International

By IANS/EFE, Miami : Spain will provide its films to US libraries and educational institutions to promote teaching of the language.

By DPA, Phnom Penh : Cambodia is seeking private investment to build 14 new hydropower dams worth more than $3.2 billion, according to a government report obtained Sunday. The report titled Prime Investment Information in Cambodia details potential private investment opportunities around the country, including hydroelectric dam construction. According to the report, 14 dams of various sizes and capacities are estimated to be able to generate a minimum of 1,850 megawatts.

By IRNA

Tehran : United Nations-backed meeting - attended by participants from over a dozen countries in the Asia-Pacific region - on the social, health and economic consequences of population ageing kicked off in Bangkok, Thailand Wednesday.

The two-day seminar is being held by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), in collaboration with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), a press release issued by the UN
Information Center (UNIC) said here Thursday.

By DPA, London : A British artist whose inflatable sculpture killed two women when it broke free from its moorings was Thursday fined 10,000 pounds ($14,457) by a court in Newcastle, north-east Britain. Maurice Agis, 77, from London, was convicted for the breach of Health and Safety procedures after a jury failed to reach a verdict on the original charge of manslaughter.

By IANS/EFE,

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia's Air Force is planning to increase in the near future the number of combat aircraft and personnel deployed at the Kant air base in Kyrgyzstan, the Air Force commander said on Wednesday. The Russian base in Kant, about 20 miles west of the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, was established in October 2003, and currently deploys about 400 troops, including 250 officers and NCOs and 150 conscripts, as well as several Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft and Su-27 Flanker fighters, two Mi-8 combat transport helicopters, and four L-39 combat trainers.

By DPA

Belfast : An era comes to an end in Northern Ireland Tuesday when the British Army officially ends its operational support for the police service, bringing to a close an often troubled relationship with the Irish Nationalist population in the British-administered province.

The British Army's official role under Operation Banner, which began in 1969, was to support the police in defeating terrorism and maintaining public order and to "assist Her Majesty's government's objective of returning Northern Ireland to normality".

By IANS, London : Oscar winning filmmaker Michael Moore is on a weight-loss spree and has shed almost 70 pounds (30 kilograms). The 55-year-old claims old age inspired him to shed the pounds and he's only half-way through an epic weight loss programme, reported contactmusic.com. "I've lost 60 or 70 pounds since Christmas. I ran across this book called the Pritikin Solution, written by a doctor (Robert Pritikin). One of the things it says is don't talk about how you're doing until you're done. And I'm only half way done," he said.

By DPA Nairobi : Kenya's rival political sides were forging ahead with talks to end the stalemate Tuesday, a day after mediator and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan threatened to pull out after seeing no progress. Annan cut the talks short Monday, stressing the parties were "not capable of resolving outstanding issues", and opted instead to meet President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, telling them the decisions were in their hands.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington : As Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama launched a multi-million dollar media blitz projecting himself as an agent of age in the final days of the campaign, Republican rival John McCain questioned Obama's ability to lead. With six days to go for the Nov 4 poll, Obama's campaign spent more than $3 million to air a 30-minute infomercial on seven networks simultaneously as the White House race tightened to three points Wednesday in major opinion polls.

By IANS, London : The world's first experiments using embryonic stem cells to treat humans have been given the go-ahead in the US. California-based biotech firm Geron will begin clinical trials on patients paralysed by spinal cord injuries. Scientists hope that injecting cells from discarded human embryos into the spines of volunteers will trigger regrowth of damaged nerve cells and eventually allow the patients to recover feeling and movement, says a Daily Mail report from the US.

By IRNA,

By DPA, Mexico City : A 56-year-old man from the northern Mexican city of Matamoros has been arrested 600 times in 10 years for misdemeanours, such as roaming around drunk or disturbing the public order, the daily Reforma reported Wednesday. Since 2000, the man who sells sweets for a living, has been taken to the municipal prison at least once a week, sometimes at his own request. "Sometimes we find him really drunk in the Capilla neighbourhood, and we take him in so that he is not run over, or he himself asks us to arrest him," one police officer was quoted as saying.

By IRNA, Vienna : Iran's Ambassador to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asghar Soltanieh gave stern warning to the agency against violating its own constitution.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington: A major snow storm that buried the national capital Washington and surrounding area under a thick white blanket was expected to dump up to 12 inches in the New York area as it started moving north Sunday. Authorities were forced to suspend public transportation in the capital, declare a state of emergency and plead with residents to stay home as the powerful Nor'easter blanketed the eastern United States, leaving thousands stranded at airports and bus terminals.

By IANS, New Delhi: Noting that India does not view the rise of China as a threat, Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor Sunday said the two countries cannot afford to have a relationship of "antagonism". "The government of India does not view China or China's development as a threat of any kind," Tharoor said in his valedictory address of a three-day conference on "Emerging China" organised by Indian Council for World Affairs and Association for Asian Scholars. The conference hosted at Sapru House was attended by academics from China, South East Asia and Europe.

By DPA, Tegucigalpa : An attack on a bus in Honduras claimed the lives of eight passengers including four children, the Honduran daily El Tiempo reported Friday, citing authorities.

By IANS,

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : The toll from the magnitude-9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami which struck north-east Japan March 11 has risen to 15,500, police said Sunday.

By Chris Cermak, DPA, Washington : Republican presidential contender John McCain had to work extra hard for media coverage over the last week amid an international, headline-stealing whirlwind tour by his Democratic rival Barack Obama. Some of McCain's manoeuvres have included slamming Obama's Iraq policy and lack of military experience, hinting that he may announce his vice presidential pick and mocking the media's wall-to-wall coverage of Obama's trip to the Middle East and Europe.

By IANS,

By DPA, Brussels : The European Union was placed on alert Wednesday as a nuclear power plant in Slovenia reported a leak in the cooling system. The plant in Krsko, in south-west Slovenia, issued the alert that it had begun to spill coolant from its primary cooling system at 1738 local time (1538 GMT), a message from the European Commission, the EU executive, said. The commission instantly informed all 27 EU member states, warning them of the situation and requiring them to inform it in turn of any anti-radiation measures they would put in place.

By IANS, New York: Actress Nicole Kidman and her singer husband Keith Urban didn't shy away from indulging in some public display of affection at the US Open here.

By IANS, Colombo : Sri Lanka's ruling coalition Sunday swept elections to the Western Provincial Council, that includes the capital Colombo, after a high pitched campaign seeking support for the military offensive aimed at crushing the Tamil Tigers. President Mahinda Rajapaksa's United People Freedom Alliance (UPFA) secured 65 percent of the total votes cast, leaving the opposition badly battered. The United National Party (UNP) led by former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe came second with 30 percent.

By IANS,

By IANS/EFE,

By IANS, Beijing: Now, it's official. 'Chinness', the Chinese version of Guinness, has been recognised by the country's trademark regulator. Derived from 'Chinese' and 'Guinness', 'Chinness' has been officially approved by China's State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC), Xinhua reported Wednesday. "The trademark application took three years for verification and the SAIC's three month announcement period," said 46-year-old Zhang Dayong, the founder of Chinness.net.

By IANS, London/Paris : Pal Sarkozy, father of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has admitted in a new book that he had his first sexual experience with his nanny when he was 11. Pal, 81, has confessed in a new autobiography called "So Much Life" that he was a philanderer ever since seducing his childhood nanny when he was just 11, Daily Mail reported. He wrote: "Sleep! That's a joke! I innocently asked the nanny to lie down next to me as if to give me a big cuddle while whispering the story. She obeyed.

By DPA, Brussels : Problems with transport equipment and with finding men for a long-awaited expeditionary force were set to top the agenda Friday as NATO defence ministers met in Brussels. "We have to make sure that our forces are suitable to face current security challenges and ready to react to rising threats," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said as he opened the second day of the ministerial meeting.

By DPA, Brussels : UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is "most concerned" by the recent upsurge of fighting in Sri Lanka, he told journalists in Brussels Thursday. "I am most concerned at the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Sri Lanka," Ban said on the sidelines of a conference dedicated to the piracy crisis in Somalia. "I would like to take this opportunity to strongly urge all the parties concerned to respect the call of the UN Security Council, made yesterday, in full and without further delay: too many lives are at stake," he said.

By IANS, Johanesburg: South Africa Wednesday gave a call to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to select somebody from the developing world as its new chief.

By DPA, Jakarta : Two powerful explosions ripped through the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels Friday morning in the Indonesian capital, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens of others, police and the security minister said. Six bodies were found in Jakarta's Marriott Hotel, two in the nearby Ritz-Carlton and another victim died in hospital after the blasts, which took place during the hotels' busy breakfast time, chief security minister Widodo Adisucipto said.

By IANS Kathmandu : Nepal's casino industry, embroiled in an ownership tussle, has hit the headlines again with gunmen opening fire at one of them, ahead of a crucial court hearing. Two gunmen fired three rounds of blank cartridges on the premises of Casino Royale in Kathmandu Saturday night, adding one more incident to a string of disturbances that have rocked the popular casino since this year after two of its partners became involved in an ownership dispute.

By IANS, Los Angeles: Actor Charlie Sheen has been accused of sending a death threat to a former associate.

By IANS, Beijing : Luxury carmaker Porsche will recall over 20,000 vehicles in China, the country's consumer quality watchdog said.

By RIA Novosti Moscow : Russian and Polish deputy foreign ministers will meet on Tuesday in Moscow to discuss U.S. plans to deploy elements of its missile defense system in Poland, a Russian diplomatic source has said. "During the talks the Russian side will be represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak and Poland by Deputy Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski," the source told RIA Novosti on Monday. The Polish delegation will attempt to overcome Russia's opposition to the installation of U.S. interceptor missiles in Poland.

By IANS, Tehran : Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani Wednesday urged the government to start enriching uranium to 20 percent, the state-run Press TV reported. The remarks came as EU member-states Monday agreed to introduce extra measures against the Islamic republic, in addition to the sanctions resolution adopted by the UN Security Council last week. Addressing lawmakers at a parliamentary session, Larijani criticised the West for bringing new sanctions against Iran, describing the measures as "unjustified".

By DPA, Washington : The US Federal Reserve Wednesday kept interest rates at their historic low of near 0 percent and noted signs that the world's largest economy is recovering from recession. The central bank's board said economic conditions "continued to pick up" since its last meeting in November but were likely to "remain weak for a time," indicating it would keep rates at their current low for some time.

Jeddah, Sep 13 (IANS) Saudi Arabia King Salman visited the victims of deadly crane collapse in the Grand Mosque in Makkah that claimed at...

By RIA Novosti Tokyo : A second group of US officials and nuclear experts is expected to arrive in North Korea Saturday to continue work on disabling nuclear facilities, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. In a six-party deal sealed earlier this month, North Korea committed itself to disclosing and disabling its nuclear programme by the end of the year, in exchange for 950,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil or its equivalent.

By IANS, El Alto (Bolivia) : Bolivian President Evo Morales has enacted a new constitution that he says will "refound" the country on the basis of unity, equality and dignity and put it on a path to national reconciliation, EFE reported Sunday. "Mission accomplished. For the refounding of a united Bolivia," Morales said Saturday while enacting a charter that was approved by popular vote in a referendum held Jan 25.

By IANS, London: Bosses at a US company have unveiled a bizarre new plan to produce 10 sparkling diamonds from locks of late pop legend Michael Jackson's hair. Executives at LifeGem have obtained a sample of the King Of Pop's tresses from a memorabilia collector, who owned some of the hair Jackson burned off his scalp while filming a 1984 Pepsi commercial and now LifeGem founder Dean VandenBiesen plans to create a limited edition set of 10 diamonds using a laboratory process that takes carbon from hair and turns it into high-quality gems, reports contactmusic.com.

By IANS, United Nations: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Israeli statements.

By IANS, Beijing : Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie Tuesday met visiting US Secretary of Navy Ray Mabus and called for deeper mutual trust between the two militaries.

Tehran : Iran will hold bilateral talks with the United States and Russia next week ahead of the next round of its nuclear talks...

By DPA, Bangkok : Thailand will charge five Kazakhstan and Belarus crew members who landed a cargo plane with 35 tonnes of weapons at a Bangkok airport on the weekend, the prime minister said Sunday. "We will strictly follow our own laws and UN resolutions," Thai Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters. "Charges will soon be set."

By DPA, Sarajevo : Bosnian forensic experts started to excavate a mass grave Thursday in Kamenica near the eastern Bosnian Serb town of Zvornik, the commission on missing people confirmed. Murat Hurtic from the commission said that some 30 to 40 bodies were uncovered after the first layers of soil were removed from the top of the grave. The victims were Bosnian Muslims killed in the massacre in the former eastern Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

By IANS, Colombo : Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa took an initial lead early Wednesday over his main rival former army commander General Sarath Fonseka in the counting of the votes for the presidential election. With over 1 million votes counted by 6 a.m, Rajapaksa recorded 689,261 votes against Fonseka's 442,292 votes, Xinhua reported. The island's sixth presidential election was held largely free of violence Tuesday with a turnout estimated to be over 70 percent.

By IANS, Madrid: Spanish Guardia Civil traffic police have confirmed that they caught former Germany captain and Chelsea star Michael Ballack speeding on a highway in Spain.

Washington : The New Horizons probe has found a second mountain range situated between bright, icy plains and dark, heavily-cratered terrain on the...

By DPA, Washington: A triple murderer minutes away from being executed by lethal injection in Texas has been given a temporary stay of execution after a US Supreme Court order. Hank Skinner was eating his final meal before being due to be executed for the 1993 murder of his girlfriend and their two sons, when the legal order from Washington arrived late Wednesday.

By IANS, Chandigarh : At the present primary pupil-teacher ratio, there will be a requirement of another 18,000 primary school teachers by 2015 in Europe, an expert said here Tuesday. David Day, head of Life Long Learning, London said at a seminar on "Career for a teacher in Europe" here that British schools and colleges desperately need teachers with modern skills to enrich their curriculum and there are estimated 15-20 percent vacancies for teachers in London.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russian scientist Igor Sutyagin, who has been living in Britian and is one of the spies exchanged as part of a Russia-US spy swap deal early this month, said Thursday that he plans to return to his home country. Sutyagin was sentenced in 2004 in Russia to 15 years in prison for passing information to the US intelligence agency CIA. "I'm going to return to Obninsk (near Moscow) and fix the rickety porch of our house," Ekho Moskvy radio quoted the scientist as saying. "Sooner or later, I don't know yet, but this will happen," he added.

By IANS, Ottawa : Canada has decided to pull out of a NATO project that collects strategic information through unmanned aerial vehicles.

By IANS, Washington: The private sector in the US saw 110,000 more jobs in October, according to a report.

By DPA, Brussels : The European Union (EU) Wednesday hit a deadlock over the question of how to fund the fight against climate change in the developing world, EU diplomats said. The bloc is committed to supporting climate-change mitigation measures in poorer countries as part of a bid to win global acceptance for strict limits on emissions of greenhouse gases at a meeting in Copenhagen in December. But representatives of the EU's 27 member states meeting in Brussels failed to agree on how their countries should share the bill, diplomats close to the talks told DPA.

By DPA, New York : UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon decided Tuesday to call 2010 the year of Millennium Development Goals, which will review progress to achieve a set of eight programmes by 2015. The goals were set by the UN General Assembly in 2000, including halving extreme poverty, universal education for children, ending child and maternal mortality and stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS. The assembly is planning meetings in 2010 to review progress made so far by governments and whether the goals can be reached in 2015.

Caracas, Sep 18 (IANS) Venezuela is planning to increase oil production from the current 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to five million barrels in 2012, President Hugo Chavez has said. "We'll take it there on pace with prices because for us it's more important to maintain the correct price of oil than to flood the market," Spanish news agency EFE quoted Chavez as saying during his weekly Sunday address. The Venezuelan leader has repeatedly said that the current price of oil was "fair" and that he did not expect the upward price trend to reverse itself.

By IANS, Paris : French police have found bomb-making materials and arms during investigation of radical Islamists arrested over the weekend, an official said Wednesday.

By DPA, Rio de Janeiro : At least 12 people, including two policemen, were killed during shootouts between rival drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro on the weekend, officials said. Police said the gangs are battling for control of drug trafficking in the northern sector of the Brazilian coastal city recently chosen to host the 2016 Olympic Games. Gunfire also downed one police helicopter, causing the death of two officers, the report by the web portal G1 said. Armed men also destroyed at least five city buses and two schoolrooms in different neighbourhoods of the zone.

By IANS, New Delhi: India hit back at China Wednesday by asking it not to help set up projects in Pakistani Kashmir as Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee rejected Chinese denunciation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's trip to Arunachal Pradesh, a region Beijing claims. "We hope the Chinese side will take a long term view of India-China relations and cease such activities in areas illegally occupied by Pakistan," the external affairs ministry said, a day after Beijing came out with an unusually strong criticism of the prime minister's visit.

Miami : The voters of Miami in the US have approved a proposal by a real estate promoter to build a 1,000 feet high...

By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS, Kathmandu : Defying the possibility of imprisonment or even death, over three dozen Tibetan monks and nuns have begun a secret "freedom march" to Tibet from Nepal to draw the world's attention to their demand for freedom and respect for human rights on the eve of the Olympic Games in China. A resolute group of 23 monks, 17 nuns and two novices began the dangerous journey under secrecy Wednesday from the outskirts of Kathmandu in a bid to evade arrest by Nepal police, who have been put on high alert to stop anti-China protests in Nepal.

By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net

Bhopal: The Hyderabad-based Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee India, (CLMCI), has called upon the people to come forward to protect the right to life with human dignity, which is a universally accepted right, and struggle for the protection of this right to life for their fellow human beings.

By DPA, Tegucigalpa ( Mexico) : The summit on Climate Change and the Environment in Honduras approved a Mexican proposal for the creation of a global Green Fund. The initiative sponsor, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, said the fund seeks to help in reducing polluting gases. He further stressed his own country's progress in the defence of the environment and the generation of energy from renewable sources. The summit of Central American and Caribbean nations was held Wednesday in San Pedro Sula, 250 km north of Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

By IANS, Washington: About 46 million Americans lived in poverty last year, accounting for 15 percent of the population, the US census bureau announced Wednesday.

By IANS,

By Arun Kumar,IANS, Washington : Making clear that to keep its word on fighting terror Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency and keep communication lines open with India, the US has said it will try to "to make that happen." Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has been phoning in updates for President George W. Bush about her conversations with Pakistani leaders about last week's Mumbai terror attacks, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said Thursday.

By Surender Bhutani, IANS, Krakow : Millions of Poles glued to television sets and thousand teary-eyed men and women gathered in this historic city Sunday gave an emotive farewell to Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria, who died in a horific aircrash in Russia eight days ago. Several world leaders joined Poland in a national mourning not witnessed in the country since 1935, with a Church leader upstaging politicians by calling for reconciliation with Russia.

By Bernama, Windhoek : The Swapo-Party has rubbished recent media reports about brewing political tensions and factionalism within the ruling party leadership as mere rumours and fabrications, Namibian news agency, NAMPA, reported. Swapo's Secretary-General Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana told reporters at the party headquarters on Monday that the ruling party is 'solidly united like a rock' despite media reports to the contrary.

By Arun Kumar IANS,

By IANS/EFE, Bogota : The bodies of eight miners killed by FARC guerrillas were found Thursday near a gold mine in a mountainous section of the southwestern Colombian province of Cauca, Caracol Radio reported. A miner who survived the attack by pretending to be dead notified authorities of the killings. A group of armed men wearing hoods surprised the miners, told them they should not be in the area and opened fire, the eyewitness, who was wounded in the attack, said.

By IANS, New York : As demanded by the local Sikh community, US authorities have charged an American teenager with hate crime for setting fire to a fellow Sikh student's turban in a New Jersey school. The accused, 18-year-old Garrett Green, has pleaded not guilty to the multiple charges of aggravated assault, bias intimidation, arson and criminal mischief in the incident at Hightstown High School in central New Jersey May 5. Municipal Court Judge Gregory Williams has asked Green to appear before him May 21.

By DPA, Stockholm : Over 5,100 confirmed cases of the influenza A(H1N1) have now been reported worldwide, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said Monday. With 2,532 cases, the United States alone accounted for almost half the global number of cases, followed by Mexico on 2,062 cases and 284 cases in Canada, the pan-European agency's updated figures indicated. The influenza has to date claimed 53 lives of which 48 are in Mexico, three in the US and one in Canada, the ECDC said.

By DPA Geneva : UN humanitarian agencies said they had temporarily suspended operations in Congo after four attacks in three weeks targeting international organizations. Equipment and goods destined for relief operations had been stolen and personnel attacked in South Kivu province. In mid-March, money and equipment had been stolen in an armed hold-up of vehicles in Kashatu. Later that month, at Minova, members of the international non-governmental organization (NGO) Doctors without Borders had been injured when their base was attacked and cash and communication equipment stolen.

By RIA Novosti Rome : Five children were released on Wednesday several hours after a man armed with a box-cutting knife barricaded himself into a day-care centre in southern Italy. National media said however that the siege was continuing and that some 15 children and two teachers were still inside the building in Italy's southernmost city of Reggio-Calabria.

By Parveen Chopra, IANS New York : Pope Benedict XVI Friday emphasised the role that respect for human rights - including right to religious freedom - can play in solving many of the world's problems. Addressing the UN General Assembly here, he, however, cautioned that international cooperation was threatened by "the decisions of a small number" of nations. Calling the UN's work in this regard as vital, the pontiff said the world's problems call for collective interventions by the international community.

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By Neena Bhandari, IANS Sydney : As the countdown begins for one of the most closely contested elections in Australia in a decade, will anyone of Indian origin be elected to the federal parliament this Saturday? Time will tell. But the presence of around 12 Indian origin Australians contesting this federal election is testimony to the fact that they want to have a real say in the way their adopted country is ruled.

By IANS, Panaji: After Chinese goods taking over the Indian market, a Chinese film will open 40th edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) here Monday. "Wheat", directed by He Ping, is set in 260 BC when China was mired in a long and bloody war between the Qin and the Zhao dynasties. Starring Fan Bingbing and Wang Jue, "Wheat" tells the story of women left behind after their husbands are sent to war. The film was produced for $6 million and was funded by He's own Beijing Classic Culture, along with Polybona Films, and the state-backed Xi'an Film Studio.

By EFE, Mexico City : The Mexican economy grew 2.7 percent in the third quarter and has therefore climbed out of its worst recession in decades, President Felipe Calderon has said. "This result is very good news because it indicates the end of the recession, of the economic contraction in the country and we're working hard so this recovery continues and broadens in the coming years," the head of state said while inaugurating the Bloomberg Mexico Economic Forum in this capital Thursday.

By SPA, Moscow : Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced an array of government changes including splitting Russia's ministry of energy and industry in two. The move appears to reflect Russia's growing emphasis on trying to resuscitate its industrial base while still relying on oil and gas export revenues, the Associated Press reported. Putin turned over the Russian presidency to protege Dmitry Medvedev last week and quickly was nominated and confirmed as prime minister. He announced the government changes on Monday after meeting with Medvedev.

By IANS, New Delhi: The soaring popularity of Twenty20 cricket has prompted the International Cricket Council (ICC) to expand its base and reach a record 216 countries through television coverage in World Twenty20 beginning in England from June 5. The inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa in 2007 was a huge success. India, the financial hub of the sport, won the Championship and soon Twenty20 cricket became the new flavour in the cricket mad nation.

By SPA, Washington : The White House said a decline in July retail sales reported on Wednesday reflected problems in the U.S. auto industry, and that fiscal and monetary stimulus would contribute to U.S. economic growth in the third and fourth quarters of this year. “Overall retail sales declined slightly in July, but most of that reflects ongoing difficulties in the auto industry,” Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, told reporters.

By IANS, London : New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has questioned whether it was safe for its cricketers to tour Zimbabwe, a country undergoing political and social breakdown. New Zealand are scheduled to play a one-day series in Zimbabwe in July, but Key made his scepticism clear. He questioned why the International Cricket Council (ICC) continues to support the country. "There are security risks for our players, there is the risk of cholera, and quite frankly we don't support that regime and we have made that quite clear," Key said.

By Uma Nair

IANS

London : Claude Monet's 1904 masterpiece "Nymphéas" will be the star of Sotheby's auction here next week and is estimated to fetch upto 15 million pounds.