US's Rice urges Israel to exercise restraint

HEILIGENDAMM, GERMANY, July 14: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel to exercise restraint in its attacks against Lebanese targets and demanded Syria press Hizbollah guerrillas to stop attacking Israel.

''It is extremely important that Israel exercise restraint in its acts of self defence,'' she told reporters travelling with US President George W Bush in Germany yesterday.

Her comments, at a hastily arranged briefing, reflected a sharper focus on Israel than statements from Bush earlier, who said Israel has a right to defend itself with its attacks in Lebanon but that it should not weaken the Lebanese government.

Rice said the message was being sent through numerous diplomatic channels and added: ''I think they understand the need to exercise restraint.''

Israel struck Beirut airport and military airbases and blockaded Lebanese ports on Thursday, intensifying reprisals that have killed 55 civilians in Lebanon since Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers a day earlier.

Asked in a CNN interview about Rice's call, Israel's ambassador to the US said Israel had exercised restraint since its 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon and believed its military offensive was now the right way to deal with Hizbollah.

Ambassador Daniel Ayalon said: ''I think they (Hizbollah) misinterpreted our restraint for the last six years.''

''If we do not want to see further escalation, deterioration, violence, this is the time to stop Hizbollah and what we are doing is the most effective (way) to stop them.''

Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said he and Rice had spoken to Israeli officials and received assurances Israel's focus was on Hizbollah, not the Lebanese government.

He added that the officials said ''the actions they are going to take are going to deal with Hizbollah, will be done in such a way to try and minimize collateral and civilian casualties, recognizing this is difficult because Hizbollah has put targets in civilian areas''.

Rice said Syria had been ''sheltering the people who have been perpetrating these acts'' against Israel, including launching rocket attacks into northern Israel and abducting Israeli soldiers.

''Syria needs to act responsibly and stop the use of its territory for these kinds of activities. They need to bring all pressure on those that it is harbouring to stop this and to return these soldiers and to allow the situation to be de-escalated,'' Rice said.

She said the United States supported a three-person UN team being sent to the region to try to defuse the crisis on the instigation of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Asked if there was a danger of the area slipping into war, Rice said: ''I think it doesn't help to speculate about kind of apocalyptic scenarios. What we have to do is work day by day, hour by hour. That's what we're doing, and that's what a lot of others are doing.''(AGENCIES)

Bangladesh wants remains of 1971 war hero buried in India

DHAKA, July 14: Bangladesh authorities have asked officials to make arrangements to bring back the remains of one of the country's top war heroes, Hamidur Rahman, from India, where he was buried after the 1971 liberation war.

The parliamentary committee on Liberation War Affairs Ministry gave the orders yesterday just weeks after the remains of another war hero, 'Bir Shreshtho' Flight Lieutenant Matiur Rahman, was brought back from Pakistan after 35 years, 'The New Age' newspaper reported today.

"The remains of Hamidur Rahman should be brought home too within the shortest possible time, and we have asked the ministry to take measures in this regard," Salauddin Ahmed, the committee chairman, told the daily.

Hamidur Rahman was killed in a combat with the Pakistani Army in the bordering Ambassa area of Tripura on October 28, 1971 and was buried there.

Bir Shrestho, the highest gallantry award in Bangladesh, has been conferred on seven war heroes. All of them, except Rahman, are buried in the country.

Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, became independent in 1971 after a nine-month bloody war. (PTI)

BOJ raises interest rate for the first time in almost 6 years

TOKYO, July 14: The Bank of Japan raised interest rates for the first time in almost six years as a decade-long bout of deflation ends and the economy heads toward its longest postwar expansion.

Governor Toshihiko Fukui and his policy-board colleagues increased the key overnight rate between banks to 0.25 percent from almost zero, the bank said today. The decision was unanimous. The US Federal Reserve increased its benchmark 17 times since 2004.

The end to the zero-rate policy is a recognition of plans by Japanese companies such as Toshiba Corp. To invest at the fastest pace in 16 years, after closing factories and slashing debt built up during the bubble economy of the 1980s. The yen fell earlier today on speculation Fukui will signal borrowing costs will remain low to protect an economy that has had just seven consecutive months of inflation.

Sixteen central banks raised borrowing costs in June as record oil and metal prices fueled inflation. The U.S. Federal Reserve increased rates to 5.25 percent from 1 percent in June 2004. The European Central Bank lifted its key rate to 2.75 percent, its third increase since December.

Japan's economy expanded for 53 months through the end of June, the longest since 57 months of growth from 1965 to 1970. The government forecasts the economy will expand 2.1 percent in the year ending March 31, 2007.

``It's a welcome sign that Japan is on the road to normality. Japan has come out of its deflation trip,'' said chief European economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London. ``The Bank of Japan's move is a sign that this is clearly the case.'' (AGENCIES)

New Orleans police say caught killer of five teens

NEW ORLEANS, July 14: New Orleans police charged a 19-year-old man with the gun slaying last month of five teens that sparked a panic about rising crime in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Michael Anderson killed five teens who were driving a sport utility vehicle through a central section of the city shortly before dawn on June 17, police said. Two managed to exit the truck but none escaped the scene, found littered with bullet casings.

''They were in the car and I can tell you that the driver was the first person that was shot,'' said Police Chief Warren Riley, announcing police arrested Anderson yesterday after a tip from residents.

''He is a career criminal,'' Riley added. ''We do have a witness who is very concerned,'' he said.

Anderson, dressed in a sleeveless white T-shirt, was taken to jail by police through a gauntlet of reporters and cameras. He did not respond to questions.

The slaying was one of the worst in the history of the violent city and set off a firestorm of protests.

Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, flooding 80 per cent of the city, killing more than 1,500, and forcing almost all residents to evacuate -- including most of the criminals.

Crime has risen this year, after an initial fall-off. There have been 62 murders to date, versus 139 last year, police said. That is a drop in absolute terms, but only about half of the city's population has returned.

National Guard troops arrived to back up the hard-pressed police days after the multiple slaying and have been ordered to stay for the summer, patrolling largely abandoned sections of the city hurt most by the storm so that police can focus on trouble spots.

Riley said that Anderson and the dead teens may have had an argument that night or been involved in an earlier drug-related incident. ''We're not sure if they really knew each other that well,'' he said.

Drug sellers returning to abandoned sections of New Orleans moved into more populated areas, setting off turf wars, Riley said. Four people were killed in a separate incident north of the city in late June. But turf wars are decreasing, Riley said, while citizens are calling police more often.

''Citizens do not want the city to get to the pre-Katrina type of crime and I think people are standing up a little bit more,'' he said.(AGENCIES)

Leg length linked to heart disease risk

NEW YORK, July 14: Having longer legs may put you at lower risk of heart disease, new findings show.

In an analyses of data from 12,254 men and women aged 44 to 65, Dr Kate Tilling of the University of Bristol in the UK and colleagues found a direct association between leg length and intimal-medial thickness (IMT), a measurement of the thickness of blood vessel walls used to detect the early stages of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

The longer a person's legs, they found, the thinner their carotid artery walls were, indicating less buildup of deposits within these blood vessels and a lower risk of heart disease and stroke.

Leg length is strongly affected by early life factors, Tilling and her team point out in their article in the American Journal of Epidemiology. For example, studies have linked breastfeeding, high-energy diets at age two and four years, and affluent childhood circumstances to longer leg length.

To investigate whether leg length might also be related to early signs of heart and blood vessel disease -- which would in turn support a connection between early life factors and heart attack and stroke risk -- the researchers compared leg length to IMT of the carotid artery in a group of men and women participating in a large study of atherosclerosis risk. They estimated leg length by subtracting a person's height when seated from his or her total height.

Leg length was directly linked to IMT, the researchers found, with the relationship being strongest for black men and weakest for black women.

The study ''provides some support for the hypothesis that early life factors, such as breastfeeding and childhood nutrition, which are associated with greater prepubertal linear growth, may reduce cardiovascular disease risk,'' Tilling and her colleagues conclude.(AGENCIES)

G8 summit costs Russia nearly 400 million dollars

MOSCOW, July 14: Preparations for a summit of the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations in St Petersburg this weekend have cost Russia 10.7 billion roubles (398 million dollars), a senior summit official has told a Russian newspaper.

President Vladimir Putin will host world leaders including U S President George W. Bush in his home town of St Petersburg, where he grew up in an cramped flat and made his first steps towards a career as a KGB spy.

Leaders will gather in the glittering Constantine Palace, restored from ruins at Putin's initiative. Russian security forces have put a ring of steel around the palace with anti-aircraft missile systems and navy warships off shore.

''On all the preparations for the summit about 10.7 billion roubles has been spent,'' Sergei Vyazalov, head of the summit's secretariat, told the Rossiiskaya Gazeta in an interview to be published today, Interfax news agency reported.

''About half of the funds were spent on infrastructure in St Petersburg and a little more than 5 billion roubles was spent directly on the summit.''

Russia's first chairmanship of the G8 is seen by senior Kremlin officials as recognition of its newly found status, following the chaos that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union.

Business sponsors contributed 160 million roubles towards the cost of the summit, Vyazalov said. He added that cost of security during the summit would not be made public. (AGENCIES)

Rare Shakespeare First Folio fetches $5.2 mln

LONDON, July 14: A rare mint condition First Folio edition of William Shakespeare's plays fetched 2.8 million pounds at an auction.

The result at Sotheby's yesterday in London was towards the lower end of estimates of between 2.5 and 3.5 million pounds, and fell short of the saleroom record for a comparable copy of 6.2 million dollars made at Christie's, New York, in 2001.

The auctioneer said the copy had been bought by London book dealer Simon Finch Rare Books, suggesting the folio will be sold on again.

The seller was the Dr William's Library, a research facility for English Protestant dissent which has owned the folio since at least 1716, making it the longest uninterrupted ownership by a public library of any copy.

''Its sale will significantly help the library by securing its finances and safeguarding their important historic collections of manuscripts and printed books,'' said Peter Selley, the specialist in charge of the sale.

The library was not immediately available for comment.

Printed in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, and containing 36 plays, less than 250 copies of the First Folio survive and most of those are incomplete.

The current example is still in its 17th century calf leather binding, and features notes in the margins apparently made by contemporary scholars.

At the time of Shakespeare's death in 1616, 18 plays now attributed to him had not reached print, and the First Folio has been credited with saving for posterity such classics as ''Julius Caesar'', ''As You Like It'', ''Twelfth Night'' and ''The Tempest''.

''There is no guarantee that these unpublished plays would ever have been put into print if the Folio had not appeared,'' said Stanley Wells, Chairman of the Trustees of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Several copies of the First Folio have been sold privately, including one purchased by John Paul Getty from Oriel College, Oxford, for an estimated 3.5 million pounds. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen reportedly bought another.(AGENCIES)

Dietary fish oils may lower risk of eye disease

NEW YORK, July 14: Contrary to some past studies, new research suggests that intake of fatty acids found in fish may help prevent age-related maculopathy, a deterioration of the eye's retina that can lead to blindness.

Several studies in recent years have found a link between high fat intake -- from any source -- and a higher risk of age-related maculopathy (ARM), the leading cause of vision loss among the elderly.

The findings are puzzling because unsaturated fats from fish and plant sources like olive oil are widely recognised as healthy fats that may protect against heart disease and other ills.

The new study, published in the Archives of Ophthalmology, adds to the puzzle. Australian researchers who followed more than 3,600 older adults for five years found no evidence that dietary fat, of any kind, increased the risk of ARM.

What's more, men and women who ate the most omega-3 fatty acids had a lower risk of ARM than those with the lowest intakes. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fats are found largely in oily fish, and to a lesser extent in flaxseed, walnuts and soybeans.

In this study, people who ate fish at least once a week were 40 per cent less likely to develop early ARM than their peers who ate fish less than once per month. People who ate fish three times per week had a substantially lower risk of

advanced macular degeneration.

As for other types of fat, there was some evidence that older adults with low intakes of monounsaturated fat -- the type found in olive oil -- had an elevated risk of ARM. And fat sources that should generally be limited, such as butter, showed no relationship to ARM risk.

The stark difference between these findings and those of some earlier studies cannot be readily explained, according to the researchers. But the notion that healthy fats would raise ARM risk is counterintuitive and lacks biological plausibility, study co-author Dr Jie Jin Wang of the University of Sydney told Reuters Health.

According to Wang and co-author Dr Paul Mitchell, there's no reason for people to veer from what's considered a ''heart-healthy'' diet -- one emphasizing fruits, vegetables, whole grains and unsaturated fats from fish and plant sources.

A diet rich in omega-3 fats, the researchers noted, may also help lower the risks of high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.

There are no definitive guidelines on dietary fat for people with early ARM, they said, but it would be ''reasonable'' for them to eat more fish and other sources of omega-3s.(AGENCIES)