Peeping into other's brain

WASHINGTON, Mar 6: Always wanted to know what impression your boss has about you or if the hot chick next door dreams about you?

The ability to read someone's mind and visualise what is he looking at, thinking of or dreaming about is a possibility now by analysing his brain activity with a medical scanner.

According to US researcher Jack Gallant, a device that can read the living brain and tap into the state of another person's conscious experience of vision can be invented in the future.

The study published in journal Nature claims a major advance in working out how people saw by deducing the relationship between natural images and the patterns of brain activity in the visual areas at the back of the brain.

The researchers used a type of real-time imaging called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or FMRI, to predict which photograph a volunteer was looking at.

Different areas in the brain represent different features of what we look at. Low-level areas represent features such as edges, angles, and curvature, and high-level areas represent very complex patterns such as faces.

Previous studies attempting to interpret visual experiences have only been able to decode much simpler information and required that the computer be trained on the exact same set of objects that it would later be tested on.

This approach to decoding brain signals could be used to track mental processes such as attention, the way that we can focus our zone of interest, and perhaps even provide access to the visual content of dreams and mental imagery.

''Our results suggest that one day it may even be possible to reconstruct the visual contents of dreams or visual imagery,'' Prof Gallant said.

Any brain-reading device that aims to decode stored memories will, however, be limited not only by then technology itself, but also by the quality of the information stored in the mind, he added.

Drawing an analogy between the ethical issues raised by the method and current debates over availability of genetic information and its potential use by the military or security services, he said, ''The authors believe that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent.''

(UNI)

UN envoy returns to Myanmar

BANGKOK, Mar 6: UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari arrived in Myanmar today amid waning optimism about his mission to get the military junta to start talks with the opposition on political reform.

It will be his first chance to hold face-to-face talks with the generals since their unexpected announcement last month of a constitutional referendum to be held in May, to be followed by a general election in 2010.

''Gambari should tell the generals that marching a fearful population through a stage-managed referendum will not advance democracy or reconciliation in Burma,'' Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

''A referendum under these repressive conditions will only cement in place continued military rule,'' he added.

It is Gambari's fifth visit to the former Burma since he was appointed in early 2006 and his third since a crackdown on monk-led protests last September.

The continued house arrest of National League for Democracy leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and the opposition's boycott of the constitution-drafting process, have led many foreign governments to reject the charter and election timeline as a sham.

The NLD has criticised it, but stopped short of calling on supporters to vote no in the referendum.

''Our leaders will tell him some bare essentials we would like of the referendum to be held by the regime in May when we meet him,'' NLD spokesman Nyan Win said yesterday.

Gambari's message to the junta on his previous visits has been to release all political prisoners, Suu Kyi included, and include the opposition and Myanmar's ethnic groups in the constitution-drafting process.

His requests appear to have fallen on deaf ears, as has his push to get the generals to engage in direct talks with Suu Kyi, whom Gambari is expected to meet during his visit. The rest of his itinerary remains unclear.

(AGENCIES)

Indonesia commutes death penalty for 3 Australians

JAKARTA, Mar 6: Indonesia’s Supreme Court has commuted the death sentences for three Australians convicted of drug trafficking to life imprisonment following appeals, a court official said.

The three were among nine Australians—eight men and one woman—arrested in the resort island of Bali in 2005 with 8.2 kg (18 lb) of heroin.

"The sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment," a Supreme Court official, Zarof Ricar, told Reuters.

Ricar did not name the three because the court had not publicly announced the verdicts, but Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper said they were Si Yi Chen, Matthew Norman and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen.

The Telegraph said court documents and an interview with one of the judges revealed that the trio’s previous good character and youth played a major role in the decision to grant them mercy.

The three had launched a case review after the Supreme Court sentenced them and another three of the so-called Bali Nine to death after previous appeals in 2006.

The three have expressed remorse and apologised to the court for their stupidity.

The other three Bali Nine members—Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who were said to be the ringleaders, and Scott Rush, one of the couriers—have yet to lodge their own case review appeals against the death penalty.

The remaining two men in the group are serving life in prison while the only female member was given a 20-year sentence.

Indonesia imposes the death sentence for many narcotic offences, defending the penalty as necessary to deter others in a country with a growing drugs problem.

The last foreigners to be executed for drugs offences were two Thai nationals in October 2004.

(AGENCIES)

Six million Britons hurt while talking on mobiles

LONDON, Mar 6: Crashed into lamppost while talking on your mobile?

You are not the only one, there are millions of Britons who join you for according to a study six million got hurt after crashing into lampposts, bollards and bins last year while texting and talking on their mobiles.

Injuries ranged from cuts and bruises to broken noses, cheekbones and even a fractured skull.

The research found 63 per cent of people concentrate so hard while texting that they are unaware of their surroundings.

One in four would support ''mobile lanes'' on pavements to highlight the increasing number of hazards, and nearly a half back the use of protective pads around them.

''Britons are clearly text addicts so we need to make sure they are protected on the streets,'' The Daily Mirror quoted William Ostrom of phone directory service 118118, which did the survey of 1,055 adults, as saying.

(UNI)

Buffett world's richest man, Slim second - Forbes

NEW YORK, Mar 6: Warren Buffett, the famed US investor who heads Berkshire Hathaway Inc, replaced his friend and Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates as the richest man in the world, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday.

The magazine estimated Buffett's worth at $62 billion in its annual ranking of the world's wealthiest people.

Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim came in second with an estimated worth of $60 billion, pushing Gates to third place after 13 years of holding the No. 1 spot.

The magazine estimated Gates' worth at $58 billion.

Buffett's rise to No. 1 was particularly noteworthy, Forbes said, as it came at a time of great financial turmoil and as Buffett has begun to siphon off part of his fortune to charity.

''Even though he is giving away a piece of his fortune each year, the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, the source of Warren Buffet's wealth, has been rising very rapidly,'' Chief Executive of Forbes Magazines Steve Forbes said, noting Buffett's fortune climbed $10 billion in the last calendar year.

Buffett in June 2006 announced plans to give 85 percent of his fortune away, granting it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities. Bill Gates serves on the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway and is a long-time bridge buddy of Buffett's. Gates has also given a substantial amount of his fortune to the foundation.

Buffett, often called the Sage of Omaha, has been lauded among investors for his preference for investing in larger companies with easy-to-understand businesses, large or dominant market shares, consistent earnings, and strong management.

In the early 1960s, Buffett started to invest in Berkshire, then a struggling textile maker, and took it over in 1965. Since then, he has transformed it into a holding company for more than 50 companies, ranging from Benjamin Moore paint and Dairy Queen ice cream to Fruit of the Loom underwear and Ginsu knives.

Gates has held the No. 1 spot since 1995, when he unseated Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, a Japanese real estate tycoon. Tsutsumi fell off the billionaire's list last year after receiving a suspended prison sentence for falsifying financial statements and insider trading in 2005.

Slim, a former stock market trader, is known for buying up struggling, cheap firms and turning them into profitable cash cows. He built his fortune by privatizing former Mexican state telephone monopoly Telmex. America Movil, a Telmex spin-off, is is now Slim's flagship business and Latin America's biggest mobile phone company.

KEEPING UP WITH THE RUSSIANS?

The collective net worth of the world's 1,125 billionaires soared to $4.4 trillion, the magazine said.

The list of billionaires has almost doubled in the past four years, Forbes said. There were 469 U.S. Billionaires, worth a combined $1.6 trillion, while the 656 billionaires who live outside the United States are worth $2.8 trillion.

Russia came in second place as home to 87 billionaires and Moscow is now the world's billionaire center, the magazine said. The Russian capital is now home to more billionaires than New York City.

India, China and Turkey also saw large gains in numbers of billionaires.

The world's youngest billionaire is 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, founder of social networking Web site Facebook. The magazine estimated his worth at $1.5 billion and said he is the youngest self-made billionaire to ever appear in the Forbes billionaire rankings.

Recent turmoil in the financial markets has taken its toll on the list.

James Cayne, Chairman of investment bank Bear Stearns Cos

; William Pulte, who founded U.S. Home builder Pulte Homes Inc; and Howard Schultz, founder of coffee chain Starbucks all fell off the billionaire's list amid declines in their companies' stock prices.

The decline in the dollar, a trend that Buffett himself has been betting on since 2002, provided a boost to billionaires outside the United States, particularly because the Forbes list is tabulated in U.S. Dollars.

(AGENCIES)

UN urges Afghanistan to crackdown on drug trafficking

NEW YORK, Mar 6: The United Nations anti-drugs agency has called on the Afghan Government to do more to dismantle major trafficking and criminal syndicates in the strife-torn nation, which remains the world's largest producer of opium and heroin.

"The networks are very powerful because the drug traders are linked to corrupt officials and to criminal networks outside Afghanistan," Christina Gynna Oguz, the Representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan, said yesterday.

Citing the just-released report of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), Oguz noted that Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium and heroin.

"The Government must, therefore, widen its efforts to include the fight against drug traders, who profit the most from the illicit opium industry and who collectively earn more than USD three billion."

The UN official called on the Afghan Government to do more to ensure that the drug laws are applied stringently to all who are involved directly or indirectly in the industry.

"Everybody who is involved in the drugs industry and in corruption must be investigated, prosecuted and if found guilty punished to the full extent of the law," Oguz added.

"Without this happening the drugs problem will not be solved and criminality, corruption and insecurity will prevail in the country."

UNODC is assisting the Afghan Government in several ways to tackle the drug menace, including imparting training to intelligence officers within the Afghan Police and providing legislative assistance on issues such as extradition.

The agency is also working with the authorities on the implementation of the Government's anti-corruption strategy and the establishment of an independent anti-corruption body.

Oguz stressed the vital need to address the threat posed to Afghan society by the drug industry. "It is so important because the drug business stands in the way of the Afghan in the village or the Afghan in the street from getting what he or she wants more than anything else in life, and that is security." (PTI)

Tata seeks $3 bln loans for Jaguar, Land Rover -FT

SINGAPORE, Mar 6: India's Tata Motors is seeking about $3 billion in loans to fund its planned purchase of Ford Motor Co's Jaguar and Land Rover luxury brands, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Tata has assigned its advisers, Citigroup and JPMorgan, to arrange the financing with a number of other international and domestic banks, the FT said, quoting people familiar with the matter.

The loan, expected to be mostly short-term bridge financing, is larger than the expected purchase price, estimated at around $2 billion.

A person familiar with the deal said part of the loan could be used for working capital, the newspaper said. (AGENCIES)

US initiates a move to get peacekeeping force into Darfur

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6: The United States is spearheading a new initiative to get a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force on the ground in Sudan's Darfur region, where the five-year conflict has escalated and malnutrition is rising.

Ambassador Richard Williamson, who took over in January as US President George W Bush's special envoy to Sudan, said countries that are "friends" of the African Union-United Nations force would meet today at UN headquarters for the first time to start tackling obstacles to deployment of the hybrid force known as UNAMID.

"Given the humanitarian suffering, given the instability and violence that's going on, it's way past time for talk. We have to have action, including accelerating deployment of UNAMID troops on the ground," Williamson told reporters yesterday after meeting Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The AU-UN force is authorised to have 26,000 troops and police, but Ban said only about 7,500 military personnel and 1,500 police officers were in Darfur on January 31. He appealed to all countries that have pledged troops to expedite their deployment -- and he reiterated an appeal for critically needed helicopters.

At Sudan's insistence, the UN Security Council agreed that the force would be predominantly African. But the Sudanese government has refused to approve non-African units from Thailand, Nepal and Nordic countries, which withdrew their offer.

Sudan's Arab-dominated government has been accused of unleashing the janjaweed militia of Arab nomads to commit atrocities against Darfur's ethnic African communities in the fight with rebel groups. (AGENCIES)

US should release India nuke deal answers - experts

WASHINGTON, Mar 6: Four US nonproliferation experts called on the Bush administration to make public comments about the US-India civil nuclear deal that it gave to US lawmakers on condition they be kept secret.

The State Department responded to congressional questions about the deal and, after initially discussing classifying the answers, gave them to a small group of lawmakers on condition they not be released, sources familiar with the matter said.

Critics of the deal, which would give India access to US nuclear fuel and equipment for the first time in three decades even though New Delhi has tested nuclear weapons and refused to join nonproliferation agreements, demanded the State Department drop what they called ''a virtual 'gag' order.''

The four nonproliferation experts -- Daryl Kimball, Fred McGoldrick, Henry Sokolski and Sharon Squassoni -- made their appeal in a statement released yesterday.

''The administration's responses should be made publicly available so that US and Indian lawmakers and the public can evaluate whether the draft US-Indian accord conforms to the terms and conditions established by Congress,'' wrote Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

''The administration's unwillingness to make their answers more widely available suggests they have something to hide from either US or Indian legislators.''

The State Department said the US-India civil nuclear agreement complied fully with US law and the administration had provided extensive briefings to Congress on the matter, including public testimony by top State Department officials.

''We've handled answers to sensitive questions in an appropriate way that responds to congressional concerns. We're going to continue with that approach,'' State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

'WINK AND A NOD'

Proponents argue the deal will be the cornerstone of a new strategic relationship between the two nations.

But some Indians feel it infringes on their country's sovereignty, while some nonproliferation advocates believe it undermines the global system designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Jon Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation expert at the CSIS think tank in Washington, said it was possible the Bush administration did not want to release its answers for fear that they might make it harder for the agreement to win approval in India.

''But even if that is the case, it would raise concerns,'' Wolfsthal said.

''We always get into trouble when we get into secret agreements or wink-and-a-nod agreements,'' he added. ''If the Indian political system isn't willing to support a deal that has certain restrictions, then we shouldn't be getting into such an agreement. It isn't sustainable.''

The deal is caught up in Indian domestic politics, with the communists who shore up the coalition government led by the Congress party threatening to withdraw support if it is pushed through.

Among other things, members of the US Congress asked the State Department to clarify whether Washington would cut off nuclear trade with India if New Delhi resumed nuclear testing.

The United States is required to do so under US law but the US-India civil nuclear cooperation deal does not make this explicit. Rather, it gives either side the right to terminate cooperation for any reason with one year's notice.

There are growing questions about whether the agreement can go through before US President George W Bush leaves office in January 2009.

To take effect, it must clear three hurdles.

India must reach an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to place its civilian nuclear reactors under UN safeguards and it must get clearance from the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group that governs global civilian nuclear trade.

After those steps, the deal must secure final approval from the US Congress, where it enjoys bipartisan support but where the November 4 election leaves little time to pass it. (AGENCIES)

Mums make better football coaches than dads

LONDON, Mar 6: Looking for a football coach? Go to your mom as they make better football coaches than dads for being naturals at motivating children.

According to a study, mothers can get the best out of young footballers through years of being unpaid teachers, nurses, counsellors and disciplinarians.

''I agree that many of the qualities I have as a mother are totally relevant to coaching youngsters,'' The Daily Mirror quoted rising football star Theo Walcott's mother Lynn as saying.

World Cup hero Sir Geoff Hurst also believes mothers bring out the best in young players. ''Mums know how to engage children, how to speak their language and how to motivate them,'' he said. (UNI)

Marital split is still a costly thing for mothers: Study

LONDON, Mar 6: No matter how much we talk about equal rights to women, the bitter reality is that marital split is still an expensive affair for mothers.

Women who separate from their partners are recovering faster from the collapse in income that they experience after a marital split, but that in all is a costly affair for them, a study reveals.

The Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University, UK has found that separating mothers and their children are still experiencing far worse financial circumstances than their departing partners.

The study, based on annual interviews with 5,500 British households found most women with children never totally recovered from the financial effects of the split. Five years on, their incomes were on average still 10 per cent below pre-split levels.

"The average short-term income loss for childless separating women has remained fairly constant over the last 15 years. Gender remains a good predictor of whether an adult’s income rises or falls after experiencing a marital split, Professor Stephen Jenkins, director of the institute said.

The average decline in a mother’s income between 1991 and 1997, was 30 per cent after splitting from a partner, comparing spending power in the years before and after the break-up. But between 1998 and 2004, the figure was 12 per cent. The researchers measured the income of the mother’s household after adjusting for the number of adults and children living in it.

But the mothers are recovering faster from financial meltdown as they are more likely to get a job and are more likely to qualify for support from the state to make the job worth doing,the Guardian reported.

Those who had a job in the year after the split and kept it for the next five years came close to restoring their income to pre-split levels. Those who did not have a job and did not find a new partner remained much worse off.

(UNI)

Shivaratri festival attracts Indians

KATHMANDU, Mar 6: Hindus from Nepal and India are offering prayers in Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu today on the occasion of Mahashivratri festival.

Devotees started visiting the temple early today, which is expecting more than 350,000 devotees, including about 3000 sadhus mostly from India, the officials of the Pashupati Development Trust said.

A large number of Hindus from India have come to the temple this year. Mr VP Krishnan of Tamil Nadu said, "This is one of the greatest festivals of the Hindus and we are bound to fulfill our religious duties by visiting Pashupatinath temple."

Mrs Shivani Singh from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh said, "I have been visiting the temple regularly for the last 15 years."

Pashupati is the name of lord Shiva. The Mahashivratri festival is celebrated every year on the 14^{th day in the Krishna Paksha of the month of Falgun in the Hindu Calendar.}

^{Meanwhile, there was a long queue of devotees in the Pashupatinath temple, stretching to more than a kilometer.}

^{Security has been tightened in the area as some people pelted stones on suspended King Gyanendra after the devotees were stopped from worshipping.}

^{The officials said the devotees would be given time to worship at the temple even during the visit of the senior officials.}

^{Gyanendra has now been barred from even giving alms and offerings to the Sadhus.}

^{"From this year, the country’s monarchs would not be allowed to present alms and offerings to hermits and ascetics - called sadhus, naga babas, jogis, shramans on various occasions - who come on a pilgrimage to Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu from all over the nation and India to celebrate the Mahashivaratri festival," Nepalnews reported today.}

^{Pashupatinath Temple’s Guthi Sansthan would distribute the alms and offering to the Sadhus on behalf of the Government. (UNI)}