In an unprecedented incident, two local Australians were beaten up by a group of Indian kabaddi players on Sunday after the former hurled racist slurs and smashed a window of a car belonging to an Indian. The two Australians of Caucasian appearance aged 25 and 42, who have not as yet filed a complaint with the police, were treated with minor injuries at a local hospital.

A brawl between the two groups started when one of the two locals smashed the rear window of a car belonging to an Indian with his skate board. Moments earlier the two local Australians had shouted abuses at a group of Indians just as they began exiting the Meadowglen International Athletics Stadium in Melbourne’s northern suburb of Epping after the kabaddi match.

Incidentally, the brawl occurred in the same suburb where only last month four Punjabis, two of who were Australian citizens, were brutally beaten by a group of Caucasians who were encouraged by a jeering mob watching from the sidelines and chanting racist abuses.

Councillor Tim Singh from the city of Darebin, who was involved in the medal presentations at the tournament, alleged that racist abuses were yelled at the players. “A lot of people were leaving….I spoke to one of the boys who were there and he said a guy had smashed the rear window of a car that was leaving and said ‘f* off your black c*”.

Describing the incident as a reaction to a provocation, Inspector Mark Doney was quoted as saying, “I think he got his just deserts from the occupants of the vehicle after he smashed the window of their car”.

Asked whether the Indians had reacted to racial abuse, Inspector Doney said, “It could have been. At this stage, I don’t have what was actually said in front of me”. The police plan to interview the skater who allegedly initiated the clash between the groups.

Indians are not the only ethnic group being targeted for attacks and abuse. Only last week, two Sudanese men were brutally beaten in an unprovoked daylight attack in the central Victorian town of Castlemaine.

Many more incidents involving Caucasians and other minorities have been reported. Less than a fortnight ago, about 200 locals, all of them Caucasians, demonstrated outside Parliament building here to protest against the government’s inability to control lawlessness that seems to be overtaking the streets of Australia’s second largest metropolis.

Sararogha, October 5
The Pakistani Taliban's new leader met reporters in the country's tribal areas for the first time since winning control of the militants and vowed to retaliate against the US and Pakistan for drone attacks along the Afghan border.

The appearance by Hakimullah Mehsud ended any speculation that he was killed in a leadership battle within the militant group sparked by the August slaying of his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud in a missile strike.

Mehsud, flanked by other Taliban commanders in a show of unity, spoke to a small group of reporters on Sunday on the condition that the interview only be published Monday.

Mehsud said his group would avenge the killing of Baitullah Mehsud and strike back at Pakistan and the US for the increasing number of drone attacks in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

Unmanned drones have carried out more than 70 missile strikes in northwestern Pakistan over the last year in a covert program, killing several top militant commanders along with sympathisers and civilians.

The Pakistani government publicly protests the attacks but is widely believed to sanction them and provide intelligence for at least some.

American officials have said they are considering a strategy of intensified drone attacks combined with the deployment of special operations forces against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets on the Pakistani side of the border - part of an alternative to sending more troops to Afghanistan in what is an increasingly unpopular war.

As part of the offensive against the Taliban leadership, Mehsud's brother, Kalimullah, was killed last month.

Analysts say the group is struggling to regroup from the attacks on its leaders.

Pakistani officials had speculated that Hakimullah had been killed in a recent shootout.

Pakistan has asked the British government to bring back its visa office from Abu Dhabi to Islamabad and relax undue curbs on issues of visas to Pakistani citizens in particular students and businessmen.

Pakistan’s concern over delay in the issuance of visas by the UK remained a top item on agenda apart from war on terrorism in meetings of two visiting British ministers - British Secretary of State for Home Affairs and British Secretary of State for Defence Bob Ainsworth - when they called on President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani here Monday.

The top Pakistani leadership voiced concerns over the unexplained delays in issuance of visas to Pakistani nationals. The two sides also discussed a number of other issues, including the differences over the type of “violators” of the UK laws who needs to be deported from Britain.

British High Commissioner to Islamabad Robert Brinkley acknowledged that they delay in issuance of visa was a serious issue, but said a number of fresh measures were already in place.

An official press release issued by the Prime Minister's House later said Gilani had urged the British government to reconsider their visa policy for Pakistani nationals that was causing serious inconvenience to the visa applicants.

Talking to Alan Johnson, the Prime Minister called for early shifting of visa office from Abu Dhabi back to Pakistan, besides quicker processing of visa cases and refunding of fees to the applicants with rejected cases.

Islamabad, October 5
The United Nations today closed all its offices across Pakistan after a suicide attack on a World Food Programme office in the heart of the federal capital killed four persons, including an Iraqi national.

“In light of this incident, all UN offices in Pakistan have been closed till further notice,” said a statement issued by the UN.

Earlier, UN spokesperson Ishrat Rizvi had told reporters that all UN offices in Islamabad and the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi had been closed. Rizvi said the UN will attempt to continue its operations, including humanitarian relief programmes, despite the closure of its offices.

Besides the Iraqi national, two Pakistani women working for the WFP were among those killed in the suicide attack. At least six others were injured when the attacker who was disguised as a paramilitary personnel, blew himself up in the lobby of the WFP office just after noon.

The attack occurred hours after UN Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, Alain Le Roy, arrived in Islamabad for a series of meetings with government officials and national authorities.

Two other UN employees were killed in a suicide bombing of a five-star hotel in Peshawar in June.

UN’s Pakistan resident coordinator Fikret Akcura condemned today’s attack and expressed sorrow at the loss of lives and injuries among WFP employees.

“This tragic and reprehensible attack is particularly deplorable given the fact that the UN staff have worked tirelessly to feed the impoverished and displaced persons in Pakistan,” Ackura said.

“There is no possible justification for this shocking crime against humanitarian workers here only to help the people of Pakistan. We urge Pakistani authorities to place their full attention on arresting the perpetrators who planned and implemented this horrendous act of terrorism,” he said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the “heinous crime” was “unjustifiable”. “I condemn (it) in the strongest of terms,” he said.

The UN WFP Deputy Executive Director Amir Abdulla said in a statement from the agency’s Rome headquarters: “This is a terrible tragedy for WFP and for the whole humanitarian community in Pakistan”.

The WFP has been feeding up to two million people displaced by military operations against the Taliban in the northwestern Swat valley and nearby areas since May.

The WFP, which has a staff of around 500 international and Pakistani personnel, also provides monthly food rations to some 100,000 people. — PTI

At the ends of chromosomes are small caps called telomeres, which prevent the cells from degrading. Blackburn and Greider identified telomerase, an enzyme that forms these caps. Meanwhile, research by Szostak and Blackburn cast light on how the shortening of the caps was linked to ageing.

Work on the enzyme is a hot area of drug research, particularly in cancer, since it is thought to play a role in allowing tumour cells to reproduce out of control.