Secretariat blaze: Chavan says fire controlled, orders probe

Sixteen people were injured as a major fire raged in the Maharashtra Mantralaya Thursday, with officials saying that everyone had been rescued from the building.





Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said that the massive fire that gutted most of the top four floors of the Mantralaya or the state secretariat was now under control. He also ordered a probe by the Crime Branch into the incident.

Chavan, who held an emergency meeting in evening, discussed the situation with other ministers and planned alternative arrangements till the situation was normal at the state government's administrative headquarters.

"An inquiry has been ordered. Crime Branch will start inquiry into the matter," Chavan told reporters after the meeting.

Besides Chavan, the meeting was attended by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, top ministers, bureaucrats, police and civic officials, at multi-storied New Administrative Building, which is opposite the seven-storied Mantralaya.

Earlier, Relief and Rehabilitation Secretary Pravin Pardeshi had said that 65 people trapped on the fifth and sixth floor have been evacuated by the fire-fighters.

"There are no more people inside. Fire fighters are combing the place again to check if anyone has been trapped inside," he said.

Maharashtra Chief Secretary J.K. Banthia said the dozens who had been trapped in the seven-floor building had been taken out. “There are no more people inside,” he told the media.

But the press conference also attended by some ministers turned stormy after journalists and a section of secretariat employees demanded to know how such an inferno could spread so fast in a high security complex.

Flames leapt out of most parts of the fourth floor of the Mantralaya and 30 fire tenders were rushed to battle the blaze. The floor houses offices of several state ministers.

The fire broke out at NCP minister Babanrao Pachpute's office, the sources said.Maharashtra Chief Secretary has ordered immediate evacuation of the entire building.

The fire which broke out on the fourth floor has now speard to the fifth and the sixth floor. The office of the chief minister and the deputy chief minister have also been affected.

Maharastra's elite commando squad Force One and city police's Quick Response Team arrived at the spot amid reports that some people were still trapped on the terrace of the Mantralaya.

Maharastra CM Prithviraj Chavan rushed to monitor rescue operations and said the prime concern was to save people and the issue of which file was destroyed in the fire will be considered later.

A few risked their lives and slid down several floors clutching water and drainage pipes.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan's office was also on fire.

Rescue workers frantically appealed to those trapped in the Mantralaya to get to the roof for rescue by navy helicopters.

Several Marine Commandos joined the rescue operations, being overseen by the Mumbai Fire Service and Mumbai Police.

More and more fire engines with their sirens wailing continued to rush to the burning Mantralaya from other parts of the city.

"I climbed down a water pipe to escape the flames," said a breathless man who later said that many others had made similar attempts to escape with the help of thick electricity cables and drainage pipes.

A large number of people were evacuated after the fire broke out. However, many were trapped in some rooms and offices of the higher floors, an official said.

Most of the people were trapped on the 5th and 6th floors and are awaiting to be evacuated.

The floor on which the fire broke out reportedly had files of the Adarsh building scam stacked, reports NDTV.

Fire-fighters are making efforts to contain the fire and keep it from reaching the sixth floor that has the Maharashtra chief minister's office.

The cause of the fire has not yet been ascertained.

The landmark Mantralaya building is located in the heart of South Mumbai, close to the Mumbai High Court.

It houses some 1,500 employees and every day gets an equal number of visitors.

Hundreds were seen outside the building watching the flames and smoke. Most employees who escaped were from the lower floors.

Also watching the inferno were the chief minister and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.

BJP backs PA Sangma as their Presidential candidate

After the BJP's press conference, PA Sangma addressed the media gathered outside his residence and said, "I'm not a candidate of a single political party. I'm backed by Odisha CM Navin Patnaik and Ms Jayalalithaa. I'm grateful to them for their support. Today I'm happy the BJP has backed my candidature. Other parties like Shiromani Akali JMM and smaller parties have spoken to me and said they're with the decision with the BJP and NDA.


I appeal to all allies of the NDA to extend their support to my candidature. I'll be going all out to reach out to political parties in UPA and NDA. I am also grateful to media for being patient."

Leaders of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley held a press conference around noon to announce Sangma's name as the BJP's candidate for the Presidential race.
Swaraj said Sangma is the tallest leader from the North East. She said ally Shikomani Akali Dal is also with the BJP on Sangma's candidature. She also said UPA did not consult them on naming Pranab as their candidate.

Swaraj said the party took this long to come out with a name because they were trying to reach out to all allies. She made it clear that there was not going to be a walkover for Pranab.

Arun Jaitley reached out to their allies in the NDA and asked them to extend their support to Sangma.

Sangma resigned from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)  yesterday over differences on the Presidential race.

Former Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma is from the North Eastern state of Meghalaya. He also served as the state's chief minister from 1988- 1990.

India ranked 142 out of 158 in Global Peace Index

Produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the Global Peace Index measures a country’s peacefulness in a year. A country is rated on its ongoing domestic and international conflict, safe and security in society as well as militarization. Countries are coded on a scale of 1-5, where 5 means the least peaceful. So which are the most peaceful and the least peaceful nations? And where does India stand?



Of the 158 countries ranked, India comes in at number 142 which, needless to say, is dismal.
India’s Perceived criminality in society is rated a number 5, indicating criminal activities within the community.






Conflicts fought is another indicator India fared terrible on. “Conflict” here means an “incompatibility” between the govt/state and the public resulting in a loss of at least 25 lives.




Access to weapons, Political terror, Terrorist acts, Military capability are the other areas where India was rated a 5.






Of the 23 indicators, India has scored well on 8. So where did India score good? Jailed population is one of them. It seems India’s prison population is in proportion to the national population.
Last year India was ranked 136 out of 153 countries by the GPI.




India has something to cheer about. Troubled neighbor Pakistan is ranked number 149, seven places below India.




China, on the other hand is way ahead of India on the index, featuring at number 89.China, on the other hand is way ahead of India on the index, featuring at number 89.




Iceland is the most peaceful country for the second year in a row





Somalia is the least peaceful country for the second consecutive year.

TMC threatens to quit UPA

The six Union ministers of the Trinamool Congress on Monday evening threatened to quit the United Progressive Alliance over the manner in which the issue of the coalition's Presidential candidate was handled.

Earlier, there was buzz that the ministers had already submitted their resignations to TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, but Sudip Bandopadhyay said that reports of Trinamool Congress' Union ministers resigning baseless and untrue.

He, however, added that said that all the TMC ministers in the central government are 'mentally prepared' to resign if the need arises. Mamata Banerjee will take the final decision on the resignations, he added. 

The Trinamool Congress will take appropriate decision at appropriate time on the Presidential polls, but added that the TMC was not for toppling UPA government.

The UPA and the TMC have been fighting a very vocal and public battle over the choice of the Presidential candidate, with TMC chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee opposing the UPA's nominee Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for the top job.

Banerjee with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had on last Wednesday had suggested former President APJ Abdul Kalam as presidential candidate. But, she found herself isolated among UPA allies when Yadav backed UPA nominee Pranab Mukherjee immediately after his name was announced on Friday.

Banerjee, however, kept on insisting on Kalam, even though the former President released a statement earlier in the day saying that he will not contest the Presidential poll.

State of the symbol

Two women almost became president of India, one in 1977 and the other in 1982. One will be familiar only to dedicated political pedants. The second remains a household name, even 28 years after her martyrdom. By 1982, Mrs Gandhi felt exhausted: The punishing drama of power had been compounded by the despair of personal tragedy. A "syndicate" of party heavyweights made her prime minister in 1966 after Lal Bahadur Shastri's sudden death, on the assumption that she would be a palliative for an increasingly disillusioned electorate and compliant to their commands. The steel that kept her nerve steady was visible only in 1969, when Mrs Gandhi used an election for President of India to split the Congress and propel her rebel, V.V. Giri, to Rashtrapati Bhavan. In 1971, she lifted her Congress to a magic pinnacle with a stunning victory; four years later, she drove it into unprecedented depths by declaring an unwarranted Emergency. Congress was erased from the electoral map of north, west and east India in 1977.

That turned out to be only the middle of the story. She was back in office in January 1980. The euphoria of this political miracle vanished when in 1980 her young heir Sanjay Gandhi died in an air crash over Delhi. No burden is heavier for a mother than a son's bier. It sapped her once indomitable spirit to the point where she began to consider a form of semi-retirement. In 1982, as another election for president neared, she turned to her young finance minister and close confidant Pranab Mukherjee with a strange thought.
She wanted to become president. Mukherjee was stunned. Why would a woman with unchallenged power seek the damp ceremonies of Rashtrapati Bhavan? Mukherjee's genius, however, lies not in asking questions, but in finding answers. As instructed he checked with two seniors, R. Venkataraman and P.V. Narasimha Rao. They squashed the suggestion. Their motives were not totally altruistic. They were apprehensive that Mrs Gandhi would nominate Mukherjee as her replacement. Mrs Gandhi stayed on. The multi-lingual intellectual Rao became frontrunner, but Mrs Gandhi had other ideas. Much to the nation's surprise, and the horror of his peers, she made home minister Giani Zail Singh president.
In public perception, Zail Singh's principal claim to fame lay in his offer to sweep Mrs Gandhi's room with a broom if asked. Since subservience is not the best argument for upward mobility, a political camouflage was trotted out. "First" is always a handy category. His nomination was rationalised as a gesture towards Punjab, since Sikhs were already in ferment. Zail Singh's real USP was a promise to be an obedient, trouble-free occupant of the palace.
Loyalty can be a fragile asset. Zail Singh was president on the morning Mrs Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984; by nightfall, Rajiv Gandhi had become prime minister. Before dawn, Delhi, the capital of rumour, was whispering that Zail Singh had been less than cooperative. In a more concrete demonstration of suspicion, Rajiv Gandhi dropped his mother's favourite minister, Pranab Mukherjee, from his Cabinet after the general elections of December.
The conflict between Rajiv Gandhi and Zail Singh strained their relationship beyond constitutional elasticity. Zail Singh was soon telling anyone who would listen, and many who would not, that he had the legal authority to dismiss Rajiv Gandhi. He would take selected guests on a walk in the Mughal Gardens because he was afraid his drawing room conversations were being taped by the Intelligence Bureau. Rajiv Gandhi's aides responded with threats of impeachment. The rhetoric on both sides possibly exceeded practical capability, but the tension was palpable and dangerous. Zail Singh slid into the larger script of confrontation over pay-offs in the Bofors gun deal.
Mrs Sonia Gandhi, as wife of the young prime minister, took away a lesson from that searing experience which she has not forgotten: That trust is a scaleable commodity in politics. In theory a president is above politics; in practice, he is what he chooses to be.
There shall be a President of India. Seven simple words define the highest office in the Republic of India. Nothing more; the Constitution is silent on the executive penumbra of the position. The next Article, 53, of the Constitution, shifts to the executive power of the Union. As symbol of the state, the president is vested with supreme command of the armed forces, but with the qualification that "the exercise thereof shall be regulated by law". The eminent constitutional expert, Ram Jethmalani, pins the anomaly that was redressed: "If the relevant Article (53) did not have important catchwords, the president of India would have been more powerful than any hereditary and absolute King. Both parts of the Article however employ words which render the vesting of these enormous powers nothing more than formal and ceremonial. Article 56(b) reaffirms the supremacy of Parliament, as "the President may, for violation of the Constitution, be removed from office by impeachment (by Parliament) in the manner provided in Article 61."
Jawaharlal Nehru held, in essence, that the president was akin to the British monarch, whose limits were defined by convention rather than statute. It was not merely a matter of blindly imitating the British template; the written clause, particularly in the grant of rights, can be more amenable to exploitation than an unwritten one. India's presidents, so far, have respected the division of responsibility; even Zail Singh did not dare go beyond the private innuendo. In any case, Article 74 binds the president to act only on the advice of the Council of Ministers, the directly elected heart of government.
Conflict arose even when India was governed by giants nurtured in the freedom movement. Dr Rajendra Prasad, Gandhiji's host at Patna en route to Champaran in 1916, became India's first president after we shook off our Dominion status and became a Republic in 1950. Prasad was an enthusiastic supporter of a controversial public-private project to rebuild the Somnath temple, famously destroyed by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026 ad. Prime Minister Nehru took a classic view of the secular state, and wrote to chief ministers on May 2, 1951: "Government of India as such has nothing to do with it. While it is easy to understand a certain measure of public support to this venture we have to remember that we must not do anything which comes in the way of our State being secular. That is the basis of our Constitution..."
Prasad, and stalwarts like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, thought that the best way to lance emotive issues, residuals of a complicated history, was to address majority demands early, when reactions could be either absorbed or brushed aside, or they would inflate into huge communal crises later, as indeed the dispute over Babri mosque did. Prasad presided over the opening ceremony of Somnath in 1951, and Nehru did nothing. The difference was not worth a confrontation.
Their second dispute arose over what Nehru described, in an interview to Taya Zinkin, correspondent of the Manchester Guardian in 1962, as the greatest achievement of his life, the Hindu Code Bill, passed in 1956, which amended and codified Hindu law to ensure gender equality. Polygamy, for instance, was permissible for Hindus till then. Prasad resisted reform, but he could do nothing against Nehru and the will of Parliament. But these were differences over parallel visions of India, not petty and acrimonious tussles for control.
Ironically, collusion between prime minister and president can be as dangerous as conflict. A president's power lies in moral authority, which demands the independence of a judge and sagacity of a wide-awake nationalist. He is guardian of the most precious asset in a democracy, the people's rights, as inscribed in the Constitution. Any lapse is never forgiven by the voter or by history. A perfectly decent president like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (August 1974 to February 1977), therefore, is not remembered for civility, but for the crass subservience he displayed when, in June 1975, he signed without question Mrs Gandhi's authoritarian proclamation that condemned India to 19 months of Emergency. The brilliant satirist Abu Abraham, who had been nominated to the Rajya Sabha by Mrs Gandhi, stepped out of his grace-and-favour persona and drew a withering cartoon of the president selling away the Constitution from his bathtub. This memory is indelible in the national consciousness, and explains the hostile reaction to the prospect of a dummy or a dwarf in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Indians want a president, not a puppet.

There were two models for president for the first 19 years, personified in Rajendra Prasad and Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who became president in 1960: Statesman-politician and public intellectual, with high talent and integrity in common. The three names being tossed about so far for this year's polls meet such standards: Pranab Mukherjee is admired across party lines, as was evident in the current session of Parliament, and in the country; Abdul Kalam and Hamid Ansari are widely respected intellectual-professionals.
In 1969, a third option entered the frame. Mrs Gandhi won a spectacular political victory but by choosing Giri, she began a process of depreciation that inevitably led to devaluation. When Giri departed in 1974 there was talk that he had taken the curtains along with him. The last five years have seen the symbol of state descend to a caricature. In 2007, Mrs Sonia Gandhi set aside Pranab Mukherjee's name and pushed Mrs Pratibha Patil's name through perplexed allies and a helpless nation. Ironically, these five desultory years of Mrs Patil have sharpened the demand for a person of stature like Mukherjee as the 13th president. Congress allies Sharad Pawar and M. Karunanidhi refuse to be hustled this time around; they are trying to pre-empt Sonia Gandhi's individual will through collective applause. They have voiced support for Mukherjee even before Congress has. Their upa colleague Mamata Banerjee is more wary, but she cannot afford to vote against a fellow Bengali. Mulayam Singh Yadav is happy to go with the flow if the flow is in this direction. Sentiment for Mukherjee has spread to sections of the bjp as well. Curiously, the only person who could deny Mukherjee what is widely acknowledged as his due is his own leader, Mrs Sonia Gandhi.
There is only one plausible reason for Mrs Gandhi's hesitation. She cannot be certain about what Mukherjee will do during his 'overlap' moment.
The first 'Overlap President' would have been a well-regarded Bharatanatyam dancer called Rukmini Devi. We shall never know what prompted the Janata Prime Minister Morarji Desai to float this 71-year-old's name in 1977; he was not famous for patronage of the arts. Perhaps he had some personal peeve against Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, whose claim lay in the fact that Mrs Gandhi stopped him from becoming president in 1969, setting off a chain of events that had come full circle in less than a decade. Desai was overruled; Reddy became president. But this circle had an extra twist. In 1980, Reddy had to swear in Mrs Gandhi as prime minister. He thus became an overlap president, splitting his term between governments that were politically hostile to each other. The last overlap president was Abdul Kalam. In 2004, Mrs Sonia Gandhi went to him to claim the prime ministership; there is controversy about what exactly transpired. A day later, Sonia Gandhi chose Dr Manmohan Singh. Every Congress MP lauded her for a unique sacrifice, all speeches broadcast to the nation by an obliging Doordarshan.
"The Prime Minister shall be appointed by the President and the other ministers shall be appointed by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister." Article 75 leaves no room for confusion. The president is within his rights to name who he will as prime minister, for there is no Cabinet whose advice he can seek. The prime minister must prove his majority in the Lok Sabha, but anyone can become prime minister for that period. In 1996, Congress lost the elections but no one won them. President Shankar Dayal Sharma set an admirable precedent by calling upon the leader of the largest single party, BJP, to form a government even though both he and the bjp knew that it would not win a vote in the House. Atal Bihari Vajpayee became prime minister for 16 days. But a precedent is not a law. As the Lok Sabha gets increasingly fractured, the president's leeway expands. The dangers are obvious if neither major party gets sufficient seats to command the dominant centre of an alliance, and smaller parties feel free to offer support in return for political or financial rewards. This has happened often enough at the state level.
The role of the president will be critical after the next general elections. Rahul Gandhi's future could depend on the decision the president will take. Mrs Sonia Gandhi is clearly hesitant about both the popular favourites, Kalam and Mukherjee; she may even wonder whether Hamid Ansari would tweak the rules just a little at crunch time. There is therefore much talk of a last-minute surprise candidate, who will probably pop up in the last week of May, or even in June around the time of the notification. Since "first" is a preferred alibi, speculation is narrowing to a tribal candidate, for three Muslims and a Dalit have already lived in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Or the Congress might choose to trip Mukherjee by opting for anyone else around whom a consensus can be created.
There is a difference though: Mrs Sonia Gandhi was in command in 2007. This year, the allies needed to ensure victory have stopped being stenographers in the service of a politically weakened Congress. They are not ready for dictation.
To bid for the future, you must first insure the present. At the moment of writing the insurance policy is in the name of Pranab Mukherjee.

Fall from grace of the insider

New York, June 17 -- As Rajat Gupta listened to the verdict, he showed no emotions. The face was a mask with finely cut angles as it had been for most of the trial. When he had looked around, there was a look on the face that said: you might belong here, but I don't. In a federal courtroom fighting charges of insider trading.

The expression didn't change at all, when he was read the verdict, guilty on three counts of securities fraud, which he must have known, carry 20 years each, and conspiracy, five.
In the visitors' section behind him, his wife, Anita, whom he met and married as students of IIT Delhi, collapsed, leaning against the bench. His four daughters sobbed.
For four weeks, they had endured the discomfort of walking past a bank of cameras into the courthouse and leaving with only the hope of a acquittal at the end of it.
On Friday morning, the jury came back, after just a day and half of deliberations to find Gupta guilty, compared to 12 days a jury took to convict Galleon owner Raj Rajaratnam last May.
The case against Gupta was clear, and much as some jurors wanted him to walk and go home to his family, as one of them has said, they couldn't overlook the evidence of his guilt.
Gupta is free on bail till October 18. His lawyer Gary Naftalis has said he plans to appeal for the verdict to be set aside, failing which he will appeal against it.
Else, a jail cell close to Bernie Madoff's?
That was a long way for a man who broke several glass ceilings as he rose in the world of business as the first non-American managing director of McKinsey, a leading management consultancy firm.
And he was business royalty in India, much sought after advisor and consultant. He went on to co-found the prestigious Indian School of Business with protege Anil Kumar, a colleague from McKinsey, who was also later convicted insider trading..
Born in Kolkata - it was called Calcutta then, Gupta moved to Delhi with his family when he was young. His father was a journalist and his mother a Montessori teacher. He lost both in quick succession when he was 15 and was on his own with his siblings.
"Despite being orphaned and despite having to watch out for his younger siblings, he worked his way through adversity in India with honours and his academic achievement earned him a scholarship - a scholarship to study at Harvard Business School," lawyer Gary Naftalis said about his client in his opening remarks at the trial.
Gupta went to Modern School, Delhi and then to IIT Delhi, where he studied mechanical engineering. That's where he met his wife Anita Mattoo, who, two years his junior, was studying electrical engineering. They met during rehearsals for a play they were doing together at IIT, called "Ratan" - she played his grandmother. They married in 1973.
The same year, Gupta won a scholarship to Harvard Business. Reuben Aragon, a Mexican-American dorm-mate from Harvard, told Business Today many years ago: "There was a spark there. You knew he would definitely be going some place." And he was about to be proven right.
Gupta joined McKinsey in 1973, and soon rose to head its Scandinavian operations, then came back to the US to head the Chicago office. In time, he rose to be elected its first non-American managing director.
Gupta is credited with aggressively expanding the firm, nearly doubling the size then to 891 partners.
He also changed the pay structure at the company, giving more to partners, and, some said, watering the values at the firm. Enron, a firm closely linked to McKinsey, happened on his watch.
Gupta, meantime, was doing well from himself. Bloomberg cited friends and former McKinsey employees in 2011 to say he could be making between $5 million and $10 million. He paid $6 million for a mansion in Connecticut, previously owned by the JC Penny family, and bought a vacation home in Florida and a luxury apartment in Manhattan.
Gupta stepped down as McKinsey chief in 2003 and launched a series of equity funds that didn't got too far. He eventually floated Voyager Multi Strategy fund with Galleon owner Rajaratnam in 2007, investing $10 million of his own money, all of which, Gupta's defense team said, he lost.
Soon, according to authorities, he was passing on insider information to Rajaratanam, who had been under regulatory scrutiny since 2006.
Gupta's tips to him as board members of Goldman Sachs and P&G would eventually get him into trouble, and the conviction on Friday.

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Hindustan Times.

HC order not a setback for me: Chidambaram

Chidambaram said these were only allegations and it was not a setback for him, but for the petitioner.

 Home Minister P. Chidambaram ruled out his resignation in wake of the Madras High Court ruling to dismiss a case against him for allegedly manipulating the 2009 elections in the Sivaganga parliamentary constituency in Tamil Nadu.

Chidambaram said that there were 111 such petitions pending in court against members of the Lok Sabha and the Election Commission of India. He also said these were only allegations and it was not a setback for him, but for the petitioner.

The Bharatiya Janata Party asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to sack Home Minister P. Chidambaram after the Madras High Court refused to dismiss a case against him for allegedly manipulating elections in his constituency.

"We appeal to the prime minister to throw him out of the cabinet immediately," BJP president Nitin Gadkari told reporters. 

"After manipulating the results of the Lok Sabha polls, and being attached to corruption cases one after the other, I want to ask what more evidence does the prime minister need against him," he said.

Accusing Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi for supporting Chidambaram's "corruption", Gadkari said: "Sonia Gandhi has said again and again that she will not tolerate corruption... Why are Sonia Gandhi and the prime minister tolerating Chidambaram's corruption? 

"If he is not ousted, it means Congress supports his corruption and the wrong means adapted by him to come to the Lok Sabha," he said. 

On Thursday, the Madras High Court refused to entirely strike off an election petition filed by AIADMK's losing candidate R S Raja Kannappan.

After having lost the election by a narrow margin of over 3500 votes, Raja Kannapan filed the election petition leveling several allegations of malpractice against Chidambaram.

In his petition, Raja Kannappan claimed that Chidambaram had mobilized funds from various banks to spend on poll campaign.

Chidambaram was elected to the Lok Sabha from Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu by 3,300 votes against the AIADMK's Raja Kannapan in 2009.

Obama: In Libya, U.S. ‘led from the front’

In a wide-ranging, campaign-style rebuttal of Republican attacks on his handling of world affairs, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that "exceptional" America had "led from the front" in the Libyan war.

Delivering the commencement speech at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Obama was clearly taking aim at conservative criticisms that he does not believe in American exceptionalism and that he has settled for a "lead from behind" strategy in Libya and elsewhere.

Obama recited some of what he considers his top foreign policy achievements, including "preventing a massacre in Libya with an international mission in which the United States—and our Air Force—led from the front."

"The United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs," he told the cadets. "America is exceptional."

"I see an American Century because no other nation seeks the role that we play in global affairs, and no other nation can play the role that we play in global affairs," Obama said.

"No other nation has sacrificed more—in treasure, in the lives of our sons and daughters—so that these freedoms could take root and flourish around the world," the president said. "And no other nation has made the advancement of human rights and dignity so central to its foreign policy."

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has repeatedly made an issue on the campaign trail of Obama's relationship to "American exceptionalism."

"Our president doesn't have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do," Romney said as he stumped in Wisconsin in March. "And I think over the last three or four years, some people around the world have begun to question that."

"After terming it a 'Pacific Century' these past few months, we're glad President Obama has had an election-season conversion to Gov. Romney's long-held view that this century must be an American Century," Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul wrote in an email to Yahoo News. "Next up: the President will roll back his devastating cuts to defense. Or at least we hope so."  (A search of the White House web site shows Obama has been talking about the "responsibility" to usher in a new "American Century" since at least February 2009.)

And Republican Senator John McCain, a frequent and vocal critic of the president on national security, charged as recently as May 16 that when it comes to Syria, "this Administration leads from behind." Obama has refused to arm the outgunned opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but has tacitly condoned countries that are doing so, according to recent reports.

(The description has its origins in a May 2011 New Yorker piece, which quotes an anonymous Obama advisor using the phrase "leading from behind" to describe the American approach to Libya, where Washington took a self-effacing role while NATO officially assumed the lead — ostensibly to avoid risking the loss of support if the operation were seen as a purely American mission.)

Obama also took aim at Republicans who accuse him of seeking reductions in military spending they say will hurt national security. Romney recently blamed the president for the painful automatic cuts a bipartisan majority of Congress approved to force its so-called "SuperCommittee" to agree on a debt-trimming deal. It failed, and Republicans now say they want out of the cuts.

Obama, who in January outlined a plan to shave $487 billion over the next ten years, told the cadets that the military would be "leaner" but promised "we will maintain our military superiority in all areas—air, land, sea, space and cyber."

The president did not explicitly take on criticisms that he hasn't been forceful enough in pushing China on human rights, or that his "reset" of relations with Russia has been mostly give, little get.

But he stressed that "when fundamental human rights are threatened around the world, we stand up and speak out" and emphasized that "we know that the sovereignty of nations cannot strangle the liberty of individuals."

Earlier, his campaign sent reporters video of Colin Powell taking Romney to task on MSNBC for saying recently that Russia "is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe."

"When Governor Romney, not too long ago, said, you know, the Russian Federation is our number one geostrategic threat, well, come on, Mitt, think. That isn't the case," Powell said.

Foreign policy is unlikely to be the deciding factor of the election — that would be the struggling economy. But Obama's campaign has used it as a weapon against Romney, notably with an ad suggesting that the Republican might not have given the order to carry out the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Why focus on me...Rekha

If you thought Rekha's first day as an MP in the Rajya Sabha was uneventful, here is something you have not clued in on. In photo: Rekha arrives at the Rajya Sabha.



 you thought Rekha's first day as an MP in the Rajya Sabha was uneventful, here is something you have not clued in on. In photo: Rekha arrives at the Rajya Sabha.As she took the oath, the Rajya Sabha TV panned in to Jaya Bachchan's face. And this has resulted in Jaya being upset. She has raised a complaint.

According to latest reports Jaya Bachchan has complained to Rajya Sabha chairperson and Vice President Hamid Ansari showing her footage while Rekha took oath as a member of the house on Tuesday

Karnataka BJP government safe, for now

Karnataka's Bharatiya Janata Party government is safe for now as former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa Monday announced that he has "temporarily put off the decision to quit the party".

"I had decided to quit. This was my decision at 12 noon. But I am putting it off by a few days in view of appeal by party president Nitin Gadkari and senior leader Arun Jaitley and several religious heads and many BJP supporters," he said at a press conference here.

Yeddyurappa, the BJP's first chief minister in the state, and indeed in the south, who was forced to quit over corruption charges July 31 last year, also said nine ministers loyal to him who had given theirresignation letters to him would for now continue in the ministry.

He launched a blistering attack on his successor D.V. Sadananda Gowda, state party chief K.S. Eshwarappa and party general secretary H.N. Ananth Kumar, blaming them for the crisis that threatened to bring down the party government in the state.

Yeddyurappa said Jaitley had telephoned him Monday urging him not to take any extreme step.

The former chief minister has been making desperate attempts for several months now for his re-instatement. That possibility, however, has become remote following the Supreme Court order last Friday for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into corruption charges against him.

Fearing his and his supporters' marginalisation following the apex court decision, Yeddyurappa Saturday secured the resignation of nine ministers loyal to him to force the BJP leaders to replace Gowda with another person of his choice.

Though Gowda was his choice in July last year, the two have fallen out. Yeddyurappa claims that Gowda had agreed to step down after six months. Since this did not happen, he has been calling Gowda a "traitor" and making frantic efforts to unseat him.

The BJP came to power for the first time in the state in May 2008. Its rule has been marked by dissidence and corruption and other cases against at least 20 of the party's 120 legislators, including Yeddyurappa.

Kim Jong Un to George W. Bush: Why the World Still Has Hereditary Rulers

Four possible explanations for the persistence of hereditary leaders.

Chinese political leader and "princeling" Bo Xilai, right, with his privileged son Bo Guagua, right. Reuters

Although hereditary monarchies with anything more than largely ceremonial roles have dwindled to a only few states, the bequeathing of political power from parent to son or daughter is a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon. Think about some of the political leaders around the globe we've been hearing most about lately. The big political story out of China concerns recently purged Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, who is a "princeling" or son of one of the regime's revolutionary founding fathers. Bo's political career seems to be over, but other princelings remain a prominent part of the Chinese political picture today. Next door in North Korea, we are getting used to a third generation of the Kim dictatorship. Kim Jung-Un has just led celebrations of the one hundredth birthday of his grandfather and regime founder Kim Il-Sung, a physical resemblance to whom apparently is one of Kim Jung-Un's political assets.

Among the "republics" of the Middle East, a current focus is on Syria's Bashar Assad, who inherited his regime from his father Hafez. In Egypt, if the demonstrators of Tahrir Square had not gotten to Hosni Mubarak first, he might well have bequeathed the presidency to his son Gamal. Elsewhere in the Middle East are most of the few remaining states that are hereditary monarchies in name as well as in fact.

Bequests of political power are certainly not limited to autocracies. In the world's largest democracy, India, the next prospective leader being groomed is Rahul Gandhi, the great-grandson of Indian founding father Jawaharlal Nehru, the grandson of one other Indian Prime Minister (Indira Gandhi) and the son of yet another (Rajiv Gandhi). Earlier this month Rahul lunched with a counterpart leader-being-groomed from Pakistan: 23-year-old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is the son of both Pakistan's current president and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the grandson of another prime minister, and is himself already chairman of the Pakistan People's Party. On the other side of South Asia in Bangladesh, the prime minister is Sheikh Hasina, who is a daughter of the country's founding father and first prime minister.

The United States is no stranger to such family political legacies. The presumptive presidential nominee of one of the two political parties is the son of a prominent governor and national figure in the Republican Party. The immediate past president was son of a previous president (one of three father-son, or grandfather-son, pairs in the history of the U.S. presidency). In the Democratic Party there have been similar family ties, with the Kennedys probably the best known.
Four possible explanations, or combinations of them, can account for the frequency of political power being inherited by the children of political leaders. One can think of them as affecting different stages in the progeny's personal history, from conception to the progeny's own political career. The first explanation is genetic. It may be a factor, although probably a limited one, given the normal genetic variation even among blood relatives and the uncertainty of linking any gene with political success.
A second explanation involves nurturing during childhood. The children of political leaders grow up in an environment in which political sensibility and associated ambition are more likely to be imparted over the dinner table than they are over other families' dinner tables.
A third explanation involves the opportunities--in education, in business, or in politics itself--that open more readily to the offspring of the powerful and famous (and the rich) than they do to others. The biographies of many political scions indicate this is a strong and probably the strongest explanation. Bo Xilai's 24-year-old son Bo Guagua may have now seen his own political prospects sink with those of his father, but his family relationship certainly seems to have opened opportunities for him. Neil Heywood, the deceased Briton who had close ties to Bo Xilai's wife and whose mysterious death is involved in the current controversies about the family, reportedly told others  that he had used his influence to get Bo Guagua admitted to the exclusive Harrow School in Britain (where Heywood was an alumnus). The young Bo is now a student at the Kennedy School at Harvard, where officials decline to say whether his family connections played a role in his admission, issuing only the usual boilerplate about a "holistic" approach that takes leadership potential into account. To the extent this third explanation is in play, that is unfortunate from the standpoint of having the most able political leaders rise to positions of power. The differential opportunities are a matter of privilege, not of merit.
The fourth explanation comes into play once the son or daughter is actually vying for political power, and wins votes or deference merely because of the name or known family connection. This explanation clearly has a lot of validity as well. We see the phenomenon at work in, among other things, the role that name recognition plays in American elections. And like the third explanation, this is not a good thing if we want the most able leaders to assume power. It represents a further step away from a political meritocracy. To some extent voting for a name may be a low-cost way to make a political choice, but it also is an unreliable way to make it. Those who, for example, voted for George W. Bush on the basis of what they thought of George H.W. Bush's presidency were in for a surprise.
Given how prevalent the inheritance of political power is, across different types of political systems worldwide, this pattern does not seem to be one that would be subject to correction through political or constitutional engineering. And that's too bad.

Rushdie cancels India visit after death threat warning

Salman Rushdie will not attend Jaipur Literature Festival after authorities warned the controversial author he was a potential target of assassins at the event, following threats of protests from Muslim groups at his planned appearance.

Opposition from some Indian Muslim groups erupted this month after Rushdie was invited to attend Asia's largest literature festival, and senior Muslim leaders called on the government to prevent the 65-year-old author from entering the country.

"I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to eliminate me," Rushdie said in a statement read out by the festival producer.

"While I have some doubts as to the accuracy of this intelligence, it would be irresponsible of me to come to the festival in such circumstances."

The British-Indian author, whose 1988 novel the Satanic Verses is banned in India, was due to speak on the first day of the five-day Jaipur Literature Festival but organisers removed his name from the schedule last week.

Rushdie would instead participate via a video-link, festival director William Dalrymple told Reuters on Friday.

"This is the result of a tragic game of Chinese whispers. The reality of Rushdie's writings are completely different from the way they have been cartooned and caricatured," Dalrymple told reporters.

The festival's directors had previously asserted that the invitation to Rushdie still stood after rescheduling his planned appearance after Muslim leaders in Jaipur threatened to protest.

"The Muslims of Jaipur were planning a protest against Rushdie. Since he is not coming, we have cancelled it," Abdul Haq Shamshi, member of the Jaipur Jama Masjid committee told Reuters.

"If he is deceiving us, and if he comes, we will protest at a minute's notice," he said, adding that thousands of protesters would take to the streets if the author arrived in the city.

HEAVY POLICE PRESENCE

Earlier on Friday, thousands of guests arrived for the first sessions of the festival, which aims to showcase the best of Indian, South Asian and international writing in one of the world's fastest-growing publishing markets.

Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, was the main draw on Friday morning, at a festival expected to draw around 70,000 visitors and world-famous names such as Oprah Winfrey, Tom Stoppard, Richard Dawkins and Ariel Dorfman.

Scores of police officers guarded the festival entrance on Friday morning, as visitors queued to pass through X-ray scanners, a new addition to the 2012 festival.

Some 560 officers were stationed in and around the festival site, Rajendra Jhala, Jaipur's deputy commissioner of police, told Reuters, adding that hundreds of others had been deployed at major road junctions and locations across the city.

"I guess this is what you get for inviting Salman Rushdie," remarked one delegate in the security queue.

The publication of Rushdie's Satanic Verses over 20 years ago sparked a wave of protests and death threats around the world after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini claimed that the novel's portrayal of the prophet Mohammad insulted Islam.

The vice-chancellor of Darul Uloom Deoband seminary said last week that Rushdie should be banned from the country, accusing the author of the Booker Prize-winning Midnight's Children of offending Muslim sentiments.

"This festival at no point wants to offend any one religion, any one people. We stand by the freedom of expression," festival producer Sanjoy Roy told reporters.