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US to head inquiry into WASHINGTON, Oct 2 Amid a "full-court press" by president Bill Clinton to quell renewed violence in ....more Indian American fighting WASHINGTON, Oct 2: An Indian American, Arathi Jayaram, a protester against the cruel treatment ......more Mystery of Adolf Hitler BERLIN, Oct 2: A chance conversation with a jew-hating Nazi .....more Afghan refugees return QUETTA, PAKISTAN, Oct 2: Habib Khan, a sturdy 20-year-old Afghan living in Pakistan....more |
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Genetic
technology: HANBURG, Oct 2: Genetic testing, genetically modified drugs and medicines that repair gene defects are already an established part of medicine, even if genetic intervention is still in its early stages.....more Nader attacks Democrats, BOSTON, Oct 2: Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader attacked Democrats and Republicans for barring him from the presidential debates and accused the two parties of selling out to corporate and moneyed interests......more Leeches can be used to ESSEN, Oct 2: Applying blood-sucking leeches to the parts of the body afflicted by arthritis is an excellent way to relieve pain, German researchers...more China terms 2 Catholic BEIJING, Oct 2: China has provided details about two of the more than 100 catholics made saints by the Pope, saying the ........more |
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US to head inquiry into mideast violence WASHINGTON, Oct 2 Amid a "full-court press" by president Bill Clinton to quell renewed violence in the middle East, Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to support a U.S.-led, three-party inquiry into the outbreak, the White House said. Clinton spoke by telephone with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak late on Saturday and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat today, U.S. National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley said yesterday. He said Clinton urged an end to the violence that officials in the region say has killed at least 29 people — 27 Palestinians, an Israeli Arab and an Israeli soldier — over four days. The violence has come as a new blow to the U.S. president’s efforts to overcome obstacles to a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace deal — principally disputes over the future of holy sites in Jerusalem that helped ignite the current violence — before he leaves office in January. All sides say the window of opportunity for a deal will soon close. "The President called on both sides to exert maximum efforts to restore calm immediately," Crowley said. "Prime Minister Barak and chairman Arafat agreed that as soon as conditions permit, the U.S. will chair a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian security officials for the purpose of fact finding and to prevent a recurrence of the past few days," he said. He said the meeting of security officials of the three countries would be "in the region" and would follow separate inquiries by Israeli and Palestinian officials. U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, national security adviser Sandy Berger and other top officials have been aggressively working diplomatic contacts. "This has been a full court press to work with both sides to urge them to bring the violence to an end," he said. Clinton, in his conversations with the two leaders, expressed "his deep concern about the escalation of violence and to convey his condolences to the families of the victims," Crowley said. Jon Alterman, of the U.S. Institute of Peace, told CNN television that U.S. mediation in the past has helped lead to an effective Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation. "One of the true successes of American mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in the last several years has been that Israeli and Palestinian security cooperation has been superb," he said. "The unfortunate thing about this situation is that it has a polarising effect in both the Israeli and Palestinian communities." Said Crowley, "this is clearly a tragic situation on both sides, which is why we are doing everything that we can to help restore calm as quckly as possible." (REUTERS) |
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Indian American fighting for right to stay with lover WASHINGTON, Oct 2: An Indian American, Arathi Jayaram, a protester against the cruel treatment of Indian cows, is fighting in Virginia’s courts for the right to stay with her lover without benefit of marriage, while under probation. Virginia, one of the 12 states out of the 50 in the US which still have laws that prohibits cohabitation without marriage, threw the book at her. Jayaram was ordered by her probation officer to marry her fiance or vacate his house. Jayaram (23) is receiving "unfair treatment because she is a member of PETA (People’s for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)," her Alexendria-based lawyer, Philip Hirachkop told reporters yesterday. PETA is waging a virulent campaign for the boycott of Indian leather unless Indian cows are better treated. Hirachkop has filed a motion in the US district court for an exemption from the Virginia law on the ground that his client committed no crime of moral turpitude by living with her lover. In 36 years of practicing law in Virginia, he told reporters, he has never heard of any such prosecution. The Virginia law against living together without marrying is intended, according to the law, to prevent engaging in "fornication" and "lewd and lascivious cohabitation." The lawyer says it is hard to prove those who actions. Countless adults in Virginia, including well-known officials, he says, are cohabiting but no one is enforcing the law against them. "We have really got the fornication police running loose in Norfolk," he said. Her lawyer says in his motion "Ms Jayaram loves her fiance and they plan to get married, but they should not be forced to get hastily married pursuant to an edict of a probation office, nor should the court get itself into the business of ordering shotgun weddings." Hirschkop cites a case law in his motion, in particular a 1979 decision to reverse the denial of a virginia bar licence to a woman who lived with a man. In a news release sent out in September, Jayaram said "I am being punished for living in a state that only recently banned cockfighting and is now trying to pass a law making hunting for fun a constitutionally protected activity." Jayaram was earlier convicted for tossing a Tofu Pie at Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman on May 30 during a demonstration. She was convicted of a misdemeanor by the US district court and sentenced to two years’ probation and community service. The court ordered that supervision of probation be transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, where she lives. Jayaram reported dutifully to her probation officer and, when asked for her address, said she had just signed a lease with her fiance. The officer then told her she had a week to get married or move out. Research conducted by the University of Wisconsin has found that 430,000 American males and females lived together without marrying in the 1960’s. Now the number is 4.25 million. Cohabiting was illegal throughout the country until abut 1970. "Fornication" is punishable in Virginia by up to a 250 dollar fine while "lewd and lascivious cohabitation" is punishable by a 500 dollar fine. (PTI) |
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Mystery of Adolf Hitler pondered in new biography BERLIN, Oct 2: A chance conversation with a jew-hating Nazi sympathiser at a cafe outside Munich in 1972 made Ian Kershaw wonder: Just what was it about Adolf Hitler and his Nazi movement that Germans once found so appealing? "I remember one phrase in particular where he said ‘Der Jude Ist Eine Laus’ — the Jew is a louse," said Kershaw, a historian at England’s Sheffield University. "I had never come across these sentiments before and I was just sort of so shocked by them and I started wondering what went on in this little place where I was." Now, after a decade of intense research and 2,000 pages of writing, Kershaw has completed the second and final volume of Hitler’s biography, hailed by some as perhaps the most complete work on the German dictator in any language. The book does not offer shocking revelations, but rather focuses on a detailed portrait of the interaction between Hitler and German society that allowed and facilitated his rise and hold on total power. "You can’t expect after 60 years a radically different view of Hitler would come forward," Kershaw told Reuters during a visit to Berlin where he stayed just a few blocks from the site where hitler once ruled much of the western world. "What you get out of this is a sense how this regime was inexorably moving towards war, genocide and final destruction, even without hitler at all stages having to do very much. "When you look at the unfolding of genocidal policy what is surprising is...How little hitler needed to do to unleash this tremendous genocidal dynamic in the state and in the population." That meant that often aides would anticipate what hitler would want and act — even when it come to implementing a policy as brutal and far-reaching as the holocaust. A decade of research still could not unravel the mystery of all of Hitler’s actions, Kershaw says. "Why (was) Hitler so incredibly secretive about the final solution?" he asked, of the code for genocide. "The fact is he didn’t speak about this in any direct sense even amongst his closest entourage and that is a little bit surprising." "Probably the answer was that he was concerned with his own image, his own prestige and he wanted to leave the dirty work to (SS Leader Heinrich) Himmler." Although a few of Hitler’s minor aides — including his last secretary and the Valet who burned the dictator’s body after his 1945 suicide — are still alive, Kershaw said they have long since provided their insights so he relied on earlier interviews and documents. The opening of Russia’s archives also gave Kershaw sccess to some new documents unavailable to historians of previous biographies. Perhaps most vital to his work was a complete copy of Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’s diary, which has a detailed if biased daily look at the Fuehrer’s activities. The time needed to research and study all these documents and then write a book took Kershaw by surprise. "When I started 10 years ago, started doing the research, I didn’t think it was going to last 10 years. Probably I would not have started it otherwise," said Kershaw. "It cost a great deal in term of energy and time and effort and I wonder sometimes if the 10 years were best served in doing so. "Many times I’ve wanted to watch a football match on the television or something but I said no I can’t because I must get on and write this next bit." "All sorts of things then suffer at the fringes. Everything is subordinated to this one goal — that sounds a little bit hitlerian that," he said with a laugh. Many critics are glad he made the effort, and about 150,000 people have already bought the first volume. The New Yorker magazine wrote that this was "as close to definitive as anything we are likely to see", and other reviews have echoed the sentiment. The German translation of the second volume covering the period 1937-45 and published last month brought positive reviews although some complained of inelegant prose. The English language version will be published this month. Some readers may be struck by the relative scarcity of personal life portrayed in the volumes. "The things which in a biography that you would normally want to focus on very sharply are in Hitler’s case relatively uninteresting," said Kershaw. "Hitler became in a sense just his public image...So the personal life sort of disappeared." "Just detached from the immense impact of this man, the personal life is really not so interesting. Or Hitler’s sex life. There’s a book actually written about it but it is a very short book because there is nothing to say, really." The unassuming Kershaw says that during the research he was immersed in the Hitler story but never obsessed by it. "Although I have been prepossessed with Hitler as a subject of my work I have not been prepossessed with him as a person," he said. "I don’t dream about Hitler, never have done." He said he did not harbour the historian’s secret wish to have met the man either. "Not only was he a repulsive figure, but I wouldn’t have actually got the answers to the questions I had about him," he said. Although Kershaw says he was able to keep a professional distance from his subject matter, he said that Hitler will always shadow Germany. "The country will retain its historic responsibility for what happened and to that extent it cannot never really get away from Hitler," he said. "Hitler represents a crucial, perhaps the crucial episode in the history. As time goes on there will be greater distance and it won’t be so immediate but I don’t think they will escape from it." (REUTERS) |
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Afghan refugees return to a devastated land QUETTA, PAKISTAN, Oct 2: Habib Khan, a sturdy 20-year-old Afghan living in Pakistan, has never seen his native land but is keen to take the dusty road home. But his defiant, deep blue eyes cannot mask a little anxiety. He wonders if going to Afghanistan from a dismal refugee camp in Pakistan will be deliverance from fear and hunger, or if he will have to struggle like millions of others to survive in a land parched by drought and devastated by war. Khan, now living in Quetta in Southwestern Pakistan, said he had agonised for days before making up his mind to go to Afghanistan. He is one of the thousands of refugees who each year accept meagre aid from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), about 20 dollar and a bag of wheat per person, to go home. Pakistan and Iran were home to several million Afghan refugees in the 1980s and 1990s. But their hospitality is now wearing thin, partly because they have their own domestic problems to deal with but also because there appears no end in sight to Afghanistan’s woes. There are now 2.1 million Afghan refugees, both registered and unregistered, in Pakistan and 1.4 million others in Iran. Pakistan is encouraging them to return UN officials and Afghans say Iran is simply forcing them out. Donor fatigue with a problem more than two decades old is making it difficult for the numerous UN organisations involved with Afghans to collect funds to look after the largest group of refugees in the world. Khan, like others in the Quetta transit camp who have decided to go home, is aware his hardship is unlikely to end in Afghanistan. But he seems oblivious to the extent of the devastation and poverty the 20 years of war has wreaked on his country. The UNHCR says about 100,000 refugees are going home very year. The refugees understand what they are doing and there is nothing the agency can do to stop people from going to Afghanistan when their lives in exile are so difficult. "They are very poverty-stricken, living in a very harsh environment and they themselves are telling us they want to come," said Ahmed Said Farah, chief of the UNHCR mission in Afghanistan. "We are not repatriating at the moment, we are facilitating repatriation. They come to us, there is lot of pressure on their side to come back and we are assisting them to come back." "It is very clear to them where are they coming from and where they are going. They are making the choices," he said. The Taleban say they welcome the returning refugees, and even allow a 30-day grace period for men to grow beards, as required under their strict Islamic rule. Another UN official, in the western Afghan town of Herat, said the returning refugees would face problems in obtaining basic social services and education as well as in getting access to potable water. It is of no comfort to the returning refugees, but the list of hardships they face is the same virtually everyone has to grapple with. "The difficulties that returnees face are the same which Afghans generally face," the UN official said. Where there was once at least some infrastructure for water, schools, health, irrigation, electricity, roads and trade, barely any exists now. War, first due to the soviet occupation in 1980s and then between feuding Afghan factions, has left most towns destroyed and people confused about loyalties. Some order has come to most of the country since the Taleban burst onto the scene in 1994 and swept over Kabul and most of the country in the next two years. But life remains cheerless, with war continuing in the far northeast, and the strict religious and social edicts of the Taleban banning even basic entertainment such as television. "Life is just hardship," said a returnee in Qala Pisak, a mud village 20 km (12 miles) east of Herat. "We are familiar with hunger and hardship," he said as he stood at the head of a long line of bearded men assembled to greet UNHCR chief Sadako Ogata on a recent visit. "If we were able to find a piece of bread it would be sufficient for us," the Afghan elder told Ogata. As he spoke under a blazing sun in a cloudless sky, barefoot children with solemn faces peaked from behind mud walls. (REUTERS) |
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Genetic technology:
controversial, but HANBURG, Oct 2: Genetic testing, genetically modified drugs and medicines that repair gene defects are already an established part of medicine, even if genetic intervention is still in its early stages. Medics are placing great hopes in genetic technology, but others fear ethical and legal encroachments on human rights and say these issues have not yet been sorted out. Nearly 70 licensed medicines in Germany already originate from genetic organisms, according to the VFA, the German Association of Drug Manufacturers involved in research. They include insulin for diabetics, inoculations against hepatitis, and erythropoietin, which is taken for anaemia and as a performance-enhancing drug in sports. Genetic medicines totalled 1.8 billion marks (820 million dollars) in sales in Germany in 1999 - only a 3.5-per-cent share of the market, but double the turnover of three years ago. Medics believe genetic tests offer exciting possibilities, even if there is still a big gap between diagnosis and treatment. If people have knowledge of genetic problems or weaknesses, they can adjust their lives to remain healthy, said Professor Karsten held, an expert in human genetics and chairman of the ethics commission of the Hamburg General Medical Council. For example, a young woman who discovers she has a genetic predisposition toward thrombosis would know she has a five times as high as normal risk of the illness, he said. She would know that if she took the contraceptive pill that risk would be 35 times higher, and if she smoked it would increase still further. Similarly, if doctors knew a patient carried the gene for hereditary colonic cancer, they would be able to advise regular cancer tests from the age of 10 to ensure early detection and treatment of a possible cancer. If genetic tests on a pregnant woman reveal that her unborn baby has the haemophilia gene, she could choose a maternity clinic specialising in this problem. Unborn girls carrying the gene for adrenogenital syndrome can be treated in the womb with medication to prevent the masculinization of the sexual organs. But Professor Wolfgang Engel, of the institute of human genetics at Goettingen University, Germany, nevertheless fears antenatal genetic tests could also pose a danger to society. "The danger exists that being born disabled is no longer allowed as an alternative to health, and the individual family are no longer able to decide whether they wants an ill child or not." Professor held believes genetic diagnosis in adults raises the prospect of patients being tested without their knowledge. "The greatest danger is of thoughtless diagnosis and lack of information for patients." The legal consequences of genetic tests in Germany have not yet been sorted out, he said. "I do not know of a case of someone being refused a job as the result of a genetic test," said Professor Gerhard Wolff of Freiburg University. But many professions such as the police force or air traffic control already refuse employment to people purely because of physical differences. People should not be denied certain jobs or insurances simply on grounds of their predisposition to certain genetic illnesses, he said. Professor Engel said individuals must retain the right to refuse a genetic test. "He must not be refused insurance or jobs for that reason," he said. But medics place great hopes in tailor-made medicines in future. "When you are prescribed a medicine from a doctor today, there is a 20 per cent chance that it does not work or has serious side effects," said Professor held. This is not because it was a bad medicine, but because it was not specific enough. One patient might metabolizen it too quickly, another not at all and suffer side effects. At the end of August a new medicine called herceptin to fight breast cancer in women was licensed by the EU. It is aimed at a specific gene and is only effective in 30 per cent of breast cancer patients. It is not a tailor-made drug, but a test for this specific gene defect is obligatory. (DPA) |
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Nader attacks Democrats, Republicans over debates BOSTON, Oct 2: Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader attacked Democrats and Republicans for barring him from the presidential debates and accused the two parties of selling out to corporate and moneyed interests. Just two days before the first debate, Nader yesterday lambasted his opponents, saying it was unethical of the two major political parties to bar him from the debates, which he described as the most important avenue of access to the voters who will decide the election. "The keys to the gate to those tens of millions of Americans are held by the very two parties that small parties are trying to challenge," Nader told a cheering audience at Boston’s Fleet Centre. Organisers said the crowd numbered 12,000. "Never Again should we allow this to happen," Nader said to thunderous applause. "The choice for the American people should not be between the bad Democrats and the worse Republicans." The Democratic candidate, Vice President Al Gore, and his Republican rival, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, will square off tomorrow in Boston in the first of three debates. The Commission on presidential debates, set up by democrats and Republicans to manage the debate process, excluded Nader and other third-party candidates last Tuesday. It said earlier that to qualify, they would have to be on the ballot in enough states to have a theoretical chance of winning the election and show around 15 per cent support in national public opinion surveys. According to the latest version of one such poll, Nader is the choice of 3 per cent of the electorate. That Reuters/MSNBC poll, conducted by John Zogby, surveyed 1,205 likely voters between Thursday and Saturday. It found gore leading bush by 45 per cent to 43 per cent. Libertarian party hopeful Harry Browne polled 1 per cent, as did the reform party’s Pat Buchanan, and seven percent of the respondents were undecided. The margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points. Nader, whose corporate-bashing rhetoric has led some to brand him an extremist, denounced that label and sought to turn it back on his accusers. "Extremism is when corporate interests corrupt, buy and sell our political representatives and destroy our democracy," he said. "It is not extremism to fight to stop this sort of destruction and hijacking of our Government." Nader said Bush and Gore were equally tainted by so-called soft-money contributions and had corrupted the political system by deferring to moneyed interests. He called Bush "a corporation running for president disguised as a person" and accused gore of having an "atrocious record" on environmental issues. "Everywhere you follow the tracks of Al Gore, there is betrayal," he said. As he left the stage, he urged his supporters to turn out for planned protests tomorrow at the debate site. "I’ll see you all down at the debate," he called. (REUTERS) |
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Leeches can be used to relieve arthritis pain ESSEN, Oct 2: Applying blood-sucking leeches to the parts of the body afflicted by arthritis is an excellent way to relieve pain, German researchers have discovered. Specialists at the Department of Internal Medicine at Essen Central Clinic used leeches to treat 10 patients suffering from arthritis of the joints. Within two days the pain was reduced by at least half and even more over the following two months, said Gustav Dobos, the head of the clinic. "This is probably because the joint becomes easier to move once the pain has been alleviated," he said. A comparative group of patients, treated only by physiotherapy, benefited from hardly any pain relief at all, he said. Elisabeth Walgenbach, aged 58, who suffers from arthritis in her right foot, turned to leech therapy after both physiotherapy and radiotherapy failed to relieve her pain. During her therapy, a small brown leech attached itself to her ankle with its back end while its head wandered searchingly over the foot looking for a good place to bite. "It feels like a bee sting," she said. Professor Dobos said there are about 20 pain-relieving substances in the saliva of leeches. The animals were once used in traditional medicine. In the nineteenth century they were so fashionable that the animals nearly became extinct in Europe. Leeches are currently only used in orthodox medicine in skin transplantation to break down blood congestion in tissue that has not yet fully developed. Professor Dobos said it was the first time such a comparative experiment had been carried out. He is now embarking on a larger study. This combination of conventional and natural therapies to fight pain is unique in Germany, said Professor Dobos. Scientists have not yet managed to artificially produce the combination of pain-killing substances found in leeches. Yet the natural therapy is not expensive. A single leech costs health insurance agencies just 2.25 u.S. Dollars and only two or three animals are needed per treatment. (DPA) |
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China terms 2 Catholic saints as criminal BEIJING, Oct 2: China has provided details about two of the more than 100 catholics made saints by the Pope, saying the men were actually China-hating criminals whose canonisations were perverse and vicious acts. The Chinese Government has exploded in anger with the Vatican for canonising 87 Chinese and 33 missionaries on Sunday, saying the act glorified a century of western imperialism in China. The canonisations, which fell on the 51st anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, also severely hampered chances for normalising relations between Beijing and the holy see, which do not have diplomatic ties, it said. Pope John Paul said making saints of the martyrs, who the Vatican says died for their faith between 1648 and 1930, should be seen as honouring Chinese, not defending colonialism. But a spokesman for China’s Sta Te Administration of religious affairs cited examples of "monstrous crimes" committed by the saints against the Chinese people, including one who he said slept with all the brides of his followers. Aldericus Crescitelli, an Italian missionary, "was notorious for taking the ‘right to the first night’ of each bride under his diocese", Xinhua news agency quoted the spokesman as saying in a report. A second missionary, Auguste Chatdelaine of France, instigated the second opium war and the burning of the imperial summer palace in 1860 after he was punished for felonies, the spokesman said. "Did they represent god’s ‘true love’ to the Chinese people like the Vatican said?" asked the spokesman, who Xinhua did not identify. Chinese catholics are allowed to practice their faith only under a Communist Party-controlled church, which China says has four million members. The Vatican says there are eight million Chinese catholics loyal to the Pope who worship in secret. The top bishop of China’s state-backed church called the canonisations intolerable and urged the Vatican to repent its past crimes against Chinese people. "Choosing this date to canonise the so-called ‘saints’ is an open insult and humiliation against the Chinese catholic adherents," Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan, Chairman of the China Catholic Patriotic Association, said yesterday. Fu was among 120 catholic bishops, priests, monks and nuns who attended a flag-raising ceremony in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to celebrate national day. He later conducted a mass to give thanks for 51 years of communist rule. (REUTERS) |
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