Hinduja brothers are the wealthiest Asians in Britain

London:  Hinduja brothers have been ranked as Britain's richest Asians in 2014 with a total worth of 13.5 billion pounds, an increase of one billion pounds over the previous year.

At a gala Asian Business Awards 2014 function held at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London last night, the group also won the Asian Business of the Year award for its outstanding achievement.

G P Hinduja, Co-Chairman of the group and brother of Chairman S P Hinuja, received the award from the Chief Guest Michael Gove, MP, Britain's Secretary of State for Education, in the presence of India's High Commissioner Ranjan Mathai, who was the Guest of Honour.

Mr Gove also released the Asian Rich List, declaring Hinduja group, a conglomerate with interests in banking, oil and manufacturing among many, as the richest in the UK for the second consecutive year.

Just behind the group is steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal with a wealth of 12 billion pounds, one billion pounds more than the previous year.

Leading NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul and Angad Paul (Steel) have been listed as 10th richest with wealth amounting to 750 million pounds, whereas mining giant Anil Agrawal was ranked third (2.4 billion pounds) followed by Sri Prakash Lohia (Petrochemicals and textiles) (2 billion pounds).

India's Tata Ltd won the International Business Award. 

Tatas are the biggest industrial employers in the UK. 

Dr Rami Ranger, MBE, Founder and Chairman of Sunmark ltd, winner of Queen's award for exports for fifth consecutive year, won the Business Personality Award while Veena Nangla of Brightsun Travel was declared as the Asian Business Woman of the year. Chakra restaurant in London received the Restaurant Award for 2014.

According to the Asian Rich List 101 published by EasternEye, one of the publications of the Asian Media & Marketing Group headed by Ramniklal Solanki CBE, there are nine Asians in the UK who can be called billionaires.

The estimated wealth of the 101 Asians in the list totals almost 52 billion pounds - up just over 6 billion pounds on 2013's total.

According to the Rich List, the year 2014 is going to be a big one for the Hindujas for it will mark the centenary of the group, which has its headquarters at New Zealand House in Haymarket, London and employs 75,000 people across 35 nations. 

The Hinduja group has what Gopi Hinduja likes to call 10 'verticals' namely: health, energy, power generation, automotive, finance and banking; oil and gas; IT and BPO; media and cable; real estate; and trading.

Art Matters: Indian dance takes London by storm

London:  We've all been there, forgotten passwords and stared at computer screens, drawing a blank. But could this be the theme for a dance?

An Indian classical dance choreographer thinks so. Her idea was one of the three dances that were selected as part of a prestigious dance show at the Southbank Centre in London. 

All performances aimed to fuse Indian dance with western contemporary dance styles. A haunting yet thought-provoking piece by Indian choreographer Divya Kasturi asked audiences to think of the number of identities they assume online with different passwords and usernames. 

She linked this with identity and the fact that every time you have to think of new words and letters as names and passwords. 

"It is the day and age when we are using the Internet and creating innumerable number of usernames and passwords. And way we do this is, you choose your letters, characters, pre-rehearse it mentally and then you actually use it...so you are performing to the virtual world," choreographer Divya Kasturi said. "Paralleling that to choreography, we sequence our dances, plan our moves and perform them to a live audience, So there are a lot of parellels there and I wanted to flesh that out."

Meanwhile, Seeta Patel's "First Light" takes the audiences on a journey from fear of the unknown to enlightenment. A hybrid between Bharatnatyam and contemporary western styles, the performance explores Goddess Durga's nine incarnations.

"We looked at Goddess Durga and look at her many sides. Violent side, the side that rides the lion, the side that plays the Veena. So in one of the pieces we have layers..crossing the stage...so I went to the floor and I said well, this may be the moment to show her aritistic side and play the Veena," said dancer Kamala Devi.

The third performance too - like the other two had a deeper spiritual meaning. Detox - explored detoxification of mind, body and soul. It addressees society's wanton need to consume. The dancers used a a mix Indian dance form and western contemporary styles. 

Akademi's director Mira Kaushik said, "I think its very important to ensure that we are part of the scene, we are part of the picture instead of living in the ghetto. A project like this opens us up to the wider world. We are confident about ourselves, we are Indians, our choreographers are Indian - but we are not scared of experimenting within a contemporary context."

The hall was full of dancers, Indian dance fans and other people interested in the fusion of western contemporary dance with other dance forms. 

DR Ann David, Head of Dance, University of Roehampton said, "Most dancers we saw today are classically trained in Bharatnatyam and Kathak. Others come from a contemporary background. Somehow, audiences in the UK expect a very high level of contemporary dance. And these dancers are a doing a good job of bridging that gap."

The applause after the performances seemed to suggest the experiment was quite a success.

MH370 co-pilot made mid-flight phone call: report

Kuala Lumpur:  The co-pilot of missing Malaysian airliner MH370 attempted to make a mid-flight call from his mobile phone just before the plane vanished from radar screens, a report said on Saturday citing unnamed investigators.

The call ended abruptly possibly "because the aircraft was fast moving away from the (telecommunications) tower", The New Straits Times quoted a source as saying.

But the Malaysian daily also quoted another source saying that while Fariq Abdul Hamid's "line was reattached", there was no certainty that a call was made from the Boeing 777 that vanished on March 8. (MH370 hunt goes on after Australia signals confidence)

The report -- titled a "desperate call for help" -- did not say who he was trying to contact.

Fariq and Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah have come under intense scrutiny after the plane mysteriously vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Investigators last month indicated that the flight was deliberately diverted and its communication systems manually switched off as it was leaving Malaysian airspace, triggering a criminal investigation by police that has revealed little so far. (Australia warns of long haul as hunt for MH370 goes on)

The fate of flight MH370 has been shrouded in mystery, with a number of theories put forward including a hijacking or terrorist attack and a pilot gone rogue.

There have been unconfirmed previous reports in the Malaysian media of calls by the captain before or during the flight but no details have been released.

The NST report said that Flight 370 flew low enough near Penang island on Malaysia's west coast -- after turning off course -- for a telecommunications tower to pick up the co-pilot's phone signal.

The phone line was "reattached" between the time the plane veered off course and blipped off the radar, the government-controlled paper quoted the second source as saying.

"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again."

Malaysia's transport ministry told AFP that it was examining the NST report and will issue a response.

The Malaysian government and media have repeatedly contradicted each other and themselves over details of the search and criminal investigation.

Australia warns of long haul as hunt for MH370 goes on

Perth:  There was no let-up in the air and sea search for the missing Malaysian airliner off Australia on Saturday as Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned that locating Flight MH370 would still likely take a long time.

Abbott appeared to step back from the most upbeat official assessment so far when he had hinted Friday that abreakthrough was imminent.

When the prime minister announced from Shanghai that he would say no more of his "high confidence" before talking to the Chinese leadership, speculation swirled through the media that a breakthrough was imminent.

Retired air chief marshal Angus Houston who heads the hunt from Perth, had quickly issued a statement clarifying that there had been no breakthrough.

On Saturday, Abbott repeated his confidence in the search, but put the accent on the difficulties remaining.

"We do have a high degree of confidence the transmissions we have been picking up are from flight MH370," Abbott said on the last day of his visit to China.

But he added, "no one should under-estimate the difficulties of the task ahead of us.

"Yes we have very considerably narrowed down the search area but trying to locate anything 4.5 kilometres beneath the surface of the ocean about a thousand kilometres from land is a massive, massive task and it is likely to continue for a long time to come."

The Australian-led search for the Boeing 777, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is racing to gather as many signals as possible to determine an exact resting place before a submersible is sent down to find wreckage.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said Saturday that the remote search area where the plane was believed to have gone down some was still shrinking.

"Today, Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield continues more focused sweeps with the towed pinger locator to try and locate further signals related to the aircraft's black boxes," JACC said.

- 'No major breakthrough' -
Ocean Shield has picked up four signals linked to aircraft black boxes, with the first two analysed as being consistent with those from aircraft flight recorders.

The beacons on the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders have a normal battery lifespan of around 30 days. MH370 vanished March 8.

AP-3C Orion surveillance aircraft were also carrying out acoustic searches in conjunction with Ocean Shield, the statement said adding that the British oceanographic ship HMS Echo was also working in the area.

Saturday's total search zone covers 41,393 square kilometres (15,982 square miles) and the core of the search zone lies 2,330 kilometres (1,450 miles) northwest of Perth.

"This work continues in an effort to narrow the underwater search area for when the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is deployed," JACC said adding that there have been no confirmed signal detections over the past 24 hours.

Speaking on Friday in China, home to two-thirds of the 239 people on board MH370, Abbott suggested the mystery about the plane's fate might soon be solved.

"We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident the signals are from the black box," Abbott said, although the transmissions were "starting to fade".

"We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometres," Abbott had said.

Abbott later met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Houston struck a much more cautious note just afterwards, saying "there has been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370".

He said the Ocean Shield would continue to trawl for pings.

"It is vital to glean as much information as possible while the batteries on the underwater locator beacons may still be active," said Houston.

A decision to deploy a submersible sonar device "could be some days away", he said.

No floating debris from the plane has yet been found, the JACC said again on Saturday, despite three weeks of searching in the area by ships and planes from several countries.

Up to 10 aircraft and 14 ships were taking part in the hunt on Saturday, with the weather forecast for isolated showers and sea swells up to one metre, with visibility of five kilometres during showers.

Houston has stressed the need to find the wreckage to be certain of the plane's fate, and has repeatedly warned against raising hopes for the sake of victims' relatives, whose month-long nightmare has been punctuated by false leads.

Space station computer outage may force spacewalk

Cape Canaveral:  A computer outage at the International Space Station may require a spacewalk by astronauts.

NASA said on Friday night that a backup computer on the outside of the orbiting lab is not responding to commands. The main computer, called an MDM or multiplexer-demultiplexer, is working fine and the six-man crew is in no danger. But the computers control some robotic functions that would be needed for next week's planned visit by a private SpaceX supply ship. A backup computer would need to be operating for redundancy of those robotic systems.

Mission Control is deciding whether the computer can be repaired or must be replaced. NASA is still aiming for a Monday launch from Cape Canaveral of the SpaceX cargo ship. But that could change, depending on the faulty computer.

Journalists who broke news on NSA surveillance return to US

New York:  The journalists had been threatened, cajoled and condemned by the British and U.S. governments. Their work together had set off a hunt for their source and a debate on both sides of the Atlantic about government surveillance. 

But they had never met - until Friday. 

That was when Glenn Greenwald, the journalist, lawyer and civil liberties crusader, and Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian newspaper, finally shook hands after months of working remotely on articles based on material from former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. The two were in New York for the prestigious Polk Award for national security reporting, awarded to Greenwald and his colleagues, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, and Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman. 

Greenwald and Poitras returned to the United States for the first time since their articles broke in June. They arrived at Kennedy Airport in New York from Berlin, where Greenwald had given a speech Thursday and where Poitras lives and is making a documentary on surveillance. 

Although Gellman, who revealed the Snowden findings alongside The Guardian, has lived in the United States since their publication beginning in June, there were fears among Greenwald's supporters that he and Poitras might be detained upon returning to the United States. Federal prosecutors have charged Snowden with violating the Espionage Act, and he has been given asylum in Russia. 

The crowd of journalists at the Polk ceremony at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan cheered and applauded when it was announced that Greenwald and Poitras had cleared customs and were en route. They arrived just after 1 p.m., trailed by flashing cameras. With the ceremony already underway, Guardian editors, including Rusbridger, welcomed the two. 

"I am finally really happy to see a table full of Guardian editors and journalists, whose role in this story is much more integral than the publicity generally recognizes," Greenwald said, as he accepted the award for national security reporting. 

It speaks to the increasingly wired and global news-gathering ecosystem that two of the journalists who collaborated on the complex and politically charged revelations from Snowden about global surveillance had never met. Poitras, Greenwald and MacAskill, a veteran Guardian reporter, flew to Hong Kong to meet with Snowden, someone they had known only via the Internet until they met in person at a hotel. Snowden identified himself by carrying a Rubik's cube. 

"New York, Rio, London, Berlin, Hong Kong at one point - it was just a very logistically, ethically complicated story," Rusbridger said after the ceremony Friday. 

His colleagues, including the editor of Guardian U.S., Janine Gibson, and her deputy, Stuart Millar, knew Greenwald well and had hired him to be a columnist the year before. 

"It is much more complicated - being dispersed," Rusbridger said. "It would have been much easier to all have been in one room - particularly a story of this nature where you assume that every conventional means of communication is suspect in some way." 

On another occasion The Guardian was forced to destroy computer equipment containing material from Snowden with power tools, under the observation of British government officials. 

Despite a trouble-free entry into the United States, Greenwald and Poitras had traveled with a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union and a German journalist to document any unpleasant surprises.

"The risks of subpoena are very real," Poitras said. "We know there is a threat." 

The Guardian and The Washington Post are considered contenders for the Pulitzer Prizes, which will be announced Monday.

From shooting victim to prisoner, not an uncommon passage

New York:  Two days after he had been shot, Andre Daly awoke in a haze with a police officer standing by his hospital bed in Brooklyn. 

"I'm thinking he's going to talk about the incident that happened to me - how I got shot," Daly, 29, recently recalled. But the officer was not there to interview Daly. He had come to arrest him over an unpaid summons. 

"He's telling me now I'm a prisoner of New York City because I have a warrant," Daly said. 
Daly spent more than a week immobilized, not just by his three bullet wounds, but also by a set of handcuffs and ankle restraints - all because of an unpaid $25 fine for possessing a cup of wine in public. 

What happened to Daly in December was no fluke. The New York Police Department routinely performs warrant checks on shooting victims. If an outstanding warrant is found, the police generally handcuff and shackle the victim, often for the whole hospital stay, no matter how minor the underlying offense or how grievous the injuries. 

"That's the procedure," the department's chief spokesman, Stephen Davis, said, explaining that the "patrol guide says prisoners will be handcuffed at all times." 

"We're not handcuffing him by virtue of him being a victim," Davis said, referring in general to instances where shooting victims were arrested on minor warrants. "But if he has a warrant, it would require him to be in our custody." 

Patients who are arrested on warrant violations are typically held by the police under harsher conditions than those who are wounded while either committing crimes or struggling with the police. In those cases, suspects are often provided a lawyer comparatively quickly, and fall under the supervision of the Correction Department, whose rules limit the use of restraints. 

However, the Police Department patrol guide says that its "policy is to handcuff all hospitalized prisoners to ensure the safety of persons present and prevent escape." The patrol guide does recognize a few exceptions, including prisoners who are comatose or paralyzed. In nearly all cases, an officer is assigned to guard the prisoner. 

Police officials said they did not keep statistics regarding how many of the city's 1,299 shooting victims last year were arrested on warrants. It is standard police practice to check them for warrants, Davis, the police spokesman, explained, "as part of the victimology" - a police phrase for researching the background of a crime victim. That can offer clues into who might have menaced the victim in the past as well as help detectives assess the victim's credibility as they put together a case. 

"When someone is shot, and when they go to investigate, they will run him for warrants," Davis said. 

But victims and their lawyers said that it is one thing to look into a victim's background; it is quite another to use a warrant as grounds to shackle people for days or weeks while they are recovering from gunshot wounds. 

"It's particularly egregious where they have minor offenses," said Seymour W. James Jr., the lawyer in charge of the Legal Aid Society's criminal practice, which represents many of the hospitalized prisoners. "They consider everybody who has a warrant a fugitive." 

After inquiries by The New York Times, Susan Herman, a deputy police commissioner who is examining ways for the department to improve its interactions with crime victims, said in a recent interview that she intended to review the department's practice of handcuffing shooting victims held on minor warrants. 

"I think it's a policy that we absolutely will be reviewing," Herman said. 

Warrants for unpaid tickets are not uncommon, particularly among young black men in high-crime neighborhoods, where the police focus their enforcement efforts. According to the court system, there are 1.2 million outstanding warrants coming from the city's Criminal Court, which handles only violations and misdemeanors. Many are for unpaid summonses. 

The policy can cause health complications. Dr. John Raba, who has been appointed by a 
federal judge in New York to monitor the treatment of hospitalized prisoners in the custody of the Correction Department, said immobilizing prisoners could generally impede healing and increased the risk of blood clots. 

Lequint Singleton had been shot in the back but was being held by the police because of two outstanding warrants: one for an open container and another for a disorderly conduct summons. As he was being prepared for surgery in August to stanch internal bleeding, Singleton said he recalled having to wait while "the doctors were arguing with the cop" about the handcuffs. "The doctor tells him: 'It has to come off. There's no way it's staying on. He's going into surgery.'" 

The handcuffs were removed during surgery, but by the time Singleton awoke, he found himself handcuffed and shackled again - and would remain so for about three weeks, he said. 
"It wasn't like they were serious cases - it wasn't like I was on the run," Singleton said. "I didn't do anything wrong. I got shot." 

One 19-year-old man who had been shot several times on Feb. 16, but was arrested on a warrant over a disorderly conduct summons, said that after a week of being handcuffed to the hospital bed, he urged the police to take him to court even though he was still wounded. 
"I was like, 'I got to get out of here,'" said the man, who asked to be identified as Roy, a shortened version of his middle name, because he feared retaliation. 

Roy said he was so weak that an officer had to support his slight frame as they entered the courtroom. "It was hard for me to walk," he said. 

A judge told him to stay out of trouble and released him, recalled Roy's lawyer, Bharati Narumanchi, who confirmed Roy's account of his detention at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn. The lawyer added that Roy did not have the strength to immediately leave the courthouse; he first lay down on a bench to rest. 

Another shooting victim, Kenneth Briggs, 53, was handcuffed at Mount Sinai-St. Luke's hospital in Manhattan for several weeks while he was in a medically induced coma, after he was shot on July 28. He said the police had told him he was handcuffed because of three outstanding warrants, all for nonviolent offenses. 

"I woke up and tried to move, but they had me handcuffed," Briggs recalled during a recent interview at Rikers Island jail, where he is serving a sentence for the sale of counterfeit New York Knicks tickets. 

He said that after he woke up from his coma, the restraints remained on for many days, delaying his physical therapy. As soon as the restraints came off, he said, he began to hobble around his room and the hospital, relearning how to walk. "They didn't start physical therapy until after I was uncuffed," he said. 

Asked if he was bitter about the whole experience, Briggs responded, "I'm mainly bitter about being shot." 

The policy also affects family members of those hospitalized; because the patients are in police custody, visitors are told to get a permission slip from the precinct that is good for only a single visit. When Daly underwent surgery at Brookdale Hospital on Dec. 15, his mother, Thelma Coley, said she was barred from seeing her son that day. 

"An officer said we can't come because he's under arrest and we have to go to the precinct," Coley said. 

Daly said his warrant stemmed from an episode last summer. He said that while at a barbecue, he walked outside to talk on the phone and placed a cup of wine on the yard's fence, which led to a summons from a passing officer. He missed his court date, he said, because he could not find a sitter for his 4-year-old son. 

After his arrest in the hospital, Daly said, shackles were placed on his ankles, and his one good hand was handcuffed to the bed. (His other hand had been shattered by a bullet, requiring the insertion of pins.) The restraints left him unable to move much. He could not scratch an itch or adjust the colostomy bag that he was using as a result of a bullet that passed through his stomach. 

When doctors wanted to examine an exit wound on his backside, they had to first ask the officer to uncuff him so that he could be turned over. A new officer came to guard him every eight or 12 hours. A captain, Daly said, would periodically "stick his head into the room to make sure I'm handcuffed and shackled." 

Mostly, the officers passed the time playing games on their cellphones; Daly said he could hear the sounds of the game Candy Crush. 

Fading signals add urgency to search for missing Malaysian jet

Perth-:  The search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner resumed on Saturday, five weeks after the plane disappeared from radar screens, amid fears that batteries powering signals from the black box recorder on board may have died. (MH370 hunt goes on after Australia signals great confidence)

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned on Friday that signals picked up during the search in the remote southern Indian Ocean, believed to be "pings" from the black box recorders, were fading. (Australian PM confident signals are from missing Malaysian plane's black box)

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared soon after taking off on March 8 from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board, triggering a multinational search that is now focused on the Indian Ocean. (Why pinger locator is still the best option in Malaysian jet search) 

Search officials say they are confident they know the approximate position of the black box recorder, although they have determined that the latest "ping', picked up by searchers on Thursday, was not from the missing aircraft. (Malaysia starts investigating confused initial response to missing jet)

Batteries in the black box recorder are already past their normal 30-day life, making the search to find it on the murky sea bed all the more urgent. Once they are confident they have located it, searchers then plan to deploy a small unmanned "robot" known as an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle.

"Work continues in an effort to narrow the underwater search area for when the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is deployed," the Australian agency coordinating the search said on Saturday.

"There have been no confirmed acoustic detections over the past 24 hours," it said in a statement.

The black box records data from the cockpit and conversations among flight crew and may provide answers about what happened to the plane, which flew thousands of kilometres off course after taking off.

The mystery has sparked the most expensive search and rescue operation in aviation history.
Malaysia's government has begun investigating civil aviation and military authorities to determine why opportunities to identify and track the flight were missed in the chaotic hours after it vanished.

NARROWING SEARCH AREA

Analysis of satellite data has led investigators to conclude the Boeing 777 crashed into the ocean somewhere west of the Australia city of Perth. So far, four "ping" signals, which could be from the plane's black box recorders, have been detected in the search area in recent days by a U.S. Navy "Towed Pinger Locator".

"We are now getting to the stage where the signal from what we are very confident is the black box is starting to fade and we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires," Abbott said on Friday.

The U.S. supply ship USNS Cesar Chavez has joined the Australian-led task force to provide logistics support and replenish Australian navy ships, a Pentagon spokesman said.

Up to nine military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships were scouring a 41,393 sq km (25,720 sq mile) patch of desolate ocean some 2,330 km (1,445 miles) northwest of Perth.

The extensive search and rescue operation has so far included assets from 26 countries.

Australia's Ocean Shield, which has the towed pinger locator on board, is operating in a smaller zone, just 600 sq km (232 sq miles) about 1,670 km (1,040 miles) northwest of Perth. 

That is near where it picked up the acoustic signals and where dozens of sonobuoys capable of transmitting data to search aircraft via radio signals were dropped on Wednesday.

Experts say the process of teasing out the signals from the cacophony of background noise in the sea is slow and exhausting.

An unmanned submarine named Bluefin-21 is on board the Ocean Shield and could be deployed to look for wreckage on the sea floor some 4.5 km (2.8 miles) below the surface once a final search area has been identified.

North Korea blasts reunification offer as 'psychopath's daydream'

Seoul:  North Korea on Saturday blasted South Korean President Park Geun-Hye's proposal on laying the groundwork for reunification through economic exchanges and humanitarian aid as the "daydream of a psychopath".

The blistering attack from the North's powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) was the first official reaction from Pyongyang to a proposal Park made in a speech last month in Dresden in the former East Germany.

She urged the North to expand reunions of families separated by the division of Korea and increase cross-border economic and cultural exchanges, starting with the South bolstering humanitarian aid. 

"Germany's unity is for us an example and model for a peaceful reunification," she had said.

An NDC spokesman noted that German reunification came about with the West absorbing the East and accused Park of begging foreign countries to help a reunification in which South Korea absorbed the North.

"This is merely a daydream of psychopath", he said, denouncing Park's proposal, billed as the "Dresden Declaration" by Seoul, as "nonsense" full of "hypocrisy and deception".

"The fact that in that particular place, Park Geun-Hye lashed her tongue about reunification gave away her sinister mind", he said in a statement carried out by Pyongyang's state media.

Reunification is however enshrined as a national priority in both the South and North Korean constitutions, but pro-merger sentiment in the prosperous South has waned considerably in recent years.

The North Korean spokesman urged Seoul to abide by earlier agreements including a landmark agreement signed in 2000, stressing all these previous accords gave priority to addressing the issue of easing military confrontation.

- Tensions high -

Tensions on the Korean peninsula remain high since the South launched annual military exercises with the United States in February, described by Pyongyang as a rehearsal for an invasion against the North.(South Korea, US to hold largest-ever joint air drill)

In a pointed protest at the exercises, Pyongyang carried out a series of rocket and missile launches, capped by its first mid-range missile test since 2009 on March 26.

The two Koreas also traded artillery fire across the tense Yellow Sea border on March 31, after the North dropped around 100 shells across the maritime boundary during a live-fire drill. (North and South Korea exchange fire across maritime border: military)

The exchange followed a North Korean warning that it might carry out a "new" form of nuclear test - a possible reference to a uranium-based device or a miniaturised warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile. (North Korea tells world 'wait and see' on new nuclear test)

Park also said in the Dresden speech that the South would help funnel international funding to the North's economic development should Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons programmes.

But the NDC spokesman said: "They should bear in mind that the tongue-lashing of Park Geun-Hye is the first root cause of deteriorating the North-South relations and beclouding the prospect of the nation."

"It is the unanimous view of the public that the North-South relations will be smoother than now only if Park keeps her disgusting mouth closed", he said.

Despite its verbal attacks, professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies said Pyongyang was likely to ease up and return to dialogue late this month as the South and the United States were winding up their military exercises.

Diplomatic efforts to resuscitate long-stalled six-party talks on disarming North Korea also appear to have been rekindled.

The US State Department said Friday that special envoy Glyn Davies would meet with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei in New York and Washington next week for discussions on the denuclearisation of North Korea.

Wu on Friday held talks with South Korean counterpart Hwang Joon-Kuk in Beijing on ways to "resume meaningful dialogue" aimed at bringing about "substantial progress" in the North's denuclearisation, Hwang told journalists.

China and India face huge cancer burden: report

Paris:  China and India are facing a cancer crisis, with smoking, belated diagnosis and unequal access to treatment all causing large-scale problems, experts said on Friday.

In a major report, published in The Lancet Oncology, more than 40 specialists warn that Asia's big two emerging giants are facing huge economic and human costs from the disease.

In China, cancer now accounts for one in every five deaths, ranking second only to cardiovascular disease as the most common cause of mortality, according to the study.

Sixty percent of cancer cases in China are attributable to "modifiable environmental factors," including smoking, water contamination and air pollution, it said.

But public awareness of the risk remains extremely low, the experts wrote, tinged by either fatalism or a misplaced faith in traditional medicine to tackle the disease.

But funding is also an issue. China currently spends only 5.1 percent of its national income on health care -- roughly only half the rate of European countries -- and just 0.1 percent of this spending goes specifically to cancer. 

In the United States, by comparison, cancer accounts for 1 percent of health spending, or ten times as much.

Patients in China also need to pay for most cancer treatment themselves, which can lead to catastrophic health care bills, while urban areas have twice as many cancer care beds than rural areas, even though half of China's population live in the countryside. 

"A quarter of all cancer deaths worldwide are in China," said Paul Goss, a Harvard Medical School professor who led the Chinese study.

"Some of the main factors responsible for the huge burden of this disease, such as insufficient and unevenly distributed health care resources and public misconceptions about the disease, are barely visible on China's national agenda."

Regional disparities in India -

In India, around one million new cancer cases are diagnosed each year, a tally that is projected to reach 1.7 million in 2035.

Deaths from cancer are currently 600,000-700,000 annually, although this figure is also forecast to rise, to around 1.2 million.

The study showed that while incidence of cancer in the Indian population is only about a quarter of that in the US or Europe, mortality rates among those diagnosed with the disease are much higher. 

Fewer than 30 percent of people with cancer in India survive for more than five years after their diagnosis -- a sign that cancer is being spotted too late and that treatment is lacking, while more than two-thirds of cancer deaths occur among people aged 30 to 69.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer killer, accounting for more than one in five of all deaths from cancer in women, while forty percent of cancer cases in the country are attributable to tobacco.

As with China, they found diagnosis is a problem, with a lack of cancer care in the north, centre and east of the country forcing many patients to travel long distances for treatment, and often to live in very harsh conditions.

In rural India, more than three quarters of private practitioners, who are often the first port of call for people sick with cancer, have no medical qualifications, the report said.

"The need for political commitment and action is at the heart of the solution to India's growing cancer burden," said Mohandas Mallath, a professor at the Tata Medical Centre in Kolkata.

"The extent to which death and illness from cancer will actually increase in the next 20 years will depend a lot on the investments made in future decades in tobacco control, healthcare delivery, cancer research, (and) clinical trials," he said.

Also vital, he said, will be boosting public awareness about smoking and of the benefits a healthy diet and lifestyle, as well as investment in vaccinations against cancer-causing viruses.

The report, which was also accompanied by an overview of cancer in Russia, will be presented at an Asian Oncology Summit taking place this weekend in Kuala Lumpur.

US blocks Iran's envoy to UN in rare rebuke

Washington:  The United States has blocked Iran's pick for envoy to the United Nations, a rare diplomatic rebuke that could stir fresh animosity at a time when Washington and Tehran have been seeking a thaw in relations.

The Obama administration said Friday that the US had informed Iran it would not grant a visa to Hamid Aboutalebi, a member of the group responsible for the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran. While US officials had been trying to persuade Iran to simply withdraw Aboutalebi's name, the announcement amounted to an acknowledgement that those efforts had not been successful.

"We've communicated with the Iranians at a number of levels and made clear our position on this - and that includes our position that the selection was not viable," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "Our position is that we will not be issuing him a visa."

Aboutalebi is alleged to have participated in a Muslim student group that held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days during the embassy takeover. He has insisted his involvement in the group Muslim Students Following the Imam's Line was limited to translation and negotiation.

Hamid Babaei, a spokesman for the Iranian UN Mission, said the decision was not only regrettable but "in contravention of international law, the obligation of the host country and the inherent right of sovereign member-states to designate their representatives to the United Nations."

As host country for the United Nations, the US must provide rights to persons invited to the New York headquarters. However, exceptions can be made when a visa applicant is found to have engaged in spying against the US or poses a threat to American national security.

Denying visas to UN ambassadorial nominees or to foreign heads of state who want to attend United Nations events in the US is extremely rare, though there appears to be precedent. According to a paper published by the Yale Law School, the United States rejected several Iranians appointed to the UN in the 1980s who had played roles in the embassy hostage crisis or other acts against American citizens.

Iran's choice of Aboutalebi had pinned President Barack Obama between congressional pressure to deny the envoy entry into the US and the White House's delicate diplomatic dealings with Tehran. After more than three decades of discord, US and Iranian officials have started having occasional direct contact, including a phone call last fall between Obama and new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

The US and its international partners also have reached an interim agreement with Iran to halt progress on Tehran's disputed nuclear program. Officials are in the midst of negotiating a long-term agreement to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

Officials said Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, the chief US negotiator in the nuclear talks, informed Iranian officials involved in discussions in Vienna this week about the visa decision. The White House said it did not expect the negotiations, which are due to resume next month, to be affected by the matter.

Despite some signs of progress in relations, many US lawmakers continue to eye Iran skeptically, and Tehran's choice of Aboutalebi sparked outrage from both Democrats and Republicans. The House and Senate unanimously passed legislation expanding the grounds for barring entry into the US to include individuals engaged in terrorism.

Carney would not say Friday whether Obama would sign that bill, but he said the president did share its sentiments.

The administration's decision to block Aboutalebi's nomination drew praise from both parties, including Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the chief sponsor of the congressional legislation. In an interview with Fox News, Cruz said he appreciated the president "doing the right thing and barring this acknowledged terrorist from coming into the country."

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said allowing Aboutalebi into the US "would have been a slap at all American victims of terrorism, not just those taken hostage in 1979. We're glad the Obama Administration made this choice, and Iran should stop playing these games. "

UN officials had no immediate comment on the US decision.

Iran had previously called US rejection of Aboutalebi "not acceptable," with Iranian state television quoting Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham as saying he is one of the best US diplomats and arguing that he previously received a US visa.

American officials said Iran still has time to withdraw the nomination and application, suggesting the US has simply chosen to not act on the visa instead of outright rejecting it.

Without a US visa, Aboutalebi would not be allowed to enter the United States. Iran could nominate a different ambassador or have Aboutalebi occupy the post from overseas.

Despite the decades-long tensions between the US and Iran, the Islamic republic maintains a robust diplomatic mission at UN headquarters in New York. The US frequently allows visas for representatives from countries it disfavors, including Syria and North Korea, but restricts their diplomats' movements and activities to a 25-mile (40-kilometer) radius of New York City.

There have been previous instances where officials accused of terrorism or deemed to pose a threat to the US have sought visas to appear at the UN, including with a previous Iranian nominee in the early 1990s and more recently with Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir. In most cases, the US has either signaled opposition to the applicant and the request has been withdrawn, or the State Department has simply declined to process the application.

Earthquake of magnitude 6.6 hits Nicaragua, no damage reported

Managua:  A strong earthquake hit southwest Nicaragua on Friday, the second in as many days, shaking buildings in the capital Managua and as far away as San Jose in Costa Rica, but there were no immediate reports of damage.

The 6.6 magnitude quake, which was also felt as far as El Salvador, struck 15 miles (24 km) south of the town of Granada, near the country's Pacific coast, at a depth of 86 miles (138.6 km), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The epicenter was 34 miles (56 km) south-southeast of Managua. Local radio station Nueva Radio Ya said the city's Roman Catholic Cathedral was evacuated as throngs of faithful gathered ahead of Holy Week celebrations.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said a tsunami was not expected due to the depth of the quake.

The quake was felt in Costa Rica's northwestern Guanacaste province, but the country's national emergency commission said there were no reports of damage or injuries.

The tremor came a day after a 6.1 magnitude earthquake shook western Nicaragua at a shallow depth of 6.2 miles (10 km), knocking out power and phone lines in some areas of the capital.

Nicaragua's government evacuated buildings on Friday in the wake of Thursday's tremor, which damaged around 700 homes and caused dozens of light injuries. Schools were already closed when Friday's quake struck.

Woman who threw shoe at Hillary Clinton released from jail

A woman who threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton as the former US secretary of state was delivering a speech in Las Vegas has been released from jail, and faces possible charges after her arrest for disorderly conduct, officials said on Friday.

Alison Michelle Ernst, 36, was released on her own recognizance just before midnight on Thursday, said Tess Driver, a spokeswoman for the Clark County District Attorney's Office. Ernst has not been formally charged but is scheduled to appear in court on June 24, Driver said.

Clinton was giving a speech on Thursday at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas when a protester who was not a ticketed guest and was being approached by Secret Service agents threw a shoe at her, said Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie

Video news footage showed Clinton, 66, a potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, move to crouch as a flying object flew past her on stage.

The former secretary of state later joked about the incident, asking if it was part of a Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show.

Las Vegas police arrested Ernst on suspicion of disorderly conduct, said police spokesman Officer Jose Hernandez. Prosecutors have not decided whether to charge Ernst in the incident, Driver said.

In many parts of the world, throwing a shoe at a political figure is a form of protest. In 2008, a shoe was hurled at then-President George W. Bush when he appeared at a Baghdad news conference with the Iraqi prime minister.

Clinton, who lost the Democratic presidential nomination to then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008, said at a marketing conference in San Francisco earlier this week that she was thinking about running for president again in 2016.

Cyclone batters Australia's Great Barrier Reef coast

Sydney:  Australia's Barrier Reef coast was on Saturday taking a battering from a tropical cyclone which knocked out power and phones, but no deaths or major devastation had been reported.

Queensland state Premier Campbell Newman said the focus was now on assessing how quickly electricity and communications could be restored.

Heavy rain and gales from tropical cyclone Ita continued to lash the far north.

But the storm was downgraded from the strongest category five before it made landfall Friday night to two Saturday morning.

Roofs were ripped off two homes and a pub in the coastal resort of Cooktown where several trees were uprooted during the night, officials said.

Ita crossed the coast near Cape Flattery late Friday as a category four with winds up to 230 kilometres per hour (140 miles per hour) near the core and tracked south across the state.

Newman warned there remained a potential for some destruction on Saturday.

"There will be a lot of damage potentially to people's property," he told ABC radio.

Both the 1,000 strong Aboriginal community of Hope Vale and Cooktown, population 2,400, had lost power.

"We've really got to this morning assess how swiftly we can get the power and telecommunications back on in these communities."

Cyclone warnings remained in force for coastal areas from Cape Flattery to Cardwell, including Cooktown and the major Barrier Reef resorts of Port Douglas and Cairns, 1,700 kilometres (1,060 miles) north of Brisbane.

At 9:00 am (2300 GMT Friday) the Bureau of Meteorology said Ita was 120 kilometres northwest of Cairns and moving south at 11 kilometres an hour.

- 'Still packing a fair punch' -

Winds gusting up to 130 kilometres per hour were forecast to hit towards Port Douglas later Saturday morning, with gusts up to 110kph as far south as Cairns and surrounding inland areas.

Tropical storms are common in northeastern Australia. Before weakening offshore, Ita had threatened to be stronger but not as widespread as the monster Cyclone Yasi system that tore through the region just over three years ago, ripping homes from their foundations and devastating crops.

The Bureau of Meteorology also warned of heavy rainfall possibly leading to flash flooding and coastal inundation from a storm surge.

The possibility of dangerous surges prompted warnings for people to evacuate parts of Cairns, with the ABC reporting that 30,000 people had been advised to seek shelter elsewhere.

Cooktown Mayor Peter Scott told Australian Associated Press he felt relieved as he had feared waking to widespread devastation.

"There's a lot of vegetation on the road and we've unfortunately seen some buildings damaged," he said.

"But there hasn't been a lot of structural damage."

Local woman Diana Spiker spent the morning walking her dog and had also expected far worse.

"They were talking about a category five at one stage so I thought there would have been a lot more damage," she said.

The bureau's Ken Kato said Ita was likely to be downgraded to a category one system or tropical low later on Saturday.

He expected the cyclone to head out "into the Coral Sea somewhere off the north tropical coast" during the day.

"But it's still packing a fair punch," Mr Kato added.