Sunday, August 09, 2009 BRUSSELS: France has called for the "immediate release" of a French lecturer and a Franco-Iranian employee at its Tehran embassy who are being tried in an Iranian court.Paris considered the charges against 24-year-old Clotilde Reiss "devoid of any foundation" and those against embassy staffer Nazak Afshar to be "non-existent", the foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.France also objected to the fact that their embassy had not been informed in advance that they would be appearing in court, "in conformity with international rules and consular protection," the statement added.The ministry said it deplored the fact that neither of them had been represented by a lawyer in court.Reiss and Afshar were among more than 10 other defendants brought before the court for a mass hearing on charges related to huge protests that erupted across Iran after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, was declared winner of the June 12 election.
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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