Damascus - Michel al-Khoury, the first Lebanese ambassador to Syria, arrived in Damascus Monday, in a further step toward normal diplomatic relations between the two countries.

"I am very happy to be the representative of my country in Syrian territory," Khoury told the German News Agency dpa on Monday. "I am now waiting for an appointment to present my credentials to President Bashar al-Assad."

Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered Israel's ambassador to Switzerland to return home for consultations, in protest of Bern's decision to host Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a conference Monday in Geneva.

Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman have decided to recall Ambassador Ilan Elgar "immediately," a statement issued by the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said.

After Slumdog Millionaire the West wants more of the Mumbai slums. Last week Karan Johar shot some key slum sequences in Borivali with the the Slumdog Millionaire kid Tanay Cheda who played the teenage protagonist Jamal in Danny Boyle’s film, and the incredibly underused Zarina Wahab who plays the Khan’s mother.

Karan chose the boy to play the childhood section of Shah Rukh’s life not only because of his facial likeness to Shah Rukh, but also because of the Tanay’s instant connectivity with the Mumbai slums and thereafter the Western audience.

Hamburg - Russia's Dinara Safina replaced American Serena Williams at the top of the latest women's tennis rankings issued on Monday by the WTA.

Safina is at the top for the first time. Her brother Marat Safin led the men's rankings for nine weeks in 2000, making them the first brother-sister act to be number one in the singles rankings.

The 22-year-old leads the way with 8,951, followed by Williams on 8,272 points. «#»

Hamburg - Rafael Nadal extended his lead at the top of the men's tennis rankings issued on Monday by the ATP thanks to a fifth straight victory Sunday in the Monte Carlo Masters.

Spain's Nadal leads with 15,390 points, followed by former number one Roger Federer of Switzerland on 10,760 and Serbia's Novak Djokovic on 9,520 points.

New Delhi, Apr 20 : India will remove a 60 per cent import duty on up to one million tons of white sugar for the next four months, a top government official said.

The government also decided to drop a requirement that raw sugar only be imported for re-export.

Three state-run trading firms and a farmers'' cooperative -- the State Trading Corp of India Ltd, the MMTC, the PEC and the National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) -- would be allowed to import up to one million tons of white sugar tax-free.