Kathmandu, June 6
Maoist leader Prachanda has warned that the rebels will resort to violence if political parties did not accept their demand to set up a republican state after holding constituent assembly elections.

Accusing the political parties of trying to "awake the dead tiger" by accepting the ceremonial monarchy, he warned the crisis would not be resolved unless the parties went for a republican state.

Addressing a gathering at a village in Morang district yesterday, Prachanda also warned that the ongoing talks may fail if the government tried to move under the guidance of "American imperialism and Indian expansionism," a Nepali language daily reported today.

Criticising the political parties for making big decisions by reviving the dead Parliament, he said the talks would not lead to any concrete result unless an interim government was formed with the involvement of the rebels and scrapping the constitution.

He said the Maoists wanted to establish a federal type of system in which the rights of Dalit and women were protected and ethnic autonomy be achieved.

He also asked the government to take action against army chief Pyarjung Thapa. 
— PTI

United Nations, June 6
Rejecting the concept of clash of civilisations, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has warned against the tendency of categorization of people according to some singular or overarching system, like religion, and stressed the need for global interaction.

“The newly popular view of singularity is not only incendiary and dangerous but is astonishing by naive,” he said, pointing out that people see themselves in hundreds of ways.

Delivering a lecture on “Identity in the 21st Century” yesterday, Sen lambasted the Western nations for trying to appropriate to themselves the concept of participatory democracy which had been in vogue for centuries as also mathematics and other sciences which have been built over what had been achieved long ago in other parts of the world.

He was also highly critical of the Western nations of ignoring persecutions in their part of the world while discussing such instances elsewhere.

Referring to terrorism, he said a lot of violence in the world was now being cultivated by singular focus on religious identity of human beings and argued that classifying by other criteria like languages a person spoke could have “very positive” contribution in defusing “brutality of starkly inter-religious strife.”

“The tendency in the contemporary world to privilege exactly one identity over all others has done a great deal of harm already in fomenting racial violence, religious-related terrorism, suppression of immigrants and denial of basic human rights,” he said. — PTI 

Tidaholm (Sweden), June 6
‘‘Don't mix, don't flush, don't waste' is the slogan of a Swedish entrepreneur selling dry toilets — a revolutionary concept that not only saves water but also converts human waste into manure.

The concept could revolutionise toilet systems in countries like India, where sewerage systems in the countryside are a distant dream and a lot of water goes down the drain in the cities in flushing human waste.

The dry toilet concept, based on 19th century flushes used in some parts of Europe, keeps the solid waste and the urine separate and uses them to create manure that can be used in farms.

‘‘There is a lot of difference in the farm produce using this manure and the normal one. The only thing is that people should get used to the idea of using human waste as manure. It is safe, ecological and hygienic,’’ Sven Ingvar-Nilsson, the man behind the initiative, told a visiting IANS correspondent.

Ingvar-Nilsson, 77, has been successfully using the dry toilet design for the last 11 years at his massive farm on the outskirts of this small Swedish town.

He says the concept not only uses human waste but also saves a lot of water that is wasted every time you flush.

Flushes in India use up to 8 litres of water in a single use. The porcelain toilets from Ingvar-Nilsson company are unique as they have two compartments in the toilet seat. One is to collect human excreta while the other one is for urine. Both are collected below the ground in separate containers.

The waste gets collected in the containers through gravity though there is a provision for vacuum flushing.

A proper ventilation system has to be installed to make the toilets odour-free.

While the human waste takes a few days to turn into manure, the collected urine can almost immediately be used in the fields.

‘‘Urine has 95 per cent nitrogen and a good content of phosphorous and potassium as well. This can be very good for the crops,’’ said Thomas Karlsson, a farmer who is using this novel toilet in his countryside farm 
here. — IANS

New Delhi, June 6
The Kashmir Centre in Brussels, which has been functioning as a key actor of political lobbying in Europe in favour of independence of Kashmir ever since it opened in October 2003, has been broken into.

Diplomatic circles here view the development as significant and suspect that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) could have been behind the strange break-in wherein no computers or valuables were stolen.

Belgian newspaper “Le Soir” reported that only the door of the Kashmir Centre as well as some cabinets — which contained confidential documents and briefing documents to “policy makers”, elected members of the European Commission and Advisers of the European Union — were broken in the April 17 and 18 incident. All documents dealt with the issue of the future of Kashmir and how it could gain independence.

The “Le Soir” report said the Kashmir Centre — 57, avenue des arts in Brussels — organised the campaign for placing placards in several stations of the Brussels underground as well as the “mobilisation” of Belgian deputies and press in favour of the Pakistani Kashmir in the aftermath of the October 8, 2005 earthquake.

The centre had also organised a fund-raising dinner in the presence of a former Prime Minister of Pakistan in January this year.

The diplomatic circles here were abuzz with reports that the break-in was in all probability the handiwork of the ISI which had become suspicious about the use of funds generated by the Kashmir Centre.

It is believed that the Kashmir Centre, a one-man outfit run by barrister Majid Tramboo, had raised half a million Euros. The money was raised for the Kashmir quake but the centre could not give proper accounting to Pakistan.

The Belgian newspaper said the Kashmir Centre's “militancy” was much more efficient because it had no relation with any fighting or religious groups from Kashmir. The EU Kashmir Centre has managed to develop an open dialogue with Pakistan which recognises it as an objective ally in negotiations on Kashmir.

The centre's Director is from Srinagar in the Indian Kashmir and is openly a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. 

Singapore, June 6
Dark soya sauce, widely used in east Asia, may prove to be more effective than red wine and Vitamin C in combating human cell damage, researchers in Singapore said.

Scientists found that the sauce — derived from fermented soya beans — contains antioxidant properties about 10 times more effective than red wine and 150 times more potent than Vitamin C, Singapore’s Strait Times reported on Saturday. 
— Reuters