News in Brief

Advani, Modi share podium
Pti, Bhopal

Senior BJP leader L K Advani and Narendra Modi yesterday shared a public platform for the first time after the declaration of the party's prime ministerial candidate but a feeling of warmth was missing as they exchanged greetings.
Advani, who had sulked over the elevation of Modi by BJP parliamentary board recently and later appeared to have reconciled to it, presented bouquets to Modi and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Asia to have most millionaires: survey
Afp, Hong Kong

Asia will have the world's largest number of millionaires as early as next year, according to a report published yesterday.
With strong growth and high saving rates, the wealth of the region's millionaires will grow by an annual average 9.8 percent and reach nearly $16 trillion in 2015, according to the wealth management unit of Royal Bank of Canada.

Most valuable diamond up for sale
Bbc Online

A flawless 59.6-carat pink diamond will be auctioned in the Swiss city of Geneva at a record asking price of $60m (£38m), Sotheby's auction house says. It says the oval-cut stone - the "Pink Star" - will become the most valuable diamond ever to be offered at auction.
Sotheby's David Bennett says the diamond belongs in "the ranks of the earth's greatest natural treasures".
The gem, which was mined by De Beers in Africa in 1999, has received the highest possible colour and clarity rating from the Gemological Institute of America.

Briton arrested in Nairobi mall attack
Afp, London

A British national has been arrested in Nairobi over the bloody attack on a shopping mall by armed Islamists, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said yesterday.
British newspapers have speculated that Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of one of the men who bombed the London transport system in 2005, was among the attackers who besieged the Westgate mall in the Kenyan capital.
Lewthwaite, a 29-year-old Muslim convert known as the "White Widow", has been on the run in East Africa for the last couple of years and is wanted by Kenyan police for alleged involvement in a separate terror plot.