2. Bihar assembly ruckus: All suspended LJP MLAs resign
PATNA: All 12 Lok Janashakti Party MLAs today resigned from Bihar Assembly in protest against their suspension by Speaker Udaya Narain Chowdhary for the rest of the session.
"All the 12 MLAs of the party have submitted their resignation letters to National President Ram Vilas Paswan and state chief Pashupati Kumar Paras in protest against their suspension from the state Assembly yesterday," LJP spokesman Keshav Singh said.
The MLAs had submitted their letters at the state legislature party meeting held here last evening and requested the party leadership to take a decision, he said.
The MLAs felt that their continuance as members of the state Assembly was "meaningless" after the "insult" they were subjected to by the speaker in the House yesterday when they were suspended.
"It has denigrated the position of the members of the house," he said.
Chowdhary had yesterday suspended 11 of the 12 LJP MLAs for their unruly behaviour in the house on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Speaker had yesterday suspended a total of 67 opposition MLAs for the rest of the monsoon session for their unruly behaviour in the House.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6200304.cms?prtpage=1

3. CPM ruining Railways image by putting cockroaches in food: Mamata
KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has suggested CPM’s hand in the train accident in Sainthia and the Jnaneswari Express mishap and ruled out resigning on moral grounds.
"I am prepared to resign if the CPM guarantees that it will not indulge in sabotage," she said slamming the Marxists for demanding her resignation in the wake of Monday’s accident in Birbhum district which left 66 persons dead.
Banerjee, who had resigned twice earlier as union minister, said people were ringing her up to tell her not to walk into CPM’s trap by quitting.
"They have been planning sabotage. They are trying to ruin the (reputation of) Railways by letting cockroaches into food. It is time for the CPM to go. The Jnaneswari Express accident took place on May 28 two before the Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections," she pointed out.
Banerjee was addressing her party’s mammoth Martyr’s Day rally organised in the memory of 13 Youth Congress workers killed in a police firing here on this day in 1993.
"The accident at Sainthia occurred on July 19 before our Martyr’s Day rally today. Both took place around 2:00 am. Many people were killed. This should be probed. The CBI is investigating the earlier accident.
"They (Marxists) are not planning development, but opening clips on tracks. Some comrades are drawing up scientific plans. After the Jnaneswari (accident) they strung up a poster claiming that it was an accident. Who were behind it should be investigated. It is sabotage," she said. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Congressmen-look-to-tweet-out-of-gag-order/articleshow/6197813.cms

4 Congressmen look to tweet out of gag order: By Subodh Ghildiyal, Times of India, Jul 22
NEW DELHI: Technology has helped people across the world get around censorship. Now, it may come to the rescue of Congressmen feeling restless over the "gag" order issued on Tuesday by a leadership perturbed by the freewheeling airing of views.
Congress leaders feel Twitter is outside the ambit of the party’s latest gag order and will help them dance around the diktat, a view which can test anxious party managers.
The "stick-to-your brief" directive to AICC office-bearers has led to unrest within as many feel the establishment is being "impractical". A strong section sees it as unjust, pointing out that no such restraint has been imposed on "motormouth" ministers, who not just speak out of turn but do so at cross-purposes with colleagues and even on foreign shores.
Amid the anger, `tweet’ seems to hold out hope as a growing number of leaders are taking to the new medium. Anil Shastri, CWC member and editor of party mouthpiece `Sandesh’, said, "I will continue to tweet. This medium enables me to say what I think is right at the right time. It is not a press statement, but it is for the media to pick it up or not."
Shastri’s tweets have covered controversial issues, ranging from seeking party chief Sonia Gandhi’s intervention to rein in inflation to his wading into the recent Kamal Nath vs Montek Singh Ahluwalia face-off.
A leader emphatically said, "Tweet is not covered by the directive. It is a personal account." An office-bearer argued that a leader may express concern over price rise which is not his mandate but then it is also not at variance with the leadership’s views. "The spirit of the comment matters," he said.
Clearly, without a clarification aimed at plugging the loophole by specifying that the gag extends to tweets as well, the 140-character messages may become the trend.
As the "seal your lips" decree kept AICC abuzz, Congress clarified it was not "person specific", claiming it was not aimed at general secretary Digvijay Singh for his recent interview which covered Naxal policy and Hindu terror.
In fact, there is a realisation that given the sorry fate of similar advisories earlier, it was risky to make this one sound like an `inviolable farmaan’ only to see it observed in breach as senior leaders cannot be reduced to mere scripted AICC managers of state units. "When you imply seniority, it subsumes a certain sense of discretion," spokesperson Manish Tiwari said.
Congress defended the circular, saying there were internal fora where leaders could air their views, critical or otherwise, but there could not be anarchy in the name of democracy. "There is nothing inappropriate," Tiwari said. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6197813.cms?prtpage=1

5.Mystery over change in Krishna’s schedule persists
NEW DELHI: The mystery about the last-minute switch in external affairs minister’s meetings with Pakistani leaders persists with S M Krishna himself saying that he doesn’t know the reason.
The sudden change in his schedule on the afternoon of July 15 in Islamabad in the midst of his discussions with his Pakistani counterpart S M Qureshi has generated considerable speculation as to how the script may have gone wrong.
"The order of my meetings was changed. I came to know only when I was going. They said I would be meeting the president first and then the prime minister. I do not know what was the reason," Krishna said.
Krishna and Qureshi were said to have made good progress during their first session of talks which started at 11 am and lasted for nearly five hours, well beyond the schedule.
The minister’s schedule was to leave at 3.20 pm and to reach Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s office to meet him at 3.30 pm. The call on President Asif Ali Zardari was to follow at 5.30 pm at the Presidential palace.
In the time slot Krishna was to meet Gilani, Pakistan’s powerful army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani met the prime minister. Kayani had also met Zardari.
When the talks resumed after Krishna’s two call-ons, the atmosphere totally changed and Pakistan took an unexpectedly stringent posture leading to the deadlock at the talks.
Many commentators in India feel that it was Pakistani Army which put spokes in the way of progress between India and Pakistan.
Krishna did not want to go into the details of what went wrong but insisted that his meetings with both leaders went off very well and that was what matters. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6200420.cms?prtpage=1

6. Indian student racially assaulted in moving bus: Indian Express on line July 22
Melbourne : An Indian student was racially assaulted in a jam-packed bus here by a group of three youths who repeatedly hit him and also threw chicken pieces at him, in yet another attack on the youths from the community in Australia.
24-year-old Rajan Kumar Katkam, who arrived here in 2008 to pursue his course in Graphics, has filed a case with the office of Victims of Crime following the the incident which forced him to defer his studies.
"I was travelling on a bus to Rye from Frankston at 2.30 pm (local time) when three youths who were apparently drunk started harassing me," Rajan said, adding that one of the members first started hitting him while the others threw chicken pieces at him.
According to Rajan, who is returning home next month, "they (attackers) said that black people want to be equal and that’s why they are getting bashed."
No one has been charged so far over the incident, which took place in February. The case was filed immediately and it is believed that video footage of the incident has been received by the Victoria police.
"The ordeal went on for 45 minutes and no one came to my rescue except one old lady who was kind enough to get up and asked those boys to stop it," Rajan said.
The victim was thankful to the white lady who tried to help him but was asked to keep her mouth shut.
Rajan is returning home next month due to some health issues which he claimed had occurred soon after the incident.
Meanwhile, President of Federation of Indian Association of Victoria (FIAV), Vasan Srinivasan, who is closely following Rajan’s case, said the victim was not able to move his right hand and had been feeling weak.
"Rajan has developed some neck and hand movement problems. We have requested his college to defer his course by a year and have booked his flight back on August 11th," Vasan said, adding he can return to finish his course at a later stage.
Indian students, specially in Victoria, have reported more than 100 cases of assaults since June last year, prompting serious concerns over their safety and the issue of racism in the country.
According to a recently released study by Monash University’s Centre for Population and Urban Research, there was a strong link between the government’s international education, skilled migration and labour policies which lead to Indian students becoming prone to racism.
The study criticised Australian government for its failure to safeguard overseas pupils who have been caught up in a nexus of education and migration.
"The policy linking education and migration was aimed at getting ‘designer migrants’ to satisfy Australia’s needs for a younger professional labour force at little cost," it said.
It said the link between education and permanent residency attracted unprecedented numbers of fee-paying students with poor English from rural India, particularly into vocational education.
There are now over 400,000 Indians living in Australia, with students comprising nearly one-third of that community.http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/650317/

7.US promises Pak to work on civil nuclear ‘deal’: Indaian Expressonline, July 22
Washington : The US has promised to work with Pakistan on the civil nuclear energy front and try to overcome the "obstacles" that come in the way, as it seeks clarifications from Beijing over its atomic agreement with Islamabad.
"In our dialogue with the Pakistani Government, we have clearly said we will work with them on civil nuclear energy," Clinton told a group of Pakistani journalists in Islamabad on July 19, according to the transcripts made available by the State Department.
Pakistan has been demanding a civilian nuclear deal with the US on the lines of the one it has with India.
China and Pakistan have an agreement under which the former would supply two additional nuclear reactors to the latter, and the US has sought additional clarifications over the deal as it goes to the Nuclear Suppliers Group.It took years to do it with India. But we are committed to pursuing it and trying to overcome the obstacles that might stand in the way, because we think it is important to get as much of a varied source of energy all connected to the grid and all being able to prevent the load shedding that now is such a difficult problem for people," Clinton said in response to a question.
She also stressed the importance for Pakistan to have a good distribution and transmission system for electricity.
"So we’re looking at how we help the Pakistani Government create an energy system, and that requires not just looking at every form of energy, which we are, but also how it is put together and delivered," Clinton said.
The average urban resident in Pakistan loses at least six hours a day, but the average rural resident loses from eight to 12 hours a day.So it’s not only a very unfortunate problem for individuals, but for business, for industry as well," she said. http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/650280/