McCain says would keep rights pressure on China

DAYTON, OHIO, Feb 21: Republican front-runner John McCain said he would keep pressure on China to improve its human rights record and expand US-Sino ties if he won the US presidency.

The four-term Arizona senator said he would also seek to make the US military presence in Asia permanent, or ''as long as nations want us there,'' and that the United States must adapt to a shift in economic power from Europe to Asia.

''We have to have both a short-term and a long-term strategy to deal with what is a reality -- a China superpower,'' McCain told a group of four reporters aboard his campaign bus yesterday.

In the short term, that would mean avoiding military confrontations with China while building up relations with Beijing and other Asian governments, he said.

But McCain would also want to see democratic improvements in Communist China if he were elected on November 4 to succeed President George W Bush.

''I would make it clear that we remain advocates for progress, human rights, democratization,'' he said. ''I would make it clear that we would continue to strengthen our ties to the countries in the region.''

McCain, 71, also acknowledged that five years of war in Iraq had distracted US policymakers from economic and diplomatic opportunities in Asia and other regions.

He said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mishandled the war during the first four years of the conflict.

''We're fixing it now and we are succeeding,'' said McCain, an early advocate of the U.S. Military's current ''surge'' strategy of sending about 30,000 more troops to Iraq.

''But the price of failure in those other four years has manifest itself in a lot of other ways.''

McCain, who would be the oldest person to win a first US presidential term, has cast himself as more seasoned in foreign policy than his Democratic rivals Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

He criticized Obama for saying in August that he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan to strike al Qaeda targets with or without approval from the Pakistani Government.

''There are ways of working with leaders of other countries and the one thing you don't want to do is embarrass them,'' McCain said. ''I know these people and I've known them for many years, and I know I can work with them.''

''And I would not broadcast to the world that I am going to bomb a sovereign nation in order to accomplish my goals.'' (AGENCIES)

South Korea's President-elect cleared in probe

SEOUL, Feb 21: South Korean investigators looking into allegations the president-elect was involved in securities fraud said today they found no wrongdoing, defusing a scandal that analysts said could have undermined his authority.

CEO-turned-politician Lee Myung-bak takes office on February 25 and was the country's first president-elect to face a criminal investigation.

Under local law a sitting president may not be prosecuted for such charges, but if implicated, the criminal suspicion would hang over his or her presidency. An incumbent president could face prosecution on leaving office.

''Lee Myung-bak was not involved in stock-price manipulation,'' Chung Ho-young, a spokesman for the special counsel, told a nationally televised news conference.

Lee's opponents have said he was deeply enmeshed in running a U.S.-based securities firm called BBK, which is under investigation in South Korea for suspected embezzlement by its managers and bilking investors out of millions of dollars.

''We have concluded the president-elect has no involvement in BBK,'' Chung said.

State prosecutors conducted their own probe late last year and cleared Lee. Lee's liberal opponents, who control parliament, in December pushed through a bill for the special counsel, arguing state prosecutors did not adequately do their jobs.

Conservative Lee won a landslide victory in the December 19 presidential election with pledges to boost the economy.

Separately, Lee and his conservative allies worked out a compromise with liberals on a plan to streamline government and prevented a fight that had the potential of making his first days in office difficult.

The deal calls for reducing the number of ministries from the current 18 to 15.

As a part of the deal, Lee dropped his plans to shut the ministry responsible for managing affairs with North Korea due to objections from liberals who said its closure would send the wrong signals to their troublesome neighbour about its special status in the South. (AGENCIES)

C'wealth looks forward to Pak playing 'full role' in grouping

LONDON, Feb 21: Describing the elections in Pakistan as "reasonably peaceful", the Commonwealth has said it looks forward to the country playing its "full role" in the grouping once democracy is fully restored.

"The Commonwealth is keen to engage with the new government once it is formed, including at ministerial level," the 53-nation grouping's Secretary General Don McKinnon said last night. Pakistan was suspended from the Commonwealth after President Pervez Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in November last year.

Noting that Pakistan is important to Commonwealth, McKinnon said "we look forward to it once again playing its full role in the association once democracy is fully restored. We remain ready to assist towards that end."

McKinnon said "These elections are an important step in Pakistan's journey towards full democracy.

"Although the run up to the elections was marred by serious acts of violence, of which the most shocking was the assassination of (former premier) Benazir Bhutto, it is a relief that polling day itself was reasonably peaceful."

He hoped that the democratic process would now be permitted to play itself out fully, with the formation of a new Government in accordance with constitutional procedures. (PTI)

Democrat Obama raised 36 million dollar in January

WASHINGTON, Feb 21: Democrat Barack Obama raised just over 36 million dollar for his presidential campaign in January, three times more than Republican front-runner John McCain, according to a campaign finance report filed.

Locked in a tight battle with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama raised 36.1 dollars from donors in January and had 24.9 million dollars in cash on hand at the end of the month to spend on his campaign.

Clinton raised 13.9 million dollars in contributions in January and made a personal loan to her campaign of 5 million dollars, according to her Federal Election Commission report.

Clinton had 29.1 million dollar in cash on hand before the February contests in the state-by-state battle to nail down the nomination for the November 4 presidential election. Obama has won 10 state nominating contests in a row against Clinton.

McCain's campaign was nearly derailed last summer by lackluster fundraising but the pace picked up as he moved closer to becoming the likely Republican presidential nominee.

According to an FEC filing, the Arizona senator raised 11.7 million dollar in January, more than he raised in the previous three months combined.

McCain's rival, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, raised 3.9 million dollar in January, according to his FEC report. (AGENCIES)

China paper accuses US of hypocrisy in space

BEIJING, Feb 21: A leading Chinese newspaper has accused the United States of hypocrisy in criticising other nations' space ambitions while rejecting a proposed space treaty and firing a missile to destroy one of its own satellites.

The United States hit one of its own dying spy satellites with a missile yesterday, Washington time -- today in Beijing -- citing fears that a normal re-entry would risk lives.

Earlier this month, Russia and China proposed a treaty to ban weapons in space and the use or threat of force against satellites and other spacecraft. But Washington rejected the proposal as unworkable and said it instead favours confidence-building efforts, the New York Times reported.

China, which shot down one of its own satellites in January 2007, has said it is ''paying close attention'' to Washington's planned satellite destruction.

But today the ruling Communist Party's newspaper went further, accusing the US of dangerous space ambitions and double-standards.

''The United States will not easily abandon its military advantage based on space technology, and it is striving to expand and fully exploit this advantage,'' said the front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the paper, which came out before Washington announced one of its missiles had hit the satellite.

When China tested an anti-satellite missile a year ago, the Bush administration and other governments criticised the act as dangerous. But the Chinese state newspaper said the United States was hypocritical.

''The United States, the world's top space power, has often accused other countries of vigorously developing military space technology, but faced with the Chinese-Russian proposal to restrict space armaments, it runs in fear from what it claimed to love.''

The paper said Washington was ''desperately trying to explain away'' its satellite shoot-down as ''for purely non-military objectives''.

Nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction are banned from space under a 1967 international treaty, but Washington's plans have caused concerns about non-nuclear arms in space. (AGENCIES)

Beijing police vow action on HK nude photos

BEIJING, Feb 21: Police in the Chinese capital Beijing have vowed to detain anyone caught distributing nude photos of several Hong Kong pop stars that were recently posted on the Internet, state media reported today.

Hong Kong police said some 1,300 private shots of the celebrities had been stolen by the staff of a computer repair shop from a faulty laptop believed to belong to Canadian-born singer and actor Edison Chen.

The scandal has caused a media frenzy and feverish downloading and sharing of the photos. Hong Kong police have made several arrests and the investigation is ongoing.

Chinese media said police in the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, had arrested 10 people suspected of producing, selling and purchasing compact discs of the photos.

''Showing the photos to friends or posting them on blogs or online forums will break the law even if it is not for the purpose of making profits,'' the China Press and Publishing Journal quoted a Beijing police official as saying.

Those who do so could be put under detention for up to 15 days for a misdemeanor offense, the unnamed official said.

''If someone transmits more than 200 of the photos as a package on the Internet, the sender will be prosecuted for criminal liability,'' the official was quoted as saying.

Authorities in mainland China have ordered Web sites and Internet service providers to exercise self-censorship, filtering and deleting the photos, but private sharing through instant messengers and other software remains rampant.

A Beijing Internet content watchdog has cited Chinese search engine giant Baidu for spreading the photos, asking it to apologise to the public, state media reported.

Tabloid newspapers in celebrity-mad Hong Kong have devoted wide coverage to the scandal, in which photos appear to include at least six stars including actress Cecilia Chung and singer Gillian Chung.

Media in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China have produced a flood of editorials and commentaries reflecting on ethics, humanity, privacy and Internet policies.

Local media reported that Edison Chen might give a briefing in Hong Kong on Thursday afternoon in what would be his first public appearance since the scandal broke in January. (AGENCIES)

Discovery shuttle's mission delayed one month: NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, Feb 21: The US space shuttle Discovery's mission to ship part of the Japanese laboratory Kibo up to the International Space Station will be delayed one month to May 25, NASA has said.

The mission was put off by a delay in the delivery of the Discovery's external fuel tank and an unfavorable angle between the sun and the ISS for solar power generation between May 7 and May 25, which could have affected the mission in its originally planned period.

The fuel tank was to have been delivered in time for the Discovery's original April 25 launch date, but was slowed due to the problem of malfunctioning fuel gauges that first stalled by two months the Atlantis mission -- which was finally completed yesterday with its safe landing at the Kennedy Space Center here.

The new date for the Discovery's mission will not impact the rest of the shuttle launch program for 2008, National Aeronautics and Space Administration chief Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters after the Atlantis landed here.

The Japanese-made Kibo ("Hope") laboratory consists of three parts. The first part, the logistics module, will be carried to the ISS by the shuttle Endeavour, scheduled to launch on March 11.

Discovery will then deliver the laboratory's pressurized module and robotic arm.

The laboratory's third part, an inter-orbit communications systems unit, will be delivered by a third shuttle mission at a later date. (AGENCIES)

Tatas scouting for hotels in US; Orient story still unfolding

CHICAGO, Feb 21: Curtains are not yet down on Tatas' offer to buy out global premium hotel chain Orient Express, but India's most-visible business house in the US is scouting for more luxury hotels in America.

"We are looking for luxury business hotels in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami," Tata Sons' Chief Representative for North America David P Good told PTI on the sidelines of a FICCI-US India Business Council Summit here.

Asked whether the group was disappointed over Orient Express spurning the Tatas takeover offer, Good said the Orient Express story is still unfolding.

Ruling out any hostile takeover move, which is against the Tatas' business ethics, Good said "we are in touch with some of the Orient Express shareholders and we are still working with management".

Good said the impression of the management that an Indian hotel chain cannot run a premium class international hotel was not sufficiently backed by facts. "We have made it known to them that their impression was not right," he said.

The Tata Group, which is on a global acquisition spree, is looking for buying hotels in the US at a time when it may get a good bargain in the face of slowdown in the American economy.

The group has enough resources to buy out several properties, using its own internal war chest and leveraging capacity to raise money both in India and the US, Good said. (PTI)

'Teenage dads at risk of having babies with birth problems'

TORONTO, Feb 21: Teenage fathers are at an increased risk of having children born with birth-related problems that could even lead to death at the time of delivery, a research has suggested.

"Our study indicated that being a teenage father was an independent risk factor for adverse birth outcomes, whereas advanced paternal age was not," said Professor Shi Wu Wen, one of the authors of the landmark study.

"It is biologically plausible that paternal age might play a role in the risk of adverse birth outcomes associated with abnormal placentation," said Prof Wen, senior scientist at the Ottawa Health Research Institute.

The researchers, from the Ottawa Health Research Institute, Canada, looked at babies born to fathers in seven age groups, from teenagers through to those aged 50 and over.

The study, the largest on the effects of paternal age on adverse birth outcomes, suggested that babies of teenage fathers are at an increased risk of having problems ranging from pre-term delivery or low birth weight, through to death in or near to the time of delivery, the Science Daily online reported.

After adjusting for confounding factors (such as race, education, smoking and alcohol drinking during pregnancy, adequacy of prenatal care and the sex of the baby), the study found that babies born to teenage fathers (aged less than 20) were more likely to be born early (a 15 per cent increased risk), have low birth weight (13 per cent increased risk), be small for gestational age (17 per cent increased risk), have a low Apgar score (13 per cent increased risk) or to die within the first four weeks after birth (22 per cent increased risk) or to die in the period from four weeks to one year after birth (41 per cent increased risk). (PTI)

Bahrain's construction sector faces heat...

DUBAI, Feb 21: A series of strikes this month in the construction sector in Bahrain will prompt it to hike the salaries of expatriate workers amid concerns over the changing market dynamics including soaring raw material costs, a senior industry official said.

The issue of hike in wages for workers, most of them Indians, came in during discussion between Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) contractors' committee chairman Samir Nass and Indian Ambassador Balkrishna Shetty in Manama yesterday.

"I had a one-to-one meeting with the ambassador. Later, a group of leading contractors also met him, in the wake of recent strikes by expatriate workers, a majority of them Indians, at a few construction sites," said Nass.

"Steel prices have gone up 100 per cent in the past 18 months while prices of other building materials have also increased by 50 to 60 per cent during this period," Nass told the Gulf Daily News.

"Most contractors are not owners of the projects they undertake. They do the work on fixed cost basis," he said.

"The demand for higher salaries will work by itself. Prices in India have gone up and the workers are, therefore, already asking for more at the time of recruitment," he said. (PTI)

India, China to control winds of climate change

SYDNEY, Feb 21: India and China have been called to participate in adopting stringent measures to cut down emission of greenhouse gases as the existing targets are not enough to control climate change.

According to an interim report on climate change to be released here today, without intervention before 2020, it would be impossible to avoid a high risk of dangerous climate change that was advancing more rapidly than previously thought.

According to Canberra's top adviser Ross Garnaut, there was a need to go ''considerably further'' as part of a global agreement to cut greenhouse emissions with full participation by developing countries, to keep climate change at acceptable levels.

The report would recommend setting two levels of carbon reduction targets, one to be met as a national and regional initiative and a more stringent target that would be adopted in concert with developing economies such as India and China.

All the major reports of recent years, including the UN Intergovernmental Panel assessments and the Stern report, had used statistics that were already out of date, The Age quoted him as saying.

''The rate of change is at the bad end of what was identified as the range of possibilities,'' he added.

Moreover, there were signs the capacity of the oceans and the atmosphere to absorb emissions would decrease, which means a greater proportion of emitted carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere in the coming years.

Scientists stated that they would not endorse particular temperature or carbon concentration targets until the final review was completed in September.

Australia was expected to do more than some other countries because its southern parts would be among the world's worst-affected regions.

It should take a leadership role in the region by working on targets with near neighbours including Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, Professor Garnaut said.

(UNI)

Identical twins not as similar as believed: Study

WASHINGTON, Feb 21: Contrary to previous belief, identical twins are not genetically identical, a new study found.

The researchers studied 19 pairs of monozygotic, or identical, twins and found differences in copy number variation in DNA. Copy number variation (CNV) occurs when a set of coding letters in DNA are missing, or when extra copies of segments of DNA are produced, the study said.

Humans receive one chromosome from their mother and one from their father, providing for two copies of the genome, the scientists informed.

In some cases, bits of DNA are missing from a chromosome, leaving the offspring with just one copy of that bit of DNA. In other instances, mutations may produce three, four or more copies of a particular bit of DNA, they added.

In most cases, variation in the number of copies likely has no impact on health or development. But in others, it may be one factor in the likelihood of developing a disease.

''The presumption has always been that identical twins are identical down to their DNA,'' said Carl Bruder, PhD and Jan Dumanski, PhD, of University of Alabama's Department of Genetics and the study_s lead authors.

''That_s mostly true, but our findings suggest that there are small, subtle differences due to CNV. Those differences may point the way to better understanding of genetic diseases when we study so-called discordant monozygotic twins...A pair of twins where one twin has a disorder and the other does not,'' Sciencedaily quoted them as saying.

Dr Bruder pointed out that one twin might develop a particular disease Parkinson_s, for example while the other does not. Previously, it was thought that environmental factors were the likely culprits, not genetics. Dr Bruder and Dr Dumanski think their findings indicate that CNV may play a critical role and this can be efficiently studied in identical twins.

''More importantly, changes in CNV may tell us if a missing gene, or multiple copies of a gene, are implicated in the onset of disease,'' Dr Bruder said. ''If twin A develops Parkinson_s and twin does not, the region of their genome where they show differences is a target for further investigation to discover the basic genetic underpinnings of the disease,'' he added.

The findings of the research were published online in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

(UNI)