Wednesday, October 07, 2009 WASHINGTON: US special envoy George Mitchell was due to leave Washington later Tuesday for the Middle East for further talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials, a US State Department official said."He's leaving tonight and he plans to have talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials today," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.Mitchell held separate talks here last week with both Israeli and Palestinian envoys as part of efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.The meetings followed up on the September 22 summit US President Barack Obama had in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.Obama's administration has been struggling to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to agree to relaunch their peace talks which were suspended in late December during the Gaza war, with the thorny issue of Jewish settlements the main stumbling block.
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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