Manila, September 28
Philippine authorities were struggling today to help hundreds of thousands of people displaced by devastating floods in the capital and outlying areas as the death toll topped 200.

Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said the government was focusing on providing relief to nearly 500,000 people affected by tropical storm Ketsana. “Right now, we will concentrate really on providing food and other necessities,” he said.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council reported that 100 persons had been confirmed killed in floods, landslides and accidents caused by Ketsana.

But a tally of casualties reported by local officials, rescuers and police showed the death toll has already reached at least 212.

The fatalities included 75 from metropolitan Manila, 85 from nearby Rizal province, 24 from the northern province of Bulacan and 12 from the province of Pampanga.

Teodoro said the official death toll was still expected to rise as reports trickling in from the affected areas were verified.

Anthony Golez, a spokesman for the Disaster Coordinating Council, said more than 8,000 people had been rescued from their inundated homes since floods submerged a large portion of the capital Saturday.

But Golez admitted that more people could be waiting for help as rescue operations were being hampered by strong currents in the flooded villages.

“We don’t have the numbers, but what we can tell everybody is that help is on the way already,” he said.

Golez said the national and local governments were overwhelmed by the massive destruction. “We are used to helping one city, one or two provinces, but now, they are following one after another,” he said. “Our assets and people are spread too thinly.”

Amid continuing appeals for help from affected residents, some of whom have become angry, officials called for patience.

“We feel their anger and pain, but it is physically impossible to reach each and every one with the conditions that we face,” Teodoro said. “The challenge now is to get food to everyone.”

The council said it has launched a rapid assessment to determine the most urgent needs of the flood victims and whether the government needs to seek more international aid.

Various United Nations agencies, the US, Japan and China have already provided emergency assistance to the victims.

More than 110,000 people were in evacuation centres after Ketsana caused the heaviest rainfall in Manila in more than 40 years, turning major highways into raging muddy rivers. Hundreds of vehicles were submerged and overturned by the floods while debris littered the streets.

Damage to property and agriculture was estimated at 108.92 million pesos ($2.32 million), according to the council.

The weather bureau said Ketsana has left the Philippines and was on its way to Vietnam but warned that two more tropical depressions were threatening to affect the country in the next two or three days. — DPA

Lahore, September 28
A Pakistani court today admitted a petition filed by banned Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed challenging two cases registered against him by the police under the Anti-Terrorism Act for inciting people to wage ‘jehad’.

After a preliminary hearing, a two-judge bench of the Lahore High Court issued notices to the federal and Punjab governments and the police officials in connection with the two First Information Reports registered in Faisalabad against Saeed.

The bench set October 12 as the date for the hearing of the 
petition.

The police in Faisalabad in Punjab province recently filed two FIRs against Saeed for making speeches in the city in which he allegedly called on people to wage jehad or holy war against infidels and sought funds for his banned group.

Talking to reporters outside the Lahore High Court, Saeed’s counsel AK Dogar claimed the JuD’s chief call for jehad was not illegal as such a measure is obligatory according to the Quran.

Dogar claimed the JuD was not a banned group and restrictions imposed on by the UN Security Council did not apply in a “sovereign country” like Pakistan. He also claimed India was wrongly accusing Saeed of involvement in last year’s Mumbai attacks.

Dogar said the speeches made by Saeed during his visit to Faisalabad last month did not attract the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Saeed, also the founder of the banned Lashker-e-Taiba, was placed under house arrest in December last year after the UN Security Council declared the JuD a terrorist group. He was freed on the orders of the Lahore High Court in June.

He said in his petition that his release on the direction of the High Court had caused an “uproar in India”, which had pressurised the Pakistan government to take action against him.

Following the registration of the two FIRs in Faisalabad, the police imposed restrictions on Saeed’s movements on September 20. However, confusion surrounds his current status as officials have been making conflicting statements as to whether he has been detained.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had said Saeed was “in custody” while the Lahore police chief Pervaiz Rathore said he was under “house arrest”. On the other hand, the Punjab police chief Tariq Saleem Dogar had said Saeed was not under arrest or house arrest and he has also not been placed in protective custody.

No formal written order was issued for Saeed’s detention and there is also no formal notification banning the JuD. — PTI 

Dera Ismail Khan, September 28
Hundreds of civilians were fleeing Al-Qaida and the Taliban’s main stronghold in northwest Pakistan after the army and militants asked them to leave, a tribal elder and a witness said today, a sign the military could be poised to launch an offensive.

Pakistan has vowed to root out militants in the northwest, many of whom allegedly use the mountainous tribal areas along the border as a base for attacks on American and Nato troops in Afghanistan.

Jets have bombed targets in the stronghold of Waziristan in recent months, but the military has said it would launch full-scale ground operations at the ‘appropriate’ time. Authorities could not be reached for comment.

Residents said recent days have shown an increase in the number of people leaving the Makeen and Ladha areas of South Waziristan, though many have been fleeing to the relative safety of nearby towns for months.

‘People are leaving the area for their safety,’ tribal elder Maulana Hassamuddin told The Associated Press by phone. He said the military had urged people to leave in the past few days, so he did.

Resident Amirullah said the Taliban had also asked locals to flee. He said he and his friends rented a vehicle to take them to the town of Bannu for more than double the normal price.

Western countries were cheered by a military offensive in the nearby Swat Valley earlier this year. Pakistan’s army has moved into the tribal region close to the Afghan border before, however, only to be beaten into a stalemate.

Analysts have questioned whether the army has enough troops, or the will, to take on the militants in Waziristan, where they are well established and heavily armed.

By arrangement with The Dawn 

London, September 28
Scientists have discovered a completely new route by which leukaemia develops, according to a research published in Nature.

Scientists from the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge studied a gene called JAK2, which is faulty in many cases of leukaemia, but until now its role was not clear.

They discovered that if JAK2 is faulty, the cell’s meticulously controlled message system ‘short circuits’.

As a result many genes are switched on and off inappropriately and a completely new cell signaling route by which leukaemia can develop is turned on.

The scientists found that the enzyme made by the JAK2 gene is also located inside the cell nucleus and plays an important role to control how genetic information is used by the cell.

Previously it was only known to be located on the inner surface of cells - acting as a messenger between the outside of the cell and the cell’s nucleus.

The team discovered that the JAK2 enzyme acts in the nucleus to switch on and off a number of genes. It does this by changing the structure of histones (the proteins that pack and protect DNA) and which control the behaviour of many genes.

The garbled messages from the faulty JAK2 gene lead to mismanagement of histones which results in catastrophic effects on the workings of a cell.

Lead author Professor Tony Kouzarides of the institute said: “This is a completely new route by which cancer can develop. In this exciting research we have revealed new unidentified parts of the cell’s messaging system which can become faulty and lead to leukaemia.” Professor Sir David Lane, Cancer Research UK’s chief scientist, said: “This is important research which will helps scientists find new and better ways to treat people with leukaemia”.

He added: Leukaemia can be difficult to treat because cancer cells are spread widely through the body so surgery is not an option. This makes it crucial to develop effective drugs to manage and treat the disease. “These findings reveal a new route by which leukaemias develop and gives scientists new opportunities to develop drugs which block it.” — PTI

Islamabad, September 28
Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving Mumbai attacker who is currently being tried by an Indian anti-terror court, isn't the only notorious Kasab from Pakistan.

There have been at least two other Kasabs, all “religious crackpots”, according to a leading columnist. “What’s with this name, Kasab (sometimes also spelled with a Q)? There have been three (in) famous Kasabs in Pakistan - and all of them religious crackpots!” Nadeem F Paracha wrote in a daily.

According to Paracha, the first person with the infamous surname to be arrested was Yusuf Kasab. Yusuf was arrested in the early 1990s and accused of committing blasphemy by proclaiming that he was a prophet. He was killed by a fellow inmate while awaiting trial in jail.

The second Kasab — “another mad-faith-crank” — was Sher Muhammad Kasab, who was recently arrested by the Pakistan Army during operations in Swat. Paracha described him as “a frontline butcher” of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. Sher Muhammad died shortly after he was captured, succumbing to injuries sustained in a gun battle with troops.

Paracha did not dismiss the surnames as a mere coincidence but saw a “meaningful concurrent.” “Because if one chronologically follows the exploits of all the Kasabs, he can draw a fairly interesting narrative about the madness of Islamic fanaticism that until recently had threatened to rip society and the country apart,” he wrote. “If delusions of grandeur like the one Yusuf Kasab seemed to have been suffering from is a madness, then the blasphemy accusation is the tool used by an opposing insanity to cure a madness they do not like the contents of,” Paracha added.

The second Kasab, Sher Muhammad, was notorious for the number of beheadings and cold-blooded slaughter of dozens of Pakistani security men and infidels that he undertook.

“Done in the name of religion, this, at best, can be defined as the extreme condition of the faith-based social psychosis that had been developing in the country for the last 30 years,” Paracha wrote.

“He is beyond detoxification. He must be used to reign in similar mad men that, fortunately, are now on the run due to the army's and the government's recent operations in Swat and Waziristan.” According to Paracha, the third infamous Kasab, Ajmal, is perhaps the most vivid example of public displays of religiosity that has gripped Pakistan. “Thus, it was rather natural for Ajmal to become a Jackie Chan for a holier cause: Islamic Jihad…But this one got caught,” he wrote.

“There are still numerous Ajmal Kasabs frequenting mosques, madrassas and martial arts training schools in the Punjab, caught between what they see in action-packed Bollywood and Hollywood blockbusters and what they hear from crackpots that masquerade as imams, maulvis and 'scholars',” Paracha concluded. — PTI 

Karachi, September 28
Pakistan today repudiated reports that it had illegally modified the US-supplied Harpoon anti-ship missile to enable them to strike at land targets in India.

“We have not and will never violate any convention or principles on that, and all international obligations are being honoured by the Pakistan Navy,” naval chief Admiral Nauman Bashir said.

The US protest on the issue “is based on sheer misunderstanding, which is being clarified at the appropriate level”, he told reporters on the sidelines of an international conference on piracy on the high seas.

Quoting unnamed US officials, the New York Times said Washington had accused Islamabad of illegally modifying Harpoon missiles and the P-3C maritime surveillance aircraft for potential use against India.

The Obama administration, said the report, lodged its protest on this with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in June, adding to the tension between the two countries.

The New York Times said Pakistan had repudiated the charge that it modified the missiles and claimed that it developed these itself. The US had provided 165 Harpoon missiles to Pakistan between 1985 and 1988.

On its part, India said it had noted the media report and was examining its impact on national security.

“We have seen the report and studied its contents. The government of India is closely monitoring all the developments having a bearing on national security,” an official said in New Delhi Aug 31.

“We will take necessary steps,” the official added.

Also in August, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said that India has conveyed to the US that all forms of aid provided to Pakistan is “invariably directed” against New Delhi and providing more arms to Islamabad will not help the peace process in the region.

The Harpoon report notwithstanding, the US Senate last week approved legislation to triple civilian financial aid to Islamabad to $7.5 billion over five years even as President Barack Obama spoke of violent extremists within Pakistan posing a threat to the world.

Underscoring Islamabad’s perceived role in the war in Afghanistan and the broader fight against international terrorism Obama urged “sustained and expanded” support for Pakistan at an international summit September 24.

Obama, seated next to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, told the meeting of the 26-member Friends of Democratic Pakistan that the US Senate vote for billions of dollars in aid for Islamabad was proof of US support. — IANS