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I will go to Srinagar, says Rashid
Pak focus remains on Kashmir
US guards describe Saddam as friendly, clean freak
Russian space rocket crashes
Reproductive tourism big hit in Europe
Nepal turning into tourists' peril
Farmers hold rally to strike ‘couch potato’ from dictionary
Teen acne good for heart
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I will go to Srinagar, says Rashid
Islamabad, June 21 "The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus was introduced for the Kashmiris, I am going... to meet my relatives," Dawn on Tuesday quoted him as telling a private TV channel. "We should forget the past and try to benefit from the current peaceful scenario," he added. Ahmed planned to travel on the bus on June 30 but India said on Monday it had not received any application from him. "As far as I know, until now no such application has been received," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said in New Delhi in response to a question. On Saturday, Ahmed had warned that the cancellation of his proposed trip could jeopardise the India-Pakistan peace process. "Whether I visit (Indian) Kashmir or not, that does not make any
difference. However India would be out in the open," he told reporters in Islamabad. Ahmed's travel plans hit a roadblock after Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front leader Yasin Malik said the minister had trained 3,500 militants at his country villa near Rawalpindi. Ahmed vehemently denied the charge, but a host of former generals and intelligence officers, including former army chief, Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, backed Malik's statement. Ahmed had reportedly filed his travel papers before the controversy erupted.
— IANS |
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Pak focus remains on Kashmir
Islamabad, June 21 He announced that the secretary-level talks on the Wullar Barrage issue had been rescheduled for June 28-29 and the delegation would now proceed to New Delhi on June 27. He held that the meeting, initially slated for June 24-25, had to be rescheduled due to a ‘small’ logistic difficulty. The spokesman also unveiled the schedule of other engagements within the composite dialogue framework which he said would culminate in a meeting between the two foreign ministers in September. Pakistan, he said, had proposed that experts-level talks on nuclear and conventional confidence-building measures be held either in the last week of July or in the first week of August in New Delhi. “We are awaiting a response from New Delhi.” The culture secretaries of the two countries would meet in Islamabad in July and interior secretaries would hold talks in Delhi in the last week of August, the spokesman said. The two commerce secretaries would also meet in August in Delhi to discuss economic and trade issues, he added. The second round of the composite dialogue process would be completed in September when the foreign secretaries and foreign ministers of the two countries would meet to review it. |
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US guards describe Saddam as friendly, clean freak
New York, June 21 Those and other details of the deposed Iraqi leader’s life in US military custody appear in the July issue of GQ magazine, based on interviews with five Pennsylvania National Guardsmen who went to Iraq in 2003 and guarded Saddam for nearly 10 months. The magazine, which reached newsstands yesterday, said the GIs could not tell their families what they were doing and signed pledges not to reveal the location or other details of the US-run compound where Saddam was an HVD, or “high value detainee,” awaiting trial by Iraqi authorities for mass killings and other crimes. However, the five soldiers told GQ of their personal interactions with Saddam, saying he spoke with them in rough English, was interested in their lives and even invited them back to Iraq when he returns to power. “He’d always tell us he was still the President. That’s what he thinks, 100 per cent,” said Spc Jesse Dawson, 25. A Pentagon spokesman had no comment on the article. The GIs recalled that Saddam had harsh words for the Bushes, each of whom went to war against him. “The Bush father, son, no good,” Cpl Jonathan “Paco” Reese, 22, quoted Saddam as saying. Spc Sean O’Shea, then 19, said Saddam later mellowed in that view. “Towards the end, he was saying that he doesn’t hold any hard feelings and he just wanted to talk to Bush, to make friends with him,” he told the magazine.
— AP |
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Russian space rocket crashes
Moscow, June 21 Officials said they believed no one on the ground had been hurt when the unmanned Molnia-M rocket came down in the thinly-populated Tyumen region in western Siberia. The unmanned rocket is believed to have developed a technical snag, about five minutes after its launch, leading to its crash, Interfax news agency quoted head of the Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos) Anatoly Peerminov as saying. The Russian government has set up a high-powered inter-agency commission to investigate the cause behind the crash in immediate response to the launch failure of the satellite. Helicopters were used to search for the wreckage, a spokesman for the Russian Space Forces said. ''The crash was caused by the third-stage engine failure or an unfulfilled order to separate the second and third stages,'' Mr Perminov said. Mr Perminov stressed that there was no threat to the environment, as launch vehicles of this type operate on kerosene and liquid oxygen, which are environmentally friendly.
— UNI |
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Reproductive tourism big hit in Europe
Copenhagen, June 21 Dutch women travel to Belgium for sperm donation because there is a shortage in their own country. Donated egg recipients cross the border because it is not allowed in Germany. Lesbian couples travel from France to get treatment that is not available to them in their own country, while Italians are going abroad because their country has the strictest fertility law in Europe, according to Prof Guido Pennings of Ghent University in Belgium. The cause is a combination of declining natural fertility, rapid scientific advances in treatment, and a mix of national regulations as countries struggle with the ethics of it all. Despite research showing that fertility declines in the 30s, women are delaying having children. Sexually transmitted diseases can cause infertility, and obesity, which is linked with difficulty in ovulating, makes the problem worse. About one in six couples suffer from a fertility problem. “It looks as if the amount of infertility in the western world could double in the next decade,” Prof Bill Ledger, a fertility expert at Sheffield University in England, told a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology on Monday. “These young people will be wanting to have effective treatment,” he told the meeting in Copenhagen. Belgium, Switzerland and Spain are among the most popular European nations for reproductive tourism. For sex selection treatment, many couples favour the United States and Jordan. Spain is popular for people seeking egg and sperm donors, he added. Clinics are even offering fertility packages.
— Reuters |
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Nepal turning into tourists' peril
Kathmandu, June 21 An Internet discussion site —Runboard.com—that has been following the cases of foreign tourists who disappeared in Nepal and India, has taken up the issue with the British government. Its administrators met British minister Baroness Symons in February, urging her to ask the Tony Blair government to ensure that the British Embassy in Nepal has a proper protocol to deal with missing persons. Prentice, a travel advisor from Bristol, went to Nepal in February 2000 with a woman for a trekking holiday. A month later, his body was found in a river in Langtang, about 85 km north of the capital. He had serious head injuries and there was a ligature around his neck. He was also apparently robbed. The Nepal police arrested four locals for the murder and sent them to prison for life in January 2002. The murder was revived in public memory this week when a British coroner in London gave the verdict of "unlawful killing" at the inquest. Three other foreign tourists, whose cases received a lot of media attention, were British nationals as well. Alex James Ratnasothy, a 24-year-old backpacker, had left home in Essex in April 2002 to travel through Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, and Myanmar. He arrived in Kathmandu in February 2003 and went on a trek to the Everest base camp. Then he vanished into thin air. Tiziana Pellegatta, a 35-year-old Italian-born, disappeared from Hotel Earth in Thamel, the tourist hub in Kathmandu, in April the same year. She was supposed to take a flight back to Rome in May but never turned up. A year later, Gareth David Koch came to Nepal on a
trekking holiday with a colleague. He went missing in March 2004 and despite frantic efforts by his parents, that continues even today, remains traceless. Then there are Franck Veismann, a French tourist, Naama Richker, an Israeli high-school graduate, and Jack Chan, a trekker from Hong Kong, whose family says he has been missing since March 2004 when he went to Nepal. Like Richker, who reportedly fell into a river while rafting, there is also an unnamed woman who went missing in the Langtang area a few months before Prentice's
murder. — IANS |
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Farmers hold rally to strike ‘couch potato’ from dictionary
London, June 21 A group of about 30 farmers took their cause to the streets yesterday, demonstrating outside Parliament and carrying signs that read “couch potato out” and “ban the term couch potato.” A similar rally took place in Oxford, central England. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term “couch potato” as “a person who spends leisure time passively or idly sitting
around, especially watching television or video tapes. — AP |
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Teen acne good for heart
London, June 21 Bruna Galobardes from the University of Bristol in Britain and his colleagues looked at health data relating to students who attended Glasgow University between 1948 and 1968. The researchers conducted a study of 10,000 men and found a very strong correlation between acne in youth and coronary protection later in life, the report said. The researchers believe that the androgens responsible for bringing on acne may have a protective effect on the heart. The young adults who reported they had or were suffering from acne were 33 per cent less likely to die from coronary heart disease.
— IANS |
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Islamabad, June 21
