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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

World Briefs


Delay in Iraqi vote count sparks fears of election fraud
IRAQI voters braved the threat of insurgent attack to turn out in their millions for this month’s general election but eight days on not one of the country’s 18 provinces has released full results. Electoral officials say that software problems have delayed the count but some politicians are now alleging fraud. Faraj al-Haidari, head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), told reporters on Sunday that early in the process, its data entry system had been unable to cope with the volume of information being inputted.
“The server was not able to cope with it and crashed several times,” he said. — Sapa-AFP

Paedophile party disbands
A DUTCH political party formed by self-described paedophiles has voted to disband itself after failing for the second time to participate in national elections in June. The group, which sought to lower the age of sexual consent to 12, says it could not get the 600 signatures necessary to win a place on the ballot in a country of 16.5 million. It would need 60 000 votes to win a seat in the 150-member Dutch parliament. The party also failed to meet the threshold in 2006, when its creation caused an international sensation. — Sapa-AP

Facebook operations in India
SOCIAL networking site Facebook is opening an operations office in India, its first in Asia, to help manage rapid growth in the number of users. The office, in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, will have advertising and developer support teams, the company said yesterday. It will supplement Facebook’s other centres in Palo Alto, California; Dublin, Ireland; and Austin, Texas. The number of Facebook users has rocketed to over 400 million since it was founded in 2004. Seventy percent of users are now outside the US and use the site in over 70 languages. — Sapa-AP



Would-be suicide bombers shot
AFGHAN security forces shot dead five men wearing suicide vests and armed with guns as they tried to storm government buildings and a bazaar in eastern Afghanistan yesterday. “The suicide bombers, who were also armed with different types of guns ... were killed before reaching their targets,” the interior ministry said in a statement. The Taliban have been waging an insurgency against Afghanistan’s government since their own regime was overthrown in a 2001 US-led invasion. There are about 120 000 foreign NATO and US troops stationed in Afghanistan to help Kabul defeat the Taliban. — Sapa-AFP


Officials arrested over floods
THE mayor of a Kazakhstan village devastated by flooding and the local emergency services chief have been arrested as part of a criminal investigation into the disaster, the interior ministry said yesterday. At least 35 people are confirmed dead and thousands were left homeless after a dam overspilled in southern Kazakhstan, unleashing torrential flooding in the energy-rich country. Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev called for the prosecutions, saying that while recent earthquakes in Chile and Turkey could not have been prevented, the failure to check the safety of the dam and give sufficient warning for full evacuation “needs to be seen as a crime”. — Sapa- AFP

Powerful cyclone tears into Fiji
A POWERFUL cyclone packing sustained winds of 175 kilometres an hour smashed into Fiji yesterday, damaging homes and crops and forcing thousands of people to flee to evacuation centres. Cyclone Tomas was classified as a category-four cyclone – the second-most destructive on a five-point scale – the Fiji Meteorological Service said, with gusts that wreaked havoc across the north of the country. There were no early reports of casualties, although officials confirmed a woman drowned over the weekend in heavy seas as the storm approached. The cyclone was reported to be generating waves up to 7.2m high and shipping was warned to stay away from the area. It was expected to intensify yesterday evening and into early today, with average wind speeds rising to 200km/h, with gusts up to 270km/h. The head of Fiji’s Disaster Management Office, Pajiliai Dobui, said about 5 000 people had moved into evacuation centres in the north of the country, especially on the second-largest island, Vanua Levu. — Sapa-AFP


Obama seeks healthcare votes
STILL seeking votes for his proposed national healthcare overhaul, President Barack Obama appears ready to reverse his position and allow unpopular deal-sweetening measures in the hopes of finding Democratic support for the Bill whose future will be decided in coming days. Increasingly eager to finish work on his top domestic priority, Obama was set to head to northeast Ohio yesterday with a final sales pitch for healthcare legislation that the top Democratic vote-counter in the House said lacked support to pass.Obama’s top political adviser, David Axelrod, said he was “absolutely confident” the measure would pass during a make-or-break week that already saw the President delay his trip to Indonesia, Australia and Guam. “This is the week where we will have this important vote,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “I do think this is the climactic week for healthcare reform.” — Sapa-AP


Eight killed in Iraq
A DOUBLE-BLAST suicide bomber targeting a military checkpoint and labourers killed eight people yesterday in the former Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah, Iraqi police and medics said. Twenty-eight other civilians were wounded in the blasts, which occurred within minutes of each other early yesterday in the centre of Fallujah, 50km west of Baghdad. — Sapa-AFP


Car bombs explode in Nigeria
TWIN car bombs exploded outside a government building where amnesty talks were under way yesterday in Nigeria’s restive and oil-rich region, wounding two people and causing panic, a government spokesman said. Yesterday’s bombing is the most daring attack claimed by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the most prominent militant group in the Niger Delta, and they have promised more attacks.

Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate World Population, Report Warns

Computer modeling suggests a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would block out the sun with large amounts of airborne debris, disrupting global agriculture and leading to the starvation of around 1 billion people, Scientific American reported in its January issue. he nuclear winter scenario assumes that cities and industrial zones in each nation would be hit by 50 bombs the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II. Although some analysts have suggested a nuclear exchange would involve fewer weapons, researchers who created the computer models contended that the panic from an initial nuclear exchange could cause a conflict to quickly escalate. Pakistan, especially, might attempt to fire all of its nuclear weapons in case India's conventional forces overtake the country's military sites, according to Peter Lavoy, an analyst with the Naval Postgraduate School. The nuclear blasts and subsequent blazes and radiation could kill more than 20 million people in India and Pakistan, according to the article. Assuming that each of the 100 bombs would burn an area equivalent to that seen at Hiroshima, U.S. researchers determined that the weapons used against Pakistan would generate 3 million metric tons of smoke and the bombs dropped on India would produce 4 million metric tons of smoke. Winds would blow the material around the world, covering the atmosphere over all continents within two weeks. The reduction in sunlight would cause temperatures to drop by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit for several years and precipitation to drop by one-tenth. The climate changes and other environmental effects of the nuclear war would have a devastating affect on crop yields unless farmers prepared for such an occurrence in advance. The observed effects of volcano eruptions, smoke from forest fires and other events support the findings of the computer modeling, the researchers said. "A nuclear war could trigger declines in yield nearly everywhere at once, and a worldwide panic could bring the global agricultural trading system to a halt, with severe shortages in many places. Around 1 billion people worldwide who now live on marginal food supplies would be directly threatened with starvation by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan or between other regional nuclear powers," wrote Alan Robock, a climatology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Owen Brian Toon, head of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "The combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability and urban demographics may constitute one of the greatest dangers to the stability of society since the dawn of humans," they added. "Only abolition of nuclear weapons will prevent a potential nightmare. Immediate reduction of U.S. and Russian arsenals to the same levels as other nuclear powers (a few hundred) would maintain their deterrence, reduce the possibility of nuclear winter and encourage the rest of the world to continue to work toward the goal of elimination" 

Amazing new technology allows blind people to see


Craig Lundberg is the first British soldier to trial the revolutionary BrainPort system that allows his tongue to do what his eyes cannot. Now, acting as a guinea pig for the latest virtual eyesight system, Craig has regained some semblance of sight. It just gives me a sensation on me tongue to identify objects, he says. So the best way to sort of explain is, someone drawing a very detailed 2D picture on me hand and I get the object of someone drawing on me hand. The BrainPort vision system consists of a postage-stamp-size electrode array for the top surface of the tongue, a base unit, a digital video camera, and a hand-held controller for zoom and contrast inversion. Signals from the camera are sent to the flat lollipop-shaped sensor in the mouth that stimulates the tongue in the shape of the image picked up by the camera. It can even distinguish between different shades of light, reflecting them with varying strengths of pulse. Lundberg lost his sight in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Basra, southern Iraq, in 2007.

Police investigate kidnapped boy's family finances


Pakistani police investigating the kidnapping of British boy, Sahil Saeed, are looking into his father's  financial background. Officers believe a large "ransom" may have been paid for the release of the five-year-old to settle a long-standing debt. Sources close to the inquiry have told The Daily Telegraph, the abduction may have been more complicated than a straightforward kidnapping. The boy, who was taken by armed robbers during a visit to his grandmother's house in Jhelum, in Pakistan's Punjab province, was yesterday found abandoned in a field in Gujrat district, where villagers handed him over to the police. His release was confirmed by Britain's High Commissioner to Pakistan and by members of the boy's family who expressed their delight at his safe return. The boy's mother, Akila Naqqash, spoke of her joy at his release after hearing the news at 4.40am yesterday. "I'm overjoyed, over the moon. I spoke to my little boy this morning. Straight away he heard my voice he said 'mummy, mummy, I've got some new toys.' He was just a normal little boy," she said. His father, Raja Naqqash Saeed, returned to Britain last week while his son was still being held by his captors, shortly after making an emotional appeal for his release and pleading with the kidnappers that he could not afford their ransom demands. But Punjab province's law minister, Rana Sanaullah, yesterday claimed Mr Saeed may have returned to Britain to negotiate with the kidnappers and that the boy was released after a ransom believed to be around £80,000 was paid. "An international gang was involved in it, and it was demanding the ransom outside Pakistan in a European country," he said. Police said their inquiry was focused on Spain where an estimated 60,000 Pakistanis live in an around Barcelona. Many of them are believed to have roots in the Jhelum area. A source close to the investigation said they were looking into whether the kidnapping was connected to debts.

Pak Army receive Cobra Helicopters from America


American military has transferred a squadron of Cobra Helicopters to Pakistan Army. According to sources, the helicopters transferred were being used by Jordanian Armed Forces. America will also fund 75 million dollars for the up-gradation of the helicopters currently being used by the Pakistan Armed Forces. The Cobra Helicopters were used in operation Rahay-Nijat and the new addition would provide much needed help and firepower especially in the upcoming Orakzai Agency Operation. Cobra Helicopters can fly at an altitude of 11,400 feet. The helicopters could also be used for night time operations.


Clashes break out in East Jerusalem



Palestinians have clashed with Israeli police in two areas of occupied East Jerusalem after Palestinian groups called for a "day of rage" over the reopening of a synagogue in the Old City. Palestinians threw stones at Israeli police who responded with stun grenades in the Shuafat and Essawiyya neighborhoods early on Tuesday. At least 90 people were wounded in the clashes, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, with around 15 people seriously hurt by rubber-coated steel bullets, teargas inhalation and some beaten by Israeli police. Security forces have said about eight police were lightly injured and about 60 arrests were made. About 3,000 police officers had been deployed in east Jerusalem and nearby villages after Hamas called for action in response to the reopening of the Hurva synagogue. The Hurva synagogue, considered by some people to to be one of Judaism's most sacred sites, reopened for the first time in 62 years on Monday in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. The walled Old City is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which makes the reopening of the synagogue controversial. Moreover, al-Aqsa, Islam's third holiest site, and the Hurva are about just 700 metres apart.