China’s coal reserves down to just 12 days: Report

BEIJING, Apr 24: China’s booming economy, which relies on coal for 70 per cent of its electricity, could be running out of steam, with the country’s coal reserves down to just 12 days.

China has just 12 days of coal stocks at most power stations, with some provinces bordering Beijing having less than a week’s reserves, the state electricity regulatory commission revealed yesterday.

Even though Chinese coal production in the first quarter of this year was up almost 15 per cent on the same period last year, it has apparently not been enough to meet the rapidly growing demand for power from an economy that has been growing by 10 per cent a year for more than two decades, NewScientist online said.

The International Energy Agency says China increased capacity at coal-fired power stations by 100 gigawatts in 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available.

The report quoted deputy head of the Chinese electricity regulatory commission, Wang Yeping, as saying the country is likely to be short of 10 gigawatts of electricity generating capacity this summer. (PTI)

No disagreement between India, US on Ahmadinejad's visit

WASHINGTON, Apr 24: The United States has defended the comments of its senior official on the upcoming visit of Iran's President to India, stating it was not in any way "pointing a finger" at India or leading to any disagreement between Washington and New Delhi.

"I don't think he (Casey) was in any way pointing the finger at India," the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Richard Boucher said here.

State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey had recently said that Washington wished New Delhi would ask Iran to "become a more responsible actor on the world stage" by ending its "rather unhelpful activities" regarding Iraq and support for terrorism.

Casey had also said it was up to India to decide how to "manage" its bilateral ties with Iran.

"I do understand that people want to make their own policy and decide their own choices. I don't think this is that big an issue, that big a disagreement between us," Boucher said.

"We do talk to India about Iran, as we talk to them about everything in the region. We've actually even proposed we have more systematic exchanges on a variety of areas of the world," he added.

"Second of all, I think our policies are very well-known in the world. We also know that India has made very clear they don't want to see another nuclear-weapon state in their region," the senior State Department official maintained.

"They'll have a visit and we'll see what comes out of it," Boucher added.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be in New Delhi on a short visit on April 29 on his way to Sri Lanka. (PTI)

'Indo-US civil N-deal bound by 123 agreement, not Hyde Act

WASHINGTON, Apr 24: The US has reiterated that the civilian nuclear initiative with India is bound by the 123 agreement and not the Hyde Act.

Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Richard Boucher rejected the notion that he has somehow dodged the issue in the past.

"No, I didn't," Boucher said in response to a query.

"We don't see any inconsistency between the Hyde Act and the 123 agreement. The requirements of US law are on us to meet. The essential function of the Act is to to enable a nuclear deal with India, because otherwise under American law we were prohibited from doing anything with India," the senior State Department official said.

"And so the Hyde Act is what makes it possible for us to sign this deal and conclude the agreement. The agreement binds the US and India once it's fully ratified and finished," he added.

"We don't see any inconsistency between what we were allowed to do and required to do under the Hyde Act, but what binds India and the United States together is the 123 agreement, not the act," Boucher maintained.

The senior official also stressed that the civilian nuclear deal with India is not a political issue so far as the Republicans and the Democrats are concerned but what has to be borne in mind is the political calendar in the US in the context of the elections and that the Bush administration is indeed worried about this.

"I don't think it is so much of a political issue, though. If you look at any of the major candidates in both parties, there's been very strong support for the US-India relationship and a desire to see this move forward on a bipartisan basis, including in the nuclear area," Boucher said.

The senior State Department official was giving his perceptions of the year ahead in America's relations with South and Central Asia making the point that there is indeed a "lot" going on.

"There's still a strong sense of momentum in the US-India relationship because there are so many areas of cooperation -- in business, science and academia -- even though some things, like the nuclear deal are slowed down as we await the outcome of the political process in New Delhi," Boucher said in his opening remarks.

"So I think we're still working very hard on a lot of different aspects of this relationship and hope to be able to work hard on the civil nuclear agreement when the Indians say the time has come to move forward again," he added. (PTI)

UN to send insecticide-treated nets to Africa to fight malaria

NEW YORK, Apr 23: The next time you take our office colleagues out for dinner, don’t order your favourite dish without a consensus. You may have to watch it go uneaten because what you like, others might not.

A new study, led by Indian-origin researchers Ashesh Mukherjee and Anirban Mukherjee, has revealed that people have the tendency to assume the whole world likes what they like, the ‘Journal of Consumer Research’ reported.

However, it found that people don’t generalise the same way when it comes to things they hate.

"The degree of false consensus depends on whether a person likes or dislikes an item. Our finding arises from a deeper truth about the human mind, namely that things we like are seen to contain primarily good characteristics, while things we dislike are seen to contain a mix of bad, neutral, or good characteristics.

"We might even like everything about an item-except for one unforgivable, deal-breaking trait. This difference leads us to make more exaggerated predictions that people like the same things we do compared to predictions that people will dislike the same things we dislike," the researchers said.

In their study, the researchers from the Universities of Michigan and McGill asked participants to choose a movie they like. They were then asked to guess what percentage of their peers liked the movie as well.

On average, people estimated that 51.2 per cent of other people also liked the movie, a significant overestimate. They also estimated that only 18.2 per cent of people, on average, disliked it-a reflection of the belief that more people agree with them than disagree.

In contrast, when asked to choose a movie they dislike and make the same estimate, the participants were less self-centred-they thought people would agree and disagree with their opinion in roughly the same numbers.

"Our research indicates that decision-makers in such situations need to be highly sensitive to the danger of over projecting their own likes, more so than their own dislikes," the two researchers wrote in the journal. (PTI)

Ban calls for measures to curb accumulation of small arms

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24: Member States of the United Nations need to increase their collection, maintenance and sharing of data on small arms as part of measures to encourage disarmament, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in a new report.

"While a build-up of small arms alone may not create the conflicts in which they are used, their excessive accumulation and universal availability tends to aggravate conflicts by increasing the lethality and duration of violence and by increasing the sense of insecurity which leads to a greater demand for weapons," he stresses in the report .

"These weapons are cheap, light and easy to handle, transport and conceal," Ban says in the first-ever report on the topic made public yesterday.

The Secretary-General points out that, currently, most conflicts are fought using mainly small arms and light weapons. "These weapons are used in conflicts, including inter-State confrontations as well as civil wars, terrorism, organized crime and gang warfare."

"Small arms facilitate a vast spectrum of human rights violations, such as rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and forced recruitment of children by armed groups or forces," he says. "More human rights abuses are committed with them than with any other weapons."

The lack of progress in curbing small arms, Ban says, is partially the result of limited data, coordination and capacity. (PTI)

Structure of heart linked to physical exercise: Study

WASHINGTON, Apr 24: A landmark study has suggested the impact of physical exercise on the structure of the heart, a finding that could immensely benefit heart disease patients.

Researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in collaboration with the Harvard University Health Services found that 90 days of vigorous athletic training produces significant changes in cardiac structure and function and that the type of change varies with the type of exercise performed.

The study, which appears in the April Journal of Applied Physiology, enrolled two groups of Harvard University student athletes at the beginning of the fall 2006 semester.

At the end of the 90-day study period, both groups had significant overall increases in the size of their hearts. For endurance athletes, the left and right ventricles -- the chambers that send blood into the aorta and to the lungs, respectively -- expanded.

"We were quite surprised by both the magnitude of changes over a relatively short period and by how great the differences were between the two groups of athletes," said Aaron Baggish, the lead author of the study.

"The functional differences raise questions about the potential impact of long-term training, which should be followed up in future studies," he said.

The information provided by the research may someday benefit heart disease patients.

"The take-home message is that, just as not all heart disease is equal, not all exercise prescriptions are equal," Baggish was quoted as saying by the ScienceDaily online.

"This should start us thinking about whether we should tailor the type of exercise patients should do to their specific type of heart disease. The concept will need to be studied in heart disease patients before we can make any definitive recommendations," he said. (PTI)

Immigration has benefited British economy, says new report

LONDON, Apr 24: High levels of immigration over the past 10 years have been beneficial for the British economy by lowering both inflation and interest rates, according to a new report by a city-based think tank.

The report published by The Work Foundationtoday said skills and labour shortages have been avoided and the economy has been kept on a stable growth path by immigration.

The British Government should embrace the case for free movement across the European Union and enable citizens of Bulgaria and Romania to work in the UK even if the move allow for a more uncertain economic outlook, it suggested.

The Foundation’s report contradicted a recent analysis of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which said competition from immigrants had a damaging impact on the low-paid employees and on training for British workers.

The report also debunked myths about the impact of migration on employment and wages. It said wages had not fallen because migrants are willing to work for less, including in key sectors such as construction work and hotels.

"The Government has had a hard time over immigration not because it has ‘lost control’ of the issue, but because it has failed to tell a compelling story based on consistent high-quality information, " said David Coats, the foundation’s associate director of policy and author of the report.

"On the available evidence, the best judgment is that the economic case for free movement in the EU is strong and the UK’s ageing population, with fewer young people entering the job market, means that a fair and flexible policy of managed migration is essential if the economy is to continue to grow," he added.

Fewer people came from central and eastern Europe to work in the UK in 2007 than in either 2006 or 2005, the report pointed out.

"The high water mark may have been passed and employers cannot rely on a continued supply of Polish workers to fill labour shortages in the UK. As the economies of central and eastern Europe grow and unemployment falls, the pressure to migrate will lessen," it added. (PTI)

Three NRIs convicted for 300 million pounds global fraud

LONDON, Apr 24: Three Indian-origin businessmen who swindled banks in Britain and the United States of more than 300 million pounds by pretending to run a worldwide metal trading empire have been found guilty and face a long term in jail.

Virendra Rastogi (39), Anand Jain (43) and Gautam Majumdar (57), ex-directors of metal trading business RBG Resources, were convicted at London’s Southwark Crown Court of conspiracy to defraud and remanded to custody this week.

Judge James Wadsworth told the three they could expect ‘long prison terms’ when he sentences them on June 5.

The conviction came at the end of a long drawn out international investigation. When investigators from the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) swooped on Rastogi in his Mayfair apartment here in 2002, he was found shredding wads of documents.

For six years, Rastogi reportedly conned banks into funding non-existent metal trading deals using 324 fake companies that turned out to be based in small flats and shops, with few assets beyond a table and chair.

The address of one company turned out to be a cowshed in India and another was a launderette in America. Hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds circulated around the globe on the instruction of the conspirators.

"This was a sophisticated and complex enterprise; it continued for over four years, in increasing amounts and fooled not only the banks (who undertook their own due diligence) but also the auditors," the SFO said after they were convicted. (PTI)

WWF warns Arctic ice melting faster than predicted

MONTREAL, Apr 23: Arctic sea ice is melting "significantly faster" than predicted and is approaching a point of no return, conservation group the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned in a new study.

The volumes of the Greenland Ice Sheet and ice in the Arctic Ocean were estimated at 2.9 million and 4.4 million cubic metres respectively in September 2007, the lowest ever levels recorded, the organisation said yesterday.

The sea ice shrank to 39 per cent below its 1979-2000 mean volume, it said.

"Recently observed changes are happening at rates significantly faster than predicted" by the 2005 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and last year's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), WWF said.

The melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet was happening so fast that experts were now questioning whether the situation is close to "tipping point," where sudden and possibly irreversible change takes place.

"When you look in detail at the science behind the recent Arctic changes it becomes painfully clear how our understanding of climate impacts lags behind the changes that we are already seeing in the Arctic," said Martin Sommerkorn, one of the authors of the report.

The WWF will present its report, comprised of the latest research in the region, to the meeting today of the Arctic Council, which groups Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. (AGENCIES)

Biodiversity loss hampers medical research: UN book

NEW YORK, Apr 24: Finding treatments for cancer, thinning bone disease and kidney failure are at risk due to biodiversity loss, a new book released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns.

Authors of "Sustaining Life" say threats to land- and marine-based life forms reduce chances of creating drugs like safer painkillers, treatments for blindness and re-growing of tissues and organs.

Citing example, they say early studies of the southern gastric brooding frog, or Rheobatrachus, showed that its baby frogs produced substances which slow down acid and enzyme secretions, thus leading researchers to believe that new inroads could have been made on treating human peptic ulcers, which affect 25 million people in the United States alone.

"But the studies could not be continued because both species of the Rheobatrachus became extinct, and the valuable medical secrets they held are now gone forever," said Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, both key authors of the book.

"Sustaining Life" the compilation of works of over 100 experts supported by UNEP, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the most far-reaching book on this subject till date.

The experts say conclusions of the book are not intended to sanction the harvesting of wildlife in a manner which further endangers species, but instead that they should trigger stepped-up conservation and management efforts.

"Habitat loss, destruction and degradation of ecosystems, pollution, over-exploitation and climate change are among the powerful and persistent impacts that are running down the planet’s nature-based capital, including the medical treasure trove of the world’s biodiversity," said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

Head of UNDP Kemal Dervis said people around the world, especially the rural poor, depend heavily on biodiversity and its loss would "seriously jeopardize our prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. (PTI)

Japan says no need to impose broad ban on US beef

TOKYO, Apr 24: Japan will not impose a blanket ban on US beef imports, despite the discovery of a spinal column in a meat shipment from an American processing plant, a government spokesman said today.

Japan this week temporarily halted beef shipments from a US plant after finding the spinal column, which violated a trade accord prohibiting parts believed to pose a risk of mad cow disease.

But Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said the violation was apparently an isolated case, and Tokyo would not retaliate by blocking all beef shipments from the United States.

"We understand this is not a systematic problem concerning US exports to Japan and there is no need to impose an import ban," he told reporters.

"But this is clearly unwelcome, and we asked the US government to fully abide by conditions concerning Japan-bound shipments," Machimura added.

The spinal column was discovered April 21 at a Japanese meat-processing factory during an inspection, said a statement from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

It was found in one of 700 boxes shipped from National Beef California LP and imported by trading house Itochu Corp, the statement said. Shipments from the US-based company have been halted.

Japan imposed a ban on US beef imports in December 2003 after the first case of mad cow disease was found in the United States. (AGENCIES)

Glaciers reveal Mars’ climate has been ‘recently’ active:Study

NEW YORK, Apr 24: The climate on the Red Planet has been much more dynamic than previously believed, suggests a study that could have implications for the life-on-Mars argument by strengthening the case for liquid water.

"We have gone from seeing Mars as a dead planet for three-plus billion years to one that has been alive in recent times," said Jay Dickson, a research analyst in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown University in the United States and lead author of the study that appears in the May edition of Geology.

"The finding] has changed our perspective from a planet that has been dry and dead to one that is icy and active," he said.

Based on the study of images taken last year by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists at Brown University believe that Mars has gone through multiple Ice Ages - episodes in its recent past in which the planet’s mid-latitudes were covered by glaciers that disappeared with changes in the Red Planet’s obliquity.

Researchers have documented for the first time that ice packs at least 1 km (0.6 miles) thick and perhaps 2.5 kms (1.6 miles) thick existed along Mars’ mid-latitude belt as recently as 100 million years ago, ScienceDaily online said.

The other images indicates that glaciers flowed in localized areas in the last 10 to 100 million years - akin to the day before yesterday in Mars’ geological timeline.

The evidence of recent activity means the Martian climate may change again and could bolster speculation about whether the Red Planet can, or did, support life. (PTI)