Daniel ‘Bond’ Craig gets hitched
Los Angeles, Juné 26 
Hollywood stars Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz have tied the knot after dating for a brief period.Craig (43) and Weisz, who co-star in the upcoming horror film 'Dream House', tied the knot on Friday in upstate New York, reportssed Us magazine. Craig entered the international spotlight when he starred in 'Casino Royale' and 'Quantum of Solace' as James Bond. — PTI 

 

 

Tripoli, June 26
The Libyan government today renewed its offer to hold a vote on whether Muammar Gaddafi should stay in power, a proposal unlikely to interest Gaddafi’s opponents but which could widen differences inside NATO.

Pressure is growing from some quarters within the alliance to find a political solution, three months into a military campaign which is costing NATO members billions of dollars, has killed civilians, and has so far failed to topple Gaddafi.

Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for Gaddafi’s administration, told reporters in Tripoli the government was proposing a period of national dialogue and an election overseen by the United Nations and the African Union. “If the Libyan people decide Gaddafi should leave he will leave. If the people decide he should stay he will stay,” Ibrahim said.

But he said Gaddafi, who has run the oil-producing country since taking over in a military coup in 1969, would not go into exile whatever happened. “Gaddafi is not leaving anywhere, he is staying in this country,” Ibrahim said.

The idea of holding an election was first raised earlier this month by one of Gaddafi’s sons, Saif al-Islam. The proposal lost momentum when Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi appeared to dismiss it. At the time, it was also rejected by anti-Gaddafi rebels in the east of Libya, and by Washington.

Many analysts say Gaddafi and his family have no intention of relinquishing power. Instead, they say, the Libyan leader is holding out the possibility of a deal to try to widen cracks that have been emerging in the alliance ranged against him.

The election proposal could find a more receptive audience this time around, especially after a NATO bomb landed on a house in Tripoli on June 19, killing several civilians. After that incident, alliance-member Italy said it wanted a political settlement, and also said that the civilian casualties threaten NATO’s credibility.

The Libyan government forces have been fighting rebels, backed by NATO air power, since February 17, when thousands of people rose up in a rebellion against his rule. The revolt has turned into the bloodiest of the Arab Spring uprisings sweeping the Middle East.

Rebels now control the eastern third of the country, and some enclaves in the West. They have been unable though to break through to the capital, leaving Western powers banking on an uprising in Tripoli to overthrow Gaddafi.

The Libyan leader suffered a propaganda defeat when four members of the national soccer team and 13 other football figures defected to the rebels, the rebel council said. Libyans are passionate about the sport and the national team was closely aligned with Gaddafi’s rule. At one point his son, Saadi, played in the side.

Asked about the defections, government spokesman Ibrahim said: “The Libyan footall team is full and functioning and performing all of its duties inside and outside Libya.” — Reuters

Washington, June 26
Keen to end the costly war in Afghanistan, US officials have participated in three murky meetings this year with an English-speaking Afghan who was once a personal aide to the elusive one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Those meetings, in Germany and Qatar, appear to have accomplished little more than confirming the man’s identity, and perhaps not even that, The New York Times reported today, quoting according to officials familiar with the talks.

But Tayeb Agha, who was an aide to Mullah Omar during Taliban’s rise to power, was arrested by Pakistani authorities last year and then released, leading American officials to assume that he is negotiating on behalf of the Taliban with the blessings of the Pakistani authorities, the report said.

“We’re at that stage where it’s very confusing,” one senior administration official said, adding that the meetings could not even be called “talks” at this stage, let alone “peace talks.” The wariness in part reflects the fact that the Obama administration has been badly embarrassed by previous diplomatic efforts.

An Afghan was given substantial sums of cash last year and was flown on a NATO aircraft in the belief that he was a Taliban envoy, but he turned out to be an impostor.

US President Barack Obama’s strategy for gradually ending the war in Afghanistan relies heavily on peace talks with the Taliban. But those talks have hardly begun, and even some administration officials acknowledge that the odds of success are slim.

Declaring that US had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, Obama last week ordered withdrawal of his troops from there starting this year, with 30,000 leaving initially, a process that would continue until the Afghans take over the security in 2014.

However, the US has imposed significant conditions for any reconciliation with the Taliban. The movement’s leaders must disarm, sever ties with Al-Qaida’s remaining leadership, recognise the government in Afghanistan and accept the country’s Constitution, including basic rights for women, who were severely repressed when the Taliban governed the country in the 1990s.

It is uncertain whether the Taliban or even parts of its leadership are willing to accept such conditions, and many experts are deeply skeptical, the report said. — PTI

Kabul, June 26
An eight-year-old Afghan girl was killed when insurgents detonated a bomb in a bag which they had given her to take to the police nearby, the interior ministry said today.

The incident happened in the southern province of Uruzgan yesterday, the ministry said in a statement.

“The enemies of peace and stability committed another unforgivable and shameful crime, an explosive-laden bag was handed to her and she was told to take it to the police,” the statement said.

“The child, pure-hearted and in good faith, took the bag and moved towards the police vehicle. As she got close to the police vehicle, the enemy detonated the bomb by remote control, killing the innocent child.” No police or other civilians were killed, it added.

The ministry did not specify which group was responsible but the Taliban are the main militant group waging in Afghanistan. — AFP 

Boston, June 26
The number of adults diagnosed with diabetes worldwide has doubled since 1980 to 347 million, with more than a third of them living in India and China, a new study has found.

According to the study by Harvard and World Health Organisation (WHO), the largest of its kind for diabetes, 70 per cent of the rise in worldwide diabetic cases was due to population growth and ageing, with the other 30 per cent due to higher prevalence.

Between 1980 and 2008, the number of adults with diabetes rose from 153 million to 347 million. Of this number, 138 million live in China and India and another 36 million in the US and Russia, according to the study carried out by an international collaboration of researchers, led by Professor Majid Ezzati from Imperial College London and co-led by Goodarz Danaei from the Harvard School of Public Health, in collaboration with the WHO.

“Our study has shown that diabetes is becoming more common almost everywhere in the world, in contrast to blood pressure and cholesterol, which have both fallen in many regions. Diabetes is much harder to prevent and treat than these other conditions,” Ezzati said, adding that diabetes was one of the biggest causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide.

The proportion of adults with diabetes rose to 9.8 per cent of men and 9.2 per cent of women in 2008, compared with 8.3 per cent of men and 7.5 per cent of women in 1980.

The estimated number of 347 million diabetics was considerably higher than a previous study in 2009, which put the number worldwide at 285 million.

The research, published in the journal Lancet, reveals that the prevalence of diabetes has risen or at best remained unchanged in virtually every part of the world over the last three decades.

“Unless we develop better programmes for detecting people with elevated blood sugar and helping them to improve their diet and physical activity and control their weight, diabetes will inevitably continue to impose a major burden on health systems around the world,” Harvard's Danaei added.

The study included blood sugar measurements from 2.7 million participants aged 25 years or more across the world and used advanced statistical methods for analysing data. — PTI 

Washington: Two Indian-origin scientists in the US claim to be developing an artificial pancreas which will deliver insulin automatically and with an individualised precision never before possible. Nearly three million people die of diabetes worldwide every year, according to the World Health Organisation. Yogish Kudva and Ananda Basu of Mayo Clinic say that soon diabetics may be free of finger pricks and daily insulin dosing if their artificial pancreas is successfully developed. 

London, June 26
Controversial Indian-origin author Salman Rushdie says he was hardly surprised by Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan and finds it “ludicrous” that the Al Qaida chief could hide in the heart of that country without anybody's knowledge.

Calling the system in Pakistan “deeply unstable, corrupt and militarist”, Rushdie said the power elite of that country was “profoundly duplicitous”, and the Indian perspective would believe that in having Islamabad as an ally, the West “is in bed with the wrong people”.

“For those of us who've been watching for a while, this is not rocket science. If you look at this from the Indian side of the frontier, you know that Pakistan has been harbouring terrorists forever,” Rushdie told The Times.

The Midnight’s Children author also said he had never believed that bin laden would be hiding in a mountainous cave and he was hardly surprised that he was found in Abbottabad.

“In this case it was obvious that someone like bin Laden could not have hidden for a decade in Pakistan, which is not a wilderness. I never believed the cave. I thought, ‘This is a rich kid who's grown up in a world of enormous wealth; he ain't living in no cave’. And Abbottabad? You're living next door to West Point? In a town where all your neighbours are retired generals... Your house is eight times the size of the next- biggest house? And nobody wants to know who lives there? Ludicrous,” he said. — PTI