Washington, October 06: President Barack Obama will not meet the Dalai Lama during his five-day trip to the US capital beginning on Monday, the first time in 18 years the exiled Tibetan leader has visited Washington without seeing the president.
Obama instead intends to wait until after his November summit with Chinese leader Hu Jintao before meeting the Dalai Lama, possibly sometime in December, officials said.
Sararogha, October 06: Flanked by heavily armed fighters, the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban sat on a blue blanket, amiable and relaxed as he cracked jokes and mixed in threats of vengeance for deadly U.S. airstrikes.
One day later, a suicide bomber attacked a U.N. office in Islamabad.
Hakimullah Mehsud met with reporters Sunday for the first time since winning control of the militant group, quashing speculation that he had been slain in a succession struggle following the killing of his predecessor in a U.S. drone attack.
Kabul, October 06: Afghanistan edged closer to a long-awaited resolution to August’s presidential vote as election workers started recounting suspect ballots and an official said a ruling on whether President Hamid Karzai won or will face a runoff is likely next week.
The August 20 election was hampered by violence and allegations of vote-rigging that have since plunged the country into an electoral crisis while Taliban militants are expanding from their southern strongholds into the north and west.
Washington, October 06: The de facto government of Honduras has repealed a controversial decree that had restricted freedom of movement and freedom of expression in the country in the wake of the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya last month.
Hours earlier, in Washington, Zelaya had issued a statement asking the de facto government to end repression and restore “unrestricted” freedom of expression as signs it is serious about dialogue to end the country’s political stalemate.
Sydney, October 06: The Australian government has embarked on a novel campaign to combat a growing wave of illegal immigrants by hiring an international advertising agency to mount street theatre in Sri Lanka.
The agency Saatchi and Saatchi will take Canberra’s blunt warning against trying to smuggle themselves into Australia from the villages of Sri Lanka.
Hyderabad, October 06: Millions of people have been forced from their homes in what officials in India describe as some of the country’s worst flooding for a century in areas that were recently suffering from severe drought.
Athens, October 06: Greece’s Socialist prime minister-elect made final decisions Monday on his new Cabinet, whose main challenges will be to revive the faltering economy and improve environmental protection.
George Papandreou, 57, will announce his appointments after being formally sworn in Tuesday, party officials said. He won a crushing electoral victory over the weekend.
Saleapaga, October 06: Search teams combed the jumble of smashed houses and ripped foliage Monday in their search for human remains nearly a week after a tsunami devastated Samoa and neighbouring islands.
Eight people remain missing in Samoa and another two in neighbouring American Samoa following Tuesday’s tsunami which crashed into the South Pacific islands following an 8.3-magnitude earthquake.
A total of 135 people are confirmed dead in Samoa, another 32 in American Samoa and nine in the northernmost islands of Tonga.
Washington, October 06: The governor of Ohio granted a reprieve to two men facing execution, as his state re-examines lethal injection procedures in the wake of a botched attempt to put another inmate to death.
Governor Ted Strickland said the executions of Lawrence Reynolds this Thursday and Darryl Durr on November 10 would be pushed back until next year.
Port Dickson, October 06: PAS has become so desperate for votes in the Bagan Pinang by-election that it is prepared to allow its non-Muslim members in Pakatan Rakyat to quote verses from the Quran in its campaign, Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said.
This, he said, was unbecoming of a party which supposedly based its struggles on the tenets of Islam.
Working as a team: Hishammuddin and Barisan campaign workers expressing their solidarity in the by-election in Port Dickson yesterday.
Vijayawada, October 06: The unprecedented floods in Krishna district, which created a havoc since the last three days, was likely to recede from today with the discharges from Prakasam barrage to bay of Bengal was ”steady” since 0100 Hrs, early today.
Talking to UNI, an official in the irrigation department said if there was no further discharges from Nagarjunasagar to Prakasam barrage, the discharges here also will come down.
He said normally during the last three days, the discharges of as much as 10,000 to 15,000 cusecs of water had increased by every passing hour.
Washington, October 06: A top Republican leader today cautioned that Pakistan, in particular ISI, would change its behaviour with respect to terrorists once again if it got an inkling that the United States is about to leave Afghanistan.
“I guarantee you, if we send the signal to Pakistan that we’re leaving, I can only imagine the adjustments that will be made in Pakistan — Pakistani government’s behaviour, including the ISI if they think we’re leaving,” Senator John McCain said in an interview to Fox Business.
Washington, October 06: An Afghan immigrant accused of plotting a terrorist attack in New York after receiving training in Pakistan was in contact with a senior al-Qaida operative, intelligence officials familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press.
The CIA learned about Najibullah Zazi through one of its sources and alerted domestic agencies, including the FBI, intelligence officials said.
Mumbai, October 06: A key Indian equities market index shot up 90 points soon after the opening bell Tuesday.
The 30-scrip sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), opened higher at 16,879.38 points and moved up to 16,956.72 points, 90.31 points or 0.54 percent higher than its previous close at 16,866.41 points.
The S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) was also in the green at 5,032.25 points, up 0.58 percent from its last close.
Toronto, October 06: Indian Yoga guru, Swami Ramdev, has suggested that his techniques of pranayama, popularly known as breathing exercises, could help in healing many ailments, including swine flu and cancer.
“I want to promote and propagate ancient Indian heritage of yoga around the globe. My aim is to turn Toronto into a peace haven,” Swami Ramdev told thousands of yoga fans, who gathered at the Pearson Convention Centre here, yesterday.
He claimed the practice of yoga could prevent diseases like swine flu, cancer and AIDS, and argued that his teachings were based on science.
Washington, October 06: Defense Secretary Robert Gates appealed Monday for calm amid intense administration debate over the flagging war in Afghanistan, asking for time and privacy for the president to come to a decision — an apparent message to the commanding U.S. general there who has pressed publicly for more American troops.
Jerusalem, October 06: The United Nations’ refugee agency is planning to include the Holocaust in a new human-rights curriculum for pupils in its Gaza secondary schools despite strident opposition to the idea from within Hamas.
John Ging, the UN Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA) director of operations in Gaza, told The Independent that he was “confident and determined” that the Holocaust would feature for the first time in a wide-ranging curriculum that is being drafted.
Bangalore, October 06: The swine flu toll in Karnataka has touched 100 after one more person succumbed to the HIN1 virus, a health official said here on Tuesday.
The latest victim of swine flu was a 31-year-old woman who died at a private hospital in Bangalore on October 2. She was under observation at the hospital since September 15.
The report confirming that she tested positive for the virus was, however, received on October 5, a health official said.
Out of the 100 swine flu death reports in Karnataka, 67 were registered in Bangalore and the rest from other parts of the State.
Bangalore, October 06: The swine flu toll in Karnataka has touched 100 after one more person succumbed to the HIN1 virus, a health official said in Bangalore on Tuesday.
The latest victim of swine flu was a 31-year-old woman who died at a private hospital in Bangalore October 2. She was under observation at the hospital since September 15.
The report confirming that she tested positive for the virus was, however, received on Oct 5, a health official said.
Out of the 100 swine flu death reports in Karnataka, 67 were registered in Bangalore and the rest from other parts of the state.
Mumbai, October 06: The Indian rupee strengthened by 26 paise to hit a four-month high of 47.25 against the US currency in opening trade on Monday on increased dollar selling by exporters amid expectations of fresh capital inflows by foreign funds.
The dollar’s weakness against major currencies also supported the Indian rupee.
At the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market, the domestic unit gained 26 paise to quote at 47.25 a dollar, a level not seen since June 5.
The rupee closed 23 paise higher at 47.51/52 in the previous session.
New Delhi, October 06: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar yesterday termed as grossly inadequate the newly-formed authority to make the Ganga pollution free, saying it does not serve the purpose for which it was designed.
Kumar, who was here to attend the first meeting of the Ganga River Basin Authority chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, doubted the capacity of the GRBA in its task to clean the river and ensure effective abatement of pollution by adopting a river basin approach.
Guntur, October 06: Due to heavy floods in river Krishna for the last three days, the flood bank at Pallapalem in Battiprolu Mandal in this district of Andhra Pradesh got breached up to 20 metres today.
Official sources said, as a result there was a grave threat of Repalle and Pateru towns getting water-logged.
Andhra Pradesh Minister for Heavy Industries Kanna Laxminarayana, who visited the spot told TV channels, despite placing sand bags and large number of boulders to protect the flood bund, the breach could not be stopped.
Islamabad, October 06: IN WHAT is likely to be its sternest challenge yet, Pakistan’s military is poised to launch a major offensive in the coming days against militants in the remote mountainous terrain of South Waziristan, long rumoured to be the hiding place of Osama bin Laden.
Slavyanovo, October 06: The formation of an Islamic party is sparking a heated debate in Bulgaria within the Muslim community and the official establishment, amid fears of straining ethnic cohesion in the south-eastern European country.
“I do not think the formation of this party serves Bulgaria’s Muslims,” Arif Abdullah, former chairman of the Islamic Union for Development and Culture, told.
“This is a hasty and uncalculated step.”
The Muslim Democratic Union was formed in the northern village of Slavyanovo on September 29 and Ali Yuzeirov was elected its chair.
Cairo, October 06: The head of Al-Azhar, the highest seat of learning in the Sunni world, has ordered a school girl to remove her niqab during a visit to an Al-Azhar school, saying he would seek an official ban for the face veil in schools.
“Why are you wearing the niqab while sitting in the class with your female colleagues?” Al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi asked the 8th grader.
The young girl was shocked with the question coming from the country’s top scholar.
A teacher intervened to explain.