India mulls ‘legalising gambling’ amid cricket scandal

NEW DELHI: The Indian government is looking at proposals to legalise the country’s multi-million-dollar underground gambling market to tackle corruption in cricket, according to a newspaper report Sunday.

India is regarded as the hotbed of global betting syndicates, with gamblers and bookmakers involved in a massive network of illegal “spot-fixing” — when stakes are pitched on individual balls or on short passages of play.

“The aim is to ascertain whether legalized betting can exist in India without the stigma attached to it now. So, we are looking at the pros and cons with great care,” an unnamed sport ministry official told the Times of India.

The shady world of Indian bookmakers came to light in a match-fixing scandal in 2000 that led to life bans for Test captains Hansie Cronje (South Africa), Mohammad Azharuddin (India) and Salim Malik

Mideast talks to resume in Egyptian Red Sea resort

CAIRO: The second round of direct peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians will take place in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on September 14-15, the Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.

At the relaunching of the talks in Washington on Thursday, U.S. mediator George Mitchell said the coming round would be held on those dates in the region, without specifying an exact venue, and that the two sides would meet every two weeks.

“Egypt will host the second round of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh,” Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said in a statement carried by the state news agency MENA.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lead the negotiations with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attending, Zaki added.

Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab

Settlement policy closes the door to peace: Palestine

WASHINGTON: Middle East talks in Washington have produced a pledge from Israeli and Palestinian leaders to continue regular negotiations, with the goal of a new peace deal by the end of the year.

The US says that”s the aim of all parties, which met for their first face-to-face talks in almost two years, but Jewish settlements and Hamas attacks remain major stumbling blocks.

Dr. Saeb Erakat, Palestine”s chief negotiator, told media about two main ways for the negotiations right now.

“I think it’s obvious now that we really hope that when the Israeli government has the choice between settlements and peace, that they will choose peace,” Erakat said. “The land that’s supposed to be the Palestinian state is being eaten up, annexed, dictated upon by settlements… confiscation, evictions from homes.”

“So if the Israeli government continues with the settlement activities, it means they have locked the door in our faces,” he stated. “(If they stop settlement activities), I think we can give the negotiations the chance they deserve.”

Six dead, over 300 hurt in China pipeline blast

BEIJING: At least six people died and more than 300 others were injured in an explosion when a chemical pipeline ignited in eastern China on Wednesday, state media reported.

The blast occurred in the city of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, at about 10:00 am (0200 GMT), China National Radio said on its website. It said a pipeline carrying ethylene blew up on the grounds of an abandoned plastics factory.

The official news agency said its reporters had seen six people recorded as dead at nearby hospitals. More than 300 people, including 52 with serious injuries, were rushed to local hospitals for treatment, the China News Service said.

Authorities were still trying to determine the total number of casualties from the blast, which blew out windows in buildings up to 300 meters (yards) away, reports said. The explosion hit a bus passing through the area, injuring many passengers, agency said.

Israel rejects Abbas terms for direct talks

JERUSALEM: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has laid down “impossible” conditions for moving to direct peace talks, Israel”s vice prime minister charged on Wednesday.

“The Palestinians have set three impossible conditions: that the negotiations start from the point they left off at the end of 2008 when Ehud Olmert was prime minister, that they be based on a total Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and that the freeze of (settlement) construction continue,” Silvan Shalom told Israeli public radio.

His remarks came ahead of a scheduled meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on Thursday to decide whether to endorse a move to direct negotiations after nearly three months of US-brokered indirect talks that have shown little sign of progress.

Washington has been pressing the two sides for more than a year to relaunch direct talks which were suspended after the start of the Gaza war in December 2008.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is ready to meet with Abbas at any time but the Palestinians have demanded certain guarantees they say are necessary to ensure that these talks succeed where past rounds have failed.

Specifically, they want Israel to accept the 1967 borders, demarcating the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, as the basis for the negotiations, as well as a complete halt to all settlement activity on Palestinian land.

Israel approved a limited moratorium on the construction of settler homes in the West Bank that expires in September and which was rejected as insufficient by the Palestinians because it did not include east Jerusalem.

Israel occupied the mostly Arab half of the city in the 1967 Six Day War and annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community. It views the entire city as its “eternal, undivided” capital.

The Palestinians view east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state, and the city”s fate has been one of the most intractable issues in past rounds of negotiations going back to the early 1990s.

US wants stability of Pak economy, democracy: Clinton

ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said her country wants the stability of Pakistan’s economy and the democratic institutions here, Geo News reported Monday.

Addressing a joint press conference along with her Pakistan counterpart Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at Foreign Office after Strategic Dialogues, she said the US would give Pakistan $7 billion in non-military aid over five years.

She said her meetings with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani were positive and various issues relating Pakistani public were mulled over.

Clinton said the US wants lasting and enduring relations and cooperation with Pakistan, adding her country will cooperate with Pakistan in sectors including energy, health and education.

She told that dialogues focused on raising the standards of living of Pakistan’s people and the projects of water and electricity were discussed.

The US top official said, ‘The action is better than the speech and we are acting.’

Responding a query, he said, ‘We are ready to talk to those willing for peace in Afghanistan,’ acknowledging that Afghan army and people both suffered a heavy toll.

Hillary also voiced sympathy and condolences to the affectees of suicide attacks at Data Darbar and the victims of other bombings.

She also mentioned Pak mangoes saying they are delicious and she bought and savored them.

The FM Qureshi said the negotiations are in the interest of the two countries, adding trilateral relations and strengthening the ties between the two nations were mulled over in the dialogues.

Kerry-Lugar Bill is a document of long-term relations, he said adding he talked to the US top official about issues relating education, health, and Pakistani people.

Next round of talks will take place in Washington in October, the FM said.

Responding another query, he said Pakistan is faced with energy crisis which heavily impacted the economy and agriculture of the country.

Abbas urges Hamas to sign reconciliation deal

CAIRO: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Tuesday again urged Hamas movement to sign an Egyptian-drafted reconciliation document to pave the way for a transitional government.

Abbas stressed “the importance of Hamas signing the Egyptian reconciliation document,” in remarks carried by a local news agency, after talks with President Hosni Mubarak in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“After that we can discuss all the demands of Hamas and other parties during the implementation of the document,” Abbas said.

“If the paper is signed, we do not mind forming a transitional government or a government of technocrats or independents to oversee several issues, most notably receiving reconstruction funds,” he said, referring to the billions of dollars pledged to rebuild Gaza following the December 2008-January 2009 war.

Abbas said last week that he would send a delegation to the Gaza Strip to seek reconciliation with Hamas, following a deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

Hamas has said it will only sign the document with certain amendments, while Egypt and Fatah have refused to reopen the negotiations.

Abbas described as a “massacre” the May 31 Israeli raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for Gaza that left nine Turkish activists dead and called for more aid convoys to pressure the Jewish state into scrapping its blockade.

Israel has sealed Gaza off from all but limited humanitarian aid since the capture of an Israeli soldier by Hamas and other militants in June 2006 and tightened the restrictions after the Hamas takeover a year later.

In the wake of the flotilla raid, Egypt which had also cut off the territory indefinitely opened its Rafah border post, the only gateway to Gaza that bypasses Israel.

But it still aims to complete an underground barrier on its border with the Gaza Strip “by the end of the summer,” in a bid to stop the smuggling of goods and weapons into Gaza via a network of underground tunnels.

Doha trade talks at ”impasse”: WTO chief

PARIS: The Doha Round of trade liberalisation talks is at an “impasse,” the head of the WTO said on Thursday, as the United States urged Brazil, China and India to help break the deadlock.

“We are in an impasse,” World Trade Organization director general Pascal Lamy said after informal talks with trade ministers on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.

Lamy stressed that global trade liberalisation was “a low-cost package of stimulus” for economies in trouble over public finances, adding: “The reason for concluding the round is more appealing now than at any point before.”

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk meanwhile said it was up to Brazil, China and India to accelerate a deal, signalling that Washington was not prepared to make any further concessions in the negotiations.

“The real question is whether India, China and Brazil frankly are ready to assume a role and responsibility commensurate with the benefits that they have realised under global liberalisation,” he said.

“We are not going to negotiate against ourselves. It”s now time for others to be creative. We have gone far and above what is expected… to break this impasse,” he added.

The Doha Round of negotiations began in 2001 and has over-run a number of deadlines for completion. The latest deadline is the end of this year.

Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean said: “There is still too much that remains unresolved.”

But he added: “Even if you accept it”s not possible to complete it this year, that”s no reason not to advance it this year.

Doha Round negotiations have focused on further liberalising world trade by dismantling obstacles to trade for poor nations through an accord that would cut subsidies for agriculture and tariffs on industrial goods.

Discussions have been dogged by discord, including over how much the US and the European Union should reduce aid to their farmers and the extent to which countries such as India and China should lower import tariffs.

Historic opportunity for Obama to mend ties with Iran: Ahmadinejad

Iran President Ahmadinejad said that the US should take a positive stance on the Tehran declaration signed with Turkey and Brazil since it is the only chance to prove their goodwill toward the country.
He said this during a speech in Kerman on Wednesday. Ahmadinejad also said, Obama should understand that the declaration is a historic opportunity for him to show that he really wants to make a change.
It is unlikely that the Iranian nation will give a new opportunity to Mr. Obama in the future, he added. If they are telling the truth and are seeking cooperation and interaction, they should enter the negotiations pertaining to the Tehran declaration and act based on the articles of this declaration, he said. If they are seeking excuses, they should know the path of any action and constructive dialogue will be closed in the future, he added.

brittany murphy cause of death

Brittany Murphy’s husband, Simon Monjack, was identified dead (reportedly from organic leads to, based on Reuters) in the Hollywood Hills house he shared using the “Clueless” star, and where Murphy was found out unconscious in December.

Brittany Murphy cause of death was ruled cardiac arrest brought on by pneumonia, anemia and prescription drug treatments. Monjack, 39, initially blamed the 32-year-old actress’ death on a Hollywood studio that dropped Murphy from the “Happy Feet” sequel.

Though the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office has already ruled normal brings about in the death, law enforcement sources tell TMZ.com that prescription drug treatments may possibly also have played a part. Monjack was also scheduled for heart bypass surgery in September, based on TMZ.

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