credible action by Pakistan”. Trust was a dynamic process, the sources said, adding that the “best scenario” would be one where the 26/11 trial ends soon with convictions, Pakistan takes “credible action” against terrorist groups and the dialogue moves alongside. “We had two choices at Thimphu. First, to have ‘talks about talks’. This was the weasel option, of endless arguments about terrorism lists, Kashmir, water etc. The second was to recognise that if the problem is lack of trust, let’s make trust the issue. It opens [things] up”.

Asked if this was a new template, the officials said, “I don’t think you can give it a name. The advantage of this is that it is open. It has potential”.

The one-on-one meeting between the two prime ministers was about clearing the air, the sources said, and not a ‘negotiations meeting’. Mr. Gilani spoke about the problems Pakistan was facing in dealing with terrorism. Dr. Singh replied that the slow pace of the 26/11 trial and the threats being issued by Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed were a source of frustration for India. Mr. Gilani said he understood India’s concerns and that his government would find a legal way to address them

Federal Court Dismisses Rosetta's Google Trademark Suit

2010-04-30T14:49:00.001-07:00

A federal court in Virginia has dismissed Rosetta Stone's trademark infringement lawsuit against Google (NASD: GOOG), which had sought to keep the Silicon Valley technology giant from selling the company's trademarks or other similar terms as part of its AdWords advertising program.

Rosetta Stone, which sells language learning software and online services, said that the decision from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia will contribute to "consumer confusion" by allowing counterfeiters to sell "pirated copies of trademarked products to unsuspecting American consumers."

"We are deeply disappointed that Rosetta Stone was not given an opportunity to present at a public trial the facts underlying Google's practices and the motivation that led Google to adopt its current trademark policies," said Tom Adams, the president and CEO of Rosetta Stone.

The company said that it is considering an appeal.

Nithyananda scandal: Actress Ranjitha serves notices on Google, YouTube

2010-04-30T14:48:00.000-07:00

Bangalore: Actress Ranjitha, on Thursday, termed the video clips telecast by television channels purportedly showing the tainted self-styled godman Paramahamsa Nithyananda engaging in acts of physical intimacy as “malicious.”
“Our client dissociates herself from the said video which has caused danger to her life, limb and property,” a Delhi-based law firm representing Ranjitha said, adding, “our client strongly objects to being referred to as one of the persons in the video.”
In her first comments made to the media after being embroiled in the alleged sex scandal, the actress said she had issued notices to search engine Google and video-sharing website YouTube, through the law firm, demanding the controversial clippings be removed with in 72 hours, ending 5 pm on Sunday.
The legal firm, PM Law Chambers (PMLC), said in a statement made to the press that it would take “appropriate action” against the Google and YouTube if the defamatory clippings were not
removed.
The law firm stated that several “persons have access to the illegally created clips, snippets of video, or are uploading or downloading the same on worldwide web, which is an offence in itself.”
When contacted, a senior official with Google’s global communications and public affairs wing in Bangalore, said he was unaware of the legal notice, and needed to check it with the Internet giant’s law department.
“The authenticity and originality of the alleged person featuring in the video taken clandestinely has to stand the test of admissibility before being treated as evidence in the Courts of Law,” PMLC said.
“The video clips, which clearly amount to gross violation of various laws of India, have malicious, diabolical and destructive intent, and are clearly aimed at bringing harm to the actress,” it said.
Those who were airing and publishing the video clips were doing so for commercial interests, it claimed, adding the actress had “authorised” the firm to initiate legal action against such persons.
Ranjitha, a “hard working, dedicated woman with high morals and has never been accused of any misdemeanor or wrong in the past 20 years,” believed that there was a conspiracy against her, by “vested interests”, who were behind the circulation of the “highly offensive videos.”
The statement requested the media to “respect her privacy, and her need to spend time with her family and recover and recoup” following the controversy.
It added that Ranjitha did not wish to discuss “this incident any further with the media and will stay away from her public life to spend time with her family to recover from this traumatic
allegation.”
The controversy over alleged sleazy activities of Nithyananda broke out on March 2 after TV channels aired the purported video footage showing the actress in intimate positions with him.
Tamil Nadu police registered various cases including rape against Nithyananda before transferring them to Karnataka where his ashram is headquartered at Bidadi, about 35 km from
Bangalore.
He was arrested from Solan in Himachal Pradesh on April 21 in a joint operation by Karnataka police and their counterparts in the hilly state.
Earlier, Nithyananda had stated that he was unwell and in samadhi when the video was shot. Lenin Karuppan, formerly a disciple of the swami, had claimed that he had arranged for the secret filming of the swami to expose him.

Apple enters mobile search big time

2010-04-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

If it seemed Apple was encroaching Google’s business with its iAd platform, then the acquisition of mobile search company Siri is a transgression of note!

$200 million blown in the wind

Though this iPhone app company’s flagship product has only been downloaded around 250,000 times, various technology publications are putting the acquisition price at north of $200 million. With investors having put $24 million into the organization, the acquisition represents an 800 per cent return, which is quite healthy for the investors.

But it seems Apple has significantly overbid for this company. The theory for this price tag is two-fold: some believe Apple feared Google would swoop in and snatch Siri the same way Google snatched Admob, while other argue if you look at the purchase as a talent and technology acquisition as opposed to an iPhone app acquisition, $200 million is well worth it for entry in the mobile search market.

Smartphones, advertising, search

This Siri acquisition marks the third major market the former BFFs Apple and Google will be competing with each other in, namely smartphones, advertising and search.

Where Google Android is a competitor to iPhone OS, and Apple’s iAd is an arrow at Google’s AdWords and AdSense, this acquisition of a company whose product is a kind of virtual assistant is a slight play on the typical mobile archetype. In this regard, Google has other platforms like Aardvark to compete with this Apple move, but if anything, this move is definitely a sign that Apple no longer treats Google territory as precious ground that should not be tread on.

What is likely, as the recent HP acquisition of Palm shows, is that the company that wins big in the three industries Apple and Google are competing in will likely be among the largest in the world, making the obscene profits mobile advertising, search and mobile technology leaders tend to. Mobile search company Siri is merely a piece in a very interesting puzzle.

New HTC Droid Incredible Google Phone Is Selling Out (HTC, GOOG, VZ)

2010-04-30T14:45:00.001-07:00

Google, HTC, and Verizon Wireless seem to have a hit on their hands.
The powerful new DROID Incredible smartphone, which went on sale yesterday, is already sold out in many of Verizon's retail stores.
It's also sold out on Verizon's website, first noted by Boy Genius Report.
In Brooklyn, N.Y., there are no Incredibles available at retail stores, according to a rep at Verizon's Atlantic Center store. We called around Manhattan stores and found many are sold out, but a few still have them in stock.
We also called two stores in central New Jersey: One at the large Bridgewater Commons Mall had Incredibles in stock. A store in Watchung did not have any in stock.
The amount of phones each store received varies. One said it sold five units, before running out. Another said it had sold a dozen, and still had a few in stock.
Assuming the sellout isn't just because of low supply levels, this is good sign for Verizon, HTC, and Google. Consumers are getting excited about Android-based phones. And so far, it's been without much advertising: Compared to the original Droid, which had a massive ad campaign, we've hardly seen any marketing for the new phone.
If Apple wasn't feeling pressure to get the iPhone on Verizon, news like this should help get the gears moving.

AP Technology NewsBrief at 5:19 p.m. EDT

2010-04-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

(Associated Press Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Apple shutting Lala.com; `Cloud' music on horizon?LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Apple is shutting down Lala.com, the online music retailer it bought last year. The move comes amid speculation that Apple will soon offer a way for people to access songs from distant computers. A message posted on Lala's home page late Thursday says the service isn't accepting new users and will shut down at the end of May.
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Amazon adding Twitter, Facebook to Kindle e-readerSAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader is getting access to Facebook and Twitter, along with several other enhancements, as part of a software update being sent wirelessly to the devices. In a posting on Amazon's site, the company says the new software will let users share book passages on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. The update will also let people sort books and documents into collections and lock their Kindle with a password. There also will be larger font options and the ability to zoom in on PDF documents.

Cell phone sales up 22 pct as economy recoversNEW YORK (AP) _ The number of cell phones sold worldwide rose 22 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, as both the economic recovery and an appetite for smart phones drove a rebound in sales, according to research firm IDC. Research in Motion Ltd., the Canadian maker of the BlackBerry smart phones, broke into the top five of the world's largest phone makers for the first time.

Samsung Q1 net profit surges to record highSEOUL, South Korea (AP) _ Samsung Electronics said net profit surged more than six-fold in the first quarter to a record high on strong demand and higher prices for memory chips as well as increased sales of mobile phones and flat screen televisions. Samsung earned 3.99 trillion won ($3.59 billion) in the three months ended March 31, the company said Friday. It recorded net profit of 582 billion won the year before.

Steve Jobs attacks Adobe Flash as unfit for iPhoneNEW YORK (AP) _ For iPhone users who've been wondering whether their devices will support Flash technology for Web video and games anytime soon, the answer is finally here, straight from Steve Jobs: No. In a detailed offensive against the technology owned by Adobe Systems Inc., Apple's CEO wrote Thursday that Flash has too many bugs, drains batteries too quickly and is too oriented to personal computers to work on the iPhone and iPad.

HP is Palm's Silicon Valley savior in $1.4B dealSAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Palm Inc. a pioneer in the smart phone business that couldn't quite make the comeback it needed, has agreed to be bought out by Hewlett-Packard Co. for about $1.4 billion in cash. The two Silicon Valley companies announced Wednesday that the deal will see HP pay $5.70 for every Palm common share and certain preferred shares. Also included in the $1.4 billion price tag are payments for additional preferred shares, warrants and employee restricted stock units.

Search engine Baidu's Q1 profit jumps 165 percentBEIJING (AP) _ Baidu Inc., which operates China's most popular Internet search engine, said Thursday its first-quarter profit jumped 165 percent on a rise in revenue and numbers of advertising customers. Net income in the three months to March 31 rose to $70.4 million, or $2.02 a share, the Beijing-based company said. Revenue grew 60 percent to $189.6 million.

Microsoft reaches licensing deal on HTC phonesSEATTLE (AP) _ Microsoft Corp. says it has patents covering phones that use Google Inc.'s Android software _ but unlike Apple Inc., Microsoft has reached a licensing deal rather than suing over the software. Microsoft said Wednesday that it has reached an agreement that will give HTC Corp., a Taiwanese company that is a major maker of Android phones, the rights to use technology covered by Microsoft's patents in those phone. Financial terms were not disclosed.

AOL 1Q profit slumps as ads, subscriptions waneNEW YORK (AP) _ Very little went right for AOL Inc. in the first quarter as it cut way back on staff and tried to refocus its business. The Internet company said Wednesday that tumbling online advertising revenue, along with restructuring costs, led to a 58 percent drop in first-quarter net profit. AOL shares sank $3.66, or 13.1 percent, to $24.35 in afternoon trading.

Motorola posts profit, strong sales; stock jumpsNEW YORK (AP) _ Motorola Inc. posted an unexpected profit in the first quarter, as sales of its new phones outdid its own forecasts. It also gave an outlook that was brighter than Wall Street was predicting, and its shares jumped Thursday. However, it has lost its position as the largest U.S. maker of phones to Apple Inc. Motorola sold a total of 8.5 million phones in the quarter, while Apple sold 8.8 million iPhones. Four years ago, when the Razr was still popular, Motorola sold 46.1 million phones in the first quarter.

Microsoft Echoes Apple: 'future of the Web Is HTML5'

2010-04-30T14:40:00.001-07:00

Microsoft has bought a first-class seat on the Flash Bashing Express with an official statement on its IEBlog. Apple's sometimes-friend, sometimes-foe echoed ideas that Apple CEO Steve Jobs expressed in Thursday's Thoughts on Flash essay and put its own stake in the ground for the future of Web technologies.

Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft's General Manager of Internet Explorer, cut to the chase rather quickly, by stating "the future of the Web is HTML5." He also said that Microsoft has been "deeply engaged" in the HTML5 process with the W3C, the standards body that drafts the specifications for how HTML5 should work. The company's Internet Explorer 9, now in beta for Windows users, features HTML5 support. Hachamovitch says that while the W3C does not specify a video format for video embedded in HTML5 sites, Microsoft has joined Apple in supporting H.264, and H.264 alone.

In a potential move to soften the blow to an already upset Adobe, Hachamovitch does end his piece with an acknowledgement that "despite [some] issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today's web."

Of course, with the rise of the portable devices that don't support Flash--and especially the popularity of the iPhone and iPad--major publishers and content providers have quickly accelerated the adoption of HTML5 and H.264 to provide Flash-less video delivery. Or, in other words, while Flash may be the Web technology of today, don't think it will necessarily by the Web technology of tomorrow.

Besides taking sides in a contentious battle over the future of Web and desktop technologies (don't forget AIR, Adobe's bridge for delivering Flash applications to Mac, Windows, and Linux desktops), Microsoft's announcement is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the company competes directly with Flash and AIR with its Silverlight technology, which can be used to deliver multimedia via the Web or the desktop. Furthermore, it's the only technology which developers are allowed to use to build applications for Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform.

Second, there's no mention of Microsoft's own Windows Media video codec; Redmond could be hinting it plans to abandon Web aspirations for its own proprietary technology, or at least relegating it to any niches it already occupies.

Microsoft siding with Apple in the war on Flash could put a serious dent in future prospects for Adobe's technology, especially where the hot new market of portable devices is concerned. While Silverlight may live on as a platform for building apps for Windows and Windows Phone (assuming those devices catch on), Microsoft's embracing of HTML5 and H.264 could do a lot to help grant Apple's wish of "leaving the past behind."

Shine Labs Bone China Collection

2010-04-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

Shine Labs Bone China Collection is minimal, modern and comes in a soothing matte finish.

Jim Henderson launched his San Francisco lighting and design company, Shine Labs, in 2009, after working as a lighting designer and manufacturer for more than 20 years. Henderson travels to Hong Kong, the Philippines and Thailand to find innovative lighting products and accessories that "shine" and artful objects that add personality to a room. His company's latest offering - the Shine Labs Bone China Collection - fits perfectly with this design philosophy.

"The material is really easy to live with," says Henderson. "It has this wonderful way it absorbs light and has a matte finish that's refreshing. They're unique and beautiful and kind of minimal and modern."

The striking ultra white, unglazed pieces work with various styles and decors and include bud, orchid and wall vases, napkin rings, plates, platters, votives and playful origami parrots. The collection, which retails for about $10 to $130, has subtle characteristics - like the delicate fluting seen on some of the vases.

Shine Labs' home accessories range from mod woodblock clocks ($108) and sleek LED task lamps ($312 and $504) to felted room dividers laser cut with cabbage roses and pop art florals ($130). The company's pendants are especially eye-catching - like the Moire Pendant Collection ($350) fabricated from wires; the gorgeous Cascade Pendant ($450) handmade from individually cut ivory organza petals affixed to a fabric diffuser and strung together to form "cascades"; and the Dolores Pendant ($176), handmade in San Francisco's Mission District from high-quality, die-cut wool panels sewn together to form a shade over a nickel-plated wire frame.

Shine Lab's products are featured in clubs, restaurants and hotels and sold in Anthropologie stores and select design showrooms. Henderson has plans to add an e-commerce site soon.

The Shine Labs Bone China Collection, available exclusively at DWM Interiors, 2 Henry Adams St., Suite 349, San Francisco; (415) 864-3857. Propeller, 555 Hayes St., San Francisco; (415) 701-7767. www.propellermodern.com. Shine Labs: (415) 626-5262 or www.shinelabs.com.

China Child Attacks: Are They Copycat Crimes?

2010-04-30T14:36:00.001-07:00

In China this week three violent attacks on schoolchildren occurred in three days. Such strings of similar crimes seem unlikely to be coincidental. And experts who study criminology say that some crimes do seem to be contagious.

"Copycat crimes do occur," said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist at the University of Baltimore. "The power of suggestion is what's going on. People who have some sort of frustration, they have some sort of debt they want to settle – when they hear about what goes on somewhere else, it helps embolden them."

Though details are not available yet about the motivations of the three men who committed the crimes in China, they do seem to fit a pattern. In all three cases, a man entered a primary school or kindergarten and began attacking students. A fourth crime fitting that pattern occurred about a month ago in China.

Not a trigger

While news reports and public discussion of crimes can sometimes influence someone to carry out a similar act, research indicates that that person most likely would have committed some kind of crime regardless.

"You have a disturbed or already-established offender who most likely was going to do something anyway," said Ray Surette, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida. "What the media attention does is it shapes what sort of incident it is. Someone who's going to take a knife into an elementary school is probably disturbed enough that if he hadn't done that, he would have done something else."

Instead of acting as a trigger for a crime, media attention around an incident more likely acts as "a rudder," Surette said, steering a person toward a particular crime over other criminal options. But in some cases, the first crime may inspire a copycat to aim higher or do something more harmful than they would have imagined on their own.

Ross agreed that news reports are neither necessary nor sufficient to completely instigate a crime that otherwise would not have occurred.

"It's just one extra channel that the person is exposed to," Ross told LiveScience. "It may give them an idea about an alternative way to engage in crime."

Why do it?

The motivation among copycat criminals can vary.

Some, especially those who imitate particularly heinous or disruptive crimes, covet the fame the initial offender gained.

Some people think, "I wouldn’t mind seeing my face over the news, causing such havoc," Surette said. "Even being portrayed as a monster is attractive to certain individuals. Every sort of attention is attractive to some individuals."

But in fact, the majority of copycat crimes are non-violent offenses such as burglaries, Surette said. In most of these cases, criminals use information about an earlier crime, or even a fictional crime on film or television, to shape their own plans in the hopes of being more successful.

"With the bulk of copycat offenders, the goal is actually risk reduction," Surette said. "What they're hoping to pick up from the media is the techniques that will lower their risk of apprehension."

In these cases, the criminals don't crave attention, they dread it. They hope to learn from an earlier criminal's mistakes or successes to get away with a crime themselves.

In fact, copycat crime is simply another form of imitation, which is one of the basic socials skills of humans that allows us to reap the benefits of other people's trial-and-error efforts.

"We're hardwired for imitation – there's a real evolutionary advantage," Surette said. Many other species, such as chimpanzees, parrots and dolphins, also show this ability, he said.

What the media can do

Because of the risk of copycat crimes, some people question whether the media should report on some crimes at all. Officials in China have ordered domestic media not to heavily cover the attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"The media has to be careful, no question about it, if it doesn’t want to contribute to people engaging in those sorts of crimes," Ross said.

Reporters should follow certain guidelines to reduce the risk of inspiring imitators, he said.

News stories should avoid "anything that raises the celebrity status," Surette said. "If you start running photos, their final words, if you emphasize and dwell on the social disruption and the damage even. You don’t want to give instructions; you don’t want to give techniques."

Japanese companies keen to set up bio-fuel plants in India

2010-04-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

(From left) Kazuo Minagawa, Japan Consul General in Chennai, B.S. Raghavan, former Policy Advisor to the UN (FAO) and N. Krishnaswami, president, IJCCI , launching a logo in Chennai on Friday. Photo: S.S. Kumar

Japanese firms are coming to India to set up bio-fuel plants and others will collaborate with Indian firms in the area of sustainable energy development, said Kazuo Minagawa, Japan Counsel General in Chennai on Friday.

Delivering the inaugural address at a seminar on ‘Global warming and climate management' organised by the Indo-Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IJCCI), he said that Allied Carbon Solutions, a bio-fuel company, launched a contract farming programme for jatropha cultivation near Madurai. Besides, the company will produce about 10 tonnes of crude jatropha oil daily. Allied Carbon plans to export the bio-fuel to the U.S. and Japan.

More firms are willing to come to India. In his welcome address, IJCCI president N. Krishnaswami said that Japan had been a role model in Asia for ‘clean environment' and ‘clean energy development' and India has to learn from Japan's experiences on these fronts.

The chamber plans to work in tandem with like-minded organisations in Japan and India. It also plans to work in co-operation with representatives of various countries in Chennai such as the U.S., Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and other ASEAN countries to pool their expertise and experiences in tackling global warming and climate management.

B.S. Raghavan, former Policy Advisor to the UN (FAO), said “these problems call for a total systemic approach, without which we cannot address it at all. A vigorous campaign has to be carried out among the vital stakeholders to create awareness.”

Mr. Raghavan said that people have to become the manipulators of change. This could be done through people-to-people networking, alliance, or coalition to find out the remedial measures.

S. Madhavan, CEO of Green Quotient Systems called upon the various stakeholders to calculate the carbon emitted by various lifestyle gadgets used in daily life.

BMW India’s NBFC arm may start operations by June

2010-04-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

After entering India in 2006, the German luxury carmaker BMW has taken the Indian luxury car market by storm. Its claim to fame has been its journey to the top spot within a span of three years by zooming past ahead its German companion, Mercedes-Benz.
In fact, the company has recently announced that it plans to make its NBFC arm operational by June this year. It may be noted here that the company announced the launch of its NBFC arm last year.
Moreover, the company has also initiated its used car business and car leasing business to individuals in the last year to strengthen its presence in the Indian market. Clearly, thecompany has bullish plans for the country and is considering India as one of the topmost economies on the priority list.
With regards to plans for the NBFC, the automaker plans to invest around USD 50 million (Rs 220 crore) over the next 24-months for expansion of BMW-NBFC. Thecompany has recently launched the new 5 series in the Indian market.
The global bestseller has sold over 3,600 units of the 5 series in India since 2007.

Water dispute fuels Indo-Pak tensions

2010-04-30T14:29:00.002-07:00

GUJRAT, Pakistan: A bitter dispute over limited water resources is fueling India-Pakistan tensions at a time when the South Asian neighbors are trying to rebuild trust and resume peace talks.

It’s a long-running feud that has worsened in recent months as a dry spell focuses attention on Pakistan’s growing water shortage. Three days of talks in March ended with both sides trading barbs and failing to reach a resolution.
The issue was raised Thursday when the leaders of the two countries met at a regional summit in Bhutan and agreed on the need to normalize relations, the Pakistani side said.
Further complicating the situation, extremists are trying to capitalize on allegations that India is stealing water from glacier-fed rivers that start in the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Independent experts say there is no evidence to support those charges, but they warn that Pakistani concerns about India’s plans to build at least 15 new dams need to be addressed to avoid conflict.
“If you want to give Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Pakistani militants an issue that really rallies people, give them water,” said John Briscoe, who has worked on water issues in the two countries for 35 years and was the World Bank’s senior water adviser.
Farmers in Pakistan’s central breadbasket are certainly angry. “India has blocked our water because they are our enemy,” said Mohammad, a 65-year-old farmer in the town of Gujrat who goes by only one name.
His farm sits close to the Chenab River, which residents say has been shrinking since India completed a hydroelectric dam in its part of Kashmir in 2008. In some sections, water flows in only a tenth of the river bed, and nearby irrigation canals have dried up.
Indian officials blame any reduction on natural variation and climate change, which have hurt India as well. They add that Pakistan’s antiquated irrigation system wastes large quantities of water.
The United States has been seeking to reduce India-Pakistan tensions, hoping that would free Pakistan to move troops away from the Indian front to fight militants attacking US and NATO troops in Afghanistan from sanctuaries near the Afghan border.
“The issues of Kashmir and terrorism are going to be much more difficult if we don’t have an agreement on water,” said water expert Briscoe, now a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.
The origin of the water dispute can be traced to the creation of Pakistan and India in 1947, when the British Indian empire was partitioned. The split gave India control of the part of Kashmir that is the source of six rivers that irrigate crops in Pakistan’s agricultural heartland of Punjab province and elsewhere.
Under a 1960 agreement, Pakistan has the use of the three western rivers — the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — and India, the three eastern ones — the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi.
India was granted limited use of Pakistan’s rivers for agricultural purposes, plus the right to build hydroelectric dams, as long as they don’t store or divert large amounts of water.
Pakistan is one of the driest countries in the world, and water availability per person has fallen from about 5,000 cubic meters (175,000 cubic feet) in 1947 to around 1,000 cubic meters (35,000 cubic feet) today. Most of the drop is a result of rapid population growth, but recent shortages have heightened suspicion about India.
Pakistan’s Indus water commissioner, Jamat Ali Shah, doesn’t accuse India of stealing water, but he says India isn’t providing information required under the 1960 pact to prove that it’s not.
“There should be nothing in the track record that shows India has violated the treaty,” said Shah. “But it is a fact that the track record is not clear.”
India denies any intention to cut off water to Pakistan and maintains that it has complied with the treaty. But as with other issues between the two countries, mistrust runs high.
“If he has the capacity to hurt me, the best that can be said about him is that he will use it for blackmailing and the worst is that he will use it to harm me,” said Shams ul Mulk, the former head of Pakistan’s Ministry of Water and Power.
Briscoe said the dams India is planning to build could give it the ability to choke off water to Pakistan if it wanted to pressure its neighbor.
India should provide automatic flow data to Pakistan, he said, while also warning that heated rhetoric on the Pakistan side would only embolden extremists.
Jamaat-e-Dawa, an alleged front group for the militant Lashkar-e-Taiba organization, issued a statement recently accusing India of using “her disputed occupation of Kashmir to carry out a deep conspiracy of turning Pakistan’s agricultural lands into barren lands and economically annihilating her through building dams and water theft.”
“If India continues with her water terrorism,” it added, “Pakistan must keep open the option of using force.”

U.S. Transfers Aircraft To Pakistan Navy

2010-04-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- In a move designed to further solidify relations between Pakistan and the United States, a ceremony was held at Naval Air Station Jacksonville on Friday morning to transfer ownership of a rebuilt P-C3 Orion aircraft from the U.S. Navy to the Pakistan Navy."Pakistan is in the middle of a war with violent extremists," Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Masiello. "It not only affects the nation, it affects the region. Their war is our war."Officials from Pakistan explained the importance of acquiring such a valuable strategic defense tool in the interdiction of terrorists, narcotics traffickers and secure the seas from piracy."Our ability to actually survey the sea is going to enhance, in a great manner, our ability to stabilize the American command," said Pakistan Vice Adm. Shahid Iqbal.Crews from Pakistan have been working with their American counterparts since last fall to become certified to operate and maintain the plane, as well as carry out their mission.

Pakistan hails dialogue with India

2010-04-30T14:28:00.001-07:00

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, April 30 (UPI) -- Pakistani officials described the latest talks with India as "positive progress" and said they plan to continue dialogue.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi praised Thursday's meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and said he plans to continue talks with Indian External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna when the Indian Parliament's budgetary session ends May 7, the Press Trust of India reported Friday.

Former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar described the meeting between the prime ministers, at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Summit in Bhutan, as "positive progress," the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

"This enhances expectations. I must say the credit goes to both sides for taking the initiatives," he said.

Meanwhile, Abdul Basit, spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Office, said Pakistan is seeking long-term strategic relations with India. He said talks between the countries would include the dispute over Kashmir.

Jackie Chan tops Forbes China Celebrity List

2010-04-30T01:22:00.001-07:00

Jackie Chan
Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan ranks number one in the recently released Forbes China Celebrity List of 2010. Taiwanese musician Jay Chou and Hong Kong singer and actor Andy Lau are in hot pursuit.
Chan, who held a concert in Beijing's Bird Nest in May 2009, became the first artist to perform in the National Stadium. Jay Chou didn't receive good reviews for his movies, but he got more attention for his work in the Hollywood film The Green Hornet with American actress Cameron Diaz. Meanwhile, Lau has starred in three movies, but his secret marriage to Carol Zhu that was exposed grabbed headlines.
Basketball forward Yao Ming continues to lead the list of celebrities from the Chinese mainland and actress Zhang Ziyi ranks fourth with 25 cover stories. Skit and sitcom actor Zhao Benshan is in the fifth place.
Writer Guo Jingming who edits Top Novel magazine is in 58th spot, while writer, blogger and racecar driver Han Han is 74th.
According to Forbes Chinese edition, the two standards for ranking celebrities are personal income and media exposure rate which is judged from 28 popular newspapers, 18 nationwide TV programs and cover stories in 29 magazines.

China Construction Bank plans big share issue

2010-04-30T01:20:00.000-07:00

BEIJING — China Construction Bank said Friday it plans to issue new shares worth up to 75 billion yuan (11 billion dollars), as the country's lenders heed government orders to boost their capital base.
The bank, one of China's big four state-owned lenders, plans to sell up to 630 million Shanghai-listed A shares and up to 15.73 billion Hong Kong-listed H shares, according to a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The size of the issue will be equivalent to no more than seven percent of the bank's existing A shares and H shares.
Proceeds from the rights issue will be used to "strengthen the capital base of the bank", it said.
The issue is still subject to approval from shareholders and regulators.
Chinese banks need to raise funds to meet regulatory requirements for capital after they issued a record 9.6 trillion yuan in new loans last year in response to government calls to support the country's massive stimulus efforts.
The central bank this week urged lenders to replenish their capital base to "strengthen their ability to resist risks and maintain financial stability", amid growing fears over bad debts.
Other major Chinese lenders including Bank of China and Bank of Communications have also announced plans to issue new shares worth tens of billions of yuan.

China lifts travel ban on people with HIV and Aids

2010-04-30T01:18:00.001-07:00

China has announced that it is lifting the ban on anyone with HIV or Aids entering the country. The change in quarantine laws comes just days before the Shanghai World Expo is launched, an event the Chinese hope will attract around four million visitors from abroad.
Officially, the State Council said that the lifting of the ban was due to evidence that border control did very little to stop the spread of HIV. It also said that there is also a greater understanding of the disease in China now. The ban had lasted for 20 years. The cabinet also pointed out that enforcing the ban had proven extremely inconvenient when it was trying to host big events such as the Beijing Olympics. For such events, China recognised that a temporary lifting of the ban was the easiest way around the problem. It first did so in 1995, when Beijing played host to the World Women’s Conference.
Campaigner for the rights of those infected with HIV and medical professor, Zhang Beichuan, said that the lifting of the ban was a huge leap forward. He said that now the government was starting to view the disease as a public health issue, rather than a disease imported into the country by people who live corrupt lifestyles.
Many of the Chinese who have been affected by HIV are provincial farmers who contracted the disease when there was a push by biomedical companies to stock up their blood banks. Many farmers leapt at a chance to sell their blood to bolster their wages. Unfortunately, many of the blood collecting operations were not monitored and were unsanitary, allowing the rapid spread of HIV.

Fashioning Trends

2010-04-30T01:16:00.001-07:00

THE HINDU Style check Surya Parvathi Photo:S.Mahinsha

Fashion designer Surya Parvathi tells Liza George about her tryst with the stars and what fashion means to her

It was an advertisement in a newspaper that had Surya Pravathi sketching her dreams on paper. The ad, a designing contest by International Academy of Fashion, Ernakulam, helped her realise that her heart lay in designing. She soon joined the institute and later went on to join Apparel Leather Techniques, Bangalore, and PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore to study fashion and its intricacies.

“As a kid I loved designing, I remember sketching bridal dresses on pieces of paper and the back of my books. I hated tailoring though. So I designed my dresses and then had them tailor-made,” says Surya who upon graduating in fashion decided to try her hand in costume designing. With no strings with the film world, she managed to get hold of director Fazil's phone number and pleaded with him to give her a chance. Nayantara's first scene in white in Fazil's Vismaya Thumabathu was Surya's debut as a costume designer.

“When I started designing costumes for the big screen, I was keen on making them as attractive as possible. I chose materials that were rich in colour and further enriched them with embellishments. It was only later that I realised that heavily-worked outfits like those with Kantha work, for instance, look flat on screen. Likewise you don't need to use silk for a stylish look on screen, poly-cotton will do just fine.”

Real vs. reel clothes

Dressed in a simple yet elegant white-gold salwar-kurta, Surya looks chic and stylish. However the photographer insists that she change into another dress for the photo shoot. “See, what I mean? That which looks good in the real world may not look good in the reel world,” she says as she sportingly changes outfits.

According to Surya, dressing Mollywood stars is easy as they are not too fussy and have faith in their designer. “Dressing actors from other States, however, can prove tricky. They are particular about their dress, hair, make-up… even shoes. One such actor wanted her shoes to match the colour of her onscreen dress. They do not know how the Malayalam film industry works: the shots, the angles used…, the cinematographer rarely shoots the shoes; it's mostly a bust shot or a close-up of the face that they go for,” says Surya who has dressed stars like Samvritha Sunil, Navya Nair, Navneet Kaur and Parvathi Melton on screen.

In fact, her outfit for Parvathi in the song Chellatharmarae… for the movie Hello (kurta with Patiala) had textile retailers replicating such outfits for sale. “It felt great when a salesman in Kochi tried to sell me one referring to it as ‘Hello Kurta,'” laughs Surya.

Before she designs for the stars, she takes into account their preferences. “Some may prefer a deep neckline, while others don't like such stuff. Malayali actresses are not so particular about the fit of their clothes except when it comes to sari blouses. Actresses from other States, on the other hand, insist that their dresses fit them like a glove; they also insist that their clothes are the latest in terms of Bollywood fashion,” says the petite costume designer who has also launched her line of clothing called ‘Isra' in the city.

“Most people in the capital city are quite conservative when it comes to fashion. Kochiites are more open to the latest in fashion trends and do not mind paying for designer wear,” says Surya.

Colour co-ordination

“Fashion keeps changing from day to day. What's in today will be out tomorrow. The only outfit I believe will always remain in style are saris.” She foresees mixing and matching of clothes being the next in the fashion scene. “The only problem is that you need to have a sense of colour co-ordination while doing so.”

To Surya, being well-dressed is not just about wearing the right outfit, it is also about the right accessories and foot wear. “Sleek pieces of jewellery are in fashion. It's the same with footwear; keep it simple yet elegant. No bows or fancy embellishments on your shoes,” says Surya who adds that the right hair do is important too to complete the look. “Your hair has to suit your face, not what the latest trend is. It is the same with clothes. You should stick to what suits your complexion and your body type. Only then will you truly be in fashion.”

Sharmila walks the ramp with 92-year-old SEWA artisan

2010-04-30T01:15:00.001-07:00

The Hindu Veteran actor Sharmila Tagore with Hansiba aged 92, the oldest rural artisan. The models display Hansiba's collections during an event organised by SEWA (Self Employed Women's Association) at National Crafts Museum in New Delhi. Photo: R.V. Moorthy.

Sharmila Tagore sashayed down the ramp to showcase a new collection by the brand Hansiba, named after the oldest SEWA artisan.

Veteran actor and Censor Board chief Sharmila Tagore sashayed down the ramp with 92-year-old SEWA artisan Hansiba Ben to showcase a new collection by the NGO‘s Hansiba initiative here. The brand Hansiba is named after Hansiba Ben.

Also giving Sharmila company on the ramp Saturday was Venezuelan Ambassador Milena Santana Ramirez.

Sharmila walked the ramp in a red silk sari with a colourful border, designed by Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) artisans and French designer, Graham Hollick, to encourage the new collection – “Ananta - The Flamboyant Stitch”.

“I have kept track of the workings of SEWA since a long time. They have done good work in making Hansiba, a well-known brand. Today, I am wearing a Hansiba sari, not only because I support this initiative but also because it is so pretty and makes me look beautiful,” said Sharmila, 63.

Hansiba, the flagship brand of a prominent Gujarat women's self-help organisation, belongs to STFC (SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre), a non-profit organisation jointly owned and managed by over 3,200 rural artisans.

Right from the raw materials to the entire supply chain, it is managed by rural women. Hansiba as a fashion brand was launched by more than 15,000 women artisans.

Hansiba has its own stores in Ahmedabad, Delhi and Mumbai and is awaiting one in Bangalore.

2010-04-30T01:13:00.001-07:00

Italian fashion designer Donatella Versace.

Designer Donatella Versace is auctioning an internship at her New York office.

The highest bidder will not only work from the Versace office, but also get to visit a Donatella Versace and Christopher Kane show in Milan, at which the intern will get the opportunity to meet with Donatella, as well as receive a signed perfume bottle and T-shirt, femalefirst.co.uk reports.

The fashion icon has joined a charity auction for non-profit organisation, The Art of Elysium, and is offering a position at the fashion house which she co-founded. Donatella recently talked about how the current difficult economic climate leads more people to be innovative.

“You would say that when there is less money around everything becomes dull, but this means you kill the economy. Everything has to be more wearable, but more creative,” the website quoted her as saying.

“Less evening dresses maybe and more day clothes but recognisable with a strong personality.”

The auction is valued at $20,000 and ends May 13.

It'll be Bollywood extravaganza at Miss India finale

2010-04-30T01:11:00.001-07:00

The Hindu Bollywood will make its presence felt in a big way at the Pantaloons Femina Miss India pageant grand finale here on Friday. File Photo: R.V. Moorthy

From Shahid Kapoor to Lara Dutta to Shilpa Shetty, Bollywood will make its presence felt in a big way at the Pantaloons Femina Miss India pageant grand finale here on Friday.

This year’s event will take place at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) and 18 girls will vie for the crown,” Lara, a former Miss India, posted on her Twitter page.

“Just got off the stage rehearsing for my act for Miss India ‘10. Some wonderful memories,” she said.

Shahid posted: “(Will be) performing at Femina Miss India. Tomorrow should be fun with so many pretty ladies around.”

Celebrities like Vivek Oberoi, Neha Dhupia and composer Salim Merchant will also make an appearance.

“Performing at NCPA for the Miss India Pageant. (Will be) doing a mix of ‘O mere khuda’ and ‘Tere liye’,” Vivek Tweeted.

Neha, who was Miss India 2002, too is excited to perform on the same stage after so many years.

“Just finished rehearsing for the Femina Miss India contest, glad to be performing on the same stage that has made me the person I am,” she wrote.

Actress Shilpa and filmmaker Anurag Basu are expected to judge the event that will see 18 girls competing for the crown.

“Will be judging Miss India... looking forward to meeting the girls,” Shilpa wrote on the microblogging site.

The 34-year-old has also thrown open a contest on Twitter. She has asked people to send her questions that can be asked -- the best question will be chosen and asked by her at the event.

Vodafone To Launch Cheapest Mobile Phone In India, What Happened To Airtel’s Virtual Phone Numbers?

2010-04-30T01:10:00.000-07:00

Earlier the mobile operator, Vodafone announced the world’s cheapest mobile phones priced at sub $15 at the Mobile World congress in February this year and now the company has announced the launch of it’s ultra low cost series with Vodafone 150 and Vodafone 250. Cheaper of the two Vodafone 150 is priced at Rs 700/- featuring 1.0” monochrome graphic display, polyphonic ringtones, alarm, calculator, torch and mini USB connector, Reportedly the battery life is claimed to 400 hours standby and 5 hours talk time.

Nokia, the leading manufacturer of mobile handsets in the country has also reportedly announced it’s plans to launch a $10 phone some time soon.

What happened to Airtel’s Virtual phone number’s ?

Now amid the cut-throat competition for the huge untapped ultra low cost mobile phone market which is up for grabs, I really wonder what happened to the Airtel’s virtual phone number. Airtel earlier announced Comviva’s virtual phone number’s where people can share one mobile handset with single SIM card but have 10 unique phone numbers.

We already know price of the mobile phone is the main hurdle in capturing the left over untapped mobile phone market in the country and virtual phone number is a great idea to tap some of this, but with the steep fall in prices of the mobile phones virtual phone numbers for sure seem to loose this race, What do you think?

The New BMW 5 Series Launched in India Image file

2010-04-30T01:09:00.000-07:00

Sixth generation of the immensely successful BMW 5 Series is truly an “Exploration of Beauty”; Inspiring design, flawless workmanship, exhilarating drive, fascinating performance, the new BMW 5 Series shares the vehicle architecture of the BMW 7 Series conveying all the Sheer Driving Pleasure typical of BMW

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Friday, April 30, 2010 -- (Business Wire India)

The new BMW 5 Series was unveiled today at the exclusive BMW pavilion which has been specially constructed for the launch in India.

The new BMW 5 Series is available in two petrol variants – 535i and 523i and two diesel variants – 530d and 525d and can be ordered at BMW dealerships across India.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Peter Kronschnabl, President, BMW India said, “The 5 Series is the core model in our product portfolio. Each generation of the BMW 5 Series has been a winner and has played a major role in the company’s success around the world. And we intend to keep it that way in India. You can imagine what high expectations we have of the new BMW 5 Series Sedan: It has to live up to its highly successful predecessor both in terms of innovative technology and sales achievements.”

“Splendid design, flawless workmanship, driver orientation with ideally placed instruments and intuitive operation, the new BMW 5 Series embodies a formula to captivate the senses. The new BMW 5 Series is everything a BMW sedan is meant to be: aesthetic, dynamic and efficient.” Mr. Peter Kronschnabl, President, BMW India further added.

The BMW 5 Series has significantly contributed to the success and image of BMW in India. BMW India has sold over 3600 units of the 5 Series in India since 2007.

The all India ex-showroom prices in INR are as follows.

The new BMW 523i : 38,90,000

The new BMW 525d : 39,90,000

The new BMW 530d : 45,90,000

Note: Ex-showroom price excludes RTO registration charges, tax, insurance, handling charges; Octroi and entry tax (as applicable). The above ex-showroom prices are exclusive of sales tax / VAT applicable on sale to the customer. Prices and options are subject to change without prior notice.

The 523i, 525d and 530d will be produced at the BMW Plant Chennai. The 535i will be available as a CBU (completely built-up unit) and will have an ex-showroom price of INR 58,00,000.

The new BMW 5 Series will be available in Alpine White as non-metallic paintwork and in the following metallic colours: Space Grey, Titanium Silver, Black Sapphire, Havanna, Cashmere Silver, Deep Sea Blue, Milano Beige, Imperial Blue Brilliant Effect and Sophisto Grey Brilliant Effect.

Dakota leather is the standard upholstery for the new BMW 5 Series and is available in the following colour combinations: Oyster / Black, Black / Black, Vento Beige / Vento Beige, Oyster / Oyster dark and Cinnamon Brown / Black. The following interior trims are available: Fine-wood trim Ash Grain Brown and Fine-wood trim ‘Fine line” anthracite.

The new BMW 5 Series: Description in Brief

The sixth generation of BMW’s immensely successful four-door stands out through modern aesthetics in design, conveys all of the Sheer Driving Pleasure so typical of BMW and offers unparalleled luxury in the upper midrange segment.

The sophisticated aesthetics and dynamic looks of the new BMW 5 Series Sedan are the result of perfectly balanced proportions. Again in the typical style of the brand, the new BMW 5 Series Sedan boasts of a long and contoured engine compartment lid, short overhangs, a coupé-like flowing roofline as well as the longest wheelbase in the segment. The charismatic flair of the upright front section and the BMW kidney grill inclined slightly forward from certain perspectives, the stylish elegance of the side view and the muscular sportiness of the rear end all come together in typical BMW design language to provide an outstanding look of style and supremacy.

Within the interior, horizontal surfaces and exciting lines create a truly generous and harmonious ambience. The clear structure of the cockpit enhances the high level of driver orientation, while the stylish, modern design of the interior is further refined by top-quality material and tastefully composed colour combinations.

The new BMW 5 Series Sedan is entering the market with the world’s first straight-six petrol engine with Twin Power Turbo, High Precision Injection and Valvetronic (225 kW/306 hp) in the BMW 535i as well as straight-six petrol engine in the BMW 523i (150 kW/204 hp). The latest generation of straight-six diesels featuring an all-aluminium crankcase and common-rail direct injection develop 180 kW/245 hp in BMW 530d and 150 kW/204 hp in BMW 525d.

Eight-speed automatic transmission comes standard with the BMW 523i and the BMW 525d. Eight Speed Sports Automatic transmission with shift paddles on the steering wheel is standard feature on the BMW 535i and the BMW 530d. With its innovative gear set configuration, a unique level of inner efficiency and optimised weight, the eight-speed automatic transmission combines outstanding gearshift comfort, dynamic performance and efficiency of the highest level.

The combination of a double track arm front axle and the Integral-V rear axle ensures supreme driving dynamics and motoring comfort all in one. Further efficiency is provided by Electric Power Steering (EPS) including Servotronic as standard feature for the first time in the BMW 5 Series. The clearly structured cockpit and intuitive controls enhance Sheer Driving Pleasure in typical BMW style to an even higher level, at the same time underlining the sophisticated ambience within the passenger compartment of the new BMW 5 Series. The driver-oriented cockpit in Black Panel technology, the multifunction steering wheel featured as standard, the two highly functional steering wheel columns, and the separation of driving and comfort functions further enhance the feeling of supremacy at the wheel.

BMW India

Headquartered in Gurgaon (National Capital Region) BMW India is a 100% subsidiary of the BMW Group. The initial investment in India is 1.1 billion Indian Rupees. The wide range of BMW activities in India include the establishment of a production plant in Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and development of a dealer organisation across major metropolitan centres of the country. In medium term, BMW India has employed around 200 people; up to 600 additional jobs have been created in the dealer and service network. The BMW Plant Chennai produces the BMW 3 Series and BMW 5 Series Sedans in petrol and diesel variants and has a capacity to produce 3000 units per year on a single shift basis. Presently, BMW India is present at 17 locations in the Indian market. BMW India has also established an International Purchasing Office (IPO) at its headquarters in Gurgaon. The IPO will focus on the development of exports from India to the BMW Group International Production Network and work towards increasing the sourcing share from India over the coming years.

The BMW Group

The BMW Group is one of the most successful manufacturers of automobiles and motorcycles in the world with its BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brands. As a global company, the BMW Group operates 24 production facilities in 13 countries and has a global sales network in more than 140 countries. The BMW Group achieved a global sales volume of approximately 1.29 million automobiles and over 87,000 motorcycles for the 2009 financial year. The pre-tax profit for 2009 was euro 413 million, revenues totalled euro 50.68 billion. At 31 December 2009, the company employed a global workforce of approximately 96,000 associates. The success of the BMW Group has always been built on long-term thinking and responsible action. The company has therefore established ecological and social sustainability throughout the value chain, comprehensive product responsibility and a clear commitment to conserving resources as an integral part of its strategy. As a result of its efforts, the BMW Group has been ranked industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the last five years.

Hakeemullah even if alive not in command of Pak Taliban anymore: Pentagon

2010-04-30T01:04:00.000-07:00

Washington, Apr.30 (ANI): The Pentagon is unsure over the fate of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakeemullah Mehsud, but it is certain that the warlord does not exert any authority over the banned terror outfit anymore.
Speaking during a media briefing here, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said while Hakeemullah’s fate is still shrouded in mystery, it is believed that he is not in command of the Taliban.
“I certainly have seen no evidence that the person you speak of (Hakeemullah) is operational today or is executing or exerting authority over the Pakistani Taliban as he once did. So I don’t know if that reflects him being alive or dead, but he clearly is not running the Pakistani Taliban anymore,” The Daily Times quoted Morrell, as saying.
Earlier, a British daily quoted an Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) official as claiming that the Taliban chieftain, who was believed to have been killed in a US drone strike in South Waziristan in January, is alive.
“He (Hakimullah) is alive.He had some wounds but he is basically OK,” the official had said on conditions of anonymity.
Although neither the US nor the Pakistani agencies had confirmed Hakeemullah’s death, who was sworn in as the TTP chieftain following Baitullah Mehsud’s death in a similar missile attack in August last year, he was widely believed to have succumbed to injuries sustained during a missile hit in January.

The people’s ‘Saarc’

2010-04-30T01:03:00.000-07:00

L-R Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sri Lanka’s President Mahendra Rajapaksa, Bhutan’s Prime Minister Lyonchen Jigmi Y. Thinley, Maldives’ President Mohamed Nasheed, Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani attend the 16th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Thimphu on April 28, 2010. –Reuters Photo/Rupak De Chowdhuri

The Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit will be over by the time these lines appear in print. But we can say that it was another attempt to scale the mountain of difficulties.
The 15th people’s Saarc meeting was held in Delhi recently to impress upon the participants of the official Saarc summit in Thimpu, Bhutan, that South Asian countries will continue to lag behind in development until they realise the meaning of cooperation.
Representatives of human rights bodies, trade unions, women groups and others from the Saarc countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, the Maldives and Sri Lanka — demanded a union of South Asian countries in the manner of the European Union, while retaining their individual identity and sovereignty. Some even saw the prospects of one market, one visa and one currency. The representatives (60 from Pakistan alone) “reaffirmed the South Asian people’s commitment to creating a South Asia free from all discrimination, exclusion and domination”.
Indeed, these are lofty ideals that are worth pursuing. The participants were not only passionate about them, they were also committed to rising above nationalism and parochialism to make the dream of a South Asia Union come true. Their speeches had no rancour, no bitterness and no allegation.
All the eight countries are different in their own way. Yet many of them were ruled by foreigners which has cast their outlook in a civilisational mould, reflecting their commonality. Unfortunately, they a seek solution to their basic problems, not from within the region but from outside.
This dependence is the fallout of their slavery. The British who ruled practically the entire region were ruthless masters. They used people in the region as brick and mortar to build the structure of their empire. Any big or odd stone that did not fit in was crushed or thrown aside. Not many rose to challenge the system. The efforts of the few who did were nipped in the bud. Others were eliminated.
Still this region, with its people of different traditions, defeated the British. In their journey towards independence, they fell and rose but reached their destination. It is a saga of suffering and sacrifice which is recalled even today.
South Asia has learned the lesson that every enslaved country does from humiliation. But what it has not learnt yet is that people have to make a joint effort to overcome problems. Together they can fight to determine the path they should take, the tactics they should adopt and the allies they should seek. All this demands an understanding that they are together. This cannot be assumed. A method has to be devised to ascertain their opinion, yes or no.
What do the people think? What do the participants in the struggle for the betterment of conditions feel? Their efforts sow the seed of accountability. If some are to be made answerable, they should have the powers to act. Who should such people be? How can they be spotted? Centuries ago, the English established themselves as the world’s supreme nation against rival claimants. Since then the idea of popular sovereignty has become an integral part of civilised governments. Some nations like France learned from England’s example.
We in South Asia are a watchful people. We were determined to throw out the yoke of foreign rule. We also wanted to devise a system to rule ourselves. Our experience was all that the British taught us — the different acts under which carefully selected people would come to the assemblies and parliaments to rule. Very few came directly elected by the people. That was our democratic system. Our struggle in different parts of the region was to have more and more elected representatives.
We shed each other’s blood, although we were independent. The subcontinent of India was partitioned into India and Pakistan on the basis of religion. When the constitution in the newly independent countries was framed, the people’s say was naturally the most.
The biggest achievement of the constitution was to keep the rights of the people supreme and to ensure that the nations did not substitute white masters with brown sahibs.
It was not a question of government alone. It was also a question of the constitutional guarantee whereby sovereignty stayed with the people. And does democracy mean only going to polling booths and registering votes? The answer to such questions may be able to tell whether democracy will survive in South Asia.
The people’s wishes — and prayers — would have yielded some results by this time had the hostility between India and Pakistan been overcome. Neither India nor Pakistan has been able to overcome the differences which go back a long way. In a way, it is the same old bias between Hindus and Muslims. Parochialism spoils the thinking of secular India when it comes to Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan has never adopted secularism even after Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s declaration that the state would have nothing to do with religion.
Between August 1947 and 2010, the two countries have engaged in three wars, apart from militaristic stances over the Rann of Kutch, Siachen and Kargil. Both are also nuclear powers. Still they love to hate each other. Kashmir and water are symptoms, not the disease.
The disease is the bias, suspicion and mistrust which appear in one form or the other. Even if one issue was to be solved, another would rear its ugly head because of the fundamental Hindu-Muslim divide. How do the two nations get away from this posture? The sooner we find an answer to this question, the stronger will be Saarc.
The writer is a senior journalist based in New Delhi.The Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit will be over by the time these lines appear in print. But we can say that it was another attempt to scale the mountain of difficulties.
The 15th people’s Saarc meeting was held in Delhi recently to impress upon the participants of the official Saarc summit in Thimpu, Bhutan, that South Asian countries will continue to lag behind in development until they realise the meaning of cooperation.
Representatives of human rights bodies, trade unions, women groups and others from the Saarc countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, the Maldives and Sri Lanka — demanded a union of South Asian countries in the manner of the European Union, while retaining their individual identity and sovereignty. Some even saw the prospects of one market, one visa and one currency. The representatives (60 from Pakistan alone) “reaffirmed the South Asian people’s commitment to creating a South Asia free from all discrimination, exclusion and domination”.
Indeed, these are lofty ideals that are worth pursuing. The participants were not only passionate about them, they were also committed to rising above nationalism and parochialism to make the dream of a South Asia Union come true. Their speeches had no rancour, no bitterness and no allegation.
All the eight countries are different in their own way. Yet many of them were ruled by foreigners which has cast their outlook in a civilisational mould, reflecting their commonality. Unfortunately, they a seek solution to their basic problems, not from within the region but from outside.
This dependence is the fallout of their slavery. The British who ruled practically the entire region were ruthless masters. They used people in the region as brick and mortar to build the structure of their empire. Any big or odd stone that did not fit in was crushed or thrown aside. Not many rose to challenge the system. The efforts of the few who did were nipped in the bud. Others were eliminated.
Still this region, with its people of different traditions, defeated the British. In their journey towards independence, they fell and rose but reached their destination. It is a saga of suffering and sacrifice which is recalled even today.
South Asia has learned the lesson that every enslaved country does from humiliation. But what it has not learnt yet is that people have to make a joint effort to overcome problems. Together they can fight to determine the path they should take, the tactics they should adopt and the allies they should seek. All this demands an understanding that they are together. This cannot be assumed. A method has to be devised to ascertain their opinion, yes or no.
What do the people think? What do the participants in the struggle for the betterment of conditions feel? Their efforts sow the seed of accountability. If some are to be made answerable, they should have the powers to act. Who should such people be? How can they be spotted? Centuries ago, the English established themselves as the world’s supreme nation against rival claimants. Since then the idea of popular sovereignty has become an integral part of civilised governments. Some nations like France learned from England’s example.
We in South Asia are a watchful people. We were determined to throw out the yoke of foreign rule. We also wanted to devise a system to rule ourselves. Our experience was all that the British taught us — the different acts under which carefully selected people would come to the assemblies and parliaments to rule. Very few came directly elected by the people. That was our democratic system. Our struggle in different parts of the region was to have more and more elected representatives.
We shed each other’s blood, although we were independent. The subcontinent of India was partitioned into India and Pakistan on the basis of religion. When the constitution in the newly independent countries was framed, the people’s say was naturally the most.
The biggest achievement of the constitution was to keep the rights of the people supreme and to ensure that the nations did not substitute white masters with brown sahibs.
It was not a question of government alone. It was also a question of the constitutional guarantee whereby sovereignty stayed with the people. And does democracy mean only going to polling booths and registering votes? The answer to such questions may be able to tell whether democracy will survive in South Asia.
The people’s wishes — and prayers — would have yielded some results by this time had the hostility between India and Pakistan been overcome. Neither India nor Pakistan has been able to overcome the differences which go back a long way. In a way, it is the same old bias between Hindus and Muslims. Parochialism spoils the thinking of secular India when it comes to Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan has never adopted secularism even after Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s declaration that the state would have nothing to do with religion.
Between August 1947 and 2010, the two countries have engaged in three wars, apart from militaristic stances over the Rann of Kutch, Siachen and Kargil. Both are also nuclear powers. Still they love to hate each other. Kashmir and water are symptoms, not the disease.
The disease is the bias, suspicion and mistrust which appear in one form or the other. Even if one issue was to be solved, another would rear its ugly head because of the fundamental Hindu-Muslim divide. How do the two nations get away from this posture? The sooner we find an answer to this question, the stronger will be Saarc.

Taliban leader was not killed by drone strike, says Pakistan

2010-04-30T01:01:00.000-07:00

Hakimullah Mehsud, a Pakistan Taliban leader, is thought to have survived a missile attack in South Waziristan in January despite US claims that he had been killed

The head of the Pakistan Taliban, whom the US believed it had killed earlier this year in a missile strike fired from an unmanned drone, appears to have emerged from the attack wounded but alive.
Intelligence officials in Pakistan revealed that electronic surveillance and information gathered from sources in the field have led them to believe Hakimullah Mehsud survived the drone strike in January in North Waziristan. His current position in the Taliban is unclear and some reports have said other leaders may have used the attack to exert their influence.
The Taliban had always insisted that Mehsud survived the attack on a mud-walled compound near the village of Pasalkot, although they refused to provide video evidence, saying it would give clues as to his whereabouts.
The Pakistan military were also cautious about claims over his death, even though the country's civilian leadership said it believed Mehsud was dead. It was the US that led the celebrations over the strike, with anonymous government officials telling reporters in Washington that intelligence suggested with "about 90 per cent certainty" that Mehsud had died from wounds sustained in the 14 January attack. They even went as far as to say they believed he had been buried in a plot in Pakistan's tribal areas.
Hakimullah Mehsud had assumed the position of Taliban leader after his namesake and commander, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a drone strike last summer. Later that summer, it was claimed the Hakimullah had also been killed – until he contacted journalists to disprove the reports.
Hakimullah's stronghold was in South Waziristan until Pakistani troops launched a major assault on his base there last autumn. He then shifted his camp to North Waziristan, which is where he was attacked in the January strike.
North Waziristan has been the location for many of the missile strikes launched by the US, and Mehsud had found sanctuary in an area controlled by Hafiz Gul Bahadur. The veteran warlord has enjoyed a non-aggression pact with the Pakistan army, although though it has come under strain in recent days as soldiers have been ambushed.
Whether the Pakistan army will now feel pressured to launch new operations in pursuit of Mehsud remains unclear.
The January drone strike against the Taliban leader happened just 72 hours after the release of a video which showed a Jordanian doctor, Human Khalil Abu-Mulal al Balawi, who killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan last year, sitting with the Taliban leader. It is believed that the Taliban provided at least logistical support to the al-Qa'ida double-agent.
The Associated Press said that one senior intelligence official in Pakistan believed that since the attack in which Mehsud was wounded, his role within the movement has weakened and other senior leaders, such as Waliur Rehman, now overshadow him.
Mehsud's reported survival, first reported by The Guardian, will no doubt be considered something of a set-back by Washington. It also highlights the limitations of the use of drone strikes, a controversial programme which has been greatly expanded since President Obama came to office.
More than 30 strikes have occurred already this year, compared with a reported 49 in 2009. The strikes, which have killed large numbers of ordinary people, are deeply unpopular within Pakistan and have heightened public anger towards the US.
News that Mehsud is thought to be alive, emerged as the leaders of Pakistan and India met yesterday in Bhutan at a regional summit. Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani had their first substantive talks for nine months.
Indian officials said the talks had been positive and that terrorism and the alleged "slow progress" of Pakistan to investigate those behind the 2008 attacks on Mumbai had been on the agenda.
"The prime ministers ... agreed that co-operation between the two countries is vital for the people of South Asia to realise their destiny," said a senior foreign ministry official, Nirupama Rao.
Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said he would soon be making contact with his Indian counterpart.

Microsoft introduced Windows Update for greater stability

2010-04-29T12:15:00.001-07:00

In addition to the usual security bulletin, Microsoft has recently introduced several updates for Windows, which is not related to the strengthening of its protection from various threats. The most important of these was an update to the operating system Windows 7 32-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit and Windows Server 2008 R2 Itanium, aimed at enhancing their stability and reliability.

Note that Microsoft quite regularly pleases software platforms, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 update, it is aimed at improving the reliability and stability of their products. For example, in the latest service pack contains fixes to help solve the following problem:

Fatal crash in Windows Explorer and then re-opening when you try to access the element in the control panel, created by third parties
Unable to connect to the services SQL Server Analysis Services from applications in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 after installing Office Live Add-in 1.4 or Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant 6.5
Windows Explorer stops responding to user actions within 30 seconds when creating or renaming a file or directory after you install certain applications
Display within 30 seconds the Welcome screen when trying to log into the system if you install a solid color as your desktop background
Absence of a warning in case of simultaneous removal of more than 1000 files. The files are erased forever, and not transferred to the basket.
Another update is intended for those who installs the software package Microsoft Office 2010, and is intended to replace certain fonts, new versions. This update is available for operating systems, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 32-bit, Windows Server 2008 64 bit and Windows Server 2008 Itanium. In addition, released updates to address problems on computers with an activated function of BitLocker, as well as for Internet Information Services (IIS) version 7.0/7.5 and Windows Installer (MSI) version 4.5.

Are Phone Manufacturers ''Abandoning'' Android?

2010-04-29T12:14:00.001-07:00

Recent announcements are sketching a slight shift away from the Android platform.

Bloomberg (via BusinessWeek) reports that Google's Android alliance is showing signs of strain. Although more than 60,000 Android-based mobile phones are sold and activated each day, there is now an obvious shift within partners to steer away from Google's mobile OS... or at least, place the main focus on a variety of options. Verizon Wireless, which currently offers the popular Motorola Droid, is a prime example of the shift, declaring on Wednesday that it will not carry the Nexus One smartphone as previously intended.
So what's going on? Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm, said that manufacturers are afraid of giving Google too much power. "I don’t think anyone wants to say, 'In addition to 70 percent of the search traffic in the world, we're going to give them a whole lot more business,'" he said. The fear is backed by Google's considerable jump in the mobile market, rising from 5.2-percent at the end of 2009 to 9-percent in February.
On the Motorola front, the company isn't exactly moving away from the Android platform. Instead, it announced that it will use location and navigation technology provided by Skyhood Wireless in future devices, territory previously dominated by Google's offering. HTC, which currently provides the Droid Eris and Droid Incredible, may develop a custom OS internally. Samsung already took this step, revealing its Bada mobile OS earlier this year.
Recent events may make the shift a bit more drastic. Wednesday Microsoft and HTC announced a deal that would allow the mobile phone manufacturer to use Android on its devices in exchange for royalties. Microsoft claims--as does Apple--that Google's Android OS infringes on their trademarks. Phone manufacturers could eventually deem the OS as problematic on both a legal and financial standpoint, and abandon Android altogether.
For now, there's still demand for Android. Google is currently playing "catch up" with the firmware, adding missing features and ironing out numerous bugs. A spokesperson for HTC said that the company still has a serious commitment to the Google platform, a good sign to say the least.

Microsoft introduced a new Windows Live Messenger

2010-04-29T12:13:00.002-07:00

General Director of Microsoft Corporation Steve Ballmer presented Windows Live Messenger the next generation. As the developer, the new Messenger is the first product announced a set of services for communication and file sharing Windows Live, which is now preparing to exit.

Messenger combines news social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn, allowing you to share information, post comments and send messages to all these networks from a single window, Messenger. In addition, it combines the renovation of other sites used by friends (Flickr, Livejournal, YouTube and others), even if the user did not enjoy them. Now this information is in one place, and in the section "Favourites" updates from people who are identified as the closest will be automatically displayed at the top of the list.

Here are some possibilities of the new Windows Live Messenger:
Social Renewal - to Messenger connect the most popular social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Now you can get the comments left on the wall, to photos, commercials and other updates from your friends directly in the Messenger, these updates are structured according to the priority of friends;
Synchronized update status. When the update appears in the Messenger, the status can be automatically updated in the various social networks, and vice versa;
Built-in commenting: the user can comment on status updates in Messenger or information obtained from social networks directly in the Messenger and not to open additional pages;
Social update from Hotmail: all social updates from incoming Hotmail email can be displayed directly in the Messenger, so do not have to look them in different places;
Messenger Connect allows any website to integrate Messenger, allowing users to communicate and share files without leaving the web page. In turn friends on Messenger Users can receive updates from these sites, and they do not have to build on their profiles and networks;
HD video chat. New Messenger lets you chat via video in full screen mode in the resolution of high quality.
Integrating search results Bing makes it easy to add photos and videos from the Internet without leaving the conversation window;
One contact list. The new Messenger is designed so that by combining the network and update duplicate contacts;
Messenger for smartphones - download and install new version at the Windows Phone, iPhone, Blackberry and other popular smartphones. This will allow access to all contacts, start a conversation, share photos and update status.

New Messenger weekdays officially launched in the coming months. It will be available for download on the site download.live.com. Now this link to download the current version of Messenger and other programs, Windows Live Essentials.

Shakira Says 'Waka Waka It's Time for Africa'

2010-04-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

Colombian songstress Shakira is a true international star so it only makes sense that she was asked to compose a song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup that will take place this summer in South Africa. And so she did!
Shakira's "Waka Waka It's Time for Africa" is very upbeat and positive, and we quite like it! And in true international style, the songstress mixes languages beautifully! We have already told you that Shakira doesn't only drop one hit after the other, she is also heavily involved in charity activity related to children's social justice, and she was recently honored with a medal from the International Labour Organisation for her work.

So how come a star like herself has decided to dedicate so much time and effort to those in need? Well, she simply follows the words of the Mahatma! "Gandhi used to say 'be the change you wish to see in the world,' and I've followed that maxim," Shakira told reporters at the event. Growing up in Columbia, Shakira saw a lot of poverty that "shaped my dream and my vision of social justice," she added.
A good voice and a good heart, we love it! So check out Shakira's "Waka Waka It's Time for Africa" for this year's FIFA World Cup and tell us if you dig the track

DISMANTLE SAARC

2010-04-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

With both China and Russia intending to be observers while Iran requests a full membership, the future of SAARC would ideally have looked quite sanguine if it had exploited its true potential.
Unfortunately the SAARC has miserably failed to live up to expectations with the Indo-Pakistan conflict overshadowing everything else. In fact the sideline talks of the two countries during the SAARC summits continue to attract more attention than the main SAARC conference itself, so much so the latter now looks more like a facilitating conference for Indo-Pakistan bi-lateral talks on Kashmir and terrorists.
As a result SAARC still remains the least united regional organization in the world with trade among the SAARC countries accounting for only 2% of the combined GDP of its nations. Even in neighbouring East-Asia this accounts to about 20 per cent while other regional bodies like the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the African Union (AU) have made major headway especially in trade.
If everything goes well, the UNASUR countries will eliminate tariff for non-sensitive products by 2014 and for sensitive products by 2019 --thus making the zone one single market.
The African Union has already begun a step-by-step process to establish an African Economic Community with a common currency and single a central bank by 2023.
With diverging security and political interests, and with culture being the only binding factor, the SAARC despite its strength –1.5 billion people-- or one fifth of the global population, remains directionless when it comes to collective strength. The inertia of the regional body had resulted in its member states becoming a bully victim of other regional bodies like EU which has a mere 500 million population. The need to plead for GSP plus concessions would not have arisen if South Asia had a vibrant economic zone.
While some 53 states work in tandem in the African Union for a common currency and some 27 states do business in the EU, the eight nations in the South Asian regional union which has been in existence for 17 long years have failed to achieve anything substantial so far.
The strength of the region India, the world’s fourth largest country by purchasing power parity (PPP) also remains its weakness as the gulf of power imbalance created by overpowering India is not something others could bridge.
If SAARC nations cannot work together due to conflicting interests, then the member states better dismantle the organization and join neighbouring regional bodies where there is better parity of status and reap whatever benefits available.

China Lifts HIV Travel Ban

2010-04-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

Migrant workers attend an event to promote HIV/AIDS awareness December 1, 2005, in Chengdu of Sichuan Province.

It's good to know that the United States lifted their ban on HIV-positive travelers before China. Until January, the US was one of seven countries with laws barring entry of people with HIV, according to amfAR. Today, that number has dropped to five. China's government lifted a 20-year old rule that banned foreigners with HIV and AIDS from entering the country. China's State Council repealed the ban after they realized it did little to prevent the spread of the disease. With the upcoming world expo taking place in Shanghai this year, they realized it caused major problems when hosting international events. This isn't the first time the ban was lifted. During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the government temporarily lifted the ban.

Trade pact with Japan for 9,000 items likely

2010-04-29T12:03:00.001-07:00

India and Japan will hold negotiations for signing a comprehensive economic partnership pact (CEPA) during Japanese minister of economy, trade and industry Nasayuki Naoshima’s three-day visit to India beginning Friday.

This agreement would remove duty and other barriers for bilateral investment and trade in goods and services for the countries. As many as 9,000 products ranging from steel, pharmaceuticals and machinery will be traded with zero or marginal tariff. The pact is scheduled to be signed by end of the calendar year.

“We are making progress in our negotiations. As per our political commitments, we would like to sign the pact. We want goods, services and investments in the trade agreement. But Japan has some basic issues which are yet to be resolved,” an official said.

The last round of negotiations was held during September 29-October 1, 2009 in Tokyo. Officials from the two countries have held 12 rounds of discussions without reso” an official said.

The last round of negotiations was held during September 29-October 1, 2009 in Tokyo. Officials from the two countries have held 12 rounds of discussions without reso” an official said.

The last round of negotiations was held during September 29-October 1, 2009 in Tokyo. Officials from the two countries have held 12 rounds of discussions without reso” an official said.

The last round of negotiations was held during September 29-October 1, 2009 in Tokyo. Officials from the two countries have held 12 rounds of discussions without reso” an official said.

The last round of negotiations was held during September 29-October 1, 2009 in Tokyo. Officials from the two countries have held 12 rounds of discussions without reso” an official said.

The last round of negotiations was held during September 29-October 1, 2009 in Tokyo. Officials from the two countries have held 12 rounds of discussions without reso” an official said.

The last round of negotiations was held during September 29-October 1, 2009 in Tokyo. Officials from the two countries have held 12 rounds of discussions without resolving basic differences, which are holding the agreement.

"India is seeking market access in Japan for its agricultural products and pharmaceuticals. Services are also of interest to India," said the official. Japan's tariffs for many agricultural commodities have remained high. Also, sectors such as oilseeds, dairy products, sugar and sugar products face higher tariffs there.

India puts block on Chinese telecoms imports

2010-04-29T11:59:00.001-07:00

The Indian government is blocking purchases of telecoms equipment from Chinese vendors on national security grounds, ratcheting up trade tensions between Asia’s fastest-growing large economies.

The practice has prompted complaints from Beijing and is causing havoc for mobile operators in India, which need enormous amounts of equipment to sustain an industry that is adding 20m new users a month.

“Proposals for procurement of equipment from Chinese original equipment manufacturing vendors have not been recommended due to security concerns,” the Department of Telecommunications wrote this week in correspondence to the prime minister’s Office, seen by the Financial Times. “Therefore, the proposals from the service providers for purchase of Chinese equipment is turned down.”

India’s mobile market has become an important source of revenue for Chinese companies, accounting for about 11 per cent of 2008 turnover at Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies, one of the world’s leading telecoms equipment makers.

But China’s growing trade surplus with India – about $16bn last year – is leading to tensions, with Indian companies complaining that the market is being flooded with cheaper Chinese goods.

New Delhi has long been accused of blocking the purchase of some Chinese telecoms equipment due to fears Beijing might embed spying devices in its networks.

Previously, this practice was thought to be mostly limited to equipment to be installed in India’s disputed border regions with Pakistan and China. But in December, the Department of Telecommunications amended its licence conditions for mobile service providers, requiring them to submit all plans for procurement of telecoms equipment from foreign vendors for screening for “security clearance”.

Although the December amendment did not single out China, in practice, security agencies have been blocking applications involving Chinese vendors. Indian department officials were unavailable for comment on Thursday night.

Chinese officials were also unavailable for comment. But the correspondence seen by the FT mentioned a request from the Chinese embassy in New Delhi for information on the amendment.

ZTE, China’s second-largest network equipment maker and the fifth-largest worldwide with $750m of turnover in India, said yesterday that it was still investigating the situation.

“This is apparently not normal commercial behaviour but something related to political factors, and it is not appropriate for us to comment on political issues,” said ZTE.

India is the world’s second-largest mobile market after China with 584m subscribers.