30 more languages spoken in China identified

September 27th, 2009 LONDON - India is the country that is spoken of most often as an enemy in China, a British newspaper reported Sunday, but quoted a retired Chinese officer as saying the men serving the People's Liberation Army (PLA) have no devotion. Compared with our last war against India in 1962, our equipment is much better but the devotion to country and people, of our officers and men is much worse, the Sunday Times quoted an unnamed retired officer as saying.

September 24th, 2009 FRANKFURT - Top government sources are putting the media in the dock for drumming up the incursion issue and reiterated that there is no imminent threat or a significant rise in incursions from the Chinese side along the Sino-Indian border. Referring to media reports of a proposed high-level meeting of the China Study Group being called by National Security Adviser M.K.

September 22nd, 2009 HYDERABAD - A popular Telugu ghazal singer Ghazal Srinivas, who holds the Guinness World Record for singing in most languages at one concert, is on a peace mission to war-torn Afghanistan. Srinivas Tuesday left for Kabul on a 10-day peace mission at the invitation of Maiwand Bank of Afghanistan.

September 18th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Pakistan and China Friday signed an agreement to build a communication satellite in the next three years, officials said. China will provide $200 million to Pakistan to build the PAKSAT-1R satellite.

September 16th, 2009 ISLAMABAD - Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has revealed that 36 Memorandums of Understanding have been signed between the Islamic country and China in the past year. In an interview with the Guangming Daily, Zardari added that over 50 new joint collaboration have also been identified.

September 1st, 2009 BEIJING - China Tuesday urged the Myanmar junta to restore order and stability at their border following unrest that triggered mass exodus of Myanmarese into the Communist country. "Safeguarding the stability of the China-Myanmar border is in line with the vital interests of both governments," said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu.

July 30th, 2009 Indo-ASIAN NEWS SERVICE BEIJING - The US administration has decided to lift its restrictions on the export of hi-tech goods to China, a media report said Thursday. The China Daily quoted Vice-Premier Wang Qishan, who took part in the two-day China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue that ended in Washington Tuesday, as saying: "The US pledged to facilitate exports of high-technology products from the US to China." Sino-US trade touched $333.7 billion last year in spite of the global financial crisis.

July 5th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo has said that Asia's two emerging giants China and India will become big powers in the future when the current economic crisis is over and the world will be a different place with many centers of political, economic and cultural influence. Speaking at the 15th anniversary celebrations of a local secondary school on Saturday, Foreign Minister George Yeo also said that Russia and Brazil will also play major roles.

July 1st, 2009 LONDON - After a detailed meeting with Dr Shabir Choudhry in London, Professor Khawaja Abdul Rehman has been appointed Regional Director of Institute of Kashmir Affairs, Azad Kashmir Chapter. Rehman is a professor of English in Muzaffarabad and is conducting research on languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

June 25th, 2009 PARIS - Authorities have identified the body of the chief pilot of the Air France aircraft that plunged into the Atlantic June 1 with 228 people aboard, the airline said on its web site Thursday. "Among the victims found in the sea search, two members of the Air France crew have been identified: the flight captain and a steward," Air France said.

June 22nd, 2009 SAO PAOLO - Brazilian authorities have identified 11 victims, three weeks after an Air France jet carrying 228 people crashed on its way to France, a news report said. The forensics department in the port town Recife identified 10 Brazilians, among them five women, and one foreigner, whose bodies were among the 50 recovered after the Airbus A330 crashed June 1 off Brazil's coast.

June 16th, 2009 KATHMANDU - It is available in languages as diverse as Hebrew and Hungarian. Now the Bhagvad Gita - a scriptural classic that provides the essence of Hindu philosophy - has been rendered in an ancient tribal language still spoken in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

June 14th, 2009 LONDON - An investigation has found that many of the foreign-language leaflets found in town halls and Whitehall have never been read, and that the government annually spends 50 million pounds on translation and interpretation for the benefit of people who cannot speak English. hough a well-intended initiative for immigrants, these articles or documents have failed to attract a single reader, claims a Telegraph report.

June 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Indiana University in the US has been given a government grant of $119,999 to educate middle and high school teachers and students in Hindi and Urdu, two of the three "strategic languages spoken in some of the most populated countries." The University's India Studies Programme has been given the grant from the "STARTALK" funding for a four-week residential immersion programme for high school students in Hindi and Urdu, two languages largely spoken in India and Pakistan. The STARTALK programme of the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI) seeks to expand and improve the teaching and learning of strategically important world languages that are not now widely taught in the United States.

May 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched an ambitious program to double the number of analysts proficient in languages, which it deems critical in the fight against America's enemies. It was done five years after 9/11 Commission faulted inadequate language skills among its employees.