Europe, for the first-time traveller, can be a teaser: the distances are vast, the stops too tempting and the costs mind-blowing. So how does one save a few extra euros on a summer junket? Through a car pool, says travel writer and columnist Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu.

“Try the Mitfahzentrale in Germany and then car pool your way across Europe as an alternative option. It saves cost,” suggests Sidhu, whose travelogue “Adrift: A Junket Junkie in Europe” will hit the stands in April.

“Out of concern for depleting renewable energy sources, a prudent German government has introduced the idea of car pooling. Not merely for the purpose of dropping children to school or colleagues riding together to work,” Sidhu said.

“The government had in fact suggested that an attempt should be made to pool fuel resources whenever travellers were cross-country or cross-continent. An experiment of sorts, perhaps; it met with huge success and is currently the mode of choice by anyone owning a car and a valid driver’s license.”

“Mitfahzentrale” - Sidhu’s mode of transport during her visit to Germany - simply put are “facilitation centres offering this unique low-cost car-sharing service in an organised fashion”.

“Now that most of Europe is still trying to recover from the downturn, car pools are becoming popular among the cash-strapped people, mostly youngsters. One can share a car as cheap as 25 euros with four people,” she said.

“The car pools are conveniently located near the main train stations. For a nominal fee, which also served as insurance cover in case of breakdowns and the shared cost of fuel consumed, you could even hitch a ride from Munich to Moscow. The more I thought about it, the more attractive the idea of traversing the continent in this manner appeared to become,” the writer said.

“Suddenly a million travel possibilities began staring at me in the face,” she said. “All that was required of me was to reach out and flag a destination,” she said.

Sidhu’s rendezvous with the “economical wheel” still continues. She has just returned from a car trip to Bhutan.

“I was part of the Indo-Bhutan Friendship Rally. I drove through jungles in stretches that had no tracks in a Maruti Esteem. I crossed the Bengal countryside of the Dooars at the foothills of the Himalayas, the forests of Bodoland in Lower Assam’s Kokrajhar district and reached Phuntsholing on the edge of Bhutan. From there, I proceeded to Thimphu, the Bhutan capital,” the writer told IANS, mapping her itinerary.

Sidhu is currently documenting heritage properties in Himachal Pradesh. “I will put it together as a new genre of travel book,” she said.

The author will read from her book “Adrift…” at the India International Centre March 28

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a Persian New Year message that Iran will “cut the hands” of anyone who tries to harm the Islamic republic.

“The Iranian nation will guard its national security with full strength and will decisively cut any unclean hand from any part of the globe which tries to harm it,” Ahmadinejad said in a message broadcast on state television.

The hardliner reiterated that his re-election in June last year was a “true” example of democracy for the world.

“The decisive vote by the nation for the president clearly outlined what path the government should take,” said Ahmadinejad, whose win has sparked one of Iran’s worst political crises with the opposition charging it was rigged.

“The enemy tried to hide the success of the Iranian people with dust, but in reality they were rubbing their own faces with dust … They should know that the Iranian nation is more determined than last year to pursue its high goals.”

Meanwhile, miffed at the rigid attitude of Ahmedinejad, US President Obama has said Iran always turned down or ignored a hand of friendship by America.

He accused Iran’s leaders of turning their backs “on a pathway that would bring more opportunity to all Iranians and allow a great civilisation to take its rightful place in the community of nations. Faced with an extended hand, Iran’s leaders have shown only a clenched fist”.

In his annual navroze message, Obama reached out more to the Iranian people themselves rather than their leaders in Tehran.

“Even as we continue to have differences with the Iranian government, we will sustain our commitment to a more hopeful future for the Iranian people,” Obama said in his message released by the White House.

Iran begins its New Year on Sunday

The UN secretary general has met Palestinian leaders at the beginning of a mission to press for a resumption of talks between them and the Israelis.

Ban Ki-Moon’s first stop was in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where he met PM Salam Fayyad. He is to see the Israeli president Shimon Peres later.

Israel’s controversial plan to build 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem has provoked the latest round of diplomacy.

The Palestinian leadership has said the plan is an obstacle to resuming talks.

It has been strongly criticised by the Quartet of the US, Russia, the EU and the UN.

Israel announced last week it had granted permission for the new homes in the Ramat Shlomo area of East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967.

During his visit to Mr Fayyad, he was escorted to a West Bank observation point on the outskirts of Ramallah to see the Israeli West Bank settlement of Givat Zeev, home to 11,000 Israelis.

Mr Ban reiterated the UN’s stance on the settlements.

“The world has condemned Israel’s expansion plans in East Jerusalem.

“Let us be clear: all settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory, and this must stop.

“The Quartet has re-affirmed this, that position. I’m also concerned about actions in Hebron, Jerusalem, and elsewhere.

“I urge all parties to respect sensitivities and promote calm.”

Mr Ban has stated the goal of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement - including a Palestinian state - within two years.

The last time Mr Ban came to Israel was in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s military operation against Gaza 14 months ago.

Weekend diplomacy

Then he did not hide his anger over the high human cost of that operation, and there may be strong words from Mr Ban this time over Israel’s refusal to halt the construction of settlements, the BBC’s Jonathan Head says in Jerusalem.

About 11 Palestinians were injured in the strikes

On Sunday the US special representative George Mitchell will also visit the region to try to get the so-called proximity talks going between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to travel to Washington where he is expected to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and possibly President Barack Obama.

Speaking to the BBC earlier, Mrs Clinton indicated that hardening the tone with Israel had paid off, with talks now back in prospect.

“I think we are going to see the resumption of the negotiating track, and that means that is paying off, because that is our goal,” she said.

Israeli strikes

The diplomatic efforts come as at least 11 people were injured by Israeli air strikes targeting Gaza’s airport, Palestinian officials say.

The Israeli military confirmed the missile strikes near Rafah, in southern Gaza, which it said targeted militants.

It was the second night of Israeli raids since a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip killed a worker on an Israeli farm on Thursday.

Friday’s missiles hit Gaza’s long disused international airport and tunnels dug by militants near the border with Israel.

On Thursday, Israeli missiles hit smuggling tunnels and a metal workshop in Gaza, but there were no reports of serious injuries.

An Israeli military spokesman said the strikes were a response to five rockets fired at Israel from Gaza in the past two days - including one that killed a farm worker from Thailand in a kibbutz in southern Israel.

He was the first person to be killed by rocket fire in southern Israel since the Israeli campaign in Gaza last year.

India will have “full access” to all the information on terror suspect David Headley, who pleaded guilty before a Chicago court to all 12 terror charges including the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, US Assistance Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake said in New Delhi on Friday.

However, he said he was not in a position to answer if an Indian team could go to the US to question Headley.

“… But I think you will have full access to all the information and whether or not an Indian team itself can go there, I cannot answer that question because I was not in the US during that period but I encourage you to be in touch with our justice department,” Blake said.

Blake, who is on a visit to Afghanistan and India, said Headley’s confession had showed how the threat of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) had “grown significantly” and asked Pakistan to work more on that front.

Blake also said Pakistan has made “important progress on the issue of terror but there is still work to be done.”

“….We still think that there needs to be progress on LeT in particular. The Headley case in our view illustrates the increasing global scope and ambition of LeT and therefore, the need for all of our countries to take the LeT threat seriously and cooperate with each other.”

A Holocaust survivor who says she met Anne Frank in a Nazi concentration camp is standing by her story in the face of skepticism from historians, filmmakers and a childhood friend of the diarist.

Berthe Meijer, 71, claims in a memoir to be published in Dutch this month that while she was in Bergen-Belsen as a 6-year-old, she remembers the severely ill Frank trying to cheer up some of the children at the camp by telling them fairy tales.

“On its face, it seems too good to be true,” said David Barnouw of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, who has studied Frank for three decades and edited the definitive scholarly publication of her diary.

He said his primary objections to Meijer’s story are that Anne would probably have been too weak from hunger and illness to tell stories shortly before her death in March 1945, and it would be an amazing coincidence that Meijer would have a memory about someone who only became well known many years later.

“But you never know,” he said. “I don’t dare to judge.”

Anne Frank became one of the most prominent victims of the Holocaust when the diary she kept for two years while in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam was found after the war and published. Frank died in a 1945 typhus epidemic at Bergen-Belsen, but the exact date is unknown.

Meijer on Thursday rejected criticism from Hannah Pick-Goslar, a friend of Anne Frank’s who saw her at Bergen-Belsen and said she was in no condition to tell stories; and from Willy Lindwer, a filmmaker who said he did not include Meijer in his Emmy award winning 1988 documentary about Anne Frank because her testimony was too vague.

“How do they think they can look into my memory?” Meijer said in a telephone interview.

Meijer’s memoir, “Life After Anne Frank,” focuses on how the early trauma of the camp, including the death of both her parents in January 1945, influenced the course of her later life. It describes the alleged meeting with Frank in an early chapter.

“I make it clear in my book, some things are vague, some things are crystal clear,” she said. “For me, the memories are paired with the emotions that went with them.”

She said Frank was very ill, but still mustered the strength to tell short fairy tales while lying in the camp barracks. Meijer said she remembers it because the stories gave her a feeling of escape from the horror that surrounded her.

Crispin Brooks, Curator of the Shoah Foundation Institute Archive at the University of Southern California, which preserves testimony of Holocaust survivors, said in an e-mail to the Associated Press it has 43 records of people having seen Anne Frank in Bergen Belsen.

Most of them described her as desperately ill. However, at least one woman who said that Anne Frank was in her barracks also said that orphaned children from the camp were allowed to play there.

The 2007 book “Anne Frank: The Young Writer Who Told the World Her Story” reports that Anne told jokes and stories to keep up the spirits of Margot Frank and the sisters Lientje and Janny Brilleslijper, who were all in the same barracks at the time. Author Ann Kramer said she believes that information came from the records of the Anne Frank Foundation in Switzerland.

A spokeswoman for publisher De Bezige Bij said the house stands behind Meijer “100 percent.”

Suzanne Holtzer said the Bezige Bij is discussing selling publishing rights with publishers in multiple countries, including the United States.

The Anne Frank House Museum says its historians have previously interviewed Meijer and have no reason to doubt her truthfulness — but that her story is unverifiable.

Records from Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial authority, show that Meijer was an inmate of Bergen-Belsen for 13 months until it was liberated in April 1945.

They also show the Meijer family lived on Amsterdam’s Niersstraat, the same street where Anne attended a Montessori elementary school from 1934 to 1941. Meijer says the two families were friendly acquaintances.
Psychologists say it’s conceivable that if Meijer knew Frank before the war, and if she met her again in Bergen Belsen, she could form a lasting memory about it, even at a young age.

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived.

Apparently miffed over delays in hearing of his case, an Indian man, facing human trafficking charges, tried to strangle himself with a scarf in a court here after judge adjourned the case for April 12.

The accused, who is in his 40’s and referred to as K K, mumbled something in Hindi while addressing the translator of the Dubai Court of First Instance immediately after the judge adjourned his case until April 12 because four witnesses had failed to appear in the court on Thursday.

He was then seen desperately attempting to strangle himself by pulling both sides of his scarf around his neck.

Jail guards and policemen, who were near K K, and two other Indians co-accused in the dock swiftly intervened and foiled his suicide attempt after a policewoman shouted “stop him” from the end of courtroom four.

Two jail guards took K K back to detention centre after they untied the scarf and took it away from him. It is believed that K K attempted to kill himself to express his desperation with the delay in court proceedings.

K K, believed to be an Indian farmer, who along with two other men is facing charges of human trafficking related to three Bangladeshi women.

The trio are also accused of rape, using the women as prostitutes and assaulting them.

Anti-government demonstrators in Thailand say they will stay on the streets of Bangkok indefinitely to continue their push for new elections.

Their numbers have dwindled after four days of rallies - of more than 100,000 who started the protest, police said about 40,000 remained.

Protest leaders have promised nightly entertainment shows and further rallies in the days to come.

Both the government and the protesters have kept the rallies peaceful.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, protesters performed ritual blood-throwing events at Government House, the headquarters of the ruling Democrat Party, and the home of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva.

On Thursday they stayed in their camp around Government House - but said that they would come back out on to the streets at the weekend.

Rotations

The red-shirt protesters say Mr Abhisit’s government is illegitimate and want him to step down.

He has refused to do so, and has been staying at a military base while protesters remain encamped around Government House.

Speaking on television, Mr Abhisit said he was open to dialogue.

“If the demonstration is still within the law the government does not object to holding negotiations” with protesters, he said.

The reds, meanwhile, said they were staying put and would seek to bolster their numbers at the weekend.

“We will have pick-up trucks and motorcycles going out all over Bangkok to urge people who agree with us that this government is illegitimate to come out,” said one leader, Nattawut Saikua.

Many people have travelled a long way from rural provinces and have jobs and businesses to return to.

But for those remaining in Bangkok, leaders are planning mass cultural shows and political meetings.

On Wednesday, alongside the blood donation and blood-spillings, protesters delivered a letter to the British embassy saying they wanted to counter false media reports about the protests.

They went on to picket the US embassy, accusing US intelligence of bugging former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The protesters say the present government was installed illegally after Mr Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006, and two subsequent governments of his allies were deposed by court action.

Montenegrin police confirmed on Wednesday that Mr Thaksin was in Montenegro, having travelled there on 13 March from Dubai where he has been living. A Thai court gave him a prison sentence in absentia for corruption.

The EU’s new foreign policy chief has been in Gaza on one of the highest level visits there by a Western official since Hamas took power.

Baroness Ashton’s trip comes amid a new push by the EU and US to revive stalled Middle East peace talks.

The international quartet of Middle East mediators - the EU, US, UN and Russia - is to meet in Moscow later.

As Lady Ashton arrived, militants in Gaza fired a rocket into Israel, killing a man, Israeli officials said.

The rocket struck the Netiv Ha’assera kibbutz in southern Israel killing a foreign agricultural worker, according to reports.

Although militants in Gaza have fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, this is the first fatality since the end of Israel’s offensive there in January 2009.

Baroness Ashton said after the attack: “I condemn any kind of violence. We have got to find a peaceful solution to the issues and problems… we need to move forward.”

Baroness Ashton will later join US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has already arrived in the Russian capital for the talks.

The Moscow meeting will “demonstrate international support” for indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians, said US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley.

Baroness Ashton swept into Gaza City from Israel in a convoy of armoured cars and was taken to a UN food distribution centre.

The BBC’s Jon Donnison in Gaza says she is not expected to meet Hamas leaders during her brief visit.

The EU is the largest contributor of aid to the Palestinians, delivering 1bn euros ($1.4bn; £890m) a year.

‘Need for aid’

Baroness Ashton told the BBC there was “a need to get aid through” to Gaza.

Only two European foreign ministers have come to Gaza in the past year, our correspondent notes.

Foreign officials are often refused entry by Israel, or their governments choose not to come because they do not recognise Hamas.

The visit has been welcomed by the United Nations, which says the blockade of Gaza has left hundreds of thousands in Gaza living in poverty.

The head of the UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip, John Ging, said the people of Gaza were hoping for a single outcome from Baroness Ashton’s visit - a lifting of the Israeli siege.

“We have to have action. A thousand days and a thousand nights of a medieval siege is far too much. It’s a shame - it’s a disgrace,” he said.

Baroness Ashton has been criticised as too inexperienced for the new job of EU High Representative, a post created by the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

Violence

Her visit comes as the US and Israel try to bridge divisions over Israeli plans for new building in occupied East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians have pulled out of indirect talks because of the plan.

Israel’s building announcement has provoked fresh violence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Mrs Clinton has described the announcement - made while US Vice-President Joe Biden was in Israel last week - as “insulting”.

She has made a series of demands of Mr Netanyahu - on the housing project and on showing his commitment to peace talks.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007, when the Islamist movement Hamas took power.

In 2008 Israel launched a three-week offensive against Gaza which killed more than 1,000 Palestinians and caused widespread damage to its infrastructure.