New Delhi: The much-talked about committee to examine the demand for separate Telangana will be announced next week, Home Minister P Chidamabaram said on Thursday.
The Home Minister said the government would have more or less finalised the names and will do by the end of this week. "Perhaps by the next week, the committee will be announced," he said.
Chidambaram in the meeting with political parties from Andhra Pradesh on January 5 had said that its agenda was to "deliberate on the mechanism and lay down a road map for consultations" on the Telangana issue.
The meeting followed Chidambaram's statement on December 23, 2009 when the government put on back burner the formation of the separate state for which it had on December 9, 2009 promised to initiate the process.
On law and order situation in Andhra Pradesh, the Home Minister said much of the agitation has cooled down while there are some protests here and there.
"My greatest regret is that a couple of students reportedly committed suicide. That, I think, should have been completely avoided. Why should children commit suicide. Parents, teachers have responsibility to stop this. But keeping that apart, by and large, things are peaceful there.
There is no major law and order violation. We are sticking to our words," he said.
China mulls setting up military base in Pakistan
BEIJING: China has signaled it wants to go the US way and set up military bases in overseas locations that would possibly include Pakistan. The obvious purpose would be to exert pressure on India as well as counter US influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"(So) it is baseless to say that we will not set up any military bases in future because we have never sent troops abroad," an article published on Thursday at a Chinese government website said. "It is our right," the article said and went on to suggest that it would be done in the neighborhood, possibly Pakistan.
"As for the military aspect, we should be able to conduct the retaliatory attack within the country or at the neighboring area of our potential enemies. We should also be able to put pressure on the potential enemies' overseas interests," it said.
A military base in Pakistan will also help China keep a check on Muslim Uighur separatists fighting for an independent nation in its western region of Xingjian, which borders the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Beijing recently signed an agreement with the local government of NWFP in order to keep a close watch on the movement of Uighur ultras.
"I have personally felt for sometime that China might one day build a military base in India's neighborhood. China built the Gadwar port in Pakistan and is now broadening the Karokoram highway. These facilities can always be put to military use when the need arises," Ramesh V Phadke, former Air Commodore and advisor to the Institute of Defense Studies told TNN.
Phadke said the article in very significant. "The purpose may be to see how the international community reacts to it," he said.
China, which has no military bases outside its territory, has often criticized the United States for operating such overseas bases. It has not just changed its standpoint but also wants to enter the lucrative protection business.
"With further development, China will be in great demand of the military protection," the article said. Pakistan, which buys 70% of its military hardware from China, is likely to be an eager buyer for such protection. Beijing may also be able to pressurize Islamabad to accept its diktat using the threat of withholding military supplies.
A Pakistani expert on China-Pakistan relationship has a different view on the subject. "The Americans had a base in the past and it caused a political stink. I don’t think it would be politically possible for the Pakistani government to openly allow China to set up a military base," he said while requesting anonymity. Pakistan might allow use of its military facilities without publicly announcing it, he said.
A Chinese military base can tackle several international relations issues, it said. One of them is "the relationship between the base troops and the countries neighboring to the host country." This is another indication that Beijing is considering Pakistan as a possible base. China’s argument is that a foreign base would actually help regional stability.
"If the base troops can maintain the regional stability, it will be probably welcomed by all the countries in the region," the article said. Beijing is conscious that the move might result in opposition from the US, UK and France which has overseas military bases.
“Thirdly, the relationship between the big countries in the world. The establishment of the troop bases is sensitive to those big countries which have already set up the bases abroad," the article said.
Arms sale to Pak justified as India buys from US: Chinese official
BEIJING: A senior Chinese defense official has justified Beijing's sale of warships and submarines to Pakistan on the ground that India was buying similar systems from Russia and the United States. He indicated that China was conscious India might be worried about the sales.
"The initiative may invite concerns from its neighboring countries. But the doubts are unnecessary," Zhai Dequan, deputy director of China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, was quoted as saying in the official media.
The statement came in the midst of efforts by Norman Bashir, chief of Pakistan's naval staff, to persuade Beijing to sell higher capacity ships as compared to the F22P frigates that China begun delivering last June.
Zhai said Pakistan’s desire for high capacity systems is normal for an independent nation seeking to bolster its security. India has also entered into large deals for military hardware from the US and Russia, he said.
"India's aircraft carrier has already cost it billions of US dollars," Zhai said.
Bashir, who met Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie on Friday, said Pakistan was keen on buying bigger ships and more JF-17 fighter planes from China apart from the submarines. Pakistan will buy more weapons including missiles from China in future, he said.
"The F22P frigate is about 3,000 tons, and now we are talking about 4,000-ton ships. These are very big projects and we think the cooperation is important for both countries, especially Pakistan," he said.
Pakistan booked four F22P frigates from China in 2005 and the first one began sea trials last year. Islamabad followed it up with another order of four more ships of same kind in 2007, the Chinese media said.
Bashir showered fulsome praise on Chinese warships saying they use the latest technology, and have the all-round capability to target surface ships, aircraft and submarine.
"The F22P frigate can be deployed to complete multitasks. The ship is balanced for offense and defense, and can be used in both peace and war time, if there is a war," he said. This is his third visit to China this year.
Fonseka attempted to assassinate Rajapaksa: Ministry
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan government on Thursday hit back at defeated opposition candidate Gen Sarath Fonseka, alleging he had attempted to "assassinate" President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his family.
A day after Fonseka charged the Army with attempting to kill him and was seeking India's protection, the Defence Ministry today claimed there was "ample evidence" to prove that the former Army Chief Fonseka hatched the conspiracy from two hotels in Colombo.
Director of Media Centre for National Security Lakshman Hullugale claimed that the President and his family were to be assassinated along Galle Road in Colombo or at the Lake House Junction in the commerce hub of Fort.
He claimed nine army deserters, who were arrested from outside a hotel in the capital yesterday, were part of the plot and investigations into this are now underway.
In his letter to the Election Commission yesterday, Fonseka accused Rajapaksa of using the state media to attack him and of misappropriating public funds for his campaign and of preventing displaced minority Tamils from voting.
"The enthusiasm of the people we noticed during the campaign is not reflected in this result," Fonseka told reporters here. "We will never accept this result. We will petition (the court) against it."
Pak dragging feet on bringing 26/11 accused to justice: PC
New Delhi: India on Thursday said it would have to conclude that Pakistan is dragging its feet on bringing terror accused in Mumbai attacks to justice if it does not put on trial people including Hafiz Saeed, founder of terror group Lashker-e-Taiba.
"If they do not bring the others to trial, then I would have to conclude, reluctantly and regretfully that they are dragging their feet," Chidambaram told reporters here.
He was responding to questions that Pakistan had spared Saeed in its chargesheet filed in an anti-terrorist court accusing seven other Lashker terrorists including Lakhvi.
India has been demanding trial of Saeed, against whom Interpol also issued Red Corner Notice for his alleged role in the 26/11 Mumbai attack. Islamabad, however, claims that India had only shared information about Saeed and no evidence.
Pakistan Federal Investigating Agency, in its report to the court conducting the trial of seven accused, including Lakhvi, states that there is "sufficient incriminating evidence on record against those arrested for orchestrating the Mumbai attacks."
India dismayed over new attacks in Australia
New Delhi: India on Thursday expressed "dismay" over new incidents of attacks against Indians in Australia with External Affairs Minister S M Krishna once again expected to raise the issue with his Australian counterpart Stephen Smith on the margins of a conference in London.
"We have learnt with dismay on Thursday, of fresh incidents of violence against Indians residing in Australia, with the latest reports coming from Brisbane where four Indians, including three taxi drivers were attacked in two separate incidents on Thursday, 28th January," Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur said in a statement here.
"....In view of the latest incidents reported today, EAM (External Affairs Minister) is likely to raise this issue once again with the Australian Foreign Minister later today on the margins of the meetings in London," she said.
Krishna had met Smith on Wednesday and had conveyed that these attacks are particularly worrisome as the Indian community members appeared to have been singled out and it was becoming increasingly difficult to accept these attacks as mere opportunistic crimes devoid of any racial motives.
He also impressed upon Smith that there has been no visible progress so far in most of the investigations into previous attacks including in the fatal murder of 21-year-old Nitin Garg earlier this month.
It was the responsibility of the Australian authorities to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to book at the earliest and immediately put effective measures into practice to prevent any further attacks, Krishna had said.
Smith had informed Krishna that a high-level Working Group had been set up under his overall charge to deal on an urgent basis with this issue.
Kaur said meanwhile, the Indian High Commissioner in Australia is currently visiting Brisbane.
He "is meeting community leaders and members of the Queensland Police authorities to discuss and deal with the recent attacks, and to ensure that remedial measures are urgently undertaken," she said.
Business News
Obama-speak: Hello, war on recession; Goodbye, war on terror
WASHINGTON: Amid talk of fading allure and promises not kept, a feisty President Barack Obama, bruised by economic, political, and foreign policy crises in his first year in office, asserted that he was not a quitter and pledged he would deliver on the change he vowed to bring about in his rousing presidential campaign.
In his first state of the union address on Wednesday that was largely devoted to domestic issues, Obama also signaled to the international community that Washington intended to ease its way out of Iraq and Afghanistan while securing itself at home through better homeland security and preventing terrorists from getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction.
Only a few minutes and a bare 800 words of his 70-minute/7000-word address were devoted to foreign policy as the first African-American President in US history battled the perception that he has lost
his way in Washington. In sharp contrast to the many Bush speeches, he mentioned the word terror or terrorists only twice in his speech; there were nearly 50 references to jobs and economy, a clear indication of where the Obama administration’s emphasis will be in the remaining three years of its term.
As has now become the norm, the President invoked the growth of China and India to gee up the home constituency on the economic front, where a continuing slow-down and job loss has bedeviled his first year in office.
"Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse," he said, referring to the enervating political gridlock in the capital that he blames for stymieing some of his initiatives. "Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations -- they're not standing still."
"These nations aren't playing for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math and science. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America," he added.
Obama also repeated the mandatory mantras about loss of jobs to foreign markets, saying to encourage businesses to stay within the United States "it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the USA."
In an elaborate appraisal of the state of the US economy, President Obama explained how government’s bail-out of big banks was inevitable despite everyone, including himself, hating it (he compared it to a root
canal). But now that the "worst storm has passed" it was time for Democrats and Republican to "overcome the numbing weight of our politics" and address issues such as health care and initiatives for job creation and economic growth.
The president set a target of doubling US exports over the next five years, a goal that will inevitably bring pressure on countries such as India to open its markets, as he pledged "to continue to shape a Doha trade
agreement."
"We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are. If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules," he said.
But it was his quick glossing over of the crises in Afghanistan and Iraq, including promise of a rapid withdrawal of US troops, that was most striking. "In Afghanistan, we're increasing our troops and training Afghan security forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home," he said. "We are responsibly leaving Iraq to its people. We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August."
"This war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home," he said to repeated applause at a joint session of law-makers where 9/11 is a distant memory and there is clearly no appetite for continued attrition abroad amid severe domestic crises.
Oracle closes USD 7.4 bn Sun deal
New York: Software major Oracle Corp has completed the takeover of hardware company Sun Microsystems Inc for USD 7.4 billion.
The deal, which was announced nine months ago, would transform the IT industry, Oracle said in a statement on Wednesday.
The two companies, which have a significant presence in India, together employs more than 26,000 people in the country. Oracle has more than 25,000 employees in India while Sun Microsystem has 1,200 people.
The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle's largest business. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimise Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris.
"With the addition of servers, storage, SPARC processors, the Solaris operating system, Java, and the MySQL database to Oracle's portfolio of database, middleware, and business applications, we plan to engineer and deliver open and integrated systems¿from applications to disk where all the pieces fit and work together out of the box," Oracle said.
The European Union's antitrust watchdog has approved the Sun-Oracle transaction last week saying the deal would not would restrict competition in the database's market. The approval from the EU came after months of investigation.
In April last year, Oracle has agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for USD 7.4 billion or USD 9.50 a share in cash.
Ramalinga Raju declared 'pauper' in US court
New York: Ramalinga Raju, former chairman of Satyam Computers, who last year confessed to have inflated his company's assets by over USD 1 billion, was declared a pauper by a court exempting him from paying court costs.
New York judge Barabara S Jones approved 'pauper' status for Raju, his brother Rama Raju, Satyam's former chief executive officer, and Srinivas Vadlamani, the company's former head of finance.
In October 2009, the defendants filed an "in forma pauperis" and for the appointment for a pro bono counsel.
According to court documents, the accused stated they are "unable to engage an attorney in the US to defend (themselves) in the class action litigation and to pay any court fees or to meet any financial obligations which might be imposed by this court".
"The court finds that defendants have adequately demonstrated that they are unable to pay costs as described in the federal law," US District Judge Jones said.
The judge however denied the request for a pro bono counsel as the "defendants are incarcerated in a foreign country and it would be unusually difficult for the appointed counsel to meet and otherwise competently represent Defendants under the circumstances".
On 7 January 2009, Raju, 55, admitted that Satyam's accounts had been falsified by over USD one billion, in what became India's largest corporate scandal.
In November, the CBI said that fraud was 40 per cent larger than originally estimated. The former CEO of Satyam is being held in India.
"It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten," he said, after the scandal broke. The IT company was taken over by Tech Mahindra.
Sports News
Murray reaches Oz Open final, revives British hopes
Melbourne: Andy Murray has beaten Marin Cilic to reach the Australian Open final and is again only a win away from ending a long British drought at the Grand Slam tournaments.
Murray is the first British man to reach the final in Australia since John Lloyd in 1977 and the first to reach two Grand Slam finals in the Open era. Cilic had an upset win over Murray in the fourth round of the 2009 U.S. Open, where the Scot had lost the final the previous year to Roger Federer.
Fred Perry, who won eight major singles titles in the 1930s, was the last British man to win a Grand Slam event.
Mithun, Saha named in India's Test squad
Mumbai: Rookie Karnataka paceman Abhimanyu Mithun and Bengal wicketkeeper-batsman Wriddhiman Saha were on Thursday named in India's 15-member squad for the first Test against South Africa beginning in Nagpur from February 6.
Ravaged by injuries to key players like Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh and paceman S Sreesanth, the national selectors brought in Tamil Nadu middle order batsman S Badrinath while opener Murali Vijay retained his place in the sqaud.
Apart from Mithun and Saha's inclusion, there were no major suprises in the squad announced by BCCI secretary N Srinivasan after a meeting of the selection committee here.
Rahul Dravid, who sustained a face injury in the second Test against Bangladesh, has been advised rest for three weeks while Yuvraj Singh has also been ruled out of the Test series due to an injury to his left wrist.
Uttar Pradesh paceman Sudeep Tyagi, who also featured in the squad that toured Bangladesh, has retained his place. Tamil Nadu wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik has been dropped with the selectors opting for the young Saha in his place.
Stylish batsman VVS Laxman, who had also suffered a finger injury during the Test series against Bangladesh, has recovered sufficiently to be drafted into the squad.
Indian Team for the First Test: Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Murali Vijay, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, S Badrinath, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (C), Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra, Sudeep Tyagi, Pragyan Ojha, Abhimanyu Mithun, Wridhiman Saha.
It's Serena vs Henin at Oz Open final
Melbourne: Defending champion Serena Williams has advanced to her fifth Australian Open final and will put her 100 per cent record at Melbourne Park on the line against Justine Henin, who is only two tournaments into her comeback from retirement.
Both advanced over Chinese players on Thursday to set up a championship match involving two former Australian champions.
Top-ranked Williams wasted four match points before finishing off a 7-6 (4), 7-6 (1) semifinal win with an ace against Li Na on Thursday, a day after her sister Venus lost to the Chinese player in the quarterfinals.
Henin overwhelmed 2008 Wimbledon semifinalist Zheng Jie 6-1, 6-0 in 51 minutes, the shortest match of this tournament and the most lopsided semifinal at the Australian Open since Chris Evert beat Andrea Jaeger by the same score in 1982.
Williams leads Henin 7-6 in career head-to-heads, although they've never met in a Grand Slam final. Williams won their last match, at Miami in 2008, just before Henin retired suddenly while holding the No. 1 ranking.
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"I can't wait for the final. It's such an amazing chance that I have to play another final in Melbourne," said Henin, who won the 2004 title in Melbourne and retired with stomach problems during the 2006 final against Amelie Mauresmo. "It's a very special occasion, but the dream continues.
"I'm going to play the No. 1 player in the world in a Grand Slam final. She's a real fighter."
Serena Williams has a 100 per cent conversion rate so far in finals at Melbourne Park, winning the title every time she's played for the championship since beating Venus here in 2003. The winning sequence has been every odd-numbered year so far.
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