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New York, NY (AHN) - The Boeing Company announced on Thursday that it has signed a $1 billion agreement with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) of India as a part of manufacturing outsourcing contract. According to the 10-year pact, HAL will manufacture sub-systems of Boeing's fighter planes including F-18 Super Hornets and Apache Helicopters. Initially, Boeing will invest around $20 million annually to increase its manufacturing unit size and complexity along with business opportunities in the sub-continent. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between Jim Albaugh, President of Boeing Integrated Defense System and Chairman Ashok K Baweja, the Indian defense...

World's first awake bypass surgery with valve replacement performed at Wockhardt Hospitals, Bangalore.    Another chapter in the history of heart surgery across the world was written in India by the Bangalore-based Wockhardt Hospital & Heart Institute, recently.   Dr Vivek Jawali, chief cardiovascular surgeon along with his team at Wockhardt Heart Institute have set a global benchmark by performing the first coronary bypass surgery along with an aortic valve replacement without using general anaesthesia or ventilator support while the patient was on a heart lung machine.   This is the first such reported case in the world of a twin heart...

The rare Koran and the painting Police in the Indian city of Bangalore have seized a copy of the Koran they believe may have belonged to Mughal emperor Aurangzeb over 300 years ago.The book was discovered after a raid on a hotel in the city. Police arrested a man who was trying to sell it and an antique painting for more than $1m. The gold-embroidered Koran, written in Persian, has more than 1,000 pages. Experts are checking if a signature on the back belongs to Aurangzeb, who ruled India from 1658 to 1707. 'Fragrant' The Mughal ruler was a...

LONDON (Reuters) - Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, a contestant on hit reality television show Celebrity Big Brother, finds herself at the centre of a storm over racism and bullying that has many Britons asking -- are we all bigots? The 31-year-old, a major star in India but little known in Britain until now, will be one of the last people in the country to know that her treatment in the Big Brother house, which is cut off from the outside world, is front page news. A record 13,000 complaints have been made to media watchdog Ofcom, politicians are weighing into...

Police in the southern Indian city of Mysore say they have arrested two suspected Pakistan-based militants after a shooting. Senior police official Praveen Sood told the BBC that the two men were planning to launch attacks on targets in Mysore and Bangalore cities. Two policemen were injured in the incident, which happened after the two men were stopped by a police patrol. Guns, a satellite phone and a laptop were seized from the men, police said. Mr Sood said the incident took place on the outskirts of Mysore, about 145km (90 miles) from Bangalore, which is the hub of India's...

Lockheed Martin is holding a two-day aerospace and defence suppliers' conference in Bangalore, South India beginning Monday. The company has been surveying potential relationships in India and sees great opportunity to add value to its product lines by working with the industry here. "Lockheed Martin views the Indian Government's new offset policy as an opportunity to create 'win-win' relationships that can help deliver high quality products at affordable costs," it said. The company said the two-day conference would seek to "establish inroads for commerce between its current supplier team and Indian companies that could provide parts and services for Lockheed...

BANGALORE: Under a project facilitated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, about 500 sex workers in Mysore own chip-embedded smart cards, which when presented during transactions help them get discounts at select shops and hotels and earn them loyalty points that can be redeemed for discounts on later purchases. The shopping basket can include provisions, food at restaurants and clothes.

IBM has a message for the world... at least to the people who care about what IBM is doing. The "I" now stands for India. The "B" stands for Bangalore - India's Silicon Valley. The "M" stands for Mirza Diya, Bollywood's answer to Lindsay Lohan. Mirza will emcee IBM's annual investor briefing at a hotel 10,000 miles away from IBM's New York offices in a sprawling palace that looks like Britain's Windsor Castle and was built during Britain's time of colonial rule. The message is simple - IBM is sending a message that India and ALL of ASIA are crucial...

BANGALORE, India — After graduating from Northwestern University last year, Nate Linkon contemplated job offers in Chicago and New York. But he chose a less conventional path and started his career here, in India's booming tech capital. The 22-year-old Milwaukee native works in marketing at Infosys Technologies Ltd., India's second-largest software exporter. He's part of a small but growing number of young Americans moving to Bangalore and other Indian cities to beef up their resumes, launch businesses or study globalization in one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Despite the traffic-choked streets, unsteady electrical supply, occasional digestive troubles and other daily...

POLICE opened fire in India's technology hub today, killing four people as tens of thousands of fans mourning the death of a film icon torched vehicles and attacked company offices. Police said that an officer was earlier beaten to death as film actor Rajkumar's cortege made its way through the streets of Bangalore. One man died of bullet wounds after police opened fire in self-defence when mobs attacked their bus. Three people were killed after the funeral as police fired at a mob enraged at not being able to attend the service. The body of the 77-year-old actor, who died...

Americans seeking jobs in booming Bangalore More U.S. workers heading East to beef up their resumes, launch companies The Associated Press Updated: 2:37 p.m. ET April 2, 2006 BANGALORE, India - After graduating from Northwestern University last year, Nate Linkon contemplated job offers in Chicago and New York. But he chose a less conventional path and started his career here, in India’s booming tech capital. The 22-year-old Milwaukee native works in marketing at Infosys Technologies Ltd., India’s second-largest software exporter. He’s part of a small but growing number of young Americans moving to Bangalore and other Indian cities to beef...

A code-red kind of alert has ripped across the country, bringing scientific installations, borders as well as beach revellers in Kerala and Goa and consulates within its ambit. NEW DELHI: The Bangalore attack has put the fear of Bali into the hearts of India’s security organisations. With the terrorists involved still at large, there is growing apprehension of a Bali-type terrorist attack in the run-up to the New Year. Therefore, a "code-red"kind of terror alert has ripped across the country, bringing scientific and sensitive installations, porous borders as well as beach revellers in Kerala and Goa and consulates within its...

It’s a possibility that's staring India in the face after the first ever terror attack in Bangalore, the center of the country's thriving outsourcing industry ___ At about 7:30 p.m. on December 28, a gunman walked into an international conference taking place at the Indian Institute of Science, a prestigious academic institution in Bangalore, and began throwing hand grenades into the conference hall—four grenades, all unexploded, have been found so far on the institute's campus. Apparently panicking when none of the grenades exploded, the gunman opened fire with an AK-56 while he retreated. A retired mathematics professor attending the conference...

BANGALORE: One scientist was killed and three others were injured when unknown persons opened fire inside the prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISC) campus here on Wednesday evening. According to police sources here, the shootout occurred at the J N Tata Auditorium of the institution when a conference on operations research was in progress. According to an administrator of the auditorium, four assailants came in a white ambassador around 1900 hrs, entered the auditorium porch and started firing indiscriminately. They then fled the spot. The deceased was identified as Prof N C Puri from IIT, Delhi, who had come here...

Bangalore may change name to Bengaluru BANGALORE, India, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Bangalore, India, may soon get the new name Bengaluru, which means "the town of boiled beans" and is closer to its original name of Benda Kaal Ooru. According to legend, a tired and hungry king, Vira Ballala, gave the city its original moniker when an old woman offered him boiled beans when he got lost on a hunting trip. Today, the city of 6.5 million people is known as the Silicon Valley of India. The name-change idea came from Dharam Singh, chief minister of the state of Karnatka,...

BANGALORE, India - Drive along Hosur Road -- Bangalore's version of Highway 101 -- even at 1:30 a.m. and you'll see sparks from welders working on new buildings to house software companies. Pick up any newspaper and read ads from tech companies seeking -- imploring -- engineers to come work for them. Experience the Silicon Valley-style, masters-of-the-digital-universe attitude permeating Bangalore, from its impossibly jammed roads to the new dot-com-like offices. ``We think we will overtake Silicon Valley,'' said Vineet Shrivastava, bid manager at the Bangalore campus of Dutch tech services and wireless company LogicaCMG. ``You can see it for yourself.''...

Cisco is bullish on India and cannot wait to use Indian expertise for research and development. Cisco Systems Inc. will hire more engineers in India than in the United States for its research and development work over the next three years, the company's chief executive said Friday. President and CEO John Chambers said the company would invest US$50 million (A41.83 million) to set up a second research and development center in Bangalore, India's technology hub, and triple its workforce here to more than 4,000 by 2008. He said this would mean more engineers are hired in India than in the...

BANGALORE - The incessant rains that submerged vast swathes of Bangalore in the last week of October couldn't have come at a worse time. The rains came on the eve of Bangalore's annual information technology exhibition - BangaloreIT.in, billed as one of Asia's hottest IT events. Not only did the rains swamp the technology fair, but worse, they laid bare Bangalore's crumbling infrastructure at a time the city, India's hi-tech hub and capital of southern state of Karnataka, was preparing to showcase itself as the country's most attractive investment destination for IT. The floods caused scores of houses to collapse,...

An Indian researcher has breached the much-touted "impenetrable" Windows Genuine Advantage of Microsoft. Bangalore-based Debasis Mohanty has cracked WGA through an "easy-to-exploit" weakness in the software for generating illegal copies of the Windows XP programme. Microsoft confirmed the claims of Mohanty, but sought to downplay it saying, "It represents very little threat." A company spokesperson said they did expect counterfeiters to try a number of different methods to circumvent safeguards provided by WGA. WGA is an anti-piracy programme that keeps a tab on consumers whether they are running legitimately licensed copies of Windows XP. Mohanty has posted a detailed proof-of-concept...

Beijing or Bangalore? The race hots up THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN BANGALORE: Every time I visit India, Indians always ask me to compare India with China. Lately, I have responded like this: If India and China were both highways, the Chinese highway would be a six-lane, perfectly paved road, but with a huge speed bump off in the distance labelled ‘‘Political reform: How in the world do we get from communism to a more open society?’’ When 1.3 billion people going 80 miles an hour hit a speed bump, one of two things happens: Either the car flies into the air,...