A day after Victoria’s Premier John Brumby played cricket on the lawns of Delhi’s prestigious St Stephen’s College as part of his ‘charm offensive’ aimed at improving Melbourne’s image among prospective students from India, an Indian taxi driver was kicked and punched by his drunken passenger here.

The ‘star’ passenger turned out to be a well-known 19-year-old Australian sportsman who resorted to violent means following a dispute over fare around 5.30 am today. Although the Footy player was taken into custody and later released, he is expected to be charged for assault-related offences.

Michael Hurley, a rising sports star who plays for Essendon, had hailed the taxi in a drunken state early this morning after spending the night partying at an event only to get violent with the taxi driver. The cab driver, who is from Punjab, preferred that his name not be revealed. While the taxi driver got away with minor injuries and did not require hospitalisation, the incident nevertheless serves as a grim reminder of attacks on Indians. The last publicly known attack on an Indian taxi driver occurred on June 5 when 24 year-old Parminder Singh, a hospitality student-cum-cab driver, was beaten up.

It also revives memories of a series of earlier attacks on Indian taxi drivers. In August 2006, a 27 year-old Indian driver was killed after being thrown out of his moving taxi by his passenger. In April 2008, around 1,000 bare-chested taxi drivers from India blocked traffic for 22 hours in the heart of the city’s central business district after a 23 year-old cabbie was brutally beaten up. The protest led to the government agreeing to increase safety for taxi drivers, which among other measures, includes providing partial funding for protective screens to be fitted in taxis to safeguard drivers from their passengers.

“We were promised security shields. It has been over a year-and-a-half since but I still haven’t been provided a protective screen in my taxi”, said Gaurav Mahajan, a student-turned-taxi driver, who hails from Chandigarh. Most taxis are fitted with cameras and voice sensors that have often helped police in their investigations.

However, this morning’s incident pales in comparison to a stabbing incident that occurred later in the afternoon in this over four million strong metropolis where street crime and brawls are on a steady rise. A local teenager (not an Indian) was stabbed during a day-time brawl between around 200 youth in a car park of a city shopping centre. Melbourne, ranked among the world’s top three liveable cities, has been witnessing a steady rise in violence, which the police are finding difficult to curb.

In a frontal attack on his inveterate foe, Mian Nawaz Sharif, ex-military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf has labelled the former premier as a "closet Taliban".

In an interview with the ABC News, Gen. Musharraf recalled Sharif's alleged meetings with Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and described him as "abrasive and confrontational".

"He has never been on good terms with any President of Pakistan, so I don’t know what kind of a mental make-up he has. But the man is abrasive against the other power brokers of Pakistan," Musharraf said.

Should Musharraf decide to return to politics, he likely would face Nawaz Sharif who has campaigned for his trial on treason charges. But Musharraf said that he "will return to Pakistan" despite the possibility of facing trial as soon as he sets foot in the country.

The former general even went so far as to call Sharif a "closet Taliban." The slur was apparently meant to affirm lingering Western apprehension that Sharif has fundamentalist leanings. "Even on Pakistan television these days, talk shows are going on saying that he has met Osama bin Laden five times -- five times before 9/11 -- and he has been financed by Osama bin Laden," Musharraf said. "Then the other element is that he never speaks against terrorism and extremism."

But when pressed for proof of Sharif’s meetings with bin Laden, Musharraf said he personally could not offer any. "No, I can’t do that, but there are certainly there are people who vouch for it, who were present there," Musharraf said.

This was Musharraf's first-ever public assault on his tormentor whom he blames for his ouster. He appears to have softened towards his real nemesis, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry whom he once termed as "scum of the earth". Last week Musharraf said it was his mistake to sack Chaudhry adding that perhaps he would not repeat that if he gets another chance.

On the possibility of his trial on return, Musharraf said: "Well, these are realities which one has to face. But, however, I am very sure of one thing -- that whatever I have done till now, constitutionally and legally, there is no charge against me," Musharraf said. 

Melbourne, September 25
The ozone hole, which had caused serous environmental concerns, is now shrinking and it could completely heal by the end of the century, bringing more rain to eastern Australia, scientists said yesterday.

Matthew Tulley from Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne said the hole is now healing because of climate protection measures adopted by several countries.

“If we had not taken action when we did, and the usage had continued to increase at the same rates, it would be an environmental catastrophe now and it would be getting worse and worse,” he said.

“Basically each year the ozone hole, which at the moment is contained by Antarctica, the size of it would have grown to cover more and more of the world so that probably by about 2050 it would have covered Melbourne, maybe even Sydney,” he added.

According to ABC report, the scientists are now at peace that the worst case scenario has been averted and the hole was now shrinking.

Australian Antarctic Division's head research scientist Andrew Klekociuk said they are using weather balloons and lasers to measure the hole in the ozone layer.

“We've been looking at the ozone hole from Davis Station and this year we certainly see that the ozone hole is not as large as it was last year, but similar in some respects to 2007, so yes it is smaller than last year in particular,” he said.

However, Klekociuk said the hole is still very large.

“It's over three times the area of Australia, so this year's ozone hole would rank in the top 10 or so ozone holes that we've seen, but certainly not as large as 2006, which was a record year, or 2000, which was quite similar to that one.” The measurements taken in Antarctica just a few days ago show the hole in the ozone layer is now 26 million square km.

It has a long way to go before it closes up but Melbourne University's climate change fellow Roger Dargaville says he expects it will continue to shrink.

“The ozone hole was an environmental disaster with the amount of UV radiation coming through the surface in the Antarctic reaching really extreme levels,” he said.

“The fact that the hole is now appearing to be closing up means that the Montreal Protocol, perhaps one of the most successful treaties ever signed, is actually doing a really good job,” he added.

The hole is invisible to the naked eye but thanks to his lasers, Klekociuk said, he has seen what it looks like.

“A region that's extremely cold, with pressures that are similar to the surface of Mars where winds are whipping around at up to, well, over 300 km per hour at times,” he said.

“Quite a hostile environment and the stratospheric clouds themselves are comprised not of water ice that we generally see near the surface but also acid droplets, sulphuric and nitric acid. So that's a pretty hostile place, quite different to what we experience on the ground.”

The scientists can see the hole is closing up but they are still trying to work out exactly what effect that will have on the world's climate.

Dargaville said he expected the healing of the hole in the ozone layer will change the polar winds that drive storms.

“The expectation is that you actually get a northward shift in the storms that bring moisture to the southern capitals, cities like Melbourne, Sydney, and Hobart,” he said.

“So there is a hope that with the closing of the ozone hole we actually get some more precipitation in the southern hemisphere.” But, the wait for that rain could be sometime, as scientists do not expect the hole in the ozone layer to be completely healed until 2075. — PTI

Islamabad, September 25
The lack of anti-graft laws makes Pakistan one of the most corrupt nations in the world and is coming in the way of foreign investments in the country, global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) says.

“How can one expect from any donor to come forward to assist Pakistan from its current financial crisis, when there exists no law against corruption?” TI said in its 2009 Global Corruption Report released on Wednesday.

Unveiling the report here, TI Pakistan Chief Adeel Gilani said anti-corruption efforts in the country had taken a 180 degree turn since the then President Pervez Musharraf issued the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) October 5, 2007, granting immunity to politicians, army officers, bureaucrats and others charged with graft.

Among those who benefited from the NRO, issued 56 days after the ratification of the UN Convention against corruption, were former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her widower Asif Ali Zardari, now the President of Pakistan.

“The timing for the release of the TI report would be embarrassing for Zardari, whose government's credibility is already seriously questioned internationally because of (his) own as well as many of his government's key players' past plagued by serious corruption charges,” The News daily noted on Thursday.

Quoting from a joint World Bank-Planning Commission of Pakistan study on the country's infrastructure implementation capacity, the TI report says 15 percent of corruption occurs at the procurement stage, costing the exchequer over Rs 150 billion.

This apart, the World Bank's Control of Corruption Indicator in 2007 ranked Pakistan a lowly 21.3 out of the 100.

Then, the Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009 ranked Pakistan 101 out of the 130 countries and found that respondents pointed to corruption as the second most problematic factor for doing business in the country, after the government instability.

“The instability of the political situation in Pakistan cannot be underestimated as a factor in permitting corruption in the private sector to flourish. Despite Musharraf's claim to be committed to fighting corruption, little headway has been made, and it is still considered to be pervasive and deeply entrenched,” The News said. — IANS

Pittsburgh, September 25
For long in confrontation with the West over its controversial atomic programme, Iran was today served an ultimatum by the US and its allies to fulfill its international obligations on its newly detected uranium enrichment facility by December 1 or face stringent sanctions.

The issue virtually overshadowed the G-20 economic summit as US President Barack Obama, flanked by his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy and British Premier Gordon Brown, announced that the three countries presented detailed evidence to IAEA yesterday in Vienna, demonstrating that Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom, 160 km south of Tehran, for several years.

“Now, Iran’s decision to build yet another nuclear facility without notifying the IAEA represents a direct challenge to the basic compact at the centre of non-proliferation regime.

“These rules are clear: all nations have the right to peaceful nuclear energy, those nations with nuclear weapons must move towards disarmament, those nations without nuclear weapons must forsake them,” Obama said.

The US President recalled that the Iranian government presented a letter to the IAEA earlier this week that made reference to a new enrichment facility years after they had started its construction.

“The existence of this facility underscores Iran’s continuing unwillingness to meet its obligations under UN Security Council resolutions and IAEA requirements. We expect the IAEA to immediately investigate this disturbing information and to report to the IAEA Board of Governors,” Obama said.

While Obama made no reference to sanctions but claimed the support of Germany, a member of the P5 plus 1, the other two leaders spoke of sanctions if Iran, which already has one enrichment plant at Natanz, did not comply with the non-proliferation regime. “The six (P5 plus Germany) will meet with the Iranian representatives in Geneva. We cannot let Iranian leaders gain time while the motors are running. — PTI