New York, Aug 1 (DPA) Chelsea Clinton was married Saturday, though details of the wedding were guarded like state secrets amid a horde of frustrated reporters in Rhinebeck, north of New York City, the family announced.
In a statement emailed to the media, US ex-president Bill Clinton and sitting Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said: “Today, we watched with great pride and overwhelming emotion as Chelsea and Marc wed in a beautiful ceremony at Astor Courts, surrounded by family and their close friends.”
The announcement was in stark contrast to the days before the ceremony, when the only established fact was that their only child was getting married.
The 30-year-old Chelsea and investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, 32, one of 10 children of another US political couple, became engaged in late 2009.
There had been speculation of a massive decoy operation ahead of the Clintons’ arrival Friday evening in Rhinebeck, which has just under 8,000 residents.
“We love it here. Chelsea loves the area as well,” Bill Clinton told reporters during a short walk through the small town.
But he wouldn’t be drawn out on details of the ceremony or the guest list.
Hillary Clinton had characterized the ceremony as being only “a family wedding”.
Speculation in the US media has ranged from less than $1 million to as much as $3 million for the affair. The wedding dress alone was said to be listed for $25,000.
Invited guests reportedly had to turn in their mobile phones and any other recording devices. The only thing known about the guests was that US President Barack Obama would not be among them.
The security measures especially are likely to push up the cost of the wedding. Rhinebeck was practically sealed off, with many streets blocked. Even airspace over the town was shut down for 12 hours.
In their statement after the wedding, the Clinton parents thanked Rhinebeck for its hospitality.
“We could not have asked for a more perfect day to celebrate the beginning of their life together, and we are so happy to welcome Marc into our family,” they wrote.
Jerusalem/London, July 31 (DPA) US President Barack Obama has warned the Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas that “there will be consequences” if he declines to open direct talks with Israel, Arab media reported Saturday.
“It is time to go to direct negotiations,” Obama said in a letter sent to Abbas and published Saturday by the London-based newspaper al-Hayat.
The US “will not accept a rejection of (Obama’s) proposal to go to direct negotiations” and “there will be consequences to this rejection in the form of lack of confidence in Abbas and the Palestinians, which can have further impact on US-Palestinian relations,” the letter continued.
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian member of the Revolutionary Council, had claimed in an interview with the London-published Arab newspaper al-Quds al Arabi Saturday that there had been “threats to isolate the Palestinians and cut off relations” made by the US as part of the “huge pressure on the Palestinian Authority to move to direct talks.”
But a White House source rejected that claim as “not true” Saturday, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
The US expressed its hope in the letter published by al-Hayat that direct negotiations would start at “the beginning of next month.”
Obama would help the Palestinians get their own state if they enter direct negotiations, but will not offer any assistance if they refuse, the letter said.
The US administration also rejected the option of going to the United Nations as an alternative to direct negotiations.
The four months allocated to the US-mediated indirect “proximity” talks will end in September, as will a partial 10-month moratorium on Israeli construction in the West Bank.
The Israeli government, the US and the European Union have all expressed their desire that direct talks get under way “immediately”.
The Arab League Thursday also gave its green light, but called on the US administration to accept negotiations defined by a clear timeframe, specific reference terms and a monitoring mechanism.
The Palestinian government has so far insisted on seeing some “progress” from the Israeli side before moving to direct talks.
London, July 31 (ANI): Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney was turned away by security guards at the White House when he arrived to play a gig for U.S. President Barack Obama last month.
McCartney, 68, had arrived at the iconic building in Washington, D.C. ahead of his scheduled performance for the president, but he and his band were not allowed through the strict security checks.
Guards on the gate eventually sent McCartney to a different entrance, but the delay left the musician fearing he would miss the gig.
“Getting through the security of the White House (was memorable). For the rehearsal, we got through fine. But for the actual gig, we were sort of not let in,” the Daily Express quoted him as saying.
“At the gate we said, ‘We’re the entertainment.’ He (the security guard) said, ‘No, you’ll have to walk around the other block.’
“It was heavy traffic, so we’re going, ‘Oh geesh. Wouldn’t you just know it’,” he added. (ANI)
Washington, July 31 (ANI): America’s ability to track down illicit nuclear material or conduct a timely investigation of a terrorist attack involving nuclear materials is at risk of serious erosion, according to a panel of experts attending a National Research Council meeting.
‘Without strong leadership, careful planning, and additional funds, these capabilities will decline,’ the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) quoted the panel as concluding in a study released July 29 here.
The 31-page report is an unclassified version of a classified sibling, pulled together at the request of the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and the US Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration and presented to the agencies in January.
Some progress has been made in addressing the issues raised in the classified report, says Albert Carnesale, chancellor emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles and a specialist on nuclear and international security issues, in a preface to the unclassified version.
He noted that President Obama has developed a five-year strategic plan to deal with the challenges faced by the country’s nuclear CSIs.
In addition, earlier this year he signed into law the Nuclear Forensics and Attribution Act, which attempts to deal with a looming shortage in experts in the field, among its other provisions.
Still, ‘much work remains to be done,’ Dr. Carnesale writes in the preface to the unclassified report.
Ideally, nuclear sleuths try intercept illicit nuclear material before anyone can turn it into a weapon or terrorist device.
A great deal of effort goes into accounting for nuclear materials not only from government weapons programs, but those used in the private sector for everything from medical imaging to irradiating food as a preservative.
If that material goes AWOL, then shows up in a box in the trunk of someone’s car, it’s up to nuclear-forensic experts to analyze samples to determine where it came from.
Virtually everyone agrees that an attack on US soil involving either a small nuclear weapon, a dirty bomb (which uses chemical explosives to spread radioactive material), or other forms of irradiated material is the most grave terrorist threat the country faces.
Thus, the pressure to quickly deliver reliable information on the nature of the material used and its most likely source to the president and to Congress would be enormous.
If the event were real, the panel says, investigators would be hard-pressed to produce results within the time given for the drills.
Several factors contribute to this, according to the report:
Multiple agencies are involved, leading to challenges in setting standards and coordinating efforts.
Historically, money and people for nuclear forensics have come from the US nuclear weapons program, whose budgets are shrinking.
Scientists and engineers with the skills needed are either retiring, or if they are still working, are too few and spread too thin to respond as quickly as an incident would demand.
Research and development has been lacking that would allow nuclear sleuths to develop new tools or update existing tools they need, while meeting modern occupational health and safety standards.
To meet these challenges, the panel offers a range of recommendations.
Among them are: conduct more-realistic, unannounced drills to get a better sense of where gaps in responses are; ensure investigators have access to all relevant databases, even if they are classified or proprietary; boost R&D to give nuclear investigators the tools to allow them to produce scientifically credible results in less time; and look for ways to improve sharing information internationally. (ANI)
Washington, July 31(ANI): The Unites States has brushed aside Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s suggestion of a NATO operation inside Pakistan to strike at Taliban safe havens in the country.
“We have no plans to send US combat forces to Pakistan,” The Daily Times quoted P.J. Crowley, U.S. State Department spokesman, as saying.
Crowley also said that the Obama administration was working with the Pakistan government to eliminate the safe havens.
“You have the United States and the international community working with Afghanistan on one side of the border, and you do have Pakistan taking aggressive action on the other side of the border. And our message to Pakistan is that the offensive needs to continue,” he added.
Earlier, on Thursday, Karzai had urged his Western allies to destroy “militant sanctuaries” in Pakistan.
“The time has come for our international allies to know that the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages, but rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centres and training places of terrorism which are outside Afghanistan,” Karzai said.
“Whether we are able to destroy these sanctuaries or not is another question. We will try what we can. Our international allies have this ability, but the question is why they are not doing it,” he added.
The Afghan government has long claimed that Pakistan is playing a double game, supplying a vital land route for NATO equipment into Afghanistan while tolerating the Taliban in and around the city of Quetta.
Afghan security officials have also frequently accused Pakistan’s spies in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of involvement in attacks inside Afghanistan. (ANI)
Washington, July 31 (IANS) Rashad Hussain, son of an Indian migrant couple from Bihar who is US Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, will travel to India Aug 1-9 to discuss Obama Administration’s initiatives on education, global health, entrepreneurship and countering violent extremism with Muslim leaders and academics.
Son of an Indian migrant couple from Bihar, Hussain will visit Aligarh, Mumbai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, and Patna, where he will meet with local university faculty and students, Muslim leaders, and government officials, the State Department announced Friday.
As special envoy Hussain, both a Quran scholar and an ardent North Carolina Tar Heels basketball fan, is charged with helping to bridge the cultural divide in US relations with Muslims inside and outside America’s borders as part of President Barack Obama’s new approach to engage the Islamic world. India has the world’s second largest Muslim population after Indonesia.
Hussain’s father, a mining engineer, moved from Bihar to Wyoming in the late 1960s. A few years later, during a visit to India, he married Hussain’s mother, now an obstetrician in Plano.
After the 2008 election, Hussain was recruited to the White House counsel’s office where he has worked on national security and new media issues, and helped inform the administration’s Muslim outreach efforts.
Ben Rhodes, Obama’s chief foreign policy speech writer, sought Hussain’s counsel last year as he drafted the president’s Cairo address reaching out to Muslims.
London, July 31 (ANI): Nicolas Sarkozy will soon be travelling in real Presidential luxury in his own America’s Air Force One-like aircraft, dubbed ‘Air Sarko One’.
The 150-million-pound aircraft complete with bedroom, air filter system would allow the French President to smoke cigars, and even take a shower.
The specially upholstered Airbus A330-200, has just been taken on its first test flight in Bordeaux, southwestern France, with all internal fittings due for completion by October.
The plane will also include a 12-man meeting room, 60 business class seats, top-grade encrypted communications systems, a reinforced fuselage and missile decoy system.
Presidential air force officials have dubbed it ‘Air Carla One’ after his supermodel wife Carla Bruni.
The French leader is understood to have long envied the luxurious conditions in which Barack Obama, the US President flies across the world in his Boeing 747-200B, and has complained that his two smaller Airbus A319s lacked the necessary presidential stature.
‘Air Sarko One’ as the plane has been dubbed, will have a wingspan a good two feet longer than the US model.
But Sarkozy’s big purchase and refit of the jet from tourist airline Air Caraibes has raised eyebrows as the winds of austerity blow through Europe and other leaders are reining in their perks.
Sarkozy has come under criticism for the new plane weeks after ordering ministers to cut spending and following a string of embarrassing expenses scandals.
However, his government yesterday rebutted claims that the new presidential plane was an extravagance.
‘There is nothing ostentatious, simply a desire to have equipment fitting for the world’s fifth power,” the Telegraph quoted Luc Chatel, the government spokesman, as saying.
He has argued that the cost of new presidential jet will be offset by the sale of two smaller A319s currently used.
However, the two medium-range jets are only expected to fetch around 20 million euros. (ANI)
By Arun Kumar
New York, July 31 (IANS) The picturesque small town of Rhinebeck, about 150 km from here, is all abuzz for former first daughter Chelsea Clinton’s marriage Saturday billed as the “wedding of the decade” and “wedding of the century” by a frenzied media.
On the eve of the “top-secret” wedding of the daughter of former first couple Bill and Hillary Clinton, tiny Rhinebeck is undergoing a transformation from a sleepy little town to media Mecca.
Chelsea Clinton, 30, and investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, 32, will wed on Saturday night at Astor Courts, a 50-acre estate along the Hudson River as a local daily Hudson Valley News reported. Many guests will reportedly stay nearby at the Beekman Arms, billed as the oldest operating inn in America.
A slim and smiling Bill Clinton pulled into Rhinebeck in a black Suburban SUV around lunchtime Friday, casually dressed and looking fit on the eve of daughter Chelsea’s big wedding.
Giving his future son-in-law a public seal of approval he said: “I like him very much. I really do. I admire him. Hillary feels the same way.”
“Today is the most beautiful day ever,” Clinton declared after sharing a pasta lunch with brother Roger, another relative and a friend in the small upstate town.
The crowd let out a huge roar when Clinton – in a black polo shirt and jeans – exited GiGi Trattoria. His party of four took a back table at the local Italian restaurant.
“Thank you, thank you,” Clinton told the crowd before leaving about an hour and 45 minutes after his arrival.
Various reports mention the wedding will be catered by a combination of Blue Ribbon Restaurants, St. Regis Hotels and Resorts and Olivier Cheng Catering and Events.
The New York Daily News says chef Laura Pensiero, whose GiGi Trattoria opened nine years ago in Rhinebeck, is one of the caterers. “I can’t talk about it,” Pensiero told the Daily News. “How did you find out?”
Boston-based Winston Flowers, whose previous clients include Cartier, Gucci and Veuve Cliquot Champagne, will provide floral arrangements, as will floral designer Jeff Leatham, according to the Wall Street Journal. Leatham is the artistic director of the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris, according to his website.
AisleDash.com reports that because of a food allergy Chelsea Clinton has asked for a gluten-free wedding cake. The bride-to-be has been a vegan for years. The English newspaper Daily Mail says it’s an $11,000, five-tier cake.
Said to number between 400 and 500, the guest list is rumoured to include Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Terry McAuliffe, Ted Turner and former British PMs Tony Blair and John Major. But President Barack Obama hasn’t been invited or so he claims.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
By Arun Kumar
Washington, July 31 (IANS) India and the United States have taken another crucial step in implementing their landmark civil nuclear deal with the signing of an agreement on the nuclear fuel reprocessing arrangements under the accord.
The agreement signed by Indian ambassador to the US Meera Shankar and the US Under Secretary of State William Burns at the State Department Friday will enable reprocessing by India of US-obligated nuclear material at a new national reprocessing facility to be established by India under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
The reprocessing agreement was one of the few remaining steps needed to facilitate participation by US firms in India’s expanding civil nuclear energy sector. The US side is now awaiting the passage of a nuclear liability law by India to enable American companies to take advantage of an estimated $150 billion nuclear power market opening up in India.
Describing the agreement as “a reflection of our deepening ties,” Shankar said India was now looking forward to the visit of President Barack Obama in November.
“We are confident that the visit would take our relationship to the next level and demonstrate how our two countries are working together to find solutions to the pressing global challenges of the day and for promotion of peace and stability in Asia and beyond,” she said.
India has an ambitious programme for development of civil nuclear energy to meet its growing energy needs with a target to increase our installed capacity more than seven fold to 35000 MWe by the year 2022, and to 60,000 MWe by 2032, she said.
International cooperation, including cooperation with US firms, is an important component of this plan, Shankar added.
The State Department said the agreement carries forward the commitment made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Obama to fully implement the India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement, describing it as a significant step which highlights the strong relationship and growing cooperation between India and the United States.
This arrangement, negotiated and concluded under President Obama, reflects the Administration’s strong commitment to building successfully on the landmark US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative and is a prerequisite for US nuclear fuel suppliers to conduct business with India.
Previously, the United States had extended such reprocessing consent only to the European Union (EURATOM) and Japan.
The Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative has facilitated significant new commercial opportunities across India’s multi-billion dollar nuclear energy market, including the designation of two nuclear reactor park sites for US technology in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, the State Department noted.
Increased civil nuclear trade with India will create thousands of new jobs for the US economy while helping India to meet its rising energy needs in an environmentally responsible way by reducing the growth of carbon emissions, it said.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
Washington, July 31 (DPA) US President Barack Obama called on Iran Friday to release three Americans hikers who have been held for a year, saying their continued detention is “unjust”.
Saturday marks one year since Iranian authorities arrested Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal, who were hiking in Iraq’s Kurdistan region when they allegedly crossed an unmarked border into Iran.
“I call on the Iranian government to immediately release Sarah, Shane and Josh,” Obama said in a statement. “Their unjust detention has nothing to do with the issues that continue to divide the United States and the international community from the Iranian government.”
Iranian authorities have suggested they were spying but have not charged them with a crime. Iran has said it is willing to swap them for prisoners in US custody.
“I want to be perfectly clear: Sarah, Shane and Josh have never worked for the United States government,” Obama said. “They have never had any quarrel with the government of Iran and have great respect for the Iranian people.”
The three hikers’ families were allowed to visit them for the first time in May. Obama said Iran’s gesture was welcome and that he spoke with the three mothers earlier this week.
But he added: “I cannot imagine how painful it was for these three courageous women to return home without their children.”
