India Ink: Newswallah: Bharat Edition

Jammu and Kashmir: Demands for a discussion over the recent execution of Muhammad Afzal, who was convicted in a deadly attack on India’s Parliament, rocked the state legislature on Friday, according to an IANS report on the NDTV Web site. The call for debate was initiated by the opposition People’s Democratic Party, and it found support from the governing National Conference party in the state.Northeast:...

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Japanese Court Convicts 2 U.S. Sailors in Okinawa Rape

TOKYO -- A Japanese court on Friday convicted two United States Navy sailors in the rape of a woman on Okinawa last year that provoked so much local anger that the American military was forced to impose a curfew. The court in Naha, the capital of the southwestern Japanese island, sentenced Christopher Browning, a 24-year-old seaman, to 10 years in prison, and Skyler Dozierwalker, 23, a petty...

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Islamic Leader Sentenced to Death in Bangladesh

NEW DELHI – A top leader of a fundamentalist Islamic political party in Bangladesh was sentenced to death on Thursday by a special war crimes tribunal that convicted him of committing crimes against humanity during the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. The death sentence against Delawar Hossain Sayedee, a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, sparked joyous celebration among thousands...

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Pope Benedict Evokes Difficult Moments in Final General Audience

VATICAN CITY — In the waning hours of his troubled papacy, Pope Benedict XVI held his final general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday, telling tens of thousands of believers in an unusually personal public farewell that his nearly eight years in office had known “moments of joy and light but also moments that were not easy” when it seemed “the Lord was sleeping.” The audience came...

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India Ink: Narmada Devi, the Housewife from Uttar Pradesh

Why do millions of people, from entire Indian villages to urbane middle managers to foreign tourists, brave the crowds at the Kumbh Mela? During this year’s 55-day pilgrimage, to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, an estimated 100 million Hindus and others are expected to take a holy dip in the Ganges River to wash away their sins. India Ink interviewed some of them.Narmada Devi, 45, a housewife from Varanasi,...

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India Ink: A Conversation With: Author and Mathematician Manil Suri

The Indian-American author Manil Suri made a splashy entry into the world of writing in 2001 with “The Death of Vishnu,” which became a best seller and was a finalist for the prestigious PEN/Faulkner award. “The Age of Shiva” followed seven years later. This month, the 53-year-old mathematics professor, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, released “The City of Devi,” the...

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Insurgents Launch 4 Attacks in Afghanistan

KABUL — Afghan intelligence agents on Sunday shot and killed a man in a sport utility vehicle that officials said had been packed with explosives, foiling what they described as an attempt to set off a massive explosion in a neighborhood of narrow streets lined with foreign embassies. At about the same time, Taliban suicide attackers set off three separate car bombs in two provinces near...

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India Ink: In Hyderabad, Anger and Frustration

Srinivas Mahesh, 28, was snacking outside his hostel near the Konark Theater in Dishknagar, his usual hangout in Hyderabad, when he heard a loud explosion Thursday evening. Not long after, he saw smoke filling up the air. Once he realized it was a bomb blast, instead of rushing back to his hostel he resolved to helping the injured.“I saw disfigured bodies for the first time in my life,” he said. He...

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India Ink: Can Doordarshan’s New Look Attract Profits?

A Doordarshan newscast from the late 1990s.After it became the first TV channel in India in 1959, the public broadcaster Doordarshan enjoyed a monopoly on viewership for decades. Even after the government opened the airwaves to private players in 1992, Doordarshan enjoyed a 90 percent share of the audience in the 1990s and had no reason to take the threat of competition seriously.Twenty years later,...

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IHT Rendezvous: China's Cyberwarriors

Rendezvous’s editor, Marcus Mabry, interviews David E. Sanger, chief Washington correspondent, on the efforts of Chinese hackers to infiltrate critical American infrastructure, from electrical grids to oil and gas pipelines. Is there a cyber cold war underw...

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IHT Rendezvous: Q and A: Nina Hoss, at Home at the Berlinale

BERLIN — The German actress Nina Hoss has been a fixture at the Berlinale in recent years. She won the best actress prize in 2007 for Christian Petzold’s “Yella,” served on the jury in 2011 and starred in one of the most acclaimed titles in last year’s competition, “Barbara,” also directed by Mr. Petzold (with whom she has made five movies in the past dozen years).This year Ms. Hoss returned to the...

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IHT Rendezvous: In Singapore's Immigration Debate, Sign of Asia's Slipping Middle Class?

BEIJING — Immigration is a hot-button issue nearly everywhere in the world, though the contours of the debate vary from place to place. In the United States, sweeping changes to the law may offer legal residency for millions of people who have entered the country illegally, my colleague Ashley Parker reports.Here in Asia, in the nation of Singapore, the debate looks somewhat different: The government...

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U.S. Embassy Denies Intervening in Mexico Cabinet Choice

The United States Embassy in Mexico on Friday issued a statement denying an article in The New York Times that reported that Ambassador Anthony Wayne had met with senior Mexican officials to discuss American concerns about the possible appointment of Gen. Moisés García Ochoa of Mexico as that country’s defense secretary. “Despite significant reporting in the Mexican press during the presidential...

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Oscar Pistorius, Facing Murder Charge, Breaks Down

Track Star Charged in Killing: Michael Sokolove, a writer who profiled Oscar Pistorius, discusses the dark turn for the South African runner.JOHANNESBURG — Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee track star accused of fatally shooting his girlfriend, appeared in tears at a courtroom in the South African capital Pretoria on Friday facing a single charge of murder. Antoine De Ras/INLSA, via...

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IHT Rendezvous: Hanging of Militant Raises Questions in India

In my latest column in the International Herald Tribune, I argue that the Indian justice system, which includes shoddy police investigations and the powerful influence of political calculations, is not competent nor fair enough to grant India the moral right to hang a man, assuming that any society can have such a right in the first place.Page TwoPosts written by the IHT’s Page Two columnists.On...

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Pope Makes First Public Appearance Since Decision to Resign

Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressPope Benedict XVI arrives for his weekly general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday. VATICAN CITY — In his first public appearance since the stunning announcement of his resignation two days ago, Pope Benedict XVI said on Wednesday he had made his decision “in full liberty for the good of the church” because he no longer had the strength needed to carry out the...

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India Ink: Lost and Found at the Kumbh Mela

ALLAHABAD, Uttar Pradesh— Most people know the heart-sinking feeling of losing someone in a crowded place. Imagine the feeling of being lost at the largest gathering of humanity in the world, the Kumbh Mela.It’s a scene so dramatic, and so common, that it’s a theme in many Bollywood movies — families who attend the Kumbh are separated and then reunited decades later.Pranmati Pandey, a middle-aged...

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Pope Benedict XVI Says He Will Resign, Cites Ill Health

Samantha Zucchi Insidefoto/European Pressphoto AgencyPope Benedict XVI blessing members of the Order of the Knights of Malta at the Vatican on Saturday. ROME — Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who took office in 2005 following the death of his predecessor, said on Monday that he will resign on Feb. 28, the first pope to do so in six centuries. Regarded as a doctrinal...

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India Executes Man Tied to 2001 Attack on Parliament

MUMBAI — India on Saturday hanged a man who was convicted of a 2001 attack on India’s Parliament that killed nine people. The hanging of Afzal Guru, a 43-year-old militant with the group Jaish-e-Mohammad, came more than a decade after the Dec. 13, 2001, suicide attack on India’s Parliament in which five gunmen opened fire, killing nine people, including security officials and a journalist....

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India Ink: Power Outage at Delhi Airport Affects Flights

An electrical power failure at the Indian capital’s main airport disrupted the radar system on Friday, delaying some flights.“There was a power failure,” which was rectified quickly, said Harbhajan Singh, the public relations officer of the Airports Authority of India.He explained that the Indira Gandhi International Airport has a three-tier system for electricity so when the power went out, the airport...

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