Vienna, Sept 5: On day one of the second round of meeting of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) here, senior Indian officials met representatives of the few member countries, who are skeptic about granting India access to nuclear fuel, in an effort to persuade them to support granting waiver to India.

Countries like New Zealand Austria, Norway, Ireland, The Netherlands and Switzerland have expressed their reservation to grant India specific waiver and raised questions at the NSG meeting on Thursday, particularly with regard to the issue of nuclear testing.

Singapore - China and Singapore concluded negotiations on a free trade agreement, China's first with an Asian country, news reports said Friday.

The agreement, finalized in talks this week between Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan in the northern coastal Chinese city of Tiajin, is likely to be signed at the Asia Europe Meeting Summit in Beijing on October 24-25.

Valletta, Malta - A headline streams across The Times of Malta's online news portal: "Search is on for 70 missing migrants."

That was on August 27. There has since been no sign of the group despite an extensive search by two German helicopters and a Maltese army maritime squadron, part of the European Union's border patrol agency Frontex.

The 70 disappeared when they were swept off a flimsy craft which capsized after it left Libya, according to eight fellow-travellers who managed to cling onto the vessel long enough to be rescued.

It is one of the worst tragedies involving would-be immigrants in the Mediterranean - yet the Maltese newspaper's online readers' forum offered little, if any, compassion.

Gaza - A boat carrying pro-Palestinian peace activists is scheduled to arrive in Gaza later this month, one of the organizers said Thursday.

The boat will arrive in Gaza on September 22, Jamal al-Khodari, head of the Popular Committee to Challenge the [Israeli] Siege, said. The vessel will carry members of the European parliament, doctors and members of the media.

The boat is the third such boat to arrive in Gaza in recent weeks. On August 23, two boats carrying 44 foreign peace activists as well as Palestinians broke the Israeli blockage on Gaza after sailing from Cyprus.

Tehran/Berlin  - The Iranian Foreign Ministry called in the French charge d'affaires in Tehran Wednesday to demand that the European Union (EU) prevent the holding of an "anti-Islam congress" planned for the German city of Cologne later this month.

The Foreign Ministry voiced concern about what it called the "growing anti-Islam trend" in Europe, appealing to the current French presidency of the EU to act, the official news agency IRNA reported.

New York, Sept. 4 : Indian companies once again made a strong showing in the Forbes List of fifty top Asian companies.

Ten Indian companies have made the list, which is dominated by China (13 companies). Australia and Taiwan follow India with seven and six firms respectively. The list also includes Hong Kong (five firms), Japan (three), South Korea (two), and Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia (one each).