Hindujas top ‘super rich’ list
London, May 11
The Hinduja brothers have emerged as the richest persons in the UK, which boasts of 102 billionaires, including Lord Swraj Paul and four others of Indian-origin. London-based Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja, who have a fortune of 11.9 billion pounds - “up by 1.3 billion pounds in the past year” - edged out steel tycoon Lakshmi N Mittal and Russian magnate Alisher Usmanov, according to the Sunday Times Super-Rich List made public today.

Hasina blames Didi for Teesta treaty failure
Dhaka, May 11
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday blamed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the failure of Teesta water sharing treaty.

Rouhani: Iran won’t accept N- apartheid
Tehran, May 11
Iran will not accept "nuclear apartheid" but is willing to offer more transparency over its atomic activities, President Hassan Rouhani said today ahead of new talks with world powers.

Mariupol/Slaviansk, May 11
Separatist rebels pressed ahead with a referendum on self-rule in east Ukraine on Sunday and fighting flared anew in a conflict that has raised fears of civil war and pitched Russia and the West into their worst crisis since the Cold War.

In Mariupol, scene of fierce fighting last week, there were only eight polling centres for half a million people. Queues grew to hundreds of metres in bright sunshine, the event taking on an almost festive atmosphere as one polling station overflowed and ballot boxes were brought out onto the street.

Clashes broke out around a television tower on the outskirts of the rebel stronghold of Slaviansk shortly before voters made their way to polling stations through streets blocked by barricades of felled trees, tyres and rusty machinery.

"I wanted to come as early as I could," said Zhenya Denyesh, a 20-year-old student, second to vote at a concrete three-storey university building. "We all want to live in our own country."

Asked what he thought would follow the vote, organised in a matter of weeks by rebels, he replied: "It will still be war." Western leaders threatened more sanctions against Russia in the key areas of energy, financial services and engineering if it continued what they regard as efforts to destabilise Ukraine.

Moscow denies any role in the fighting or any ambitions to absorb the mainly Russian-speaking east, an industrial hub, into the Russian Federation following its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea after a referendum in March. Ukraine's Interior Ministry called the referendum a criminal farce, its ballot papers "soaked in blood".

One official said that two thirds of the territory had declined to participate. For a vote on which so much hangs, the referendum in the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, which has declared itself a "People's Republic", seemed a decidedly ad hoc affair.

Ballot papers were printed without security provision, polling stations were limited in many areas, voter registration was patchy and there was confusion on quite what people were asked to endorse.

Voting is due to end in the hastily arranged referendum in 53 locations at 10 pm (1900 GMT) and the rebels hope to have the ballots counted by Monday afternoon, although its outcome will not be widely recognised internationally or by Kiev. — Reuters

London, May 11
The Hinduja brothers have emerged as the richest persons in the UK, which boasts of 102 billionaires, including Lord Swraj Paul and four others of Indian-origin. London-based Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja, who have a fortune of 11.9 billion pounds - “up by 1.3 billion pounds in the past year” - edged out steel tycoon Lakshmi N Mittal and Russian magnate Alisher Usmanov, according to the Sunday Times Super-Rich List made public today.

The Hinduja brothers, who run the multinational Hinduja Group conglomerate with interests across automotive, real estate and oil, moved up from third position last year to top the UK's billionaire charts this year.

The list - a full version of which will be released next Sunday - also includes NRI industrialists such as Lakshmi Mittal and family, Prakash Lohia, Lord Swraj Paul and family, Anil Agarwal and Ajay Kalsi and family among the city's 72 billionaires.

Mittal also edged one position up to the third rank with 10.25 billion pounds even as Russian magnate Alisher Usmanov, who topped the list till last year, fell to the second place.

“Last year, the Hindujas sold a 49 per cent stake in a Saudi Arabian lubricants maker, Petromin, for more than 200 million pounds. Property investments in India have added 200 million pounds. The family's IndusInd bank is capitalised at about 2.7 billion pounds. In Britain, Hinduja Automotive turned over about 1.5 billion pounds in 2012-13,” the newspaper said. — PTI 

Dhaka, May 11
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday blamed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the failure of Teesta water sharing treaty.

Bangladesh and India were all set to ink a deal on the sharing of Teesta waters during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Dhaka visit in September 2011, but the signing had to be cancelled following last-minute objections raised by Mamata, Hasina said. Manmohan Singh had made positive remarks on the deal, she said. Hasina categorically put the blame on Banerjee for the first time on Sunday. — IANS 

Bauchi, May 11
One of the teenagers who escaped from Islamic extremists who abducted more than 300 schoolgirls said today the kidnapping was "too terrifying for words," and she is scared to go back to school.

Science student Sarah Lawan, 19, told The Associated Press that more of the girls could have escaped but that they were frightened by their captors' threats to shoot them.

Lawan spoke in the Hausa language in a phone interview from Chibok, her home and the site of the mass abduction in northeast Nigeria. The failure to rescue 276 of the students who remain captive four weeks later has attracted mounting national and international outrage.

"I am pained that my other colleagues could not summon the courage to run away with me," she said. "Now I cry each time I came across their parents and see how they weep when they see me." The police say 53 students had escaped and captors are threatening to sell the students still held into slavery.

Lawan spoke as more experts are expected in Nigeria to help in the search, including US hostage negotiators. Nigeria's government belatedly accepted offers of help last week from the United States, Britain, France, China and Spain.

Also today, a leading Nigerian rights group demanded the UN Security Council impose sanctions on the Boko Haram terrorist network who abducted the girls, saying expressions of concern and condemnation are not enough.

"The future of these missing schoolgirls hangs in a balance. The council should not leave them to fend for themselves," executive director Adetokunbo Mumuni of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project said in a statement. "But it is not enough for the Council to express concern." He said targeted sanctions would send a strong message. — AP 

Peshawar, May 11
At least five persons were killed and 14 others injured today when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a mosque inside a stadium in this northwestern city of Pakistan, the police said.

The incident occurred when the bomber entered the Arbab Niaz stadium stadium in Pardah Bagh area and fired gunshots.

Witnesses said security personnel opened retaliatory fire upon which the bomber detonated his explosives near a mosque inside the stadium where a government-run camp was set up for tribal refugees.

The intensive blast caused one of mosque's walls to fall down and nearby buildings were also damaged.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police's SSP operations Najeeb ur Rehman confirmed that the blast was carried out by a suicide bomber.

The bomber was believed to have been targeting a group of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Tirrah Valley of the troubled Khyber tribal region who had gone to the camp in the stadium to get themselves registered for ration and repatriation.

The bomber entered the stadium posing as an IDP and then detonated his jacket containing eight to 10 kg of explosive material.

Thousands of people from Tirrah valley fled their homes after the military began an operation against Al-Qaida-affiliated militant organisation in 2011.

Rescue teams reached the blast site and shifted the victims to hospital. — PTI

Hanoi, May 11
Protesters staged one of Vietnam's largest ever anti-China demonstrations today, decrying Beijing's deployment of a deep-water drilling rig in contested waters as territorial tensions soar.

Some 1,000 people, from war veterans to students, waved banners saying "China don't steal our oil" and "Silence is cowardly", a dig at Hanoi's handling of the dispute, and sang patriotic songs in a park opposite the Chinese Embassy.

"This is the largest anti-Chinese demonstration I have ever seen in Hanoi," said war veteran Dang Quang Thang, 74. "Our patience has limits. We are here to express the will of the Vietnamese people to defend our territory at all costs. We are ready to die to protect our nation," he said.

The two countries are locked in long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea over the Paracel and Spratly islands, and often trade diplomatic barbs over oil exploration and fishing rights in the contested waters.

Tensions between the communist neighbours have risen sharply since China unilaterally announced in early May it would move a deep-water drilling rig into disputed waters-a move the United States has described as "provocative".

Vietnam said China's decision was "illegal", demanded the rig be withdrawn, and dispatched vessels to the area- which it claims were subsequently attacked and rammed by Chinese ships. — AFP