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| Sunday,
July 29, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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China, USA
to hold consultations
Israel
demolishes 3 Palestinian posts |
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NASA 1975
Viking data points to Mars ‘bugs’ Four shot
in Bangladesh clashes Fresh
riots in Belfast Clot risk
in air travel
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China, USA to hold consultations Beijing, July 28 The decisions were taken during an official-level meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and the visiting US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Xinhua news agency reported. “The two sides agreed in principle to hold an expert consultation on non-proliferation, and details will be discussed through diplomatic channels,” it said. The decision on non-proliferation follows strong US objections to Chinese transfers of missiles and weapons of mass destruction-related technology to countries like Pakistan. “The two sides agreed in principle to resume dialogue on human rights between China and the US, and details will be discussed through diplomatic channels,” the report said. Mr Powell’s visit to Beijing comes days after Beijing deported two US-based scholars following convictions on charges of spying for Taiwan. He is the highest-level official to hold talks with the Chinese after months of tension that began with the April one collision of a US spy plane and a Chinese jet over South China sea. Both China and USA, described the meeting as “very positive and constructive,” and held that the two countries should take the opportunity to jointly develop constructive cooperative relationship. At today’s meeting, Beijing and Washington also decided to hold the 14th session of the Sino-US Joint Economic Committee (JEC) meeting this September, and the Sino-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) meeting at proper time this year. The two sides agreed to hold a special meeting on enhancing consultation mechanism on military maritime safety. During talks, Mr Tang said China intends to, with joint efforts of the USA, build a constructive cooperative relationship between the two countries. “The USA seeks no enmity with China but hopes to maintain good ties with it, he said, adding as two great nations, they should safeguard mutual interests and resolve disputes,” Xinhua quoted Mr Powell as saying. They also discussed China’s accession to the WTO, the human rights, non-proliferation, energy, environmental protection, and other international and regional issues, the report said. This is the second meeting between Mr Tang and Mr Powell in four days. The two leaders had met for the first time in Hanoi on July 25 on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting. “The two countries are facing important opportunities as well as challenges in developing bilateral relations,” Mr Tang said, noting Chinese President Jiang Zemin and US President Bush will meet in Shanghai in October this year and Bush will visit China later. Although the two countries have differences, they have important common interests, the Chinese Foreign Minister said, adding both countries enjoy broad prospects in expanding exchanges and cooperation, and should view bilateral relations in a comprehensive perspective, handle their differences carefully and appropriately. Mr Tang pointed out that Chinese leaders had been handling Sino-US relations from a strategic height and in a long-term perspective, and the Chinese side intends to, with joint efforts of the USA, build a constructive cooperative relationship between the two countries. “Such a goal is realistic, and is in the interest of both countries and conducive to peace and prosperity of the world,” the Chinese minister said. Mr Powell said he was in the city to promote friendly bilateral ties, and
President Bush too was looking forward to his visit to Beijing. Mr Tang pointed out the Taiwan issue was the most important and most sensitive core question in the Sino-US relations, and the proper handling of the issue was the key to smooth development of bilateral ties. Mr Powell said the Bush administration, just as earlier governments, would abide by the ‘one-China’ policy, and handle the Taiwan issue on the basis of principles of the three US-China joint communiques. Meanwhile, Mr Powell also held talks with Chinese President Jiang Zemin today. He told the Chinese leader that he was enormously impressed at the changes brought about in the country since his last visit.
PTI |
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Israel demolishes 3 Palestinian posts Jerusalem, July 28 The Israeli shelling of the posts, located near Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, yesterday came in retaliation for the drive-by shooting on Thursday night in which an Israeli teenager was killed. The shooting took place north of Jerusalem on the highway which winds through the West Bank linking Jerusalem with the central Israeli town of Modi’in. Ronen Landau (17) died shortly after being hit by a sniper’s bullets as he was driving with his father. Previous shooting attacks on the same highway earlier this year have killed two Israelis and wounded several. By early afternoon yesterday, Ramallah was still suffering under the tight closure imposed on it after the shooting, which Israel Radio said was expected to stay in place until the end of the week. Meanwhile, a poll published in the Ma’ariv daily showed 46 per cent of Israelis favouring an all-out attack against the Palestinian authority in response to what Israel says are repeated Palestinian attacks. Only 30 per cent said they supported continuing the present policy of relative restraint and almost as many - 24 per cent - had no opinion. Premier Ariel Sharon, who declared the relative restraint policy in May, is coming under increasing criticism to abandon it, not only from hardline ministers in his wall-to-wall coalition, but also from within his own Likud Party, many of whom are openly critical of the current Israeli strategy. Mr Sharon, however, said this week he would not drag Israel into a war to appease a few “shouters” - a reference to the criticism he heard at a meeting of the Likud Central Committee earlier this week. Under the current policy, Israel does not launch large-scale attacks against the Palestinians, but limited attacks to retaliate for each Palestinian attack on Israelis. Israel also targets individual Palestinian militants and activists accused of being behind, or participating in, attacks on its citizens. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, however, seemed to favour a quick return to negotiations when he told a small group of legislators from his Labour Party on Thursday that “the time has come for big steps so as to complete the peace process.”
DPA |
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NASA 1975 Viking data points to Mars ‘bugs’ Los Angeles, July 28 A University of Southern California scientist argues that is just what happened and that once-lost data collected by the 1975 Viking probes suggest the existence of Martian microbes. The significance of that finding was overlooked — along with the data itself — after NASA concluded that its experiments showed only signs of chemical activity on the surface of the “Red Planet,” said Mr Joseph Miller, a USC neurobiologist. But a careful re-examination of a fragment of the recovered NASA record showed a surprising pattern: gas released by the Martian soil and tracked by Viking followed the same kind of rhythms followed by all Earth-bound organisms from humans to fruit flies in a cycle akin to feeding and respiration by colonies of microbes. “I think, basically, that it’s bugs,” said Mr Miller, a neurobiologist and an expert in the study of the circadian rhythms that regulate biological activity. Two Viking spacecraft were launched by NASA in August and September of 1975 and took almost a year to reach the Martian atmosphere. Once there, both sent probes to the surface some 3,000 miles (4,828 km) apart to conduct a series of experiments, several of which were designed to look for evidence of life. In one of those tests, a robotic arm on the probes scooped up soil samples, which were dropped into a dish along with a shot of a radioactive carbohydrate solution. Scientists reasoned that any organism in the Martian soil would consume the nutrients and release radioactive carbon as a gas, something the probe was equipped to measure, said Mr Miller. Viking found clear evidence that the Martian soil generated gas over the nine-week experiment, but scientists concluded that was the product of reactive chemical “superperoxides” in the soil, not evidence of life, Mr Miller said. That closed the book on the Viking experiments until Mr Miller, who had worked with NASA in the early 1980s studying the sleep cycles of monkeys in space, asked the agency to go back over the record of the experiment in 1999. “I figured this was going to be on a website somewhere,” Mr Miller said. “Well, guess again. They had lost track of it.” NASA scoured its archives and turned up the long-neglected computer tapes, only to discover these were coded “in a format so old that the programmers who knew it had died,” Mr Miller said. Working from a printed record that the initial NASA team had saved, Mr Miller has been able to assemble and analyse about a third of the data and plans to present his initial findings tomorrow at a science conference in San Diego. Mr Miller found the gas emissions from the soil sample fell into a cycle of precisely 24.66 hours — the length of the Martian day — a pattern that was linked to a slight variation in the temperature inside the mostly insulated lander. That pattern of heightened activity in the warmer daytime and inactivity at night is akin to the kind of temperature-driven circadian rhythm that simple terrestrial organisms, such as bread molds exhibit, Mr Miller said. Even more suggestively, the amount of carbon gas released rose over the course of the experiment, but then also dropped sharply at one point when the soil sample was heated to 160 degrees Celsius.
Reuters |
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Four shot in Bangladesh
clashes Dhaka, July 28 Interior Ministry officials said about 60 persons died in armed clashes in the past two weeks between activists of the Awami League of outgoing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and its main political opponent, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Begum Khaleda Zia. The officials said violence flared up as a non-party caretaker government took charge in the volatile country after Ms Hasina stepped down as Prime Minister on July 15 at the end of a five-year term. Ms Hasina claimed that at least 25 Awami League activists were brutally murdered, allegedly by the rightwing BNP and its Islamist allies, after her government resigned clearing the way for a neutral interim administration to hold the next general election. The police in the eastern Bangladesh town of Feni said the gunbattle involved armed members of both the Awami League and the BNP - the two main contenders for power in the upcoming poll.
DPA |
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Fresh riots in Belfast Belfast, July 28 Several volleys of shots — which Roman Catholics said came from a protestant area — were reported in the latest surge of overnight violence that has deepened tension in the provincial capital’s rival zones. A police spokeswoman said the victim had sustained a minor face wound, “possibly caused by a ricocheting bullet”. The police said they were attacked with petrol bombs and stones by rioters in cheek-by-jowl Roman Catholic and Protestants districts. The spokeswoman said there had been reports of shots having been fired at the police. Gunfire crackled on a rock-strewn road in the Ardoyne area as Sinn Fein politician Gerry Kelly was being interviewed by a Sky Television camera crew at the height of the unrest. Sinn Fein is the political ally of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, which has halted hostilities in a long war aimed at ending rule from Britain. As other Roman Catholics, fearing they were under fire, shouted “get down”, Kelly and the camera team ducked low for cover. The ground was littered with broken glass and bricks and a fleet of police and army vehicles formed a buffer between rival crowds.
Reuters |
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Clot risk in air travel Wellington, July 28 Dr Rodney Hughes of the Green Lane Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, said one study indicated that up to 10 per cent of high-risk travellers — those over 50, overweight or with health problems — risked developing deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), or blood clots that could form in the legs during extended sitting as on long flights.
Reuters |
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