Friday, June 05, 2009 BAGHDAD: Iraq and Afghanistan are planning to resume diplomatic relations "very soon", 12 years after they were severed during the days of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, a senior Afghan diplomat said."We sent a message from our chief diplomat to his Iraqi counterpart about the resumption of diplomatic relations between our two countries and the reopening of our embassies in Kabul and Baghdad," Fazler Rahman Fazil, a senior Afghan consular official, told late on Thursday."We have been received very well here, and we will discuss it when we return (to Kabul), and take a joint decision very soon," said Abdul Raqeeb Salim, a senior official in the Afghan foreign ministry's Arab countries division.The Afghan embassy in Baghdad, in the western Amariyah district, is currently in poor condition and is in need of a great deal of renovation.
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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