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US vetoes resolution against
Israel Hamas issues threat
Bush jokes about WMDs, draws fire US may supply more choppers to Pakistan Spanish cops arrest five
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Earth has a
new satellite Poor parental support linked to adult depression
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US vetoes resolution against Israel United Nations, March 26 The Bush Administration, alone among major powers in not condemning Monday’s assassination as an extrajudicial killing, rejected the resolution yesterday because it did not denounce Yassin’s group Hamas for suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in recent years. Washington’s “no” vote killed the resolution because it is one of the five permanent members of the council with veto power. A total of 11 countries voted in favour. Britain, Germany and Romania abstained after Algeria, negotiating for Arab nations, rejected an amendment they wanted that would have condemned “atrocities” against Israelis. The measure was supported by China, Russia, France, Angola, Chile, Pakistan, Spain, Algeria, Benin, Brazil and the Philippines. Palestinian representatives said they would take the resolution to the 191-member UN General Assembly. The Palestinians enjoy strong support in the assembly while Washington, Israel’s closest ally, has no veto there. Security Council measures can carry the force of international law, but assembly resolutions express the will of the international community. In a statement to the council before the vote, US Ambassador Johan Negroponte said that Washington believed the assassination of Yassin damaged peace efforts. But he also said the “unbalanced” resolution would detract from the so-called road map peace plan by a quartet or West Asia advisers — the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union. “This resolution refers only to the situation in occupied territories, ignoring the tragic events in Israel,” Mr Negroponte said. Algeria, the only Arab nation on the council, introduced a draft resolution condemning “the most recent extrajudicial execution committed by Israel.” It also condemned “all attacks against any civilians as well as all acts of violence and destruction.” Yassin was a founder of Hamas, which has sworn to destroy the Jewish state. Visiting the U.N. on Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom described Yassin as the “godfather of the suicide bombers.” The US veto was Washington’s 79th in the U.N. Security Council since it first convened in 1946 — more than any other country except the former Soviet Union. Most of Moscow’s vetoes were during the Cold War era when it frequently clashed with the United States in the world body. — Reuters |
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Hamas issues threat Beirut (Lebanon), March 26 The threat was made by the group’s military wing, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in a videotape broadcast by the Al-Arabiya satellite channel. A news editor at the channel’s headquarters in Dubai said the tape came by mail yesterday from one of their bureaus in the region. The tape showed two masked men standing behind five tall rockets, the kind of missile that Hamas guerrillas use to hit Israeli towns. Yassin, a quadriplegic, died on Monday when an Israeli helicopter-gunship fired three missiles as he was being wheeled out of a mosque in Gaza after dawn prayers. The Israeli Government accused him of being an arch-terrorist who had planned attacks that had killed hundreds of Israelis. The statement promised to carry out attacks that Israel has not witnessed before “through Al-Qassam rockets with which we will hit all our occupied towns in Haifa, Jaffa and Ashkelon.” —
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Bush jokes about WMDs, draws fire Washington, March 26 During the banquet with television and radio correspondents Wednesday evening, President Bush showed a slide of himself looking underneath furniture in the White House. “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,” he quipped. Democrats accused President Bush of making light of the war in Iraq that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more then 550 American soldiers. Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of banned weapons was the chief reason for launching the invasion, but more than one year since U.S. troops hit the Iraqi soil, the chief U.S. weapons inspector has confirmed no weapons have been found. President Bush also showed a slide of himself playing cards on Air Force One, and joked he was using a deck that would help him learn the names of foreign leaders he was about to meet. The quip was a reference to the Iraqi “deck of cards” used by the Pentagon to assign importance to Saddam’s cohorts. The event with reporters is typically meant to be an opportunity for the president to poke fun at himself and members of his staff, but Democrats charged the weapons joke was insensitive and went too far. —DPA |
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US may supply more choppers to Pakistan Washington, March 26 “With respect to Pakistan, we are working on the helicopter issue. They need more helicopter capacity in that part of the tribal areas,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday. Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary, Mr Powell said the US had already supplied to Pakistan night-vision goggles to fight Al-Qaida operatives along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Pakistan had on Sunday admitted that it’s forces were getting technical help from the US army. —
PTI |
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Spanish cops arrest five more Madrid, March 26 The latest arrests bring the total number of people in custody in connection with the 10 blasts which killed 190 persons to 18. Spanish radio reports said the arrests announced last evening of a trio of North Africans followed a series of police searches in and around Madrid. Judicial officials said the three had appeared before duty judge Ismael Moreno, who had passed their dossier on to examining judge Juan Del Olmo. According to Cadena Ser Radio, two persons of Moroccan origin had been detained at Ugena, a small town some 40 km south of Madrid, while another person had been arrested in the capital. Later, the police said another two arrests had been made without specifying the origin of the latest suspects. Eleven persons arrested two days after the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history — eight Moroccans, two Indians and a Spaniard — are already in jail facing provisional charges of murder and terrorism. —
AFP |
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Earth has a
new satellite Paris, March 26 The asteroid, 2003 YN17, “is probably a chunk of debris” from an impact between a larger space rock and the surface of the moon, the British weekly says. 2003 YN17’s orbital plane is roughly the same as the earth’s, but its unusual path, compounded by a corkscrew-like track, means that sometimes it is ahead of us and sometimes it is behind. “Since 1996, its path has taken it round the earth, making it a quasi-satellite. This phase will last until 2006, the report says. The finders are a team led by Paul Chodas, an asteroid specialist at NASA’s famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. —
AFP |
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Poor parental support linked to adult depression Houston: Consider yourself fortunate if you are among those kids who got emotional support in abundance from parents early in life. According to a recent study, people who got loads of parental support during childhood are likely to have relatively good health throughout adulthood, whereas people with inadequate parental support while growing up are likely to have poorer health as adults. It was a known fact that children who received support from their parents reported fewer psychological and physical problems during childhood than children who received less parental support. However, now studies have found that adult psychological and physical health is influenced by the amount of social support adults receive. In the latest study, Benjamin A. Shaw, Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health, University at Albany, and colleagues from the University of Michigan, investigated for the first time whether the health effects of parental support received during childhood persisted throughout adulthood into old age. Responses were analysed from 2,905 adults between the age group of 25-74 by National Survey of Mid-life Development in the United States. The participants were asked about the availability of emotional support from their mothers and fathers during the years they were growing up, such as “how much could you confide in her or him about things that were bothering you ? Depressive symptoms, chronic health conditions and self-esteem were also assessed through survey questions. The researchers found lack of parental support during childhood is associated with increased levels of depressive symptoms and chronic health conditions (such as hypertension, arthritis and urinary problems) in adulthood and this association persists with increasing age throughout adulthood into early old age. The association appears to be more strongly linked to mental health than physical health problems, which may be due to differences in how these problems develop over a period of time, according to the authors. Specifically, early parental support appears to shape people’s sense of personal control, self-esteem and family relationships, which in turn affect adult depressive symptoms and physical health. The findings of the study are reported in the March issue of Psychology and Ageing, a journal published by the American Psychological Association. —PTI |
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