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Pak Senate panel seeks release of prisoners
Breakthrough in anti-SARS vaccine
Over 1,000 released from Abu Ghraib
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Pak won’t change
stand on Kashmir: Aziz
Belgian to die for killing Indian
Wolfgang Bauer dead
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Pak Senate panel seeks release of prisoners
Islamabad, August 27 It also demanded consular access to the Pakistani prisoners in India. The committee was informed that the issue of Pakistani and Indian prisoners in each other’s countries had been included in the agenda of talks between their interior secretaries scheduled for August 28 in New Delhi. Foreign Affairs Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan told the committee led by Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed that the Interior Secretary had been directed to take up the issue with his Indian counterpart and India had agreed to discuss it. The Foreign Secretary said there were 611 Pakistanis in Indian jails, including 52 fishermen. He said the national status of 173 of the prisoners had been confirmed after verification while the identification of 178 was in process. He said the government had been trying to get consular access to 208 Pakistani prisoners but it was awaiting a response from the Indian side. He said there were 576 Indians in Pakistani jails. He said the progress made on the issue in the talks would be discussed in the meeting of Foreign Secretaries of both countries in Islamabad next week with progress on other confidence-building measures during the past year. He said relations between the two countries had been improving gradually and he hoped that the issue of prisoners would become a part of the confidence-building measures between them. The secretary said verification of the identities of the prisoners in Indian jails was a difficult process because relatives of those without documents were reluctant to provide information about them. He said the government had decided to simplify the procedure of identification so that the prisoners without proper documents could be released as early as possible. Senator Mushahid Hussain said the Indian High Commissioner had told him that New Delhi was ready to release the Pakistani prisoners whose identification had been confirmed. The secretary said the Foreign Office had not received any such offer from the Indian Government, but assured the committee that if such an offer was received officially, the government would be ready to take measures for the release of those prisoners. Minister of State for Interior Dr Shahzad Wasim said that in many cases the verification process for prisoners in India was delayed due to incomplete addresses. He said the release of fishermen from Indian jails would be on top of the agenda in the interior secretaries’ talks. |
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Breakthrough in anti-SARS vaccine
Beijing, August 27 The Chinese scientists in Guangzhou in South China’s Guangdong Province, where SARS originated, said they had developed small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA), which would target specific genes. It was efficient enough to combat the disease, they added. SARS, first identified in 2002, killed 774 persons worldwide before it was brought under control by quarantine, isolating patients and restricting travel. Since then, researchers led by the Director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, Zhong Nanshan had been working to find drugs and vaccines to prevent another outbreak. Tests on monkeys showed that although animals treated with the siRNA could still be infected with the disease, their symptoms were significantly less severe, suffering less lung damage and smaller increases in body temperature. “The long-term experiments show that siRNA is effective in curing SARS, and the monkey subjects showed no adverse side effects,” Li Baojian, a biotechnology professor at Zhongshan University, said yesterday. However, “the technology of siRNA cannot be used clinically in the short term”, he said. Though the theory of siRNA was discovered in 1990, it had never been used on humans, Zhong said. “We must undergo a careful and long-term test of toxicity for siRNA before it is made into drugs or a vaccine. The test needs three to five years at least”, he added. — PTI
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Over 1,000 released from Abu Ghraib
Baghdad, August 27 The move, the largest prisoner release to date, followed appeals by Sunni representatives to the government to start releasing thousands of prisoners who have been languishing in the jail for months without being charged with a crime. After a meeting with President Jalal Talabani on Thursday, Sunni negotiator Saleh al-Mutlaq said the President had agreed to release many detainees before the referendum on the constitution on October 15. Al-Mutlaq said hundreds of detainees, most of them Sunni Arabs, were to be set free. “This major release ... marks a significant event in Iraq’s progress toward democratic governance and the rule of law,” the US statement said. “Those chosen for release are not guilty of serious, violent crimes - such as bombing, torture, kidnapping, or murder - and all have admitted their crimes, renounced violence, and pledged to be good citizens of a democratic Iraq.” — AP
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Pak won’t change stand on Kashmir: Aziz
Islamabad, August 27 The Kashmir issue cannot be ignored for a longer period of time and it would be the focal point on the agenda of the meeting between General Musharraf and Mr Manmohan Singh in New York next month on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) Premier Sikandar Hayat Khan, who called on him here yesterday. Pakistan would neither withdraw from its principled stance on Kashmir nor give up its political, diplomatic and moral support to the Kashmiris, Mr Aziz said, adding the issue would be resolved “according to their wishes.” He said Pakistan was carrying forward the process of confidence building measures in the ongoing dialogue with India but stressed for including Kashmiris in the process as they were the “main party” to the issue. He told Mr Hayat that Pakistan was giving special attention to the development work in PoK, especially in education, health and infrastructure. — PTI
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Belgian to die for killing Indian
Canberra, August 27 Youssef Tecle Imnetu, 24, was ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years in prison during sentencing yesterday in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for the murder of Shoukat Ali Mohamed on July 29, 2003, The Daily Telegraph reported. His accomplice, Basheeruddin Mohamed, who shared a Sydney apartment with Imentu, was deported to India for breaching conditions of his student visa before the police discovered his involvement in the crime, a prosecutor told the court. Mohamed, who has not been charged because Australia does not have an extradition treaty with India, allegedly owed the victim $ 15,121. Imnetu and Mohamed forced their victim to swallow heroin, clubbed him with a baseball bat, strangled him and then stuffed his body in a trash bin outside their inner-city apartment, the court was told. — AP
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Vienna (Austria), August 27 The playwright died yesterday after a long struggle with heart troubles. Bauer’s 1968 theatre piece ‘Magic Afternoon’, is seen as a masterwork in contemporary Austrian drama. Among his numerous works were a novel and scripts for television and radio. “Wolfgang Bauer is one of those authors who brought a new realism on the stage and with it a new honesty to Austrian drama,” Austria’s State Secretary for Art and Media Franz Morak said in a statement. “He ushered in a new era of drama in Austria.” — AP
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