India celebrates planting its flag on moon

India rejoiced Saturday at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the country s space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission. A probe sent late Friday from the orbiting mother spacecraft took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moon s south pole, said Indian Space Research Organization spokesman B.R. Guruprasad.

The box-shaped probe was painted with India s saffron, white and green flag, sparking celebrations in the country that is striving to become a world power. The tricolor has landed, the Hindustan Times said in a banner headline, while The Asian Age proclaimed India is big cheese.

As India s economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth built on the nation s high-tech sector into political and military clout. The moon mission comes just months after it finalized a deal with the United States that recognizes India as a nuclear power, and leaders hope the mission will further enhance its prestige.

This momentous achievement shall be etched in the history of India as a grateful tribute to our scientific community for their resolute efforts to take India to a global leadership position, said Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party. To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China and now India have sent missions to the moon.

But while the celebrations conjured up images akin to that of the U.S. flag unfurled on the moon by Apollo astronauts, India s flag is most likely scattered over a wide swath of the moon s Shackleton crater after the probe slammed into the surface at more than 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) per hour. The violent landing was planned and Indian scientists hope to study the images and data sent back by the probe during its 25-minute descent to prepare for a future soft landing, Guruprasad told The Associated Press.

It carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. The video imaging system took pictures of the moon s surface, while the altimeter measured the rate of descent of the probe and the mass spectrometer studied the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.

Guruprasad said the pictures that were released were raw images and that scientists had not yet analyzed the information sent by the probe. It was the first stage of a two-year mission aimed at measuring not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath.

The probe was one of 11 payloads on the spacecraft Chandrayaan-1. Chandrayaan means moon craft in ancient Sanskrit.

India plans to follow the mission by landing a rover on the moon in 2011 and, eventually, with a manned space program, though this has not been authorized yet.

India feels outsourcing won't be an issue in ties with US

India said on Saturday that the incoming Obama Administration in the US has given an assurance to it that the policies to strengthen bilateral ties will continue and felt that outsourcing, a hot topic during the Presidential polls in US, will not be an issue.

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who met former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, deputed by President-elect Barack Obama to meet world leaders currently in Washington for the G-20 summit, said the transition administration gave a lot of assurances that the change in policies started during the Clinton era would continue.

"They assured us that the new Administration would continue to strengthen the relations between the two countries," Ahluwalia told reporters on his meeting with Albright. Democratic Congressman Jim Leech was also present in the meeting.

"We raised things that the (G-20) summit would discuss and tried to ascertain their views," he said.

Ahluwalia said he did not raise the reported desire of Obama to send former President Bill Clinton as his special envoy on Kashmir. "Neither was it raised nor did we take it up," he said.

To a question on Obama's reported reservations on outsourcing, he said he did not feel that one could judge what the new Administration would do on the issue just on the basis of what was said in election speeches.

India on the moon, with tricolour

India Friday became the fourth country in the world to land a man-made object on the lunar surface when its moon impact probe (MIP), with the tricolour painted on it, landed on the earth's only natural satellite at 8.31 p.m. after ejecting from the Chandrayaan-I spacecraft.

The MIP impacted on the moon's surface 25 minutes after it was separated from Chandrayaan at 8.06 p.m., orbiting at 100 km above.

'We have given the moon to India. We have successfully placed our national flag on the lunar surface. In this auspicious month of Karthika, the moon has been very favourable to us,' a beaming G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), announced amidst thunderous applause by space scientists and officials.

To savour the historic event, former president and rocket scientist A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and former ISRO chairman U.R. Rao were present at the space agency's telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac) on the outskirts of Bangalore.

'On Jawaharlal Nehru's 119 birthday, the space scientists have gifted the moon to millions of Indian children. I am proud of ISRO. The success of Chandrayaan mission demonstrates the creative leadership of Nair and the technological excellence of our scientists,' Kalam told reporters after witnessing the complex manouvres from the spacecraft control centre at Istrac.

It may be recalled that the modern Indian space programme was initiated in 1962 when Nehru was the prime minister.

The 34 kg boxed shaped probe, with the saffron, white and green colours of the Indian flag painted on all its four sides, hit the lunar surface in the designated area of Shackleton crater, near the South Polar region.

'A series of automatic operations were carried out by firing the spin up rockets after achieving a safe distance of separation from Chandrayaan. With the firing of its retro rocket, the probe slowed down and started its rapid descent towards the lunar surface,' Nair pointed out.

Soon after the probe mission was accomplished, Chandrayaan disappeared behind the moon in its two-hourly orbit. Before going out of sight, the payloads in the 519 kg spacecraft captured all the pictures taken by the video imaging system of the MIP and recorded the data relayed by the radar altimeter and the mass spectrometer of the probe.

ISRO plans to use the data for its future lunar soft landing missions. Information from the instruments was radioed to Chandrayaan-1 by the descending probe. The spacecraft recorded the data in its onboard memory for later readout.

The crash landing of the 375 mm x 375 mm x 470 mm MIP, a honeycomb structure carrying a radar altimeter, a video imaging system and a mass spectrometer, raised a cloud of dust that will be analysed by the scientists, yielding a host of data about the composition of the moon. But well before that, the video imaging system and the mass spectrometer had obtained data that will enable the scientists to analyse if the moon has water, if it has anything that can be used as fuel for nuclear fusion, hopefully even the age of the moon. The landing of the MIP comes 50 years after the first man-made object landed on the lunar surface. The other countries that landed probes on the moon are the former USSR, the US and China.

Miss India USA pageant to raise funds for Bihar flood victims

The popular Miss India USA pageant this year would raise funds for the Bihar flood victims, organisers of the beauty competition have said.

The 27th edition of the Nationwide Miss India USA is scheduled to be held in New Jersey Nov 23, in which some two dozen Indian-American beauty queens representing their respective states of the US are expected to participate.

'Part of the proceeds will go for the relief of Bihar flood victims,' said Dharmatma Saran, chairman and founder of the pageant Thursday. Some 2.3 million people in North Bihar have been badly affected by massive floods, said to be one of the worst in the state in recent memory.

Saran said Prakash Jha, a well-known producer/director from Bihar, would be attending the pageant to promote the fundraising. Jha is currently touring various parts of the US raising money for Bihar flood victims.

In its 27th year, Miss India USA is the oldest Indian pageant outside India. Winner of this competition would represent the US in the 18th annual Miss India Worldwide pageant to be held in South Africa Feb 14 next year.

India, UAE to set up labour grievance redressal cell

India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will set up a grievance redressal mechanism soon to solve labour-related issues involving expatriate Indian workers in this Gulf nation.

This was agreed upon at a meeting between Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi and UAE Minister for Labour Saqr Gobash Saeed Gobash in Abu Dhabi Thursday, according to a statement issued by the Indian embassy in the UAE.

There are around 1.5 million expatriate Indian workers in the UAE and a large number of them are engaged as contract labourers in the country's construction sector.

The new grievance redressal mechanism, comprising officials of the Indian mission in Abu Dhabi and the UAE labour ministry, will help to quickly examine and dispose of labour-related issues.

'The two ministers noted the excellent contribution being made by Indian workers in the UAE in the development of various projects and applauded their high sense of discipline and dedication,' the embassy statement said.

'The two ministers also reviewed various aspects of recruitment and contracting of Indian workers and discussed ways in which the present system could be improved for the benefit of the workers.'

The UAE minister also reiterated his ministry's commitment to improving the living and working conditions of expatriate workers in the country.

The two ministers also expressed satisfaction at the progress made in labour-related issues through the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, a series of continuing joint meetings between major labour sending and receiving countries and the UAE's new initiative to launch a pilot project to improve the living and working conditions of expatriate Asian workers.

At the Global Forum for Migration and Development held in Manila last month, Labour Minister Gobash had announced the pilot project, which, he said, would involve 3,000 Indian and Filipino workers.

According to Gobash, the governments of the UAE, India and Philippines will collaborate towards the development of the project with expert inputs from the Arab Labour Organisation, the International Labour Organisation and the International Organisation on Migration.

The overall goal of the project is to test a range of practical measures that will serve to improve the quality of life and work of contractual workers.

Indians workers comprise 42.5 percent of the total labour force in the UAE and 65 percent of them are in the blue-collar category.

Ravi also invited Gobash to visit India to pursue the bilateral dialogue on labour issues, which the latter accepted.

Taslima Nasreen 'forced' to leave India again

Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has again been "forced" to leave India after her brief stay India, prompting the controversial writer to question the country's alleged secular credentials.

The writer, who returned to India on August 8, said she had to leave on October 15 following the government's dictum. "Yes, I was forced to leave India once again... The government gave me resident permit for 6 months with a secret condition that I must leave the country in a few days," she said in an e-mail interview.

The ex-physician-turned-feminist author, who is under attack from Muslim fundamentalists for her book 'Lajja', said she is now somewhere in Europe, delivering lectures.

Taslima's second exit from India comes seven months after she was forced to leave the country in view of protests by fundamentalist groups against her presence in New Delhi.

Prior to her departure, she had been living in Kolkata since 1994 after being exiled from Bangladesh over her book, which was dubbed anti-Islam by the fundamentalists.

"The condition of getting permission to reside in India is yet a direction for not to reside in India."

She said she will "go back" to India in January. "As the door of Bangladesh is closed for me, my home, I still consider, is in India, in the West Bengal city of Kolkata. If I am not allowed to return there, then it is back to nomadic existence again, without a land, without a home," the author said.

Expressing her angst over being shunted out again and again, she said "India, which prides itself of being the world's largest democracy, an allegedly secular state, could not give shelter to me."

"They (India) could not give shelter to a person whose entire life has been spent in the cause of secular humanism, a person without land or home, who regarded India as her land and Kolkata as her home...," Taslima said.

"I was shocked to see that not a single political party, organisation or institution protested against the way I was treated (in India). Not many individuals, who are regarded as the standard bearer of secularism, have spoken for me," said the Bengali writer of much talked-about books like 'Amar Meyebela' (My Girlhood), 'Utal Hawa' (Wild Wind) and 'Dwikhondito' (Split-up in Two).

Asked whether she still preferred to live in Kolkata, the place from where she was forcibly ousted on November 22 last year, the two-time "Ananda Award" winner said, "Yes, I still prefer Kolkata. I hope I would be allowed to live in Kolkata. I also request Pranab Babu (External Affairs Minister) and Buddha Babu (West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya) to allow me to live in the city," she said.

The author also said that she had no hard feelings against the West Bengal Chief Minister despite that fact that he banned her book 'Dwikhondito'.

"I still respect Buddha Babu even though he has banned my book which encouraged the fundamentalists to issue fatwa against me and start campaign ultimately resulting in my ouster from the city of joy," said the recipient of Simone de Beauvoir Feminist Award, 2008.

Taslima said she is writing her sixth autobiographical book. "I am writing the sixth part of my autobiography while giving lectures on important issues like human rights and freedom of expression," she said.

China 'regrets' Indian minister's remark over Arunachal Pradesh

China said here Tuesday that it deeply regretted India's Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee's remarks calling Arunachal Pradesh a part of India's territory.

'We deeply regret the Indian side's remarks, that take no regard of the historical facts. China and India have never officially settled demarcation of borders, and China's stance on the eastern section of China-India borders is consistent and clear-cut,' said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a regular press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Qin said the current Chinese government, as well as previous ones, has never recognized the illegal 'McMahon Line' (demarcating the border between India and China by the British), and the Indian side is very clear about that.

Qin was commenting on remarks made Sunday by Mukherjee, in which he said that Arunachal Pradesh is an inalienable part of Indian territory and India will suggest to China that the border be opened for trade.

As for the boundary issue between China and India, the spokesman said China is willing to find a solution, which is fair, reasonable and acceptable to the two sides, through peaceful and friendly negotiation in the spirit of mutual understanding and adjustment.