Beijing calls NSA over Tibet, says he has promised not to allow anti-China activity

Keen to ensure that the violence in Tibet did not cause a strain on its bilateral ties with New Delhi, China today reached out to India to apprise it of the situation in Lhasa and seek continuing support from India on the issue.

Chinese State Councillor Dan Bingguo spoke to National Security Advisor M K Narayanan over phone today and explained Beijing's stand on the situation in Tibet, China's state news agency Xinhua reported. It said Bingguo expressed the hope that India would "continue to show understanding and support" to the Chinese position.

On his part, Narayanan is said to have reaffirmed India's position that Tibet is part of Chinese territory and New Delhi would not allow Tibetans to carry out anti China political activities from Indian soil.

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Low on fuel and no sign of deal, nuclear power plants take a hit

With the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement still far from being done, a shortage in fuel supplies has resulted in a majority of nuclear power plants in India showing a decline in their operating capacities compared to last year. This has led to a 10 per cent reduction in overall power generation.

According to information available on the website of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), the capacity factor of ten of the 17 units has gone down in 2007-08 (till February) compared to the previous year.

In some cases, like Unit-I in Kalpakkam, the fall in the operating capacity has been drastic, coming down to 36 per cent from 72 per cent last year. Unit-1 in Kakrapar has simi larly been operating at only 46 per cent of its capacity as compared to 67 per cent last year.

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Financial year ends in three Years, Arjun wants Government to release Rs 867 crore today

Despite opposition by Finance Minister P Chidambaram and a Supreme Court stay on more quota in higher education institutions, Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh wants the Cabinet to release Rs 867 crore at the fag end of the fiscal year.

With three days left for the fiscal year to come to a close, Arjun Singh has insisted that the money be released in the current financial year so that IITs and medical institutes can be expanded as promised in the 2007-08 Budget.

This is despite a "strong rebuttal" by the Finance Ministry which said that it did not have money to spare during the current fiscal ending March 31. It also said that any approval would violate the fiscal prudence norms (to rein in expenditure) that were circulated to all ministries last November.

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Chinese comrades invite Rahul to mark 20th year of his father's visit

Beijing may have summoned the Indian Ambassador at 2 am to protest against the Tibetans trying to scale their Embassy wall in New Delhi but all this was off the record today as a high-level delegation of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) came knocking on the Congress doors with a red carpet.

Signaling a readiness to look beyond its ideological brethren among the Left, the CPC came to the Congress with a proposal to hold a conference in Beijing to mark the 20th anniversary of the late Rajiv Gandhi's path-breaking visit to China in December 1988. The CPC also invited Rahul Gandhi to inaugurate the conference likely to be held towards the year-end.

The CPC proposed to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Congress Party to form an "institutional mechanism of collaboration" between the two. The Chinese delegation, led by Li Jinjun, Vice Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, proposed that Rahul should come to China to inaugurate the conference. These proposals were accepted by the Congress delegation led by senior party leader Devendra Dwivedi.

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Sharma, 3 others get life in jail for Shivani murder

Nine years after the murder of The Indian Express staffer Shivani Bhatnagar, a Delhi court today handed life imprisonment terms to suspended IPS officer R K Sharma and three others for plotting and executing her killing.

Additional sessions judge Rajender Kumar Shastri, discarding the prosecution's demand for death penalty to "conspirator" Sharma and hired killer Pradeep, awarded the four convicts - Sharma, Pradeep, Sri Bhagwan and Satya Prakash - the minimum punishment under the murder charge. Their lawyers later said they would appeal against the order.

Shivani was murdered in her East Delhi apartment on January 23, 1999.

Considering the manner in which the murder was carried out, the criminal history of the convicts and that Sharma has served the society as a police official, I do not find it to be a rarest of rare case warranting the death penalty," ASJ Shastri said while pronouncing the quantum of sentence in a packed courtroom.

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There's a burden on my conscience but we can afford to dream

As the Chief Minister of Delhi, I am often asked about my perception of the capital and my vision for this city. Delhi stands atop many layers of history and each layer has witnessed many struggles that brought about equivalent changes.Diplomatic struggles to overcome it; bloody battles to subjugate it; bloodless struggles to win over the heart of the city. Of all the struggles that challenge the status quo, democratic battles are the most challenging.They are dynamic.These battles bring a silent change.Above all, they include the people over whom battles are fought precluding none.

The tenure of our Congress Government is in its tenth year, at the end of which we shall go back to the people to be able to seek once again from the city the courage to dream and the mandate to realise those dreams.

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China opens air space for Jet flight to San Francisco

Chinese and Indian civil aviation authorities on Wednesday met here to resolve their differences over fifth freedom rights in their air bilateral agreement and it is learnt that the former has, after a lot of persuasion, agreed to allow San Francisco as a ‘beyond point' for India. Fifth freedom rights refer to the right to carry passengers from one's own country to a second country, and from there to a third country. So, with San Francisco agreed upon as a ‘beyond point' by China, an Indian airline can fly to China and from there to San Francisco. This is good news for private airline Jet Airways which has been keenly waiting to service destinations on the US west coast.

Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has shot off a notice to Chinese cargo carrier Great Wall Airline to submit its documents for security clearance at the earliest. India had permitted Great Wall Airlines earlier this year to fly to Mumbai and Chennai besides Delhi, despite security concerns by the National Security Council secretariat and other agencies.

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Holi gift? Pay Panel for 42% hike in Central staff salaries

The festive season this weekend will bring extra cheer to 55 lakh Central government employees as the Sixth Pay Commission is likely to recommend an increase of up to 42% in their salaries and pensions when it submits its report on Thursday.

While the number of salary grades will be pruned to 18 from the existing 33, the basic salary proposed is 35 to 42% higher than what each employee currently gets, inclusive of dearness pay and dearness allowance.

The house rent allowance will become city specific with those living in metros getting the full 30% of the basic salary. But for other towns, the HRA could be capped at 15% of the basic salary.

The commission is also expected to recommend the delinking of pay from post so that an employee would get higher scale at fixed time intervals. That is,he need not await his promotion to become eligible for the next salary grade.

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‘He led from the front, even when he didn't have to'

Three-Year old Sidharth does not understand the reason why his toys have been shifted out of the living room to make way for white sheets and incense sticks, or why his mother's tears have been flowing all night.

Tomorrow his father, Lt Col M S Kadam, would have turned 38. Instead, today evening, his body reached home. The officer laid down his life on Sunday personally leading an assault to bring down the most wanted militant in Jammu and Kashmir.

As the officiating commanding officer of 22 Rashtriya Rifles, Kadam was not even supposed to lead an assault such as this. But, when he received information that Hafiz Nisar, the Lashkar-e-Toiba's commander in Kashmir, was hiding in Rafiabad's Chatloora village, Kadam could not sit back and watch.

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Beijing declares ‘people's war', troops pour into Lhasa

Chinese security forces poured into Lhasa even as the local government today launched a "people's war" to crush the massive pro-independence protests, ahead of the deadline to agitating Tibetans to surrender.

No fresh bloodletting was reported in Lhasa where 10 people were killed and 12 security personnel injured after the protests, launched as part of the stir to mark the 49th anniversary of the failed Tibetan uprising against the 57-year Chinese rule, turned violent.

But rights groups claimed that seven people were killed today after the violent protests spilled to nearby provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu with significant Tibetan population.

A day after setting a Monday deadline for rioters to surrender or face punishment, Tibetan political and security chiefs declared a "people's war" against the protesters and vowed to "expose" the Dalai Lama group.
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The later, the worse: Fears at home & abroad send Sensex crashing

If the world markets are a coupled entity, correction is country- and time specific. So even as the January-February results season saw earnings per share (EPS) of Sensex companies rise by 8%, the coupled nature of markets have pulled the Sensex down by 25%, taking its PE multiple down by 32% from a scorching 28.4 to 19.4. The 4.8% fall in the value of the Sensex to 15,357 today (See Page 21) has to be seen in this context.

Days or months is too short a time to ascribe clear reasons for a market fall, but the fact remains that India stands next only to China in this global crash. Between January 11 and today, it has fallen by 25%, next only to China's 27.6%.

Flashback to November-December 2007, when the global meltdown began, and the India decoupled story stood strong: as emerging markets fell by 10-12% during the period, the Sensex actually rose by 5%.

The reason then ascribed to Sensex as the last index standing was that the Indian economy does not rely on exports and is more dependent on internal factors - strong domestic consumption, growing infrastructure. In the current fall, these facts have all but disappeared.

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Interest rates are hurting, the slow down has begun

The government has been reiterating its focus on maintaining a balance between managing inflation with growth but it seems to be struggling on both fronts - inflation crossed 5% last week and the latest industrial output numbers released today show a sharp slowdown in growth.

Compared to an 11.6% surge last January, industrial production growth in January 2008 has more than halved to 5.3% hitting key "growth-driver" sectors: manufacturing, capital goods, mining, electricity and consumer durables (which actually saw negative growth).

While production numbers have been slowing down from the double-digit growth seen at the start of the financial year, the January data has shown the sharpest slump, indicating that the Reserve Bank of India's policy of holding lending rates for the past one year in the hope of managing inflation, is hurting.

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Staff to ground airports today, to save skin won't call it a ‘strike'

Hours after the Civil Aviation Ministry confirmed the closure from March 16 of the existing Begumpet airport in Hyderabad - the day the new Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad commences operations - airport employees, responding to calls by their unions, struck work indefinitely across the country from Tuesday midnight in protest against the move to shut down the old airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Though initial reports from airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata indicated there was no immediate disruption of either domestic or international flights, this action by employees is likely to affect operations at airports across the country. Delhi and Mumbai airports are not likely to be very badly hit because the private operators there have increased the presence of their personnel.

Declining to call their action a strike and referring to it as a "non-cooperation movement", Airport Authority Employees Union general secretary M K Ghoshal said: "We will report at airports as per our scheduled timings but will not work." Taking a tough stand,

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Hockey cries help Experts say may be this is the ‘shock therapy' we needed

BEATEN 2-0 by Britain in the final of the qualifiers at Santiago, India has failed to make the cut for the Beijing Games - the first time in 80 years when the eight-time gold medallist will not be at the Olympics.

As a heartbroken and furious hockey fraternity called for the ouster of Indian Hockey Federation president K P S Gill, some even demanding dissolution of the governing body, quite a few said they were not surprised they had seen this coming. The failure to make it to the Olympics, they said, was probably the shock therapy Indian hockey needed to start afresh and work its way up the ladder.

In Chandigarh, former captain and Olympian Balbir Singh Senior said the team's exit should serve as a wake-up call for people who love the sport

"I am shocked, most hurt as I have had a long association with hockey. Today, I feel as I have lost a close relative," Singh said. He said it was a day to ponder, not just for those associated with the game or its top brass, but the government, media and the public as well. "It will be easy to criticise two or three people, but that will not lead us to any solution. We have to rectify the system as a whole," he said.

Dhanraj Pillay, who cried himself to sleep after Carvalho's men failed to beat Britain for the second time in a week, said: "Whatever you say is not enough. This is the worst day for Indian hockey. I've been crying myself hoarse for a while now. The IHF never tried to take the help of players like me who played for the country so long."

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Kerala violence reaches Delhi: Sangh, CPM clash

In a violent fallout to clashes between cadres of the CPM and Sangh in Kerala, RSS-BJP activists today targeted the CPM head quarters in New Delhi, leading to clashes and stone pelting which left at least 10 CPM members, 12 from the RSS and eight policemen injured. The Rapid Action Force had to be called in and police had to use teargas to scatter the crowds.

Fifteen people, including six BJP councillors and two former MLAs, were later arrested and charged with rioting, obstructing a public servant on duty and holding a demonstration without prior permission.

Trouble began this morning when over Sangh activists marched up to A K Gopalan Bhawan - the CPM headquar ters in Gole Market - where a meeting of the party central committee was on. "At around 11 am, when we took a break for tea, we realised that a few RSS protestors were forcing their way into our office. The police were unable to stop them. When we tried to reason with them, they started pelting stones," said Hari Singh Kang, a CPM central committee member who was among the injured.

The BJP and RSS members, on the other hand, claimed they were leading a peaceful protest over seven deaths in Kannur in Kerala. They alleged that the CPM began the stone-pelting.

"We were in a peaceful protest and before we knew it, Left party members were pelting stones at us from the first floor of their office. I tried to stop our party workers from retaliating when a big stone hit me in the head," said Moolchand Chawla of the BJP. "They provoked us into retaliating but we remained peaceful," he said.


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May be Raj missed this: UP boy brought U-19 Cup, guarded it in tiny Kurla flat

NIYAZ and Azra Khatoon Ahmad were more than a little nervous when the Mahanagari Express brought them to Mumbai's Dadar railway station late on Wednesday.

The elderly couple were coming from Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh, traveling Sleeper Class, worried if Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena activists would be on the prowl targeting passengers from north India.

At the station, they were welcomed by a large group of youngsters led by their son Iqbal Abdulla - the only Mumbai player in the India Under-19 team which won the World Cup in Malaysia.

"Back home we had read a lot about whatever is happening in Mumbai. If not for Iqbal's celebration, it would have been a difficult decision to take the train to Mumbai, the fear was at the back of the mind," Niyaz told The Indian Express. Abdulla was brought to Mumbai more than four years ago by an eager coach and the left-arm spinner made his Ranji debut last year. He took 10 wickets in Malaysia and was also a member of the U-19 team which toured South Africa.

This week, being the only player from Mumbai, the Class 12 Arts student was given the responsibility of carrying the World Cup trophy from Bangalore, where the team arrived from Kuala Lumpur, and handing it over to the BCCI headquarters. He kept it in the kitchen of his 350-sq ft Kurla house since that was the only free space available in his tiny dwelling, but was worried


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McCain is smiling as Hillary up but not in, Obama down, not out

Reviving her White House hopes, Hillary Clinton stormed back with primary wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island and chipped away at Barack Obama's delegate lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. In the other camp, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination with wins in all four states.

Emboldened by the wins which ended a string of defeats Obama had 11 straight victories - Clinton told supporters in Ohio that "we are going on, we are going strong and we are going all the way."

Tuesday's results have made the fight muddier for the two Democratic contenders, much to the advantage of McCain. Obama said in San Antonio that he was still leading in terms of the number of delegates who will finally choose the Democratic presidential nominee during the August convention. Under the complicated Texas electoral system, super delegates (elected party officials) are now set to swing the balance of power for the two Democratic contenders.

Midway through the counting when Clinton looked set to vindicate her reputation as a "comeback kid", Obama, who won the Vermont primary, congratulated McCain for winning all four states and cementing the Republican nomination. He then walked up to a somewhat sombre crowd outside the municipal auditorium.

As he emerged from the building, wife Michelle's favourite Stevie Wonder number began blaring: "Like a fool I went and stayed too long, now I am wondering if your love is still strong, ooh baby, here I am signed, sealed, delivered."


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They bury the biggest ghost

"YEAAAAAAH... Come on now, Jai Hind. Ek Sikh kaafi hai sab ke liye (one Sikh is enough for all)." For all the abuses hurled at him, all the controversies he landed in, Harbhajan Singh had the last laugh - it was more of a shriek, and probably of relief - as he turned to the crowd, clutching his India jersey and waving the Tricolour.

India ended their troubled tour of Australia on a high note today, defeating the hosts by nine runs in a thriller to wrap up the best-of-three triangular series finals 2-0. Needing 13 runs from the last over, Australia were bowled out for 249 as James Hopes's brave innings came to an end with only two balls left.

For Indian cricket, this is a red letter day. This young side has done what no other Indian team has done before - a series victory in Australia against Australia. Probably, better than the 1985 World Series when India became champions. Sunil Gavaskar, who was the skipper then, walked up to Mahendra Singh Dhoni today: "Congrats skipper, really well done."

Dhoni called the entire team on stage to lift the trophy. "I think all 17 players reacted well. As a skipper, all you do is just transfer the pressure to individuals. I go up to Bhajji and tell him, get me a wicket. I think Bhajji has been superb. For all the things written about him, I felt he was almost like Michael Jackson. He was followed wherever he went, everyday his photos were splashed. But I think all these controversies and the backlash worked for us. Harbhajan is a very aggressive and expressive guy, the controversies made him tougher," Dhoni said.

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After 35 years, she hears from him: I am not dead

A ROUND 8.30 pm local time on Monday, Kashmir Singh, who spent 35 years in Pakistani prisons, most of them on death row, on spying charges, finally stepped out of Lahore's Kot Lakhpath jail a free man.

Now 60 years old, the Indian citizen was released on the order of President Pervez Musharraf, said Javed Latif, superintendent of the prison.

"I am seeing the lights, the hustle and bustle. I feel like I'm in some other world," he told the Associated Press while being driven through Lahore. "Listen, I am laughing. I don't remember the last time I laughed like this."

Some people showered rose petals on the car carrying Singh as it drove out of the Kot Lakhpath prison. The release was beamed live by all Pakistani news channels.

Shortly after his release, Singh offered prayers at Gurdwara Dera Sahib, where Sikh Guru Arjan Dev was martyred and which is located near the Badshahi mosque built by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. "I am happy to be released and thankful to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf," he said.

Later, Singh was taken to a five-star hotel where he would spend the night before being driven to the Wagah border on Tuesday to be reunited with his family, which spent all of Monday with his photos in hand waiting for him.

Singh is scheduled to be united with his family at 11 am Tuesday. "Tell my family I am joining them tomorrow morning. I am not dead... I got a new life," he said.

A former policeman from Hoshiarpur in Punjab who became a trader in electronic goods, Singh was arrested during a business trip to Rawalpindi in 1973, said Pakistan's Minister for Human Rights Ansar Burney, who was instrumental in Singh's release. He was convicted and sentenced to death by a military court in Lahore, but the Government stayed his execution in the late 1970s and Singh's case then languished.Burney said some of the paperwork on Singh was missing.


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Double Sunday

Catches win you matches, they say. But not today.

The South Africans took blinders while the Indians fielded as if they had been blindfolded. India gave their worst batting display while the South Africans, for most part of the day, were an inspired unit. India got to play the full 50 overs but South Africa got just half of them. Did someone say that cricket was a funny game? The teary South Africans would have begged to differ.

In a rain-interrupted final match, India beat South Africa by 12 runs to win their second under-19 World Cup. South Africa can blame it on a host of factors but there's no denying that at the end, the best team in the tournament was holding the silverware.

Batting first, India were 83/4 with all their batting stars Taruwar Kohli, Tanmay Srivastava and Virat Kohli back in the pavilion.When they took the field, Virat and Pradeep Sangwan dropped catches while wicket-keeper Shreevats Goswami, who had a terrific tournament so far, lived a nightmare, missing five chances. Compare that to the South African effort. The tournament's Jonty Junior Sibrand Engelbrecht held two spectacular catches to dismiss Virat and Tanmay and saved at least 30 runs while fielding at point. Two run outs, several close calls saw India being dismissed for a mere 159.

As skipper Kohli said after the game, it was the bowlers who rose to the occasion. "All through the tournament the batsmen have been the match winners. Today, the bowlers complemented our efforts. And that's what makes us a champion side," he said.

Pacer Siddharth Kaul said the skipper's instruction during the team huddle before the taking the field was simple: "Josh dikhana,

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