Saudi Arabia hires 35 pc more foreign workers in 2007

DUBAI, Jan 31: Despite calls for greater nationalisation of the workforce, Saudi Arabia recruited 34.57 per cent more skilled foreign workers in 2007 as compared to 2006 due to a rapid industrialisation witnessed in the country.

Bangladeshis were the largest beneficiaries of the new labour visas as they received 23.60 per cent of these visas and Indians came a close second with 18.61 per cent visas.

The number of visas issued for the recruitment of skilled foreign workers by the Ministry of Labour increased by 34.57 per cent last year compared to visas issued in 2006, Labor Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi said.

Attributing the increase in recruitment visas to growing development and industrial projects, the minister said 1.7 million recruitment visas were issued to the private sector, including domestic servants, in 2007 as compared to 1.26 million in 2006.

"As many as 1.2 million visas, excluding those of domestic servants, were issued to the private sector in 2007 with an increase of 54.19 per cent compared to the previous year," the minister was quoted as saying in Arab News.

The growing demand for skilled foreign manpower comes in the wake of new industrial, educational and real estate projects in various parts of the country as well as the fact there were no skilled workers to carry out their projects in the Kingdom, according to foreign investors.

Abdul Wahid Al-Humaid, deputy labour minister for planning and development, said there was a substantial increase in visas issued for skilled professions such as engineers. Of the total visas, 48.42 per cent were for assistant engineers and 20.57 per cent were given for service professions. So me 5,503 visas were issued for construction workers and 396 visas for civil engineers. (PTI)

Somalia is worst humanitarian crisis:UN official

LONDON, Jan 30: High levels of malnutrition and the difficulties of delivering aid make Somalia the world's most pressing humanitarian crisis, the UN refugee agency's representative there said.

More than 1 million people have fled their homes in Somalia, which is convulsed by fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces, Islamist insurgents and an assortment of warlords.

''I've never seen anything like Somalia before,'' Guillermo Bettocchi, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said yesterday during a visit to London.

''The situation is very severe. It is the most pressing humanitarian emergency in the world today -- even worse than Darfur,'' he told reporters, referring to the war in western Sudan, which has driven 2.5 million from their homes.

A bomb attack which killed three foreign aid workers in Somalia on Monday underlined the difficulty in delivering aid in the anarchic country that has been wracked by clan violence for 17 years, he said.

Fifteen percent of the population suffer acute malnutrition while health services are very limited and sanitation, water and shelters are extremely poor, Bettocchi said.

(AGENCIES)

Dubai to build world's longest arched bridge

DUBAI, Jan 30: After boasting of having the tallest high rise in the world--Burj Dubai, the emirate would soon add another first in the form of world's longest arched bridge.

Work on the project, the sixth crossing over the Dubai Creek, would commence in March and is expected to be completed in four years at an estimated cost of three billion dirhams, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced yesterday.

The bridge, 1600 metres long and 64 metres wide, will comprise 12 lanes, 6 in each direction. In addition, the Green Line of Dubai Metro will run through the centre of the bridge (the dividing area between the two bridges). The giant arch will be 205 metres high and 667 metres long, Khaleej Times reported.

The bridge will link Al Jaddaf in Bur Dubai with the road separating the Lagoons and Dubai Festival City. The crossing would also provide entry and exit points for the Creek Island, on which Opera Building, a project of Sama Dubai, will be constructed.

The Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the RTA, Mattar Al Tayer, said the project, developed by a United States-based company, would be completed in six phases.

''The construction of the first phase would begin in March this year,'' pointed out the RTA Chairman.

The crossing would facilitate free traffic flow at all intersections and allow free navigation throughout the day as it would be 15 metres above the water surface.

The 50-metre-wide navigation corridor would enable movement of large yachts.

(UNI)

Pakistan moots 'early release' for Bollywood

ISLAMABAD, Jan 30: Considered the most prominent cultural export of India, Bollywood may soon stage a comeback in neighbouring Pakistan.

The Pakistan Government is considering a parliamentary proposal to lift a four-decade-old ban on Indian movies.

A Senate Committee said the ban does not hold good now as most of the movies were available on DVD and through cable television.

Bollywood flicks were officialy banned in Pakistan after the 1965 war.

''This should be done in a manner which may promote healthy competition at home and without harming our religious and cultural norms and values,'' The News quoted committee chairman Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry as saying in a statement.

''The ban has practically become ineffective as these are being viewed uncensored in almost every household on cable TV as well as CDs and DVDs, necessitating a reappraisal to deal with the issue rationally,'' the statement added.

In 2006, President Pervez Musharraf issued a special decree allowing three Indian ventures to be shown in Pakistan, including the movie 'Taj Mahal', which starred Pakistani actor Sonia Jehan. (UNI)

US sees some fraud likely in Pakistan election

WASHINGTON, Jan 30: A senior US diplomat said some fraud was to be expected in Pakistan's elections on February 18 but the United States was working hard to ensure a poll that is ''as free and fair as possible.''

US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher made the comments yesterday at a congressional hearing where lawmakers questioned whether a fair election was possible under President Pervez Musharraf, who has fired Supreme Court justices, placed restrictions on the media and detained opposition lawyers.

The election is meant to complete a transition to civilian rule in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a US ally which has suffered from a surge of attacks by al Qaeda-linked militants based on the Afghan border.

Fears about the stability of Pakistan, which Musharraf has ruled since he seized power as a general in a bloodless coup in 1999, have been aggravated by the December 27 assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

Boucher said Pakistan has a history of electoral abuses but that the United States had worked to counter this by supporting observer missions, creating US embassy teams to monitor key races and pressing the government to ensure transparency.

''We don't necessarily accept a certain level of fraud but, if history is any guide and current reports are any guide, we should expect some,'' Boucher, the top US diplomat for South and Central Asia, told the lawmakers.

''We continue to work very hard to try to ensure an election that's as free and fair as possible.''

Speaking in London on Friday, Musharraf said the election would be ''free, fair, transparent and peaceful,'' adding that ''any bugs in the system that could be manipulated have been removed by me and the election officials.''

Boucher faced skepticism from lawmakers who pressed him on why the United States has not demanded that Musharraf reinstate the Supreme Court justices he dismissed in November.

''Our view is that the issue of an independent Pakistani judiciary can't be solved that simply,'' Boucher said, saying he did not expect Pakistan to address the matter until after the elections, when he hoped that elected politicians could decide how to build an independent judiciary.

Lawmakers also asked how a fair election was possible with a Supreme Court that Musharraf appeared to have stacked.

John Tierney, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the panel that held the hearing, said that unless Musharraf was willing to release detained justices and to ''appoint people who are not perceived to be his puppets ... How are we ever going to get people to accept any election as being legitimate?''

Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, added: ''I can't get beyond the fact that he basically dissolved the judiciary, and put them aside, and it seems that almost everything that follows from that point becomes a farce.''

Boucher argued that the greater the scrutiny by Pakistani media, opposition parties and outside observers, the lower the chances of the election being rigged.

''It's harder to get away with now ... There is going to be a lot of reporting, there is going to be an enormous number of observers around. The political parties are well organized and, believe me, they will cry foul if there are any fouls,'' he said. ''I don't think we should give up on this election.'' (AGENCIES)

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Troops help stranded Chinese as snow kills 50

BEIJING, Jan 30: Troops are fanning out across large swathes of China hit by snow storms which have killed about 50 people as Premier Wen Jiabao apologised to stranded railway passengers ahead of a major holiday.

The government has ordered almost half a million troops and paramilitary forces to help those cut off and suffering shortages of food and power, though there is little sign the weather will abate soon.

Unusually icy temperatures, snow and sleet blanketing much of central, eastern and southern China have crippled thousands of trucks and trains loaded with coal, food and passengers in the most severe winter weather in half a decade.

A bus plunged more than 40 metres (130 ft) from a snowy mountain road in the southwestern province of Guizhou, killing 25, the Xinhua news agency said, adding to another 24 killed across 14 provinces.

Wen used a bullhorn to tell train passengers stuck at Changsha station in southern China he was sorry.

''I am deeply apologetic that you are stranded in the railway station and not able to go home earlier,'' state media quoted him as saying. ''We are now doing our best to fix things up and you will all be home for the Spring Festival.''

Migrant workers in the booming southern province of Guangdong were urged to abandon plans to go home to celebrate next week's Lunar New Year holiday, or Spring Festival, because train tracks were blocked by snow.

''Guangdong is your home and let's combat the worst freezing disaster in decades together,'' Xinhua cited an open letter to migrant workers issued by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Labour and Social Security as saying.

''Please stay in Guangdong to greet and celebrate the Spring Festival joyously,'' it said.

Although all airports previously closed by the snow have reopened, millions of others remained trapped at stations and on highways.

''Railway authorities in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Beijing, Jinan and Kunming have been forced to stop selling tickets and refund those already sold,'' Xinhua said.

''However, most passengers have been reluctant to return their tickets, hoping railway operations would soon resume.''

In China's booming business capital of Shanghai, state radio said many delayed trains had begun to arrive, adding that services should start returning to normal by Wednesday.

Normally mild Shanghai had been hit by heavy snowfall. Beijing remained cold but clear.

Analysts said the brutal weather was a short-term blow to the economy and would stoke inflation that already has the government worried. It hit an 11-year high of 4.8 percent last year.

Blocked roads and railways have also choked coal shipments, magnifying energy shortages that have caused power brownouts in 17 of China's 31 provinces and province-status cities. (AGENCIES)

Indonesian dies of bird flu, source remains unknown

JAKARTA, Jan 30: A 32-year-old Indonesian man who had tested positive for bird flu has died, a health ministry official said today adding authorities are still investigating the source of infection.

The man, from Tangerang west of Jakarta, died yesterday at Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital, said Toto Haryanto from the ministry's bird flu centre.

His death takes the country's toll from the H5N1 bird flu virus to 101.

Initially, authorities suspected the man had contracted the virus from pet doves kept in his neighbourhood, but subsequent tests revealed the birds and other fowl in the neighbourhood were H5N1-free.

''It's a big mystery that has yet to be solved,'' said Zulkarnain Hassan from the agricultural ministry's bird flu control unit tasked with investigating the source of infection.

''There are three out of four people who died of bird flu this week whose virus source remains unknown,'' Hassan told Reuters.

The country's death toll hit 100 on Monday when two separate laboratory tests confirmed a 23-year-old woman from East Jakarta and a 9-year-old boy from the capital's outskirts had died of bird flu. The source of infection in both cases is still unknown.

The number of bird flu deaths has spiked recently, with six people dying of the virus in January.

Emil Agustiono, a top national bird flu committee official, said the recent surge in cases was caused by a combination of several factors, including poor sanitation and weather.

''The virus is happy when it's wet. It thrives during the rainy season ... Combine that with poor sanitation and lack of awareness. The people in the slums are at greater risk,''Agustiono told Reuters.

Contact with sick birds is the most common way of contracting the virus, which is endemic in poultry populations in most of Indonesia.

Fighting bird flu has been difficult in Indonesia as millions of backyard fowl live in close proximity to humans, while health education campaigns have often been patchy and rules difficult to enforce.

Although H5N1 remains an animal disease, experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily passed from human to human. Millions of people could die because they would have no immunity against the new strain.

Not including the latest death, bird flu has killed 223 people in a dozen countries since the virus reappeared in Asia in late 2003, according to World Heatlh Organisation data. (AGENCIES)_

Lebanon war report could rock Israeli Govt

JERUSALEM, Jan 30: An Israeli panel investigating the conduct of the 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon publishes a final report today that could rock Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Government.

Though Olmert is unpopular in opinion polls and has lost allies from his fractious coalition government, he has vowed to stay in office and repair any faults found by the inquiry.

The government-appointed Winograd commission's interim findings delivered last April were highly critical of Olmert, his Government and senior military commanders, spurring calls for the prime minister to resign.

The commission cannot recommend that Olmert or others should resign, but the prime minister was widely expected to face harsh words from the five panel members.

The defence minister at the time of the war, Amir Peretz, and armed forces chief Dan Halutz resigned last year.

The commission, set up to investigate deficiencies in the conduct of the war, will give Olmert a copy of the report at 5 pm (1500 GMT). An unclassified version will be released to the public after a news conference about an hour later.

The war was triggered when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid in July 2006. Nearly 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed in 34 days of fighting.

In its interim findings, the commission accused Olmert of lacking ''judgment, responsibility and prudence'' in his decision to go to war against Hezbollah.

Olmert, who is pursuing new US-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians, says he has already acted to implement the panel's early recommendations.

Unlike the interim report, the final findings will focus on the last days of the war when Olmert ordered a costly ground assault even as a UN-brokered truce was in the works.

Olmert has no obvious challenger and has referred to himself as politically indestructible.

(AGENCIES)

Ageing faster? Blame it on your sedentary lifestyle.....

LONDON, Jan 30: No anti-ageing, wrinkle-free cream can prevent those couch potatoes, who while away time in food and entertainment, from ageing faster.

According to new research, physical inactivity diminished life expectancy not only by predisposing to age-related diseases but by influencing the ageing process itself. On the other hand, physically active people remained biologically younger than those following sedentary lifestyles.

The report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine studied physical activity level, smoking habits and socio economic status of 2,401 twins and revealed that regular exercisers had lower rates of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity and osteoporosis after studying .

The DNA of the twins helped in examining the length of telomeres--repeated sequences at the end of chromosomes--in the white blood cells (leukocytes). Leukocyte telomeres progressively shortened over time and served as a marker of biological age.

The study stated that less physically active people had shorter leukocyte telomeres than the active ones. Oxidative stress--damage caused to cells by exposure to oxygen--and inflammation were other mechanisms by which sedentary lifestyles shortened telomeres. Physical activity, however, reduced psychological stress mitigating its effect on telomeres and the aging process.

This conclusion could be used by clinicians to promote the potential anti-aging effect of regular exercise, lead researcher Lynn F Cherkas said.

(UNI)

Exercise reverses weight gain from antipsychotics ....

NEW YORK, Jan 30: In patients who take antipsychotic medication, a supervised exercise program significantly reduces weight and improves cholesterol levels, a Canadian research team has found.

''It might be extremely difficult for some chronically and severely mentally ill patients who require antipsychotic treatment to eat less and exercise more when their treatment increases appetite and produces fatigue and sedation, and their illnesses decrease motivation and limit social interactions and activities,'' the investigators note.

To counteract these tendencies, Dr Angelo Tremblay, at Laval University in Quebec City and colleagues designed a behavioral weight control programme that included a 90-minute class about proper nutrition and exercise, and a structured, supervised exercise program. Sixty-minute exercise sessions held twice a week included cardiovascular workouts, strength training exercises, and flexibility and balance drills.

Tremblay's group evaluated the program in an 18-month trial among patients with schizophrenia or mood disorders undergoing treatment with various antipsychotic medications, including olanzapine, clozapine, risperidone, and quetiapine. Included were 59 patients allocated to the weight management programme and 51 who received usual psychiatric care.

Their findings appear in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

The two groups were similar in age and in duration of treatment with their current main antipsychotic drug. Nearly half of the patients were obese, and diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol were common in both groups.

During follow-up, body weight decreased in the exercise group, but increased in the comparison group.

Likewise, subjects in the exercise group saw significant improvements in their blood sugar levels and cholesterol levels. Subjects in the usual care group, by contrast, experienced a worsened of their cholesterol levels.

''The present findings highlight the importance of an ongoing weight management intervention including physical exercise designed specifically for patients on antipsychotic treatment,'' Tremblay and his associates conclude.

(AGENCIES)

SARS enters host cells via "fatty rafts": Study ........

HONG KONG, Jan 30: The SARS virus, which spread to many countries around the world in 2003 killing about 800 people, invades its victims using ''fatty rafts'' on the cell membrane, Chinese scientists have found.

These lipid rafts, or fatty acids, are cholesterol-enriched sections of the cell membrane.

How the SARS virus enters and infects its host cells has always been controversial, but such details are crucial as they provide important clues on how the virus can be stopped.

In an article published in Cell Research, scientists in China and the United States described how they cultured cells, exposed them to the virus and then observed how the virus was engulfed -- a process called endocytosis -- by the host cells.

''The virus gets in through endocytosis and then it is aided by lipid rafts along the way,'' Jiang Chengyu, a professor at the Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, said in a telephone interview.

But Jiang said designing an ''inhibitor'' to stop the virus was still a long way off.

''This finding helps us understand the puzzle a little more, but as for creating an inhibitor, that is still a long way to go,'' she said.

Experts say the palm civet and certain species of bats are natural hosts of the SARS virus, and some of them caution that SARS could re-emerge and become a global threat.

China was condemned internationally for not alerting the world to the threat of SARS when it first showed up in the southern province of Guangdong in late 2002.

But it has done much after the 2003 epidemic to ban the rearing and consumption of civets in an effort to remove a vital link in the chain.

The article can be found at <http://www.Nature>. (AGENCIES)

Cannabis bigger cancer risk than cigarettes:Study ...

HONG KONG, Jan 30: Smoking a joint is equivalent to 20 cigarettes in terms of lung cancer risk, scientists in New Zealand have found, as they warned of an ''epidemic'' of lung cancers linked to cannabis.

Studies in the past have demonstrated that cannabis can cause cancer, but few have established a strong link between cannabis use and the actual incidence of lung cancer.

In an article published in the European Respiratory Journal, the scientists said cannabis could be expected to harm the airways more than tobacco as its smoke contained twice the level of carcinogens, such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons, compared with tobacco cigarettes.

The method of smoking also increases the risk, since joints are typically smoked without a proper filter and almost to the very tip, which increases the amount of smoke inhaled. The cannabis smoker inhales more deeply and for longer, facilitating the deposition of carcinogens in the airways.

The researchers interviewed 79 lung cancer patients and sought to identify the main risk factors for the disease, such as smoking, family history and occupation. The patients were questioned about alcohol and cannabis consumption.

In this high-exposure group, lung cancer risk rose by 5.7 times for patients who smoked more than a joint a day for 10 years, or two joints a day for 5 years, after adjusting for other variables, including cigarette smoking.

''While our study covers a relatively small group, it shows clearly that long-term cannabis smoking increases lung cancer risk,'' wrote team leader Richard Beasley, at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand.

''Cannabis use could already be responsible for one in 20 lung cancers diagnosed in New Zealand,'' he added.

''In the near future we may see an 'epidemic' of lung cancers connected with this new carcinogen. And the future risk probably applies to many other countries, where increasing use of cannabis among young adults and adolescents is becoming a major public health problem.''

(AGENCIES)