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India remains in DHAKA, Dec 22: India remained in focus of Bangladesh’s foreign policy and domestic.....more SYDNEY, Dec 22: It is not just in the UK and the US that Indian students have been excelling....more
Madonna marrying Guy Ritchie after son christened DORNOCH, SCOTLAND, Dec 22: Madonna marries film director Guy Ritchie in a Scottish......more Mitterrand son jailed in PARIS, Dec 22: French judges have jailed Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son and one-time.....more |
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Pentagon
welcomes WASHINGTON, Dec 22: The Pentagon has welcomed the extension of Ramzan ceasefire in Kashmir by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and hoped that it would lead to greater stability in the region.....more
Taliban, not Pak ISLAMABAD, Dec 22: Pakistan military ruler General Pervez Musharraf was quoted today as saying that Afghanistan’s Taliban regime was in a position to supply arms to Pakistan and not the other way around......more India’s ceasefire PARIS, Dec 22: France today termed India’s decision to extend the Ramzan ceasefire in Jammu.....more Japan welcomes TOKYO, Dec 22: Japan today welcomed Indian Government’s decision to extend.....more |
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India remains in focus of bangladesh DHAKA, Dec 22: India remained in focus of Bangladesh’s foreign policy and domestic politics throughout the year 2000 with the two countries taking steps to boost cross-border infrastructure projects and political rivals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina harping on their pet issue of India-bashing. With no major irritant in Indo-Bangla ties, the year gone-by saw consolidation of resumption of Benapole-Petrapole rail line and significant progress towards starting a bus service between Dhaka and Agartala. The economic links between the two countries have strengthened considerably with India emerging as the single largest source of import for Bangladesh. Bangladesh accounts for over billion US dollar worth of exports from India but imports from Bangladesh is only around US dollar 60 million, a phenomenon that remains a major concern for Dhaka pressing for narrowing of the huge trade imbalance. Appreciating Bangladesh’s concern, India, during the year, agreed in principle, to allow duty-free access on a non-reciprocal basis to selected items of Bangladesh exports. To impart a new dynaism in Indo-Bangla relations, New Delhi has proposed to Dhaka introduction of border trade transit facility to Northeasten states through Bangladesh territory by Bangladeshi carriers and sale of gas. But Hasina Government has not yet taken decisions on the subjects, given their sensitivity in the politics of Bangladesh where she is accused by the four-party alliance led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia for forging closer ties with India. India has not let any opportunity to convey one of its major concern to Bangladesh bilaterally over Indian insurgents taking shelter in the Bangladeshi territory. Bangladesh Prime Minister has time and again assured that the territory of her country will not be allowed to be used by sessionists and terrorist elements. American companies pleaded for export of gas to India but opposition parties in Bangladesh vowed to oppose any such move. The Government decided to keep any decision pending till after the general elections next year. The two countries maintained high-level political contacts with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visiting Dhaka in June to inaugurate Dhaka-Calcutta bus service and Bangladesh’s home, foreign, commerce and industries ministers travelling to Delhi for talks with top Indian leadership. India also figured prominently in the domestic politics where the temperature has been steadily rising with fresh general elections just six months away. The four-party opposition combine stuck to its anti-India utterances more as part of political compulsion than out of any other reason. The rightist Islamic groups in the opposition camp found India-baiting even more necessary as Hasina’s Awami League maintained a strident stance against Pakistan throughout the year and turned the heat on pro-Pakistan right wing groups in the opposition alliance which kept up anti-Government stir. (PTI) |
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SYDNEY, Dec 22: It is not just in the UK and the US that Indian students have been excelling, many expatriate Indian students in Australia have made it to the class XII merit list with some scoring 100 per cent. As many as 69 of the 63,000 students, who appeared in the class XII examination, received a score of 90 per cent or above in at least 11 units of study. While the education department had no individual figures for students from various ethnic backgrounds, the list of honours had several Indian names. Rahul Garg of Merewether High School, who hails from Punjab, came here in year 5 and is the only student in his school to have secured a 100 per cent. "I thought I would do well, but people in the suburbs don’t get cent per cent. It is the students in Sydney who achieve that kind of results as they have access to better schools, better teachers and more resources". Rahul feels children in India are far more serious about studies. "Here there is a lot of emphasis on healthy body, healthy mind. I play a lot of soccer and badminton and chose personal development health and physical education as one of the subjects along with maths and science". While students in India might be moving away from the long and tedious line of medicine, most of the achievers here want to get into medicine. "It is interesting, challenging and at the same time gives one the chance to help the community," adds Rahul, whose mother is a medical researcher. (PTI) |
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Madonna marrying Guy Ritchie after son christened DORNOCH, SCOTLAND, Dec 22: Madonna marries film director Guy Ritchie in a Scottish Castle today after the fairytale baptism of their baby son was marred by a man’s arrest in the Cathedral where the christening took place. Mystery surrounded the activities of the Church intruder, who police said was arrested one hour after the couple and guests left the 13th century Cathedral in this sleepy highland village The BBC described the man as a protestor who interrupted the ceremony three times. But a Church elder who was among 24 local residents invited by Madonna to attend the baptism said there were no disturbances during the 30-minute Church of Scotland ceremony and the man was arrested long after most guests departed. "I don’t think anybody had any idea of any disruption," said the elder who did not wish to be identified. "The man was found trying to leave the church. I don’t know what law he would have broken." A police statement said: "a 51-year-old male from the South of England has been detained following his discovery in Dornoch Cathedral this evening." The unemployed man had no weapons on him and was not known to police. He had been charged with a "a number of relatively minor offences" and could appear in court in Dornoch on Friday. Asked if he was a suspected stalker, police superintendent Fim Heddle told Reuters: "I can’t say." The queen of pop and the top British film director were flanked by showbusiness celebrities and relatives for the ceremony conducted by flamboyant Church of Scotland Minister Susan Brown, dubbed "holy spice" by her adoring parishioners. The Minister made no mention of a disturbance when she told Reuters that the service "went very well. It was a very happy event. This was a great start to christmas. This is a fun time and this just adds to it". A radiant and beaming Madonna, 42, and Ritchie, 32, looked happy and unflustered when they walked into an early evening Scottish mist from the cathedral after four-month-old Rocco Ritchie’s baptism. With Paparazzi flash bulbs lighting up the night sky through the ghostly mist, the pop icon waved to cheering crowds packed five-deep outside the Sandstone Cathedral. Fans wolf-whistled as Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow and other guests left the church to return to secluded Skibo Castle about five miles (eight km) away where Friday’s wedding, also conducted by Smith, will take place. Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, who introduced Madonna and Ritchie at a dinner party two years ago, grinned from ear to ear for photographers. Ritchie’s 71-year-old father who served in the local Seaforth Highlanders Regiment, was equally delighted by the family gathering. The Ritchie family’s connection with the area and its secluded beauty were the reasons the couple chose Dornoch. With up to 1,000 reporters staging Dornoch’s biggest invasion since the vikings pillaged the highlands in the sixth century, Madonna feared for her children’s safety amid what she called "the media madness". Madonna’s four-year-old daughter Lourdes — her father is fitness trainer Carlos Leon — joined her mother for Rocco Ritchie’s big night. Police had warned the Paparazzi that anyone overstepping the crowd barriers could end up in jail for Christmas. Madonna’s fears proved ill-founded as the photographers captured the shots they had been patiently waiting for all week with little pushing and shoving. Madonna was dressed in an ankle-length cream coat with her hair tied back in a bun. Ritchie, carrying the couple’s four-month-old son wrapped in a white christening robe against the chill night air, was in a long dark overcoat. For Madonna, a divorced Catholic, and Ritchie, a protestant, the Church of Scotland baptism and wedding rites present few complications. The couple can write their own wedding vows and plan to do so. The Church of Scotland, which has no hierarchy of bishops or archbishops, has around 626,000 members throughout Scotland, and is by far the main denomination there. (REUTERS) |
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Mitterrand son jailed in French arms probe PARIS, Dec 22: French judges have jailed Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son and one-time African affairs advisor to the late President Francois Mitterrand, in a widening probe of suspected illegal arms sales to Angola, judicial sources said today. Mitterrand, who was taken in for questioning early on Thursday along with popular novelist Paul-Loup Sulitzer, was sent to the forbidding Sante prison in Paris late in the day after testifying for hours before two investigating magistrates, they said. The judges told him he was being held as they investigated him on suspicion of influence peddling, complicity in arms trafficking and abuse of confidence and company funds. Jailing a public figure freshly put under judicial investigation, a step just short of being charged, is a rare step in France. But increasingly daring magistrates have begun resorting to it in a campaign to investigate charges of high-level corruption that used to be ignored. Mitterrand, a former news agency correspondent in Africa, was his father’s African strategy adviser from 1986 to 1992 as head of the "African cell" that directly handled top-level relations with France’s former colonies in Africa. The sources said Sulitzer, who was also taken in after the two men’s names were found on computer files seized from arms dealer Pierre Falcone, was still being questioned late yesterday evening. (REUTERS) |
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Pentagon welcomes extension of ceasefire WASHINGTON, Dec 22: The Pentagon has welcomed the extension of Ramzan ceasefire in Kashmir by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and hoped that it would lead to greater stability in the region. "Obviously, the unilateral cease fire announced by india is welcome. And we hope it can be something that leads to greater stability in the area," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said. Asked whether the Defence Secretary has been in touch with the parties in India or Pakistan on this issue or any other security issue on the "border conflict," Bacon said "we follow this primarily through our military command side, the commanders in chief." "I think that is the primary way we have been following what is going on," he said. (PTI) |
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Taliban, not Pak in a position to supply arms: Musharraf ISLAMABAD, Dec 22: Pakistan military ruler General Pervez Musharraf was quoted today as saying that Afghanistan’s Taliban regime was in a position to supply arms to Pakistan and not the other way around. Musharraf made the remark to newspaper editors in Islamabad while commenting on the new sanctions imposed against the Taliban by the United Nations Security Council, including an arms embargo, Daily Ausaf of Islamabad reported. Pakistan denies it, but it is believed to be the main supplier of arms to the radical Islamic Taliban, which is considered a Pariah regime by the United States and its friends. Musharraf said the Taliban had no need to buy arms as they have access to tons of modern arms left from the US-backed anti-soviet war fought in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 when both powers supplied massively to rival Afghan factions. Arms supplied to the anti-Taliban forces by their foreign supporters also fell into the hands of the Taliban when it captured Northern Afghanistan, he said. Pakistan was facing difficulties in meeting its own needs because of the US sanctions against it and was not in a position to supply any arms to the Taliban, the general said. (DPA) |
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India’s ceasefire initiative encouraging: France PARIS, Dec 22: France today termed India’s decision to extend the Ramzan ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir as "encouraging" and welcomed the initiatives taken by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to restart a dialogue with Pakistan. "We strongly welcome the December 20 announcement to extend the ceasefire for one more month which is encouraging," a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told reporters here. "We are equally satisfied with Vajpayee’s remarks on taking exploratory measures to restart a dialogue with Pakistan," the spokesperson said. France, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, had earlier also lent political and diplomatic support to the Prime Minister’s decision when he made the first ceasefire announcement on November 19. Diplomatic sources said the continuing support was the result of India’s strategic dialogue and other joint forum initiatives with France and the country now had better understanding and appreciation for New Delhi’s efforts to establish peace in South Asia. (PTI) |
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Japan welcomes extension of ceasefire in J&K TOKYO, Dec 22: Japan today welcomed Indian Government’s decision to extend ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir and urged New Delhi and Islamabad to resolve their outstanding disputes in the spirit of Lahore declaration. Japan welcomes the developments since Indian Government’s November 19 ceasefire initiative to stop violence and reduce tension, a Foreign Ministry statement here said. Japan would like both India and Pakistan to act in the "Lahore spirit" and strengthen their efforts to resolve their outstanding disputes, it said. India on Wednesday announced extension of the Ramazan ceasefire by a month and said the position would be reviewed after the Republic Day on January 26. (PTI) |
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