Tuesday, June 09, 2009 SEOUL: North Korea sentenced two female US journalists to 12 years in a labour camp Monday for illegal entry and an unspecified "grave crime," further fuelling tensions with Washington after testing a nuclear bomb. US President Barack Obama was "deeply concerned" about the sentences handed down to Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and his government was using "all possible channels" to obtain their release, the White House said. A five-day trial "confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing," the official Korean Central News Agency said, without explaining the crime. The Central Court "sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labour." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday the charges against the pair were baseless and they should be allowed to return home. Clinton also said the United States was considering putting North Korea back on its terrorism blacklist following its recent nuclear and missile tests. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly on Monday called for the pair's release. "We think that the government in North Korea should release them on humanitarian grounds," he 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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