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Indira felt a pathological need
to criticise US: Kissinger
Registration, verification of rebels’ combatants
Punjab Immigrants |
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Lankan airlines’ UK head asked to leave island
Tony Blair converts to Catholicism
The fat lottery prize of $ 3b out
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Indira felt a pathological need
to criticise US: Kissinger
Washington, December 22 This assessment was given by the then powerful Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to President Gerald Ford after his meeting with Gandhi in October 1974, a few months after India exploded its first atomic bomb. Kissinger’s views were contained in a memorandum put up for Ford by his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, recently-released State Department documents show. After India went nuclear, Kissinger told Gandhi that the US was not interested in “recriminations” but in how to prevent further Kissinger said he had raised concerns over New Delhi’s nuclear policy, telling Gandhi “very frankly” that “their nuclear explosion was a bomb no matter how India described it” and her undertaking not to produce nuclear weapons did not mean the next government would not do so. “By our second meeting, she seemed to have reflected on this and asked if we had any specific proposals. I have asked (then Ambassador Daniel P) Moynihan to follow up this possible opening with her,” he said. The talks with Gandhi were “frank but very warm” and it was evident that “they are very pleased by the visit and our recognition of India as an important country in the world and the predominant power in the sub-continent,” said the former top official of Richard Nixon and Ford Administrations. “Despite Mrs Gandhi’s almost pathological need to criticise the United States, she, too, desires to see relations between us improve on this new and more equal basis,” he said.
— PTI
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Registration, verification of rebels’combatants
The United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) said on Saturday that it had completed the second stage of registration and verification of Maoist combatants, in accordance with the Agreement on Monitoring of the Management of Arms and Armies (AMMAA). According to a statement issued by the UNMIN, the last combatants to be verified were those retained outside the cantonments to provide security arrangements for the Maoist leadership or for medical treatment, as per the understanding on this matter reached between the government of Nepal and former rebels. The last group of Maoist combatants -- more than 300 People’s Liberation of Army-- was interviewed at the party’s central office of the Community Party of Nepal- Maoist in Kathmandu on December 20 to 21. The AMMAA provides that upon registration, those found to be born after May 25, 1988, will be honourably and automatically discharged. UNMIN had repeatedly urged the government and the Maoists to reach decisions relevant to discharge and reintegration, including payments. According to a reliable source, the Joint Monitoring Verification Committee comprising mainly of UNMIN military experts, representatives of Nepal Army and Maoist combatants have found more than 40 per cent of total 31,000 Maoists combatants, who were registered during the first phase verification, either to be disqualified or absent during the second state verification.
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Punjab Immigrants
Toronto, December 22 Visa officer Brian Hudson allegedly made the remarks when British Columbia’s attorney-general Wally Oppal visited India recently. Oppal said he was informed that Hudson told a delegation of university and college officials that he did not understand “why Canada was recruiting immigrants from Punjab, which has high-crime, forgery and human-trafficking rates”. “We take all allegations of bias on the part of the department seriously. The minister has directed senior department officials to look into the comments made by a visa officer,” the minister’s communications director Mike Fraser said in a statement. The delegation of university and college officials was in New Delhi as part of its efforts to attract more Indian students and professionals to Canada. Oppal, also British Columbia minister for multiculturalism, was in India at the time of the meeting, but was not present when the comments were made. He said that some had called the alleged comments racist though he had not used the word himself. Hudson deferred comment to officials in Ottawa, saying that he was “not going to jump into the political arena”, Globe and Mail reported today. — PTI
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Provocative Snaps
Sydney, December 22 Valerie Begue, from the French-run Indian Ocean Island of Reunion, was elected Miss France 2008 earlier this month. But she has refused to resign, saying she had been betrayed. Before the competition, contestants assure that they have never been photographed in compromising positions. But, one of the pictures shows Begue licking yoghurt provocatively, while another had her floating on a wooden cross in a swimming pool. Following the surfacing of the pictures, president of the Miss France contest, Genevieve de Fontenay, went on French radio to demand that Begue would have to stand down, or would be stripped of her crown. “If she had some courage and a bit of dignity she would say ‘I’m resigning because I’m not worthy to carry on as Miss France’,” The Australian quoted de Fontenay, as telling Europe 1 radio. She went on to say that if she had been aware of the pictures, Begue would never have been let into the Miss France competition. “I wouldn’t want to be seen touring the provinces with a girl like that,” she added. This is not the first instance when a beauty queen has embarrassed the competition organisers. The 2004 Miss France, Laeticia Bleger, was suspended for six months after her photos surfaced in the Playboy. — ANI
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Lankan airlines’ UK head asked to leave island
Colombo, December 22 The President was rushing back home last week from London for the crucial third reading of the budget in Parliament after watching the passing out of his son Yoshitha from the Royal Britannia Naval College in Dartmouth. But, the Sri Lankan Airlines reportedly refused to clear 35 seats for Rajapakse and his entourage on an over-booked flight from London via Maldives to Colombo on December 13.
— PTI
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Tony Blair converts to Catholicism
London, December 22 Blair, whose wife and children are Catholic, was received into full communion with the Catholic Church by Cardinal Cormac Muphy O’Connor on Friday. “I am very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church,” Murphy-O’Connor said in a statement. For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at mass with his family and in recent months he has been following a programme of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion.
— Reuters
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The fat lottery prize of $ 3b out
Madrid, December 22 The number was drawn shortly before 11 am in a live television and radio broadcast of the lotter, which this year is dishing out $3.1 billion in prize money. Each of the holders of the winning ticket are to receive $430,000. The tickets were sold throughout Spain, including in cities like Alicante, Madrid, Almeria, Barcelona and Toledo. The second prize of will be split among holders of tickets bearing the number 55469. Spaniards were glued to the radio and television as the prize numbers were called out in an event considered the official kick-off for the Christmas season. Although other lotteries have bigger individual top prizes, the Gordo is ranked as the world’s richest for the total sum
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