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Indian
Captain freed PARIS, Dec 23: A French Court released on bail the Indian captain of the ill-fated Erika Tanker, which sank off French ....more Passenger vessel sinks MANILA, Dec 23: An ferry carrying 630 passengers and crewmen sank .....more Indian couple jailed for fraud LONDON, Dec 23: A London-based Indian couple and three others, who set up a series of front...more Spacewalking astronauts repair hubble SPACE CENTER, HOUSTAN, Dec 23: Working more than 600 kms ......more Mesh tubes keep heart BOSTON, Dec 23: For years, heart specialists have debated ....more |
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Chandrika seeks medical COLOMBO, Dec 23: Hours after being sworn in for a second six-year term, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga ....more Scientists release global earthquake hazard map SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 23: Much of the world’s population lives on potentially shaky ground, scientists are saying after releasing.....more Algerian pleads innocent SEATTLE,
Dec 23: An
Algerian accused of trying to smuggle nitroglycerin and
other bomb-making materials into the United States from
Canada has ....more |
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Indian
Captain freed PARIS, Dec 23: A French Court released on bail the Indian captain of the ill-fated Erika Tanker, which sank off French Coast on December 12, but asked him not to leave the country until investigations are completed into the incident even as authorities battled to bring the devastating oil slick left in its wake under control. Sources said, Krun Mathur, who has been in a Paris prison since his arrest on December 15, was ordered by the investigating judge yesterday to surrender his passport and not leave France, until a probe against him on charges of endangering lives of the crew and maritime pollution are completed. Mathur’s bail application was earlier posted for December 28 at the appeals court but his lawyers requested the court to advance his hearing. Indian officials were not allowed to see him immediately after his arrest. They were allowed to meet him only on Monday after persistent efforts. Meanwhile, France inducted hundreds of military as well civilian personnel to combat the oil slick now threatening to hit the coast by Christmas eve. French, Spanish Dutch and British ships are battling to remove the oil slicks spread over an area of 300 kms. Despite a week-long effort, clean-up crews have only been able to retrieve 1,000 tonnes from an estimated 10,000 tonnes of oil discharged into the sea as the Maltese-registered Erika Tanker broke into two in the Bay of Biscay. French officials said coastal pollution was unavoidable. Meteorological officials said the oil slick will first hit the Island of Yeu, 20 km off the western coast of France by Christmas eve and in the next few days touch the mainland seriously threatening marine life. Twenty-six Indian crew of the tanker were saved by rescue teams. Shortly afterwards, french police arrested the Captain. The court refused him bail last week drawing fire from the Ship Masters Association which said he was being made a scapegoat for the accident. Indian consular sources said yesterday that the Captain was in a good condition. (PTI) |
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Passenger vessel sinks in central Philippines MANILA, Dec 23: An ferry carrying 630 passengers and crewmen sank early today in central Philippine waters, leaving more than 400 people missing, officials said. Only 180 people have been plucked out of the waters around Bantayan Island off Cebu province, 585 km South of Manila, where the M/V Asia-South Korea sank at 5 a.m.local time (0230 Ist). No casualties have so far been reported as several Coast Guard teams, at least three Navy boats, local fishermen and rescue groups continued to scour the area for more survivors. Coast Guard Commander Godofredo Mandal said the 2,840-tonne vessel, operated by the Cebu-based Transasia shipping lines, was sailing overnight from Cebu to nearby Iloilo province. Defence Secretary Orlando Mercado, Chairman of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, said the vessel was carrying 578 passengers and 52 crewmen. Radio reports said the passengers included 175 students of a University in Cebu going home to Iloilo for the holidays. "We are hoping that we will be able to rescue as many as possible," Mr Mercado said. "We are keeping our fingers crossed and we are doing everything." Hundreds of ferries carry passengers between the Philippines’ more than 7,000 islands, which have been the scene of some of the world’s most horrific maritime disasters. The worst ferry accident in history occurred in the Philippines in 1987 when 3,000 to 4,000 people drowned. (DPA) |
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Indian couple jailed for fraud LONDON, Dec 23: A London-based Indian couple and three others, who set up a series of front companies to dupe the exchequer of customs and excise duty to the tune of 18.5 million pound, has been jailed by a city court here. The Southwark crown court on Tuesday sentenced Rahul Chandubbai Patel, 35, to five years of imprisonment and his 29-year-old wife Nilam, to a one-year jail term. Three other co-defendants, Jatinderpal Sihota, 33, Jagtar Singh Basram, 27, and Daljinder Singh Dhillon, 32, were sentenced to varying jail terms in the case. Prosecutor Jeremy Gompertz QC told the court it would appear that Patel and his wife were concerned with purchase and storage of drinks and its disposal through the trade and handling of money. The couple and the others set up four front companies and forged documents to show millions of pounds worth of wine had been exported to France and Spain. In reality they were just shifted to trucks from bonded warehouses and remained within the country, thus avoiding millions in excise duties. During a search operation, customs and excise officers recovered stamps and equipment used for forging documents. During another undercover operation they traced at least 360 illegal transfers from warehouses including some from the London city bond in Silvertown, Docklands. Sihota and Dhillon were sentenced to three years each and Basram one year in jail. Another person Colin Lesley Pearcy, 32, a Director of Reynolds Transport Limited, based in Surrey, was sentenced to two years. (PTI) |
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Spacewalking astronauts repair hubble SPACE CENTER, HOUSTAN, Dec 23: Working more than 600 kms above earth with ratchet tools, two astronauts have fitted the hubble space telescope with instruments needed to restore its unparalleled view of the cosmos. It was the first of three spacewalks over the last three days on the dlrs 3 billion observatory and, by far, the most important. Hubble has been out of service since mid-November. Keenly aware of the magnitude of the job, Steven Smith and John Grunsfeld on Wednesday floated out of space shuttle discovery’ hatch almost an hour early and quickly began organizing their tools in the cargo bay. Four hours later, they had replaced all six of hubbles gyroscopes. The work was made more difficult by stubborn bolts and storage-bin lids that wouldn’t close. A quick electronic check of the new gyroscopes showed they all worked. Additional testing was needed, though, before NASA could declare 100 percent success. In any event, it will be a few weeks before the hubble resumes making observations. Also on the evening’s agenda: Equipping each of the telescope’s six batteries with a voltage regulator to prevent overheating. The spacewalk is to last six or seven hours. The hubble, which was plucked from space with discovery’s robot arm on tuesday, has been useless to astronomers since a fourth gyroscope failed on Nov 13. A minimum of three are needed to keep the 13-meter, 11,250-kilogram telescope steady as it aims at stars and other celestial targets. (AP) |
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Mesh tubes keep heart arteries open: Study BOSTON, Dec 23: For years, heart specialists have debated whether it is wise to use mesh tubes called stents to keep heart arteries open after they have been expanded with an inflatable balloon. Two studies in today’s New England journal of medicine suggest the answer is a qualified "yes". The tubes are effective at keeping the arteries open, the studies conclude, but there is still no evidence that the stents help heart disease patients live longer. Used for less than a decade, stents are now implanted in up to 70 percent of heart disease sufferers who undergo angioplasty, a procedure in which a balloon is threaded into the heart at a point where heart disease has narrowed an artery. When the balloon is expanded, it usually reopens the blood vessel. Doctors implant a half million stents in the United States each year. In one study of 900 volunteers who had suffered a heart attack and were treated with angioplasty, doctors found that 11 percent of the stent recipients suffered chest pain after six months, compared to 17 percent who did not get stents. While blood vessels narrowed in 34 per cent of those who did not get a stent, the rate was 20 per cent for those who did. However, the study — led by Dr Cindy L Grines of William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich — found that the death rate after six months was 4.2 per cent for stent recipients compared with 2.7 per cent for volunteers who did not get them. That is not statistically significant. But researchers had hoped that stent use would dramatically reduce mortality. In the study, they acknowledge that "we have no evidence" that stents reduce the most important complications of a heart attack: Death, a stroke or a second heart attack. The second study, a statistical analysis of cases in British Columbia, also noted that heart vessels have tended to stay open longer as the popularity of stenting increased. "It is disappointing that no study has shown that stents favourably influence mortality," said Dr Alice K Jacobs of Boston Medical Centre in an editorial in the journal. "In fact, several trials, including the study by grines, report higher rates of death and (heart attack) among patients randomly assigned to stent implantation." But in her editorial, Jacobs said further tests may show that stenting helps heart disease patients live longer because only a few patients — 3,009 in eight experiments — "have been followed over comparatively short periods of time." (REUTERS) |
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Chandrika seeks medical treatment in London COLOMBO, Dec 23: Hours after being sworn in for a second six-year term, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga flew to London for medical treatment to wounds she suffered during an assassination attempt, officials said today. Ms Kumaratunga, who suffered facial wounds in a Saturday attack by a suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) woman suicide bomber, won 51.12 percent of votes cast in Tuesday’s balloting. The President, with a bandage covering her right eye, took the oath of office before Chief Justice Sarath Silva at a simple ceremony at her official residence, temple trees, shortly after the Commissioner of elections declared her winner yesterday. Her nearest rival Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP) got 42.71 per cent of the votes. There were 11 other candidates. "The President is likely to be away for a week or a week and a half. Hopefully she will be back before the millennium," a senior Government official told Reuters in saying Ms Kumaratunga left late yesterday for London by air. (REUTERS) |
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Scientists release global earthquake hazard map SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 23: Much of the world’s population lives on potentially shaky ground, scientists are saying after releasing the first map detailing the entire planet’s earthquake hazard zones. The ominously colourful document offers few surprises: Southern California, Southeastern Hawaii, Turkey, Taiwan, Iceland and the India-China border are most likely to experience strong shaking in the future. Active tectonics make outstanding scenery and people want to live there, said Kaye Shedlock of the US Geological Survey. You just have to recognize what your hazards are. The map, developed by 500 scientists over seven years, offers developing nations new information that can be used to update or establish building codes. Some nations in Africa, for example, never compiled such data. We can say today that as a result of this programme, more than half the nations of the world have a new generation of seismic hazard maps, said Domenico Giardini of the Swiss Seismologica Service in Zurich. As much as 15 percent of the planet’s land is in zones of high or very high hazard, defined as a 10 percent chance or greater of violent shaking within next 50 years, Shedlock said. Roughly 40 percent is considered low hazard. One of the greatest hazard areas in the map, coloured red, is along the India-China border, where India is literally smashing into Asia producing the still-growing Himalayas, the tallest mountains in the world. (AP) |
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Algerian pleads innocent as US steps up security SEATTLE, Dec 23: An Algerian accused of trying to smuggle nitroglycerin and other bomb-making materials into the United States from Canada has pleaded innocent to all five counts of a federal indictment. Ahmed Ressam, 32, was indicted on charges he made false statements to US Customs officers smuggled nitroglycerin transported explosives and possessed unregistered firearms -the apparent timing devices found in Ressam’s car. He could get up to 40 years in prison and fined more than 1 million if convicted on all counts. Assistant US Attorney Francis Diskin told the judge at yesterday’s hearing that material found in Ressam’s car was sufficient to build a powerful bomb. Ressam, speaking through an Arabic interpreter, answered affirmatively when US district judge John Weinberg asked him if he understood the charges and the meaning of his pleas. Weinberg ordered him to continue to be held without bail. There are no conditions that can be set than would ensure his appearance and safety of the community, he said. Tom Hillier, Ressam’s public defender, said the defense did not object to the lack of bail. Later, at a news conference, US Attorney Kate Pflaumer urged anyone who knows of anyone that might be planning a terrorist attack to come forward. Under conspiracy law, an individual is responsible until he disassociates himself and affirmatively goes to authorities, Pflaumer said. He would say little about Ressam. Ressam’s arrest, and the arrest of a second Algerian at the Canadian border in Vermont, have stirred fears of attacks during the new year. (AP) |
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