Moscow, August 13
Russia will deliver aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov to India as per schedule as stakes are “very high” for both the countries in the flagship defence project, India’s outgoing ambassador Kanwal Sibal said today.

“Officially the Russian government has communicated to us in writing that Gorshkov will be delivered on schedule. If the situation were to change we would have been communicated in writing,” Sibal said commenting on media reports about delay in the delivery of Kiev class aircraft carrier to the Indian Navy.

“We have monitoring teams on the ground at Sevmash shipyard and are aware of the situation on the ground,” the envoy said addressing a news conference here at the end of his three-year Moscow stint.

Earlier, Russian media had reported about the delay of two-three years in delivery of retrofitted aircraft carrier against the delivery schedule of August, 2008, mainly due to cost escalation and ill financing.

“Gorshkov is a flagship project of our defence cooperation. It is a high visibility project and its timely implementation would have impact on public opinion in India and demonstrate to the international community Russia’s technological capability. So the stakes are very high for both the countries,” Sibal observed.

The Russian government has dismissed the director of Severodvinsk (North Russia) based Sevmash shipyard for the slippage in the schedule of Gorshkov upgrade and is believed to be making efforts on war footing to complete the $1.5 billion contract signed in January, 2005, on time.

Reviewing the 60 years of diplomatic relations between Moscow and New Delhi, established on April 13, 1947, Sibal said “yesterday’s Soviet Union and today’s Russia have played a decisive role in bolstering India’s defence capabilities.” — PTI

Kuala Lumpur, August 13
An Indian jeweller was robbed of valuables worth Rs 1 crore he had brought here to exhibit, in a heist at a five-star hotel where he was staying.

Sanjay Kumar, a jeweller from Delhi, had packed all the ornaments in his hotel room after returning from the exhibition last night.

When he returned after dinner, the security guard informed him that his room had been broken into and the jewellery was missing.

“All my life savings had gone,” a visibly-shocked Kumar told PTI today.

He said the robbers took away jewellery worth at least $ 350,000 besides some cheques of the ornaments sold, a few thousand Malaysian ringgit and his passport.

“The hotel claims it has at least 70 cameras but the hotel security has no clue how it could have happened,” Kumar said, adding that the robbery had been discovered by some guards who were doing the rounds of corridors.

The jeweller said he had stayed at the hotel many times earlier too.

Since he always used to stay at five-star hotels, Kumar said, he had not bothered about taking insurance for the jewellery as he was confident about the security at such places.

“I never thought five-star hotels would have such security problems,” he said.

Kumar has lodged an FIR with the local police and also intimated the Indian High Commission here. “It could be an inside job, it could be some gang which could have entered the hotel as guests, I have no idea,” the distraught Kumar said. — PTI

The PPP has said that it would not accept the President in uniform. This was in clarification to a news report which quoted PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto as saying that she had a "confidential understanding" with President General Pervez Musharraf on his uniform.

"Our stance on the uniform issue is very clear. We cannot work with a ‘uniformed’ president," said PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar.

He said that under the Constitution, the deadline for Musharraf to doff his uniform would expire on November 16 before the general elections subject to the Supreme Court not intervening earlier.

Washington, August 13
An Indian woman and her two children were killed in a "suspicious" fire at their home in the USA's Illinois state.

Nimisha Tiwari (32), her toddler daughter Ananya and four-year-old son Vakadham were killed in the Saturday afternoon fire in the family's two-storey house in the Cinnamon Creek subdivision where they had been living for five years.

The police described the fire as "suspicious" and arson investigators were called in.

18-month-old Ananya suffered thermal burns and the manner of death was a "homicide," according to a Cook County medical examiner's autopsy report.

While investigators released a cause of death for Ananya, autopsy findings for her mother were not being discussed pending police and fire investigations into the case, authorities said.

Nimisha's husband Anand Tiwari, a software engineer, is not a suspect because police verified his whereabouts for that morning, investigators were quoted as saying by Chicago Sun Times.

Neighbours said Anand was taking a business class in downtown Chicago when the blaze broke out. — PTI

London, August 13
A little-known school of scholars in south India discovered one of the founding principles of modern mathematics hundreds of years before Sir Isaac Newton, to whom the finding is currently attributed, according to a new research here.

Dr George Gheverghese Joseph from the University of Manchester says the 'Kerala School' identified the 'infinite series' - one of the basic components of calculus - in about 1350.

The discovery is currently attributed in books to Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz at the end of the 17th centuries, the University of Manchester reported in its website today.

The team from the Universities of Manchester and Exeter reveal the Kerala School also discovered what amounted to the Pi series and used it to calculate Pi correct to 9, 10 and later 17 decimal places.

And, there is strong circumstantial evidence that the Indians passed on their discoveries to mathematically knowledgeable Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the 15th century.

That knowledge, the researchers argue, may have eventually been passed on to Newton himself.

The research was carried out by Dr George Gheverghese Joseph, honorary reader, School of Education at the University of Manchester and Dennis Almeida, teaching fellow at the School of Education, the University of Exeter. — PTI