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Pak to seek World Bank help on
Australia pledges $7.4 m to fight
13 Indians indicted in USA
Fear stalks Bangladesh after bomb attacks
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Reunited with son after 28 yrs
£40,000 spent to prove hangovers are bad
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Pak to seek World Bank help on Neelum waters
Islamabad, December 1 Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz presided over a meeting of all stakeholders here on Tuesday and directed to examine the dispute from all legal and technical aspects whether Pakistan should seek appointment of a neutral expert or setting up of a court of arbitration under the aegis of the World Bank. A senior official of the water and power ministry told The Dawn that Pakistan would most probably seek establishment of a court of arbitration because the dispute involved inter-tributary transfer of water which was more of a legal issue than a technical one. “Legal recourse under provisions of the (Indus Waters) treaty is the only option left and we would formally request the World Bank to set up a court of arbitration to resolve the dispute,” he said. Pakistan’s commissioner to the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) Syed Jamat Ali Shah presented a status report on the Kishanganga Storage and Hydropower Project being built by India and briefed the meeting about his recent discussions with his Indian counterpart in India. He informed the meeting that India was moving ahead with the project despite Pakistan’s technical and legal objections and did not show any flexibility to address these reservations at the PIC level. He, therefore, proposed that Pakistan should exhaust all provisions of the treaty, particularly article-IX and Annexure-G of the treaty, for establishment of court of arbitration or the appointment of neutral expert, to protect its water rights. The prime minister approved the proposal in principle and directed all the relevant agencies of the government to prepare the legal case and see if it was fit for the jurisdiction of the court. The meeting also reviewed a counter memoir on Baglihar dam dispute that Pakistan is required to submit to the World Bank appointed neutral expert by December 30 in response to India’s memoir. Under article-IX of the treaty, Pakistan would ask the World Bank to constitute a seven-member court of arbitration to settle a dispute over Neelum river because it involved diversion of Neelum waters to Jhelum via Wullar Barrage through a 22-km tunnel. |
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Australia pledges $7.4 m to fight AIDS in India
Sydney, December 1 Foreign Minister Alexander Downer announced the five-year aid programme, which will focus primarily on India’s northeastern states. “Australia will fund a new initiative with UNAIDS and the government of India to reduce the risk and impact of the virus in the northeastern states of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Meghalaya,” he said. “This new initiative will target the most vulnerable to infection in the north- east — children, sex workers, drug users and their partners,” he said. “While building on the capacity of the State AIDS Control Societies, the project will also develop innovations in HIV education, prevention and care.” According to UN figures, India has the second highest number of HIV/AIDS infections of any country in the world after South Africa. An estimated 5.1 million Indians were infected with the disease, making the country home to around 60 per cent of the more than 8.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the Asia-Pacific region, Downer said. Australia has committed some $ 600 million to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Asia Pacific in the decade to 2010. — AFP |
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13 Indians indicted in USA
Phoenix (United States), December 1 US Attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton said those named in the indictment put their freedom and business at risk assisting alien smuggling, according to the Arizona Republic newspaper reports. Federal agents who raided the motels discovered 23 undocumented immigrants staying in the motels. The owner of one of the motels is still being sought by the police. The motel owners are likely to face 10 years in prison and a fine of $ 250,000.
— UNI |
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Fear stalks Bangladesh after bomb attacks
Dhaka, December 1 Tuesday’s near synchronised twin suicide attacks in the courthouses in two cities — southeast port city of Chittagong and Gazipur on the outskirts of Dhaka — left nine people dead and many wounded, at least a dozen of them critically. A spate of attacks by Islamic outfits in the past few months has already shaken the country but the emergence of suicide bombers has caused fresh terror as this has exposed the radical outfits’ determination to turn the country into a theocratic state based on Islamic Sharia law. Though the government pledged to dismantle the militant outfits, many people are worried as the government recently expelled an MP from the party after he claimed that some people within the ruling coalition were sheltering members of Islamist outfits. “Everybody should be worried if political parties still continue their blame game instead of tackling the situation,” said Motiur Rahman, a businessman. Security experts fear more attacks ahead but say the country lacks adequate preparedness to fight the suicide bombers. Inspector General of Police Abdul Quayyum termed the blasts the first to fall under the category of suicide attack and said the fortification of security following repeated attacks had prompted the terrorists to change their strategy, making them more desperate to hit the targets. “Such incidents are taking place in Iraq and elsewhere and the world has not yet come up with an efficient strategy to deter suicide bombings,” he said. Many are not satisfied with the police explanation. Bangladesh does not even have access to basic knowledge and expertise to fight suicide bombers when many developed and developing countries are spending millions of dollars on measures to combat such a deadly form of terrorism, they observed. — IANS |
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Two killed in blast
Dhaka, December 1 The victims succumbed to their injuries at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where 14 injured have been admitted. — UNI |
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Reunited with son after 28 yrs
Dubai, December 1 Atiq married an Indian woman in the early 1970s. She returned to India, when she was two-month pregnant, following differences with Atiq, leaving her daughter with her father. ‘’When Juma was born, I went to see him in India and bring him back to the UAE, but his mother refused,’’ Gulf News quoted Atiq as saying. The father kept visiting Juma till he was eight years, but the mother shifted to another place without informing Atiq. A police official said the department under its ‘’communicating with the victim’’ programme decided to help Atiq locate his family, when they came across his case in a Dubai court. The department is following up about 3,000 such cases, the official said.
— UNI |
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£40,000 spent to prove hangovers are bad
IT reads like a fantasy concocted by a student on the make: Scientists hand a group of youngsters enough money to go out and get drunk on the understanding they return the following day to report whether they feel under the weather or not.
But this is no fantasy. Academics at Glasgow Caledonian University spent £ 40,000 proving that hangovers make you feel tired and impede your
concentration. Some people have found the study anything but amusing, accusing the quango concerned of wasting tax payers’ money. Margaret Davidson, chief executive of health campaign group the Scottish Patients Association, said: “This is a waste of public money that could be better spent on research to help people with alcohol problems or provide them with treatment.”
— By arrangement with The Independent, London
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