tribuneindia...Spotlight

			Tuesday, December 14, 1999
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Sharma’s condition ‘critical’
NEW DELHI, Dec 13 (PTI) — The condition of former President Shanker Dayal Sharma continues to be “critical” as he complained of breathlessness, doctors attending on him said today. The former President continues to be on ventilator and there was no improvement in his condition, the doctors at the Heart Command Centre of the Escorts Heart Institute here said. His vital organs were, however, working normally with the help of medicines, they said.

Tudjman laid to rest
ZAGREB, Dec 13 (DPA) — Tens of thousands lined the streets of Zagreb today to bid farewell to independent Croatia’s first President Franjo Tudjman as his funeral ceremony got underway. Army generals bore his coffin from the presidential palace, where Tudjman’s body had laid in state over the weekend, to a gun carriage on which it was drawn to the capital’s Mirogoj cemetery. Large numbers of politicians from the Balkan region were present, including Branko Perovic, Foreign Minister of the Yugoslav Constituent Republic of Montenegro. Belgrade, by contrast, had continued sharply to attack Tudjman after his death on Friday.

New trains
NEW DELHI, Dec 13 (UNI) — Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee today announced the introduction of five new super fast trains to usher in the new millennium. The new weekly trains are: Sealdah-Ajmer Millennium Express, Howarh-Dehradun Millennium Express, Nizamuddin-Coimbatore Millennium Express, Dharbanga-Amritsar Millennium Express and Jaipur-Agra Cantt Holiday Millennium Express.

Author dead
NEW YORK, Dec 13 (Reuters) — Author Joseph Heller, whose antiwar novel “Catch-22” captured the imagination of the Vietnam war-era generation with its message of hopelessness, is dead, his literary agent said today. Heller, 76, died at his home in East Hampton, New York, last night of a heart attack, said a spokesman for his literary agent Amanda Urban of the International Creative Management. Heller, born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 1, 1923, shot to fame with his 1961 novel “Catch 22”.

Barak may seal treaty with Syria
JERUSALEM, Dec 13 (Reuters) — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said today he hoped to present a peace treaty with Syria or the Palestinians to the nation within six months for a referendum. In a statement released by his office, Mr Barak dismissed euphoric reports in the Israeli media that it would take only weeks to forge a peace deal with Damascus.