China And India

Sex selection in parts of China and India will produce a 10% to 20% excess in males in the next 20 years, according to a new study. Many couples in China, India and South Korea prefer sons. This cultural pattern combined with the use of ultrasound technology for sex selection over the past two decades has produced the shift, said the authors of an analysis published Monday in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Assn . In nature, about 105 males are born to every 100 females.

NEW DELHI — Hopes were high after Congress passed a U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement in 2008 that the two countries would forge a close military and strategic partnership. But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's three-day trip to India, starting Sunday after a weekend stop in Bangladesh, comes amid reduced expectations and political distraction on both sides and a relationship increasingly marked by incremental movement on a variety of issues. Though India remains an important ally, few big-ticket nuclear and defense deals that the United States had hoped for have materialized.

Chinese Premier Li Peng arrives here Wednesday for a six-day visit that is likely to further promote growing contacts between the world's two most populous nations. Li is due to hold talks with Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and other officials on a variety of issues, including the two nations' disputed Himalayan border.

  The India-China relationship, relatively well managed for years by the two governments, is under growing pressure in the face of insensitivity and nationalism on both sides, India's hyperactive broadcast media and the growing autonomy of Chinese ministries, analysts say. Irritants that have spurred distrust recently between the two Asian giants include a series of reported incursions along their disputed 2,500-mile border. In one case, an Indian warship off Vietnam received an apparent Chinese naval radio transmission in July telling it to "leave Chinese waters.

Re "Anti-NATO Axis Could Pose Threat," Sept. 27: What astounds me is that your reporters were unable to find even one "expert" who thought a potential alliance among Russia, China and India might be a good thing. If 2.5 billion people, many of whom live with crushing poverty, can ally to improve their standard of living, isn't that good? These nations have a desperate need for infrastructure and other productive investment. That strikes me as an opportunity. They have millions of children crying out to be educated.

A recent recording making the rounds in Nepal featured a Maoist party leader speaking to a man with a Chinese accent. During the 12-minute tape, the Chinese voice offers $6.9 million to bribe 50 Nepali legislators for help in forming a Maoist-led government that would favor China over India. Whether the tape is genuine, whether the voice is really that of a Chinese official and whether India's intelligence wing released it as part of a propaganda exercise haven't been established.

"U.S., China Agree on Broad Goals but Few Specifics in Arms Control Talk" (July 9) notes that China's Communist regime may be actively helping Pakistan upgrade its arsenal of missiles so Pakistani missiles could deliver nuclear payloads to Indian cities. In view of this information, the U.S. Senate must not permit the U.S. to have permanent normal trade ties with China. Surely, the Senate must hold China accountable for such a horrendous act against India, the world's proven model democracy (the title awarded to India this month by the United Nations Development Program)

U.S. foreign affairs specialists are monitoring the potential for increased cooperation between Russia, China and India, amid a growing conviction in all three countries, especially after NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, that U.S. power must somehow be checked. Although agreeing that the three nations are far from coalescing into a pan-Eurasian, anti-NATO axis, the analysts remain concerned about what they call a nightmare scenario: an alliance that would bring together about 2.

Hewlett-Packard Co. moved a veteran executive onto its board and announced the departure of two senior officers amid a major management shakeup, and put new focus on China and India. Chief Executive Leo Apotheker, who took over at the world's No. 1 computer maker in September, is under pressure to turn around HP, which is struggling to hold on to its place in the technology sector. It trimmed its sales forecast for the second straight quarter last month. Ann Livermore, who runs HP's enterprise business, has been appointed to the HP board and will step down from her day-to-day management of the division, the company said Monday.

Negotiations between representatives of the world's largest economies appeared stalled Thursday on a particularly touchy aspect of attacking global warming: how to make sure countries actually do what they pledge to do to combat climate change. The challenge of ensuring that promises come true looms even larger than such issues as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing financial aid for developing countries, diplomats and environmentalists said. "Among the major emitters, this seems to be the biggest issue," said Melinda Kimble, a former U.S. climate negotiator who is a senior vice president at the United Nations Foundation and closely engaged in the talks.

Chief among the problems facing the United States today is this: too many obligations piled high without the wherewithal to meet them. Among those obligations are the varied and sundry commitments implied by the phrase "American global leadership. " If ever there were an opportune moment for reassessing the assumptions embedded in that phrase, it's now. With too few Americans taking notice, history has entered a new era. The "unipolar moment" created by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has passed.

Shifting reading habits and a brutal recession may have caused the demise of Domino, Metropolitan Home and House & Garden, not to mention smaller publications such as Oprah Winfrey's O at Home and Martha Stewart's Blueprint, but a surprising phenomenon has been developing elsewhere: While shelter magazines fold in the States, a new generation of interior design titles has taken off in Brazil, Russia and, most aggressively, China. We're not talking digital click-throughs, the online decorating guides such as Lonny that have sprung up here, sometimes staffed by writers and editors who were laid off during the industry meltdown.

As NASA retreats from an ambitious human spaceflight program for the foreseeable future, foreign countries are moving ahead with their own multibillion-dollar plans to go to the moon, build space stations and even take the long voyage to Mars. Although most of the world still lags far behind the United States in space technology and engineering know-how, other nations are engaging in a new space race and building their own space research centers, rockets, satellites and lunar rovers.

Hewlett-Packard Co. moved a veteran executive onto its board and announced the departure of two senior officers amid a major management shakeup, and put new focus on China and India. Chief Executive Leo Apotheker, who took over at the world's No. 1 computer maker in September, is under pressure to turn around HP, which is struggling to hold on to its place in the technology sector. It trimmed its sales forecast for the second straight quarter last month. Ann Livermore, who runs HP's enterprise business, has been appointed to the HP board and will step down from her day-to-day management of the division, the company said Monday.

Sex selection in parts of China and India will produce a 10% to 20% excess in males in the next 20 years, according to a new study. Many couples in China, India and South Korea prefer sons. This cultural pattern combined with the use of ultrasound technology for sex selection over the past two decades has produced the shift, said the authors of an analysis published Monday in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Assn . In nature, about 105 males are born to every 100 females.

A recent recording making the rounds in Nepal featured a Maoist party leader speaking to a man with a Chinese accent. During the 12-minute tape, the Chinese voice offers $6.9 million to bribe 50 Nepali legislators for help in forming a Maoist-led government that would favor China over India. Whether the tape is genuine, whether the voice is really that of a Chinese official and whether India's intelligence wing released it as part of a propaganda exercise haven't been established.

Fifty years ago this week, the Indian subcontinent broke its colonial chains with Britain, forming the nations of India and Pakistan. India, crippled by partition and poverty, chose a democratic path to the future. "Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny," Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru said in a speech on the eve of independence, Aug. 14, 1947, "and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge.

NEW DELHI — Hopes were high after Congress passed a U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement in 2008 that the two countries would forge a close military and strategic partnership. But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's three-day trip to India, starting Sunday after a weekend stop in Bangladesh, comes amid reduced expectations and political distraction on both sides and a relationship increasingly marked by incremental movement on a variety of issues. Though India remains an important ally, few big-ticket nuclear and defense deals that the United States had hoped for have materialized.

He's a "living Buddha" with movie-star good looks and an iPod, a 25-year-old who rubs shoulders with Richard Gere and Tom Cruise and is mentioned as a successor to the Dalai Lama. Now allegations that he's a Chinese spy, and a money launderer to boot, have laid bare divisions in the outwardly serene world of Tibetan Buddhism and longtime tensions between China and India. There's a lot at stake. The Karmapa is among Tibetan Buddhism's most revered figures and heads the religion's wealthiest sect, with property estimated at $1.2 billion worldwide.