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Russia launches Galileo satellite
Pak seminaries to resist arrest of students
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Sikhs donate $2.3 m for
hospital project
Indian doctor freed on bond
Baglihar: deadline for Pak extended
No MFN status to India: Pak
Pak notifies control lists of N-exports
Sibling’s heart disease
means you risk it too
Indian co-winner of King Faisal Award
20 Iraqi detainees killed
US curbs on 2 Indian
firms
Indian scribe wins Arab award
Top Al-Qaida suspect killed
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Russia launches Galileo satellite
Moscow, December 28 It brought the GPS spacecraft to a preset circular orbit at 1201 pm (local time), with an altitude of more than 23,000 km and inclination of 56 degrees. The booster was launched at 8.19 am (local time), Itar-Tass reported. The GPS is currently the only worldwide system offering services ranging from driver assistance to search-and-rescue help. The satellite is expected to demonstrate key technologies required for Galileo, the $ 4 billion sat-nav system Europe hopes to deploy by 2010. If successful, the satellite will mark a major step in Europe’s biggest ever space programme, involving firms such as European aerospace giant EADS, France’s Thales and Alcatel, Britain’s Inmarsat, Italy’s Finmeccanica and Spain’s AENA and Hispasat. The system will be organised as a public-private partnership, with the commission wanting two-thirds of the funding to come from the industry and the rest from public coffers. The new network will provide the European Union countries the guaranteed access to a space-borne precise timing and location service independent of the United States.
— UNI |
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Pak seminaries to resist arrest of students
Lahore, December 28 The Maulana, who is also president of his own faction of the JUI which runs several seminaries, announced that ulema would not inform their respective area’s police while moving out of the station. He was speaking at a press conference here on Tuesday. “We’ll do our best to keep the students with us and shall prefer arrest over giving the foreigners to police,” he vowed. He blamed Gen Musharraf for violating the UN charter as well as the Constitution by forcing the students out though they had neither been involved in any case in their country of origin nor here. Even the USA and the UK, direct victims of the 9/11 and 7/7 terror attacks respectively, did not take such a harsh step of banishing the students belonging to the countries of the suspects involved in the terror acts, he said. Maulana Fazlur declared that no scholar would be bound to inform his respective police station while leaving the area for any reason, as demanded by the government.
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Sikhs donate $2.3 m for
hospital project
Brampton, December 28 The money will be spent on building the William Osler Health Centre Foundation’s Brampton Hospital at Bovaird Drive and Bramalea Road, which is scheduled to open in 2007. The fundraising event, Better Health Radiothon, was organised from November 15 to 24. During each programme, radio broadcasters discussed the importance of the new hospital with local residents and appealed for support. “It truly was a tremendous outpouring of generosity from listeners in the Canadian Sikh community. Word spread quickly and we have had inquiries about support for our new hospital from as far away as Vancouver and Texas,” Maureen Flanagan Pool, director of development and new initiatives for the foundation said. “We had calls coming in from across the Greater Toronto Area and from as far away as London, Cambridge and Ottawa,” Pool added. The radio centres to take part at the fundraising event included — Asian Connections Radio, Mehfil Radio, Nirwar Radio, Pardesi Radio, Parvasi Radio, Radio Punjab, Sargam Radio, Sur Sagar Radio and Surtal Radio. The new hospital project is dubbed to be the largest health care infrastructure in the country. The 608-bed hospital, spread at more than one million sq ft area, would “keep with the modern trend toward holistic health care”, said the press release.
—
IANS |
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New York, December 28 Totada R Shanthaveerappa, who was indicted by a federal jury on 87 counts last Thursday, and his assistant Dan Bartoli were released yesterday on separate bonds of $ 1 lakh by a court in Atlanta of George state. The pro appeared in the court four days after the license of the 70-year doctor, also known as T R Shantha, was suspended by the State Medical Board saying his continued practice of medicine poses a “threat to public health, welfare and safety”. The suspension came after a grand jury had indicted him on several charges including money laundering, insurance fraud and prescribing unapproved drugs. His 63-year-old assistant Bartoli is charged with helping Shantha to inject numerous patients with a commercial-grade weed killer ‘Dinitrophenol’ and insecticide ‘Chemail Ukrain’ and using hyperbaric oxygen therapy. — PTI
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Baglihar: deadline for Pak extended
Islamabad, December 28 Neutral expert Raymond Lafitte extended the deadline because Pakistan “did not” receive some technical data from India, which was imperative to prepare replies to certain technical questions, official sources said here. However, Pakistan had received most technical data on the project from India, they said. The neutral expert had on October 19 convened a meeting of Indian and Pakistani officials in Geneva where the two countries were given the technical questions about design standards for the hydropower project. “The neutral expert is likely to convened the next meeting some time in the last week of January or the first week of February,” the sources were quoted as saying in Pakistani daily “The News”. Lafitte was appointed neutral expert for the 450 MW power project in May by the World Bank after Pakistan said the construction of the project violated the 1960 Indus Water Treaty. Meanwhile, sharply reacting to India’s comments on the situation in Balochistan, Pakistan said today it was “unwarranted” and tantamount to interference in its internal affairs and “contrary” to efforts aimed at bringing peace and stability in South Asia. New Delhi had yesterday noted with “concern” the spiralling violence in Balochistan and heavy military action there and asked Pakistan to “exercise restraint” and address the grievances of the people of the region through peaceful discussions. — PTI
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Islamabad, December 28 “We are in process of a composite dialogue with India on both trade and political issues, but Pakistan will not give MFN status to India unless visible progress is made on political issues between the two countries including Kashmir issue,” Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan told mediapersons here. The minister, who attended the recent WTO round of talks, said despite the no MFN status to New Delhi by Islamabad, the trade between the two countries was in favour of India because of Pakistan’s liberalised tariff regime. However, Pakistan’s exports to India are not flourishing despite New Delhi’s MFN status to Islamabad. He said the main hurdle in the enhancement of exports to India was its restrictive tariff regime and non-tariff barriers. He said with regard to the tariff regime Pakistan was seeking the same treatment from India to ensure the level playing field for trade. — UNI
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Pak notifies control lists of N-exports
Islamabad, December 28 The control lists have been notified pursuant to the ‘’Export Control Act on goods, technologies, materials and equipment related to nuclear and biological weapons and their delivery systems’’, which was adopted by Parliament in September 2004, a Foreign Office statement said here. The control lists adopted by Pakistan encompass the lists and scope of export controls maintained by the nuclear suppliers group
(NSG),
the Australia group (AG) which relates to biological agents and toxins, and the Missile Technology Control Regime
(MTCR).
— UNI
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Sibling’s heart disease
means you risk it too
New York, December 28 This is a higher risk than if your parents have heart disease, says the study published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers led by Joanne M. Murabito compared the occurrence of heart disease in about 2,475 people with and without siblings over eight years. This new study shows that having a brother or sister with heart disease is a significant independent risk factor, reported health portal HealthDay News. Murabito said: “We found that participants who had a brother or sister with cardiovascular disease had higher levels of risk factors compared with participants who had a sibling without the disease. “In addition, participants with a brother or sister with cardiovascular disease had a 45 per cent increased risk for the disease.” The known risks for heart disease include family history of the condition, age, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, overweight, current or former smoking, physical inactivity and diabetes. The increased risk appears to be attributable to a combination of genetics and childhood environmental exposures, the study found. Murabito believes that people should know if their siblings have heart disease and be aware that their own risk could increase. She said: “It is important for physicians to collect a family’s medical history. “It is important to consider sibling cardiovascular disease history when looking at people with elevated levels of risk factors. “Although you can’t change your family, you can modify many lifestyle-related risk factors for heart disease. “You can keep your blood pressure and cholesterol and blood sugar under control. You can maintain a healthy weight by regular exercise, and if you smoke, you can quit.”
— IANS |
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Indian co-winner of King Faisal Award
Dubai, December 28 India’s M S
Narasimhan, an honorary fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, shares the prize with UK’s Simon Kirwan Donaldson, president of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and professor of mathematics at Imperial College, London for seminal contributions to math which also helped provide a foundation for physical theories. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, director general of the King Faisal Foundation, said the prizes would be distributed to the winners on February 18. The two mathematicians’ work has helped establish strong ties with the formulation of quantum chromodynamics for which the King Faisal Prize in physics was given last year, the Foundation said.
— PTI
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20 Iraqi detainees killed
Baghdad, December 28 Prisoners stole a weapon from a guard at an Iraqi detention facility in the northern Shiite pilgrimage district of
Kadhamiyah, before shooting dead one prison officer and wounding another. Guards then opened fire on the detainees, killing 20, the official told AFP. Many of those detained at the facility are held on terrorism charges. A US military official said the incident was under investigation.
— AFP
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Washington, December 28 US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli yesterday said sanctions had been applied to six Chinese firms, two Indian firms and one Austrian company as reported earlier in the day by the Washington Times. Both Indian companies were chemical exporters. The Austrian firm, Steyr-Mannlicher, is a well-known maker of advanced assault weapons. He said there was a credible information showing the companies had transferred equipment or technology that was barred from going to Iran. The year-long sanctions blocked the firms from doing business with the US government or obtaining American hi-tech products. Mr Ereli said the restrictions were an effective tool in blocking Iran from developing missiles and weapons of mass destruction. More than 40 companies and individuals had been sanctioned under a five-year-old US law aimed at stopping weapons proliferation in Iran. — UNI
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Indian scribe wins Arab award
Dubai, December 28 Isaac John of ‘Khaleej Times’ won the award for his “insightful reportage about the challenges and opportunities in forging an effective anti-piracy drive in the Arab world”. The award was constituted by Business Software Alliance (BSA), a global organisation dedicated to promoting a safe and legal digital world, Co-Chairman of BSA (Middle East) Jawad Al Redha said. John — a veteran of 25 years in Gulf media — has won three Pan-Arab awards in a row in 2005, a rare distinction for an Indian journalist in this region. He was one among the five
recipients of the award, distributed at a gala function here last night, including Mahmoud Saberi (Gulf News), Thair Soukar (Channel Arabic), Mohammed Mousa (Al Khaleej) and Haider bin Abdel Redha (Oman Daily).
— PTI |
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Top Al-Qaida suspect killed
Riyadh, December 28 “Abdulrahman al-Motaeb, 26, who figures number four on a most-wanted list was killed this morning in the desert,” the source told AFP. Another suspected
militant, Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Siwailmi, died of his wounds early today after being hit in yesterday’s clashes with the security forces near Buraida, capital of Qassim province, 300 km north of Riyadh, according to the Interior Ministry. Motaeb is believed to have been in the car with Suwailmi during the shootout, after which he escaped by hijacking another
car. Five policemen were killed yesterday in the bloodiest clashes in the kingdom for more than three months.
— AFP |
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