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British MP lambasts US Senate panel
Pakistan, Britain sign defence deal
Over 1 lakh Indians to perform Haj
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13,540 Indians given UK citizenship
Indian chemist wins $ 1 m award
Cannes fest ignores Indian cinema
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British MP lambasts US Senate panel
British member of Parliament George Galloway on Tuesday lambasted a US Senate panel investigating alleged corruption in the United Nations oil-for-food programme calling the probe “the mother of all smoke screens.”
Buoyed by his recent election victory in Britain, Mr Galloway travelled to Washington to defend himself against charges of receiving vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil from deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein regime between 2000 and 2003. “I am not now or ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf,” Mr Galloway said in combative testimony. An outspoken critic of the Iraq war who was expelled from the Labour Party because of his remarks, Mr Galloway said the Senate panel’s investigation was intended to divert attention from the “crimes that you supported from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq’s wealth.” “I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to Al-Qaida. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001,” he told the panel’s Republican chairman, Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. “Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives - 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever, on a pack of lies,” he said. The maverick British lawmaker said he had met with Mr Hussein “exactly as many times as Donald Rumsfeld has met with him”. Mr Rumsfeld, at present US Defense Secretary, met Mr Hussein as President Ronald Reagan’s Middle East envoy in the 1980s, when the US backed Iraq in its war with Iran. “The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns,” Mr Galloway said in a blistering opening statement. The Senate subcommittee has alleged in recent days that Mr Hussein rewarded a number of European politicians for supporting Iraq’s bid to lift economic sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. One of the main allegations raised by the subcommittee is that Mr Galloway received oil allocations with the assistance of Fawaz Zureikat. Mr Zureikat, who was chairman of the Marian Appeal founded by Mr Galloway to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl with leukaemia, has denied making any arrangements linked to oil sales on behalf of Mr Galloway. Mr Galloway told the senators on Tuesday: “I can assure you Mr Zureikat never gave me a penny from an oil deal, a cake deal, a bread deal or from any other deal. He donated money to our campaign, which we publicly brandished on all our literature along with all the other donors to the campaign.” Mr Galloway, directing his remarks at Mr Coleman, angrily pointed out: “You have nothing on me Senator, except my name on lists of names in Iraq, many of which were drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Iraq.” The British MP’s explosive testimony surprised seasoned American observers on Capitol Hill. The New York Times noted “the vitriolic tone used by Mr Galloway was rare for a witness in a Senate hearing.” |
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Pakistan, Britain sign defence deal
Islamabad, May 18 Visiting British Under Secretary of State for Defence, Kevin Tebbitt, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to this effect with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt Gen Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, a statement from the Pakistan Defence Ministry said. The MoU will “help open new avenues in defence cooperation between Pakistan and the UK. It would facilitate procurement of defence equipments and transfer of technology,” it said. The two sides also agreed to hold “joint exercises, exchange observers and to jointly fight the war on terror.” It was also agreed to hold counter-terrorism workshops and seminars so as to benefit of each other experience. Gen Aurakzai said there existed a wide range of cooperation between Pakistan and UK which need to be strengthened further. |
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Over 1 lakh Indians to perform Haj
Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahmad has said a total of 1,37,000 Indian pilgrims would perform Haj this year.
Of them, 82,000 would come through the Haj Committee and the rest through Private Tour Operators
(PTOs), following an agreement signed in Riyadh between Mr Ahamad and Saudi Haj Minister Fouad
Al-Farsy. “The number of pilgrims coming through private tour operators will go up from 45,000 last year to 55,000 this year,” he said in Jeddah yesterday. He said the performance of the private tour operators would be monitored after they were registered with the External Affairs Ministry, he told the local media adding that only those PTOs registered with the ministry would be eligible for Group Haj visas. The Indian Government, which has increased the embarkation points to 15, is in talks with Saudi officials to ensure that more comfortable and safer facilities are provided for Indian pilgrims.
— UNI |
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13,540 Indians given UK citizenship
London, May 18 Almost 70 per cent of new Britons in 2004 came from Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the rest of Asia, according to Home Office figures published today. The number of persons given citizenship in Britain has risen every year since Labour came to power in 1997 and is now 1,00,000 more than the 1997 figure. Migrants from Pakistan topped the list of new British citizens, with a total of 14,125, or 10 per cent. They were followed by 14,125 Somalis, 13,540 Indians, 6,370 South Africans and 6,280 Nigerians. New English-language tests for prospective citizens appeared to be having some effect in reducing applications for citizenship, which fell by eight per cent to 1,35,000, compared with a rise of 28 per cent in 2003. "The citizenship figures show that many people who have settled in the UK want to make a commitment to UK society by applying for and becoming British citizens," Immigration Minister Tony McNulty said.
— PTI |
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Indian chemist wins $ 1 m award
Jerusalem, May 18 Rao, a Linus Pauling Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, has a sustained record of accomplishments in one of the most important fields of materials science and solid-state chemistry. He was one of the earliest to synthesise two-dimensional oxide materials, such as La2CuO4, and his work had led to a systematic study of compositionally controlled metal-insulator transistors. The selection committee of the foundation stated, "The studies hold unusual promise and have had a profound impact in application fields such as colossal magneto resistance and high temperature superconductivity". The award ceremony will be held on May 23, at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
— UNI |
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Cannes fest ignores Indian cinema
Cannes, May 18 This time around, the prestigious Cannes festival has recognised Indian actors while ignoring Indian cinema. For, despite Nandita Das being chosen as part of the jury, Aishwarya Rai given the honour to utter the sentence to open this year’s festival and ‘sexy siren’ Mallika Sherawat “walking the red carpet leading to the
Palais”, what makes Indian cinema at the 58th Cannes Film Festival seem almost a ‘non entity’ is the absence of a single film-entry from India in any official selection, even as many films from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and even Sri Lanka have been included in the official screenings. The lacuna due to the absence of Indian films in any official selection has, however, been somewhat made up due to the screening of several Indian films in the market section. This year, a number of Indian film-makers and distributors have turned up looking for buyers. The films already screened/to be shown in the Marche (the market section), or elsewhere privately, include Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Black”, Subhash Ghai’s
“Kisna”(in its shorter, English version), and Delhi-based producer Bobby Bedi’s two latest movies, “The Rising” (starring Aamir Khan) and “American Daylight”. The last-named film, which revolves around a girl
employed in a Delhi call centre, made its debut at the Goa IFFI last December but has yet to be commercially released.
— UNI |
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