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Mursi powers: Egypt protests continue
Supreme Constitutional Court hits back at President
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explosion in Jaramana
Oxford Dictionary ex-editor secretly deleted Indian words
Special to the tribune
Pakistan test-fires N-capable missile
Pak court stays renaming of roundabout after Bhagat Singh
Pak SC orders end to ads of govt functionaries on public expense
As elections near, political violence shoots up in Pak
Nepalese ex-prince held in Thailand on drugs charge
Students protest military search at Lankan varsity
Albert Einstein’s brain was ‘exceptionally complicated’
In Cold War, US planned
to blow up the Moon
Gunmen kill Saudi diplomat in Yemen
Irish PM vows swift action on abortion laws
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Mursi powers: Egypt protests continue Cairo, November 28 Five months into the Islamist leader's term, and in scenes reminiscent of the popular uprising that unseated predecessor Hosni Mubarak last year, police fired teargas at stone-throwers following protests by tens of thousands on Tuesday against the declaration that expanded Mursi's powers and put his decisions beyond legal challenge. Protesters say they will stay in Tahrir until the decree is withdrawn, bringing fresh turmoil to a nation at the heart of the Arab Spring and delivering a new blow to an economy already on the ropes. Senior judges have been negotiating with Mursi about how to restrict his new powers, while protesters want him to dissolve an Islamist-dominated Assembly that is drawing up a new Constitution and which Mursi protected from legal review. Any deal to calm the street will need to address both issues. But Opposition politicians said the list of demands could grow the longer the crisis goes on. Many protesters want the Cabinet, which meets on Wednesday, to be sacked,
too. Mursi's administration insists that his actions were aimed at breaking a political logjam to push Egypt more swiftly towards democracy, an assertion his opponents dismiss. "The President wants to create a new dictatorship," said 38-year-old Mohamed Sayyed Ahmed, who has not had a job for two years. He is one of many in the square who are as angry over economic hardship as they are about Mursi's actions. "We want the scrapping of the constitutional declaration and the Constituent Assembly, so a new one is created representing all the people and not just one section," he said. The West worries about turbulence in a nation that has a peace treaty with Israel and is now ruled by Islamists that they for long kept at arms length. The United States, a big donor to Egypt's military, has called for "peaceful democratic dialogue". Two people have been killed in violence since the decree, while low-level clashes between protesters and police have gone on for days near
Tahrir. Violence has flared in other cities. — Reuters Out on streets
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Supreme Constitutional Court hits back at President Cairo, November 28 Mursi has angered much of the judiciary with a decree that extends his powers and puts his decisions beyond legal review. In a speech on Friday, the President praised the judiciary as a whole but said there were corrupt elements, which he would weed out. The Constitutional Court, before which Mursi swore his oath of office, declared the Islamist-led Parliament void earlier this year, leading to the Assembly's dissolution. "The really sad thing that has pained the members of this court is when the President of the republic joined, in a painful surprise, the campaign of continuous attack on the Constitutional Court," said the court's spokesman, Maher Samy. Samy said Mursi had accused the court in a speech on Friday of leaking verdicts before the formal announcement. Mursi did not mention the court by name but said it was "strange" when people learnt of rulings before they are issued. Speaking in a news conference, he dismissed critics' accusations that the court is stuffed with officials loyal to Hosni Mubarak's ousted regime or judges with a political agenda. "It wasn't true or honest to claim that the judges of the Constitutional Court are chosen from among those who have a specific political direction or are the previous regime's allies," Samy said. "The court won't be terrorised by threats or blackmail and will not submit to any pressure on it in any direction." — Reuters
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Blasts kill 38 near Syrian capital
Jaramana (Syria), Nov 28 The explosives-packed cars were detonated at daybreak in a pro-regime neighbourhood of the mainly Christian and Druze town of Jaramana, residents, state media and a rights watchdog reported. The blasts ripped through a central square near a petrol station, sending residents fleeing in panic. There was a ball of fire at the end of a narrow lane, and the impact of the explosions brought walls down onto cars, crushing them and scattering debris over the ground. Pools of blood and severed body parts were on the streets, said an AFP photographer in the town. The death toll mounted as the morning wore on, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights giving tallies of 20, then 29 and finally at least 38. The Interior Ministry put the count at 34. "Activists and residents in the town said most of the victims were killed when a suicide attacker blew up his car, just after an explosive device was used to blow up another car," said the Observatory. Residents rushed with the dozens of wounded to hospital or to visit the homes of bereaved families. "What do they want from Jaramana? The town brings together people from all over Syria and welcomes everybody," one of them told AFP. Jarmana has now been targeted by four such bomb attacks in three months. It is home to predominantly Christians and Druze, an influential minority whose faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Sectarian divides are a key factor in Syria's armed rebellion, with many in the Sunni Muslim majority frustrated at more than 40 years of Alawite-dominated rule. SANA reported that "terrorists" blew up the two car bombs at the same time, as two separate explosive devices were set off without claiming any lives. The Syrian uprising erupted in March 2011 with peaceful pro-democracy protests, inspired by the Arab Spring. It transformed into an armed insurgency when the government began a bloody crackdown on dissent. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad, himself from the Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam, insists it is fighting foreign-backed "terrorists". The failure of international diplomacy has enabled it to press on with its all-out military campaign to crush the rebellion, and the fighting has resulted in more than 40,000 deaths, according to the Observatory. — AFP
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Oxford Dictionary ex-editor secretly deleted Indian words
London, November 28 Robert Burchfield deleted words like “balisaur”, a badger-like animal from India, “Danchi”, a Bengali plant and “boviander”, the name in British Guyana for a person of mixed race living on the river banks. The OED is now re-examining words removed by Burchfield who edited the world respected dictionary during the 70s and 80s and who died in 2004 aged 81, the Daily Mail reported. Burchfield, who bizarrely blamed previous editors for it, has long been considered the editor who opened up the English dictionary to the wider world. Sarah Ogilvie, also a former OED editor, in her new book “Words of the World” reveals how Burchfield started a rumour that his earlier editors were inward-looking anglocentrics, when in fact the opposite was true. After investigating Burchfield’s rumours, she discovered they were unfounded and that he was actually responsible for the deletion of words such as “shape”, meaning a Tibetan councillor, and “wake-up”, a golden-winged woodpecker. “I was the editor of the OED responsible for words from outside Europe and while editing these words I noticed a pattern that went against the general consensus: there were thousands of foreign words and words from varieties of English around the world in the dictionary and they had been put there by editor James Murray and his fellow editors,” she said. “The irony of the whole story is that although in the beginning the dictionary editors were criticised for putting too many ‘outlandish’ words in the dictionary that were ‘decaying’ our language, 100 years later they were criticised for the opposite: for too many British words in the dictionary and not enough foreign words! But it turns out that this was a myth perpetuated by a 20th-century Chief Editor of the OED,” said Ogilvie. She compared Burchfield’s four OED dictionaries published between 1972 and 1986 to a 1933 edition and found that he had erased 17 per cent of the “loanwords” and world English words that had been included by editor Charles Onions, who included 45 per cent more foreign words than Burchfield. — PTI
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Special to the tribune The British Government's continuing interest in biological and chemical weapons - the so-called poor man's answer to more expensive nuclear weapons - has been exposed by an animal rights group in the UK.
The British Union for Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) says it has evidence of cruel experiments carried out on animals that have been poisoned, blasted, forced to inhale toxic chemicals and infected with deadly diseases. Many of the experiments, including some in collaboration with US defence agencies, were carried out at the secretive Porton Down laboratories in Wiltshire, close to the port city of Southampton. Global phenomenon Using chemical and biological weapons is a moral issue in the West and has been controversial ever since the First World War when Germany used mustard gas in trench warfare. Subsequently, a number of other countries, including the US, were revealed as investing in such weapons, including anthrax, nerve and blister agents, although very little hard information is readily available. When the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used mustard gas, as well as the nerve agents Sarin, Tabun and VX, against the civilian population of Halabja, it provoked a hue and cry all over the world. Saddam himself was accused of committing crimes against humanity. In Asia, it was Japan (in 1939) that first established a germ warfare research centre in Harbin. The Chinese deny producing biological weapons and it has signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), but Chinese companies have been sanctioned by the US for contributing to Iran's chemical weapons programmes. Like China, Pakistan too has signed the CWC and is thought to have the technical capability to make blood, blister and nerve agents. Back in 1996, the US Government accused Islamabad of "conducting research and development with potential biological warfare applications." Beasts bear brunt In London, BUAV has revealed how pigs were exposed to lethal chemical warfare agents - phosgene gas and sulphur mustard - that induced severe lung damage. It comments on how inhalation of phosgene and/or sulphur mustard leads to a slow and painful death by suffocation. The sulphur mustard experiment was funded by the US Department of Defence. It comments on how in both experiments, pigs were anaesthetised before being forced to breathe in the deadly chemicals. Anaesthesised pigs wrapped in blankets were also blown up with bombs to induce severe blast injuries. Immediately after the blast, the pigs had 30 per cent of their total blood content pumped out through an artery in their legs as researchers then tried to resuscitate the pigs. All of the animals were killed and dissected at the end of the experiment. Marmosets, a type of monkey native to South America, were infected with anthrax. After being anaesthetised and restrained inside tubes, they were forced to inhale the deadly bacteria for 10 minutes, followed by an antibiotic for up to 10 days. Four animals died from serious infection and those that survived were later killed and dissected. Similarly, guinea pigs were poisoned with an extremely toxic nerve agent, while mice were infected with a bacterial agent, Yersinia pestis, that causes bubonic plague. For soldiers’ sake A spokesman for the British Ministry of Defence's Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down said, “DSTL is proud of the research undertaken by its staff and believes that the remit to provide safe and effective protective measures for the UK and its armed forces could not, currently, be achieved without the use of animals." The spokesman added, "All the research projects that involve animals are licenced by the Home Office. As part of the licencing process, the researchers have to convince the Home Office that the work is required, that the results cannot be obtained without the use of animals and that every step has been taken to minimise pain and suffering to the animals involved." But BUAV's Chief Executive Michelle Thew responded, "Although supporting the need to ensure the safety of soldiers and civilians in an ever-increasing dangerous world, the BUAV is opposed to deliberately causing suffering and death to animals in such disturbing and cruel experiments. We believe it is totally unacceptable to treat animals in this way."
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Pakistan test-fires N-capable missile
Pakistan on Wednesday conducted a successful test of its mid-range nuclear-capable Hatf-V Ghauri ballistic missile. According to the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), the liquid-fuelled ballistic missile, capable of carrying both conventional as well as nuclear payload, has a range of 1,300 km. The Ghauri missile was first test-fired on April 6, 1998. The eighth missile test so far this year comes two months after the last test of a Hatf-VII with a range of 700km. Five of those tests were conducted within a few weeks after India successfully test-fired the Agni V, which can deliver a one-tonne nuclear warhead anywhere in China. Defence analysts said India’s strategic priorities were focused more on China while Pakistan was still concerned about its eastern neighbour.
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Pak court stays renaming of roundabout after Bhagat Singh Lahore, November 28 Justice Nasir Saeed Sheikh of the Lahore High Court extended the stay after the Punjab Government and the Lahore city district government failed to submit their responses to a petition challenging the renaming of Fawara Chowk at Shadman after Bhagat Singh. The Tehrik-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool, a movement launched by the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, had filed the petition against a move by authorities to rename the roundabout. Zahid Butt, a local trader who filed the petition on behalf of the organisation, claimed that RAW, India's external intelligence agency, had funded the Bhagat Singh Foundation to raise the issue. He claimed the foundation lobbied the Dilkash Lahore Committee that recommended the renaming of the roundabout. Senior JuD leader Maulana Amir Hamza, who heads the Tehrik-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool, has said the group will not allow places to be named after Hindus, Sikhs or Christians. "Pakistan is a Muslim country and such ideas cannot be appreciated," he said recently. The JuD wrote a strongly worded letter to district administration chief Noorul Amin Mengal and other government officials warning them not to rename the roundabout after a "Hindu freedom fighter". The Dilkash Lahore Committee had rejected all objections and asked authorities to notify the new name for the roundabout without delay. Meanwhile, civil society activists have filed two applications in the Lahore HC, asking it to make them parties to the case challenging the renaming of the roundabout. Activists Taimur Rehman and Saeeda Diep filed the applications in the court yesterday through lawyer Yasir Latif Hamdani. — PTI
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Pak SC orders end to ads of govt functionaries on public expense
Taking exception to a spate of political advertisements in the media at government expense, the Supreme Court has directed all government departments not to spend public funds on advertisements glorifying public figures. The court noted that pictures of government functionaries are published in print and electronic media. A propaganda blitzkrieg has been launched by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and its rival Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) listing their achievements and flawed governance of rivals. All of this is done on government expense using various federal and provincial government departments. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was hearing a case related to Universal Support Funds (USF), which has reportedly released Rs 127 million to an advertising company for publicity. Suo motu action was taken by Justice Chaudhry following news reports published in the press. Pictures of the President, Prime Minister, ministers, Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, Hamza Shahbaz, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and Chaudhry Shujaat were prominently flashed in these advertisements. Justice Chaudhry said: “Under no rule can the pictures of any public functionary be published at the expense of public funds.” The apex court sought detailed reports from the Ministry of Information and various departments regarding the mechanism in place for publicity of government functionaries, the volume of funds they spend annually and the provisions under which these funds are used. The court also directed the authorities concerned to provide details of the advertising agencies to which the work is contracted and the legalities of the transactions.
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As elections near, political violence shoots up in Pak
There has been a 37 per cent increase in violence in the second quarter of the year compared to the January-March quarter.
A report released by the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) details the number of incidents and the sharp rise. A total of 2,658 persons were affected by political violence in the country, out of which 1,004 people died between April and June 2012. Based on news stories of incidents around the country, the report records politically-motivated electoral violence in the pre-election period. Pakistan’s next General Election will be held in May 2013. Fafen listed 10 politically most-violent districts with Karachi on top reporting 268 incidents followed by Quetta with 74 incidents of violence during the period under review. Other cities include Peshawar (31), Rawalpindi (18) Bannu (15) DI Khan (13) Lahore (11).
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Nepalese ex-prince held in Thailand on drugs charge
Bangkok, November 28 Police said the incident happened last month when Shah had to spend a night in jail in the tourist resort of Phuket on a charge of possessing an illegal drug. The former crown prince was later released on bail of 10,000 baht (Rs 18000), it added. A senior police officer in Phuket told the Bangkok Post that the former crown prince was arrested with a woman at a hotel in the resort island. He did not identify the woman. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phuket police had been called by the hotel to break up a quarrel between a man and a woman and they found the drugs while mediating the dispute. The man turned out to be the Nepalese former crown prince, he added. Nepalese newspaper The Himalayan Times said the Nepalese embassy in Bangkok was informed about the case on Oct 27. — PTI
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Students protest military search at Lankan varsity
Colombo, November 28 Police and army stormed the university yesterday searching for propaganda material after students tried to mark the LTTE "heroes week", the last week of November when the Tamil Tigers used to commemorate fallen cadres.— PTI
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Albert Einstein’s brain was ‘exceptionally complicated’
London, November 28 The Nobel Prize-winning scientist's brain was divided into 240 blocks and distributed to researchers after his death in 1955. Most of the specimens were lost and little was written about its anatomy. Scientists now have used photographs of the brain before it was segmented to produce a "road map" connecting the 240 sections and the 2,000 thin slivers into which they were later split, 'The Telegraph' reported. The pictures, taken from the private collection of pathologist Thomas Harvey, who divided the brain up, show a number of peculiarities about Einstein's brain. Although Einstein's brain was only of average size, weighing 1,230 grams, certain areas contain an unusually high number of folds and grooves, a comparison with 85 other brains showed. Anthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University found "regions that are exceptionally complicated in their convolutions" in each of Einstein's brain lobes. The finding confirmed reports in two previous studies, which suggested that an unusual pattern of ridges in the brain could have been linked to Einstein's remarkable ability to solve problems in physics, the report said. Falk and colleagues, writing in the journal 'Brain', also observed that Einstein's brain was enlarged in regions which transmit nerve impulses to the face and tongue, and in the pre-frontal cortex, which is linked to concentration and forward planning. The extra matter in areas linked to the face and tongue could explain a comment by the scientist that his thinking was "muscular" rather than taking the form of words, researchers said, adding "it may be that he used his motor cortex in extraordinary ways". Researchers were also able to map out the 240 brain sections in the hope that other scientists could use them for future projects. Einstein died on 18 April 1955 aged 76 in New Jersey, United States. — PTI
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In Cold War, US planned to blow up the Moon London, November 28 American military chiefs allegedly devised the secret project, "A Study of Lunar Research Flights" — or "Project A119" — in the hope that the then Soviet Union would be intimidated by viewing the nuclear flash from the Earth, the Telegraph reported. It would have given the US a much needed morale boost after the Russians successfully launched Sputnik in 1957, according to physicist Leonard Reiffel, who was involved in the project. The US would have used an atom bomb, because a hydrogen bomb would have been too heavy. The planning reportedly included calculations by astronomer Carl Sagan, who was then a young graduate. Military officials, however, reportedly abandoned the idea, which would have taken place in 1959, because of fears that it would have an adverse effect on the Earth should the explosion fail. The project documents were kept secret for nearly 45 years, and the US government has never formally confirmed its involvement in the study, the British daily said. Instead of blowing up the Moon, the US intensified and eventually won the space race against the Soviet Union, with Neil Armstrong becoming the first man to walk on the Moon in 1969. — IANS
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Gunmen kill Saudi diplomat in Yemen
Sanaa, November 28 "Gunmen dressed in the central security forces' uniforms opened fire heavily at the car of the Saudi diplomat in Sanaa, causing it to flip over, killing him and his bodyguard," the source in Yemen said. The diplomat is an official at the embassy's military section in Yemen, the source said. Saudi Arabia confirmed the incident, identifying the diplomat as Sergeant Khaled Shobeikan al-Anzi. Anzi "came under gunfire from unknown gunmen as he was leaving his home, killing him and his Yemeni bodyguard," Saudi's official news agency said. — AFP
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Thai PM survives no-confidence vote Bangkok, November 28 Today's vote came after a three-day censure debate, and four days after a demonstration by thousands of protesters who called for the overthrow of the government, citing corruption as one of the reasons. The opposition was outnumbered in parliament, however, and lawmakers voted 308 to 159 to keep Yingluck in power. One deputy premier and other two ministers also comfortably survived no-confidence votes. Yingluck won a landslide election victory last year, and has led Thailand through one of its longest peaceful periods in recent years. The country has suffered bouts of political instability since a 2006 coup ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck's brother. The opposition Democrat Party blamed Yingluck for putting Thailand at risk of losing its spot as the world's top rice exporter and for alleged widespread corruption in the rice-pledging programme, in which the government paid farmers at prices higher than market prices. Yingluck told parliamentarians the programme gave direct benefits to Thai farmers and helped increase the prices of Thai rice. She added that the government will introduce an information technology system and install closed-circuit cameras to prevent graft. Among other issues brought up against Yingluck and other ministers were alleged irregularities in the government's flood management budget, canal-dredging projects and the procurement of combat systems on two navy frigates. — AP
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Irish PM vows swift action on abortion laws
London, November 28 However, there was adverse reaction within his own party. — PTI
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Obama greets Sikhs on Gurpurab
China says HIV/AIDS cases up 7 Copts, US pastor sentenced to death over anti-Islam movie Iran will enrich uranium 'with force' Chavez back in Cuba for treatment
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Cairo, November 28
A Pakistani court today extended by three weeks a stay on a move to rename a traffic roundabout in Lahore after legendary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.
Justice Nasir Saeed Sheikh of the Lahore High Court extended the stay after the Punjab Government and the Lahore city district government failed to submit their responses to a petition challenging the renaming of Fawara Chowk at Shadman after Bhagat Singh.
An eminent former editor of Oxford English Dictionary (OED) attempted to rewrite it by deleting thousands of words with foreign roots, including those of Indian origin, a new book claims.
