Indian
hostages return home finally
New
Delhi: The three Indian truck drivers, abducted by Iraqi
militiamen, arrived in New Delhi early this morning. Antaryami,
Sukhdev Singh and Tilak Raj were released on September 1
after a 42-day ordeal. A Kuwait Airlines flight brought
the three into the Capital at 6 am. Joy and relief was writ
large on the faces of both the hostages and their families
who received them at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahmed along with
other top officials were also present. Upon their arrival,
the truck drivers said they were grateful to the Indian
government for securing their release. "I am grateful to
the government, which worked very hard to get us released.
Ahmed also worked very hard. Even people in Kuwait took
a lot of pains to get us released," said Tilak Raj. The
three men claimed they were looked after well by their Iraqi
captors. "We've returned after over forty days. I express
my heartfelt gratitude to the Kuwaiti people and the Indian
government," said Sukhdev Singh. The three men worked with
Kuwait Gulf Links (KGL), a transport company that had operations
in Iraq. An Iraqi group, calling themselves the Holders
of The Black Banner, had kidnapped them.
Sikh
anniversary celebrations (Go
To Top)
by Mike Lockey
London:
Sikhs across Britain, just like in many other countries
around the world, are preparing to celebrate the 400th anniversary
of the founding of their religion. "This special anniversary
is an opportunity for Sikhs to share the values and content
of the holy book with all of humanity" says Debinderjit
Singh, the head of the UK Sikh secretariat. The holy book
he refers to contains the scriptures completed by the 10th
and last of the Sikh gurus, Gobind Singh, and is acknowledged
by most adherents to be the foundation of the religion.
Local community leaders in Britain have also emphasised
the significance of the book. Santokh Singh, from the Birmingham
Council of Gurdwaras, pointed out that the writings contained
in it are in fact multi faith: "you will find that this
is the first inter-faith dialogue that includes material
by both Hindu and Muslim saints". To reflect this, the commemoration
this year will include inter- faith ceremonies welcoming
people from all religious backgrounds.
For example, on September
19th there will be a day of presentations by international
speakers, performances by musicians, as well as spiritual
discussions, taking place at the International Convention
Centre in the Midlands. The guests will include Joginder
Singh from Amritsar and the Archbishop of Canterbury, as
well as government ministers and local dignitaries. London
will hold a similar celebration at the Royal Albert Hall
on September 26th to which members of the British royal
family have been invited.
AP
government begins talks with PWG (Go
To Top)
Hyderabad:
Talks between the People's War Group and the Andhra
Pradesh government began today. Representatives of the rebels,
- revolutionary writers Varavara Rao and Kalyan Rao and
ballad singer Gaddar - began meetings with state Interior
Minister K.Jana Reddy here after a cease- fire was announced
last month. The PWG had sought the Cease-fire among other
demands before resuming talks which broke down two years
ago. Varavara Rao complained of continuing police harassment
of their cadres.The PWG has been waging an armed struggle
for peasant rights for the last 30 years.
Govt.-opposition
consensus on Indo-Pak dialogue reached: Sarna (Go
To Top)
New
Delhi: Senior leaders of the UPA government, including
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister
Natwar Singh today met a cross section of coalition allies
and opposition leaders to brief and seek a consensus on
issues relating to the weekend talks between the foreign
ministers of India and Pakistan. Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh held a breakfast meeting with his predecessor, Atal
Behari Vajpayee, who launched the peace process by extending
a "hand of friendship" to Pakistan in April last year. Singh
also attended a meeting of his coalition partners later
in the day. "These meetings have been held to discuss the
approach. I can tell you that the Prime Minister and the
Foreign Minister have consulted the opposition and the latter
have supported the government's approach to these talks.
And the approach is, that this should not be seen as an
event but a process that needs to be carried forward," Foreign
Ministry spokesperson Navtej Sarna told reporters here.
Diplomats and observers say they do not expect a dramatic
breakthrough nor a breakdown at the talks, which begin tomorrow
with a meeting between the two countries foreign secretaries.
Thereafter, the Foreign ministers will review the progress
of the composite dialogue process on Sunday and Monday.
Indian officials say they have presented 72 proposals to
Pakistan for "confidence-building measures" aimed at cementing
bilateral ties.
Lawyers-police
clash in Lucknow (Go
To Top)
Lucknow:
In a clash between the police and lawyers over a minor
accident, at least 38 people have been injured in Lucknow.
The trouble reportedly began when an Army truck hit the
car of former ABA president L K Mishra. The incident occurred
near the Parivartan Chowk in the city's Hazratganj area.
The quarrel between the soldiers, traffic police personnel
and Mishra turned violent after he was allegedly manhandled.
Lawyers in New Delhi also staged a protest against the incident
in Lucknow. Meanwhile, UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav
has ordered a judicial inquiry into the incident.
Shibu
Soren granted bail (Go
To Top)
Ranchi:
The Jharkhand High Court today granted bail to Jharkhand
Mukti Morcha (JMM) president Shibu Soren in both Chirrudih
massacre and Pirtand murder case. Soren had been in judicial
custody since August 2 when he surrendered before a Jamtara
court. He was given bail by the single bench of Justice
Tapen Sen after furnishing a surety of Rs.1.5 lakh. Earlier,
Soren had earlier moved the High Court for bail in connection
with the 1975 Chirrudih massacre. Soren had claimed in his
bail petition that he had never been served with the summons
in the Chirrudih case. The 29-year old case had led Soren
to quit as Union coal minister. The court had sent him to
judicial remand after rejecting his bail pleas.
POTA
case against Vaiko, 8 others to stay (Go
To Top)
Chennai:
A POTA court today refused permission to withdraw cases
against MDMK General Secretary Vaiko and eight others. Dismissing
the petition filed by the Public Prosecutor for withdrawal
of cases against Vaiko and eight others, Judge L Rajendran
observed that the Prosecutor's application was based on
the order of the Central POTA review committee. The reasons
assigned by the review committee were "untenable" as the
committee had not gone into the details of the case, Rajendran
observed. On September 1, the Judge had sought a copy of
the communication from Tamil Nadu Government directing State
Public Prosecutor (PP) for POTA cases to withdraw the case
against Vaiko and eight other party functionaries. He then
adjourned the case to September 3 for pronouncement of the
verdict. Vaiko's counsel had earlier filed a petition under
Section 317 for dispensing with the MDMK leader's presence
as he was undertaking a padayatra. Reacting to the verdict,
Vaiko today said the designated POTA court, which refused
permission to withdraw cases against him, had taken a stand
against him right from the beginning. "I do not want to
make any comments on the POTA court's verdict. Still, I
am confident that justice will ultimately succeed," he said.
Asked if he would challenge the POTA court's decision, Vaiko
said his case against detention under POTA was pending before
the Supreme Court.
PM
briefs Vajpayee on proposed Indo-Pak FM talks (Go
To Top)
New
Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today had a breakfast
meeting with his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee and is
reported to have briefed him about his government's preparations
for the weekend talks between the foreign ministers of India
and Pakistan. The meeting was also attended by Foreign Minister
Natwar Singh and his predecessor Yashwant Sinha. The BJP
leaders gave the Prime Minister their suggestions on the
issue Talks are scheduled between External Affairs Minister
K Natwar and his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid M Kasuri
on September 5 and 6. The UPA government has begun discussions
with the opposition as part of its effort to evolve a political
consensus on issues that may be raised during the forthcoming
talks.
Withdraw
Uma Bharti case by Saturday, Karnataka Govt told (Go
To Top)
Bangalore:
The Karnataka government received a major setback today
after a court in Hubli ordered it to withdraw the case against
former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti by 11 a.m.
on Saturday. The state government had filed a petition asking
the court for more time to drop the cases against Bharti.
The BJP leader is currently lodged in a makeshift jail at
a guest house in Dharwad. She was arrested last week in
connection with an attempt to murder case, where she's facing
charges of inciting mob violence in Hubli in 1997.
Pak
claims Shiv Sena hand in violence against Nepali Muslims
(Go
To Top)
Islamabad:
Officials here have alleged that an offshoot of India's
right-wing Shiv Sena outfit played a major role in perpetrating
acts of violence against Nepali Muslims earlier this week.
The News quoted the unnamed officials as saying that the
Push Patti Sena, an extremist Nepalese Hindu outfit, was
behind the attacks on Muslim establishments in Kathmandu
following the brutal killing of 12 Nepalese hostages by
their abductors in Iraq. They alleged that the Push Patti
Sena in connivance with the Shiv Sena carried out the attacks
as part of a well devised conspiracy. The Nepalese government
has however, condemned the attacks and said that it was
doing everything in its power to take action against the
culprits.
Rajpakse
Govt secures working majority in Parliament (Go
To Top)
Colombo:
Prime Minister Mahendra Rajpakse's coalition government
today secured a working majority in Parliament after the
Tamil-dominated Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC) said it was
prepared to back the government with its eight parliamentary
seats to help it to seek a lasting peace with the LTTE.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga's ruling United Peoples'
Freedom Alliance won a snap April election, but fell eight
seats short of an absolute majority. "My party is supporting
the government because it is a minority in Parliament. Once
our eight MPs support them, it becomes a majority. So, there
is more confidence in the government. They can now go ahead
with the peace process, they can do more development which
is now getting stalled. We have extended our support because
now everyone will get confidence on the government. They
will say now it has a majority," Ceylon Workers' Congress
leader Arugugan Thondaman said. "I have extended my support
and cooperation. It's up to the government to say whether
they want my support or not. Only then will the marriage
go through," he added.
Bloody
end to Russian school siege (Go
To Top)
Moscow:
At least 100 bodies have reportedly been found in a
school in southern Russia where Chechen separatists had
been holding hundreds of hostages, including women and children.
According to the BBC, heavy gunfire and loud explosions
were heard throughout Friday morning as Russian troops stormed
the school in the town of Beslan in North Ossetia in what
seemed to be an unplanned operation. Russian officials confirmed
that some dead had been found inside the school, while the
Inter Fax news agency put the death toll at more than 100.
More than 400 people were reported injured. Several of the
hostage takers are also reported to have died in exchanges
of fire with troops as they tried to escape. Some are reported
to have blown themselves up.
Bush
accepts Republican nomination (Go
To Top)
New
York: US President George W Bush has accepted the Republican
Party's nomination for the presidential elections to be
held in November. Giving one of the longest speeches of
his re-election campaign at the end of the Republican Party
convention, Bush said he had "a clear and positive plan
to build a safer world, and a more hopeful America". The
speech received a thunderous applause inside the Madison
Square Garden conference hall in New York. George W Bush
also used his speech broadcast on prime-time television
in the US, to defend his record over the last four years,
particularly his decision to go to war against Iraq.
Outsourcing
to India costs UK cancer patient his medical history (Go
To Top)
London:
Doctors and hospitals in the West are likely to think
twice before outsourcing their medical reports for transcription
to India in the wake of a recent report of maladministration
and inefficiency in service. According to the Daily Mail,
a patient, who was waiting to be told whether he had cancer
or not, was baffled when British doctors attending to him
told him that his medical reports had gone missing in India,
where they had been outsourced for transcription. Ian Ward,
a retired policeman, who had been waiting anxiously to find
out if he had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a savage cancer of
the lymph system, was simply stunned when doctors relayed
this news to him. "I find it ludicrous that we have the
best health service in the world and yet have to send off
notes to a Third World country. There needs to be a severe
shake-up of the Health Service. If someone has a disease
that is life-threatening, they need all the information
at a time that is crucial to them," the paper quoted Ward,
56, as saying. Eventually, Ward was told that he had cancer
by his consultant after the latter ran some of the scans
past him. This incident is likely to further the cause of
an ongoing campaign in Britain not to encourage the outsourcing
of medical transcriptions to India that has reportedly gaining
ground for the last month or so. Ward's case comes almost
a fortnight after a Daily Mail expose on errors made on
medical notes that had been outsourced to India. However,
Ward can now heave a sigh of relief as the reports have
finally arrived, though he is yet to see it.
