Redefine News

Kevin Rudd the Australian Prime Minister will be visiting India this week. Issues such as frequent attacks on Indian students, uranium sale and forging better bilateral ties with India will be discussed.

The Australian prime minister is scheduled to meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday. During his visit Kevin Rudd will be traveling to Mumbai and Delhi as of Wednesday in what appears to be as a part of country's damage control exercise after International student attack crisis in Austral.

According to a report, the Australian Prime Minister will be attending a Cricket Match in Mumbai where he will meet many Indian Business leaders.
Sale of uranium from Australia to India and Rudd government’s stand to not give the same as New Delhi is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is also expected to come up during the parleys, ahead of a review of the NPT next year.

Australia and India may use the visit to announce the start of negotiations towards a free trade agreement after a feasibility study reportedly found a deal to be favourable to both countries.
The Australian Prime Minister will head to Singapore after Visiting India. There he is supposed to attend the 17th annual summit of leaders from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies, on November 14-15.

The Prime Minister will use his visit to focus on a range of issues, including climate change, a conclusion to the Doha round of world trade talks and his long-term proposal for an Asia-Pacific Community.

On Thursday a psychiatrist from U.S Army opened fire with two handguns at the Fort Hood Army post, killing 12 and wounding 31 others, Army officials said.

It was previously believed that the suspect was Killed but according to the army official, the suspect is still alive.

The man was identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old from Virginia.

The suspect who is a psychiatrist in U.S Army had earlier treated soldiers wounded in foreign wars preparing for foreign deployment at the post.

"Our investigation is ongoing but preliminary reports indicate that there was a single shooter," Lieutenant-General Robert Cone, Fort Hood's commanding officer, told a news conference. "The shooter is not dead but in custody in stable condition."

US President Barack Obama called the shooting at the Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening, “a horrific outburst of violence.”

“It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas,'' the commander in chief said. ``It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.''

Fort Hood is home to about 50,000 troops, although Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said only about 35,000 were on base at the time. The fort, established in 1942, stretches across 339 square miles (878 square km) in central Texas and is the largest single employer in Texas.

Hasan, whose family said he was born in suburban Washington, is single with no children. He graduated from Virginia Tech, where he was a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps and earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1997. He received his medical degree from the military's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, in 2001 and was at Walter Reed for six years for his internship, residency and a fellowship.

The attack happened just down the road from one of the worst mass shootings in US history. On Oct. 16, 1991, George Hennard smashed his pickup truck through a Luby's Cafeteria window in Killeen, Texas, and fired on the lunchtime crowd with a high-powered pistol, killing 22 people and wounding at least 20 others.

The incident raised new questions about the toll that six years of continuous fighting in Iraq and nearly eight years of fighting in Afghanistan have taken on the U.S. military and on individual soldiers, many of whom have been on several combat tours.

Washington: Two Suspected Lashkar’s terrorists David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana who were arrested by FBI last month were part of a plan made by Let to attack the facilities of a Danish newspaper and the National Defence College in India, according to FBI.

Attorneys from US Department of justice opposed the bail application of Rana before a Chicago court on Tuesday. They said that Rana is a danger to the community and might leave the country, if released.

Rana faces a maximum sentence of 30 years, if proved guilty. Meanwhile Headley's bail plea is scheduled for December.

The reference to the National Defence College, New Delhi, as a target was made by the duo during their conversations on September 7, which was recorded by the FBI.

"In the same conversation, Headley and Rana discussed Denmark and other targets, including the National Defence College in India -- Rana, in fact, used the English word "target" in this discussion," the FBI informed the court.

"Later in this same conversation, Rana asked Headley to 'pass along a message' to Individual B (unidentified LeT leader)," the FBI said in its previous affidavit.

"Based on email communications from Headley, defendant Rana was fully aware of the true purpose of Headley's travel to Denmark, and the false pretences that Headley used to gain entry into the facility," they added.

"On or about January 29, 2009, defendant Rana even posed as Headley to communicate with a representative of the newspaper and thereby maintain Headley's cover story."

According to them, Rana had also misled a government official, the Pakistani Consulate in Chicago, to obtain a visa for Headley to facilitate his prospective overseas travel.

An Earthquake which was recorded 4.9 on richter scale struck the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas early on Wednesday. At 209 people were injured in this incident.

The quake struck at 2:56 am (0500 IST Wednesday) and also rocked the adjoining Qeshm highland.

"As of 6:00 am today, we have 209 people wounded in the earthquake said Farshid Abedi, the head of the main medical university in Hormozgan province where Bandar Abbas is located.

Seoul – South Korea: On Monday North Korea issued a threat that if U.S. Officials do not quickly agree to one-on-one talks demanded by communist regime than it will increase its nuclear arsenal.

The regime's impatience came days after No. 2 Nclear negotiator Ri Gun came away from meetings with Washington envoy Sung Kim without an agreement to hold bilateral talks.

"If the U.S. is not ready to sit at a negotiating table with the (North), it will go its own way," the North's Foreign Ministry said Monday in a statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.

Ian Kelly a State Department spokesman in Washington did not comment on the North’s statement.

He said that the U.S. is "still considering" North Korea's invitation for Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special envoy on North Korea, to visit Pyongyang for talks.

He also said the U.S. is "still considering" North Korea's invitation for Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special envoy on North Korea, to visit Pyongyang for talks.

The North agreed in 2007 to disable its nuclear facilities — as a step toward its ultimate dismantlement — in exchange for energy aid and political concessions. Pyongyang halted the process and later abandoned the pact after receiving most of the promised energy aid and concessions.

It seems these are the worst of times to be a militant in Kashmir. First, a teenage girl axed a Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist to death in Rajouri roughly a month ago. Now, a bear has mauled two Hizbul Mujahideen militants to death as they hid in its cave in Shopian, South Kashmir.

A spokesman of the army said a wild bear entered the forest hideout of the separatist guerrillas and killed two of them in Kulgam district.

According to him the two commanders dared to colonise a bear's cave at Darwal Nar in Pir Panjal in Shopian and paid for it with their lives. For, late on Sunday night, as the two slept, the bear came calling. "It attacked the armed militants and killed them on the spot,"

The spokesman said Saifullah was the district commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen for Pir Panchal area while Qaiser was a tehsil (sub-district) commander of the outfit.

“We have recovered in the hideout two AK-47 rifles, four magazines and some other equipment the terrorists had been using ,” the spokesman said.

This is the first incidence in Kashmir in which a a wild animal has killed separatist guerrillas who often use the densely forested mountains here to build safe havens.

A busy commercial area near the Pakistan Army’s headquarters in the garrision city of Rawalpindi was stroked by a suicide bomber on Monday,killing at least 24 people including military personnel

The blast caused considerable damage to the facade of the Shalimar Hotel on Mall Road, less than a kilometre from the Army's fortified General Headquarters that was besieged by a group of terrorists nearly a month ago.

Police officials were quoted by Dawn News channel as saying that a suspected motorcycle-borne suicide bomber blew himself up outside the hotel when policemen tried to intercept him.

Among the dead and injured were the people who came to collect their salaries and pension in a state run bank situated near the Hotel.

Witnesses said that private security guards and army personnel were also among the victims in the explosion that occurred at 10.40 am.

Military police and paramilitary personnel cordoned off the area and diverted traffic from the road in front of the hotel.

Zahid Dara, who witnessed the blast, told reporters: "I fell off my motorcycle when the blast occurred. People began running helter-skelter in panic. I saw the blast had occurred outside the hotel, near which there are several banks, travel agencies and other offices".

Mumbai-born and Chicago-raised Eboo Patel, a charismatic Muslim scholar who fights fanaticism and religious intolerance, has been named in the fifth annual Best Leaders issue of the US News & World Report magazine

The list of 22 leaders was compiled in association with Harvard Kennedy School. It also includes Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, Newark city Mayor Cory Booker, Cisco Systems CEO and Chairman John Chambers and playwright-activist Eve Ensler.

A 33-year-old Rhodes scholar and author, Patel is also one of US President Barack Obama's advisers on faith. He has been running an organisation called Interfaith Council and camps for youth from different religions for over a decade.

In the magazine report, Patel recollected how during the 7th-grade student council election, a white classmate had told him, 'Nobody would vote for people like you'. Locker-room humiliation and peer taunts of 'curry maker' -- worse marked his adolescence, he told the magazine.

In his memoir, Acts of Faith, Patel says he could have easily become a religious extremist but for his careful reading of The Koran, and the inspiration he took from leaders ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr to Nelson Mandela.

Patel is tackling what he considers the 'colour line' of the 21st century: The faith line,' the magazine said, adding, 'While Patel's soft-spoken charm may hide his Rhodes scholar intellect, there is nothing understated about his strikingly ambitious vision for global religious pluralism.

 
More than one billion people go to bed hungry everyday as the deadly combination of a severe food shortage and one of the worst global financial crises in living memory has shrunk food aid to an all-time low, a UN body said today.

It’s probably right that there's nothing great about this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Other Nobel Peace Prize laureates such as Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, even Al Gore—achieved specific things that unarguably changed the world for the better before they got their awards. Alfred Nobel's prize is for people who have done the most or the finest work for alliance between nations or for the mankind.

This time we can say that The Nobel Committee has accidentally done something that will only widen the political gulf between red and blue by increasing the opposition to Obama, which will make it even more difficult for him to actually achieve any of his goals.

The question is not what he has done. We know that He still continues to soothe the mind of the international left-liberal organization. He's still the artistic—and unifying—symbol of anti-Bush.

We also know that the Afghanistan may not be Vietnam yet but the "necessary" war is going nowhere near the Taliban resistance, healthcare is still a mess and the recession has not exactly ended.

Obama, though, is almost more of a symbol than an actual agent of change—at least so far. If nothing else, this award seems incredibly premature. Why not wait until he’s at least been president for an entire term, after he’s actually had enough time to make good on his promises?

This award, says the Nobel quote, is for Obama's diplomacy which "is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Did we get it right, "...shared by the majority of the world's population"?

Just nine months in office, Obama gets the Nobel for being what he's not.

As Peggy Noonan says in the Wall Street Journal, the Nobel Peace Prize, whenever it's awarded to a politician, is an "award given by liberals to liberals.

President Obama has won the award for what he may achieve in the future.

As per the Jury said about her “The research of Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson demonstrates that economic analysis can shed light on most forms of social organization”.

Her work mainly challenged the usual perception that common property is poorly managed.

In an interview on Swedish television she told that her first reaction was “great surprise and pleasure”, and she was totally shocked after being first American women to be honored by the Economic Noble.

Ostrom, being a professor at Indiana University whose name was circulated as a likely winner in recent years “conducted numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, and concluded that the outcomes are "more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories,” as the jury said.