WASHINGTON: The United States called Monday on Iran to end its "hateful rhetoric" after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attacks on Israel but said it still wanted talks with Tehran to mend relations. President Barack Obama "disagrees vehemently" with Ahmadinejad, who branded Israel a racist state, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. He said it vindicated the decision by the country's first African-American president to shun the UN conference on racism in Geneva. "This is hateful rhetoric. It's, I think, one of the reasons why you saw the administration and the president determined that its participation in this conference was not a wise thing to do," he said. But Gibbs added, "We continue to evaluate our policy and understand that from a larger foreign policy framework, doing things the same old way is not likely to bring about the change we need in our foreign policy." State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Ahmadinejad's "rhetoric is unhelpful, it's counterproductive and it just feeds racial hatred." "We want to have a direct dialogue with Iran, but Iran needs to do a number of things to get back in the overall good graces of the international community," Wood told reporters.
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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