Gandhi

HOLLYWOOD -- Having played characters such as the Sundance Kid and Bob Woodward, Robert Redford knows what it's like to evoke real life on film. But nothing quite prepared him for the stomach-churning experience of screening The Motorcycle Diaries, the new film based on Che Guevara's youthful road trip across South America, for Guevara's widow, Aleida March, her family and Albert Granado, now 82, who was Guevara's companion on most of the trek. When Redford acquired the rights to Guevara's book about his journey of discovery long after the Cuban revolutionary's death, he promised Guevara's widow a first look at the finished movie.

NEW DELHI, India - Manmohan Singh was sworn in as India's 13th prime minister yesterday, making history as the country's first Sikh to hold the position. Another kind of history was made as well: For the first time, the Indian National Congress, which led India on its own for 37 of the country's first 45 years, will lead a coalition government. Singh, an economist and former finance minister, will be the country's first prime minister to hold a doctorate. He is credited with saving India from a balance-of-payments crisis and potential economic collapse in 1991, and with beginning many of the economic changes that have helped transform India's quasi-socialist economy into a growing global force.

IN THE WAKE of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's 1991 assassination, fevered efforts arose to draft his widow as his successor. Sonia Gandhi's Italian heritage made that politically problematic, and in any case she was reluctant to serve. Roughly 13 years later, little has changed: Mrs. Gandhi's foreign roots hand political fodder to the Hindu nationalists just booted from power by her party, Congress, and she's still reluctant to assume the office in which both her husband and his mother, Indira Gandhi, were murdered.

NEW DELHI, India - Hounded by Hindu nationalists and apparently fearing for her safety, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi shocked her adopted nation yesterday by announcing she would not become India's next prime minister. Former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, a key member of Gandhi's transition team, will be the Congress party's new candidate, Jairam Ramesh, a senior Congress official, told The Associated Press today. Once the allies have expressed their support for Singh - who would be the country's first Sikh prime minister - Singh must meet the president to stake his claim to form the next government.

When watching the Oscars on TV, it's difficult to gauge clapping and shouting except in the cases of standing ovations or stunned silences. In person, levels of enthusiasm become thunderously clear. Sit in the audience and it's easy to see that that the biggest conflict in the Academy is waged in the Academy members' minds, between their urge to award weighty, "worthy" movies and to acknowledge the pictures they actually enjoyed. I learned this firsthand 21 years ago, when E.T. went up against Gandhi.

The student: Kriti Gandhi, 13 School: Burleigh Manor Middle Special achievement: Kriti placed second in the Stein Roe Young Investor Essay Contest, sponsored by Stein Roe Mutual Funds. She wrote an essay on what she had learned about money and investing. Her essay was selected from more than 1,250 submitted by seventh- and eighth-graders nationwide. What she said in the essay: "Basically, I said that you should learn about it from early on in life and that you should start early, you should diversify and you should invest maybe in a mutual fund if you don't know much," Kriti said.

JOHN, THE CALLER to WBAL talk radio, was angry. He was tired of hearing about the mounting tide of terrorism in Israel, annoyed at pictures of the bombed-out Sbarro, weary of images of carnage and mourning. "Let them kill each other," declared the caller, claiming to be the "average" American. He wanted the news media to focus on the things that really matter to him, tensions and issues at home. John simply didn't care. He should. Here in the United States, John takes his personal security for granted, but the freedom to live a routine life may not last much longer.

1948: Gandhi assassinated1948: Kinsey sex report1948: Long-playing record invented1949: NATO treaty signed

NEW DELHI, India -- Sonia Gandhi's leadership of the Congress Party -- which long ruled India but is now a shadow of its former self -- faced its most crucial test yesterday as voting in India's gargantuan monthlong national election moved to the Hindi heartland.The biggest prize is Uttar Pradesh, the north Indian state with a population of 160 million. Once a bastion of Congress power, it sent three members of the Nehru-Gandhi family to serve as members of Parliament and as prime ministers.

THIRTEEN months of government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Jana Party (BJP) did not remake India. It did stir a nuclear arms race with Pakistan and religious-cultural bigotry directed mostly at Muslims. But the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee also improved relations with Pakistan and the United States. And it initiated economic reforms that dismantled inefficient socialism, leading to hopes that India may help lead Asia back to economic health. Now that it has fallen for no good reason, the BJP government can be seen as the most productive of the five that India has had through two elections in three years.