Reuter Tokyo, Dec. 28 Satellite and cable television is approaching the status of rice as staple in the Asian diet but some governments feel threatened by foreign encroachment on their airwaves. Viewers across Asia are tuning in to a cornucopia of information and entertainment. Millions of Asians now know American newsmen Ted Koppel and Dan…
Dhaka, Aug. 11: Bangladesh’s state minister for local government and rural development Syed Abul Hossain has resigned after he used a second passport on a recent private visit to Singapore, officials at the Prime Minister’s office said on Monday. They said the minister tended his resignation letter on Sunday requesting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed…
Hong Kong: A growing number of Americans are paying $3,000 to adopt Chinese orphan baby girls, a Hong Kong newspaper said on Sunday. The Sunday Morning Post said demand was so high that the United States consulate in the south China city of Guangzhou had set up an adoption unit staffed by a state department…
WASHINGTON, July 21.— The House of Representatives’ Merchant Marine Committee today approved a Bill to block petroleum shipments to any foreign country unless the Secretary of Commerce certified that such exports would not interfere with national defence or security. The Bill arose out a committee of inquiry into shipments of petroleum products to Russia,…
Reuters SOUSTONS, France President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said on Thursday that the Madrid peace conference had broken the ice between Middle East foes but that the international community must follow it up to ensure peace. “The ice was broken, we hope it will be completely broken,” he said here. M. Gorbachev was in southwest…
Reuters New York – Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir pleaded for American understanding in the hours before the Middle East peace conference opened, asking where Israelis would live if they traded land for peace. “It’s our land,” Mr. Shamir told CBS News in an interview in Madrid, where the conference began Wednesday. “How could we…
Berlin (Reuters) – Protected by the police and armed with a new court order, workers on Friday resumed the dismantling of Berlin’s giant Lenin statue, a survivor of the 1989 revolution that ended Communist rule in the former East Germany. Policemen scuffled earlier with 40 demonstrators who tried to prevent the workers from erecting…
Warsaw (Reuters) – President Lech Walesa of Poland will ask Bronislaw Geremek, a former Solidarity adviser and a leader of the Democratic Union party, to form a government, a presidential spokesman said Friday. “The president thinks Professor Geremek should start political consultations aimed at forming a government,” the spokesman, Andrzej Drzycimski, said by telephone…
Reuters Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia – The Yugoslav Navy on Wednesday searched a flotilla of Croatian relief boats for weapons before allowing it to pass through a blockade to the medieval port of Dubrovnik. The ferry Slavija, with the Yugoslav president, Stipe Mesic, aboard, was waiting at the eastern tip of Mljet Island for the fishing and…
BONN (Reuters) Germany, in a subtle conciliatory shift, said Monday it was striving to develop a cheaper version of the European Fighter Aircraft in agreement with its partners in the project: Italy, Britain and Spain. Bonn stunned its partners in July when it dropped out of the multi-billion dollar project’s production phase and said it…
MONROVIA, Liberia (Reuters) – Liberia’s Roman Catholic primate said at a requiem Mass on Monday for five American nuns that he held the rebel leader Charles Taylor responsible for their deaths. The missionaries from the Illinois-based Adorers of the Blood of Christ order disappeared about two weeks ago. Archbishop Michael Francis and other church officials,…
SEATTLE (Reuters)- A Boeing Co. spokesman said Monday that the engine lost from a 747 cargo plane on its approach to Luxembourg airport had apparently fallen off by design to prevent greater damage to the wing. The plane, belonging to the Luxembourg freight carrier Cargolux, landed safely Sunday, and none of the four crew members…
RAMALLAH, Israeli-Occupied West Bank – Palestinians poured into the streets after their chief delegate’s speech at the Madrid peace talks on Thursday, decorating Israeli army jeeps with olive branches as smiling soldiers looked on. “We let the world hear our cause,” Nasser Ibrahim, a Palestinian who works in Israel, said after hearing a broadcast of…
HAVANA (Reuters) – The Labor Ministry has ordered managers at many companies to cut back production schedules, resulting in wage cuts of up to 30 percent, the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina said Thursday. Managers were ordered to revise operating schedules “taking into account the need to reduce cafeteria service at those labor centers experiencing…
PRAGUE (Reuters) – Traffic could increase by 1,000 percent on some European east-west routes in the next decade with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, transport chiefs said here Thursday. They called for a policy to integrate road, rail, air and water transport to meet the needs of increased traffic throughout Europe while protecting…
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A court on Thursday jailed four men for their role in the biggest art theft since World War II, Dutch radio said. The four Dutch nationals had pleaded guilty to stealing 20 works worth about $500 million from the Van Gogh Museum here last April 14. The paintings, which included “Potato Eaters,”…
JERUSALEM – Roger G. Harrison, the U.S. ambassador to Jordan, was injured Monday is an automobile collision on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, the Israeli police said. A woman in another car was killed. The police said Mr. Harrison was undergoing surgery at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. A police spokeswoman said three other men in the…
ANKARA-Car bombs killed an American serviceman and seriously injured an Egyptian diplomat here Monday in attacks directed at the Middle East peace conference. A group calling itself Turkish Islamic Jihad took responsibility and said the attacks were to protest the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference that opens in Madrid Wednesday, the Anatolian News Agency reported. …
Calcutta, India, June 15 (Reuters) – The leader of the world’s oldest democratically elected communist government looked back on his 20 years in power, and said he was proud of his achievements in a “capitalist feudalist” society. Jyoti Basu, the 82-year-old chief minister of India’s West Bengal state, told Reuters in an interview late on Saturday…
New Delhi, Dec 8 (Reuters) – India’s Gujarat state aims to be a primary focus for foreign investors, particularly in infrastructure like ports, power and roads, the leader of the west coast province said on Monday. “The word industrialization is humming in Gujarat’s air. Above all the government is investor-friendly,” Chief Minister Dilip Parikh told…
20 April 1994 Reuters News English (c) 1994 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 20 (Reuter) – “Blossoms in the air; unable to stay longer; and still escape time.” The haiku, or Japanese three-line verse, by the well-known poet Seishi Yamaguchi might have been written just for Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa as he strolled under the…
9 March 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 9 (Reuter) – Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Sunday accused China of pursuing a Policy of “cultural genocide” and warned that isolated violence in his Himalayan homeland could spread. In a strongly-worded statement issued to mark the 38th anniversary of…
22 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited KATHMANDU, May 22 (Reuter) – Nepal’s coalition government plans to grant the Himalayan kingdom’s central bank full independence, the finance minister said on Wednesday. The Nepal Rastra Bank is currently under the supervision of the finance ministry. “We are considering that the central bank should…
23 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited KATHMANDU, May 23 (Reuter) – Nepal’s fragile coalition government is not in any danger despite the Communist partner’s strong showing in local polls, Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand said on Friday. “I don’t see any threat now but it is very difficult to predict when…
24 July 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 24 (Reuters) – Japan is keen on expanding investment in India but finds its bureaucracy extremely inflexible, a senior Japanese official said on Thursday. Nobuaki Tanaka, deputy director-general in Japan’s Foreign Ministry, said India accounts for a minuscule 0.25 percent of Japan’s…
28 July 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 28 (Reuters) – India’s Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral has caused anger and confusion in both his country and neighboring Pakistan with an apparent about-face on talks with Muslim militants in Kashmir. Gujral stunned friends and foes alike on Saturday by announcing during…
27 August 1991 Reuters News English (c) 1991 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuters – India hopes to receive substantial financial aid from a consortium of donors next month, Finance Secretary Sriranga Shukla said on Tuesday. Shukla, in Tokyo for talks ahead of the September 19-20 meeting in Paris, said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World…
17 September 1991 Reuters News English (c) 1991 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuter – Most Asian stock markets, casting around for fresh stimulus, weakened on Tuesday while the dollar declined in late regional trade against the mark. But Tokyo stocks, buoyed by hopes of easier credit, bucked the declining trend with the 225-share Nikkei average up…
13 April 1992 Reuters News English (c) 1992 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuters – India intends to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for more contingency funds, although foreign reserves are at a very comfortable level, Finance Minister Manmohan Singh said. Singh, who has spearheaded a series of sweeping reforms that have turned India’s socialist economic…
29 August 1992 Los Angeles Daily News Valley The Japanese government Friday approved an $87 billion spending package – the nation’s largest since World War II – in a bid to jolt the dormant economy back to life. During a late-evening meeting, government ministers rubber-stamped the growth-boosting package totaling 10.7 trillion yen. The massive package was in line…
28 December 1992 Reuters News English (c) 1992 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Dec 28, Reuter – Satellite and cable television is approaching rice status as a staple in the Asian diet but some governments feel threatened by the foreign encroachment. Viewers across Asia are tuning in to a cornucopia of information and entertainment. Millions of Asians…
28 December 1992 Reuters News English (c) 1992 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Dec 28, Reuter – Satellite and cable television is approaching the status of rice as staple in the Asian diet but some governments feel threatened by foreign encroachment on their airwaves. Viewers across Asia are tuning in to a cornucopia of information and entertainment. …
29 December 1992 The Globe and Mail All material copyright Thomson Canada Limited or its licensors. All rights reserved. Tokyo SATELLITE and cable television is approaching the status of rice as staple in the Asian diet but some governments feel threatened by foreign encroachment on their airwaves. Viewers across Asia are tuning in to a cornucopia…
4 January 1993 Straits Times English (c) 1993 Singapore Press Holdings Limited Some govts feel threatened by foreign encroachment on airwaves TOKYO – Satellite and cable television is approaching the status of rice as a staple in the Asian diet but some governments feel threatened by foreign encroachment on their airwaves. Viewers across Asia are…
1 February 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Feb 1, Reuter – Currency speculators who sparked a fresh crisis in the European monetary system over the weekend brought their heavy guns to bear on Britain’s currency on Monday, ramming the pound to new lows in Tokyo trading. Asian stock markets were mixed. …
22 April 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 22, Reuters – One of the architects of India’s radical economic reforms said on Thursday the changes sweeping the country were irreversible despite recent religious and political strife. “Now there is no doubt about the permanence and irreversibility of reform. You cannot re-erect…
20 August 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Aug 20 (Reuter) – The Japanese government heaved a sigh of relief on Friday after action by the United States yanked the yen back from a close brush with parity with the U.S. cent. But currency traders served notice that the rampant yen was…
14 September 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Sept 14 (Reuter) – Japan’s sickly economy has been contracting as its stubborn trade surplus balloons, government figures showed on Tuesday. Gross national product (GNP) shrank 0.5 percent in the April/June quarter from the previous quarter after adjustment for inflation, the government’s Economic Planning…
13 December 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Dec 13 (Reuter) – Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Takemura said Tokyo had every intention of making a decision on opening the country’s rice market by late Monday. Leaders of the eight-group ruling coalition were to meet during the evening to decide whether to accept…
15 April 1994 Reuters News English (c) 1994 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 15 (Reuter) – A leading opposition politician is preparing to revolt against his party in hopes of becoming Japan’s next prime minister, NHK public television said on Friday. Meanwhile, the fate of the nation’s ruling coalition, riven by a struggle for power, hung…
21 September 1994 Reuters News English (c) 1994 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Sept 21 (Reuters) – India’s new telecommunications policy will open the domestic market to foreign firms, end a century-old state monopoly and aim to provide 60 telephones for every 1,000 people by 2000, a minister said on Wednesday. India now has 9.64 telephones per…
6 February 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 6 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s Kashmir region said on Thursday he did not think a nuclear war would erupt on the subcontinent over the disputed territory. “I think India has never thought of using a nuclear option, and Pakistan would…
20 March 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 20 (Reuter) – Democracy has taken root in most African countries but needs nurturing, Commonwealth Secretary-General Chief Emeka Anyaoku said on Thursday. He told Reuters in an interview that, with serious strife persisting in such countries as Rwanda, Zaire and Sudan, the…
26 March 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 26 (Reuters) – Salman Haidar will be an immovable object facing a resistible force when he sits down this Friday for India’s first talks with Pakistan in three years. Haidar, India’s Foreign Secretary or seniormost diplomat, inspires strong feelings, not all warm,…
27 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuters) – India is determined to grant autonomy to state-controlled television and radio, Information and Broadcasting Minister Jaipal Reddy said. Reddy, a leader of the Janata Dal, the largest group in India’s ruling centre-left coalition, told Reuters in an interview late…
15 June 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited CALCUTTA, India, June 15 (Reuters) – India is not likely to see a return to one-party rule, a leader of the current ruling coalition said. Jyoti Basu said his Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M), which has made a success of multi-party politics, had valuable…
28 July 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 28 (Reuter) – India’s Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral performed one more of his apparent policy flip-flops over the weekend, this time over the sensitive issue of Kashmir. Gujral stunned friends and foes alike on Saturday by holding out an olive branch…
14 August 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (Reuters) – India’s leaders gathered in their parliament’s majestic Central Hall on Thursday night to relive their nation’s “tryst with destiny” a half-century ago. The vast domed chamber, its thick warm air stirred ineffectually by ancient fans, was packed with lawmakers…
15 August 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (Reuters) – India put on a dazzling show of fireworks, laser beams and parades capped early on Friday by a solemn ceremony in parliament that relived the moment 50 years ago when the subcontinent won independence. Thousands of people led by…
Reuters News 5 September 1997 English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 6 (Reuters) – An Indian bureaucrat who wrote two biographies of Mother Teresa remembers her as a woman with a mischievous sense of humour who wielded formidable administrative skill to control her worldwide organisation. “It was a very special morning,” Navin Chawla…
29 August 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said the rupee’s volatility had subsided and the policy of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was to intervene to prevent volatility and speculative activity in the market. “The value of the rupee will be…
15 October 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth’s visit to India was hit by fresh controversy on Wednesday after an apparent misunderstanding over the protocol of her giving a speech in a provincial capital. British officials told reporters the Indian government had cancelled the speech…
16 September 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 16 (Reuter) – India’s government, clearly alarmed by a fiscal deficit that was threatening to soar out of control, moved on Tuesday to boost revenues with a host of steps including a jump in import tariffs and a cut in federal spending. …
20 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 20 (Reuters) – India faced the prospect of fresh elections on Thursday as the country was convulsed by a frenzy of political gamesmanship. The only real question appeared to be when, not whether, the new polls would be held. “It may happen…
30 September 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 30 (Reuters) – A militant group in Kashmir on Tuesday said an exhumed body was that of the group’s leader and not one of four missing Western hostages as suspected. The chief of police in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state said forensic…
19 October 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Oct 19 (Reuters) – India looked back in frustration on Sunday at a visit by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth that read like a “how not to” catalogue of perceived insults and diplomatic missteps. The state visit, to mark India’s 50th year of freedom from…
16 October 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Oct 16 (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth’s tour of India slid deeper into controversy on Thursday with sources close to the Indian government charging that Britain’s ruling Labour Party had a “hidden agenda” to create an independent Kashmir region. Even as British officials scrambled…
24 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 24 (Reuters) – The collapse of Yamaichi Securities could signal the end of the worst of Japan’s “post-bubble” economic adjustment, Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Mitsuo Sato said on Monday. “I think we need to go through that kind of challenge in…
27 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 27 (Reuters) – “May you be the mother of a hundred sons.” That benediction has been called down upon generations of Hindu brides in India, but the country’s junior health minister Renuka Chowdhury has a new mantra: “One is fun.” Some demographers…
29 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India woke up on Saturday to a lame-duck government and a political crisis that only deepened after Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral’s resignation. Newspapers were cynical about what lay ahead and ran banner headlines like “Experiment Coalition: Abort, Fail,…
19 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 19 (Reuters) – India’s lack of “grit” in pursuing its costly military foray into northern Sri Lanka may have led to Rajiv Gandhi’s 1991 murder by a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber, New Delhi’s former envoy to Colombo said on Wednesday. “If…
28 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India’s Congress party switched off the life support system of the minority government on Friday, but in the process may have hastened its own death throes. Twice in the past 13 years Congress has ridden to power on a…
3 December 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Software firm Infosys Technologies Ltd is poised to become the first Indian firm to raise new capital through American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), chairman and managing director N.R. Narayana Murthy said on Wednesday. The blue-chip Infosys announced on Tuesday that…
7 December 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 7 (Reuters) – The word “pundit” is Sanskrit for “learned man,” and in India they were busy at the weekend trying to divine what lay ahead for the world’s most populous democracy. This much was clear — no single party was likely…
7 December 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 7 (Reuters) – The speaker of India’s parliament said on Sunday democracy had taken deep root in his country a half-century after independence, and all parties would speak the language of economic reform will go ahead,” Purno Sangma, speaker of the Lok…
8 December 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 8 (Reuters) – India’s main opposition group will block the full convertibility of the rupee, favour foreign investment only if it goes into infrastructure and shake out state firms if it wins power, its chief planner said on Monday. Jay Dubashi, chief…
8 December 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Global investors cannot afford to ignore India, but Indian companies need to prove that they can compete in developed markets, Fred Steingraber, chief executive officer of A.T. Kearney Inc., said on Monday. “I don’t think anybody is prepared to…
9 December 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 9 (Reuters) – India will accelerate its drive to increase electricity generation and is looking for huge funds to meet the nation’s power deficit, Power Minister Yoginder Alagh said on Tuesday. “Between now and March it will be faster and not slower,”…