New Delhi

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is to leave Sunday for a one-week visit to India that is intended to build economic and cultural ties between Baltimore and the huge Asian subcontinent.The trip, which is being paid for by STEP IN, an organization of Baltimore-area Indian business people, will include a reception in New Delhi for Indian business leaders with Thomas Pickering, the U.S. ambassador to India, as host.A delegation of Baltimore-area business people will meet Mr. Schmoke in India.Aides say the mayor's trip is intended to put Baltimore in a position to take advantage of India's efforts to make its economy more accessible to foreign business people.

NEW DELHI, India -- After two weeks of political turmoil, India got another new government yesterday, but even before the new prime minister took office there were signs that he may have trouble holding together a fractious 13-party coalition that almost broke apart in last-minute wrangling over Cabinet posts.For many Indians, it was a sobering moment as the political establishment gathered for the swearing-in of the country's second government in 17 days.The tableau that went out across India on television -- of the new prime minister, H. D. Deve Gowda, looking onto an assembly that included two other men who have been prime minister in the past three weeks -- did little to allay the concerns.

NEW DELHI -- India named its first female president yesterday after weeks of acrimonious campaigning that touched on sensitive issues such as political corruption, partisan gamesmanship and women's rights. Through ballots cast by federal and state legislators, Pratibha D. Patil comfortably won election to the largely ceremonial post, making this country the world's largest to claim a female head of state. The last woman to serve that function for India was Queen Victoria, during the days of the British Raj. A lawyer by training, Patil, 72, is a relative unknown on the national stage.

YESTERDAY, as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was sternly warning Japan that it must squarely face up to its actions in World War II, he just happened to be in New Delhi - having signed this week a historic agreement with India to peacefully resolve decades-old border disputes between the two emerging Asian powers and to dramatically boost their limited bilateral trade. This underscores the broadest context to this newspaper's call for Washington to stop sitting so much on the sidelines while China challenges Japan's, and by implication America's, primacy in Asia.

NEW DELHI, India -- President Clinton's weeklong swing through India, Bangladesh and Pakistan got off to a sour start yesterday when security risks forced him to scrub a planned visit to a village in Bangladesh. The stop at Joypura, where Clinton had hoped to visit with villagers benefiting from U.S. assistance in health, education and development programs, was to have been the centerpiece of the president's program for today. Last night, though, two hours after Clinton arrived in New Delhi, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said in a prepared statement that the president would not be going to Joypura, an impoverished hamlet 20 miles outside of the capital city of Dhaka, "because of concerns raised by the Secret Service."

NEW DELHI, India -- Salman Rushdie has been granted a visa to return to India, his native land, whose banning of his novel "The Satanic Verses" began a chain of events that led to death threats by offended Muslims and a life in hiding for a writer with a price on his head.The decision was confirmed yesterday by a spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs and prompted immediate threats of violent demonstrations. "We will protest within a constitutional framework, but I warn the government of India that a righteous follower of the Holy Prophet may make an attempt on Rushdie's life, and each Muslim will be proud of this person," said Syed Ahmad Bukhari, deputy priest of Jama Masjid, the best-known mosque in new Delhi.

THE SCALE of arrests in Pakistan lends substance to President Pervez Musharraf's speech Saturday renouncing terrorism and banning five organizations. India should accept that a bona fide start has been made. It must understand that some violent protest in Kashmir is indigenous and authentic, not managed by Pakistan's intelligence service. And India must accept that Pakistan will still cling politically to the Kashmir issue as part of its national ideology, just as India does. The secret behind President Musharraf's doing the apparent bidding of Washington and New Delhi is that he has wanted to reverse the "Talibanization of Pakistan" all along.

NEW DELHI, India -- In a shiver of outrage and horror, residents closed shops, offices and schools yesterday in a central Indian city where 113 people died after baton-swinging police charged a protest march, and a government minister resigned in disgrace.Between 60 percent and 70 percent of the businesses in Nagpur, 375 miles south of New Delhi, were shut by the sympathy strike, said C. K. Gouri, an officer in the city's police control room. Schools and colleges locked their doors for the day.Even as criticism of their conduct mounted and a report circulated that the accidental discharge of an officer's gun might have caused the mayhem at Wednesday's march, police arrested 10 people, including the demonstration's organizer, on charges of provoking rioting and accidental deaths.

NEW DELHI, India -- The grisly killing has been dubbed India's "crime of the decade." For many, it underlines in blood the ties between the nation's politicians and criminals.On July 2, police say, Sushil Sharma gunned down his wife, Naina Sahni, perhaps fearing that she was having an affair. He tried to dispose of her body by incinerating it in his restaurant's tandoor, the oven used to bake bread and north Indian culinary delicacies.What made the crime leap into the headlines was Mr. Sharma's political prominence.

NEW DELHI, India -- Despite some blunt public statements by Pakistan, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott voiced "high optimism" yesterday as he ended discussions there on regional nuclear arms control."