Four prominent members of the US Congress have asked the Bush administration to urge the government in Islamabad to make rogue scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan available for interrogation by US officials.

The lawmakers, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, the committee's senior Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairman of the subcommittee on West Asia and South Asia Gary Ackerman and that panel's senior Republican
Mike Pence, made their request in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
on Thursday.

The Pakistani government has refused to cave in to US pressure to hand over the scientist for an investigation into the extent of his nuclear black market.

The Bush administration moved to take the regime in North Korea, a beneficiary of the Khan network, off its list of state sponsors of terrorism on Thursday.

In the letter, the lawmakers wrote that ever since the Khan network was exposed in 2003, they have been “very concerned about the lack of access that the government of Pakistan has given the US to interview A.Q. Khan about the extent of his activities”.

“A full investigation on the actions and activities of Dr Khan has therefore not been possible,” they added.

They asked Rice to work with Pakistan's new civilian leadership to ensure they give the US not only direct access to Khan but also ensure that he is not released from house arrest.

“It is in the interest of the US, Pakistan, and indeed the rest of the world, that the full actions of A.Q. Khan become known so that we can best deal with the ramifications,” they said.

They noted that recent reports indicate that the Khan network may have transferred designs for smaller, more sophisticated nuclear warheads than were previously known publicly.

“These designs could allow states like Iran to more easily produce smaller nuclear warheads for its ballistic missiles, significantly increasing the potential nuclear threat from Iran to Israel and our European allies,” they wrote.

Contending that an Iran with nuclear weapons capability is one of the “gravest national security threats facing the US and our friends and allies,” they said it was in the nation's interest to get “direct access to A.Q. Khan to conduct a full investigation and find out what designs were smuggled and to whom”.

The government has turned down the objection by religious lobbies to the conversion of death sentence to life imprisonment of all prisoners in Pakistan.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has sent a summary to President Pervez Musharraf. Under the constitution only the president has the authority to remit or commute
any sentence.

Musharraf has yet not given his assent to the proposal, law minister Farooq Naek told reporters here.

The blanket remission will benefit nearly 7,000 persons condemned to gallows in the country. It will also cover Indian spy Sarabjit Singh who is awaiting execution that has been deferred twice though the government has yet to respond to appeals from India to commute the death sentence.

The religious circles have opposed the announcement on two counts. Chief of JUI Maulana Fazlur Rehman, speaking in the National Assembly, said according to Islamic principles, only heirs of a victim of murder have the authority to forgive a murder on payment of compensation or even without it.

Another group of religious leaders accused the government of adopting a devious plan to forgive people facing death sentence on charge of blasphemy.

Human rights activists, however, have welcomed the gesture while urging that death penalty be abolished through a constitutional amendment.

New York, June 27
An Indian origin woman, who along with her millionaire husband was found guilty of keeping two Indonesian housekeepers as virtual slaves in their mansion here, has been sentenced to 11 years in jail - a punishment the Indian American community has found too harsh.

Varsha Sabhnani, 46, was sentenced on Thursday in the US District Court in Central Islip, Long Island. In addition to the prison term, she will serve three years probation and pay a fine of $25,000.

She was convicted along with her husband, Mahendra Sabhnani, in December 2007 on 12 counts that included forced labour, conspiracy, involuntary servitude and harbouring aliens.

Mahendra, 52, was scheduled to be sentenced on Friday and was expected to get a more lenient sentence for letting the maids at their Muttontown mansion be ill-treated by his wife. The family-owned Eternal Love Parfums Corp ran a worldwide perfume business.

The victims, identified as Samirah and Enung, were apparently not treated humanely. They had testified that they were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, and forced to take freezing showers as punishment for crimes like taking leftovers from trash cans because they were hungry.

Judge Arthur Spatt called the testimony "eye-opening, to say the least - that things like that go on in our country".

Prosecutors contended the accusations amounted to a "modern-day slavery" case. They said the maids were subjected to "punishment that escalated into a cruel form of torture", which ended in May 2007, when one of the women fled and wearing nothing but rags came to the attention of workers at a neighbourhood restaurant who called the police.

One of the women arrived in the Sabhnanis' home in 2002 and the second in 2005. Their families in Indonesia were paid about $100 a month each. No cash was given to the maids.

The judge postponed a decision on the amount of back wages owed by the couple to the women.

Prosecutors suggested the women were due more than $1.1 million, while defence attorneys said the figure should be much lower.

The Indian American community, which has followed the case with dismay and disbelief, is not too happy with the jail term slapped on Varsha.

Bharat Jotwani, a friend of the Sabhnanis who was in the court for Varsha's sentencing, told IANS, "The family is very disappointed and upset with the harsh sentence. 11 years is a long time." — IANS

New York, June 26
A leading organisation of Indian Americans that backed Hillary Clinton's White House bid has now extended support to triumphant Democratic candidate Barack Obama and pledged to raise $10 million, giving a major boost to his campaign for the November presidential election.

‘American Indians for Democrats’ decided to endorse Obama to ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House in the next presidential elections, chairman Sant Singh Chatwal said.

Chatwal said his organisation planned to hold a major fund-raiser for Obama next month where the Indian community would raise at least $10 million, thus making it the biggest such event for him.

Replying a question, the leading hotelier said Indian Americans had been supporting Hillary Clinton but now that she had endorsed Obama, there was no reason for them not to put their full weight behind him.

Earlier, the organisation had raised $5 million for Clinton's campaign. Both Obama and Clinton were present at the function yesterday.

Joginder Singh Bains and his wife Darshan had denied involvement in sexually assaulting their niece Karamjeet Kaur after she moved to their house following her mother’s death in an accident 42 years ago, but British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver found them guilty.

The assaults began when Karamjeet, who is now 50, was eight years old and took place over a period of 10 years.

Judge Nancy Morrison found that Darshan knew what was happening and wanted to ensure “there would be no pregnancy or discovery of on-going abuse”.

“The young plaintiff was present in their (Bains) home, slept in their bedroom
and at times in their bed with them, when sexual assaults took place,” she
observed yesterday.

Karamjeet, now a mother of two and known as Vicki Waters after her marriage, “was denied aid by her aunt, her father’s younger sister to whom she turned to for help on two occasions. This child was vulnerable as she had recently lost her mother in a tragic accident,” Morrison said.

Karamjeet told the court how she had pleaded for help from her aunt and a grandmother after Bains, who is now 77, began sexually assaulting her, but her pleas went unanswered.

Darshan collaborated to have an IUD, a form of birth control, inserted into
Karamjeet when she reached puberty, which the judge said proved she knew
about the sexual abuse.

London, June 27
Britain has more number of divorcees than married people, according to the latest official figures.

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the number of weddings in England and Wales in 2006 was 236,980, the lowest figure since 1895.

It is the smallest proportion of marriages compared to population since records began in the mid-Victorian era.

"The number of people available to marry has been increasing, but the number choosing to marry has been declining. The trends in marriage and divorce suggest that a continued decline will be observed in the proportion of the population that is married," a report by the ONS said.

There has been a steep rise in cases of divorce in recent years, accompanied by a growing trend of cohabitation.

As a result, most people above the age of 16 are now single, divorced or widowed. The data for 2005, the most recent year available, show that the number of married people in the adult population of England and Wales has dropped to 50.3 per cent.

With the number of married couples following a steady downward path since 1997, the proportion of married couples would have dipped below half in 2006. — PTI

BRIEFLY

Russia launches military satellite
MOSCOW: Russia launched a heavy military satellite on Friday, aimed at improving the country's missile attack warning capabilities, the defence ministry said. The Proton-K/DM-2 heavy carrier rocket with a Cosmos-series military satellite was launched this morning from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan, leased by Russia from the former Soviet Republic. According to local media reports, Russia has an operational network of about 60-70 military reconnaissance satellites. — PTI

Plants migrating due to warming
WASHINGTON: Global warming has caused numerous European plant species to migrate to higher elevations over the decades, according to new research. The research appeared in the June 27 edition of the journal, Science, and has potentially important ecological and evolutionary consequences, the study's authors wrote. The report, compiled with data from the French National Climatic Network, was conducted in six mountainous regions throughout Europe. — AFP

60,000 drug users in Nepal
KATHMANDU: Over 60,000 persons, including 3,500 women, consume narcotic substances in Nepal, according to a latest report, which reveals that Kathmandu alone has around 17,000 recorded drug users. The police arrested some 617 people, including 64 women, in connection with drug trafficking in 2007, according to the Drug Abuse Controlling Legal Implementation Centre. Most of the drug users are aged between 20 and 25, the study said. — PTI

Top Al-Qaida leader killed
BAGHDAD: Al-Qaida's top leader in Mosul was killed during a raid this week in the northern city, the US military said. The "emir" of the terror movement in Mosul, known by his nickname Abu Khalaf, was killed along with two other extremists in a gun-battle on Tuesday, the US military said. — AP

UK airports still vulnerable
LONDON: A year after Bangalore-resident Kafeel Ahmed rammed an explosive laden jeep into the Glasgow airport, a terrorism expert says British airports continue to be vulnerable to such attacks. After the attack on June 30 last year, security has been upgraded at airports, but security consultant Chris Yates believes that some weak points were yet to be addressed. — PTI