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‘Dr Death’ Patel arrested in US
Reinstatement of Judges
Sixth graft case against Zardari quashed
Obama wins Mississippi Barack Obama talks to workers during a town hall meeting at Gamesa Wind Corporation, a wind turbine producer, in Faireless Hills, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. — AFP photo
Indian American girl wins ‘junior Nobel’ |
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31 Indians hurt in Dubai car crash
20 Bhutanese refugees sent to US
Indian link traced in UK credit card fraud
No ban on Everest expeditions for Olympic torch: China
Indians to the rescue of churches in UK
Koirala to retire from politics after poll
Sex Scandal
Racist Remarks Won’t tolerate terror against India: Canada
Advt for sale of Dr Amit’s house withdrawn
Kidneys, pancreas ‘created in mice’
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‘Dr Death’ Patel arrested in US
Washington/Melbourne, March 12 Patel (57), who faces life imprisonment if convicted, was ordered held by Portland Judge Hubel, pending a bail hearing tomorrow. The NRI medico dubbed as ‘Dr Death’ by the media in Australia will face an extradition hearing on April 10. Patel, who was working at the Bundaberg Base Hospital in Australia’s Queensland state since 2003, fled to the US in April 2005, a month after an inquiry was launched which finally linked him to several botched operations. According to a statement released by the Oregon state prosecutor, the charges against Patel include three counts of manslaughter, three counts of grievous bodily harm, two counts of negligent acts or omissions causing harm, five counts of fraud, plus a further two counts of fraud valued at more than $ 5,000 and one count of attempted fraud. The maximum penalty for manslaughter is life imprisonment. The other charges carry jail terms ranging from two-and-a-half to 14 years. Patel, who hails from Jamnagar, Gujarat, had moved to the US in 1977 and was banned from surgery in the US states of New York and Oregon before he arrived in Australia. The Australian government said it was very pleased with the US cooperation in the case. Foreign minister Stephen Smith said Australia had issued an arrest warrant for Patel in the US and he was arrested on Monday. “As a consequence extradition proceedings are underfoot,”
he said. — PTI
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Mush ‘plotting to subvert’ PPP, PML-N accord
Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad Chuadhry Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, has accused President Musharraf of conspiring to subvert the Zardari-Nawaz Sharif accord on the reinstatement of deposed judges and reiterated that Musharraf must resign. He threatened to organise a ‘long march’ on the Army House if Musharraf did not stop his intrigues. On Sunday, PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif signed a power-sharing agreement and promised to reinstate judges through a resolution of Parliament within 30 days of taking over the government. He repeated the argument that an executive order was required to undo Musharraf’s illegal and unconstitutional actions of November 3, including the imposition of emergency and sacking of 60 judges. Aitzaz, who had a luncheon with Asif Zardarii today, talked to the media and led a lawyers’ rally outside the residence of deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. He said a request for lodging a criminal cases against Musharraf had been filed with the police and vowed to secure Musharraf’s punished for illegally confining judges and their children. PPP sources said Aitzaz was likely to contest a by-election from Lahore as a joint candidate of the PPP and the PML-N and was certain to acquire a preeminent position in the new dispensation. Lawyers continued their black-flag protest demonstrations in major cities across the country but deferred it in Lahore because of yesterday’s bomb blasts. They demanded the immediate reinstatement of deposed judges and the restoration of independence of judiciary.
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Sixth graft case against Zardari quashed
An accountability court in Rawalpindi today quashed the sixth graft case against PPP co-chairperson Asif Zardari and reserved judgement on the last in a series of seven corruption cases he had been facing for the past 11 years. Judge Khalid Mahmood dismissed the Cotecna case in which Zardari was accused of accepting commission on the grant of contract to a Swiss firm to detect cases of avoidance of custom duties. A related case on the charge of laundering of graft money in Swiss banks is pending in a Swiss court. The court accepted the plea that the case was covered by the general amnesty granted under the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). However, it questioned the validity of the same argument in the BMW case in which Zardari was accused of importing a BMW vehicle without paying duties. The court heard arguments from both sides and reserved its ruling till March 14. In the Cotecna case, other accused, including Nusrat Bhutto, ailing mother of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto, was also acquitted. Zardari was arrested in November 1996 after the dismissal of the Bhutto government and spent eight years in jail without conviction. He was bailed out by the Supreme Court in 2004.
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Obama wins Mississippi Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama won a convincing victory over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Mississippi primary on
Tuesday extending his lead over the former First Lady. “What we've tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state we are making the case about the need for change in this country. Obviously, the people in Mississippi responded,” Obama told CNN after his win. Mississippi has 33 pledged delegates, which will be allocated proportionally. Obama's latest victory was no surprise. Exit polls showed the state's Democratic voters were sharply divided among racial
lines. Surveys found that roughly 90 per cent of black voters supported Obama, but only a third of white voters supported him. Obama and Hillary were in Pennsylvania on Tuesday where they are vying for a larger pool of delegates – 158 – in an April 22 contest. Meanwhile, Obama lashed out at comments made by a Hillary supporter, Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic vice- presidential candidate in 1984 and the only woman ever nominated by a major party for either of the top two U.S. political offices. She told a California newspaper: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Hillary Clinton called the comments “regrettable,” but the Obama camp accused the New York senator of double standards for refusing to remove Ferraro from the campaign. Obama told a Pennsylvania newspaper he didn't think Ferraro's comments “have any place in our politics or in the Democratic
Party. They are divisive.”
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Indian American girl wins ‘junior Nobel’
New York, March 12 The 17-year-old resident of Durham, North Carolina, was on Tuesday declared the grand prize winner for 2008 in Washington DC. She will get a $1 lakh scholarship from the Intel Foundation. Past winners of the competition have gone on to receive over 100 of the world’s most coveted science and math honours, including six Nobel
prizes. Shivani’s winning project turns to bioinformatics and genomics to identify stage-II colon cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and the best therapeutic agents for treating their tumours. Shivani developed an interest in cancer research after doctors saved an immediate family member diagnosed with brain
tumour. In the final round in Washington, she told a TV interviewer: “We were asked some challenging questions regarding our projects.” She said she was looking forward to meeting, along with other contest finalists, President George W. Bush and some senators on Capitol Hill. Elizabeth
Marincola, president of the Society for Science and the Public, which administers the competition, said: “We are proud to join with Intel in congratulating Shivani Sud and all of this year’s finalists. We are inspired by their dedication to science and are encouraged by what the quality and depth of their work foretells for our continued innovation and economic prosperity.” In 2006, Shivani had received a $50,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. Daughter of Ish and Anu Sud, she is a student of Charles E. Jordan High School with multifarious interests, including classical and modern Indian dance. She plans to attend Princeton or Harvard, earn an MD or a PhD and make a career in research. Besides Shivani, nine other students won lesser prizes ranging from $20,000 to $75,000. They were picked from 40 finalists announced last month in a competition that attracted over 1,600 high school seniors. All the remaining 30 finalists received $5,000 scholarships and a laptop from Intel. Among them were seven Indian American students, including four girls: Avanthi
Raghavan, Shravani Mikkilineni, Hamsa Sridhar, Isha Jain, Vinay Venkatesh
Ramasesh, Ashok Chandran and Ayon Sen. — IANS
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31 Indians hurt in Dubai car crash
Dubai, March 12 Earlier reports put the number of dead at between six and eight, but late last night the authorities confirmed only three persons died in one of the worst road accidents in the UAE. The accident took place early yesterday at Ghantoot on the border between Abu Dhabi and Dubai because of poor visibility. Due to the impact of collision, about 25 cars caught fire, the police said. According to officials in the Indian Embassy, none of the dead was Indian, but unconfirmed reports said there were two Indians among the dead. Srinivas Babu, first secretary in the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi, told PTI that the injured Indians were admitted to various hospitals of Abu Dhabi, 22 in Mafraq hospital, six Rahba Hospital, two in Khalifa Hospital and one in Rashid Hospital in Dubai. Babu said the embassy was in constant touch with the local authorities to provide relief to the injured and to know details about
the accident. Khamis I. Mohammad, deputy of traffic and patrol of the Abu Dhabi police, said, “It was a disaster scene, everyone was speeding and after the first crash happened people just started hitting each other.”
— PTI |
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20 Bhutanese refugees sent to US
At least 20 Bhutanese refugees, who were spending miserable life inside the Sanischchare refugee camp in eastern Nepal for the past 17 years, left for the USA on Monday with the hope of a new life. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Nepal, sent all these refugees to the US under the facilitation of International Organisation for Migration (IOM) as part of the first phase of the third country resettlement programme for the refugees. A few days ago, around 60 refugees, including women and children, were airlifted to Kathmandu from refugee camps in Jhapa. But the refugees have mixed reaction over their departure to the US. “I am happy because I am going to the US and the ordeal in the refugee camps is over. I am unhappy because uncertainties lie ahead,” a media report quoted a nervous and confused teenager, Ambika Timilsina. The US alone has promised to resettle around 60,000 refugees. However, some of the refugees within the seven refugees camps in Jhapa and Morang districts in eastern Nepal have been rejecting the aforesaid offers claiming that they prefer repatriation to their homeland with dignity first rather than to resettle in Meanwhile, as per the previous agreement reached with the major Tarai-based political parties, the Nepal government has recognised 32 persons, who were killed during the year-long agitation unleashed by Madhesi parties in southern plain of Nepal, as martyrs. Among them, two are police personnel, who were killed in course of Tarai movement. On February 29, the government and the United Democratic Madhesi Front, a joint forum of three different political parties - Tarai-Madhes Democratic Party, Madhesi People’s Rights Forum and Sadhbhavana Party - were agreed to recognise them as martyrs and provide Rs 1 million financial assistance to their family members and provide necessary treatment for the injured people in
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Indian link traced in UK credit card fraud
London, March 12 The Association of Payment Clearing Services (APCS) said the 25 per cent initial rise in fraudulent use of British credit and debit cards in three years was mainly due to stolen and counterfeit cards used abroad. Card fraud overseas rose by 77 per cent last year to 208 million, 39 per cent of the total. There have been several instances of British consumers reporting money withdrawn from their accounts in India, In February, hundreds of car owners in Lincolnshire in the east Midlands became victims of the scam after they filled fuel from a petrol station in the county. It was the latest in a series of credit card scams across Britain, in which card details are recorded by hidden cameras while making payment for fuel at petrol stations As a safety measure, British banks have introduced a “chip and pin” system for transactions in shops using credit and debit cards. This means that for every purchase, apart from the card, the customer also needs to punch in an exclusive pin number. Signing for purchases using cards has been virtually phased out to prevent frauds. — PTI
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No ban on Everest expeditions for Olympic torch: China
Beijing, March 12 “We have never published such an announcement and we will accept all expeditions, whether Chinese or foreign,” said an official from the China Tibet mountaineering association. “Expeditions will face no problem as long as they conform to the laws and regulations,” the official said. But a mountaineering source in neighbouring Nepal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a slightly different story. “A couple of days ago (the China-Tibet mountaineering association) sent an email that said we could only get permits after May 10,” said the source, who is involved in organising expeditions on the The Chinese mountaineering association said expedition organised that overcrowding and environmental pressures meant they had to ask all commercial expeditions to stay off the mountain, the source said. The specialist US-based Internet site mounteverest.net said earlier China had decided to ban expeditions from its site of Everest until May 10. May and September are the most popular months for expeditions on Everest. The decision to include Everest on the relay route that also passes through Lhasa and other parts of Tibet has triggered controversy, and pro-Tibet independence groups have threatened to stage protests. — AFP
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Indians to the rescue of churches in UK
London, March 12 Western missionaries in the 19th century trekked to remote tribal areas of India and converted tribes, who are now returning the favour by moving to places such as Wales to meet a shortage of priests there. One of the first Indian priests to arrive in Wales to preach Christianity was Rev Hmar Sangkhuma, from the Diocese of Mizoram in northeastern India. Mizoram has a majority of Christian population that was initially converted by missionaries from Wales between 1840 and 1960. Sangkhuma has been offering spiritual guidance to the local Welsh population in Maesteg, near Bridgend. Some time ago, a Methodist church in Swindon had its first Indian minister Rev Ajay Singh. During the colonial era, Christian missionaries were encouraged to spread the gospel in India’s tribal areas, including the northeast. Missionaries from Wales, Ireland and Scotland undertook much of the work. — PTI
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Koirala to retire from politics after poll
Kathmandu, March 12 “I will hand over the Nepali Congress leadership to the new generation after the Aprils polls,” the veteran India-born politician, who is serving his fifth term as Prime Minister, told reporters at his hometown Biratnagar. Koirala, who heads the Nepali Congress, said no force could disrupt the polls, when asked about the alleged attempts by King Gyanendra’s supporters to derail the vote that would decide the fate of the monarchy. Koirala said an understanding had been reached with the Indian government to strengthen security in border areas to curb incidents of violence in Terai region ahead of the election. On the agitation by the ethnic-Indian Madhesi people in Terai against alleged marginalisation, Koirala said his government would “always remain open to talks if the outfits opt for a peaceful resolution to their problem”. The government recently signed a peace agreement with a major agitating group promising autonomy and proportional representation to the Madhesi region. In a political career spanning six decades, the 82-year-old leader, who has been ailing for some time, has served as Prime Minister from 1991-94, 1998-99 and 2000-01. He was chosen as a consensus prime ministerial candidate by the Seven-Party Alliance after King Gyanendra was forced to give up his absolute rule in April 2006.
— PTI
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Republicans threaten to impeach Guv
New York, March 12 The New York Times, however, said he was engaged in an intense legal and family debate over whether to resign and quoted aides as saying that his wife, who is a corporate attorney, was urging him to stay on. Legal analysts say Spitzer may be in more serious trouble for allegedly manipulating his own funds and the way in which he moved money from one account to another to pay for sex and call girls. Federal investigators were quoted as saying by ABC television network that there is no evidence Spitzer used state money or campaign funds to pay the prostitutes, but that the way he moved an estimated $ 40,000 through various accounts violated federal money laundering laws. "These are serious laws and laws that given the amount of money involved here could mean a prison term of 10 to 18 months," Sean O'Shea, a former federal prosecutor specialising in financial crimes, was quoted as saying. A prison term is one of the issues holding up the Governor's resignation as well as whether or not he pleads guilty to criminal charges, ABC news said. Analysts say that if Spitzer fails to resign, it could lead to an ugly impeachment battle in the state legislature with Republicans determined to initiate the proceedings. No one relishes such a fight in a presidential election year, one analyst said. — PTI
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Muslims seek Senator’s censure
Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington Muslim rights groups are calling on the US Congress to censure a Republican lawmaker for his racist comments about Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. Iowa Congressman Steve King said in a radio interview over the weekend, “If (Obama) is elected President,... then the radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this war on terror.” King also raised questions and suspicions about Obama’s middle name Hussein. “(Obama’s) middle name does matter... because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world...,” the congressman said. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) urged congressional leaders to censure King, who is the top Republican leader of a House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, refugees, border security and international law. The group noted King’s comments suggest that Obama is somehow linked with terrorism and that his potential election would be cause for celebration among fanatical extremists.
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Won’t tolerate terror against India: Canada
Ottawa, March 12 Canada has already taken action by banning Babbar Khalsa and the International Sikh Youth Federation and warned groups that promote terrorism that they will face the brunt of the Canadian law, parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs Deepak Obhrai said yesterday. “As the Air India inquiry has shown, lack of strong action can lead to deadly consequences. Currently there are 40 organisations and groups listed as banned terrorist organisations under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act,” he
said. Obhrai was commenting on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s letter to the head of the Sikh temples in Canada where he expressed concerns that groups supporting Sikh militancy were regrouping. The Prime Minister had accused Sikh groups overseas of trying to revive a violent insurgency, which has been on the wane since the early 1990s, saying he had “credible information of efforts being made by extremist groups to revive militancy” in the state of Punjab.
— PTI
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Advt for sale of Dr Amit’s house withdrawn
Toronto, March 12 Priced at $ 634,900, the house was listed on MLS, an online real-estate portal, on March 6, the report said. The listing was suspended on Monday, but no reason was given. The agent handling the property offered no details about who was selling the house, but it was believed it was being sold through a trust, the report said. The pink-brick house backs on to a ravine, and was bought by the couple in April 2007 for $ 610,000. Amil Kumar, against whom an Interpol notice was also issued, was arrested in a Nepal on February 8, and later brought to be tried in India. He was last seen in Brampton before Christmas driving a leased luxury Lexus SUV, the report added.
— PTI
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Kidneys, pancreas ‘created in mice’
Tokyo, March 12 If the feat can be repeated in domestic animals, it will allow doctors to replace damaged organs in humans without the need for a donor, according to the University of Tokyo researchers. The researchers said that they were now planning to test the technique on monkeys and pigs to ensure its safety.
— PTI
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India-born surgeon Jayant Patel, facing charges of manslaughter and negligence for the death of 13 of his patients in Australia, was arrested by FBI at his home in the US state of Oregon.
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama won a convincing victory over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Mississippi primary on
Tuesday extending his lead over the former First Lady. “What we've tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state we are making the case about the need for change in this country.
Obviously, the people in Mississippi responded,” Obama told CNN after his win.
