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In North Korea, Putting a Female Face Front and Center

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea - Ri Sol-ju, the wife of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, is adding a new look to the nation's leadership. Until she began accompanying Mr. Kim in public appearances in recent weeks, holding his arm and smiling at what appear to be adoring crowds, there had seldom been a woman's face among the North's power circles, which are filled with grim-faced party secretaries in Mao suits and military generals in their olive-colored uniforms.

Since North Korea's state-run news media revealed Ms. Ri's identity on July 25, ending weeks of speculation, the outside world has learned a bit more about her, most notably that she has been a YouTube star of sorts.

North Korea watchers dug up a few video clips from state-run North Korean television that show a woman with the same name singing patriotic songs like “Footsteps of Soldiers.” It was unclear at the time if the woman was Ms. Ri.

Since then, the South Korean government's National Intelligence Service has said it believes the singer is indeed Mr. Kim's wife. The spy agency also told Parliament that Ms. Ri was born in 1989 - making her one of the youngest first ladies in the world - had been married to Mr. Kim in 2009 and had performed with Pyongyang's Unhasu Orchestra at least until early 2011, when she sang at the orchestra's New Year's concert.

The couple is believed to have a child, the agency said.

In the 2011 concert, the woman identified as Ms. Ri performed in front of her husband and her father-in-law, Kim Jong-il, and sang about falling in love with a “broad-chested comrade.” Wearing a red hanbok, a traditional Korean dress, and flanked by saxophonists, she defined a true man as “not one who is handsome or well-clothed” but “one who takes a tough road for others while not losing his smile.”

In another performance in 2010, she sings “Don't Ask My Na me,” a song about an idealized worker.

The South Korean spy agency said that Ms. Ri had been to South Korea as a member of the North's cheering squad in support of athletes competing in a track meet in 2005. South Korean photographers dug up the photos of Ms. Ri, noting her poise and smile.

Mr. Kim's father also seemed to have a soft spot for performers: the current leader's mother, Ko Young-hee, was a dancer with Pyongyang's Mansudae Art Troupe. Kim Jong-il's first wife, Sung Hae-rim, was a movie actress, and the woman who was believed to have been his consort in his final years, Kim Ok, was a pianist.

Defectors from North Korea say it is common for children of the top leadership to pick wives from Pyongyang's artistic circles. The performers, who often do shows exclusively for the party and military elites, are selected in a rigorous audition process, and their families' ideologies are investigated in a process that can take months. Talent and looks alo ne cannot guarantee entry into what is considered a privileged class. The fact that Ms. Ri was apparently allowed to travel abroad means that she was trusted by North Korea's leaders, they said.

“In North Korea, arts and literature are a political and propaganda tool before they are a source of entertainment,” said Lee Woo-young, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, South Korea. “Their social status is much higher there than in counties like South Korea.”

Jong Jin-hwa, a North Korean radio broadcaster who now lives in Seoul, said: “In North Korea, songs are all about ideology. They don't contain words like ‘love.' ”

Kim Jong-il, who died in December, saw fertile ground for propaganda in movies and music. He wrote a book about filmmaking and produced operas that featured the struggle against “imperialists” - an overriding theme in North Korea.

Around the time that North Korea formally declared Kim Jong-un as his father's successor in 2010, it required farmers and soldiers to learn a song entitled “Footsteps,” which heralded the coming of “the young general” who would lead the country to a “brilliant future.” The video accompanying the music shows a sunrise, a long-range rocket launch, goose-stepping soldiers and the young Mr. Kim riding a white stallion.

In Pyongyang's secretive hierarchy, officials are measured by how close they stand to the leader in public. Under Kim Jong-il, no wife or consort was in sight. But his 66-year-old sister, Kim Kyong-hee, still shows up with Kim Jong-un, trailing behind him, and many outside analysts say she helps guide him behind the scenes.

She looks as dour and sickly as her brother in his last days, her eyes usually obscured by dark glasses. Despite the enormous power she is said to wield with her husband, Jang Song-thaekck, she belongs to a generation of North Korean women who lived under strictures regarding “prope r behavior for socialist women”: no smoking, no driving, no bicycling, and no trousers unless they worked in the fields.

The emergence of a youthful first lady - not just visiting collective farms but watching a live performance featuring a cast of Disney characters - is part of what analysts say is Kim Jong-un's efforts to forge a new leadership style.

Still, things will not change quickly in North Korea, said Kim Young-soon, a former North Korean dancer who defected to the South nine years ago.

“For instance, North Korean performers won't be allowed to have fan clubs,” Ms. Kim said. “In North Korea, there can be no stars except Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un.”



Video Said to Show Execution by Syrian Rebels Stirs Debate

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

As my colleague Damien Cave reported, Syrian rebels on Tuesday said they had captured and later executed several members of a prominent Aleppo family with close ties to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. That act - captured on video and circulated widely - appeared to constitute a war crime, human rights activists said on Wednesday.

While the details remained murky, the killings appeared to stem from the pitched battles that have raged for days in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria and the country's commercial hub. Rebels accused members of the Barri family, a large Sunni clan well known for suppressing opposition to Mr. Assad, of killing 15 antigovernment fighters.

Video posted by antigovernment activists showed more than a dozen men, some with bloodied faces and torn clothing, who are said to be members or associates of the clan. Held in what appeared to be the room of a school, they were made to give their names and accused of being pro-government militiamen known as shabiha. The man sitting in the center and said to be a leader of the group said his name was Ali Zein El Abidin Barri, also known by the nickname Zeino.

Another video, posted to YouTube on Tuesday, appeared to show several of the men from the clip above, including an older man bleeding from his face and wearing only his black underwear, being led by rebels with assault rifles out on to an Aleppo street where a crowd had formed. In the extremely graphic and disturbing video, the men, prisoners of the rebel fighters, were then forced to sit along the wall of a local school, decorated with a painted mural of Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob SquarePants and other cartoon characters kicking a soccer ball.

“The Free Syrian Army forever,” the crowd chanted. “Stepping on Assad's head.”

Then, seemingly without warning, someone in the group of armed rebels fired a single shot. That set off a hail of bullets that continued for nearly 45 seconds. Many in crowd, including the videographer, backed away from the ad hoc firing squad. As a cloud of dust cleared, the lifeless bodies of the captured men could be seen. An Al Jazeera reporter in Aleppo identified one of the dead as a local politician, Zeino al-Barri.

The disturbing clip attracted tens of thousands of views by Wednesday morning and sparked a vigorous debate online, with some antigovernment activists objecting to the executions, while some welcomed it. Others justified the executions as the unfortunate consequence of the government brutal response to the 17-month-old uprising.

“Intentionally killing anyone, even a shabiha, once he is outside of combat is a war crime, regardless of how horrible the person may have been,” said Nadim Houry, a Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, in a telephone interview. “As the opposition gains more territory, it is important to hold them to the same standard that we would apply to all sides.”

Mr. Houry was quick to point out that Human Rights Watch had previously documented scores of extrajudicial killings by the Syrian government during the conflict in an April report, as well as in previous reports of human rights abuses by the rebels. None of those acts of brutality justified executions without judicial process, he said.

But after making a similar point about war crimes on Twitter, Mr. Houry found himself in a debate with several activists.

Shakeeb al-Jabri, a Syrian activist i n Beirut, Lebanon, said such expectations of the rebel fighters were idealistic.

“The video is disturbing but the supporting comments are really shocking,” Wissam Tarif of the human rights group, Avaaz, wrote on Facebook. “Few condemned and most commentators approved and congratulated. This is not what Syrians or at least most Syrians are fighting for.”

The circumstances leading to the capture and execution of the Barri clan members were not clear, but it appeared to follow a street battle on Tuesday that flared up after what antigovernment activists said was a truce between fighters from the two groups.

As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, wrote on his Angry Arab blog of the large size of the Barri clan, which, by some estimates, numbers in the thousands.

Quoting an unnamed Syria observer, Mr. AbuKhalil wrote that the family was thought to have ties to criminal gangs and guns: “Their elders (they include an MP) were known for attacking demonstrations in their areas and beating protesters, as well as recruiting and financing thugs. But these are, of course, a small section of a very large family.” Rebels had secured an agreement from the Barri family to remain neutral in the current fighting in Aleppo, the observer said, but the agreement broke down on Tuesday.

A man said to be a rebel leader in the fight against the Barri clan gave an explanation for the killings in a video poste d on Tuesday, saying a battalion of rebel fighters had been unexpectedly attacked by a large number of armed shabiha, killing 15 rebels. He said that after a long firefight, roughly 50 of the pro-government fighters were captured and a small number were killed for their role in the rebel deaths.

Mona Mahmood, a Guardian reporter, spoke by phone on Wednesday to a man said to represent the armed group, who echoed reports that a deal between the Barri clan and rebel forces had broken down on Tuesday, leading to the clash and the executions.

“We were in a truce with the Barri clan, which are shabiha clan,” the man, identified as Basheer al-Haji, told The Guardian. “We were attacking one of the police stations in the city and Barri clan began shooting against us from behind.” He said they captured 50 people and immediately held a kind of “field trial” for them.

“We have judges and lawyers who are in the opposition,” he said. “They found that se ven of the Barri clan were involved in killing and they decided to execute them. Others are kept for trial after the collapse of the regime.”

Underscoring the decentralized nature of the rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, a battalion in Homs posted video earlier this week proclaiming that they would adhere to international law in the treatment of detainees.

“We are committed as best we can to applying the articles and subarticles of the Geneva Convention No. 4 that details the treatment of prisoners of war,” read a man who was identified as a fighter with the Farouq Brigade in Homs, while sitting in front of the rebel flag.

“We are committed to treating them in a humane way, and we tell everyone that we are revolting against a barbarous regime that always tortured and treated detainees and arrestees in brutal ways that led to the death of many,” he said. “That is why we can never adopt the behavior of that very entity we a re revolting against.”



Did \'Solar Storms\' Cause India\'s Massive Blackout?

By HEATHER TIMMONS

No, we're not wearing tinfoil hats over here at India Ink - so-called “solar storms,” or magnetic eruptions on the sun's surface, have been known to take down electricity grids before, most notably in Quebec in 1989.

And, as it turns out, this year is a year of heightened solar activity.

“The ferocity and pace of the Sun's flares and magnetic eruptions rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, and the Sun has only recently emerged from its slumber and started generating new solar flares,” Kenneth Chang wrote in The New York Times in March.

In fact, Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Britain, penned an article in April that warned we should “prepare for the coming space weather storm.” These storms, more precisely called “coronal mass ejections,” send charged particles into space that could hit the Earth, he tol d The Los Angeles Times in May, creating electromagnetic disturbances. “Think of it like a hurricane - is it headed toward us or not headed toward us? If we're lucky, it misses us,” he said.

“A big geomagnetic storm can essentially put extra electric currents into the grid,” Mr. Hapgood added. “If it gets bad enough, you can have a complete failure of the power grid.”

And just this past weekend, “a medium-size solar flare erupted from the sun,” MSNBC reported, “hurling a cloud of plasma and charged particles toward Earth on a cosmic path that is expected to deliver a glancing blow to our planet on Tuesday.”

So, are India's power ministers (both previous and current) and its electricity-guzzling northern states off the hook? We thought we'd call the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore to get an expert opinion.

Solar storms “have been of some concern” recently, acknowledged K. E. Rangarajan, a physicist who specializes in the Sun and magnetic fields at the institute.

But, Professor Rangarajan said, there's no evidence to suggest Monday and Tuesday's massive power outages were caused by such an event.

Generally, he explained, these storms affect countries in higher latitudes than India, like Canada and the Netherlands, the most. In the last few days, none of these countries have reported grid problems, he said. “Since it has not been reported in any other part of the world,” solar activity may have no relation to India's power outages, he said.

Still, Professor  Rangarajan added kindly, “It's always good to ask questions.”



Image of the Day: August 1

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Indian Conglomerate Buys New York\'s Plaza Hotel

By NEHA THIRANI

The storied Plaza Hotel in New York is the latest buy for Lucknow's Sahara India Pariwar.

The Plaza, whose first guest in 1907 was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, heir to the Vanderbilt industrial empire, has been struggling in recent years after a conversion into condominiums. It took nearly seven years to convert the units, and buyers â€" who spent as much as $50 million on their homes â€" complained about the quality of the renovations.

But on Monday, the hotel owners Elad Properties, a real estate company owned by the Israeli businessman Yitzhak Tshuva, said the Sahara group had agreed to buy a controlling stake in the property for $570 million. Elad has a 60 percent stake in the hotel, and Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holdings owns the rest. Once the deal is completed, Kingdom Holdings' stake will be reduced to 25 percent. The hotel will continue to be managed by Fairmont Hotels & Resorts.

Financial analysts said the hotel should be viewed as more than a “trophy asset.”

“I think it is a well-thought-out business decision,” said Praveen Chakravarty of AnandRathi Financial Services. “Looking at the hospitality market in Europe and the United States and the valuations available, it makes sense for anyone with liquid cash to spare to pick up assets, be patient, do some cross synergies and wait for the market to rejuvenate.”

The Sahara group is cash-rich, he added, and the deal is not expected to harm the company's finances.

This is not the Sahara group's first overseas hotel acquisition. In December  2010, the company purchased the iconic Grosvenor House Hotel in the Mayfair area of London from the Royal Bank of Scotland for $726 million. The company plans to add an Indian restaurant, nightclub, spa and swimming pool to the hotel, which will continue to be managed by Marriot International. The group has also reportedly bid £75 0 million, or $1.18 billion, for a group of Marriot hotels in London being offered by the Royal Bank of Scotland, though it has not confirmed that bid.

“Both the Plaza Hotel in New York and the Grosvenor House Hotel in London are both extremely prestigious properties in very attractive markets,” said Sudeep Jain, executive vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. “New York and London are gateway cities of the world and financial capitals, so the group strategy would seem to be acquiring prized assets in prized markets.”

Also in New York, the Sahara group is reportedly about to acquire the Dream Downtown Hotel from the Indian-American hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal. The Sahara group's chairman, Subrata Roy, is reported to have made a formal offer for an 85 percent stake in the hotel, valued at $100 million. The Sahara group is also said to be interested in other high-end iconic hotel properties in New York such as the Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental an d Waldorf Astoria.

The Sahara group did not make an executive available for comment.

The group is not alone among Indian hotel companies looking to expand their business overseas. Indian hoteliers such as The Oberoi Group and Indian Hotels Company Limited, which operates the Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, have had an established international presence for many years, and other Indian companies have rushed into the market recently.

The availability of Indian capital, along with a slowdown in the hotel industry in Europe and the United States, which has caused a drop in property values, has accelerated this, analysts said.

“It has become more prevalent for Indian capital, both hoteliers and investors, to evaluate foreign hotel assets,” Mr. Jain said. “Certain markets could be more attractive than deals available in India at the moment because of the state of the economy and different business cycles.”

In April, Delhi-based Bharat Hotel s, which operates the Lalit brand of hotels, acquired Lambeth College building, a heritage property in London, for an undisclosed amount. The property, which will be reopened in three years, is being developed into a luxury boutique hotel. The group already has a project under development in Koh Samui, Thailand. The Indian Hotels Company acquired the Ritz Carlton in Boston in 2007 and renamed it the Taj Boston. In April this year, the company has also said to have renewed attempts to increase its stake in Orient-Express Hotels, an international hotel chain.

“There seems to be a sudden realisation by Indian entrepreneurs that they can run hotels better than some of their counterparts abroad,” said Mr. Chakravarty. The Nadathur Group, founded by N. S. Raghavan, is buying hotels in Australia and Indonesia, he said, and intends to run them.

“There seems to be something about the hospitality business that so many Indian entrepreneurs feel that they could do a better job at it than their Western counterparts,” he added.

The Sahara India Pariwar, founded in 1978 by the billionaire Subrata Roy, has interests in finance, infrastructure, real estate, media and entertainment, manufacturing and information technology. In 2004, Time magazine famously called the Sahara group India's second largest employer after the railways. The company also owns a 42.5 percent stake in Force India, the Formula One Team, and the Pune Warriors, an Indian premier league cricket team.

“The Sahara group has shown an inclination to be in high-profile, consumer-facing businesses,” Mr. Chakravarty said.

The company also recently announced it would own one of the six franchises of the proposed Hockey India League and is said to be close to purchasing a controlling stake in DigiCable, a cable TV distribution company, to enhance its interests in the Indian television business.



Rate India\'s Outgoing Power Minister

By HEATHER TIMMONS and SRUTHI GOTTIPATI

Barkha Dutt, NDTV anchor: So you're satisfied with your stint in the power ministry? How would you rate yourself? Would you rate yourself average, good, very good or excellent?

Sushil Kumar Shinde, the outgoing power minister:  Excellent!

Mr. Shinde, who just has been promoted to minister of home affairs, India's top security position, raised some eyebrows when he declared himself an “excellent” power minister in an interview with NDTV on Wednesday. After all, Mr. Shinde has just presided over the world's biggest blackout. Two of them, in fact: on Monday and Tuesday, when massive grid failures left hundreds of millions in India without power.

Mr. Shinde's move to the ministry of home affairs, which was announced Tuesday as part of a reshuffle of the cabinet, was roundly criticized as ill-timed and tone deaf. The move is an obvious sign of the r uling Congress Party's “preference to seniority and not to merit,” the Hindustan Times wrote.

Responses to Mr. Shinde's interview, and his own personal rating, were swift and acerbic: “Is Sushil Kumar Shinde a staff writer at The Onion ?” Sachin Kalbag, executive editor of the newspaper Mid Day, asked on Twitter, referring to the satirical newspaper.

Mr. Shinde asked that viewers appreciate that the power was turned back on in India in a matter of hours. “In 2003, the same situation arose in North America, and at that time for four days continuously, America was not having power,” he said. (In 2003, part of eight states were blacked out after a power surge, but many areas had power after 24 hours.) “India has handled the situation well,” Mr. Shinde said.

Despite some reports to the contrary, Mr. Shinde laid the blame for the outages fully on states that were withdrawing more power than they should have. “The grid failed because of the over loading of the power,” he said, contending that “many states” try to take more power than scheduled.

His assertion seemed to be contradicted by the incoming power minister, M. Veerappa Moily. “We don't want to be in the blame game,” Mr. Moily said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

“According to assessment the world over, India has the best and largest power grid system,” Mr. Moily said. The “question is, ‘What has happened?'”

How would you rate Mr. Shinde's performance as power minister? Please let us know in the comments below.



Overdrawing Not Behind India\'s Blackout, State Official Says

By PAMPOSH RAINA

Finger-pointing has begun in earnest over India's recent massive power outages.

Although some government power authorities, electric company executives, the departing power minister and much of India's news media blamed the grid failures Monday and Tuesday on various states they said had taken in more than their expected power allotment, thus causing the grid to fail, others called that a mistaken oversimplification.

“This hype that states are overdrawing is the reason for the collapse is not right,” said Ajit Sharan, the power secretary for Haryana state. It is too early to say what, exactly, happened, he said.

Mr. Sharan and others point towards the system run by the central government agency, the Northern Regional Load Dispatch Center, that issues warnings to states if they are drawing excessive power.

Mr. Sharan said that 50 hertz of power is the ideal frequency for the grid. If the supply dips to 49.7 hertz, a warning is issued by NRLDC to any state that is overdrawing, he said. If the power falls below the 49.7 hertz mark, a second warning is issued.

But that was not the case when the grid failed, he said. “At the time when the grid collapsed, the frequency was 50.2 hertz,” he said, which is normal.

Haryana is one of the states that has reportedly been drawing excess power from the northern grid, which some say led to the grid's collapse.

“There is nothing wrong with overdrawing of power,” Mr. Sharan said. “There is a quota for every state. While some states overdraw, the others underdraw. If no state overdraws, then where will the excessive power go?”

Mr. Sharan said that the transmission link between Agra in Uttar Pradesh state and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh state had shut down, probably because power had been overdrawn. This link connects the western grid and the northern grid.

When that happene d, the central power control agency “did not send a timely message,” he said. As soon as the grid there developed a problem, he said, “it should have been isolated, but that did not happen.” How the situation developed from there is not known, he added.

Naresh Kumar, the chief public relations manager for the National Regional Load Dispatch Center, declined to comment on the Agra-Gwalior shutdown. A committee formed by the Power Ministry is looking into the matter, he said.



Indian TV Network Sues Nielsen Over Ratings Data

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

A leading Indian television network, New Delhi Television, or NDTV, “has sued the Nielsen Company, accusing its Indian joint venture of providing ‘false, fabricated and manipulated data' on TV ratings for almost a decade,” Vikas Bajaj wrote in The New York Times.

NDTV says the manipulated data cost it nearly a billion dollars in advertising revenue, and the suit is seeking several billion dollars in damages.

The company filed the suit late last week in New York State Supreme Court against Nielsen; its Indian joint venture, TAM Media Research; and Kantar Media Research, which owns a 50 percent stake in the Indian business.

NDTV, which is best known for broadcasting a 24-hour English-language news station, accuses employees of TAM of manipulating ratings in exchange for kickbacks from other TV networks. It further says that Nielsen, TAM and Kantar executives did not move to address the problems when NDTV presented “evidence of corruption and manipulation” to them earlier this year in several meetings, some of which were attended by senior Nielsen and Kantar executives.

Read the full article.



Ramadan Poses Challenges to Muslim Athletes

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“With nearly three million Muslims living in Britain, the observance of Ramadan here is not generally a notable occurrence,” Sam Borden wrote in The New York Times. “But the Olympics have made this far from an ordinary summer in England,” which has “led to a variety of issues for the estimated 3,000 Muslim athletes and officials at the Games,” he wrote.

“Restrictions for Ramadan are laid out in the second chapter of the Koran, where it is written: ‘And whosoever of you is present, let him fast the month, and whosoever of you is sick or on a journey, a number of other days,' Mr. Borden wrote. For most athletes competing at the Olympics the second part of that passage has been the rationale to postpone their fast until after competition, but not for all.

For Coach Pim Verbeek, who is from the Netherlands and not Muslim, that breakdown has required an increasi ngly difficult scheduling dance. During training, Verbeek held two sets of meals and two different practices: one practice at noon, when the fasting players were generally sleeping, with the other at 6:30 p.m., when the fasting players were able to work because they would follow it by breaking their fast a few hours later.

In other words, while most teams at the Games were doing everything they could to become more unified as competition approached, Verbeek's team had split in two.

“Our full team hasn't eaten a full meal together since July 20,” Verbeek said in an interview. “It's interesting, I suppose, but it's not very good timing.”

Then there are performance concerns. Dehydration is the primary problem for athletes. Verbeek said his team trainers had to double-check which players they were tossing water bottles to during games to make sure they were not offering water to the observant players.

The lack of fluids can sometimes also cause pa rticularly awkward moments during standard postmatch drug testing.

Read the full article.



India\'s Troubled Olympic Odyssey

By MALAVIKA VYAWAHARE

India opened its medal tally at the London Olympics 2012 with Gagan Narang winning the bronze on Monday in the 10-meter air rifle shooting event.

The win has been accompanied by several setbacks, though, since the Olympics opened on Friday. The men's doubles tennis team of Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna faced a crushing straight sets defeat Tuesday, which also saw the ouster of the badminton mixed doubles team of Jwala Gutta and V. Diju from the competition. The men's field hockey team lost to the Netherlands (3-2) on Monday and will be playing New Zealand in a preliminary round match Wednesday.

Here's an update on the rest of India's Olympic athletes:

Another Indian star shooter, Abhinav Bindra, who won a gold at the Beijing Olympics, ended his London stint on a disappointing note on Monday, failing to advance in his only event, the 10-meter air rifle. His compatriot Mr . Narang stays in the competition with the 50-meter rifle prone event on Friday and the 50-meter rifle 3 positions on Aug. 6.

Saina Nehwal, ranked fourth in the world by the Badminton World Federation, is a strong contender for a medal in the women's badminton singles. She will look to set her Olympic record straight this year, having been eliminated in the quarterfinals in the last Olympics.

Ms. Nehwal won her group-stage match Monday against Lianne Tan of Belgium, booking a place in the 16-player elimination round.

In tennis, the men's doubles team of Leander Paes and Vishnu Vardhan are still in the running even as the women's doubles team of Sania Mirza and Rushmi Chakravarthi crashed out in the first round.

The second-round match between Leander Paes and Vishnu Vardhan and the second-seeded French pair of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Michael Llodra, has been postponed to Wednesday.

Mr. Paes will pair with Ms. Mirza in the mixed doubles event.

< p>In boxing, India's medal hopes are being kept alive by Vijender Singh (middleweight category) and Jai Bhagwan (lightweight category), both of whom qualified for the round of 16. Mr. Singh was a bronze medalist at the last Olympics. Both Mr. Singh and Mr. Bhagwan will face their opponents on Thursday.

However, Shiva Thapa, another boxer, ended up with a first-round exit on Saturday in his Olympic debut.

Mary Kom, a five-time women's boxing world champion from Manipur, India, will fight her first match on Aug. 5 in the flyweight category. This is the first time women's boxing is part of the Olympics.

In archery, India is out of the competition in the men's and women's team events, but Deepika Kumari continues to be one of the leading contenders for a medal in the singles event. Ms. Kumari, who is ranked No. 1 by the World Archery Federation, will compete against England's Amy Oliver on Wednesday.

This year's flag bearer for the Indian contingent, the wrestler Sushil Kumar, will bear the weight of a billion expectations when he enters the ring in the 66-kilogram freestyle wrestling event on Aug. 12, the final day of the London Olympics. Mr. Kumar had bagged the bronze at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 in the same event.



Power Restored to Most of India Wednesday Morning

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

After India suffered the largest electrical blackout in history on Tuesday, power had been almost completely restored to all the affected areas as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

The metropolitan area of Delhi and the north eastern region are up and running, power in the northern and eastern region have been restored at 98 percent and 95 percent respectively, according a report from the government's National Load Despatch Center.

Tuesday's blackout affected a broad swath of India that encompassed about 670 million people.



India\'s Electrical Grid: Did Someone Fall Asleep at the Controls?

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“The Indian electrical grid, said Arshad Mansoor, the senior vice president for research and development at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., is like “a whole bunch of rubber bands.” Cutting some, he said, might make no difference, but cutting another one could make the web fall apart,” Matthew Wald wrote in The New York Times.

The area blacked out in India is effectively a single, interconnected grid, which means that power is transmitted through it almost instantaneously, as are imbalances, Raj Rao, an American electric company executive who is a frequent visitor to India, told Mr. Wald.

India is chronically short of generating capacity, but that still does not explain outages like those that happened Monday and Tuesday:

The most likely mechanism was a botched attempt to black out a small area temporarily, Mr. Rao said.

For e xample, he said, if the generating capacity was 120 megawatts and the available capacity was 100, that would require unplugging 20 megawatts of load.

“My hunch is, somebody fell asleep and they did not cut off the 20 megawatts,” he said. “And that's where you run into trouble.”

When demand on the generators runs higher than they can satisfy, they automatically disconnect themselves to prevent mechanical damage, and as each one drops off, it makes a cascade more certain, he said. The first generators would cut out in a fraction of a second, he said.

Read the full article.



Musicians Voice Support for Jailed Russian Punk Group

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

As a parade of Western celebrity musicians trek to Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large Russian cities for popular summer shows, many are bringing the Kremlin a striking message of defiance:

With three members of a Russian punk group called Pussy Riot on trial for sneaking into Moscow's main cathedral and performing an anti-Kremlin song, foreign artists like Sting, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Franz Ferdinand and others have been using their concerts in Russia to rally for their release.

As my colleagues David M. Herszenhorn and Andrew Roth reported, the criminal trial of the three women, which began on Monday, is being watched as an indication of the lengths the Kremlin will go to squeeze political dissent following the election of Vlad imir V. Putin to a third term as president.

The three women were jailed following the performance in February and remain in custody. They face up to seven years in prison on charges of inciting religious hatred. Their opponents claim that their actions defiled the church and insulted believers. Russia's Orthodox Church, which has close ties to the Kremlin, has called for serious punishment. Others, even those unsettled by the crude performance, have called their nearly four-month imprisonment and the specter of more punishment draconian.

Not unsurprisingly, rights groups like Amnesty International have condemned what they see as politically motivated persecution of the women. But the involvement of international celebrities in such a case seems to be something new for modern Russia.

At a concert in Moscow this month, Mike Patton, the lead singer of the rock group Faith No More, appeared on stage in an orange and green balaclava like the ones typically worn by members of Pussy Riot. Several women in similar headgear were also allowed on stage where they called on concertgoers to join a protest in support of the group.

In concert in Moscow, rock group Faith No More shows support for Pussy Riot

At another Moscow concert this month, Anthony Kiedis, the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, wore a blue T-shirt with “Pussy Riot” written on it.

Red Hot Chili Peppers in Moscow

And at an outdoor concert in a Moscow park this month, the rock group Franz Ferdinand dedicated the song “This Fire” to the women.

“This song is dedicated to all those musicians who end up in jail for just saying what they think,” the band's front man, Alexander Kapranos, said on stage. “This is for the girls of Pussy Riot,” he said to cheers from the crowd.

Franz Ferdinand dedicated a song to Pussy Riot in Moscow

He went further on Twitter, apparently aiming his criticism directly at Mr. Putin, who has said he is fond of the Beatles.

Top Russian officials have yet to respond to the criticism, and it is not clear, short of barring c oncerts, what they could do to stop it. While some Russian musicians deemed critical of the government find it difficult to secure concert venues and get on the radio, officials almost never restrict access to foreign music. Rarely has there ever been a need to.

Foreign celebrities typically remain silent about the political situation in Russia, and some have received major honorariums to attend private parties and other events hosted by even the most unseemly officials.

Last year, the violinist Vanessa-Mae performed at the birthday party of Chechnya's leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, who has been implicated in kidnappings, torture and murder. Hilary Swank and Jean-Claude Van Damme also attended.

Foreign supporters of Pussy Riot have been joined by prominent artists, musicians and other cultural figures in Russia. Over 200 cultural figures signed a petition last month calling on the authorities to release the women.

Others have taken more extreme measures. Last week, Pyotr Pavlensky, a performance artist in St. Petersburg, chose to protest the Pussy Riot case by taking thick red thread and sewing his mouth shut.



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