Indian president Pratibha Devisingh Patil on Tuesday visited Museum of Natural History in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The Museum displays artifacts from Champa Civilization, which depicts the result of an entirely peaceful relationship between India and Vietnam.
Patil harped on the cultural ties between India and Vietnam.
Wednesday’s announcement that Tivo will begin offering streaming video from DVD-rental company Netflix is one more indication that technology companies increasingly see an on-demand future.
Under the terms of the agreement, the owners of recent Tivo machines (TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL) who also have an unlimited Netflix subscription will be able to select and watch content from Netflix’s library of approximately 12,000 on-demand titles.
“This is a collaboration between two like-minded Silicon Valley companies,” said Steve Swasey, Vice-President of Corporate Communcations for Netflix. “They are both fast-moving and creative.”
Brief Flirtation in 2004
The two companies held brief talks about the possibility of streaming videos to Tivo boxes back in 2004, but Swasey said the current agreement is unrelated to those conversations.
“That was a separate idea altogether,” Swasey said. “Both companies were overly ambitious and overly eager back then, and we thought we could be further along than we were. So we haven’t been in negotiations with Tivo on this since 2004.”
Swasey said that Netflix did not begin roll out its streaming functionality until 2007. Once it did so, however, the company has been aggressively pursuing partnerships to augment its service.
“At the beginning of 2007, Netflix had a DVD distribution business model,” Swasey said. “A short time later, we offered to streaming to PCs with a library of about 2,000 titles. Fast forward to 2008, we’ve got streaming to Macs, to video players, to the Xbox, and now to Tivo. And in many cases, our customers are paying less. The goal is to give consumers the ability to watch our content on whatever screen they choose.
Swasey would not predict whether Tivo or Netflix would ultimately pick up more subscribers from the deal, but said that the partnership should benefit both. “With this agreement,” Swasey argued, “Tivo joins 4 other great companies in working with Netflix to make its streaming content more widely available.” Over the last few months, Netflix has struck similar deals with LG, Samsung, Roku, and Microsoft.
Bad for Blu-Ray?
Although one of the partnerships will deliver content from Netflix through Samsung’s Blu-Ray DVD players, the arrangement with Tivo suggests that the Blu-Ray format could be threatened. Although the resolution of Blu-Ray movies is still higher than available streaming HD content, the gap is likely to narrow.
Even now, it is an open question whether the difference in quality for Blu-Ray movies is a sufficient incentive to overcome the simple convenience of selecting movies with a clicker, rather than driving to the local video store or even waiting a day or two for delivery from Netflix.
In any case, the agreement with Tivo and other box manufacturers is also a forward-looking approach by Netflix, which clearly anticipates a time when the delivery of physical DVDs will be a shrinking portion of its business model. Ironically, deals like this that bring the movies directly to the TV and the couch will only hasten that day.
A bomb planted near a Baghdad mosque killed three Shiite worshippers as they were leaving Friday prayers, Iraqi officials said, as Sunni and Shiite preachers condemned a draft security pact with the United States.
Police and health officials said seven people were wounded in the blast, which occurred in the primarily Shiite neighborhood of Shaab of north Baghdad.
Maj. Mark Cheadle, a U.S. military spokesman, said the bomb went off across the street from the mosque. He said three civilians were wounded but none died in the attack, which he blamed on Shiite extremists
Iraqi police and hospital officials gave the higher death toll but spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information. Such conflicting casualty tolls are common in Iraq.
Throughout the country, mosque preachers used the weekly prayer services to speak out against the draft security agreement, which would allow U.S. troops to remain in Iraq until at least the end of 2011.
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is preparing to submit the draft to parliament for final approval — which U.S. officials believe is by no means certain.
In Najaf, an aide to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told worshippers that the Sadrist movement would continue to oppose the deal “whatever the concessions that the government claims to have gotten.”
The aide, Sheik Assad al-Nasseri, spoke one day before the Sadrists planned demonstration in Baghdad to drum up opposition to the deal.
In Baghdad, Sunni cleric Abdul-Sattar Abdul-Jabar said the agreement is “more dangerous than the occupation” and demanded the government refuse to sign it. He called for a referendum to allow voters to decide on the deal.
At another mosque, Shiite cleric Sadralddin al-Qubanji said the talks had taken place in secret and Iraqis were unaware of the details. He said the deal “might be negative or positive” and that the country stood at a “momentous turning point” in its history.
“There is no national unanimity about it,” al-Qubanji said. “We cannot sign an agreement with secret terms.”
Al-Maliki has said there are no secret parts although the government has not published the full text in Iraqi media.
Also Friday, Muslim clerics spoke of the plight of Christians in the northern city of Mosul, where thousands have fled amid attacks by suspected Sunni insurgents.
The recent series of killings, widely blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq, have occurred as the Christian leaders stepped up lobbying efforts to ensure its representation in upcoming provincial elections in the primarily Islamic country.
Al-Qubanji said he disapproved of the attacks in “letter and spirit,” adding that the violence represented a “malicious scheme against Christians and all Iraqis.”
Islamic extremists have frequently targeted Christians and other religious minorities since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, forcing tens of thousands to flee Iraq.
However, attacks declined as areas became more secure after a U.S. troop buildup, a U.S.-funded Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and a Shiite militia cease-fire.
Newly reelected Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will meet other world leaders and put Parliament back to work quickly to hammer out ways to weather the credit crisis and keep the country’s economy competitive, he said on Wednesday.
In the wake of Tuesday’s federal election, which strengthened Harper’s minority government, other opposition leaders said they were ready to work together to tackle the fallout from global economic instability.
“The No. 1 job of the prime minister of Canada is to protect this country’s economy, our earnings, our savings, and our jobs, during a time of global economic uncertainty,” Harper told a news conference in Calgary, Alberta.
“The mandate we received allows us to continue moving forward,” he added, presenting a six-step plan to ensure Canada remains as unscathed as possible.
Harper said Ottawa would take “whatever steps are necessary to ensure that Canada’s financial system is not put at a competitive disadvantage” but gave no details.
He plans to summon Parliament later this autumn and present an economic and fiscal update before the end of November. He will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy and senior European Union officials for talks on the crisis this Friday.
Rivals frequently accuse Harper of playing partisan politics but he was keen to shoot down suggestions he would be thinking only of his future electoral prospects.
“The last thing I want to talk about today is another election … I don’t think the people of Canada do either. I think that’s a message that all parliamentarians will understand,” he said.
“We will always keep all our parliamentary options open but at the same time I would prefer if possible to work with the opposition parties, particularly on the question of the economy.”
Harper’s party rose to 143 seats from the 127 they held before the election, while the Liberals dropped to 76 from 95. The separatist Bloc Quebecois rose two to 50 seats, the left-of-center New Democrats jumped seven to 37 and two independents were elected.
Harper had run on providing a steady economic hand but was sideswiped by severe market volatility toward the end of his campaign as the Liberals accused him of having no plan for tackling the crisis.
On Wednesday, Harper received early and somewhat unexpected support from Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, who called for Parliament to return quickly “so we can work together to sustain and stimulate the economy”.
New Democrat leader Jack Layton said Harper should draw the right conclusion from the vote and start cooperating.
“I’m opening the door to working with other party leaders to try to achieve real results, particularly around issues like the economy,” he told reporters in Toronto.
Liberal leader Stephane Dion had no plans to talk to the media. The Liberals, who recorded their worst electoral showing in terms of seats since 1984 and their lowest percentage of the vote since the 1860s, are likely to start looking for a replacement for Dion.
Some critics asked why Harper had not managed to win a majority of seats, given that Dion ran a poor campaign based on the promise to introduce a carbon tax to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“The fact that Mr. Harper was restricted to another minority government, albeit a marginally stronger one, means that this campaign can only be viewed as a personal defeat,” said an editorial in the influential Globe and Mail newspaper, which had endorsed Harper before the vote.
In percentage terms, the Conservatives won about 37 percent of the vote against 27 percent for the Liberals. Voter turnout was a record low 59.1 percent.
September has been a great month to write about politics on the Web.The Los Angeles Times had an all-time-high 137 million page views, The Washington Post topped 320 million, and both Slate and the Huffington Post set their own traffic records.Much of the credit for driving page views goes to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, according to the New York Times.
According to the paper, slightly more than one-third of Palin search queries drove traffic to news and media sites.
Figures provided by Hitwise say that Fox News received the largest share of these search referrals at 1.12 percent, followed by Time at 0.98 percent. Many other publications received at least 0.1 percent — nothing to shake a stick at, given the torrential interest in Palin.
The Palin Effect is unmistakable. In early September, right after McCain introduced the Alaska Governor as his running mate, the percentage of traffic that Web sites for print publications received from search engines peaked at close to 26 percent, up from about 22 percent the week before and a clear high point for 2008. Broadcast media and other political sites saw a similar jump in their numbers.
Palin continues to reign supreme over the blogosphere. According to Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics technology, which tracks mentions of people and topics on blogs, Palin has been the most blogged-about of the four national candidates, ceding her top billing to McCain and Obama only in the days after the two presidential debates.
Quantifying the Palin Effect for an individual publication is difficult to do without access to that site’s internal tracking figures. We do have those numbers for Slate, if not for anyone else. Five of Slate’s 25 most-read articles in September were explicitly about Palin — a Sarah Palin FAQ and articles about her hacked e-mail account, her convention speech, her pregnant daughter and her interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson.
Another four were pegged to Palin news: “Explainers” on whether you can see Russia from Alaska and music licensing at conventions, plus a column on teen pregnancy and a tribute to the intrinsic weirdness of Alaska.
Those nine articles, which accounted for about 5 percent of Slate’s September page views, aren’t just a symptom of our readers’ voracious appetite for election news; only one non-Palin politics story ranked in the top 25.
Iceland sought on Friday to reassure international investors caught in its banking meltdown, saying it aimed to meet its obligations despite the turmoil which has ravaged a once-vibrant financial sector.
British officials were due to hold talks on Saturday with Icelandic authorities on dealing with the estimated 1 billion pounds of British deposits trapped in Iceland’s collapsed banks.
Banks and investors in several other European countries were also assessing the cost of their involvement in the north Atlantic island, which has become the most pronounced victim of the global financial crisis.
“The Icelandic government of course intends to honour its obligations,” Prime Minister Geir Haarde told a news conference in Reykjavik, without giving details.
Haarde said sharp criticism this week from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who said Iceland’s failure to guarantee British deposits was unacceptable, had been “disconcerting … and not very helpful”.
“To say that our country is virtually, as such, in default is not a true description of the situation here,” Haarde said.
But more criticism came on Friday from the Dutch government, which accused Iceland of insufficiently supervising Icelandic bank Landsbanki’s Icesave business in the Netherlands.
The Dutch finance ministry said the central bank was holding Iceland’s supervisor liable for any resulting damages.
In Vienna, Austria’s Erste Group Bank said it had 300 million euros ($411.7 million) exposure to Icelandic banks.
Austrian cooperative bank Raiffeisen Zentralbank (RZB), the parent of listed Raiffeisen International, said it holds Icelandic bank debt but declined to say how much.
The Finnish financial watchdog said Finnish banks’ total Icelandic bank exposure was 210 million euros and it was too early to estimate possible losses from that.
Iceland’s government seized control this week of most of Iceland’s banking system — taking over Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir. Financial markets ground to a halt as traders reported hardly any trades in the crown currency and money markets while its stock exchange remains shut until next week.
A deal to sell most of Landsbanki’s overseas corporate finance and brokerage business to Iceland’s Straumur-Burdaras investment bank for 380 million euros fell through on Friday.
SWEEPING POWERS
Home to just 300,000 people and previously best known for its geysers and other natural splendours, Iceland turned from a fishing-based economy into an international financial haven.
Its citizens enjoyed the trappings of prosperity as its banks expanded dramatically overseas, investors took large positions in its high-yielding currency and foreign money poured in to local projects over the last decade.
All that changed this week and the government was forced to adopt sweeping powers that gave the state the ability to dictate banking operations.
The International Monetary Fund has sent a mission to Reykjavik and said it was ready to lend to countries hit by the global credit crunch.
Iceland will also start negotiations with Russia on Tuesday to secure a 4-billion euro loan.
In Reykjavik on Friday, about 200 angry Icelanders protested outside the central bank over the way the economy has been run and called on the bank’s governor, David Oddsson, to resign.
They chanted “David Out” and two women held a sign reading “Stay Calm While We Rob You”.
Kaupthing and Glitnir banks said the situation was calm with no run on deposits. Landsbanki was not available for comment.
“There is a (100 pct) state guarantee for deposits, so there is no reason for people to run to banks and take out money,” Kaupthing spokesman Benedikt Sigurdsson said.
The crisis led to tense exchanges between Britain and Iceland. Haarde had expressed outrage when Britain used an anti-terrorism law to freeze assets in Landsbanki.
A British spokesman said London considered the Icelandic authorities’ behaviour unacceptable and it had been difficult to get information from them. Britain acted after Iceland indicated it would give preference to domestic depositors, he said.
“We’ve asked the Icelandic authorities to return money that should have been left in Britain,” British Prime Minister Brown told reporters. In a letter distributed by the Icelandic government, Brown said he hoped the dispute could be resolved rapidly and amicably.
Britain’s Local Government Association estimated 108 British local authorities have 750 million pounds invested in Icelandic banks. London’s police force, its transport network and charities across Britain also have investments with them.
An Icelandic businessman summed up the mood on the island.
“It looks like we are being left out in the cold by everybody else. It is grim. Everybody is taking care of themselves. The only people who are supporting us are the Russians,” Kari Stefansson of the Decode Genetics biotech company told Reuters.
Abraham Leon was getting a checkup when he found out he had high blood pressure and was at risk of developing diabetes.
On the spot, the 5-foot-6-inch, 240-pound lab researcher joined “Vamos Por Un Million de Kilos” (Let’s Lose a Million Kilos), a national campaign to get Mexicans to collectively trim about 2 million pounds.
The project is one of several new efforts to fight obesity in Mexico, which is on track to catch up with the United States within a decade as one of the world’s fattest countries, according to the Mexican government. Nearly half of Mexico’s 110 million people are overweight, and the number of fat children has climbed 8 percent a year over the last decade.
“The longer we carry this excess weight, the more serious the problem becomes,” said Dr. Samuel Flores Huerta, director of the Department of Community Health at Children’s Hospital. “Obesity is costing this country a lot of money.”
Mexico is working to mandate more physical education in public schools and encourage employers and unions to give workers time for exercise. The administration of President Felipe Calderon says it has built or renovated more than 800 public sports facilities around the country. The National Institute of Public Health is promoting food education and healthier choices in schools, such as fruits and vegetables instead of chips and soda.
Mexican cuisine has always been high in fat and carbohydrates. But for decades, people living in small villages could not grow enough crops to eat a lot and had to travel long distances to gather more food.
Now, as the middle class grows and more people move to cities seeking work, diets have become laden with processed and fast foods. At the same time, doctors say, Mexicans spend more time in sitting in cars or watching TV.
The country has the disease rates to prove it. According to government statistics, new cases of high blood pressure increased 24 percent in Mexico in just six years, from 2000 to 2006. New cases of Type 2 diabetes, believed to be linked in part to obesity, jumped 31 percent during that time.
Companies spend a lot to market unhealthy foods in Mexico, said Margarita Safdie, an investigator at the public health institute. In one so-called health-conscious promotion, a company offered a free bottle of water to anyone buying two soft drinks.
“It should be the other way around,” Safdie said. “It’s not that healthy food is much more expensive. What happens is that calories have become cheaper.”
At Alvaro Lozano’s taco stand in downtown Mexico City, customers line up every day for a choice of fatty meats on two corn tortillas washed down with a sugary soft drink. He said his customers are more concerned about money and time than about health.
Mexicans have also developed a taste for fast food.
“The food is good, and sometimes I don’t feel like cooking,” said Ana Lopez, 35, a Mexico City homemaker dining at Kentucky Fried Chicken on the Zona Rosa pedestrian mall.
“Vamos Por Un Million de Kilos” came out of a promotional campaign by the Televisa media company, launched after its sports department noticed a certain irony.
“Some of our sportscasters were talking about fitness while they themselves were obese,” said Rafael Bustillos, Televisa director of sport. “It was after that that we decided to start creating awareness about this issue.”
Advertisers sponsored spots encouraging viewers to eat healthier foods and showing easy and free ways to exercise in a country where few can afford gym memberships. Then the Mexican Institute of Social Security signed on, recruiting clinic patients like Leon for the weight-loss challenge. The campaign reached its goal in just four months with 2 million people.
“We only recommend that people lose a half to a full kilo (1 to 2 pounds) a week,” said Dr. Ernesto Krug, a public health unit director. “More than that is not healthy.”
The campaign is now starting a second phase, “Vamos Por Mas Kilos” (Let’s Lose More Kilos), targeted more widely, including at adolescents.
Leon, 39, has dropped 40 pounds since May. Before his checkup, he ate tacos, burgers and whatever his wife prepared, and didn’t exercise. Now he has learned to cook so he can choose healthy ingredients. He takes the stairs at work and walks at least twice a week with his wife. He also tries to be a role model.
“I have tried to tell my brother to do what I did. He’s overweight,” Leon said. “But he won’t listen to me.”
Leon plans to lose 20 more pounds. But already he worries less about heart disease and more about how to replace his baggy wardrobe.
“I think that it has paid off,” he said. “Physically, I feel great and more secure with myself.”
The European Union banned imports of baby food containing Chinese milk on Thursday as tainted dairy products linked to the deaths of four babies turned up in candy and other Chinese-made goods that were quickly pulled from stores worldwide.
The 27-nation EU adds to the growing list of countries that have banned or recalled Chinese dairy products. In addition to the ban, the European Commission called for tighter checks on other Chinese food imports.
Chinese baby formula tainted with melamine has been blamed for the deaths of four infants in China and the illnesses of 54,000 babies there. Health experts say ingesting a small amount of the chemical poses no danger, but melamine — used to make plastics and fertilizer — can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure. Infants are particularly vulnerable.
All imports of products containing more than 15 percent of milk powder will have to be tested under the new rules due to come into force Friday after talks among the EU’s 27 member nations.
EU food safety experts said they have found only a limited risk in Europe from food imports from China. But the European Commission says it is acting as a precaution in the face of the growing health scare.
The problem apparently has spread to animals, with a lion cub and two baby orangutans developing kidney stones at a zoo near Shanghai. The three baby animals had been nursed with milk powder for more than a year, said Zhang Xu, a veterinarian with the Hangzhou Zhangxu Animal Hospital.
The World Health Organization and UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund, issued a joint statement Thursday expressing concern about the widening crisis.
“Whilst any attempt to deceive the public in the area of food production and marketing is unacceptable, deliberate contamination of foods intended for consumption by vulnerable infants and young children is particularly deplorable,” the statement said.
Melamine has been found in infant formula and other milk products from 22 Chinese dairy companies. Suppliers trying to cut costs are believed to have added it to watered-down milk because its high nitrogen content masks the resulting protein deficiency.
“We also expect that following the investigation and in the context of the Chinese government’s increasing attention to food safety, better regulation of foods for infants and young children will be enforced,” the U.N. statement said.
The rest of the statement called for more awareness of the benefits of breast-feeding. That has become less common in recent years in China as busy mothers switched to powdered baby formula.
Melamine-tainted products has also turned up in an increasing number of Chinese-made exports abroad — from candies to yogurt to rice balls.
In China, the problem has spread to a popular brand of candy, with authorities pulling White Rabbit candy from shelves in Shanghai and the southern province of Hainan.
White Rabbit, which has been recalled already in Singapore, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, was found to contain “unsatisfactory” levels of melamine — more than six times the legal limit — in a test of 67 dairy products, according to the Hong Kong government’s Center for Food Safety.
The candy is still on sale in some stores in Beijing, and there has been no public announcement of a nationwide recall from China’s safety watchdog. A woman who works at the propaganda department of the quality body, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said that she did not know of White Rabbit candy being recalled in China. She did not give her name, as is common with officials in China.
The watchdog issued a recall list on Sept. 16 for 69 batches of milk powder made by 22 companies. The only other recall list was on Sept. 19 for liquid milk.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said China wants to work with food safety authorities of other countries over concerns about its dairy products, and China’s state broadcaster CCTV said Thursday there have been no positive tests of melamine on major brands of milk, yogurt and other liquid dairy products after Sept. 14.
The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture said that 29 provincial areas nationwide had set up special working groups to regulate the dairy product market.
The Shanghai government has urged a subsidiary of Bright Food Group to stop the sale of White Rabbit candy — one of the best-known candies in China — and pull them off the shelves, and to recall those for export that are likely to have problems, it said.
The subsidiary, Guan Sheng Yuan, has been making White Rabbit candies for almost 50 years, with exports to Southeast Asia and Chinese communities overseas.
“The inspection is ongoing and we are waiting for the results,” Xu Yongxin, a public affairs official for Bright Food Group Co, which makes the candy, said by phone Thursday.
The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) chief Tahmasseb Mazaheri has been replaced by his general secretary Mahmoud Bahmani, Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported.
Mazaheri is the second CBI governor to resign within President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s three-year presidential tenure. The first, Ebrahim Sheibani, resigned in August last year over differences with the president in the country’s economic management.
So far the ministers of economy and finance, interior, cooperatives, mines and metals, oil, education, the head of the planning and budget organization, and chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani have left Ahmadinejad’s administration, reportedly due to disagreements with the president’s policies.
ISNA carried the official appointment letter by Ahmadinejad to Bahmani and called on him to increase the country’s economic growth and value of the national currency Rial.
The Fars news agency had Saturday reported about the probable replacement of Mazaheri owing to grave differences with Ahmadinejad over economic policies.
Mazaheri initiated last month a three-month currency reform process with the aim of knocking off three zeroes from the national currency (Rial).
Upon his order, the central bank printed new 50 and 100 Rials, replacing the previous 500,000 ($518) and one million Rial ($1,036) bank cheques.
Although the central bank reassured on state television that the new bank cheques could be used as de facto bank notes, severalinstitutions, including banks, have hesitated to accept them, reflecting the government’s dispute with Iran’s Central Bank in the currency reform process.
Owing to an inflation rate of more than 26 percent - in some cases even up to 50 percent - the current banknotes, which range from 500 Rials (about five cents) to 50,000 Rials ($5.18) no longer correspond to the prices and people have had to take a lot of cash with them for even simple shopping. The coins are de facto worthless.
Inflation in Iran has led to widespread criticism of Ahmadinejad, not only by opposition parties but also within his own political camp.
Both sides have often accused him of ignoring experts’ opinions, especially on economic issues, and instead adopting an ideological approach.
Ahmadinejad has so far failed to implement his promised economic reforms toward fairer distribution of national wealth, including the country’s increased oil revenue.
Yet another round - the 12th - of Sino-Indian talks to resolve the complicated boundary dispute concluded here today with China stating that no specific agreements had been reached. Two days of discussions between India’s National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and China’s State Councilor Dai Bingguo were “pragmatic, candid and friendly,” according to a cryptic statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
The talks concluded without “reaching any specific agreements,” the official news agency Xinhua said. After a year-long hiatus, the boundary talks were held amid some tension in bilateral ties in the wake of attempts by China to block a consensus on the India-specific waiver at the NSG meet in Vienna earlier this month.
Beijing’s stand at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) upset New Delhi, which conveyed its unhappiness to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi during his visit to New Delhi last week. China maintains it played a positive role at the crucial NSG meet.
The brief statement said Dai and Narayanan, both designated as Special Representatives by the two governments, exchanged in-depth views on a framework to solve the boundary issue. “They agreed that both countries would carry out the guidelines of their leaders, maintain negotiations and seek a fair and reasonable solution acceptable to both sides,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying.
The next round of talks between the two sides will be held in India. It is not clear if the two sides discussed the status of Tawang, nestled among the mountains in Arunachal Pradesh which has long been a serious bone of contention.