A two-day bandh called by Maoists across 6 states West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh as well as 3 districts of Maharashtra begins today.

The bandh is in protest against the Union Budget, which the Maoists say is anti-poor and prepared under the dictates of the World Bank.

The bandh is also meant to create public opinion against the Operation Greenhunt, the Centre's offensive against Maoists. Maoists have warned Home Minister P Chidambaram of large-scale violence if the police continued to hunt down its cadres and kill innocent people.

The six states are on a high alert.

The bandh has posed a threat to railway property, especially rail tracks as well as communication systems in the inter-state border zones. As a result, 10 trains, including Patna Palamu Express, Ranchi-Delhi Garib rath, and eight passengers trains have been cancelled in Bihar and Jharkhand.

Six trains passing via Barkakana Latehar section in Jharkhand have been diverted via Rajabera.

Maoists also triggered a blast on a stretch of land along the railway track between Midnapore and Godapia Sal stations in West Midnapore district in the wee hours today as the bandh called by them began.
 

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In a sign of the mounting power of the army over the civilian government in Pakistan, the head of the military, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, will be the dominant Pakistani participant in meetings in Washington this week.

At home, much has been made of how Kayani has driven the agenda for the talks. They have been billed as Cabinet-level meetings, with the foreign minister as the nominal head of the Pakistani delegation. But it has been the general who has been calling the civilian heads of major government departments, including finance and foreign affairs, to his army headquarters to discuss final details, an unusual move in a democratic system.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has been taking a public role in trying to set the tone, insisting that the United States needs to do more for Pakistan, as "We have already done too much." And it was at his request that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed this fall to reopen talks between the countries at the ministerial level.

The talks are expected to help define the relationship between the United States and Pakistan as the war against the Taliban reaches its endgame in Afghanistan. It is in that context that Kayani's role in organizing the agenda has raised alarm here in Pakistan, a country with a long history of military juntas.

The leading financial newspaper, The Business Recorder, suggested in an editorial that the civilian government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani should act more forcefully and "shun creating an environment conducive to military intervention."

The editorial added, "The government needs to consolidate civilian rule instead of handing over its responsibilities, like coordination between different departments, to the military."

"Gen. Kayani is in the driver's seat," said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of international relations at Islamabad University. "It is unprecedented that an army chief of staff preside over a meeting of federal secretaries."

Kayani visited the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., over the weekend, and will attend meetings at the Pentagon with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and Defence Secretary Robert M Gates on Monday. He is also to attend the opening ceremony of the talks between Clinton and Qureshi at the State Department on Wednesday, a spokesman at the US Embassy in Islamabad said.

The most pressing concerns in the talks, according to officials on both sides, will be trying to establish confidence after several years of a corrosive relationship between allies, which only in the past few months has started to gain some positive momentum.

But the complexity of the main topics at hand - the eventual US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan's concerns about India - is expected to make for a tough round of talks.

On the positive side for Pakistan, the Obama administration has been rethinking its policies toward the country, said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. "There is a realization that some of its assumptions over the past year were not correct: that Pakistan's security paradigm could be changed, that its military could be pressured," Lodhi said.

Meanwhile, concerned about efforts by the Afghan government to engage in talks with Taliban rebels, who have important bases and allies on Pakistani soil, the Pakistani government will offer itself as a mediator in any such negotiations, Hussain said. He said that the message would be "If you want to talk to bring the Afghan Taliban into the mainstream, you should talk to us."

Tensions with Afghanistan have been raised by some of Pakistan's recent operations against the Taliban, most notably the recent capture in Pakistan of a senior Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. The former head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said Friday that the arrest had jeopardized back-channel negotiations with Baradar's faction of the Taliban.

But the spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, Abdul Basit, said Saturday that Baradar's arrest had nothing to do with reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan.

India's growing role in Afghanistan was also high on Pakistan's agenda. The spokesman for the Pakistani military, General Athar Abbas, said Pakistan would be "conveying very clearly" its displeasure with India's offer to help train the Afghan army at the behest of US and NATO forces. Pakistan has made a counteroffer to train the Afghans, an offer that Pakistan knows is unlikely to be accepted but that it made to pressure Washington to stop the Indian proposal, Pakistani analysts said.

Kayani arrives in Washington after what the Pakistani military considers a stellar nine months in fighting the Pakistani Taliban, first in the region of Swat and most recently in South Waziristan.

The militants, according to the Pakistanis, have been weakened in their bases in the tribal areas, but at a high cost. According to Pakistani Army figures, 2,377 soldiers were killed in the two campaigns. About 1 in 10 of those killed were officers, a very high rate, Hussain said.

With those sacrifices and the heavy toll on army equipment in mind, Pakistan is expecting quicker reimbursement from the United States of its expenses in fighting the militants, Abbas said.Pakistan has complained that the United States has unfairly held up payments of $1.2 billion for 2009 under an agreement to help finance the fight against insurgents. For its part, Washington says its auditors need to satisfy Congress that the Pakistani military has properly spent the money.
 

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Is the US now open to a nuclear deal with Pakistan similar to the Indo-US deal?

Reports suggest a change of heart on the part of Washington, which had so far kept rebuffing Pakistan's request for a nuclear deal.

Anne W. Patterson, US Ambassador to Pakistan, has said in an interview to a US-based Pakistani journal: "We are beginning to have a discussion with the Pakistan Government" on the country's desire to tap nuclear energy.

She said these would be "working level talks" on the issue in Washington this month. "Earlier on, non-proliferation concerns were quite severe. I think we are beginning to pass those and this is a scenario that we are going to explore...," Patterson said.

India has taken note of the possibility of a deal between the US and Pakistan. In New Delhi, government sources said India hoped the international community would strike the right balance between meeting energy needs of any country while taking on board its track record on proliferation of nuclear technology and weapons of mass destruction.
 

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Airports across the country have been asked to increase security after a crude bomb was found on a  Kingfisher plane on Sunday.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security has said that packages from couriers should be accepted by airlines only after the addresses of the senders are verified Airports have also been told that packages covered in newspaper, magazines, plastic should be thoroughly checked.

On Sunday, a small explosive was found in the cargo section of a Kingfisher flight after it landed in Thiruvananthapuram from Bangalore. All passengers had left the plane when the crude bomb was found by staff inspecting the aircraft. The Civil Aviation Ministry has ordered an inquiry into the security lapse - to find out how the explosive made it onto the plane. All packages on planes are meant to be accounted for before the flight takes off. 

The crude bomb on the Kingfisher flight did not have a detonator or a timer. 
Kerala police have begun a comprehensive probe into the recovery of a crude explosive from the cargo section of a Kingfisher flight here with focus on "security lapses".
    
The Bangalore police, Civil Aviation Department and Central Intelligence agencies would help in the investigations considering the seriousness of the case, highly placed police sources told PTI on Monday.
    
The "country-made bomb like object" of the size of a cricket ball containing 30 gms of 'gunpowder', wrapped in two layers of paper, one of which was a page from the Thiruvananthapuram edition of a Malayalam newspaper, was found on Sunday on the plane that arrived from Bangalore here with 31 people on board, raising security concerns.
    
As part of the probe, a three-member team led by Police Commissioner M R Ajaya Kumar rushed to Bangalore on Sunday evening itself to view the Close Circuit TV recordings at the airport there to ascertain details of the passengers who flew in the flight and ground-handling staff including cargo loaders.
    
Similarly, a Bangalore police team is expected to be here later on Monday to collect such details from the city airport.
    
"We will be collecting all the details from both the airports for analysis. We will be helped by other agencies concerned. However, as the detection was done here, the state police will be playing a vital role in investigations and pursuance of the case," a police officer said. 

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In a setback to the Reddy brothers, the Supreme Court today stayed all further mining activities by the Obulapuram Mining Corporation (OMC) owned by the Karnataka minister-cum-mining magnates in Andhra Pradesh.

A bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Deepak Verma appointed an expert committee headed by the Survey of India to review the mining areas and ascertain allegations of large-scale encroachment of reserve forest areas allegedly by the powerful mining lobby.

The apex court granted two weeks to the committee to file its report and said no further mining activities would be permitted at the site until further orders. The apex court also issued notices to the Reddy brothers, including G Janardhan Reddy and his brother Karunakara Reddy, on the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by the Andhra Pradesh government challenging the February 26 state High Court order quashing the cancellation orders passed by the state.

Attorney General G E Vahanvati submitted that the High Court ignored the findings of the apex court-appointed Central Empowered Committee and the high level inquiry committee of the state government.

Both the Committees after conducting independent inquiries had arrived at concurrent conclusion that the Reddy brothers have encroached into vast hectares of reserve forest areas in the state.

The apex court said the committee headed by the Survey of India would also include members drawn from the state department of Forest, Mines and Revenue.
 

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It can be difficult to write software for a gadget without being able to touch it. But that has not stopped developers from rushing to create applications for the Apple iPad.

For small startups and big Internet and media companies alike, the iPad, and tablet computers in general, beckon as the next wide open technology frontier.

For many of them, getting apps onto the iPad will be a challenge, at least at first. Apple has provided only a few companies with iPads on which to design and test their software before the device's release on April 3.

The rest have had to make do with software running on a Mac that mimics the iPad, a disadvantage when dealing with a device that Apple is pitching as a new way of interacting with media.

The few companies that did receive the device - including Major League Baseball, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times - have been subject to Apple's long list of rules. The companies must agree to keep the iPad hidden from public view, chained to tables in windowless rooms. This although the basic look of the iPad stopped being a secret in January.

And Apple has told all other developers who have downloaded its iPad programming tools to remain silent about their apps until later this month.

Apple's addiction to secrecy does not seem to have damped enthusiasm among developers.

"There's something about the newness of the iPad that's driving an even greater level of excitement than what existed in the last year for the iPhone," said Raven Zachary, president of Small Society, an iPhone software company in Portland, Ore.

Zachary has organized workshops for iPhone developers and plans to do the same for the iPad. "People see this as an opportunity to do things that have not been done before and get that first mover's advantage," he said.

Some companies are even opening up and talking about their iPad plans, risking Apple's reprisal. Sure, they are salivating at the prospect of the iPad's 9.7-inch screen and fast processor - but also at the demonstrated willingness of Apple customers to pay a few dollars to get apps onto their devices.

Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble are working on apps for buying and reading electronic books, even though both companies sell their own e-reading devices and Apple will offer its own iBooks app. The expectation is that the iPad will give a big lift to the e-book market, benefiting the whole industry. Neither company was given an iPad for testing.

"We have actually developed a tablet-based interface that redesigns the core screen and the reading experience," said Ian Freed, vice president for Kindle at Amazon. "Our team had some fun with it."

The Kindle app for the iPad, which Amazon demonstrated to a reporter last week, allows readers to slowly turn pages with their fingers. It also presents two new ways for people to view their entire e-book collection, including one view where large images of book covers are set against a backdrop of a silhouetted figure reading under a tree. The sun's position in that image varies with the time of day.

At the offices of Barnes & Noble's digital unit in New York, 14 developers have occupied a windowless room since January, completely redesigning the company's iPhone app for the iPad, according to Douglas Gottlieb, its vice president

of digital products. The developers hunch over Macs around a big table, and printouts and notecards are taped up on the walls.

The new app will let users flip through books quickly with finger swipes and customize fonts in multiple colors and sizes. Gottlieb said the company was talking to publishers about adding multimedia to digital books.

Apple said last week that it was starting to accept submissions from iPad developers who want the chance to get their apps into the App Store before the iPad's release. But both Amazon and Barnes & Noble say they plan to wait and test their software on an actual iPad before submitting it for Apple's review.

Developers know from experience how important timing can be. Some of the earliest developers to release programs for the iPhone were also the most successful. Then the number of apps in the App Store - currently 150,000 - became overwhelming. A developer who is out in front with an application that is tailored for the iPad stands a better chance of getting noticed.

But there is the chance that an app that ran just fine on the simulator will have problems or just feel wrong on a real iPad. Many developers say they do not want to take that risk.

"As much as we'd love to be there on Day 1, a misstep could kill the train before it even gets out of the station," said Wade Slitkin, chief executive of Panelfly, which makes a digital comic-book reader for devices like the iPhone and has deals with publishers like Marvel Comics and Sterling.

There are real-world factors that may go undetected with a simulator, like the weight of the device and how people hold it. To compensate, engineers have been printing out sample pages and pasting them onto magazines, "to get a feel for holding it in our hands," said Stephen Lynch, chief technologist at the company.

Shervin Pishevar, founder of SGN, a mobile gaming company, tried to get a jump on the competition by attending the iPad's unveiling in San Francisco in January, then spending every possible moment using one in a demonstration area. Pishevar said he believes that the large iPad screen will allow families to sit around the device and play turn-based Monopoly-type games.

His company is also developing games that players will operate by linking an iPhone or iPod Touch to the iPad over a wireless network and using the smaller device as a game controller - somewhat like the motion-sensitive remote for the Nintendo Wii.

"We are going to be able to build games and entertainment applications that are as good as a console-type game," Pishevar said.

Among large media companies, The Journal, The Times, Time magazine and NPR will have apps for the iPad available when it goes on sale, according to people briefed on those companies' plans. Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Most of the existing apps for the iPhone will run on the iPad as is, either stretched to fit the screen or in a smaller window. But many developers are focusing on revamping their most popular iPhone titles for use on the iPad.

Neil Young, co-founder and head of the iPhone gaming studio Ngmoco, said his company was updating several games, including a multiplayer game called Charadium where players draw items and take turns guessing what the picture is. It will get new controls and a roomier blank pad to draw on.

"There are so many more places to touch on the screen," he said. "We can have a lot more fun with it."  
 

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Sahara bagged Pune while little known Rendezvous Sports World Limited clinched Kochi as the Indian Premier League on Sunday unveiled two new teams joining the cash-awash Twenty20 league.

IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi said Sahara Adventure Sports Group made an identical USD 370 million bid for three cities -- Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Pune.

"They made the highest bid for all three cities and were asked to chose one of those cities. So Pune will be the home ground of their team," Modi told reporters.

Rendezvous Sports World Limited made the second highest bid today but their offer of USD 333.33 million was enough to land the Kochi franchise, Modi said.

Indian actress Freida Pinto will romance Hollywood heartthrob Daniel Craig in the next 007 movie as she steps into the coveted shoes of a Bond girl.

The actress, who rose to international stardom with the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, will star in the next spy flick to be directed by Sam Mendes, reported Mirror online.

"Sam (Mendes) has been talking about Bond for months now and is so excited about it. The project has been in the pipeline for months and Freida was always the dream Bond girl, but initially she was nervous about accepting it," said a source.

"It will be a typically glamorous and raunchy role and Dev has been joking to friends he is cool with seeing Freida rolling around with 007," the source added.

American actress Olivia Wilde is reportedly in talks to star as the second Bond girl in the 23rd outing of the Bond franchise, which will be set in Afghanistan.

"This is going to be the most ambitious 007 yet. Sam plans to reinvent the genre. Peter Morgan, who wrote The Queen, has penned the first draft of the script and it promises to be visually stunning," the source said. PTI BB