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India, Pak hold talks on Sir Creek
WB expert on Baglihar
starts talks on June 9
Pak threatens to resort to UN resolution on Kashmir
USA not to mediate in Indo-Pak talks: Rocca
22 killed in twin blasts
in Indonesia
Viagra may cause blindness
NPT meet collapses in face of differences
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Big Ben falls silent for more than an hour
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India, Pak hold talks on Sir Creek
Islamabad, May 28 An Indian defence delegation, headed by Maj.- General. Gopal Rao, the Surveyor General of India held talks with Additional Secretary of Ministry of Defence, Rear Admiral Ahsan-ul-Haq Chaudhry at the Pakistan Ministry of Defence, Rawalpindi. The two sides held seven round of talks so far and this was the eighth time they met to resolve mutual claims on Sir Creek. The talks will end tomorrow. Officials said the talks focussed on the joint survey conducted by both sides in January this year to identify some of the boundary pillars installed in 1924 by the then authorities of Sindh and Kutch. The two sides conducted the joint survey on the land and off the Sir Creek coast. Officials believe that the survey could prove a way out for the dispute over a small stretch of marshy land which emerged as the key for determining the exclusive maritime zone off Gujarat and Karachi coasts. The Sir Creek dispute was one of the eight points of contentious issues being discussed under the composite dialogue process. Talks on Sir Creek started in the backdrop a deadlock in the two-day talks on Siachen glacier, which concluded at Rawalpindi yesterday. Officials said some new ideas were discussed ,but no headway was made over demilitarisation of the world’s highest battlefield.
—PTI |
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WB expert on Baglihar
starts talks on June 9
Islamabad, May 28 Government sources here told Dawn that the neutral expert had asked the two countries to send their teams to the meeting to finalize procedure of the proceedings during the two-day meeting. The sources said authorities in Islamabad had received Professor Lafitte’s notice on Friday. The same had also been sent to India, they said. The Ministry of Water and Power, the Foreign Office, the Law Ministry and Pakistan’s commissioner to the permanent Indus Commission would hold a meeting in a couple of days to finalize a strategy and select a team to represent Pakistan before the neutral expert. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is expected to preside the meeting. On April 10, the World Bank had appointed Raymond Lafitte, a Swiss civil engineer, as the Neutral Expert ‘to address differences’ between Pakistan and India on the Baglihar hydropower project on the Chenab river, which Pakistan considered violated the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960. This is the first time in the 45-year history of the Treaty that the World Bank has appointed a neutral expert to address a dispute between the two countries. Raymond Lafitte, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, will make a finding on a ‘difference’ between the two governments concerning the construction of the Baglihar project. The appointment was made through a consensus between the two countries. The Chenab is one of the rivers comprising the Indus river system. After the partition of the subcontinent, the Indus Waters Treaty was concluded with support from the World Bank in 1960. The Treaty divided the river systems between the two countries. The Bank is a signatory to the Treaty and was approached by Pakistan to appoint a Neutral Expert to deal with a difference that had arisen between the two countries. |
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Pak threatens to resort to UN resolution on Kashmir
Islamabad, May 28 The Indian “stubbornness” could force Pakistan to review its existing policy, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri was quoted as saying by ‘The News’ daily in his native town of Kasur yesterday. He said the composite dialogue process could not be meaningful without the active participation of Kashmiris, particularly the Hurriyat Conference, whose leaders he termed as “the real representative party” of the Kashmiris.
— PTI |
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USA not to mediate in Indo-Pak talks: Rocca
Islamabad, May 28 “The momentum seems to be in favour of the peace process and a number of steps are being taken at a great speed, a gratifying speed,” Ms Rocca, who held talks with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf here this, week, said in an interview to the daily appearing today. All the steps being initiated by the two countries had the support of the USA, she said. Ms Rocca said ultimately the solution would lie between India and Pakistan. She said if there was an area where, “We can help, we are there to do so but right now the momentum seems to be going very firmly and both countries seem to be working towards the resolution of the disputes.”
— PTI |
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22 killed in twin blasts
in Indonesia
Jakarta, May 28 The blasts occurred in the morning at a market in Sulawesi island’s Christian-dominated town of Tentena, said Police Maj Riky Naldo, the deputy chief of police in nearby Poso town. More than 90 per cent of Indonesia’s 210 million people are Muslims. Two policemen were among the wounded, Naldo said. “The latest report says 22 persons were killed,” Vice-President Jusuf Kalla told a news conference in Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. Kalla said he believed the explosion was carried out by terrorists, but that the attacks were not linked to the long-running sectarian violence in the area.
— AP |
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Viagra may cause blindness
Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, may have to place warnings on boxes of Viagra to say that its best-selling impotence drug America's drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, said yesterday it had received reports of 38 cases of blindness which appeared to have been caused by Viagra, and a further four cases among patients taking Cialis, the number two drug in the erectile dysfunction market, made by Eli Lilly.
The FDA said it was investigating the link between the sight problems and the drugs, but has not discovered whether there is a direct connection. "We take this seriously," a FDA spokeswoman said. Pfizer and other manufacturers already warn patients on their websites that sight problems such as blurring can be a rare side effect of taking impotence drugs. The FDA may force them to add the specific disclosure about the risk of blindness to labels on bottles. Pfizer said it was talking to the FDA about adding a disclosure to Viagra's label to say that in rare cases men taking Viagra had developed blindness. The company said reports of blindness had surfaced before, but added that no proof had been found of a direct link with Viagra. It said men who take Viagra often have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which are also associated with the conditions that can cause blindness. Pfizer's shares fell 3 per cent in New York, as the problem appeared to be just the latest in a series of safety concerns to hit the drug industry. Viagra, introduced in 1998, had sales of $1.68bn ((pounds sterling)921m) in 2004. Levitra, made by GlaxoSmithKline and Germany's Bayer, was approved in August 2003, and Cialis in November of that year. Shares of GSK rose. GSK said it has not found any evidence that Levitra, the third largest erectile dysfunction drug which it manufactures in the US, has caused site problems. —
By arrangement with The Independent |
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NPT meet collapses in face of differences
New York, May 28 Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), pushing for greater control over nuclear materials, and diplomats expressed disappointment and fears that the USA might try to create regimes outside the treaty to control proliferation. Regretting the failure, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that their inability to strengthen the collective effort is about to weaken the treaty and the broader NPT-based regime. When asked about the reasons for the failure, conference chairman Sergio Duarte of Brazil said yesterday, “I think you can write several books on that”. Months before the meet, it was clear that the chances of finding a meeting ground are very slim. The non-nuclear states wanted the nuclear weapon states to pledge to eliminate their nuclear weapons but the USA rejected the demand and blocked every move towards that end, saying circumstances have changed. But it did point to the reduction in warheads that it, along with Russia, had undertaken.
— PTI |
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Big Ben falls silent for more than an hour
London, May 28 The problem began at 10. 07 p.m. when Big Ben’s minute hand stopped. It began moving again slowly, then stalled a second time at 10.20 p.m. and remained still for 90 minutes before starting up again, the engineer said. Some speculated that hot weather might have been to blame. Temperatures in London reached a high of 31.8°C today, and forecasters called it England’s hottest day in May since 1953. But the engineer at the Palace of Westminster, which operates the clock, said the cause was unclear. “We’ve been told there was a minor glitch, but then it was started up again,” he said. — AP
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Kalam visits Einstein’s house
Berne, May 28 |
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