CAIRO: Hamas and Egyptian officials continued talks in Cairo on Tuesday night aimed at achieving a long-term truce in Gaza, as violence flared around the Palestinian enclave.Representatives of the Islamist movement that has controlled Gaza since seizing it 18 months ago met Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Cairo's pointman on Palestinian and Israeli affairs, hours after Gaza militants fired a rocket at an Israeli town.Israeli warplanes bombed smuggling tunnels on Gaza's border with Egypt in response and the Jewish state warned of the "severest riposte" to rocket fire. Hamas has said the group is ready to agree to a one-year truce with Israel, but has not ruled out an 18-month truce proposed by Egyptian mediators. The delegation met Suleiman in the morning and went into another round of talks in the evening. Salah al-Bardawil, a member of the delegation from Gaza, told a Palestinian news agency between sessions that the talks were "positive." Hamas had agreed to form committees with other Palestinian groups to oversee reconstruction of Gaza but had questions on Israeli restrictions on goods it would allow through its border crossings with Gaza, Ma'an news agency quoted him as saying.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...
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