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Bush makes surprise visit to Kabul
Pak must do more to curb terrorism: Bush
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Don’t bow to pressure, Iran tells India
Small town Indian
accompanies Bush
Pakistan
develops new missile
Pak forces kill 30 militants
Optimists less prone to heart attacks
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Bush makes surprise visit to Kabul
Kabul, March 1 Addressing a joint news conference here with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Bush also said every effort must be made to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. He hailed Afghanistan's progress under President Hamid Karzai since the fall of the Taliban. Bush was in the Afghan capital on a five-hour visit that included a stopover at the strategically-located Bagram Air Force Base, the main center for U.S. troops in the country. On his trip, the U.S. leader is also trying to boost security and economic ties with India, and soothe tensions between India and neighboring Pakistan, also a nation with a nuclear capability. Speaking with Doordarshan, Bush acknowledged the nuclear issue was a tough one for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Earlier, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is accompanying Mr Bush, told reporters on Air Force One that sticking points remained in the way of the nuclear agreement. "The one thing that is absolutely necessary is that any agreement would assure that once India has decided to put a reactor under safeguard that it remain permanently under safeguard," she said. The provision, Rice cited, would prevent India from transferring a reactor from civilian to military status, thus exempting it from international inspections. Rice said she was uncertain whether there would be an agreement during Bush's trip but said the success or failure of his visit wouldn't be determined by that. "We're still working on it," she was quoted as saying. —Agencies
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Pak must do more to curb terrorism: Bush
Washington, March 1 Prior to boarding Air Force One for his visit to India and Pakistan, Mr Bush said “I’m going to talk to my friend President Musharraf and remind him that we have a common enemy in Al-Qaida, and so long as Al-Qaida is plotting and planning in the neighbourhood, we’re going to need to work together to stop those plots.” The American President acknowledged that Musharraf faced political problems for siding with the USA in this war on terror but said that the Pakistan leader must make a choice.
— PTI |
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Don’t bow to pressure, Iran tells India
Dubai, March 1 Chairman of the powerful Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said to accomplish the Islamic Republic’s “natural rights” it expected its neighbours and friendly countries not to bow in the face of Western pressures. Stating that the Indo-Iran energy ties were significant, he told Indian Ambassador Manbir Singh that the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, besides its economic advantages for the three countries, could turn into a regional peace pipeline and pave the way for economic developments in the region. During his meeting with Mr Manbir Singh yesterday, the Iranian leader pointed to the deep cultural and historical ties between the two countries. The ambassador said India acknowledged Iran’s right to nuclear technology and pointed out that the issue should be resolved through talks, patience and more flexibility. — UNI
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Small town Indian accompanies Bush
Washington, March 1 Goyal has been a White House pressperson for many years and is often ridiculed for his softball questions that deal exclusively with India, for which he has been labelled the "Goyal foil"— or a way out for White House spokesman Scott McClellan when he is in a spot. "I tell them, but I get only one chance to ask a question and I want to get in my question about India instead of the other subjects the media is talking about," says Goyal. Born in a small village of Badsikri in Haryana, Goyal is making his second trip with a US President, the last one being with the Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton. Goyal started attending White House press briefings during Jimmy Carter's presidency. I feel he is the one who opened the doors to India. Today a Republican president is going after a long time, but so much has happened after the Clinton visit, he said. He attended the briefings off and on until he secured a "hard" pass for the White House in 1991. Goyal runs a paper called India Globe, of which he sends out some 10,000 copies. At 16, Goyal told his mother, he wanted to leave the country and the village leaders met to discuss the issue. "My village got together and said I was incapable of doing anything. Finally my uncle said: Give him Rs 10,000 and he will not waste it, I guarantee. The rest, as is said, was history," says Goyal. — IANS
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Pakistan
develops new missile
Islamabad, March 1 The system uses technologies called ‘Integrated Global Positioning System’ and ‘Inner-shell Management System Navigation,’ official news agency Associated Press of Pakistan said. The programme is designed around the modular joint airframe guidance and flight control systems. The maximum range of this missile is 70 km. Under the programme, fighter jets fitted with sensors provide relevant details about potential targets and guide the fighter plane to strike them with an
accuracy. This system is used to hit armoured vehicles and fixed targets, a local television channel reported. Prof Dr Hassan Askari, a renowned defence
analyst, highlighted advantages of the system and said that the missile could be fired from a fighter plane while remaining
outside the range of enemy's anti-aircraft and other defence systems. — UNI |
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Pak forces kill 30 militants
Miranshah, March 1 A witness said he saw helicopters attack village houses where women and children lived. The attack came just days before US President George W Bush is due to arrive in Pakistan on a trip that will also take him to India. US and Afghan forces in Khost and other provinces along the border are frequently harried by Taliban insurgents, Central Asian Islamist militants and remnants of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida. Pakistan comes under frequent pressure to act more forcibly against the fighters, although it has deployed around 80,000 troops in the border areas. Bush's visit is seen by analysts as a gesture of support for President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in Washington's war on terrorism. Musharraf's domestic critics frequently rail against the conduct of the war on terrorism, as Pakistanis are being killed, the Pashtun tribes alienated and Pakistan's own territory sometimes violated by US forces.
— Reuters |
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Optimists less prone to heart attacks
New York, March 1 The research led by Erik Giltay of the Delfland Institute of Mental Health in the Netherlands studied 545 men aged between 64 and 84 years. They were followed for up to 15 years and were asked to fill in a questionnaire to determine whether they were optimists, the online edition of BBC News reported. The researchers found that those classified as optimists in 1985 were 55 percent less likely to die of heart disease or stroke by 2000 when taking major factors such as smoking and family history into account. He said it was not necessarily to do with lower rates of depression. "One possibility is that optimists are better at coping with adversity and may, for example, take better care of themselves when they fall ill," he said. He added that optimists were more likely to exercise and an individual's disposition could affect health through its influence on the nervous, immune and hormonal systems. But he said pessimists need not be resigned to having heart and stroke problems as they could reduce their risk through other measures such as becoming more active and smoking less.
— IANS
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