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Howard: Uranium deal NPT-like
Peru earthquake toll 500
Sotheby’s focus on Indian art
CJ issue not discussed with me: Consultant
Headgear: Sikh children denied passports
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Cases against Sharif to be reopened
Pak cleric issues fatwa
‘Shuttle damage no threat’
3rd arrest in double murder
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Howard: Uranium deal NPT-like
Melbourne, August 17 "I can assure your listeners that the net effect of our safeguards agreement will be the same," Howard told ABC radio today adding it will prevent India from using the fuel for developing nuclear weapons. Howard last night reached an in-principle agreement with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh. Howard said both countries would enter a bilateral safeguards agreement, and India would have to enter a similar agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. "And the sort of conditions that are going to be imposed on India are the same as the conditions that are being imposed on countries like China and Russia and I think also France ... and we've been selling uranium to France for many years," he said. "I spoke to the Indian Prime Minister last night and I went through all of the conditions, and I'm writing to him over the next few days to confirm that the agreement is subject to all of those conditions being met." Australia has some of the world's largest known uranium deposits in the southern part of the country. 'Sydney Morning Herald' reported today that plans to sell Australian uranium to India are in doubt, with India unwilling to agree not to conduct future nuclear weapons tests. The Pakistani High Commission in Canberra issued a statement yesterday criticising the government for seeking the uranium deal with India, the daily said. It said that in the interests of non-proliferation and "strategic stability in South Asia" there should instead be a "package approach" where Australia supplied both India and Pakistan.
— PTI
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Peru earthquake toll 500
Pisco (Peru), August 17 “The toll has jumped to over 500 and 1,600 injured,” the head of the country’s firefighter service, Roberto Ocno said yesterday. The US Geological Survey yesterday upgraded the quake to a rare 8.0 on the moment magnitude scale, as the Peruvian government said it was launching an airlift with helicopters and planes to bring emergency aid to the hard-hit coastal towns, cut off by the quake. Two air force planes departed Lima at dawn bound for Ica, 300 km south of Lima, carrying 50 tons of aid including medicine and food. Two national police helicopters loaded mainly with tents were headed for the small port of Pisco and north to nearby Chincha. Buildings collapsed, major highways to the coast were torn apart and power lines knocked out by the massive quake, leaving the local officials issuing urgent appeals for help. “We have hundreds of dead lying in the streets, and injured people in the hospital. It is totally indescribable,” said Juan Mendoza, the mayor of Pisco. The United Nations has mobilised $ one million for relief operations and is rushing food and other forms of assistance to Peru. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that at least 1,500 people have been injured and nearly 400 homes destroyed by the quake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, whose epicentre was 161 km away from Lima.
— AFP, PTI
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New York, August 17 While the auction house in New York will hold its sale of Indian art, including miniatures and modern paintings on Sep 19, paintings, sculptures, photographs and video art by Subodh Gupta and Mrinalini Mukherjee amongst others will be the highlight of the Sep 21 sale of Contemporary Art South Asia: India and Pakistan. Works from both sales will be on exhibition beginning from Sep 14. The offering of approximately 118 lots in the Sep 19 sale is estimated to bring in between $6.4 million and $9.4 million. The sale will feature Husain’s ‘Pagan Mother’, painted almost entirely in blue with the figure delineated by thick black contours and highlighted with flashes of white and terracotta. The painting is estimated between $500,000 and $700,000. Another highlight of the sale by Husain is an Untitled (Horse), oil on canvas (est. $200,000-250,000), from a private Maryland collector. Also being offered is ‘The Other Space’, an important painting by R Broota estimated at $600,000-800,000. This work from the 1990s is representative of a brief and rare period in Broota’s career where the human figure completely disappeared from his canvas. The artist’s unusual and painstaking technique of scraping paint from the canvas to reveal the white beneath creates a monochromatic work of intricate detail. An untitled work by VS Gaitonde in 1973, estimated at $500,000-700,000, will also be on offer. A great untitled work by SH Raza (est. $280,000-380,000) will also be featured. Raza says of his work: “Music, poetry, dance, as much as literary thought, have always inspired me in my work. But as a painter, I have to realise the ideas, the moods, the sentiments in a visual language of form and colour.” Akhar Padamsee’s Untitled (Nude), 1962, demonstrates the artist’s preoccupation with mapping the human form and capturing its emotive qualities and is estimated between $150,000 and $200,000. The second sale of Contemporary Art South Asia: India and Pakistan, to be held Sep 21, will be highlighted by an untitled work by Subodh Gupta from 2006. The life-sized sculpture, depicting an Indian family on a motorcycle, is estimated to sell for $200,000-250,000. The second sale is estimated to bring in between $1.9 million and $2.6 million. A 2001 work by Atul Dodiya, “Man from Kabul”, is made of acrylic with marble dust on fabric and estimated between $100,000 and $150,000. Another highlight is “Aspara” by Mrinalini Mukherjee from 1986 (est. $60,000-80,000). This sculpture made of natural fibre explores the hidden character of the material. Also featured in the sale is a work by Ashim Purkayastha, “He is not my Enemy”, from 2004 and is estimated at $30,000-40,000. This acrylic on canvas work is a self-portrait of the artist with Gandhi. — IANS
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CJ issue not discussed with me: Consultant
President Pervez Musharraf’s chief legal consultant Syed Shariffudin Pirzada has said the president did not consult him at all on the chief justice issue, which is why the embarrassing situation arose. In an interview on BBC’s ‘Hard Talk’ programme, Pirzada said, “I was not in Pakistan when President Musharraf submitted a reference against the Chief Justice of Pakistan to the Supreme Judicial Council.” He added that he “gave various concessions to the chief justice in the Supreme Court during the hearing”. He gave the president correct advice, but the proper course of action was not adopted in filing the reference, he maintained. Pirzada said politicians’ actions allowed the army the opportunity to intervene, and politicians should cultivate democratic norms in their parties first. “I can hardly find a politician who can come in and introduce democracy in its true form,” he added. He said Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif should be allowed to return if they repented what they had done in the past.
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Headgear: Sikh children denied passports
Toronto, August 17 “It’s really disappointing,” Lakhwinder Kaur Sidhu, the mother of the three Surrey Sikh children, said, adding that there was no explanation beyond a statement that the headgear was deemed unacceptable. “The passport office, they should know the meaning of the headgear,” Sidhu said yesterday. The organisation sent a letter to the minister of foreign affairs on Wednesday, asking that the “misunderstanding” be resolved quickly. “In this day and age today, after all this controversy for 25 years for somebody to still be unaware of who Sikhs are, it’s incredible, especially in B.C.,” spokesperson for the organisation Jasbeer Singh said, estimating there are around 125,000 Sikhs in the province. The wearing of religious headgear by Sikhs is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and it’s unacceptable for the passports to be rejected on those grounds. “What’s more amazing is that the parents were wearing (religious) headgear and were given passports but the kids were denied,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying by The Vancouver Sun today. — PTI
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Cases against Sharif to be reopened
The Accountability Court in Rawalpindi approved, on Friday, approved the petition for reopening three corruption and bank scam cases against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The court, which had earlier reserved its judgement, fixed the next hearing on August 25.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had filed this petition in the court on August 3 praying for the reopening of the pending cases against Nawaz Sharif relating to Hudaibiya Paper Mills, Ittefaque Foundries and Raiwind. Rawalpindi Accountability Court Judge Khalid Mahmud, while hearing this petition on August 15, had reserved the judgement. The court today, while announcing the decision approved the reopening of the cases against Nawaz Sharif. The hearing of the cases would now begin from August 25. These three cases against Nawaz Sharif were kept in abeyance due to Sharif family's exile.
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Pak cleric issues fatwa
Islamabad, August 17 The pamphlets pasted in Matta of Swat district in the North-West Frontier Region warned the locals against working for the non-government organisations. “Since the US and Jewish states have made Muslims lives miserable, jihad is mandatory against the people working for them at international and national levels,” Mufti Khalid Shah said in his fatwa issued yesterday. The fatwa urged the Muslims to wage a jihad against the “friends of infidels,” eyewitnesses said.
— PTI
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Houston, August 17 NASA officials considered sending astronauts out to patch the 3-inch gash in the shuttle's belly, but decided Endeavour was OK and it was better not to fool with it, mission management team chairman John Shannon said yesterday. ''It does not constitute a risk to the crew, it is not expected to cause any damage to the vehicle structure,'' he said in a briefing at Johnson Space Centre. — Reuters
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3rd arrest in double murder
Silicon, August 17 Charles Anthony Murphy Jr., 22, was taken into custody at his workplace in Irvine and is being held without bail at Anaheim’s detention facility on suspicion of murder. The police has found the mini van they think was used in the murders. “The evidence found in the van made us confident of its link to the crime,” police officer Lt. Chuck O’Connor said.
— PTI
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Melbourne, August 17
Pisco (Peru), August 17
