Pakistan, India ink accord on liberal visa regime

Pakistan and India signed an agreement to relax visa regime for its citizens under which traders from the two countries will be allowed to visit ten cities while tourists will be given visa for five cities. Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Indian External Affairs Minister SM Krishna signed the agreement here on Saturday. Under the new regime, ordinary tourists from the two sides will be given visas for five cities. The citizens above 65 years will be issued arrival visas for 45 days. Visas on arrivals can also be issued on Wagah and Attari borders. Both the countries also agreed to issue multiple visas to each other’s traders for one year to visit ten cities. The two countries will also issue triple-entry visa to artists from both the countries under the new liberalized regime. Both the countries have also agreed to enhance air and sea travel routes besides restoring Mumbai-Karachi sea link. Earlier, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and her Indian counterpart held talks on wide-ranging issues including the new liberalized visa regime. Both the leaders are scheduled to address a joint press conference later in the evening. Krishna’s visit is part of ongoing composite dialogues between the nuclear-armed nations. His visit may lead to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Pakistan later this year. The formal Pak-India dialogue commenced today with one-on-one meeting between Khar and Krishna here at the Foreign Office. Later on, the two ministers were joined by their respective officials.

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UK PM expected to reshuffle govt

LONDON  - Prime Minister David Cameron was expected to reshuffle his government this week as British lawmakers returned to work Monday following their summer break. During the parliamentary holiday, Cameron has faced unrest from within his own centre-right Conservative Party, with one former minister asking whether he was “man or mouse”. It will be the first proper reshuffle of Cameron’s government since the May 2010 general election that brought him to office. The Conservatives are in coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats, led by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who has faced questions from within his own party about his leadership.

Writing in The Mail on Sunday newspaper, Cameron vowed to “cut through the dither” and breathe new life into the nation’s recession-mired economy with a series of new initiatives in this parliamentary term.

He also pledged that he would continue reining in Britain’s deficit amid the ongoing eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

Cameron’s official spokesman refused to comment on the timing or content of the reshuffle, widely commented on in newspapers Monday and expected to involve cabinet members as well as junior ministers.

Reports suggested that high-ranking ministers such as Clegg, finance minister George Osborne or Foreign Secretary William Hague were safe in their posts.

A YouGov poll in The Sunday Times newspaper put support for the Conservatives at 35 percent, centre-left Labour at 41 percent, the Liberal Democrats at nine percent and other parties at 14 percent.

Some 60 percent thought Cameron was doing badly as prime minister, while 67 percent thought the coalition was working together badly. YouGov sampled 1,739 people on Thursday and Friday for the poll.

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UN turns up pressure on Iran’s N-activities

TEHRAN - Iran was under diplomatic pressure on Friday after a UN watchdog report said it had expanded its nuclear programme and was hampering inspections, and UN chief Ban Ki-moon in Tehran called on it to release political prisoners. Iranian officials responded by denying some of the charges in the International Atomic Energy Agency report, which they said was timed to steal the spotlight from a Non-Aligned Movement summit they were hosting. UN leader Ban Ki-moon called on Iran Friday to prove its nuclear program is peaceful after a UN watchdog said the Islamic state has stepped up its atomic drive. Ban, who pressed Iranian leaders over international suspicions of a bomb-making effort while at a summit in Tehran this week, expressed regret at the lack of progress between the government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It is “regrettable that Iran has yet to reach agreement with the IAEA on a plan to resolve all outstanding issues,” said a statement released by Ban’s spokesman, Martin Nesirky. Ban said there had to be “a diplomatic and negotiated solution” to the showdown.

“This must include measures by Iran aimed at building international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” he added.

The statement comes in the wake of a new IAEA report that said Iran has doubled capacity at an underground nuclear facility and stepped up production of nuclear fuel. The United States, Britain, France and other western powers accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear bomb. But Tehran insists its effort is peaceful.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech attended by Ban at the Non-Aligned Movement summit this week that his country would “never” cease its nuclear activities. The IAEA report was released late on Thursday - in the middle of the summit - and said Iran had doubled its capacity to enrich uranium at its underground Fordo nuclear facility by installing, but not yet switching on, more than 1,000 more centrifuges. Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom said that Iran’s first atomic power plant, a symbol of what the Islamic Republic says is its peaceful nuclear ambition, is now operating at full capacity. It also said that UN inspectors wanting to see part of a military base in Parchin, outside Tehran, which is suspected of hosting tests of explosives that could be used in a nuclear warhead, had been “significantly hampered” by months of refused access.

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi rejected the Parchin allegations, telling the ISNA news agency they had “no technical basis” and that “one cannot clean a site” of nuclear work.

Iranian officials have previously emphasised that Parchin is an off-limits military base and that the IAEA’s focus on it is overblown and based on “false” Western intelligence. Ban, in his speech at the Iranian diplomats’ college, expanded on criticism of Iran’s nuclear stand that he had delivered in meetings with Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and at the opening of the summit.

He urged Iran to comply with the IAEA and with UN resolutions on the issue, stressing the “cost of Iran’s current trajectory” and saying that “any country at odds with the international community... finds itself isolated from the thrust of common progress.”

On Friday, Khamenei said that US and Israel are responsible for the conflict scorching Syria by “flooding weapons” to rebels there. “The main and behind-the-scenes operators behind the painful issues in Syria are America and the Zionist regime,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a meeting with Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi on the sidelines of a NAM summit.

“The main operators in the Syrian issue are those who have been flooding weapons into Syria and financially backing the irresponsible groups,” he said.

Halaqi thanked Khamenei for Iran’s support, and delivered greetings from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who did not attend the NAM summit.

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Paul Ryan’s relation with black ‘Democrat girlfriend’ opened his eyes to racism

Washington: The cheerleader who Republican vice president candidate Paul Ryan dated in college and helped forge his uncompromising opposition to racism, said that she may not be a Republican, but still supports her ‘nice guy’ old friend.

Deneeta Pope said she met Ryan through friends at Miami University some 20 years ago. “It’s really hard to remember what happened... He was two years older than me. We dated for a short time and we hung out at a couple of parties together,” Pope, 40, said.

Ryan always described himself as a ''big, big fan'' of Martin Luther King and is a staunch advocate of civil rights. Speaking exclusively to Mail Online, but Pope, an IT specialist and realtor living in Chicago, denied that they experienced any racism as a couple.

According to the Daily Mail, Pope also said that their relationship was not very serious. “We weren't in love. It was a college relationship,” she said. Michael Steel, campaign spokesman for Ryan, confirmed to MailOnline that ‘Mr Ryan dated Ms Pope in college’ in the 1990s. In a 2005 interview, Mitt Romney’s future running mate Ryan said that he had been confronted with racism personally, because he had dated an African-American and also had a brother with a black wife. “I have a sister-in-law who’s African American, My college sweetheart was black,” he had said.

“I just experienced some ugly comments, some racist views from people who I thought were friends of mine,” Ryan said. Pope, a registered Democrat since at least 2008, in 2009, she made three donations of USD 324 each to President Barack Obama's inaugural fund.

“I am indeed a Democrat. That’s no secret. But although I have a different political association to Paul, I support him and wish him continued success,” she said.

Although Ryan is determined to oust President Barack Obama from the White House, he has drawn attention to the historic significance of his being the first black US president, the report said.

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All options on table, say Britain and France

UNITED NATIONS - The British and French foreign ministers said Thursday they are not ruling out any options in Syria, including a military-enforced no-fly zone to protect thousands of civilians fleeing the raging conflict in that country.

At a press conference ahead of a UNSC meeting on the growing humanitarian crisis, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague also announced greater aid for international relief efforts. Hague, the British Foreign secretary, said that a Turkish proposal for a safe zone requires military intervention, which the council is unlikely to approve at the moment. “But we are not ruling out any options for the future,” he added.

Asked whether the options include a Nato-enforced no-fly zone without Security Council authorization, he repeated: “We are not ruling out any options.”

Fabius said Paris and London are in “complete unity ... on this point. About the humanitarian crisis in Syria, Hague said, “It is steadily getting worse. We are ruling nothing out, we have contingency planning for a wide range of scenarios. “But we also have to be clear that anything like a safe zone requires military intervention and that of course is something that has to be weighed very carefully.”

Hague and Fabius said the UN Security Council - bitterly divided over the Syria conflict - would be unlikely to give its crucial agreement to any military operation to protect a safe zone.

Britain will give an extra three million pounds and France five million euros  to aid efforts inside Syria and in camps in neighbouring countries, the ministers said.

A UN appeal for $373 million for relief operations for Syria and refugee camps outside the country has raised barely $196 million.

Fabius and Hague said other countries had to step up financial assistance to the United Nations and other aid groups.

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SM Krishna to arrive in Pak on Sept 7

Minister of External Affairs of India S. M. Krishna will be visiting Pakistan from September 7 to 9 for holding review meeting with Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar at her invitation. Foreign Office spokesman while confirming the arrival of the Indian Minister for External Affairs to Pakistan on September 7 said the bilateral talks will take place on September 8. The spokesman said these talks will be preceded by a meeting of the Foreign Secretaries of Pakistan and India on September 7 here in the federal capital. The two Ministers will also co-chair the Plenary of the India-Pakistan Joint Commission to be held in Islamabad on September 8.

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Nasa to explore radiation belts

WASHINGTON  - Nasa launched two satellites into space to explore the belts of radioactive particles orbiting the Earth, in a mission that is the first of its kind. The twin spacecraft will spend the next two-yr exploring the so-called Van Allen belt that is filled with highly-charged particles and at times poses a danger to communications, GPS satellites and even human spaceflight. “Scientists will learn in unprecedented detail how the radiation belts are populated with charged particles, what causes them to change and how these processes affect the upper reaches of the atmosphere around Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, a Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate official.  

Associate administrator for . “The information collected from these probes will benefit the public by allowing us to better protect our satellites and understand how space weather affects communications and technology on Earth.” The satellites - buttressed with protective plating - blasted into orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard an Atlas V 401 rocket. Nasa’s latest mission comes just weeks after the space agency landed its $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover on the surface of the Red Planet, breaking new ground in US-led exploration of an alien world.

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