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Death toll in B’desh may be 20,000
Over 3,400 political activists freed in Pakistan
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Infant used to bomb Bhutto’s rally?
School sets criteria for ‘practising Hindus’
Stem cells
without embryos: Skin cells transformed
Dalai Lama may name successor
Nepal extends UN mission term
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Death toll in B’desh may be 20,000
The official death toll from Thursday’s cyclone in Bangladesh rose above 3,000 on Monday, with some aid agencies estimating the toll to reach up to 20,000 from the disaster that has affected at least 27 million people. As the government grapples with the scale of the category-4 cyclone, named Sidr, emergency food and medical relief are yet to reach outlaying islands and remote pockets devastated by the cyclone and the accompanying tidal wave. A survivor in a remote island called Ashar Char in the cyclone-ravaged of Barguna alone told the Tribune that 5,000 of the island’s 10,000 inhabitants are missing. Assessing the death toll has become even more difficult with so many dragged out to the sea by the tidal wave that accompanied the cyclone. At least a million have been left homeless, and hundreds of thousands have been injured with little sign of medical help until Monday. Corpses lined the shores of Bangladesh’s south-west coast, as hundreds were found hanging off trees, while hundreds were carried 2 to 3 km inland by the deadly tidal surge. “We thought it was another false alarm. They told us a big Tsunami wave was coming, but nothing happened. This time as soon as we heard the winds, they sounded like a thousand aeroplanes. We ran for the shelter,” said Delwar Hossain, in Patharghata, the area, which bore the brunt of the coastal hit on the southern tip of Barguna lining the Sunderbans. Delwar lost his wife, his mother and two cousins. Hundreds wailed and screamed similar stories village after village. But most of the survivors carried vacant, lifeless looks while silently cleaning up their flattened homes with slim hopes of trying to salvage something from the remnants of their lives. Bangladesh Red Crescent, Red Cross’s equivalent in Muslim-majority countries, feared on Sunday that the death-toll could rise to 10,000. Privately, some international relief agencies and national NGOs, who have the best ground-level network, fear that the death count could rise to 20,000, if not more. The international community is pouring money into the country to negate the massive humanitarian crisis. Until on Monday, various countries have offered $145 million in emergency aid. The US has already sent two ships and medical teams to help with the relief operations. Locally, the military and the government are leading the relief effort. The government has pledged $5.4 million, but there are large sections of the remote areas are clamouring for relief as they face starvation going into the fifth day after the cyclone. As the economy in this region faces ruin, after most of its crops, fishing industry and infrastructure were demolished by Sidr, the government on Monday came out saying the cyclone will not significantly hamper agriculture output and everything is under control. Vast improvements in Bangladesh’s cyclone preparation and warning system has possibly saved this disaster from becoming five times worse.
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Over 3,400 political activists freed in Pakistan
Islamabad, November 20 The commencement of the release came in tandem with the government also saying today that former Supreme Court judges sacked by Musharraf and held under house arrest during emergency rule were “free to move.” Interior ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema while announcing the release at a news conference said another 2,000 prisoners will be freed soon. The cases of some facing criminal charges could take longer, he said. The development came hours after Musharraf’s handpicked Supreme Court cleared all major legal challenges to Musharaff’s re-election as President but as a civilian and amid mounting US pressure for restoration of civil liberties. Responding to a question about deposed judges of the Supreme Court, he said they were “free to go to their homes if they so desire”. He said they were living in their official residences here at “their own choice”. But the families of sacked judges, including former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, claimed that police outside their houses were barring them from going out. — PTI
EC announces schedule
Amid boycott threats by the opposition parties, the Election Commission on Tuesday announced the election schedule that leaves them little time to coordinate the boycott move and only three weeks in which to conduct election campaign.
Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Mohammad Farooq announcing the schedule here said elections for national and provincial assemblies would be held simultaneously on January 8, 2008. Nominations have been invited from today (Wednesday) till Monday while the process of scrutiny, withdrawal and appeals will end on December 16.
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Infant used to bomb Bhutto’s rally?
Islamabad, November 20 The infant was strapped with bombs and a bomber repeatedly tried to get close to Bhutto’s armoured truck and hand over the child to her or any other Pakistan People’s Party leader, the News reported today quoting sources in the PPP. “The bomber repeatedly tried to carry the child to the back of Benazir Bhutto’s bulletproof van and hand over the infant either to Bhutto or any other PPP leader on board the truck but something always prevented him from getting close,” the report said. They also said Bhutto saw the bomber with the infant on the Sharae Faisal avenue a little before the two bombs went off. Bhutto herself saw the man with the child and “asked him to come closer so that she could hug or kiss the infant”. A guard, however, thought the man was behaving abnormally and did not allow the man to come near the truck, it said. Bhutto believes the bombs strapped to the infant caused the explosion in a police van that was near her truck. The PPP leader is said to have told party workers that she recognises the man who was carrying the infant.
— PTI
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School sets criteria for ‘practising Hindus’
London, November 20 The school, named Krishna-Avanti Primary School, is located at the London Borough of Harrow, which has the highest concentration of Hindus, 40,000, in any council in Britain. The school is promoted by a charity organisation called the I-Foundation. The admission process has started for the intake of the first batch of students in September 2008. Seats are limited to 30. The policy defines ‘practising Hindus’ as those who perform daily prayer and deity worship either at a temple or at home, and accept and follow Vedic scriptures, in particular the Bhagavad Gita. They must also be involved in at least weekly temple related voluntary work, attend temple programmes at least fortnightly and abstain from meat (including fish and eggs), alcohol, smoking and drugs. Asked if children of Hindu families who preferred non-vegetarian food or may not be ritualistic Hindus or who followed traditions within Hinduism that went against the school’s definition of practising Hindus would be ineligible for admission, a spokesman of the I-Foundation said, “The rules do not exclude anyone who does not qualify under the criteria. The policy is not meant to exclude people.” — IANS
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Stem cells without embryos: Skin cells transformed Washington, November 20 Their breakthroughs could make possible the long-sought goal of tailor-made medicine, but without the political, scientific and ethical roadblock of using human embryos. Both teams call the new cells induced pluripotent stem cells and say they look and act like embryonic stem cells, the master cells that give rise to every cell and tissue in the body. “We can now envisage a time when a simple approach can be used to produce stem cells that are able to form any tissue from a small sample taken from any of us,” Ian Wilmut of the Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “This will have enormous implications for research and perhaps one day for therapy,” added Wilmut, who helped clone the first mammal, Dolly the sheep, in 1997. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin in Madison and colleagues reported their finding in the journal Science, while Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues reported theirs in the journal Cell. Both teams used just four genes to transform ordinary skin cells called fibroblasts into induced pluripotent stem cells, iPS cells for short. “We are now in a position to be able to generate patient and disease-specific stem cells, without using human eggs or embryos,” Yamanaka said in a statement. “These cells should be useful in understanding disease mechanisms, searching for effective and safe drugs, and treating patients with cell therapy,” he added. “By introducing four genes (OCT4, NANOG, SOX2 and LIN28), into human fibroblasts, stem cells sharing essentially all features of human ES cells were obtained,” Thomson’s team wrote in their report in Science. “Similar to human embryonic cells, human iPS cells should prove useful for studying the development and function of human tissues, for discovering and testing new drugs, and for transplantation medicine,” added Thomson, whose team first discovered human embryonic stem cells in 1998. Yamanaka’s team used a slightly different cocktail of genes, OCT3/4, SOX2, C-MYC and KLF4, to get their iPS cells. Both teams said the new cells are not ready to use in
people yet because they used a type of virus called a retrovirus to carry the new genes into the skin cells. It is not clear whether this virus might cause genetic mutations that could cause cancer or other side effects. “More research is necessary to determine how closely related these cells are to embryonic stem cells, but these methods should be useful for developing disease models and for drug development,” Thomson's team wrote. — Reuters
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Tokyo, November 20 “If the Tibetan people want to keep the Dalai Lama system, one of the possibilities I have been considering with my aides is to select the next Dalai Lama while I’m alive,” he told Japan’s Sankei Shimbun in an interview published today. The options would include electing the successor “democratically” from among high-ranking Tibetan Buddhist monks or naming the successor himself, the Dalai Lama said. — AFP
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Nepal extends UN mission term
The Nepal government on Tuesday univocally decided to extend the term of the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) by six months, minister for health Giriraj Mani Pokharel said.
A Cabinet meeting held this afternoon at the Prime Minister’s Office in Singha Durbar reached the decision to extend the UNMIN’s term, acting on the verbal proposal tabled by Foreign Minister Sahana Pradhan during the cabinet meeting last week. The government has to inform the UN headquarters in New York at least one month before the UNMIN’s term expires if the term is to be extended. The yearlong term of the UNMIN had started on January 23. Earlier, Pradhan had informed that the government should receive consent from the seven-party alliance, including Maoists to extend the term of the UNMIN.
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