Iran comes back to the table despite US blacklist
Tehran, December 15
Tehran said today it will keep talking with world powers on its disputed nuclear programme despite a US move to blacklist Iranian companies for evading sanctions.

UK lawmakers to get ‘honesty’ training
London, December 15
Britain's new MPs will be given compulsory "honesty" training to teach them how to behave in a public office after a series of scandals have left the public "jaundiced" and disillusioned with politics.

Universe on the brink of collapse?
London, December 15
The universe may one day collapse and everything in it - including the Earth - will be compressed into a small, super hot hard ball, scientists have warned.

Qunu, December 15
South Africa's first black President Nelson Mandela was today laid to rest with full state honours in his childhood village after teary-eyed friends and family members bid adieu to the anti-apartheid icon whose courage and freedom struggle turned him into a giant of history.

South Africa President Jacob Zuma and former President Nelson Mandela’s widow Graca Machel at the funeral ceremony of Mandela at Qunu village on Sunday

A military escort carried Mandela's casket to the family plot where Mandela was accorded a traditional burial, marking the end of an exceptional journey for the prisoner-turned- president who transformed South Africa.

The South African flag was removed from his casket, which was lowered into the ground followed by a traditional ceremony.

South African military jets and helicopters flew over Mandela's casket was placed over the grave. South African television showed the casket at the family gravesite, but stopped broadcasting the event before the casket was lowered.

The burial brought down the curtain on ten days of national mourning and memorial events for the global peace icon. Mandela died on December 5 aged 95 after a protracted illness.

Tribal leaders wrapped in animal skins joined dignitaries in dark suits for the walk toward the burial grounds. Soldiers lined the route as mourners slowly made their way to the gravesite atop a hill overlooking the valleys of Qunu.

Before making their way to the site, mourners attended a funeral service in a tent set up for the event. Ninety-five candles glowed at the funeral service, one for each year of his life.

With restricted access to facilities in the rural area, only about 4,500 people were allowed at the service and only about a tenth of those were at the actual burial site.

President Jacob Zuma, speaking at the funeral service, pledged to fulfil Mandela's ideals of ridding South Africa of poverty, unemployment, lack of educational facilities and social ills such as crime and violence.

Several heads of state or their representatives, including UK's Prince Charles, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Shariatmadari and presidents of several African nations, were present at the solemn event.

Most heads of state had opted to attend the official memorial service last Tuesday at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, where over 80,000 people braved rain to join 91 world leaders, including President Pranab Mukherjee and his US counterpart Barack Obama, in paying tributes to Mandela. — PTI

Dhaka, December 15
At least four persons were killed in clashes in Bangladesh today, taking the death toll to 25 in violence linked to the execution of a senior Jamaat-e-Islami leader, even as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina warned of strong action against rioters.

Jamaat workers stabbed to death an Awami League supporter today, hours after three Islamists were killed in a clash with police in northern Lalmonirhat district.

Ten people belonging to minority Hindu community were injured when Jamaat activists set afire their houses at Kafirbazar area in the district, reports said.

At least 25 people have been killed in clashes since Thursday night, when Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Mollah, known as the "Butcher of Mirpur" for atrocities committed during Bangladesh's 1971 liberation war, was hanged.

Mollah, who was hanged after the Supreme Court rejected his review petition, became the first politician to be put to death for war crimes. — PTI

Beijing, December 15
China, Japan and South Korea today agreed to jointly combat air pollution, a common challenge to East Asia, to boost sustainable development for greater ecological improvement.

At the end of a two-day summit in Xianghe, a county about one hour's drive east of Beijing, representatives from the three countries said that they would join hands to boost sustainable growth.

Wang Chunzheng, vice chairman of the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, said the northeastern Asian nations of China, Japan and South Korea share common benefits as well as common responsibilities in joint air pollution control, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Wang pointed out that Japan and South Korea have advanced technologies and experience in energy saving, environmental protection and air pollution treatment. He added the three nations have great potential for cooperation in the environmental protection industry as the Chinese leadership has vowed greater efforts for ecological improvement.

Japanese Ambassador to China Masato Kitera said that environmental issues including climate change, as well as air, water and soil pollution, are shaking the foundations for human life, a situation which requires all nations to join hands in seeking solutions.

Kitera said the pollution is a common challenge to East Asia and that cooperation between China, Japan and South Korea is essential. — PTI

Tehran, December 15
Tehran said today it will keep talking with world powers on its disputed nuclear programme despite a US move to blacklist Iranian companies for evading sanctions.

“We are pursuing the negotiations seriously and of course we will give a well-considered, purposeful, smart and proper reaction to any inappropriate and unconstructive move," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his Facebook page.

This was despite the Americans having made "inappropriate moves to which we gave the appropriate response by considering all aspects of the issue". "The negotiations and achieving a result are a difficult task and will definitely have a lot of ups and downs. We have predicted that from the very beginning." The US blacklisted a dozen overseas companies and individuals on Thursday for evading sanctions imposed on Iran to halt a “bid to build a nuclear bomb”.

Senior US officials argued the move was taken under an existing sanctions regime which had forced Tehran to negotiations. — AFP

London, December 15
Britain's new MPs will be given compulsory "honesty" training to teach them how to behave in a public office after a series of scandals have left the public "jaundiced" and disillusioned with politics.

The standards watchdog is to devise courses in ethics for the MPs to ensure they can spot the difference between right and wrong.

Lord Bew, the chairman of the committee on standards in public life, said the courses - to start after the next general election —would increase "the awareness of practical ethical issues among MPs."

The seminars will increase "the ethical sensitivity of members of Parliament" and coach them in how to behave in a number of scenarios - such as accepting gifts from outside bodies and dealing with lobbyists, Bew was quoted as saying in a The Sunday Times report.

The courses are designed to address public unease after a series of scandals that have left the public "jaundiced" and disillusioned with politics.

Tutors would remind MPs that they should behave in public life with "integrity, selflessness and honesty", the report said.

Bew said it was no longer enough for MPs to say "basically I know in my gut what to do" and they needed "compulsory training" to spot the difference between right and wrong.

"People are thrust into situations they don't expect and they are not necessarily equipped to know how to behave. There are sometimes simple cases of corruption, but a lot of what is going on now is it is a little bit more complicated to work out what is right and what is wrong," Bew was quoted as saying.

Bew said even MPs who had honest intentions could benefit from training in "ethical awareness".

The peer said MPs should have the same training in ethics as lawyers, accountants and bankers. He hoped the courses would help to restore public trust in public life. — PTI

London, December 15
The universe may one day collapse and everything in it - including the Earth - will be compressed into a small, super hot hard ball, scientists have warned.

The risk of a collapse is even greater than previously thought and the process may have already started somewhere in the universe, scientists claim.

Physicists have long predicted that the universe may collapse and that everything in it will be compressed to a small hard ball.

New calculations from physicists at the University of Southern Denmark now confirm this prediction, suggesting sooner or later a radical shift in forces of the universe will cause every little particle in it to become extremely heavy.

Everything - every grain of sand on Earth, every planet in the solar system and every galaxy - will become millions of billions times heavier than it is now, and this will have disastrous consequences: The new weight will squeeze all material into a small, super hot and super heavy ball, and the universe as we know it will cease to exist.

This violent process is called a phase transition and is very similar to what happens when, for example water turns to steam or a magnet heats up and loses its magnetisation.

The phase transition in the universe will happen if a bubble is created where the Higgs-field associated with the Higgs-particle reaches a different value than the rest of the universe.

If this new value results in lower energy and if the bubble is large enough, the bubble will expand at the speed of light in all directions.

All elementary particles inside the bubble will reach a mass, that is much heavier than if they were outside the bubble, and thus they will be pulled together and form super-massive centres. — PTI

Ukraine unrest: Pro-European integration protesters hold an effigy of Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovich during a rally in Independence Square in Kiev on Sunday. Reuters

Foodie pilot delays Pak flight for sandwiches
Lahore: A foodie pilot, Flight Captain Noushad, delayed a New York-bound Pakistan International Airlines' flight by two and a half hours because he wanted to take sandwiches, which were not part of the approved menu, aboard the plane. PTI