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Pak PM sees hope on gas pipeline
US security officer dies in mortar attack
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Astronauts return after six months in space
Monkey embryos cloned in USA
Lift ban on overland travel: Afghan Sikhs
NRI to walk from Amritsar
to Kanyakumari
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Pak PM sees hope on gas pipeline
Islamabad, October 24 Aziz, in an interview to Daily Times, did not see immediate chances of the two countries opening the bus route, but said India and Pakistan were holding talks to start it. “I think it (bus service) is possible, but there are some problems.... We are discussing all issues.” Officials of the two countries are scheduled to meet in New Delhi on December 7 and 8 to discuss all issues relating to the bus service. The proposal is currently bogged down over the nature of travel documents to be used by the travellers. While India wants passport and visa to be used, Pakistan is opposed to it. Instead, it wants the travellers to be permitted to use identification certificates provided by local officials. Aziz identified talks on Kashmir and progress on the gas pipeline as the best confidence building measures (CBM) for Pakistan. He said he expected tangible progress in talks with India on the gas pipeline issue in one year. “The best CBM for Pakistan is to engage India in two things. One is to engage it in dialogue on Kashmir. Second, make progress on the gas pipeline. When you create mutual dependence, you open many other doors. Their views may be different to ours. If we open a door that is not of benefit to both countries, it will not work.”
— PTI |
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Quake leaves 19 dead in Japan
Tokyo, October 24 A tremor measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale centred in Ojiya, about 260 km northwest of Tokyo, rocked the area last evening, knocking a bullet train from its rails, overturning cars and rattling buildings as far away as the Japanese capital, state media reported today. Several strong quakes followed through the night, and aftershocks continued to jolt the area this morning, Kyodo news agency reported. At least 19 persons, most of them
elderly or children were killed, over 1,500 were injured and at least seven were reported missing in Niigata Perfecture yesterday, it said. Amidst fear of more powerful aftershocks, the Defence agency dispatched 230 personnel in vehicles and helicopters to rescue stranded residents and provide clean water. Around 68,000 persons were evacuated from Niigata alone. The earthquakes were the deadliest to hit tremor-prone Japan since 1995 when 6,433 persons were killed and 43,700 injured when the western city of Kobe was devastated by a quake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said the government would compile a supplementary budget for reconstruction work. The government also established an emergency headquarters to deal with the Nilgata-Ken Chuetsu earthquake.
— PTI |
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US security officer dies in mortar attack
Baghdad, October 24 Ed Seitz, an agent with the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, was killed at Camp Victory, embassy spokesman Bob Callahan said. Camp Victory is the headquarters of the US-led coalition’s ground forces command. A number of people were injured in the attack but none with life-threatening injuries, Callahan said. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is on a tour of Asia, said: “The Department of State and I mourn the loss of one of our own today in Baghdad.” “Ed was a brave American, dedicated to his country and to a brighter future for the people of Iraq,” Powell said. “Ed’s death is a tragic loss for me personally, and for all of his colleagues at the Department of State,” he added.
— AP
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Baquba (Iraq), October 24
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Astronauts return after six months in space
Arkalyk (Kazakhstan), October 24 US astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian Gennady Padalka had manned the 16-nation International Space Station (ISS) for almost 188 days, while Russian Yuri Shargin spent just 10 days there. The returning crew landed at 06.05 a.m. IST, 88 km north of the Kazakh town of Arkalyk. ‘’We were very happy to be home,’’ a smiling Fincke told a news briefing later. ‘’When they opened the hatch, there was such a beautiful smell that we knew we’d come home.’’ Seated in a chair next to the charred black Soyuz TMA-4 capsule, Fincke said he had been exhilarated by its re-entry into the atmosphere. ‘’It was like fireworks,’’ he quipped. Despite their landing in the dark, which complicated the search and rescue operation, and a chilly and rainy morning, an upbeat Padalka said the crew had been touched by ‘’the warmth of reception’’ on Earth. Russian spacecraft have become the sole means of sending crews and cargo to the ISS since February 2003, when the US space shuttle fleet was grounded after the Columbia disaster. — Reuters
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Why Churchill considered negotiating
with
Britain’s
disastrous performance in the early years of the Second World War left Winston Churchill considering peace negotiations with the Nazis, documents unearthed by a Cambridge historian reveal.
Correspondence contained in a major new book on the war-time Prime Minister shows he believed Britain faced no alternative by the summer of 1940 — and contradicts his public declaration that he would never negotiate with the Germans. It is not the only example of him glossing over potentially damaging details, according to Prof David Reynolds, who has examined thousands of documents in his new analysis of Churchill’s wartime record and of his subsequent memoir, ‘The Second World War’. These include the true extent of his relationship with Stalin and his doubts about the D-Day strategy. Published next month, the book argues that after Dunkirk, and before the Russians and Americans entered the war, “a negotiated peace with an alternative German government” seemed “the best possible outcome” to Churchill. “Churchill was at pains to say in his memoirs that he was never going to negotiate with Germany, but it is clear that in 1940 he had not ruled out talking to a non-Hitler German government,” said Professor Reynolds. “Here was a man who was looking into the abyss.” The desperation felt by Churchill is starkly illustrated by one of the quotes unearthed by Professor Reynolds. It records a conversation between Churchill and General Hastings Ismay. The latter tells the PM in the summer of 1940: “We will win the Battle of Britain”, to which Churchill replies: “You and I will be dead in three months’ time.” Professor Reynolds goes on to describe Churchill’s long-term patronage for an alternative D-Day plan, involving “at least six heavy disembarkations” in locations, including Denmark, Holland and Bordeaux. This too was played down when Churchill came to writing ‘The Second World War’. “Churchill rewrote his strategy in the light of D-Day and post-war American criticism,” said Professor Reynolds whose book, ‘In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing in the Second World War’, is published by Penguin on November 4. “In doing so, he tried to deceive his readers, and perhaps himself, on an issue of central importance.” Churchill began publishing his epic six-volume history of the war in 1948. With access to hundreds of top-secret documents, his account quickly become the definitive history of the war and helped him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. But, it now appears, he also used it as a tool to hide his own, admittedly few, mistakes and weaknesses from future generations of historians. Professor Reynolds also questions Churchill’s insistence in his memoirs that he spotted the post-war Soviet threat early on — arguing that he put more trust in Stalin than he would ever publicly admit. “Through his memoir, Churchill succeeded in stamping his image of the war on all of us,” said Professor Reynolds. “He was very keen to ensure that his view of himself was the one that posterity had as well. It was a very determined, pre-emptive strike on the verdict of history.” — By arrangement with The Independent, London |
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Monkey embryos cloned in USA
New York, October 24 “If researchers are able to repeat this process in monkeys, it might help them to refine the tricky technique without experimenting on human eggs and embryos, which are very difficult to obtain,” Nature magazine reported. It might help solve the mystery whether human embryonic stem cells, which can grow in a variety of tissues, will prove useful in medicine, it said. Although none of the resulting pregnancies lasted more than a month, this is by far the closest scientists have come to cloning a primate, the magazine said. The study was released on Friday by reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Philadelphia. Schatten’s team copied a technique used earlier this year to clone a human embryo and extract embryonic stem cells, the report said. None of the cloned monkey embryos resulted in a pregnancy that lasted more than a month. But Schatten said it is too early to say whether cloned monkeys will ever be born; it may just take more attempts. It is also impossible to use these results to predict whether a cloned human baby could survive long.
— PTI |
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Lift ban on overland travel: Afghan Sikhs
Kabul, October 24 Ravinder Singh, a member of the Afghan Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee, complained to the visiting Indian newsmen here recently that most of the Sikh families could not afford direct air travel to India. “We appeal to the Indian Government to allow us entry overland via Pakistan,” he said. The Indian Government had imposed a ban on overland entry of Afghan Sikhs following a warning from intelligence agencies that Pakistani agencies were trying to infiltrate Sikh extremists in the garb of Afghan Sikhs. Restrictions had also been enforced as after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, Afghan security agencies had come across tell-tale evidence of some Sikh youths undergoing arms training in ISI-run camps near Kabul and in northern Afghanistan.
— PTI |
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NRI to walk from Amritsar
to Kanyakumari
London, October 24 India Association Chairman Balwant Singh Grewal will commence the walk from the Golden Temple on November 16. The walk will last about five months. This was announced by Grewal at the association’s annual Divali dinner and dance and launch of the Great Charity Walk at the Crown Conference Centre here last night. At the annual dinner, the association raised about £ 100,000 through donations and raffle draw. According to Dr Keval Singh, a cancer specialist, cancer is a major public health problem in the UK with over 2,50,000 persons developing cancer each year and over 1,50,000 dying of the disease.
— PTI |
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