Iran may be able to make nuclear bomb by 2015-UK panel

LONDON, Mar 2: Iran retains nuclear weapons ambitions and there is a ''strong possibility'' it could be in a position to quickly make a nuclear bomb by 2015, British lawmakers said today.

Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee said in a report that sanctions were unlikely to persuade Iran to halt work that could be aimed at building nuclear weapons and said a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities was also unlikely to work.

It urged Britain to press Washington to talk to Tehran directly about its nuclear programme, which Iran says is solely to generate power but which Washington alleges is aimed at building nuclear weapons.

''Based on the evidence we have received and our own visit to Iran, we believe its nuclear ambitions remain,'' said Mike Gapes, chairman of the committee which has held hearings with officials and experts and visited Iran last November.

Technological constraints were likely to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapon, if that was its goal, in the near future, the committee's report said.

But Gapes, a member of the ruling Labour Party, said: ''There is a strong possibility that it could establish a 'breakout' nuclear weapons capability by 2015.''

A ''breakout'' capability meant ''the ability to manufacture a nuclear device within a short period of time by virtue of its non-military nuclear technical capabilities and assets,'' the report said.

The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote tomorrow on a resolution imposing a third round of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme.

Iran has ignored previous resolutions demanding it freeze its uranium enrichment programme, which can produce fuel for nuclear power plants or atomic weapons.

A US intelligence estimate last December which concluded Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has dampened international support for further sanctions.

The Foreign Affairs Committee said Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, saying that if it did so, it would be likely to lead to other states in the Middle East seeking to do the same.

It said current international sanctions were ''not sufficiently robust to coax (Tehran) into suspending its enrichment'' while future sanctions were ''likely to remain ineffective''.

''A military strike would be unlikely to succeed and could provoke an extremely violent backlash across the region,'' it said.

It recommended that the British government urge Washington to ''change its policy and begin to engage directly with Iran on its nuclear programme''.

Washington has said it is open to talks with Iran but says Tehran must give up uranium enrichment first -- a condition the committee said Tehran was very unlikely to accept. (AGENCIES)

Credit crunch fuels investor thirst for art, wine

LONDON, Mar 2: Rollercoaster markets may have cooled investor appetites for shares or property, but interest in offbeat investments is booming as a growing number of art and wine funds compete to combine passion with high returns.

Downturns typically mean a slowdown in investments that are seen as discretionary, but industry watchers say the credit crunch has left the appeal of so-called ''investments of passion'' -- art, wine and collectibles -- largely untarnished.

Instead, they say, it brought home the need for investors to take on uncorrelated assets to offset the ups and downs of the mainstream equity and credit markets.

Investing in a Picasso, a case of Chateau d'Yquem or a Bordeaux from the sought-after 1961 vintage is nothing new: wealthy enthusiasts have been filling their cellars and covering their dining-room walls for centuries.

But the specialised asset managers that have emerged in the past decade have brought sophisticated financial techniques to the pursuit, widening interest to include large institutional investors who are attracted by rising prices, and returns that can reach or exceed 20 to 40 percent a year.

In 2007, for example, the FTSE blue-chip index rose by less than 4 percent. The main index on Liv-ex, an independent trading and settlement platform for the fine wine trade, ended the year up just over 40 percent -- and with excitement still bubbling around the 2005 Bordeaux vintage, now being shipped.

''More and more people are looking at wine as an asset class, discovering it is uncorrelated to bonds and equities, that there are fund managers out there to help them capture those gains,'' said Andrew della Casa, a director at the Wine Investment Fund, one of the sector's largest players with 35 million pounds ($69 million) of funds under management.

He said the credit crunch had allowed funds to demonstrate how resilient alternative assets were in a real downturn.

''On the institutional side, the credit crunch may have crystallised thoughts that have been around for years, when they've been tracking the wine market,'' he told Reuters. ''Now they have less options elsewhere they might say well, let's give it a go.''

Although in a steep downturn, analysts say investment in art and wine will, like luxury goods, behave poorly, Della Casa said the wine market has a resilient core of demand.

''People say prices have gone up tremendously, they can only go down,'' he said, referring to how demand from emerging middle classes in Russia, China and elsewhere has driven prices.

''That's not the case -- there is static demand from North America and Europe and even if we just go back to that trend, we are still going to outperform every asset class out there. That's even if -- and we don't think we'll get there.''

Most investors flocking to wine auctions are regulars stocking up their cellars, but a growing minority is taking a bet on key vintages. One buyer at Christie's earlier this month snapped up a case of Chateau Petrus Vintage 1982 -- one of the greatest vintages in recent decades -- for 32,200 pounds, at one of the auctioneer's most successful sales to date.

ART OF INVESTING

Interest in art has also remained buoyant -- Christie's also sold a Francis Bacon triptych for 26.3 million pounds ($52 million) this month: the highest price ever paid for a post-war work of art sold in Europe.

''The art market did not suffer repercussions when the Internet bubble burst and it is doing extremely well today, even after the credit crunch,'' Robert Tomei, CEO of Italian fund manager Advanced Capital, who is launching his third art fund.

Tomei's 150 million euro Advanced Capital Art fund, run with art dealer Simon de Pury of Phillips de Pury, will focus on contemporary art, photography and design and hopes to replicate the 20 percent annual returns he achieved with past funds.

But neither art nor wine -- nor other investments in the broad ''alternative'' category which includes private equity or hedge funds -- can be totally immune to a downturn.

''Investing in fine wine is no panacea,'' said James Miles, a director at Liv-ex. ''You have to go in with your eyes open. In a period of lengthy dislocation, wine prices tend to fall, but the fall is nothing like what the debt, equity and property markets have seen and the outlook seems strong.''

Like other alternative investments, both art and wine remain riskier and, by and large, less liquid markets -- although fund managers say they are working to strip out the risk, for instance by focusing on established artists or wines.

''If you look at our portfolio, losses have never exceeded 10 percent including costs, and this is because of the intrinsic value of art. Art doesn't burn cash, it isn't an Internet company,'' Advanced Capital's Tomei said in an interview.

''If you buy artists that have an established career, it's a real asset and that acts as downside protection, assuming you have not bought at a speculative price.''

The Wine Investment Fund takes a similar low-risk approach, investing only in already bottled wine -- as opposed to the more traditional route of wine ''en primeur'', before it has been bottled -- and only in top Bordeaux, the most liquid of wine investments.

(AGENCIES)

All eyes on record oil prices as OPEC prepares to meet

LONDON, Mar 2: OPEC, whose member countries together pump 40 percent of the world's oil, was expected to maintain its official output ceiling on Wednesday as crude prices trade at record highs above 100 dollars.

OPEC President Chakib Khelil said the 13-member Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries would decide to either cut or hold its current daily output level of 29.67 million oil barrels when it meets in Vienna.

"Either we hold (output) steady or we cut in order to restore market balance and stability," Khelil, who is also Algeria's energy minister, said in a statement ahead of Wednesday's meeting.

OPEC members Iran and Venezuela are calling on the cartel to cut production when it meets in the Austrian capital, arguing that prices were likely to slide when demand for crude drops during the second quarter.

The March-June period coincides with warmer temperatures in the energy-hungry northern hemisphere, thus reducing demand for heating fuel.

But should crude futures remain close to historic highs by the time of Wednesday's meeting, the organisation would be unlikely to endorse a cut in production.

"I think we won't do anything if prices stay at this level," Libya's acting Oil Minister Chukri Ghanem told AFP on Friday.

At an extraordinary OPEC meeting on February 1 in Vienna -- called amid fears of a global economic slowdown -- the cartel agreed to hold its output quota, insisting the market was adequately supplied.

In sitting tight, the organisation ignored pleas from US President George W Bush to increase production to help cool soaring prices which weigh on economic growth and push up inflation. (AGENCIES)

Interpol issues red alert for escaped JI militant

SINGAPORE, Mar 2: Interpol has issued an international red alert for an alleged Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militant leader who escaped from a detention centre in Singapore, the global police body's website said today.

Authorities were combing Singapore for Mas Selamat bin Kastari, the alleged JI leader in the city-state who escaped last Wednesday after he was allowed to use the toilet during a visit from his relatives.

Singapore police today said they believed Kastari was still in the country four days after he fled the detention centre but gave no further details.

Interpol's "Red Notice" alert allows a "warrant to be circulated worldwide with the request that the wanted person be arrested with a view to extradition," the organisation's website said.

Four different photos of Kastari, a Singaporean, were posted on Interpol's website, which said he could speak English and Malay. The alert comes after the agency issued an "Orange Notice" this past week, when the alarm was first raised about his escape.

Since his flight, security forces, including paramilitary Nepalese Gurkhas, have scoured Singapore and kept a tight watch on its borders with Malaysia and Indonesia.

Kastari was accused of plotting to hijack a plane in order to crash it into Singapore's Changi Airport in 2001 but was never charged in court. He was being held under an internal security law that allows for detention without trial.

In The Straits Times, Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo described Kastari's escape as "a setback" that the country will learn from. (AGENCIES)

Turmeric can help mend an unhealthy heart

LONDON, Mar 2: The secret to a healthy heart lies in your spice rack too, according to a latest research.

Turmeric might prevent heart failure and repair damaged hearts, researchers suggest.

Heart failure, in which the heart, damaged by heart attack or disease, gradually loses the ability to pump blood round the body, typically kills 40 per cent of victims within a year of onset.

The study, reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, suggests turmeric could help as well.

It contains a compound called curcumin, which has been used in Asian medicine for centuries to treat inflammatory disorders and is linked with a wide range of health benefits.

''The benefit of curcumin is not strengthened by eating more of it, as many dishes are high in fat,'' Daily Mail quoted researcher Peter Liu as saying.

When tested the spice on mice, at Toronto General Hospital in Canada it was found that the creatures' damaged hearts became more efficient at pumping blood and scars healed up after just a few doses.

(UNI)

Mystery of why roots burrow in the soil solved

LONDON, Mar 2: The mystery of why roots of a plant grow into the soil and not above it seems to have been solved by scientists.

According to a team of British scientists, the reason to when seeds germinate, their roots burrow instead of coming up on the soil surface is down to special hairs that chain the root in the soil and help them grow their way past obstacles.

''The key is in the fuzzy coat of hairs on the roots of plants, we have identified a growth control mechanism that enables these hairs to find their way and to elongate when their path is clear, '' says researcher Prof Liam Dolan from the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

Root hairs explore the soil in much the same way as a person would feel their way in the dark. If they come across an obstacle, they grope their way around until they can continue growing in an opening. In the meantime, the plant is held in place as the hairs grip the soil.

The hairs are guided by a clever chemical trick that makes them seek out soil. A protein at the tip of root hairs called RHD2 helps stimulate the uptake of calcium from the soil, boosting growth, the production of more protein and further uptake of calcium.

But when an obstacle blocks the hair's path, or indeed it encounters the surface of the soil, the cycle is broken and growth starts in another location and direction.

The work could help develop new crops to deal with poor soils in developing countries, according to the report published in journal Science.

''The knowledge gained from this research will aid in the breeding of such crops through either conventional breeding techniques or genetic modification,'' the Daily Telegraph quoted Prof Dolan as saying.

(UNI)

UAE slaps stiff fine, jail for drunken driving

DUBAI, Mar 2: Stiff penalties including possible jail term and a fine of upto 20,000 dirham (Rs two lakh) have been imposed on drunk drivers in the UAE in a move to check increasing number of accidents.

Brigadier Mohammad Saif Al Zafein, Director, Dubai Traffic Department, told WAM news agency that as per the new laws, a black point system for traffic offences has been implemented across all the emirates aiming to cut down the number of deaths due to traffic accidents.

Last year alone, 1,056 people lost their lives in road accidents in the UAE.

As the law became effective all over the country, Dubai Police's Traffic Department yesterday started implementing it in the emirate also.

Dubai Police's Traffic Department has intensified patrols and implemented strict penalties.

(UNI)

Seek luck in 'private', court tells superstitious Italian males

LONDON, Mar 2: A top Italian court has ruled that scratching the crotch-- considered an equivalent to crossing the fingers in the country-- in public is a criminal offence.

Superstitious Italian males are known to ward off ill luck with a ''quick grab''.

The court of cassation suggested that those seeking luck should do it in the privacy of their homes.

''Such actions risked generating 'awkwardness, disgust and disappoval' in the average man,'' the court said.

The judgment came on the appeal of an unnamed 42-year-old workman who was convicted of indecent behaviour by ''ostentatiously touching his genitals through his clothing'', the Guardian reported.

However, his lawyer said it was just a ''compulsive, involuntarily movement, probably to adjust his overalls''.

The workman was ordered to pay 200 euros in fine and 1,000 euros in costs.

It is a common practice for Italian men to touch their genitals whenever some terrible thing is mentioned as they believe it wards off ill luck.

The third penal division of the Rome court observed: ''Public genital-patting has to be regarded as contrary to public decency, a concept including that nexus of socio-ethical rules requiring everyone to abstain from conduct potentially offensive to collectively held feelings of decorum.'' (UNI)

NYC cabdriver charged with helping family get rid of baby

NEW YORK, Mar 2: A cabdriver who dropped off a baby at a firehouse, claiming someone had left her in his car, was arrested and charged with making up the tale to help an overwhelmed family abandon the child.

Klever Sailema had been hailed for a good deed after he dropped the baby off Thursday, saying the child, who was about 6 months old, had been left in his livery cab by a stranger.

The case had captivated the city after pictures of the adorable baby girl - who police now say was born to a 14-year-old girl and a man nearly twice her age - were published in newspapers and broadcast on TV.

The cabbie had told investigators his fare was a nervous-looking man who had gotten in carrying the baby and a diaper bag, then disappeared after asking the driver to pull over so he could make a phone call.

Sailema, 44, provided enough detail that police released a sketch of the suspect. He repeated his tale to reporters at a news conference on Friday.

Police didn't immediately say what broke the case open, but a family friend, Stuart Caban, said he took the teenage mother to police Friday evening after finding her walking in the Bronx, carrying a newspaper with her daughter's picture and sobbing.

"She was depressed, scared, crying. She loved her daughter. She wanted to be with her," said Caban, a 23-year-old bail bondsman.

The girl told her she hadn't wanted to leave the baby but ran away after a violent fight with the father, Caban said.

The baby's mother will probably not face charges because of her age, said police spokesman Paul Browne. Investigators were still hunting for the child's 27-year-old father late yesterday. (AGENCIES)

Chattering chimps think like humans

WASHINGTON, Mar 2: Chimpanzees may have a 'language- ready' brain enabling them to think like us while communicating.

New study published in the journal Current Biology shows that a key part of the brain known as Broca's area used by humans when communicating is also used by chimps.

''Chimpanzee communicative behavior shares many characteristics with human language, these similarities extend to the way in which our brains produce and process communicative signals,'' said Jared Taglialatela of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

The researchers interpret this similarity is because chimpanzees may have a language-ready brain.

''One interpretation of our results is that chimpanzees have, in essence, a 'language-ready brain, by this, we are suggesting that apes are born with and use the brain areas identified here when producing signals that are part ' of their communicative repertoire,'' he said.

The results also suggest that the ''neurobiological foundations'' of human language may have been present in the common ancestor of modern humans and chimpanzees, he said.

''We didn't know if or to what extent other primates, and particularly humans' closest ancestor, the chimpanzees, possess a comparable region involved in the production of their own communicative signals,'' Taglialatela said.

In the new study, the researchers non-invasively scanned the brains of three chimpanzees as they gestured and called to a person in request for food that was out of their reach. Those chimps showed activation in the brain region corresponding to Broca's area and in other areas involved in complex motor planning and action in humans, the researchers found.

(UNI)

Runaway Indian maid to be deported

DUBAI, Mar 2: A runaway Indian housemaid, who duped Indian embassy officials and charity groups into believing she was a victim of abuse, is to be deported.

The police are looking for Bindhu Mohanan since she ran away from her sponsor within 10 hours of her arrival in February last year.

The 31-year-old came to Bahrain on February 27 last year to work as a housemaid, but was soon reported missing to police by her Bahraini sponsor.

Mohanan had earlier told the Bahrain Pathanapuram Association president Babu Kurumbelil that she ran away because her sponsor beats her and had not paid her for two months.

Her case was taken up by the Indian Embassy and her sponsor Ahmed Abdulla had agreed to drop his complaint against her as a runaway, provided she leaves the country so that he could employ another maid.

But she failed to turn up at the airport as agreed last December and had not been seen since then until February 24. (PTI)

GSK bird flu vaccine shows broad cross protection

HONG KONG, Mar 2: A vaccine designed by GlaxoSmithKline to protect people against the H5N1 bird flu may be effective in warding off a few different sub-types of the virus, the company said today.

In an Asian clinical trial involving 1,206 adults in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, the vaccine produced antibodies that not only neutralised the H5N1 virus found in Vietnam, but also the variant now dogging Indonesia.

''The vaccine was made using the Vietnam strain. In principle, there is a very broad antibody reactivity that's being induced. These are neutralising antibodies and they do correlate with protection,'' Albert Osterhaus, head of virology at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, told Reuters when asked for comments about the study.

Osterhaus was not involved in the study, but is familiar with the results and methodology.

An earlier GSK study in Europe showed the vaccine to be effective in protecting against two other H5N1 subtypes, in China's central eastern province of Anhui and Turkey.

For years now, experts have warned a flu pandemic was long overdue and many have held up the H5N1 virus as a prime candidate because people have no immunity against this bird virus, and because of the high mortality rate associated with it so far.

The virus has infected 368 people in 14 countries since 2003 and killed 234 of them, or 64 per cent.

An eventual vaccine to protect people against a flu pandemic can only be made 4-6 months after the start of such a disaster, when the culprit virus strain has been identified.

But human populations still need some form of protection in those initial months of a pandemic and drug companies are in a race to design what are known as ''prepandemic'' vaccines.

GSK's prepandemic vaccine uses a very low dose, 3.8 micrograms, of antigen. Antigens are substances like toxins, viruses and bacteria that stimulate the production of antibodies when introduced into the body.

But they can be difficult to culture and scientists have been trying to fix that by using boosters, or adjuvants.

Volunteers in the GSK trial received two shots of the adjuvanted vaccine 21 days apart, and blood tests done three weeks after the second shot showed the presence of antibodies which neutralised the Vietnam and Indonesian H5N1 strains.

Osterhaus, however, voiced a note of caution -- that the pandemic may be triggered by a completely different virus.

''We are all scared of H5, but we should realise that other (viruses) are also a threat and the thing with flu is we have to expect the unexpected,'' he said.

''Separate stockpiling of antigen and adjuvant, that is quite an interesting option,'' he added.

With such a plan, adjuvants will then be mixed with the antigen of whatever virus emerges as the pandemic strain. (AGENCIES)