6 pc Net surfers are addicts: study
BOSTON, Aug 23 — Almost 6 per cent of Internet users suffer from some form of addiction to it, according to the largest study of web surfers ever conducted.

Antibiotic drugs from insects!
STRASBOURG, Aug 23 — In the Laboratory of the Strasbourg Biotechnology Company, Entomed, there is a display box with butterflies, beetles and fruit flies.

22 killed as bus falls into ravine

Death sentence on party men
MQM threat to launch mass protest

ISLAMABAD, Aug 23 (PTI) — The Karachi-based Mohajir party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has threatend to take to the streets if two of its workers were sentenced to death in the case related to the killing of four Americans in Karachi in 1997.

MQM’s Coordination Committee declared after a meeting in London that the party leaders are preparing, “mass mobilisation of their cadres’’ and launch “widespread street action’’ if the government made any move to hang the party workers who had been convicted by an anti-terrorist court on Friday for killing four Americans and their Pakistani driver in Karachi in November 1997.

The committee alleged that the MQM workers were “falsely implicated’’ and sentenced to death in the case for the “sole purpose of maligning the image of MQM nationally and internationally’’, a report in The Frontier Post from London said today.

“The Pakistan Government would have to pay a heavy price for falsely implicating these two men in the case,’’ the MQM committee warned.

Incidentally the MQM’s self-exiled chief Altaf Hussain, who is living in London since 1994, has also been named in the case along with some other senior party leaders and were shown as absconding by the prosecution.

The decision to name Altaf Hussain as an absconder in the case, “clearly shows that the intentions are political,’’ the MQM committee said.

On the other hand, Hussain in an interview to the BBC, has alleged that the anti-terrorist courts in Karachi has been set up specifically to crush the MQM.

Reacting to the death sentence passed on two of his party workers for their alleged involvement in the killing of four Americans and their Pakistani driver in Karachi in 1997, he said he and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto were unwilling to return to Pakistan because they did not think that justice would be given to them there.

In an interview to the Urdu service of the BBC, Mr Hussain said the officials of the American Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), who had visited Pakistan to ascertain whether those accused of the killings were the real culprits, had expressed their doubts.

Despite the doubts expressed by the FIA, the anti-terrorism court sentenced Mohammad Salim and Ahmed Salim to death and that explains the real reasons behind establishing such courts, Mr Hussain said.

Mr Hussain, who is also an accused in the case, said he was willing to answer the charges against him in a neutral or international court.

The court’s verdict has come at a time when Mr Hussain is under tremendous pressure from the radicals in his party who want the outfit to adopt a more militant stance in view of the increase in the incidence of extra-judicial killings of MQM activists.

Early this month eight MQM leaders revolted and demanded that the party should adopt the policy of “blood for blood” to give a befitting reply to the extra-judicial killings and persecution of party workers.

The revolt has shaken Mr Hussain who has so far taken his leadership for granted.

Israel, Palestinians resume talks

TEL AVIV, Aug 23 (AFP) — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have resumed talks here on a timetable for further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and a framework agreement on final-status issues, Israeli officials have said.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat met Israeli prime ministerial envoy Gilad Sher shortly after midnight today mainly to discuss unresolved issues under the Wye Land-for-Security Accord.

Under the US-brokered Wye Agreement signed in October last year, Israel was to withdraw from 13 per cent of the West Bank and release 750 Palestinian prisoners in three phases before January, 1999. The talks are focussed on these issues.

Earlier yesterday, the negotiators announced a partial agreement on releasing Palestinian detainees.

“Israel agreed to free a first group of prisoners on September 1 and a second (group) on October 8,” Mr Erakat told the official voice of Palestine radio.

The two sides “set up a joint committee to establish a list of releasable prisoners... all of whom will be political prisoners,” he said. On the Israeli side, a senior official from Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s office confirmed that “some 250 detainees” in all will be freed on these two dates.

JERUSALEM (Reuters): Israel accused the Palestinians on Monday of fabricating a crisis in West Asia peace talks.

Foreign Minister David Levy insisted they would fail in what he called a bid to get the USA to pressurise Israel into making concessions.

“There’s no crisis. There is before us apparently a sort of tactics,” Mr Levy said of a trip by Palestinian negotiators to Washington ahead of a visit by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright next week.

Palestinian officials said yesterday that Mr Mahmoud Abbas and Mr Saeb Erakat had been invited to confer with Ms Albright before her trip to Israel, the Palestinian authority, Egypt, Jordan Morocco and Syria starting on September 1.

“This attempt to pressure Israel will not succeed,” Mr Levy told Israel radio. “The USA knows precisely that Israel is keeping its commitment”.

Russia steps up attacks on rebels

MOSCOW, Aug 23 (AFP) — Russia today delivered the strongest single-day air strike yet against Islamist rebels in the mountains of Dagestan and prepared to launch a decisive ground offensive to flush out the gunmen.

The Interior Ministry said 140 gunmen who crossed over from neighbouring Chechnya two weeks ago were killed by Russian forces in a battle near the tiny village of Tando, where the rebels have proclaimed their own independent Islamic state.

Russian forces flew 68 sorties over its southern republic, delivering 38 rocket strikes against villages near the Chechen border still under the gunmen’s control.

Officials said the group included Islamic extremists from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Battles were also continuing today in the villages of Ansalta and Rakhata.

“Today we will raise the Russian flag over Tando,” vowed Gen Vladimir Kulakov, who commands Interior Ministry forces in the region.

But intense fighting here continued this morning with Russian troops still refusing to launch a decisive ground offensive, relying on air attacks instead.

Woman reveals her affair with Mbeki

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 23 (AFP) — A South African woman told the story of her love affair in the 1960s with teenager Thabo Mbeki to a magazine shortly before her death last month, according to a report here.

The Sunday Times said yesterday the South African edition of Marie Claire magazine would later this week publish Zena Temkin’s account of her year-long affair with Mr Mbeki when he was 19 and she was 17.

It started when both teenagers were working at the underground Communist newspaper, New Age, in Johannesburg and ended when Mr Mbeki fled into exile in 1963, Temkin told the magazine.

They tried to keep the relationship a secret because apartheid legislation at the time forbade sex across the colour bar.

But the security police became suspicious when they taped a telephone conversation in which Temkin told a friend that she feared she was pregnant.

As a result, Temkin fled to England where Mr Mbeki was studying at the University of Sussex, and they briefly resumed the relationship until she discovered that he had another girlfriend.

Mr Mbeki’s spokesman, Mr Parks Mankahlana, said the President had nothing to say on the matter”.

6 pc Net surfers are addicts: study

BOSTON, Aug 23 (AP) — Almost 6 per cent of Internet users suffer from some form of addiction to it, according to the largest study of web surfers ever conducted.

“Marriages are being disrupted, kids are getting into trouble, people are committing illegal acts, people are spending too much money. As someone who treats patients, I see it,” said Mr David Greenfield, the therapist and researcher who did the study.

The findings, which were released yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, appear likely to bolster the expanding acceptance of ‘compulsive Internet use’ as a real psychological disorder.

Mr Kimberly Young, a pioneer in the new field of research, said the latest study was so broad that it “adds a layer of legitimacy to the concern that Internet addiction is real”.

However, the 6 per cent figure is lower that some estimates of 10 per cent or more stemming largely from research on college students.

Mr Greenfield carried out the study jointly with the ABC News. He collected 17,251 responses to an Internet use questionnaire distributed and returned through the web site abcnews.com.

He adapted his questions from a widely used set of criteria for gambling addiction. For example, the questionnaires asked if participants had used the Internet to escape from their problems, tried unsuccessfully to cut back, or found themselves preoccupied with the Internet when they were no longer at the computer.

If participants answered “yes” to at least five of 10 such criteria, they were viewed as addicted. A total of 990 participants, or 5.7 per cent, did answer “yes” to five or more questions. With an estimated 200 million Internet users worldwide, that would mean that 11.4 million were addicts.

The question about using the Internet as an escape yielded more “yes” answers than any other: 30 per cent.

Mr Greenfield’s analysis of the data suggested that Internet users’ feelings of intimacy, timelessness and lack of inhibition all contributed to the addictive force of the Internet.

“There’s a power here that’s different than anything we’ve dealt with before,” said Mr Greenfield.

Researchers did caution that, while one of the best estimates yet, the 6 per cent figure was based on a group of people who used only one web site, however broadly aimed. The questionnaire also followed ABC news coverage on Internet addiction, so relatively more compulsive users might been drawn to the survey.

Researchers said Internet addiction would ultimately be broken down into several categories, perhaps revolving around sex and relations, consumerism, gambling, stock trading, and obsessive Internet surfing for its own sake.

Antibiotic drugs from insects!

STRASBOURG, Aug 23 (DPA) — In the Laboratory of the Strasbourg Biotechnology Company, Entomed, there is a display box with butterflies, beetles and fruit flies.

“It is from these insects that we are developing a new class of antibiotics,” said the Scientific Director, Ms Jean-Luc Dimarcq.

“A beetle, which has some injury and falls into a cesspool, does not get infected. An animal or a human being in such a case would immediately develop a serious infection,” he said, explaining the scientific background to the research.

The nine employees of the company, which was founded last April, are at work isolating highly-resistant peptides from various insects which over their 500 million years of evolution have developed a particularly effective immune defense system against bacteria and fungi.

The hope is that new antibiotic medications gained from these peptides — compounds formed from amino acids — can be used to treat serious infections in a hospital.

22 killed as bus falls into ravine

BEIJING, Aug 23 (AFP) — Twentytwo persons were killed when a bus carrying 52 persons veered off a mountain road in the Northwestern province of Shaanxi and fell some 120 meters down into a ravine, state press reported today.

The long-distance bus was travelling from Xian city toward Yilong in Sichuan province on Saturday when it veered off the road, crashing through four guard rails into the ravine, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

SS chief suspended
BERNE: The head of Swiss secret service has been suspended after claims by a former military accountant that he was involved in creating a secret army, the Swiss Government has announced. Defence Minister Adolf Ogi told reporters on Sunday that Peter Regli had been suspended at his own request as an investigation into financial fraud took on “unimaginable” dimensions. — AP

Film on paparazzi
LONDON: Britain’s Prince Edward has signed up Hollywood’s biggest stars to appear in a television documentary about the rise of paparazzi photographers, the Times newspaper said on Monday. The paper said that Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Jonny Depp are among the actors who have filmed contributions to the programme, made by Ardent Productions, the prince’s loss-making TV company. — AFP

Indian asylum-seeker
POTSDAM (GERMANY): An asylum-seeker has been seriously injured after an attack by three unidentified assailants near here the police said. The 22-year-old Indian was at a festival in Luckenwande around 50 km south-east of here with other asylum-seekers late Saturday when they were set upon by three assailants shouting “forgeigners out” and “why are you here”. The refugee was kicked and punched and suffered serious injuries and was later treated in the hospital, the police said. — Reuters

8 killed in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH: Eight persons were killed and 25 injured when a truck carrying Buddhist worshippers home from a ceremony skidded and crashed in heavy rain, the police said here on Monday. “It was raining hard, the driver was careless and the truck skidded and hit a tree throwing people off the back” said colonel men Sivorn, Deputy Military Police Chief in Kompong Speu province, south-west of Phnom Penh. — Reuters

Australia may apologise
CANBERRA: Australia may finally apologise to Aborigines taken from their homes as children under a past government policy of cultural assimilation, one of Prime Minister John Howard’s closest advisers said on Monday. Mr Bill Heffernan, Parliamentary Secretary to Cabinet, said he believed the government was close to finding a form of words to fulfil a long-standing aboriginal demand for an apology. — Reuters

‘Drop’ spy case
WASHINGTON: The Justice Department security chief has urged his superiors not to proceed with prosecution of accused spy Wen Ho Lee because evidence against him is not strong enough, against him is not strong enough, the newsweek reported. Internal Security Chief John Dion’s Sunday decision followed acknowledgments by US investigators that they do not have the evidence to convict Mr Lee of stealing secrets for China, despite much probing, the magazine reported in this week’s edition. — Reuters