RxPG News XML Feed for RxPG News   Add RxPG News Headlines to My Yahoo!  

Medical Research Health Special Topics World
 
  Home
 
 Careers 
 Dental
 Medical
 Nursing
 
 Latest Research 
 Aging
 Anaethesia
 Biochemistry
 Biotechnology
 Cancer
 Cardiology
 Clinical Trials
 Cytology
 Dental
 Dermatology
 Embryology
 Endocrinology
 ENT
 Environment
 Gastroenterology
 Genetics
 Gynaecology
 Haematology
 Immunology
 Infectious Diseases
 Metabolism
 Microbiology
 Musculoskeletal
 Nephrology
 Neurosciences
 Obstetrics
 Ophthalmology
 Orthopedics
 Paediatrics
 Pathology
 Pharmacology
 Physiology
 Psychiatry
 Public Health
 Radiology
 Rheumatology
 Surgery
 Urology
 Alternative Medicine
 Medicine
 Epidemiology
 Sports Medicine
 Toxicology
 
 Medical News 
 Awards & Prizes
 Epidemics
 Health
 Healthcare
 Launch
 Opinion
 Professionals
 
 Special Topics 
 Ethics
 Euthanasia
 Evolution
 Feature
 Odd Medical News
 Climate
  India Business
  India Culture
  India Diaspora
  India Education
  India Entertainment
  India Features
  India Lifestyle
  India Politics
  India Sci-Tech
  India Sports
  India Travel
 
 DocIndia 
 Reservation Issue
 Overseas Indian Doctor

Last Updated: May 21, 2007 - 4:00:57 AM
News Report
India Channel

subscribe to India newsletter

   EMAIL   |   PRINT
Kate Webb, journalist friend of India, is dead
May 21, 2007 - 5:14:19 PM
She spent 24 long years in Indochina - until the Americans fled Saigon.

Article options
 Email to a Friend
 Printer friendly version
 India channel RSS
 More India news
[RxPG] New Delhi, May 21 - Kate Webb, one of the finest Western wire service journalists who loved India, has died - after 40 years in the profession during which she once got to read her own obituary.

Kate, as she was fondly called, won numerous friends in India during her stint as deputy chief of AFP's South Asia bureau here during the late 1980s and 1990s.

According to friends and former colleagues, Kate died of cancer May 13 in Australia, her adopted country and where she started off as a journalist in the early 1960s.

Kate became something of a legend in 1971 when she was taken prisoner by the Vietcong in Cambodia.

She was promptly presumed dead. The New York Times wrote a front-page obituary about her - which she got to read when she returned to work after being freed by the communists who had mistaken her for a spy.

A hard working journalist who never compromised on facts, Kate remained a warm and tender person, one always eager to help out the less privileged irrespective of their nationality or status.

In India, she made many friends, shared many cups of tea with her colleagues and was a frequent visitor to the Press Club of India.

Unlike many Western journalists, she had no air of superiority. She rarely spoke about her glorious past, letting her work do the talking.

If she did not have a notebook ready with her, she would furiously take down notes on any piece of paper that came handy - and that often was the silver foil of her cigarette packets.

Kate covered the Vietnam war, the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the strife in East Timor, the end of the Marcos era in the Philippines, the Gulf war, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and Hong Kong's handover to China.

Her stay here coincided with some tumultuous events including Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, the Indian military deployment in Sri Lanka and the rise of caste and religion in the nation's politics.

According to her published obituary, Kate was born in New Zealand in 1943 and moved to Australia when she was eight. Her parents died in a car crash when she was 18.

After studying philosophy at Melbourne University, she wanted to become an artist. Kate took to journalism after being forced to pay for a glass window she shattered while working on it.

She became a secretary on Sydney's Daily Mirror and soon became a cadet reporter.

At 23 she resigned, got a job as a freelancer for the United Press International and worked for the wire service for 13 years.

She spent 24 long years in Indochina - until the Americans fled Saigon.

She joined AFP in Jakarta in 1985 and remained with the news agency for 16 years, serving in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, South Korea and Afghanistan. She retired in 2001.





Related India News
Apex court approves stringent anti-ragging measures
Podbharti.com, music to the ears of Hindi web community
Probe into official connivance in Munnar encroachments
DMK's Radhika Selvi: from gangster's widow to minister
Assam seeks 4,000 troopers as attacks cause panic
Take 'serious note' of BJP's communal designs, Sonia asks government
BJP MPs get Lok Sabha adjourned over Sethusamudram project
Gender and sexuality film festival touches a gamut of issues
Two militants killed in Kashmir
Now Budhia to walk from Bhubaneswar to Kolkata

Subscribe to India Newsletter
E-mail Address:

 Feedback
For any corrections of factual information, to contact the editors or to send any medical news or health news press releases, use feedback form

Top of Page

 
© All rights reserved 2004 onwards by RxPG Medical Solutions Private Limited
Contact Us