INDIA & WORLD

Gas pipeline issue: India for more comforts from Iran

New Delhi: India has sought more ‘comforts’ from Iran for safe passage of natural gas through Pakistan before a pact on the $7.4 billion tri-nation pipeline can be signed.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s six-hour visit on April 29 broke India’s eight -month non-participation in IPI talks and there is likelihood of swift movements to conclude negotiations.
“We had a very good meeting. The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conveyed India’s keenness to join the project,” Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said.
Sources said New Delhi wanted Iran to handover custody of gas at the India-Pakistan border and not at Iran-Pakistan border as had been suggested by Tehran, to cut transit risk through Pakistan. It also opposed price revision clause that Iran is seeking to insert in the gas sales agreement.

India among worst hit by terrorism: US

Washington: India was among the countries worst hit by terrorism in 2007 with over 2,300 deaths and the government’s counter-terrorism efforts remained hampered by “ill-equipped” law enforcement machinery and “slow and laborious” legal systems, the US State Depart-ment has said.
In its annual report on terrorism, the State Department said terrorist activities along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir are on the decline, but Pakistan-based militant outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and other terrorist groups continue to plan attacks in the valley.
“Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba and other Kashmir-focused groups continued regional attack planning. In 2007, Kashmir-focused groups continued to support attacks in Afghanistan, and operatives trained by the groups continued to feature in Al-Qaeda transnational attack planning,” it said.
The report said Indian government’s contraries efforts remained hampered by outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems.
“The Indian court system was slow, laborious, and prone to corruption. Terrorism trials can take years to complete. Many of India’s local police forces were poorly staffed, lacked training, and were ill-equipped to combat terrorism effectively,” the report said.

India’s voice must be heard: Manmohan Singh

New Delhi: Dismayed by poor international response to various crisis, such as energy, food and financial, affecting the world, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on April 29 India’s voice must be heard in the management of such issues.
Addressing the annual meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industries, Singh said, that India has a responsibility and a right to participate in the management of these global challenges.
“India’s voice must be heard on such matters. Be it the management of the world food economy, be it the management of the energy economy, be it the management of financial system or indeed be it the management of global security,” he said.
Pointing out the poor response to the ongoing energy crisis, he said the world oil demand rose by just one percent per annum over the past two years, crude prices shot up by over 90 percent in dollar terms and 40 percent in Euro terms.
“I am deeply dismayed that the global response to this Third Energy crisis has fallen short of our expectations and compares poorly with the response to the first and the second oil crisis,” Singh said.
He said the international community was also slow to come to grips with the now visible structural weakness in the functioning of international financial system.
“The management of financial sector in the developed economies, especially the US, has been less than satisfactory,” he said adding the sub-prime crisis and recession there had consequences for the stability and sustainability of global growth.
He said the international financial institutions have also not played an active role in dealing with the problem and the consequences of the problem. “This too requires greater consultation between the G-8 countries and the so- called G-5 countries,” Singh said, adding India also adopted a similar global approach in combating climate change.

China opens world’s longest sea-crossing bridge

Shanghai: China formally opened what it says is the world’s longest sea-crossing structure on May 1, a 36 kilometer bridge spanning a bay just south of the eastern business hub of Shanghai.
The Hangzhou Bay Bridge links Shanghai to the industrial city of Ningbo across Hangzhou Bay, cutting the driving distance between them by 120 kilometers.
The official opening was shown live on state television on May 1. The official Xinhua News Agency said traffic would start running on the six-lane bridge later on May 1. The bridge is a cable-stayed structure built at a cost of $1.7 billion. Construction started in November 2003. The 32.5 kilometer Donghai Bridge had been the previous longest sea-crossing structure, linking Shanghai to the massive Yangshan deep water port. Some of the financing for the bridge came from private sources, a first for such a large infrastructure project in China.

Indian docs win legal battle against UK govt.

New Delhi: Eight thousand Indian-origin doctors in Britain won a landmark case in the House of Lords on April 30. The Lords ruled that they could not be discriminated against in recruitment to the National Health Service. With four judges in favor and one against, the Lords Committee dismissed a government appeal that would have given preference to doctors from the European Union. The judges said it was wrong for the Department of Health to discriminate against non-European doctors. The ruling came as a big relief for Indian origin doctors, who came to the UK under the Highly Skilled Migrants Program (HSMP). The Lords Committee also awarded costs to British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO), which spearheaded the legal battle against government’s attempt to retrospectively introduce regulations to restrict non-EU doctors already in the UK from applying for training posts in the state-aided National Health Service.

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