Organisations from
23 Countries oppose Indo-US nuclear deal
WASHINGTON,
Jan 10: More than 130 experts and Non
Governmental Organisations from 23 countries have
criticised the US -India nuclear deal, saying its
proposal to exempt India from longstanding global
nuclear trade standards "would damage the
already fragile nuclear nonproliferation system
and set back efforts to achieve universal nuclear
disarmament."
In a letter sent
to more than four-dozen Governments this week,
they called upon the Governments "to play an
active role in supporting measures that would
ensure this controversial proposal does not:
further undermine the nuclear safeguards system
and efforts to prevent the proliferation of
technologies that may be used to produce nuclear
bomb material, or in any way contribute to the
expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal."
The letter
described as an ‘international appeal’
urges the Governments to consider additional
conditions and restrictions on nuclear trade with
India.
Among other
recommendations, it urges "to actively
oppose any arrangement that would give India any
special safeguards exemptions or would in any way
be inconsistent with the principle of permanent
safeguards over all nuclear materials and
facilities."
Among the
signatories to the ‘international
appeal’ include former UN Undersecretary
General for Disarmament Affairs and President of
the 1995 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review
and Extension Conference Jayantha Dhanapala,
mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Tokyo-based
Citizens_ Nuclear Information Center and the
Washington-based Arms Control Association.
The appeal insists
that NSG states should under no circumstances
allow for the transfer to India of plutonium
reprocessing, uranium enrichment, or heavy water
production technology, which may be replicated
and used to help produce nuclear bomb material.
In the coming
weeks, the 35-member International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors and the
45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) will
likely take up the issue.
India is
reportedly seeking IAEA safeguards that could
allow to cease IAEA scrutiny if nuclear fuel
supplies are cut off, even if the country renews
nuclear testing. (UNI)
Hindu appointed
Pak PM’s adviser on madrasas ....
ISLAMABAD,
Jan 10: A Hindu has been appointed as
special advisor to Pakistan Prime Minister to
monitor the process of registration and reforms
of madrasas in the country.
Caretaker Prime
Minister Mohammadmian Soomro appointed Mr Amar
Lal, who has been working as Prime
Minister’s special Assistant on Minority
Affairs, to the post assigning him the status of
a Federal Minister.
According to Daily
Times, Mr Lal had directed Secretary Religious
Affairs Wakil Ahmad Khan in a letter yesterday to
provide him all records pertaining to reforms and
registration of madrasas besides arranging a
special briefing for himself about the syllabus
taught at the semiaries.
"It’s
not in my knowledge that anyone has been
appointed as special adviser to monitor
registration of madrasas," Mr Wakil Ahmad
Khan was quoted by the paper as saying.
He said denied
receiving any letter from Mr Lal asking to
arrange a briefing for the latter.
(UNI)
Coffee in
moderation won’t boost miscarriage risk
...........
NEW
YORK, Jan 10: Drinking moderate amounts of coffee
during pregnancy won’t increase a
woman’s likelihood of miscarrying, new
research shows.
"Based on
what we’ve seen, it’s not a cause for
great concern," Dr. David A. Savitz of Mount
Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, the
study’s first author, said, noting that past
research has had similarly "reassuring"
results.
But because women
in the study consumed a relatively small amount
of caffeine-the equivalent of less than two cups
of coffee daily in early pregnancy and less later
on-the study can’t answer the question of
whether consuming more might be harmful, he said.
Savitz’s
study is unique in that some women reported their
caffeine consumption before pregnancy, others
reported it within the first 8 to 12 weeks, he
noted. "There’s an advantage in asking
very early, when people can recall more
accurately."
He and his team
followed 2,407 pregnant women, 258 of whom
miscarried. All of the women reported their
caffeine consumption before they became pregnant;
4 weeks after their last menstrual period; and at
the time of the interview.
Most women in the
study who drank coffee or other caffeinated
beverages consumed about 350 milligrams of
caffeine daily before they became pregnant and in
very early pregnancy, equivalent to 1.7 7-ounce
cups of brewed coffee a day. At the time of the
interview, their average caffeine intake had
fallen to 200 milligrams.
At each of the
three time points assessed, there was no
statistically significant relationship between
the amount of caffeine a woman consumed and her
risk of miscarriage.
"These data
provide evidence to suggest that, within the
lower range examined, caffeine intake is not
associated with risk of miscarriage," Savitz
and his colleagues conclude. (AGENCIES)
Australia to end
plastic bags in supermarkets.....
SYDNEY,
Jan 10: Australia has followed China in
announcing it plans to end plastic bag use in
supermarkets, with its new environment minister
saying today he wants a phase-out to start by the
end of 2008.
"There are
some 4 billion of these plastic bags floating
around the place, getting into landfill, ending
up affecting our wildlife, and showing up on our
beaches while we are on holidays,"
Environment Minister Peter Garrett said today.
"I think most
Australians would like to see them rid. We think
it’s absolutely critical that we get
cracking on it," Garrett, once president of
the Australian Conservation Foundation, told
local media.
"We’d
like to see a phase-out implemented by
2008," he said.
China launched a
crackdown on plastic bags on Tuesday, banning
production of ultra-thin bags and forbidding
their use in supermarkets and shops from June 1,
2008.
"We should
encourage people to return to carrying cloth
bags, using baskets for their vegetables,"
China’s State Council said in a notice on
the government Web site (www.Gov.Cn
<http://www.Gov.Cn>).
Chinese people use
up to 3 billion plastic bags a day and the
country has to refine 5 million tonnes (37
million barrels) of crude oil every year to make
plastics used for packaging, according to a
report on the Web site of China Trade News (www.Chinatradenews.Com.Cn
<http://www.Chinatradenews.Com.Cn>).
Many countries
such as Ireland and South Africa have
experimented with heavy taxes, outright bans or
eliminating the thinnest plastic bags, while some
towns and cities have taken unilateral action to
outlaw plastic bags.
"We’ve
certainly had a system in place that’s been
voluntary up to now, where you’ve got people
coming into the supermarkets and they have the
opportunity to take up those canvas bags,"
said Garrett, whose centre-left Labor party came
to power in November.
Garrett said he
would meet with the leaders of Australia’s
six states and two territories in April to
discuss the phasing out of plastic bags.
But it is unclear
how Australia will rid itself of plastic bags,
whether like China it will issue an outright ban
or like Ireland impose a levy. Garrett said he
was not personally in favour of a levy as it
punished shoppers.
"It has
always been the policy of Labor to look at a
total ban in 2008 and that is what minister
Garrett is doing and we totally support
that," said Clean Up Australia chairman Ian
Kiernan. "But we are not in favour of a
levy."
"We know that
with the Irish example there was a dramatic
reduction in the acceptance of plastic bags with
the levy but that started to creep back and it
has not proved to be effective in the long
term," Kiernan said. (AGENCIES)
DNA defect
linked to 1 pc of autism cases .............
BOSTON,
Jan 10: Researchers have identified a
genetic defect responsible for 1 percent of the
various forms of autism, and other experts said
the DNA region involved could cause many more
autism cases.
Identifying the
genetic defect also offers another way to screen
early for the disease, and perhaps to help
children with treatments that can reduce some
effects of the developmental disorder,
researchers said.
A test for such
genetic defects already is helping to inform
parents with a child who has just been diagnosed
with autism whether siblings might be at risk and
whether future children might develop some form
of autism, said Dr. Mark Daly of Massachusetts
General Hospital, who led the study released
yesterday.
Autism includes a
range of disorders, from the mild Asperger's
syndrome to profound mental retardation and lack
of ability to socialize. It affects as many as 1
in 150 children in the United States -- up to 1.5
million children and adults.
Because ''early
intervention such as behavioral and educational
therapy can have a positive impact on children
who develop autism and other forms of
developmental delay, any tool that can help give
an earlier diagnosis at ages well before the
formal diagnostic criteria kick in can be very
useful,'' Daly said in a telephone interview.
The genetic defect
identified in the study ''may be the tip of an
iceberg'' as a cause of autism, Dr. Evan Eichler
of the University of Washington, Seattle, and Dr.
Andrew Zimmerman of John Hopkins University in
Baltimore wrote in a commentary in the New
England Journal of Medicine, where the study
appears.
JUMBLING OF
GENETIC CODE
About 150 similar
''hot spots'' which are vulnerable to such
jumbling of the human genetic code have been
identified, Eichler and Zimmerman said.
''It has become
clear that the solutions to autism will be
neither simple nor uniform among patients with
various autistic syndromes,'' they wrote.
Daly and
colleagues of the Autism Consortium in Boston
found deletions or duplications in chromosome 16
among 24 out of 2,252 people from families with
autism problems in the United States and Iceland,
compared to 2 out of 18,000 people chosen
randomly.
Earlier results
linked autism to a duplication of a chunk of
genetic material on chromosome 15, which may
account for another 1 or 2 percent of cases.
The researchers
said most of the mutations did not appear to have
been inherited. Genetic mutations can happen in
two ways - they can arise spontaneously, as often
seen in cancer, or they can be inherited from one
or both parents.
The cause of most
cases of autism remains a mystery and the subject
of controversy.
Earlier this week,
for example, a California study produced new
evidence that an apparent rise in autism has not
been caused by the mercury preservative formerly
found in childhood vaccines, as some parents have
believed.
''We're still a
long way from understanding how this chromosomal
deletion or duplication increases the risk for
autism,'' said Daly. ''This is only one piece of
a very complex puzzle.''
''It is
interesting that most of the duplicated sequences
on chromosome 16 also carry copies of one of the
most rapidly evolving gene families in the human
species,'' Eichler and Zimmerman wrote. That
means that ''from an evolutionary standpoint,
autism may be a relatively 'young' disease.''
(AGENCIES)
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