Indian food writer adds spice to Western palates

UBUD, INDONESIA, Oct 5: At one time, only Indians swore by her cookbooks.But over the years, ''curry queen'' Madhur Jaffrey has transcended cultural boundaries and today has almost every fan of Indian cuisine eating out of her hand.

''In America and England, Indian food has a vast audience. Otherwise, it was considered an esoteric thing,'' said Jaffrey, whose books and cookery shows are often credited with introducing Indian spices to British supermarkets.

''Today, chapati (Indian bread) flour is available in supermarkets in England and it's not just for Indians,'' she told Reuters at a writers' festival in the Balinese resort town of Ubud where she shared some spicy stories from her life.

Jaffrey's journey into the cooking world began accidentally in the 1950s when she went to drama school in London and found ''the food was just dreadful''. This set her thinking about Indian cuisine and its eclectic spices like asoefetida, cardamom and coriander.

Her mother and other relatives then started mailing her letters with recipes which Jaffrey eventually put together in a cookbook in the 1970s.

It was the first of more than 15 books, dishing out tips not just on Indian kebabs and biryanis but also on other Asian cuisine from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

But Jaffrey really tasted success with her television shows on Indian and eastern cooking, which were among the first to break away from the traditional studio format of cookery programmes and were presented almost like travel shows.

''Food doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists in a culture. I wanted the circumstances of a recipe, whether it's for a picnic or a religious festival,'' said Jaffrey.

Britain's Good Food magazine recently voted the petite food writer among the world's 20 most influential foodies along with TV legend Delia Smith.

''When I go to villages, I ask farmers' wives and fisherwomen what they're cooking at home,'' she laughed. ''I like to know what people eat for breakfast, in the cinema.''

ACCIDENTAL COOK

Jaffrey stumbled into food writing by accident.

She began as an actress, but because there wasn't enough money in acting she took to writing to supplement her income to help raise her three daughters after she moved to New York.

''I started writing to pay for my kids' college in the US I wrote on dance, culture and food,'' Jaffrey told a gathering of foodies and book lovers sipping champagne under a Balinese-style gazebo in Ubud, Bali's cultural capital.

''But somehow food just took off. I was hijacked into this world.''

New York-based Jaffrey, whose first name Madhur means sweet as honey, has acted in several Merchant-Ivory films set in India including ''Heat and Dust'' and ''Cotton Mary'' -- and is still involved with acting, directing and working on screenplays.

She is currently working on a film about three generations of South Asians and mental health, a subject that's often brushed under the carpet in many Asian societies.

This year, she also released her memoirs, ''Climbing the Mango Tree'', a story about growing up in a huge extended family in colonial India told through food memories of picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint and sneaking tastes of exotic street fare.

At the end of the book, Jaffrey has included more than 30 recipes from her childhood.

''I don't think of myself as a master, I'm just passing on what I've learnt,'' said the author and actress, dressed in a crisp white traditional Indian dress.

''And I just want to continue what's I'm doing.'' (AGENCIES)

The joys and frustrations of Ramzan

DUBAI, Oct 5: It's supposed to be a time of peace and piety, but it's really hard to stay spiritual while trying to get work done during Ramzan.

For one month of the lunar calendar, Muslims abstain from food, drink, sex, cigarettes and profanities from sunrise to sunset with the aim of purifying the body and soul.

But for many people such as journalists who have to work through the feast, fasting often breeds frustration.

The first thing that hits you is the caffeine withdrawal.

Bleary eyes and wandering minds are hallmarks of Ramzan. Rumbling stomachs and parched throats also make focusing on work difficult.

A popular Arabic newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, summed it up well in a caricature of an employee, dressed in traditional Arab robes, sitting at his desk watching the seconds tick by until Iftar, the time to break the fast.

Even if you do summon the energy to work, getting interviews or information can be exhausting.

Labour laws in most countries in the Middle East require businesses to cut back their working hours, which means executives are busier and less inclined to talk.

Many officials, tired from lack of food and drink, work only after sunset, which means you often have to put in a full morning's work only to be at your desk at night.

This Ramzan, which started on September 23, a colleague had to stay in the office until almost midnight to speak to a Gulf official who had refused to take her calls while he was fasting.

And then there's the road rage.

Ramzan hours tend to be the same for both the private and public sectors, which means traffic gridlock as millions of commuters all try to use the same stretch of road.

As the time for Iftar nears, tempers fray further.

Stragglers race home through empty streets in the final minutes, and accidents are common -- traffic police in the West Asia are probably the only people who work overtime during Ramzan. (AGENCIES)

Chemo has long-term impact on brain function :Study

WASHINGTON, Oct 5: Chemotherapy causes changes in the brain's metabolism and blood flow that can last as long as ten years, a discovery that may explain the mental fog and confusion that affect many cancer survivors, researchers said today.

The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that women who had undergone chemotherapy five to ten years earlier had lower metabolism in a key region of the frontal cortex.

Women treated with chemotherapy also showed a spike in blood flow to the frontal cortex and cerebellum while performing memory tests, indicating a rapid jump in activity level, the researchers said in a statement about their study.

''The same area of the frontal lobe that showed lower resting metabolism displayed a substantial leap in activity when the patients were performing the memory exercise,'' said Daniel Silverman, the UCLA associate professor who led the study.

''In effect, these women's brains were working harder than the control subjects' to recall the same information,'' he said in a statement.

Experts estimate at least 25 per cent of chemotherapy patients are affected by symptoms of confusion, so-called chemo brain, and a recent study by the University of Minnesota reported an 82 percent rate, the statement said.

''People with 'chemo brain' often can't focus, remember things or multitask the way they did before chemotherapy,'' Silverman said. ''Our study demonstrates for the first time that patients suffering from these cognitive symptoms have specific alterations in brain metabolism.''

The study, published today in the online edition of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, tested 21 women who had surgery to remove breast tumors, 16 of whom had received chemotherapy and five who had not.

The researchers used positron emission tomography scans to compare the brain function of the women. They also compared the scans with those of 13 women who had not had breast cancer or chemotherapy.

Positron emission tomography creates an image of sections of the body using a special camera that follows the progress of an injected radioactive tracer.

Researchers used the scans to examine the women's resting brain metabolism as well as the blood flow to their brains as they did a short-term memory exercise.

Silverman said the findings suggested PET scans could be used to monitor the effects of chemotherapy on brain metabolism. Since the scans already are used to monitor patients for tumor response to therapy, the additional tests would be easy to add, he said.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, with some 211,000 new cases diagnosed each year, the statement said. (AGENCIES)

Bird flu vaccine shows good results in early trial

CHICAGO, Oct 5: An experimental vaccine for bird flu using new cell-based manufacturing methods showed promise at combating divergent strains of the virus in an early clinical trial, Baxter International Inc. Has said.

The health-care products maker said yesterday preliminary results from a 270-patient study suggest the vaccine was safe, well-tolerated and may provide wider protection against H5N1 -- the bird flu virus -- for a larger number of people.

H5N1 mainly affects birds, but experts fear it could mutate into a strain easily transmitted from person to person, capable of killing millions of people in a global pandemic.

An H5N1 virus has killed at least 148 people since 2003, mostly in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and China, according to the World Health Organization.

The results are the first data from any bird flu vaccine made using cell-based techniques, according to a Baxter spokeswoman Deb Spak.

The Deerfield, Illinois-based company is testing a new and better way for developing vaccines using cell-based manufacturing techniques that hold the promise of producing much larger quantities of vaccine in much less time.

Vaccine makers currently rely on egg-based production methods, which require steady supplies of carefully grown eggs and months of cultivation. The new method grows the vaccines in labs, in batches of cells called cell cultures.

Spak said the early-stage study suggests the vaccine could offer cross-protection from other strains of the virus.

''This is the first clinical demonstration that a candidate H5N1 (bird flu virus) vaccine can induce antibodies that neutralize widely divergent strains of H5N1,'' said Noel Barrett, vice president of global research and development for Baxter's vaccines business.

Barrett said the results must be confirmed with a larger study. Baxter said the clinical trial of the experimental H5N1 vaccine in healthy adults in Austria and Singapore suggested the vaccine had similar side effects to those reported for seasonal flu vaccines. (AGENCIES)

HRW welcomes Indian ban on child labour

New York, Oct 5: A US-based human rights watchdog has welcomed the Indian ban on domestic work and some other forms of labour by children under 14 years of age but stressed the necessity of enforcing it effectively.

"This ban on child domestic labour is a welcome step, but changes on paper are not enough," Zama Coursen-Neff of Human Rights Watch said.

The central ban on children working in homes, restaurants, hotels and resorts would come into force from October 10. Officially, India has about 12 million child workers under 14.

The HRW regretted that the ban provides no protection for children aged 14 18 who, it said, also "face exploitation and abuse by their employers."

"If the Indian authorities are serious about protecting children from hazardous labour, the state governments should start prosecuting abusive employers and rehabilitating child workers," Coursen-Neff, who is senior researcher for the Children's Rights Division, said in a statement.

Noting that the law prohibits the employment of children under age 14 in occupations deemed hazardous, a list that will now include domestic, hotel and restaurant work, it said government officials must remove and rehabilitate children, and prosecute employers illegally using underage children.

HRW claimed that while investigating child labour in India in 1996 and 2003, it found that most government officials responsible for enforcing the law failed to do so.

"Illegal employers almost never faced sanction. Money that the Government allocates for rehabilitation, which is critical for preventing children from returning to dangerous work, remained unspent," it alleged. (PTI)

Chinese urban teenagers emerge as potential new consumers

BEIJING, Oct 5: Urban Chinese teenagers, mostly from one-child families, are emerging as potential new consumers waiting to be fully tapped, a new survey has found.

About 44 per cent of students aged 13 to 18 have their own bank accounts, and have an average of more than 200 yuan in monthly pocket money, the survey found after interviewing some 8,000 students in eight big cities.

The researchers say that a sample of this size can represent the views of 2.45 million teenagers in these large Chinese cities.

According to the results, teenagers spent 62.5 per cent of their pocket money on food and beverages. They also spent an average of 82 yuan per month on online games. Stationery, comic books and magazines were also high on the list of purchases.

The research was carried out in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu and Xi'an from April to September.

Thanks to China's one-child family planning policy and robust economic growth, today's urban teenagers typically enjoy better financial support than their predecessors who were not from single-child families.

According to the report, half of their pocket money was received at the beginning of the Chinese Lunar New Year when parents and other family members traditionally give money to young relatives. On average, young people in the larger cities get 1,400 to 2,000 yuan in such gifts. (PTI)

Pak says Rawalpindi explosion did not target Musharraf

ISLAMABAD, Oct 5: Pakistan has claimed that the powerful explosion near President Pervez Musharraf's highly guarded residence in Rawalpindi was not aimed at him as media reports said it could have been caused by a bomb or a missile.

"Nothing is related to the President or the Army House," Army Spokesman Maj.Gen. Shaukat Sultan has said referring to the blast last night in the garrison town.

Despite official denials, reports continue to speculate about yet another abortive attempt targeting Musharraf, who survived two bids on his life in December 2003.

Pakistani daily Dawn quoted officials as saying that the explosion was caused by a bomb while a huge quantity of other explosives found in the park, located a few hundred yards away from Army House where Musharraf stays, failed to detonate.

Soon after the explosion, heavy army contingents moved into the area and cordoned it off. It was unclear whether it was a bomb or a missile, the daily said.

While an official statement said the blast caused no casualties or damage to property, local people, whose kin worked in the park stalls, anxiously waited for the news about their relatives.

Locals said the explosion was so powerful that it was heard several kilometers away and windowpanes of several residence were smashed in the area.

"A search party was sent to the spot, which found some explosive material there. Now the Bomb Disposal Squad and the search parties are carrying out the clearance of the area," the statement said. (PTI)

Hawking to write book on why we have a universe

NEW YORK, Oct 5: Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist who wrote the best-selling ''A Brief History of Time,'' is to start work on a new book that will examine how and why the universe was created.

''The Grand Design,'' which is expected to be released in the fall of 2008, will be co-authored by Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist and author who collaborated with Hawking on ''A Briefer History of Time'' which was published last year.

Publisher Irwyn Applebaum of Bantam Dell Publishing Group said the experience of the co-authors working on the more reader-friendly ''A Briefer History of Time,'' motivated them to work together again.

''The Grand Design'' tackles the question of why there is a universe, looking at both the origin of the universe and the deeper issues of why the laws of physics are what they are,'' Applebaum told Reuters.

Hawking, 64, a Cambridge University physicist who has a crippling muscle disease and is confined to a wheelchair, has written several books that examine the origins of the universe, and what the future holds.

''A Brief History Of Time'', published in 1988, spent 72 weeks at on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than ten million copies worldwide.

Hawking is also working on a series of children's books with his daughter Lucy, the first of which is due to be published next year.(AGENCIES)

Papua New Guinea rebuffs Australia on extradition

SYDNEY, Oct 5: Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare has rebuffed Australian attempts to extradite the Solomon Islands' fugitive attorney-general on child sex charges, saying he is free to leave the country.

Somare said Julian Moti, who is in hiding in the Solomons' embassy in the PNG capital Port Moresby, should be allowed to fly to Honiara.

"We have no law to hold people to ransom," Somare was quoted as saying by PNG's Post Courier newspaper today.

"He (Moti) came here, he is to have a free passage from us to go to Solomon Islands."

Moti was arrested at Australia's request during a Port Moresby stopover on his way to Honiara on Friday -- a move criticised by Somare, who said orders for the arrest did not come from the PNG commisioner of police.

Moti failed to turn up in court on Saturday, and on Monday Solomons' Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said his government was protecting the law officer because the Australian charges were politically motivated.

Relations between Australia and the Solomon Islands have deteriorated rapidly since Honiara expelled Canberra's ambassador last month, accusing him of meddling in local politics.

The Australian government has denied the charges are politically motivated and Prime Minister John Howard said it was "quite inappropriate" that Moti should be sheltered in the high commission.

The charges against 41-year-old Moti relate to an incident involving a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu in 1997. (AFP)

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