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Police rescues 54 students chained in Pak madrassa
US panel for freezing aid to Pak
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Pak mulls taxing NATO trucks
Now, a robot to alleviate depression among
elderly
Super vaccine may knock out 70 pc of cancers
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Police rescues 54 students chained in Pak madrassa Karachi, December 13 The police raided the Zakariya madrassa late on Monday on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial hub. They were now investigating whether it had any links to violent militant groups, which often recruit from hardline religious schools.
Most victims had signs of severe torture, and had developed wounds from the chains, the police said. The main cleric of the madrassa escaped during the raid.
“Those 50 boys who were kept in such an environment like animals,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told journalists. Many of the students, who varied in age from 15 to 45, were still in chains while shown on television.
“I was there for 30 days and I did not seen the sky or the sun even once,” Zainullah Khan, 21, told Reuters at a police station where the students were questioned and then released to their relatives. “I was whipped with a rubber belt and forced to beg for food.”
Student Mohi-ud-Din said: “I was kept in the basement for the past month and was kept in chains. They also tortured me severely during this period. I was beaten with sticks.” Senior police official Rao Anwar said many of those rescued were drug addicts brought to the seminary for treatment. “These people were not taken to the madrassa forcefully. In fact the parents of many of them had themselves got their children admitted there,” he said.
“Some of them are drug addicts, and others involved in other crimes, and they were tortured and kept in chains so that they did not run away.”
A man who identified himself as Abdullah told local television that he had brought his 35-year-old drug addict brother to the madrassa for rehabilitation.
“The chains are not a problem. They are needed because without them heroin addicts run away,” he said. Thousands of madrassas are spread across Pakistan, which is fighting an insurgency by Al-Qaida-linked Taliban militants.
Many people are too poor to afford non-religious schools or feel state institutions are inadequate so they send their children to madrassas, where they memorise the Koran, learn Arabic and study the traditions of Islam.
Many madrassas offer free board and lodging. Some of the more extreme schools churn out fighters and suicide bombers for militant groups like the Taliban or Al-Qaida.
— Reuters
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US panel for freezing aid to Pak Washington, December 13 The negotiating panel of the House of Representatives and the Senate yesterday unanimously agreed to freeze the $700 million aid to Pakistan as they reached a compromise on a sweeping $662 billion Defense Authorization Bill for the year 2012. The move is likely to further deepen the crisis in ties of the two countries, hit severely following a NATO raid that killed 24 Pakistani
soldiers. Besides stringing aid to Pakistan, the military spending bill also targets Iran’s Central Bank and sets new hurdles for closing Guantanamo Bay prison for Al-Qaida fighters. The legislation will now face vote in both the Houses this week amid warnings by President Barack Obama that he would veto any bill that required military custody of suspected extremists who target
US. Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid, and the freeze, when it is empowered by the Congress, would form only a small portion of billions of dollars of civil and military assistance it gets each year. But the freeze could lead to greater cutbacks as demands rise in the US to penalise Islamabad for failing to act against militant groups on its soil, who kill US soldiers in Afghanistan.
— PTI
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Pak mulls taxing NATO trucks
While NATO supplies through Pakistan continue to be blocked in the wake of its attacks on Pakistan checkposts, Islamabad is considering charging millions of dollars in taxes on NATO trucks and tankers that freely pass through Pakistan on their way to Afghanistan under what was previously a ‘verbal
understanding’.
There had been no official agreement with the US or NATO regarding the use of Pakistani land and facilities, an official of the defence ministry has disclosed.
The senior officer said there was neither any tax nor a fee for the use of Pakistani ports, storage and infrastructure facilities. The damage to use of infrastructure by heavy NATO tankers and containers alone is estimated at over $1billion.
Pakistan’s fragile alliance with the US crashed to new lows after November 26, when Nato air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in what Islamabad said was a deliberate attack. Islamabad sealed its Afghan border to NATO convoys, closures that entered 18th day on Tuesday, forcing trucks back to Karachi.
The move was part of a list of recommendations passed by a parliamentary committee following the attacks. The panel has also recommended that a tax be imposed on oil supplies to NATO in accordance with international conventions.
Replying to a question, he said the issue of any tax on the US or NATO supplies never came up during the last decade. He said that it was practically a kind of a ‘tax holiday’ for NATO and the
USA. He further said that recently when containers carrying supplies for NATO were attacked, the Frontier Corps was called to protect them without any
payment. Meanwhile, Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit also confirmed that he was not aware of any agreement between Pakistan and NATO or the US regarding the use of Pakistani land, ports and other facilities for the supply of goods through Turkham or
Chaman.
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Now, a robot to alleviate depression among
elderly
London, December 13 The robot also has a way to indicate moods, LED lights embedded in Babyloid’s cheek turn red to signify that it is contented while blue LED tears will mean it is unhappy. If
you hold the crying Babyloid and rock it, it might fall asleep. Babyloid’s creator Masayoshi Kanoh, a professor at Chukyo University in Japan’s Aichi prefecture, has said that the basic design with smiling face was chosen ‘to avoid the creepiness a realistic baby face can have’, the New Scientist
reported. During experimental studies at a retirement home, Kanoh found that users interacted with Babyloid an average of seven to eight minutes in a sitting with a total of 90 minutes per day, which helped ease symptoms of
depression. The inventor conducted experimental studies at a retirement home, and found that it helped ease symptoms of depression in the elderly when they interacted with Babyloid for 90 minutes a
day. The robot can produce 100 different voices and its prototype costs about 2 million yen
presently. However, Kanoh hopes that it if it reaches the market, consumers would be able to get it for 100,000 yen.
— ANI
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US, Iran continue to spar over spy drone
Washington, December 13 “We’ve asked for it (drone) back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama said at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. It was the first time when Obama administration acknowledged that the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, a radar evading stealth drone, was in Iranian hands, which Tehran says it brought down as the plane was flying over its territory. Meanwhile, Iran scoffed at Obama's request. The US drone captured by Iran is now the property of the Islamic republic, Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said. "The American espionage drone is now Iran's property, and our country will decide what steps to take regarding it," Vahidi was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency. "Instead of apologising to the Iranian nation, it (the United States) is brazenly asking for the drone back," Vahidi also said, according to another news agency, Mehr. Iran "will not back
down from defending the nation or its interests," Vahidi declared. Earlier, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said: "It seem he (Obama) has forgotten that Iran's airspace was violated, spying operations were undertaken, international laws were violated and that Iran's internal affairs were interfered with.” The country’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by CNN as saying, “There are people here who can control this spy plane, surely we can analyse this plane too.” Obama, however, shed no further light on the plane’s mission or why it failed to return to a base in Afghanistan. “With respect to the drone inside of Iran, I’m not going to comment on intelligence matters that are classified,” he said. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had expressed doubts over Iran complying with US demand. “Given Iran’s behavior to date, we do not expect them to comply,” Clinton told reporters at a press conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, with whom she discussed Iran. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta voiced skepticism that Iran would manage to gain much of a technological advantage from the aircraft. “It’s a little difficult to know just frankly how much they’re going to be able to get from having obtained those parts,” Panetta told reporters aboard a US military aircraft. “I don’t know the conditions of those parts. I don’t know what state they’re in.” Asked if Iran may have forced the plane down in a cyber attack, Panetta said: “I don’t know”. — PTI
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Super vaccine may knock out 70 pc of cancers
London, December 13 It shrunk breast tumours by 80 per cent during tests and could also tackle prostate, pancreatic and cancers, said researchers. Even tumours that resist treatment with the best medicines available, including the 'wonder drug' Herceptin, may give in to the vaccine, the Daily Mail reports. Said study co-author Sandra Gendler, professor of molecular biology at the Mayo Clinic: "Cancer cells have a special way of thwarting the immune system by putting sugar on the surface of tumour cells so they can travel around the body without being detected. To enable the immune system to recognise the sugar, it took a special vaccine that had three parts to it. That turned out to be a winning combination," she added.
— PTI
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The Karachi police has rescued 54 students from the basement of an Islamic seminary, or madrassa, where they said they were kept in chains by clerics, beaten and barely fed.
