Tag: India

COMMENT - The 14-team 10th edition of the cricket World Cup 2011 will kick off on Feb. 19, with the inaugural match between India and Bangladesh at Mirpur. The three-times on the trot defending champions Australians are no longer the team to beat. Their vulnerability has thrown this World Cup wide open, with no clear cut favourites, though some believe that India and Sri Lanka have the edge owing to home advantage.
But there are sides like South Africa, England, Australia and,

LAHORE - Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi has rejected criticism from former greats and has asked his players to keep their focus on the game. Addressing a press conference here at the Gaddafi Stadium ahead of their departure for the 2011 World Cup, Afridi said that the critics had ignored his overall performance as captain in 2010. He said the ex-cricketers should support the team at this juncture when all the players are performing well.
Coach Waqar Younis and manager Intikhab

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan and India on Thursday announced that they will resume the peace talks stalled after the Mumbai attacks in November 2008 on all bilateral disputes, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir.
The agreement to this effect was announced by the two foreign ministries simultaneously following the talks on Sunday between the Indo-Pak foreign secretaries in Bhutanese capital, Thimphu, where the prime ministers of neighboring states had also met back in April

PARIS - Formula One team Force India will improve on their seventh place finish in last year's championship because they have drivers hungry for success, said the team owner Vijay Mallya on Tuesday. The Indian billionaire was speaking at the launch of the new model, the VJM04, for the upcoming season and said he had great faith in the two race drivers Germany's Adrian Sutil and rookie Scotsman Paul di Resta, who replaced Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi.
The team also has the talented

NEW DELHI - India may harvest its second highest amount ever of food grains in 2010-11, including a record 81.47 million tonnes wheat, its farm minister said on Wednesday, which could help the government in reining in food inflation.
The cost of food for families in Asia's third-largest economy has soared 17 percent over the past year, latest data showed, boosted most recently by gains in onions and other everyday vegetables as harvests are hit by unseasonably heavy rains. India

ABU DHABI - International Cricket Council (ICC) chief executive Haroon Lorgat favours legalisation of sports gambling in India while retaining his optimism for a corruption-free World Cup in the sub-continent. There has seldom been a cricket corruption of late without an Indian connection and the clamour is growing to legalise betting in a country where legal gambling is confined to horse-racing while casinos are allowed only in a couple of states.
Lorgat and his colleagues in

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan on Monday expressed its desire to have cordial and cooperative ties with India, a day after the two sides agreed to have constructive engagement aimed at restoring the stalled dialogue process. The sentiment was expressed by Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir when he called on India's External Affairs Minister SM Krishna in Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan.
"The Pakistan foreign secretary underlined the desire of Pakistan to have cordial and cooperative ties with

THIMPHU - The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan on Sunday affirmed the need to carry the dialogue process between the two countries forward. In a meeting in Bhutan, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir and his Indian counterpart, Nirupama Rao also agreed on the need for a constructive bilateral dialogue to resolve all outstanding issues.
According to a press release, the meeting was held in "pursuance of the mandate given by the prime ministers of India and Pakistan,

NEW DELHI - The Indian government Saturday said that it has served notices to 17 nationals who have allegedly stashed away black money in foreign banks and action would be taken against them according to law, said a senior government minister.
"We have received a few names and already served notices on 17 persons and prosecution has begun," Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the media in the eastern city of Kolkata.
However, the minister refused to disclose the

ISLAMABAD - On the eve of the Indo-Pak foreign secretaries' talk in Bhutanese capital Thimpu, Pakistan urged its nuclear neighbour for a "meaningful" dialogue on Kashmir and other disputes saying it was vital for durable peace and stability in South Asian.
Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir is set to meet his Indian counterpart, Nirupama Rao today (Sunday) in Thimpu, the Bhutanese capital on the sidelines of a SAARC ministerial conference in a bid to revive the dialogue process that

ISLAMABAD - India lacks courage to unearth the role of Hindu extremists and their links with some Indian Army personnel in the Samjhota Express bombing, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit told Pakistan Today on Saturday.
He said it was "unfortunate" that India had been unable to complete its investigations into the Samjhota Express blasts, despite the passage of four years. "We do not know how many more years India will need to bring the perpetrators of the Samjhota terrorist

HYDERABAD DACCAN - Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who is on a visit to India in connection with the 17th Commonwealth Law Conference in India's Hyderabad Deccan, spent a busy day on Saturday.
He participated in the patron chief justices' meeting of the Commonwealth member states. The meeting discussed many important professional issues related to the functioning of judiciary and the Commonwealth. Chief Justice of India Justice SH Kapadia and

KASUR - PML-Q MNA and Environment Standing Committee member Marvi Memon visited Kasur the other day and said that India was polluting the Sutlej River water with the industrial waste. She said the water of the Sutlej River was polluted and injurious to human health.
She added that tanneries' waste was polluting the water of the river and hundreds of villages in Kasur were badly affected by it. She visited different areas where pollution was increasing due to dead animals and

NEW DELHI - Sachin Tendulkar has been winning matches for India with his amazing batting exploits for more than two decades, and it's time his team clinched the World Cup for him. Tendulkar, who turns 38 in April, makes his sixth and probably the last appearance in the showpiece event with one notable omission from his eye-catching CV - a World Cup.
The 'Little Genius' may have amassed a record 17,629 runs in 444 one-dayers with 46 centuries - the highest by any batsman - but

WASHINGTON - Pakistan has doubled its nuclear weapons stockpile over the past several years, increasing its arsenal to more than 100 deployed weapons and effectively edging ahead of its nuclear-rival India, The Washington Post reported late Sunday. Citing US non-government analysts, the newspaper said that only 4 years ago, the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was estimated at 30 to 60 weapons.
"They have been expanding pretty rapidly," the report quoted David Albright, president of the

CAIRO - The US, Turkey, India and Iraq on Sunday started organising the evacuation of their nationals from Egypt as an angry anti-government revolt raged into a sixth day amid increasing lawlessness and mass jail breaks.
"The US embassy in Cairo informs US citizens in Egypt who wish to depart that the department of state is making arrangements to provide transportation to safehaven locations in Europe," an embassy statement said, as other countries issued travel warnings and

LAHORE - The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) Chairman Gohar Ejaz has blamed the Indian government for hurting the spirit of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and claimed that the Indians have distorted the principle of free market mechanism on cotton trade.
He said that the condition of cotton export registration, imposed by the Indian government, has allowed Indian cotton merchants wriggle out of contracts worth one million cotton bales to