Friday, August 28, 2009 ANKARA: NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen joined Turkish leaders at a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner Thursday in what he described as a manifestation of his respect for Islam. The former Danish foreign minister's bid for NATO's top post had met with harsh objections from predominately Muslim Turkey, partly due to his stance during the crisis over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in Denmark in 2005. "Please see my presence here tonight as a clear manifestation of my respect for Islam as one of the world's great religions," Rasmussen said at the iftar, or the evening meal when Muslims break their dawn-to-sunset fast during the holy month of Ramadan."Fasting is meant to teach patience, modesty, self-restraint and giving and reaching out to the less fortunate. These are all universal human values that go beyond cultures and religions," he said. Rasmussen praised Turkey's role as "a bridge between Europe, the Arab world and Central Asia" and pledged to work for better ties between NATO and Muslim countries."I'm confident that we will make real progress in building trust and cooperation between the Alliance and partners in the Mediterranean and the Middle East," he said.Rasmussen had invoked freedom of expression to defend the publication of a series of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper in September 2005, which triggered outrage and deadly unrest among Muslims worldwide. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a practicing Muslim who had vocally criticised Rasmussen, said the NATO chief's participation in the iftar "will be a meaningful message to the people of my country and the Muslim world." Erdogan angrily rejected the labeling of extremist violence as "Islamist terrorism" and urged Western respect for Islam. "Drawing on isolated incidents to portray a whole religion and all its followers as potential terrorists, trying to disseminate such perceptions and tolerating such attitudes is, to say the least, a crime against humanity," he said.
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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