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Saturday,
October
11, 2003,
Chandigarh, India  
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Peace Nobel goes to Shirin
Pope deserved it:
Walesa |
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Nobel laureate to
dismantle post-9/11 curbs Philadelphia, October 10 One of the two Americans who won this year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry yesterday said that he might use some of his prize money to help defend academic freedom against restrictions imposed on scientists as part of the US war on terrorism.
6 Palestinians
killed in Israeli raid |
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Man jailed for
stalking kids
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Peace Nobel goes to Shirin Oslo, October 10 Ms Ebadi (56) was given the prize “for her efforts for democracy and human rights,” particularly for women and children in her country, which has been under Islamic rule since its 1979 revolution, the Nobel Committee said. In 1974 she became Iran’s first woman judge, but lost that post in the revolution five years later when Islamic clerics took over and decreed that women could not preside over courts. In a reaction broadcast on Norwegian radio, Ms Ebadi said her win was “very good for me, very good for human rights and very good for democracy in Iran.” She added that she was “very glad and proud” and hoped the fame the prize brought would help her work in her country. “My problem is not with Islam, it’s with the culture of patriarchy,” Ms Ebadi told Britain’s Guardian newspaper in June. “Practices such as stoning have no foundation in the Koran.” Ms Ebadi spent time in jail for attending a 2001 conference on Iranian form in Berlin. She has maintained a high profile in her feminist struggle, also by writing many books and articles. “Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear,” she told the Christian Science Monitor newspaper in 1999. The Nobel Peace Prize, which carries a purse of $ 1.3 million, is decided by an Oslo-based Nobel Committee which counts two men and three women. Ms Ebadi was selected from a field of 165 candidates for the prize, among them Pope John Paul II and former Czech President Vaclav Havel. —
AFP |
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Pope deserved it: Walesa Vatican City, October 10 “The Pope is sick exactly because of the pain that wars caused him so he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize,’’ said Anna, an elderly Italian, after visiting the Vatican today. The 83-year-old Pope, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, has made thousands of appeals for peace, disarmament and the relief of Third World debt throughout his long pontificate. Supporters felt that this should have been his year because he marks his 25th anniversary next week, he was instrumental in the fall of communism in 1989, opposed the Iraq war and recently his health has appeared to go into steep decline. The Pope was runaway favourite to win the award before the announcement today, according to Australian bookmaker
Centrebet. At the Vatican, officials went out of their way to hide their disappointment. Their reaction could be summed up by one comment: “He deserved and it would have been nice if had got it, but he does not need it.’’ In the Pope’s Polish homeland, former president Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his leadership of Poland’s Solidarity anti-communist movement, spoke for many of his compatriots: “I have nothing against this lady, but if there is anyone alive who deserves this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, it is the Holy Father,’’ he told the TVN 24 news channel. Meanwhile, in Prague, former Czech President Vaclav Havel also warmly congratulated Ms
Ebadi, even though he had been tipped as one of the favourites for the award. In London, Amnesty International hailed the choice of the Iranian lawyer as the prize winner today as an important recognition of those who stand up for human rights.
— AFP, Reuters |
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Nobel laureate to dismantle post-9/11 curbs Philadelphia, October 10 “There are some social issues we were considering, including scientists who are being persecuted around the world and in the USA,’’ Dr Peter Agre of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a telephonic interview. Agre (54) who will share the $ 1.3 million prize with Dr Roderick MacKinnon of Howard Hughes Medical Institute at New York’s Rockefeller University, discovered in 1988 the membrane protein, or channel, through which water passes in and out of human cells. MacKinnon (47) discovered the cellular channel for ions. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the discoveries were critical to science’s understanding of the human body, which was about 70 per cent salt water, and diseases of the kidneys, heart, muscles and nerves. Agre’s contribution specifically has led to an entire series of biochemical, physiological and genetic studies of water channels in bacteria, plants and mammals. “I was in my pajamas at 5.30 a.m. when I got a call from Sweden. It didn’t seem to be a joke, and life has been pandemonium-struck ever since,’’ Agre said. “People have been pouring champagne in our kitchen. My goal is not to drink any until this evening.’’ Agre and his wife Mary have four children. He underscored the importance of supporting social issues involving science, specifically citing the criminal case of Texas plague expert Thomas Butler who had been charged by the federal authorities after he reported that he lost some plague samples. Prosecutors said he illegally transported samples from Tanzania. The case, born out of national security restrictions imposed on scientists after the September 11 attacks, has already brought a number of scientists to Butler’s defense saying that he did nothing different than other scientists. Butler has pleaded not guilty. “He was arrested and taken away in chains... This is something that’s bothered many of us,’’ Agre said.—
Reuters |
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6 Palestinians killed in Israeli raid Gaza, October 10 Citing what it called plans by Palestinian militants to obtain anti-aircraft missiles, the army sent dozens of armoured vehicles, including tanks, and infantry into the Rafah camp on the Gaza-Egypt border to search for weapons-smuggling tunnels. Palestinian medics said six Palestinians were killed, including an eight-year-old boy, and more than 40 persons — among them eight children — were wounded during all-night gunbattles as assault helicopters flew overhead. On the stormy Palestinian political front, Qurie maintained his public silence in what appeared to be a dispute with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat over security powers crucial to a revival of West Asia peacemaking stalled by violence. Palestinian officials said Qurie threatened to resign after a session of parliament, called yesterday to ratify an emergency government, was cancelled amid opposition from a number of lawmakers to the idea of forming a crisis Cabinet. “Mediation efforts will continue to narrow differences between Abu Ala and President Arafat,’’ a Palestinian official said, using Qurie’s nom de guerre. He said members of the Central Committee of Arafat’s Fatah faction were engaged in “telephone diplomacy” with Qurie. RAMALLAH: Mr Arafat attended Muslim prayers at his West Bank headquarters today, repeatedly kneeling and getting to his feet without help and looking stronger after what doctors said was a bout of stomach problems. In appearances earlier this week, Arafat, 74, was pale and haggard, and seemed disoriented. This set off speculation, denied by his doctors, that he was suffering from a serious illness. —
Reuters, AFP |
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Man jailed for stalking kids London, October 10 |
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