Daily Excelsior... World

Australian researchers
find pineapple crush
can fight cancer

SYDNEY, July 7: Australian scientists have discovered pineapple molecules can act as powerful anti-cancer agents and said today the research could ........more

Pak Govt delays decision
on Nawaz Sharif’s passport

ISLAMABAD, July 7: Pakistan Government appears to have developed second thoughts over renewing deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s . ..........more

Oxford honour for alumnus Manmohan Singh

LONDON, July 7: Four decades after he left the Oxford university with a doctorate in Economics, Prime Minister Manmohan ....more

Pak denies Bin Laden, Mulla Omar hiding in tribal regions

ISLAMABAD, July 7: Pakistan has categorically rejected claims by some Afghan Government officials that Al-Qaeda network chief Osama bin Laden ...........more

Iran, Pak decide to invite India for talks on gas pipeline

ISLAMABAD, July 7: Iran and Pakistan have decided to invite India to hold trilateral meetings of their oil ministers to speed up the implementation of ......more

New scientific find may
help smokers quit

LONDON, July 7: The mental boost smokers get from nicotine is linked to the same area of the brain in mice as its addictiveness and the two are .....more

Taiwan carries out
military maneuvers

YUANLI (TAIWAN), July 7: Taiwanese troops today carried out a major military exercise aimed at fending off a ...more

Chinese navy launches massive rescue exercise off Shanghai

BEIJING, July 7: Chinese navy today launched a massive joint nautical rescue exercise to test its ability to......more

Rice to skip key ASEAN talks, may be viewed as snub by region ..............

Freedom museum at WTC site to shrink, focus more on victims ........

Human rights watch urges Afghan leader to try war criminals .........

Myanmar says 400 prisoners freed, refuses to identify them ...........

Australian researchers find pineapple crush can fight cancer

SYDNEY, July 7: Australian scientists have discovered pineapple molecules can act as powerful anti-cancer agents and said today the research could lead to a new class of cancer-fighting drugs.

Scientists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) said their work centred on two molecules from bromelaine, an extract derived from crushed pineapple stems that is used to tenderise meat, clarify beers and tan hides.

One of the molecules, CCZ, stimulates the body’s immune system to target and kill cancer cells, the other, CCS, blocks a protein called Ras, which is defective in 30 per cent of all cancers.

QIMR researcher tracey mynott said her team had set out to find why the enzyme-rich bromelaine crush had such strong effects on biological material.

"In searching for these components, we discovered the CCS and CCZ proteins and found that they could block growth of a broad range of tumour cells, including breast, lung, colon, ovarian and melanoma," Mynott said in a statement.

While clinical trials are a long way off, Mynott said the research had huge potential.

"The way CCS and CCZ work is different to any other drug in clinical use today," she said. "Therefore, CCS and CCZ will represent a totally new way of treating disease and potentially a whole new class of anti-cancer agent."

QIMR has launched a two-year study to examine the safety of the treatment and means of securing a reliable source of CCS and CCZ. If it succeeds it will seek a commercial partner to develop a drug that could be used in human clinical trials. (AFP)

Pak Govt delays decision on Nawaz Sharif’s passport

ISLAMABAD, July 7: Pakistan Government appears to have developed second thoughts over renewing deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s passport following opposition from some top leaders of the ruling Muslim League-Q (PML-Q).

After initial positive indications to grant Sharif and his wife their passports to travel out of their exile in Jeddah, the Government has delayed the decision on the matter and Pakistan officials said it would be taken by the weekend.

Pakistan’s Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said a few days ago that Sharif was entitled to get a Pakistani passport.

However, the Government has delayed a decision on the issue of Sharifs’ passports because of opposition from some of the main leaders of the PML-Q, which largely comprised defectors from the former Premier’s PML-N.

Some leaders of the PML and other parties in the ruling coalition were perturbed over reports that the Government was planning to renew Sharif’s passport after holding ‘negotiations’ with him, the ‘Dawn’ newspaper said.

A few ministers and Parliamentarians had approached PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to seek party position on the issue. They were of the view that reports of "the regime’s contacts with Nawaz Sharif at this time could affect the party’s performance in the forthcoming local Government elections."

PML-N Information Secretary Siddiqul Farooque, meanwhile, claimed senior PML-Q leaders had asked President Pervez Musharraf not to issue passport to Sharif as it could create problems for the ruling coalition.

Sharif yesterday ruled out any dialogue or deal with Musharraf, saying such a step would undo his six-year-long "struggle for a democratic Pakistan" and that the Government would not be doing him a "favour" by renewing his expired passport. "My application for renewal is only a routine matter."

Media reports here said Sharif’s application for renewal of his passport has been referred to the Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, a spokesman for Pakistan’s consulate in Jeddah told Sharif’s son-in-law Safdar yesterday.

Safdar met the consul-General and was told that the application had been forwarded with a covering letter and now he should turn up on Saturday to know what action had been taken by the relevant authorities, ‘Dawn’ reported.

According to Sharif’s spokesman Farrukh Shah, Safdar was also informed that the consulate did not have the machine for machine-readable passports, so he should bring pictures of the deposed Prime Minister with him. (PTI)

Oxford honour for alumnus Manmohan Singh

LONDON, July 7: Four decades after he left the Oxford university with a doctorate in Economics, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will receive an honorary doctorate from his Alma Mater tomorrow.

Dr Singh, who studied for a Doctorate in Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford during the late 1950s and early 1960s, will be awarded the degree of doctor of civil law, Honoris Causa, on his return from Gleneagles in Scotland where he met the leaders of the G-8 countries.

The Indian Prime Minister is the leading figure among ten eminent personalities from the arts, politics, science and business who have been awarded the honorary doctorate by the Oxford University.

According to the citation, "Dr Manmohan Singh, D.Phil, the 14th Prime Minister of India, studied at Punjab University, Cambridge, and finally Oxford where he completed a D Phil in Economics. After a career in academia, he has held a number of political and economic appointments in India and at international organisations including Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Governor of the Reserve Bank of India." Dr Singh has been an honorary fellow of the Nuffield College since 1994.

The other recipients of the honarary degree include Nobel prize-winning American writer Toni Morisson, author of the widely acclaimed ‘song of solomon and beloved’, British stage and Film Director Ken Loach, Artist Paula Rego and General Electric Company vice-chairman Sir William Castell.

Another Nobel prize winner, Dr Christiane Nsslein-Volhard, Director of the Genetics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Development Biology is among the awardees along with Dr Oliver Sacks, Clinical Professor of Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, Physicist Sir Anthony Leggett, Sir Michael Rutter, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, King’s College, London and Dame Gillian Beer, King Edward VII Professor of English Literature.

Apart from Dr Singh and Ken Loach, the eight others received their honorary degrees at the University’s Annual Honorary Degree Ceremony held on June 22. Loach’s Honorary Degree will be conferred on 29 September.

Dr Singh is a special invitee at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. (UNI)

Pak denies Bin Laden, Mulla Omar hiding in tribal regions

ISLAMABAD, July 7: Pakistan has categorically rejected claims by some Afghan Government officials that Al-Qaeda network chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban’s spiritual Guru Mullah Omar are hiding in the country’s tribal areas.

"None of them is on Pakistani soil," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani said here last night.

Mr Jilani told a private Pakistani wire service that none of the terrorists were crossing over to Afghanistan from Pakistan.

"These accusations are baseless and some people with vested interests are giving such statements to harm the strong trade, economic, political and diplomatic ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan," he said, adding that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz would visit Afghanistan at the end of this month to bolster bilateral relations.

Mr Jilani said President General Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai talked to each other twice over the phone and discussed security matters.

Mr Karzai praised Pakistan’s role in the war on terror and reiterated that existing ties between both countries would be improved, Mr Jilani said.

Representatives from Pakistan, US and Afghanistan had held a meeting on June 28 to discuss regional security, he added. Pakistan helped Afghanistan hold Presidential elections last year in a peaceful manner. "We will play a positive role in the forthcoming Parliamentary elections as peace, development and stability in Afghanistan are in our supreme national interest," he said. (UNI)

Iran, Pak decide to invite India for talks on gas pipeline

ISLAMABAD, July 7: Iran and Pakistan have decided to invite India to hold trilateral meetings of their oil ministers to speed up the implementation of the multi-billion dollar Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project.

Visiting Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh and his Pakistani counterpart Amanullah Khan held detailed discussions here last night and decided to hold trilateral meetings of oil ministers from India, Pakistan and Iran to gear up the implementation of the project.

Jadoon and Zanganeh exchanged views on the talks they had with Indian Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer last month in Islamabad and Tehran respectively, official newsagency APP reported today.

India and Pakistan had last month agreed to constitute a Secretary-level joint working group to thrash out issues and modalities for getting the project off the ground by January 2006.

Both the ministers resolved to invite India to all Ministerial or Secretary level talks on the ambitious project, the report said. Iranian officials would also attend the proposed joint working group meeting to be held between Indian and Pakistani officials in New Delhi next month.

The ministers told reporters after the meeting that they did not discuss the issue of gas prices as it was considered premature as this stage.

The three sides are expected to exchange information with regard to the financial, technical, commercial and legal aspects of the project and other matters when they meet in August.

The Iranian Oil Minister had yesterday said he was hopeful of signing a Memorandum of Understanding on the gas pipeline, after which construction can start in less than a year for the project that "will bring sustainable peace in the region."

"I am hopeful that an mou will be signed during the talks here, which will determine the major topics regarding the import of gas," he told reporters.

The 4.16-billion dollar project envisages supply of gas from Iran to India through Pakistan. Out of the 2,600-km long pipeline, 760-km of would pass through Pakistan. (PTI)

New scientific find may help smokers quit

LONDON, July 7: The mental boost smokers get from nicotine is linked to the same area of the brain in mice as its addictiveness and the two are probably inseparable, French scientists have said.

In a study that may hold insights into ways to help people quit smoking, researchers at the Cnrs-Pasteur Institute in Paris showed that receptors on cells in the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) of the brain are involved in nicotine’s addictive and cognitive qualities in mice.

"This is a very critical area for self-administration for nicotine in the brain," said Jean-Pierre Changeux, who headed the research team.

The VTA is involved in responses to natural rewards such as food, sex and the effect of drugs. Addictive drugs activate the release of dopamine, a chemical linked to pleasurable sensations, which is made in cells of the VTA.

Scientists have known that a family of receptors, or doorways into cells, called nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are involved in addiction to smoking.

Changeux and his team genetically engineered mice so they lacked a gene for a portion of a nicotine receptor, to discover the impact it would have on how the mice functioned.

The mutant mice had a mild learning impairment and unlike normal mice, which had learned to press a lever to self-administer nicotine, they showed no interest in getting nicotine.

"When there is a loss of the nicotine receptor then there is a loss of cognitive function in the mouse," Changeux, who reported the finding in the science journal nature, told .

But when the scientists re-injected the gene, the mice’s cognitive function was restored. The rodents were also more likely to seek out nicotine.

"Given the intricacies of the brain, it is striking that reintroduction of a single molecule to just one small area of the brain should so dramatically affect behaviour," said Julie Kauer of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in a commentary in the journal.

Changeux and his team do not know whether humans would react in the same way but they believe their work could advance the search for drugs to cure addiction. If researchers could find a way to stop nicotine attaching to brain cells, it may be possible to prevent addiction.

Drug companies are already trying to harness the positive effect of nicotine to treat brain disorders such as memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease. (AGENCIES)

Taiwan carries out military maneuvers

YUANLI (TAIWAN), July 7: Taiwanese troops today carried out a major military exercise aimed at fending off a Chinese invasion of the island, four months after Beijing passed a law threatening force if Taiwan moves toward Independence.

The exercise is part of Taiwan’s annual Hankuang — Chinese glory — maneuvers. About 6,000 soldiers and reserve forces were mustered in central Taiwan to practice repelling Chinese troops landing at beaches and barring them from advancing into towns and cities on the island.

The soldiers fired flares into the air as mortars opened up. Defensive arrangements included sniper nests and booby traps.

They were the first major military exercises Taiwan has carried out since march, when the passage of Beijing’s anti-seccession law significantly raised tensions between the longtime rivals.

China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949. Since then Beijing has used a blend of threats and diplomacy to try to bring the self-governing island back into the fold, including feting two Taiwanese opposition leaders in an effort partially aimed at lowering cross-straits tensions.

President Chen-Shui-Bian viewed the two-hour exercise at Yuanli, a beachside town in central Taiwan.

Chen’s presence coincided with his effort to close ranks with senior members of the Taiwanese military, many of whom resent his efforts to carve out a separate identity for the self-governing island of 23 million people. (AP)

Chinese navy launches massive rescue exercise off Shanghai

BEIJING, July 7: Chinese navy today launched a massive joint nautical rescue exercise to test its ability to deal with any possible emergency situation in sea waters off the Yangshan port in east China’s Shanghai metropolis.

The exercise is expected to last over an hour and will involve approximately 1,000 people, 30 ships and five aircraft, Xinhua news agency reported.

The exercise is being held to showcase China’s capabilities to cope with any possible emergency situation, including rescue operations and firefighting, it said.

Earlier reports had said that rescue departments of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and the Maritime Affairs Departments of Russia, the United States, and ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would send representatives to see the exercise while South Korea and Japan will send patrol craft to observe the maneuvers.

Chinese officials said the exercise is an important step in carrying out the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on transport cooperation signed with the 10-member ASEAN last November. (PTI)

Rice to skip key ASEAN talks, may be viewed as snub by region

WASHINGTON, July 7: US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice will not attend a key southeast Asian meeting this month, officials said amid warnings that the move could be viewed as a slight by the region’s leaders.

Rice had told Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers that she could not make it to the ASEAN ministerial meeting in the laotian capital Vientiane in late July due to a clash of schedules, regional diplomats said.

But some officials had linked her skipping of the trip to concerns in Washington that the region was not pushing enough for democratic reforms in military-ruled Myanmar.

As this would be the first time in about two decades that a US Secretary of State is not participating in the annual ASEAN talks, some ASEAN leaders may perceive it as downgrading of US participation in the region’s most important diplomatic event.

The meeting includes a July 28-29 post-ministerial dialogue between ASEAN and its key trading partners, notably the United States, European Union, China, Japan and Russia, as well as an ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the only official security meeting in the Asia-Pacific region.

Rice, who is expected to visit Africa during that period, would be represented by her deputy Robert Zoellick, the former US trade representative and an old ASEAN hand, to the meetings.

Unlike her predecessor Colin Powell, who maintained a personal touch in relations with his ASEAN counterparts, Rice has delegated much of the work in the region to Zoellick. (AFP)

Freedom museum at WTC site to shrink, focus more on victims

NEW YORK, July 7: In response to criticism, a "freedom museum" at the World Trade Centre site will focus more on the victims of the 2001 terror attacks, officials said.

The change was announced yesterday by the museum’s Chairman and Vice-Chairwoman in a letter to the lower Manhattan Development Corp., which oversees the rebuilding.

Some victims’ relatives have protested for weeks that the international freedom center museum would be anti-American and disrespectful to the dead.

The museum, criticised for its intent to focus on global freedom movements, now will place the victims of Sept 11 alongside the "freedom heroes of history" in its main concourse, the letter said.

The museum will be "appropriately celebratory of our nation, and its leading role in the global fight for freedom," Chairman Tom Bernstein and Vice-Chairwoman Paula Grant Berry wrote.

The museum will create a viewing room for victims’ families and a gallery dedicated to the international expressions of sympathy for the attacks, Bernstein and Berry wrote.

In addition, the museum will give a veto over its planned discussion series to the Board of Directors of the Sept 11 memorial foundation, which includes Debra Burlingame, the most vociferous critic of the freedom museum. (AP)

Human rights watch urges Afghan leader to try war criminals

KABUL, July 7: An international rights group urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai today to set up a special court to try major war criminals — including some who are part of his Government — saying such a move is vital for the nation to emerge from a quarter-century of bloodshed.

The report by New York-based human rights watch charges that numerous officials and advisers in Karzai’s Government are "implicated in major war crimes and human rights abuses that took place in the early 1990s" — when Afghanistan was embroiled in a bloody civil war.

Karzai has put together a Government that includes people who fought on all sides in the war. He has vowed to end warlordism, but has needed the support of regional strongmen to keep the peace in vast swaths of the remote countryside.

Though Afghanistan has been at war more-or-less constantly since the 1970s, the report — "bloodstained hands: past atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan’s legacy of impunity" — focuses on a one-year period from April 1992 to March 1993, following the collapse of a Soviet-backed Government in Kabul, when the civil war began.

"Rival armed factions committed extensive human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war, illegally shelling and rocketing civilian areas, abducting and murdering civilians, and pillaging civilian areas," it says.

The group said many leaders implicated in the abuses are now officials in Karzai’s Government — including Chief of Army Staff Abdul Rashid Dostum and second Vice President Karim Khalili. Also cited is Mohammad Qasim Fahim, Karzai’s former Defense Minister, as well as renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an ally of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. (AP)

Myanmar says 400 prisoners freed, refuses to identify them

YANGON, July 7: Myanmar’s military Government said today it had released about 400 prisoners around the country, but it would not identify the freed inmates, many of whom were believed to be political detainees.

"About 400 prisoners were released yesterday (Wednesday)," a Director from the Home Affairs Ministry told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He could not confirm who the inmates were or whether prominent political prisoners were among them.

The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) said yesterday it knew of 249 people, mostly political prisoners, who had been freed. Party officials said they knew of no new releases today.

Early today some of the freed prisoners visited the Yangon headquarters of the NLD, the party headed by detained nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

One of those released yesterday was Sein Hla Oo, a former journalist who became a member of the NLD’s central executive committee, its top body, party spokesman Myint Thein said.

Sein Jla Oo won a seat in Parliament in 1990 elections, when the NLD scored a landslide victory that was never recognised by the military. He was first arrested in 1990 and held in solitary confinement. He was arrested again in 1994 on charges of denouncing the junta and promoting political unrest. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison and again put in solitary confinement.

He was freed from Myitkyina prison in northern Kachin state, Myint Thein said. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 15 years under some form of detention, is under house arrest in Yangon. (AFP)