International

By DPA Beijing : Chinese President Hu Jintao and Taiwan's vice president-elect Vincent Siew Saturday held landmark talks that were expected to set the tone for future Taipei-Beijing ties. The meeting was the highest-ranking contact between the two countries since both split at the end of a civil war in 1949. The 20-minute meeting was "very frank, friendly and achieved results", Siew said in a brief statement after the talks on southern island resort of Hainan. Taipei's position was that the two sides should "face reality, envision the future and put aside differences", Siew said.

By Prensa Latina London : Another 54 flights of British Airways (BA) were cancelled Saturday due to the crisis at Heathrow airport's new Terminal Five, since it began operations three days ago. Those cancellations add to another 100 on Thursday and Friday, and 37 others predicted for Sunday. Resulting from the poor running of the terminal, officially inaugurated two weeks ago by Queen Elizabeth II, thousands of passengers could not travel Friday, or had to wait long hours to do it.

By IANS, Beijing : Over 5.4 million Chinese visited 150 major memorial sites or cemeteries to mourn the deceased on the first day of the tomb-sweeping festival.

By DPA, Tokyo : Radiation levels have surpassed legal limits at a quake-damaged nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, officials said Sunday, raising concerns over radiation leaks.

By Xinhua, Phnom Penh : Cambodian courts this week will unveil public information boards designed to improve the accessibility and transparency of the country's legal system, local media reported Wednesday. The information boards, installed in sets of three, make details of court rules and procedures available to the public, the Mekong Times newspaper said.

By IANS/EFE, Vatican City : Cardinals met Monday for the last time to prepare the conclave at which they will elect the successor of Pope Benedict XVI.

By EFE, La Paz : Bolivia has expelled another US diplomat accusing him of conspiring against the government of President Evo Morales. Morales said Monday that he ordered the expulsion of Francisco Martinez, second secretary at US embassy in La Paz, for having links with the country's right-wing opposition and conspiring against his government. "Martinez was in contact with opposition groups during the entire conspiracy stage," the president said, referring to weeks of violent protests mounted last September by provincial governments in eastern Bolivia.

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By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS, Kathmandu : A man wanted for a string of blasts in Nepal's capital Kathmandu last year has been elected from a Terai constituency in the country's historic constituent assembly election. Babban Singh, who has been on the run since September when three explosions in crowded public places, including a bus, killed two students and a housewife, was Monday declared winner from a constituency in Rautahat district along the Indo-Nepal border.

By DPA Washington : Taiwan's plan to hold a referendum next year on whether it should join the United Nations is a "provocative policy" that will raise tensions with China, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. Rice Friday said the US opposes any attempt by Taiwan to alter cross strait relations with China and will not support formal independence from Beijing. "We think that Taiwan's referendum to apply to the United Nations under the name Taiwan is a provocative policy," Rice said in her final press conference of the year.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : The foreign ministers of Russia and Norway will visit border towns and discuss cross-border and fishing cooperation on June 9-10, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Monday. Jonas Gahr Stoere and Russia's Sergei Lavrov are to make a two-day trip to Murmansk, and the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, 250 kilometres away. The ministers are expected to exchange ratifications of the Varangerfjord maritime delimitation agreement, meet with local Russian and Norwegian authorities and businessmen, and inspect border crossings.

By IANS, Beijing : The Communist Party of China (CPC) has elected younger and more grassroots-level delegates to attend its upcoming national congress, a senior party official said here Tuesday.

By IANS/EFE, Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) : Four people, including two minors, were shot dead and another was wounded while playing soccer in this Mexican city, authorities said.

By EFE, Monterrey (Mexico): A group of gunmen attacked a detention centre in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, freeing 23 inmates and killing two federal agents guarding the facility. State police said a group of more than 20 gunmen Friday attacked the detention center in Escobedo, part of the Monterrey metropolitan area, and killed federal agents Roberto Gonzalez Barco, 33, and Ricardo Mota, 42.

By IANS, Beijing: Three astronauts who completed China's first manned space docking safely returned to Earth Friday morning.

By Xinhua, Zhoucun (China) : Overspeeding was responsible for Monday's deadly train collision in east China that killed 70 people and injured 416 others, the investigation panel set up by the State Council said Tuesday. A high-speed train from Beijing to Qingdao, coded T195, veered off the rails in the city of Zibo at about 4:40 a.m. Monday. The derailed coaches smashed into another train, coded 5034, which was coming from the opposite direction on the adjacent track.

Tbilisi : Eleven amateur and professional climbers from Georgia reached the summit of Mount Kazbek in northern Georgia as a memorial service for the...

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By Arun Kumar, IANS,

Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood, The unfortunate attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine of Paris in January 2015 has brought to the fore a man-made cataclysm that has been threatening to shape up in the world for over two decades blatantly defying the existential necessity of 'maintaining an inter-community relationship balance' that's needed for the welfare of humanity and everything else in the multiverse. Like a clap it needs two hands.

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By IANS, By AKI, Rome: Authorities in the Italian capital are converting an apartment that belonged to a mafia boss into a shelter for vulnerable children, officials said.

By DPA, Munich : The German state of Bavaria demanded Friday that a British publishing company stop reprinting Nazi-period newspapers. The educational reprints of the newspapers have become best sellers in Germany where most people under 80 have never seen Nazi propaganda in the raw and those over 80 do not want to talk about it. Albertas Ltd hired German historians to annotate the facsimiles and underline the methods of Nazi propaganda. The new weekly series, using papers from the 1930s and 1940s, is aimed at the general public and schools.

By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS, Kathmandu : As he awaits a critical hearing on his sensational murder trial in Kathmandu's apex court Sunday, Charles Sobhraj says he is unperturbed by the dark prophecy made in a new book based on his life and crimes by a former acquaintance.

By IANS, Moscow : Ten people were killed Wednesday when their plane crashed in Russia's far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, officials said.

By IRNA New York : The turmoil in the US airline industry deepened as the fourth US low-cost carrier in less than a month filed for bankruptcy, and American Airlines cancelled nearly 600 additional US flights for inspections. In all, American has canceled more than 3,000 flights this week, in a wave that began Tuesday. The actions, coupled with earlier cancellations at other airlines, have left passengers stranded coast to coast, disrupted businesses and tapped a deep well of ire against the airlines.

By Sudeshna Sarkar Kathmandu, Sep 28 (IANS) Nepal's Maoists, who left the coalition government earlier this month, called a two-day general strike in Mithilanchal, Nepal's Terai region, Friday to protest against the murder of their leader, Birendra Prasad Yadav, who was killed Monday. This fresh disruption of normal life comes less than a fortnight after violence engulfed the Terai region resulting in the death of 33 people and causing thousands to flee their homes. Sarlahi, Mahottari, Dhanusha, Siraha and Saptari districts were affected by the Maoist's shutdown call.

By DPA, Colombo: A former pro-rebel Tamil political party Wednesday officially announced its support of former army commander Sarath Fonseka in Sri Lanka's Jan 26 presidential election. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Sri Lanka's most prominent Tamil party with 22 members in the 225-seat parliament, called on minority Tamils to support General Fonseka, the opposition candidate, who is running against incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa. "We feel that he understands the problems of the minorities much better than his opponent," TNA leader R. Sampanthan said in Colombo.

By DPA, New York : Japan's new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Thursday his government will act as a bridge between nuclear and non-nuclear states because Japan has suffered the devastation of atomic bombs in 1945. Hatoyama also said Japan will play the same role in economic fora, where the formulation of regulations dealing with financial markets are needed, including summits of the world's 20 richest economies (G20).

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russian police are preparing to thwart plans by Georgian terrorists to unleash attacks in major Russian cities in retaliation against Moscow's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, a Russian daily said on Thursday. Izvestia published the texts of two alert notices sent to police stations nationwide, which said terrorists from Georgian radical movements had been preparing a series of attacks in cities including Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

By IANS

Brussels : Portugal, which takes over the six-month rotating Presidency of the European Union July 1, has planned summit-level meetings with all the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), with the 8th EU-India summit scheduled for November 30 in New Delhi.