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‘Sharif delayed return due to US pressure’
9 detained in Pak blast case
MMA chief feels betrayed by JUI
US acknowledges India’s firm stand on |
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Trust raises £2,50,000 for charity in India
Sonia to meet Chinese leaders
Countering Depression
‘Diana was in love with Charles’
Nepal King visits temples on Dussehra
Soyuz goes off-course, but returns safely
Iran insists no nuclear shift after Larijani
New York welcomes ladybugs as pest killers
Pentagon chief to seek troops for Afghanistan
Myanmar still in fear as curfew lifted
Mouth sewn shut in protest
Postcard reaches friend after 64 years
Woman survives 19 hours afloat in Pacific
Two Indian labourers killed in Dubai
4 Globalstar satellites put into orbit
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‘Sharif delayed return due to US pressure’
Islamabad, October 21 Sharif, who was deported to Saudi Arabia barely hours after he flew into Islamabad after seven years in exile on September 10, has given his word that he will not leave Saudi Arabia till November 7 and asked Pakistani and Saudi officials not to compel him to defer his homecoming any longer, The News reported. The daily said Saad Hariri, the son of assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, convinced Sharif in Jeddah on October 17 to put off his return to Pakistan. It quoted sources in the Pakistan High Commission in London as saying that Sharif “had no option” but to bow to pressure from Saudi Arabia and the USA, mounted on behalf of President Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan’s Supreme Court, which had said that Sharif is free to return to the country, is currently hearing a contempt petition filed by his PML-N party after he was deported to Saudi Arabia last month. Hariri played a “key role” in finalising an understanding between the Sharif family and Pakistan’s military regime in 2000 and is believed to be close to Musharraf, the report said. While visiting Sharif in Jeddah on Tuesday, he was accompanied by Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the USA. They asked Sharif to postpone his plan to leave Saudi Arabia for two to three weeks. — PTI
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9 detained in Pak blast case
Islamabad, October 21 The arrested persons include the three accused who were wanted by the police in many cases of sabotage, they said adding that an AK-47 rifle, a 9 mm pistol, a 12 bore rifle and a revolver were seized from them. Residents of Dera Bugti, where the blast took place, have submitted an application in which they blamed 10 terrorists, including Brhamdagh, the grandson of late Nawab Akbar Bugti, responsible for the killings, the police said. The condition of two of the more than 20 people injured in yesterday's attack, carried out with a bomb hidden in a van, are critical and were shifted to a hospital in Rahim Yar Khan from Sui. The rest of the injured were out of danger and being treated in hospitals in Dera Bugti, Sui and Rahim Yar Khan, the police said. Security has been beefed up across Dera Bugti district and a meeting of local officials decided that no vehicle would be allowed to enter the main bazaars in the town.
— PTI
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MMA chief feels betrayed by JUI
Islamabad October 21 Talking to reporters in his home town Dera Ismail Khan, Fazl said he would take up his differences with Qazi in the meeting of the MMA’s supreme council. The meeting was scheduled for Monday but has been postponed due to the illness of Qazi Hussain Ahmed. A fresh date is likely to be announced soon. Fazl said his party was also reviewing its presence in the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM). Some leaders of its components, including Imran Khan criticised Fazl on suspicion that he deliberately delayed the dissolution of the NWFP assembly before the Presidential election. Fazl blamed the speaker of the Assembly who belongs to Qazi’s Jamaat-i-Islami, for thwarting attempts to dissolve the Assembly. Meanwhile talking to Dawn, Fazl condemned what he called media trial of his party and categorically denied any secret deal or negotiations with Musharraf. Fazl said he had serious differences with Jamaat-i-Islami which had betrayed him during the presidential election on the resignation issue. He, however, said the two parties would contest the general election from the MMA platform. He said he was opposed to Gen. Musharraf’s phony election and that the APDM decision of resignations before and even after the presidential election was not a correct move that has now been proved.
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US acknowledges India’s firm stand on N-deal
Faced with the prospect of losing the support of its Communist Party allies over a civilian nuclear deal it struck with the United States, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government has received a pat on the back from Washington for its “firm” stand.
“Despite the objections voiced by the Communist Party of India in August of this year, the Indian government has stood firm and is meeting its commitments under the agreement,” the administration’s point person on the nuclear deal, undersecretary of state R. Nicholas Burns writes in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. He said the deal had become “the symbolic centerpiece” of the new US-India friendship and “is wildly popular among millions of Indians who see it as a mark of US respect
for India.” Burns revealed that secretary of state Condoleezza Rice laid the cornerstone for the transformed relationship on a visit to India in March of 2005. Rice told the Prime Minister that the United States would “break with long-standing nonproliferation orthodoxy and work to establish full civil nuclear cooperation with energy-starved India,” Burns said. “At the start of President Bush’s second term, we knew that the nuclear issue was the proverbial elephant in the room in the U.S. relationship with India,” said Burns. The Bush administration understood that resolving this would go a long way in developing an “ambitious partnership” with India. When Singh visited Washington in July 2005, Bush proposed that after 30 years, the United States was prepared to offer India the benefits of full civil nuclear energy cooperation. Noting the complexities of two years of the “diplomatic marathon of negotiations” that followed, Burns said, “My Indian counterparts and I worked more closely and intensively than we ever had before.” “We were sometimes forced to dig deep into our reserves of creativity and tenacity. But the outcome demonstrates that Americans and Indians can work together to achieve important goals on the most vital international issues — something once thought impossible,” he wrote. Burns noted the benefits of this deal were very real for the United States. “For the first time in three decades, India will submit its entire civil nuclear program to international inspection by permanently placing 14 of its 22 nuclear power plants and all of its future civil reactors under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Within a generation, nearly 90 percent of India’s reactors will likely be covered by the agreement. Without the arrangement, India’s nuclear power program would have remained a black box. With it, India will be brought into the international nuclear nonproliferation mainstream,” he contended. Acknowledging critics of the deal who, among other things, opposed the decision to grant India consent rights to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, Burns noted the United States had granted reprocessing consent before to Japan and the European Atomic Energy Community. “Moreover, these rights will come into effect only once India builds a state-of-the-art reprocessing facility fully monitored by the IAEA and we agree on the specific arrangements and procedures for it.” He also assured critics that the agreement with India will not assist the country’s nuclear weapons program in any way. And should India decide to conduct a nuclear test in the future, then the United States would have the right under US law to seek the return of all nuclear fuel and technology shipped by them.
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Trust raises £2,50,000 for charity in India
London, October 21 Legendary Bollywood actor-producer Dev Anand was the special guest while Sir Ian Blair, chief of the metropolitan police, was the guest of honour at the glittering ceremony attended by over 250 guests. Speaking on the occasion, Ken
Livingstone, Mayor of London and Patron of the Trust, lauded the achievements of NRIs in UK and particularly in London and said “You (Indians) should think London as your second
home.” Livingstone said he would be going to India next month to further strengthen the ties between India and the UK. Referring the rapid progress India was making, the Mayor said by 2020 India would be one of three most important powers in the world, the other two being the USA and China. He said he was happy that India has emerged as the second biggest investor in the
UK. Raj Loomba, who set up the trust 10 years ago in memory of his mother Pushpa Wati Loomba to draw the world’s attention to the terrible plight of poor widows and their children in India said said the Trust has extended its reach of work in various ways. Former Lord Mayor of London Alderman Sir David Brewer, welcoming the guests to the Mansion House, said the Loomba Trust was now educating more than 3,600 children of poor widows in India, developing new programmes in five other countries and achieving growing international recognition for its flagship International Widows Day initiative. “The Loomba Trust gives voice to a very worthy and important cause, which all of us gathered here tonight are happy to support,” he said. Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is president of the trust and former Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee inaugurated the Indian branch of the trust in March 1999. The trust was set up to educate at least 100 children in each of India’s 29 states, which was exceeded last year. “Today, the trust educates over 3,600 children of poor widows across India, providing each with a scholarship to fund their education for a period of at least five years,” Raj Loomba said. “We are working partnership with Virgin Unite to support HIV and AIDS affected children in South Africa, and we help to create opportunities for young widows and youths in Kenya, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in partnership with Youth Business International, a charity of Prince Charles,” he said.
— PTI
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Beijing, October 21 Gandhi, also the Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), has been invited by the Chinese President and incumbent CPC general-secretary, Hu Jintao, for a visit aimed at strengthening Sino-Indian strategic ties as well as party-to-party relations. She is expected to arrive here on October 25 for a visit that is likely to last till October 30, meeting Hu and other senior Chinese leaders and visiting Beijing and probably two other Chinese cities, sources said. — PTI
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Autobiography
New York, October 21 Speaking at the release of autobiography ‘Romancing With Life’ in the United States, he said a lot of people had approached him to write his biography. But he had one question “how could they portray the depth of his life and experiences when they knew him only superficially”. “The book is only about me, my career and experiences. It was written by me in my own hand in ink,” the 84-year hero of yesteryears told the audience which comprised a substantial number of his fans who were teenagers at a time when he was at the pinnacle of his acting career. Releasing the book at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan here last night, counsel-general Neelam Deo described Dev Anand as “living treasure”. The strength of his creations, she said, lay in depiction of strong women characters and dealing with controversial subjects in a sensitive manner that not only brought the point home but also made the movies box office hits. In this context, she recalled that in ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama’, he had focused on the issue of drugs and the struggle of young people to find their niche in life at time when the subject was not being openly discussed. In ‘Guide’, he openly discussed the subject of infidelity in a way that it did not offend the moviegoers, most of whom would not touch the subject. The function was attended, among others, by Indian-born filmmaker Mira Nair and Founder of Jet Airways Naresh Goyal. In his remarks, Dev Anand said the success of Hindi version of ‘Guide’ was a few changes made in the novel of the same name by R K Narayan. The English version which stuck to the novel was not so successful. Asked what was his finest hour, Dev Anand said, “this moment,” explaining that he lives in the present and not in the past and that is his strength. Questioned as to how he feels when despite all his efforts, his movie fails, he replied amidst laughter that “the audience is foolish.” But then he explained seriously that from the reaction of audiences one learns a lot. However, no one can pinpoint one particular reason as to why a movies succeeds or fails it could due to acting, story, direction, treatment of the subject, songs or music and a whole lot of other factors. Walking the audience through his career spanning six decades, Dev Anand said he left his home with Rs 30 for Bombay travelling in “third class compartment of third class” and struggled for two and a half years before his career took off ‘Hum Ek Hain’ and went to play the romantic lead in more than 110 movies before turning to producing his films. Replying to question about difference between movies of yesteryear and today, he said it was all the same with romance, dances, songs etc. but the only difference that in olden days, “hero took a lot more time to get the girl” than his modern version. Dev Anand is scheduled to appear at several book-signing functions in the United States over next few days.
— PTI
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Countering Depression
Atlanta, October 21 Buddhist meditation can play a big part in treating patients with depression, the researchers said. Each case is unique, and often non-traditional therapies like meditation training are helpful when used with other treatments, they said. “With other diseases, we can measure things and predict what treatment we should use,” said Dr Charles Nemeroff, head of the Emory School of Medicine’s department of psychiatry and behavioural sciences yesterday. “But in the disease state of depression, it could be mindfulness, cognitive behaviour therapy or medicine.” The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader praised a study being done by Emory University researchers Dr Chuck Raison and Geshe Lobsang Negi on how compassion meditation affects students’ mental health. He said the study’s results will have wide application in preventing depression. “I think in our life, it is very important to have compassion,” he said in English. The daylong conference is part of a weekend of events at Emory with the Dalai Lama, who has accepted a distinguished professorship at the private college. On Friday, he was presented with a science curriculum designed by Emory faculty and translated into Tibetan.
— AP
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‘Diana was in love with Charles’
London, October 21 Instead, South African-born Lana Marks has said that it was Prince Charles who remained Diana’s one true love, despite the infidelities that tore their relationship apart, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported here today. “The bottomline was that the person she really loved deep down was Charles. She said this early on and throughout our friendship. He was the love of her life. We did talk about several men in her life... “Just because Diana had a good relationship with somebody who she permitted to enter her life, that didn’t mean they were going to get married. She said it without using words directly, but in her language she indicated to me very clearly that she was not going to marry him,” Marks said. When asked about the supposed engagement ring Dodi gave the Princess, she said, “Diana was overwhelmed with gifts every day of her life-just mountains of extremely valuable gifts-and the ring could have been one of those. Any gift from Dodi doesn’t stand out because many male companions gave her gifts. It was often jewellery of great value. “I would categorically say she wasn’t (pregnant). She confided in me in great depth about everything going on in her life at that time. If there had been any pregnancy she would have told me. I would have known.” Marks, who gave her first statement to Scotland Yard detectives, has not yet been called to give evidence at the current inquest. — PTI
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Nepal King visits temples on Dussehra
Kathmandu, October 21 The King was shown visiting the famous Hindu temple Hanumandhoka temple by a TV channel yesterday where some people raised slogans in his
favour. The King spent about 15 minutes worshipping in the temple, according to the television channel. On Dashain the King visited a number of Hindu temples, including Bhadrakali Temple. During his visit to the temple, the authorities locked the main gate of the temple for four hours, forcing visitors return back without worshipping. The palace also performed Pancha Bali (sacrifice of five animals) at Hanumandhoka and other temples on the occasion of the ten-day festival. Such sacrificial offerings are made to gain power. A day before the King’s visit at
Hanumandhoka, 34 buffaloes and 34 goats were sacrificed at Kot area in the temple premises as per the tradition. King’s visit to Hanumandhoka temple was disrupted by Maoists’ protest outside the premises while his supporters recited pro-King slogans inside the complex. King also wished the people of Nepal. “I wished for peace, happiness and prosperity of all the Nepalese and Hindu people residing within the country and abroad on this great Dashain festival that promotes human values such as mutual goodwill, affection and unity among all the people, the King said.
— PTI
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Soyuz goes off-course, but returns safely
Arkalyk, October 21 The landing capsule carrying Russians Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, and Malaysian Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, landed short of the designated landing site at 4.06 pm, Russia’s Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said. The spacecraft deviated from the intended path because of a computer glitch that sent the spacecraft on a steeper-than-usual descent trajectory, the so-called ballistic descent, Lyndin said. “That meant that the crew were subjected to higher than normal gravity load on their descent,” Lyndin told said. Russian search and rescue teams quickly located the craft, which landed just under 340 kilometres west of the designated landing site near Arkalyk in north-central Kazakhstan, NASA reported on its web site.
— AP
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Iran insists no nuclear shift after Larijani
Tehran, October 21 Larijani, who was seen as having a moderating influence on nuclear policy, stepped down following a prolonged disagreement with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the handling of Iran’s position in the stand-off. His successor, deputy foreign minister Saeed
Jalili, is a hardliner and a close confidant of the president, and is believed by analysts to share Ahmadinejad’s unrelenting refusal of offering any concession to the West. But foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini insisted the change in personnel did not herald any switch in policy. “The resignation of Larijani was agreed by the President but the policies and strategies of the Islamic republic on the nuclear issue are unchangeable goals,” he said.
— AFP
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New York welcomes ladybugs as pest killers
New York, October 21 In the next days and weeks, they will crawl into plants, flowers and shrubs in the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex in search of insects whose smell attracts them-soft-bodied, leaf-sucking aphids and mites. Buying the bugs-at $16.50 for 2,000 -- means the complex’s owner, Tishman
Speyer, can avoid using chemical insecticides. “In most cases, we reach for a can of pesticide- and we kill not only the ‘bad guys,’ but the ‘good guys,’” said Eric
Vinje, owner of Planet Natural, which supplied the pest-killers. “All we’re doing here is putting more of the ‘good guys’ to tip the scale, to get some kind of pest population control.” He said a ladybug can eat up to 50 pests a day, plus insect eggs.
— AP
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Pentagon chief to seek troops for Afghanistan
Kiev, October 21 Gates, who landed in Kiev today to meet Ukraine’s government and attend the Southeast Europe Defence Ministerial, has grown increasingly frustrated by the failure of NATO allies to fulfil promises made to Afghanistan, his aides say. A senior defence official travelling with the Pentagon chief said one of Gates’s main goals was to press members of the Southeast Europe Defense Ministerial to send troops to Afghanistan. The 11-member group sent a 100-troop brigade, called Southeast Europe Brigade or SEEBRIG, to the war zone in 2006. “It’s to have a discussion about SEEBRIG and how SEEBRIG can potentially help in Afghanistan again possibly by undertaking a training mission,” the official said when asked about Gates’s priorities in Kiev. “Given the need for trainers in Afghanistan, could SEEBRIG undertake or consider doing such a mission there?” the official said. After meetings in Kiev, the secretary stops in Prague on his way to a meeting of NATO defence ministers in the Netherlands.
— Reuters
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Myanmar still in fear as curfew lifted
Yangon, October 21 The government ended the curfew yesterday in Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, where authorities violently put down pro-democracy protests, led by Buddhist monks, in late September, killing at least 13 persons and jailing about 3,000. Residents in Yangon said they were relieved to see the end of the nightly curfew, which lasted from 11 pm to 3 am, but confided that they did not yet feel that life had returned to normal. “People are very happy about the end of the curfew. We are free now,” said one company official in his 30s, who declined to be named. “But people, including myself, continue to worry about the situation because of what happened in Yangon last month,” he said. The end of the curfew came as military-run Myanmar was put under more international pressure over the deadly clampdown on dissent, with the United States Friday stepping up sanctions against the top generals including junta leader General Than Shwe. A 55-year-old housewife said she was glad that the government lifted the curfew, but added she would stay away from Yangon’s golden Shwedagon Pagoda, a rallying point for
protesters. — AFP
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Mouth sewn shut in protest
Bogota, October 21 Luis Miguel Aldana (52) told The Associated Press yesterday that he started the peculiar protest five days ago, after being locked out of his apartment in Bogota. Instead of paying two months of rent, Aldana says he bought shoes for his three children. Now he is demanding the government provide a loan to jump-start a cottage textile business and pay health care bills for his wife and children. Without the loan, he says his family will end up living on the streets. “I’m doing this to get attention because people have a heart of iron and also a face of iron-they don’t listen to anybody and think this is a joke,” said Aldana, speaking out of the corner of his mouth that is not sewn shut. Aldana currently is living in a neighbor’s house, where he sits in bed with his hands and legs shackled in chains.
— AP
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Postcard reaches friend after 64 years
Tokyo, October 21 The card travelled from Burma, Nagasaki, Arizona and Hawaii before finding Shizuo Nagano (80) in southern Kochi prefecture, according to Mukogawa Womens University. The postcard was written by Nobuchika Yamashita. He used to work with Nagano at their neighbourhood store before Yamashita was drafted. The postcard was handed to Nagano by a 20-year-old student of the university last week, it said in a statement recently. The student, Yuko Kojima, gave it to Nagano after staying as an exchange student in Hawaii.
— AFP
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Woman survives 19 hours afloat in Pacific
Ukumehame, October 21 Lillian Ruth Simpson said her canoe flipped in strong winds about 1.6 km off the Hawaiian coast. She could not restore the canoe, and tried to swim to shore and failed. “The times I thought, ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die,’ I would say, ‘No, I have three kids and you’re not taking me anywhere,” she told the Maui News. She spent a long night dozing off, accidentally swallowing sea water, throwing up and trying to keep warm by wrapping her bathing suit top around her head. By the time Joseph Carvalho Jr, captain of the boat Strike Zone, found Simpson on Friday, she could not remember her name. “She told me that she kept telling herself, ‘At least the water’s warm,’” Carvalho said.
— AP
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Two Indian labourers killed in Dubai
Dubai, October 21 The deceased identified as Ram Babu and Venkat Rao were clearing the debris of the demolished building when the beam collapsed. “The bodies of the victims have been kept at the forensic laboratory and an investigation has been initiated into the incident,” the Khaleej Times quoted a Dubai police official as saying. Both the labourers hailed from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
— UNI
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4 Globalstar satellites put into orbit
Paris, October 21 The first generation of these satellites was launched in 1999 by Starsem, the Russian-European subsidiary of Arianespace from Baikonur. Four more satellites were put in orbit in May this year.
— AFP
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