Sri Lanka rebels say battle army in no-man's land

COLOMBO, Nov 23: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers said today they were engaged in fierce fighting with the army in no-man's land in the island's restive east, with government troops with tanks trying to breach their defence lines.

''There is an intense confrontation going on,'' Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan told Reuters by telephone from the rebels' northern stronghold.

The military said it had no details of any confrontation in the east.

Ilanthiraiyan said the battle was raging near a ''border'' that separates rebel from government territory in the east, near the rebel-held town of Vakarai, where an estimated 30,000 displaced persons have fled to camps.

''They are moving with tanks and armoured personnel carriers towards our forward defence line,'' he added. ''They are trying to come into our territory. They have breached the no-man's zone and are still in it.''

The incident follows two days of air force raids on Tiger territory. The island's main international donors appealed in vain to both sides on Tuesday to halt a new chapter in a two-decade civil war.(AGENCIES)

Six-member delegation of Singapaore on two-day visit to India

SINGAPORE, NOV 23: Singapore has sent a six member parliamentarian delegation on a two-day visit to New Delhi, starting from yesterday.

Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports and Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Dr Vivian Balakrishnan is leading the delegation as the co-chair of the India-Singapore Parliamentary Forum, which was launched in New Delhi by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in June 2005.

Other members of the delegation are Parliamentary Secretary to Community Development, Youth and Sports Teo Ser Luck, and members of parliament Mr Inderjit Singh, Ms Penny Low, Dr Lim Wee Kiat and Mr Zaqy Mohamad.

The delegation members would call on Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora, Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath. (UNI)

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Afghanistan may become failed state, UN mission chief warns

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 23: Warning about a rise in Taliban violence, growing illegal drug production and shaky state institutions in Afghanistan, the head of a Security Council mission to the strife-torn country has warned that it may become a failed state unless the international community fully supports the recovery effort.

Japanese envoy Kenzo Oshima, who led the 10-member mission between November 11 and 16, held talks with officials in Islamabad before meeting Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and other officials in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

''Over the course of 2006... And this is a worrying development, the rise in the Taliban-led insurgency and other social ills, including the upsurge in illegal drug production and trafficking, against the backdrop of a still too weak, fragile state and provincial institutions ... And the accompanying endemic corruption and impunity," Mr Oshima told the powerful 15-member Security Council yesterday, highlighting some of the problems that Afghanistan faces.

"It is abundantly clear that Afghanistan needs additional and sustained support and assistance from the international community, both for quick gains and for sustained progress over the long term," he said, warning that "without such support, there is no guarantee that Afghanistan will not slide back into conflict and become a failed state again."

The council mission to Afghanistan was the first in three years, the last one being in 2003. Throughout the visit, Mr Oshima stressed the 15-member body's continued commitment to the country's recovery.

"It is important to stress the two cardinal points: that the commitment of the international community for the support of Afghanistan remains firm and sustained; and that the Afghan Compact, owned and led by Afghans, is and will remain the best strategic framework for cooperation between the Afghan government and the international community."

A full report on the mission is being prepared and will be circulated to all member states as a UN document ahead of a public meeting on Afghanistan next month, Mr Oshima added.

In a related development, the head of the UN's anti-drug agency has welcomed a decision by the Afghan Counter Narcotics Trust Fund to make development grants to provinces that eliminate the opium poppy, noting that the current six opium-free provinces will each receive half a million dollars for development projects.

"Solving Afghanistan's opium problem is not only a question of security, it's a question of development. By rewarding the good behaviour of farmers who are committed to making their provinces opium-free, we show the people of Afghanistan that they can have a sustainable future without growing illicit crops," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

The grants will be paid through the Good Performers Fund, a programme of the Counter Narcotics Trust Fund, which is supported by the United States and Britain. Afghanistan, the world's largest opium producer, had a record crop of 6,100 tonnes in 2006. (UNI)

NKorea's counterfeiting a major concern: Interpol

SEOUL, Nov 23: Interpol's chief said today North Korea's counterfeiting of US dollars -- especially the 100-dollar "supernote" -- is a major concern for the international police organisation.

"In terms of North Korea, the one area of significant criminal activity that concerns Interpol and that we learned about is the counterfeiting of US notes, especially the 100-dollar supernote," Robert Noble, Interpol secretary general, told reporters.

Noble, quoted by Yonhap news agency, said Interpol issued "orange" warning notices in March 2005 and in June this year notifying member countries the North was suspected of trying repeatedly to obtain counterfeiting equipment.

Noble said Interpol, at a special conference in the French city of Lyon in July, had urged manufacturers of equipment to produce coins and bills not to ship products to North Korea.

In an indictment brought against Irish nationalists in the United States in August 2005, North Korea was named as the source of "supernotes" they were accused of passing.

The notes are so-called because of their superior quality.

In September 2005, the US Treasury blacklisted a Macau bank suspected of helping launder the proceeds of North Korean counterfeiting, prompting the communist state to boycott six-nation nuclear disarmament talks for almost a year.

North Korea agreed on October 31 to return to the talks at an unspecified date, on condition the issue of the financial curbs was "discussed and settled" within the framework of the forum. (AGENCIES)

US Midwest town sees return of old disease

CHICAGO, Nov 23: For the past two weeks, high school nurse Colleen Kahler has been on high alert.

Her office, which typically treats routine ailments such as sore throats, stomach aches and pulled muscles, has been transformed into a screening center for an unlikely disease with a name that recalls a bygone era -- whooping cough.

''We became a triage unit,'' says Kahler, health services coordinator at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, a tony suburb of Chicago.

''The phones were literally ringing off the hook,'' she said. ''We were fielding questions from parents, physicians and students.''

Health experts said the New Trier outbreak underscores how whooping cough, a highly contagious respiratory infection, remains a public health threat in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than 25,600 reported cases in 2005; the true number may top 1 million annually.

It killed 13 children, mostly infants, in 2003.

Before immunizations became widespread, an average of 147,000 people in the United States developed whooping cough every year and 9,000 died.

Whooping cough is common in countries where children do not receive vaccinations -- 294,000 people worldwide died of the illness in 2002, according to the World Health Organization.

It is making a resurgence in other developed countries, such as Britain. Germany began vaccinating teens against pertussis in 2000.

An upswing of reported cases in the past decade is a source of debate among health professionals, who attribute it both to waning immunity in teenagers and adults and improved detection. Neither the vaccine, nor infection with the bacteria itself, offer lifelong protection.

Beginning at two months of age, babies get vaccinated against whooping cough, also known as pertussis, as part of an early childhood immunization series that includes diphtheria and tetanus.

Until last year, with the approval of a new type of vaccine for people aged 11 to 64, adolescents only got a booster shot for diphtheria and tetanus because the vaccine used in recent years was not approved for people over the age of 7 due to concern about possible side effects.

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK

New Trier had 26 confirmed cases of pertussis by November. 16, or one third of all those reported in suburban Cook County. The school's first case was detected in late August when students returned from summer break. There have also been reports of sporadic cases at other high schools in the area.

Since early November, New Trier has been operating under directives from local health authorities to treat the situation as an outbreak.

''If your child has a cough, please do not send him or her to school,'' the local health department said in a letter to New Trier parents.

New Trier has been trying to limit potential spread to other schools by canceling some athletic and extra-curricular events, circulating fact sheets, letters and e-mails, and keeping a close watch on students, faculty and staff for signs of the disease.

''We don't want to alarm everyone, so it's a big balancing act,'' said Dr Catherine Counard, assistant medical director for communicable disease control at the Cook County Department of Public Health. ''Whooping cough is a serious disease and we need to get this under control.''

Whooping cough is tricky to diagnose because early symptoms are similar to other respiratory illnesses such as the common cold and bronchitis.

One telltale sign is a persistent dry cough. If detected early, the disease responds to antibiotics, but it is often diagnosed late and must be left to run its course.

Rarely life-threatening in teens or adults, small children are at risk for broken ribs, pneumonia, and sometimes death. They typically get the disease from adults, making containment of an outbreak on the scale of New Trier's critical.

PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES

CDC now recommends that adolescents and adults get the new tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis booster instead of the older vaccine that included only tetanus and diphtheria. At New Trier, most of the cases were among older students who had not received the new shot.

''We now know that immunity to whooping cough wears off as we age,'' said Dr. Susan Rehm, medical director at the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. ''The nice news is that this is preventable through vaccination.''

As New Trier battles its outbreak, there have been reports of cases of whooping cough at Children's Hospital in Boston and a high school in Palo Alto, California.

Trying to get a handle on the health status of more than 4,000 students spread over two school campuses has been no small feat, New Trier's Kahler recalled. Anyone with a sustained cough -- teachers and staff included -- has been sent home pending clearance from a doctor.

Kahler had to initially double her staff to six nurses and add a secretary just to keep up with extra paperwork, lab results, student whereabouts, community outreach and the endless stream of phone calls.

Preventive measures at the school have ranged from subtle to humorous. A large container of Purell hand sanitizer and Kleenex is now a staple in every classroom. Students were shown a film entitled ''How to Do It In Your Sleeve,'' which offers a primer on minimizing the spread of germs when coughing.

But despite the school's best efforts, the outbreak has not been easy on the local community. Many pediatricians were not ready for the onslaught of requests for pertussis vaccine and parents have had difficulty seeking alternative sources.

''The numbers are much less now because the kids are getting cleared and getting treatment,'' said school superintendent Linda Yonke. ''I hope we're through the worst.'' (AGENCIES)

China's karaoke bar owners reject royalty payment scheme

BEIJING, Nov 23: Tens of thousands of karaoke (KTV) bar owners in China have rejected as "illegal and unreasonable" a new national royalty payment scheme launched by the Chinese government to curb rampant piracy.

China's National Copyright Administration (NCA) on November nine unveiled a scheme by which karaoke bars have to pay 1.5 US dollars a day in royalties to music artists for each KTV room.

The NCA said copyright owners had designated an association for the collective management of audio and video copyrights to glean royalties on their behalf.

However, as it is awaiting official approval by the government, the China Audio and Video Association (CAVA) has been designated as an interim agent to collect royalties.

In China's southern city of Guangzhou, the Guangzhou Cultural and Entertainment Industry Association said the royalty collection agent had no government approval and the method of paying royalties according to the number of KTV rooms was unreasonable.

"As the association has no approval, it has no right to collect royalties, and a non-existent 'right' cannot be transferred to the CAVA," chairman of the Guangzhou-based association, Huang Shiqiu was quoted as saying by 'China Daily.'

Huang also said the number of rooms in a KTV establishment was not an accurate reflection of the amount of business.

A copyright fee based on the popularity of songs is believed to be more reasonable, he said. (PTI)

Russian cosmonaut hits golf ball into orbit

HOUSTON, Nov 23: Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin hit a golf ball into Earth's orbit from the International Space Station to raise money for the Russian space program at the start of a six-hour spacewalk.

Tyurin, the station's flight engineer, made a one-armed swat with a gold-plated six-iron to send the lightweight ball on a journey estimated to take it around the Earth at least 48 times before it burns up in the atmosphere.

He spent 16 minutes setting up the shot off a ladder on a Russian docking module with the help of US astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria under the guidance of Russian flight controllers.

''OK, there it goes,'' said Tyurin, who has played golf twice in his life. ''It went pretty far. It was an excellent shot.''

Canadian golf club maker Element 21 Golf Co. Paid the cash-strapped Russian space agency an undisclosed amount of money for Tyruin's golf demonstration, which was filmed by a video camera.

NASA, the American space agency, is prevented by law from receiving money for its involvement.

Element 21 will use the video in a future commercial and contends the golf ball will orbit for three and a half years, rather than the three days estimated by NASA.

NASA delayed the golf shot for months checking that the ball would not threaten the safety of the space station or future space shuttle missions.

Tyurin's tee-time was delayed for nearly two hours as a kinked cooling line to his spacesuit prevented the astronauts from leaving the station, which is circling the Earth every 90 minutes, while it was in sunlight needed for filming.

After the golf exhibition, Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria, the station commander, then began to deploy an instrument that will measure particles in low-Earth orbit during solar flares.

The astronauts are also scheduled to relocate a communications antenna that will guide the European Automated Transfer Vehicle to the station next year and to check the antenna on a supply vehicle.(AGENCIES)

Belarus, Myanmar faulted at UN for rights abuses

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 23: A key United Nations panel rebuked Belarus and Myanmar, formerly Burma, for human rights abuses amid a growing debate about whether any country should be named and shamed for rights violations.

The Belarus resolution, introduced by the United States, was passed by a vote of 70 to 31 with 67 abstentions by a General Assembly committee handling human rights. Its adoption is tantamount to official passage by the full assembly.

The resolution faulted the Minsk government for rigged elections last March, suppressing dissent, arresting dissidents and obstructing opposition candidates.

Belarus in turn unsuccessfully sought a resolution against the United States, expressing ''dismay'' at voting irregularities, detentions at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and listing criticisms by US civil rights groups on abrogation of liberties under legislation to combat terror.

That measure received six positive votes and 114 against with 45 abstentions. The six voting in favor were Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Syria as well as Belarus.

But several countries, including Egypt and Algeria, said they voted ''no,'' mainly because they disagreed with any country-specific resolutions -- with the exception of Israel because it was an occupying power. Belarus and Uzbekistan last week were successful in getting a measure passed that discouraged UN human rights bodies from adopting resolutions condemning violations in a specific country.

Belarus' UN Ambassador Andrei Dapkiunas said he introduced the resolution on a matter of principle to emphasise double standards. He said the rich attempted to ostracize individual countries, especially the United States which he said was ''responsible for gross manipulation of human rights in Guantanamo and the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.''

'STEADY DETERIORATION'

US envoy Richard Terrell Miller said the resolution against Belarus was necessary because of a ''steady deterioration of human rights'' with seriously flawed elections and the use of state power against opposition candidates.

Miller defended the United States by saying some issues mentioned in the resolution were familiar to delegates because of intense investigation and reporting in the US press.

''These very processes, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary'' clearly distinguished the United States from the sponsor of the draft resolution, Miller said.

The committee on Tuesday adopted a resolution on rights abuses in Iran and an earlier one on North Korea. But Uzbekistan managed to get the panel to kill a resolution on Monday that would have faulted its for arbitrary arrests and locking up dissidents and activists in psychiatric wards.

Yesterday, the committee also rebuked Myanmar, formerly Burma, in a resolution passed by a vote of 70 to 28 with 63 abstentions. The document said the country's government refused to investigate widespread human rights violations, such as summary executions, torture, forced labor, sexual violence and recruitment of child soldiers.

The resolution singled out attacks by the military on villages in Kayin States and other ethnic provinces, harassment and arrest of student leaders and the continuing house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi and her deputy Tin Oo, leaders of the opposition Nation League for Democracy.

Myanmar has long been criticized by UN human rights bodies for its military leadership that refused to acknowledge San Suu Kyi's overwhelming victory at the polls in 1990.

The United States asked the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pressure Myanmar to stop jailing political opponents and flooding the region with refugees. (AGENCIES)

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Bird flu hard to detect until too late: Studies

WASHINGTON, Nov 23: Quick tests that can tell if patients have influenza do not detect bird flu, so despite heroic efforts, they can die before anyone knows what killed them, doctors reported.

The H5N1 bird flu virus also causes a range of symptoms in people, making it that much harder to diagnose, experts said in two separate reports from Indonesia and Turkey yesterday.

In Turkey, repeated testing failed to diagnose H5N1 avian influenza in eight patients, one team of doctors reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In Turkey and in Indonesia, patients turned up with a wide variety of symptoms, even in family clusters, making it hard to distinguish H5N1 from a range of other common infections, another team said.

Dr Ahmet Faik Oner, Dr Mehmet Ceyhan, and colleagues at Yuzuncu Yil University Hospital in Van, Turkey said they hope their detailed findings can help other experts battling avian influenza, which remains largely a disease of birds but which occasionally infects humans.

Bird flu has infected 258 people in 10 countries and killed 153 of them. Experts say the danger is that the virus will evolve and spark a pandemic that could kill millions.

''There is no question that there will be another influenza pandemic someday. We simply don't know when it will occur or whether it will be caused by the H5N1 avian influenza virus,'' Dr Robert Webster and Dr Elena Govorkova of the Memphis, Tennessee-based St Jude Children's Research Hospital wrote in a commentary on the two reports.

Dr Anthony Fauci of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was not involved in the studies, said they gave useful details about the newer strain, called clade 2, of the virus.

''It's important that as these viruses evolve from one clade to another that we get a good, clear description of the type of disease, the transmission of the disease and ability of diagnostics to pick it up,'' Fauci said in a telephone interview.

TURKISH CHILDREN

Oner's team fought an outbreak of H5N1 in children in Turkey between Dec. 31, 2005, and Jan. 10, 2006.

They said 32 separate tests failed to detect the virus -- not only quick tests, but time-consuming polymerase chain reaction or PCR tests and ELISA tests, which look for specific proteins from viruses or bacteria.

Eventually, eight patients were diagnosed using real-time PCR, the researchers said. Four died.

''In our series, fever was a major symptom, and most of our patients had pneumonia on admission,'' they wrote. Most had cough and sore throat, but only half reported muscle aches and only one had a runny nose. About a third had diarrhea.

Certain blood enzyme levels were elevated in most of the patients and that may be an important clue, they said.

In a second report, a team of researchers from the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Ministry of Health in Jakarta and elsewhere said rapid tests also failed to detect the virus when they fought three family clusters of H5N1 in 2005.

The clusters ''included mild, severe, and fatal cases among family members,'' they wrote. Despite the use of multiple antibiotics, breathing assistance and other care, half the patients died.

Last week, a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the CDC reported they had developed an inexpensive and quick ''gene chip'' test that might identify flu viruses, including H5N1. Fauci said that test would have helped in Turkey and Indonesia.(AGENCIES)

Lack of sleep may spur weight gain

NEW YORK, Nov 23: Middle-aged women may be able to sleep their way to a trimmer body, new study findings suggest.

In a study that followed more than 68,000 US women for 16 years, researchers found that those who caught more zzz's each night tended to put on less weight during middle-age.

What's more, women who typically clocked 5 hours of sleep were one third more likely than those who slept for 7 hours to have a substantial weight gain -- 33 pounds or more -- during the study period.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology and presented earlier this year at a medical conference, add to evidence that sleep habits affect a person's weight.

Although the reasons aren't clear, some research suggests that sleep deprivation alters hormones involved in appetite control and metabolism.

It's also possible that people who sleep fewer hours either eat more or, because of fatigue, exercise less often.

Whatever the reason, the new findings suggest that sleeping 7 hours or more each night could help prevent the middle-age spread, according to the study authors.

Dr Sanjay R Patel of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland led the research.

Patel and his colleagues based their findings on data from the long-running Nurses' Health Study, which has followed the health of thousands of female nurses for the past 30 years.

On average, women who in 1986 said they usually slept 5 hours or less per night gained more weight over the next 16 years than those who slept for 7 hours per night or longer.

Although the effect was modest, Patel's team notes, even a relatively small weight gain can make a health difference; putting on an extra 10 pounds has been shown to double a person's risk of diabetes, for example.

And some of the weight gain was substantial. Sleep-deprived women were more likely to gain in excess of 30 pounds, and were 15 per cent more likely to become obese as they grew older.

Consuming extra calories could not be blamed for the weight gain, the investigators add, because women who slept less also ate less. Similarly, differences in levels of physical activity did not appear to be a factor.

''These findings,'' the researchers conclude, ''have the important implication that increasing sleep time among those sleeping less than 7 hours per night may represent a novel approach to obesity prevention.''(AGENCIES)

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