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| Thursday, August 9, 2001, Chandigarh, India    |
Human cloners to go ahead with 200 eves |
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Taliban
to free aid workers after probe 10 Macedonians die in ambush USA watching China
on missile transfer Stampede in B’desh plant kills 20 |
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Bangladesh’s bloody road to polls Clinton to be candid on Monica in book Israel, UN agree on video viewing
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Khatami sworn in; 2 hardliners in council Teheran, August 8 The moderate Khatami took his oath of office in Parliament in the presence of senior judicial and military officials and members of the powerful constitutional watchdog Guardian Council. “As President, I swear on the holy Koran to uphold the religion and the people’s rights,” Mr Khatami said. “The most important issue for us today is creating an Islamic democracy which was the main aim of the revolution,” he said in a speech after the oath-taking. “It is necessary to create the rule of law and methods through which the nation can oversee powerful state institutions.’’ The ceremony was delayed when Parliament, dominated by reformist Khatami allies, rejected candidates for two Guardian Council places put forward by the hardline judiciary chief. The council has vetoed a number of laws passed by Parliament while the judiciary has launched a legal campaign banning reformist newspapers and jailing radical reformers. Conservatives had argued all 12 members of the council needed to be present for Khatami’s inauguration to go ahead. The row was resolved by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who ruled that whichever candidates received the most votes in Parliament, they would take their place on the council, whether they had a majority or not. Two conservative lawyers were thus elected to the council yesterday with only 67 and 62 votes from the 249 MPs present. This was a defeat for reformists in Parliament and their attempt to assert the authority of the democratically elected assembly over officials appointed to power, analysts said. Meanwhile, hardline judiciary ordered the closure of the popular reformist newspaper Hambastegi (Solidarity) on Wednesday, the official IRNA news agency said. It gave no details, but a journalist at the newspaper told Reuters that judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, was unhappy with a front page interview with a reformist MP which criticised the judicial apparatus. Some 40 reformist publications have been banned by the judiciary and several journalists have been jailed since Khamenei called the reformist press “bases of the enemy” in a speech last year. Khamenei appointed the judiciary chief who has been bitterly opposed to attempts by allies of the moderate Khatami to reform the 22-year-old Islamic republic.
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Human cloners to go ahead with 200 eves Washington, August 8 Vowing to take steps to avoid babies being born with severe abnormalities, Italian doctor Severino Antinori yesterday told a contentious meeting of a National Academy of Sciences panel that he would proceed with plans to provide cloned children for infertile couples. The panel is gathering information for a report expected by the end of September on whether the USA should impose a moratorium on human cloning. The controversial Italian embryologist told US media that the infrastructure for human cloning experiments were already in place at two labs in undisclosed locations. “We hope that in November we will begin to do the nuclear transfer, which in actuality is a transfer of the nucleus of .... A body cell into the egg of a woman for the purpose of establishing an embryo,” he told CNN television today. “That embryo will be transferred into the uterus to establish a pregnancy,” he said. In media interviews, he said he plans to impregnate as many as 200 women with cloned embryos, in what would be the first attempt to produce a human clone. Dr Antinori, who rose to prominence in 1994 when he helped a 63-year-old woman have a child, maintains that his goal is to help couples suffering from reproductive problems have their own
offspring. Dr Antinori and Panos Zavos, a Kentucky fertility specialist working with him, faced tough questioning from scientists who have cloned animals and noted the extremely high rates of defects and failures. Dr Zavos said he and Dr Antinori planned to begin the process of creating cloned babies for infertile couples by November. Dr Antinori first gained worldwide notice by helping a 62-year-old woman have a child in 1994. Dr Zavos said he could screen embryos for genetic abnormalities before implanting them, although he acknowledged that problems could develop later. “We’re not perfect but we’re trying to get there,” he insisted. “This technique can be made safe for people for reproductive purposes,” he said. Meanwhile, the British researcher who attained international fame by cloning Dolly, the sheep, has told scientists here it would be mistake to use cloning to
reproduce humans. “Animal cloning is inefficient in all species,” warned Ian Wilmut, director of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, where Dolly was cloned five years ago. “Expect the same outcome in humans as in other species: late abortions, dead children and surviving but abnormal children,” he said on Tuesday. Other scientists said it was currently impossible to detect the types of problems seen in animal clones by examining embryos. “This is not good science,” said Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist and animal cloning pioneer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Whitehead Institute. Jaenisch noted that only 1 per cent to 5 per cent of cloned animals survived to birth and some of those later died prematurely due to various birth defects. Problems occurred at similar rates in all species cloned, including cows, mice and pigs. Brigitte Boisselier, a biochemist and member of a group known as the Raelians, who also has announced plans to create cloned babies, said people had the right to use their genes the way they wanted. including the right to reproduce one’s self by cloning. The Raelians, who believe in extraterrestrials, promote cloning as a chance for “eternal life.” Boisselier said there was “huge demand” for cloning services because the technology offered hope to infertile couples of having a biologically related child. “If there are hopes, if there is technology, you should be aware this will be done,” she told the panel.
Reuters, AFP |
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Taliban to free aid workers after probe Islamabad, August 8 “The 24 aid workers from the Shelter Now International (SNI) assistance organisation tried to exploit the miseries of poor Afghans and converted them to Christianity,” the sources said. SNI is run by the German-based Christian relief agency Vision for Asia. “We will not keep them even for a single moment in the jail if the investigation is completed,” the sources said. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca had demanded the release of the aid workers during her visit to Islamabad last week. Among the aid workers are two US women. “The message was the USA would not take lightly any harm that would come to an American citizen,” a U.S. embassy official said. A Taliban official said that among those held were Americans Dana Curry and Nicole Barnardhollon; Germans George Taubmann, Margrit Stebnar, Kati Jelinek and Silke Duerrkopf and Australians Peter Bunch and Diana Thomas. Kabul: While foreign aid workers waited in their white cement prison for the findings of a Taliban investigation into charges they preached Christianity in this deeply Muslim nation, diplomats and the United Nations today sought their release. However, no one expects the foreign aid workers to receive the death penalty. Most other aid workers in the Afghan capital say it is more likely they will be expelled. The Taliban have shown some of the material confiscated from the Shelter Now International Office which included instruction films on Christianity in the local Dari language, as well as copies of the Bible translated into Dari and information about Christian Dari-language radio programmes.
IANS, AFP |
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10 Macedonians die in ambush Skopje, August 8 “There are 10 fatalities,” the official said. The rebels opened fire on an army convoy on the road between the capital Skopje and the flashpoint town of Tetovo in northwest Macedonia. The attack seemed sure to derail 10 days of peace talks in southern Macedonian between leaders of the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties on ways to head off a new Balkan war.
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USA watching China on missile transfer Washington, August 8 State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has said that Washington would try to design a system of missile export controls through “expert talks” with Beijing. He said the goal of those talks would be to improve Beijing’s “mixed results” in implementing a November pledge not to assist foreign missile programmes. China in the past has denied it, but now engages in missile proliferation and has linked the issue to US weapons shipments to Taiwan. “That is certainly not our preferred course (imposing sanctions against China), although we would certainly follow the US law if it came to that,” Mr Boucher said. “But first and foremost, what we want to see is that the Chinese abide by the
(November) agreement and implement their new system of controls effectively,” he said. Washington hoped to start the talks in time so that they could “produce resolution” before President Bush’s visit to China in October.
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Stampede in B’desh plant kills 20 Dhaka, August 8 A short-circuit triggered the alarm at the Dhaka building which houses four garment factories, police said. Sixteen workers died on the spot and four in hospital. They said the death toll was likely to go up as some of the injured were stated to be in critical condition. The police said the fire originated from an electric short circuit in Micro Garments located on the sixth floor of a building in Mirpur area in the north-western part of the capital city. The report on hearing the sound of explosion caused by the short circuit and seeing black smoke billowing from there, hundreds of panicky workers started running for safety. As large number of workers attempted to leave the burning factory at a time through the narrow staircases, it sparked the fatal stampede. Some desperate workers jumped down from the second and third floors to save themselves from the blaze suffering critical injuries.
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Bangladesh’s bloody road to polls Dhaka, August 8 Despite a drive to unearth illegal weapons, activists of Bangladesh’s two main parties have been fighting pitched battles in many cities and towns. The latest incidents of violence and death have been reported from Khulna and Feni in southern Bangladesh. A Awami League (AL) leader and a worker were killed in Khulna on Saturday, while an activist of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was murdered in Feni. Both parties blamed each other for the escalating violence, which has also left hundreds injured. Elections are due in October. According to reports, activists of both parties have been fighting gun battles, torching villages and even attacking police stations. One report alleged that a former AL politician set a village on fire in Feni. Three BNP men were killed in clashes between activists of the two parties while 100 others were injured. In another incident, angry villagers near Dhaka torched a number of houses and ransacked a market protesting the killing of a businessman aligned with the AL. In the same area, a former BNP politician and his men attacked a police station and ransacked it. At a meeting with the caretaker government on Saturday, President Shahabuddin Ahmed expressed grave concern at the increased violence and asked the administration to “take steps for rapid improvement of law and order.” Meanwile, the AL chief, Ms Sheikh Hasina, claimed that 30 party activists had been murdered since the caretaker government took power on July 15. “I am surprised that the caretaker government is doing many other jobs but showing no interest in stopping the killing. So far none of the killers have been arrested,” she told a rally in Dhaka. Ironically, after her rally, three more AL men were killed. The BNP chief, Ms Khaleda Zia said: “The AL terrorists have continued terrorism, killings and attacks on the BNP across the country.” Without mentioning the exact number of people the BNP had lost, she said: “We strongly demand that the caretaker government recover the arms AL supplied to its activists.” Chief adviser Latifur Rahman said stemming violence and seizing illegal weapons was a pre-requisite for holding a transparent election.
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Clinton to be candid on Monica in book Washington, August 8 Mr Clinton will reportedly get at least $12 million from Knopf Publishing Group to tell the long-awaited story of his rise to power and his tumultuous days in the White House. The book is set to be published in 2003. Washington lawyer Robert Barnett, who negotiated the book deal, yesterday said Mr Clinton received an "enormous number of wonderful offers" from many publishers but settled on Knopf, a division of Random House Inc, which is owned by Bertelsmann AG. During discussions with Knopf, the publishing group was interested in how Mr Clinton would write about his life, Barnett said. "I think they saw that there was an enormous number of topics to cover, people to talk about, highs and lows, and great accomplishments," said Barnett in an interview with ABC’s "Good Morning America’’ programme. Asked how Mr Clinton would tackle writing about his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Barnett said: "I think that he will cover all experiences of his life, ... what happened in Arkansas, what happened in Washington and what happened on the world stage. I think he will do it in a comprehensive and candid way." Barnett said Mr Clinton would approach his memoirs in the same way as the late publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Graham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1997 autobiography, "Personal History".
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Israel, UN agree on video viewing United Nations, August 8 One tape will be shown in edited form so as to obscure the faces of Lebanese Hezbollah Guerrillas who are thought to have been involved in the kidnappings. NABLUS:In a familiar scene of West Asia retribution, Israeli helicopters bombarded two Palestinian security targets in the West Bank early today after gunmen killed a Jewish settler overnight. The killing and subsequent strike, from which no injuries were reported, came just hours after U.S. President George W. Bush reaffirmed a pledge to help end 10 months of
bloodshed. AFP, Reuters |
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