Archives

Three in Pune have Sars

          Pune, Apr 22: Officials in Maharashtra have confirmed that the reports of the three members of a family with symptoms of Sars are positive. Subhash Salunke, Director-General of the state's health services, however, said the condition of all the patients was normal. (Contd)

UN team to hunt for chemical weapons in Pak

          Islamabad, Apr 22: A three-member United Nations team is arriving in Pakistan on April 29 in search of chemical weapons, says the News. The inspection will be first of its kind, whose main focus will be to enforce the UN's Chemical Weapon Convention (CWC) Treaty that binds its signatories to destroy their chemical weapons and open their sites to the UN inspectors to ensure that they are not producing chemical weapons.

          Pakistan, being a signatory to the CWC Treaty signed in 1993, is bound to open up its chemical industrial sites for the inspectors to show that it is not making chemical weapons. The treaty was enforced in 1994. A UN team will conduct its first-ever inspection at the Fauji Jordon Fertiliser. Members of the team include a Mexican, a Swedish and a Pakistani. During the visit, the team will only search Fauji Jordon Fertiliser, whose premises would be opened for the inspectors within 12 hours of their arrival in Pakistan.

US Senate "seized" of Kashmir row (Go To Top)

          Washington, Apr 22: A resolution on Kashmir adopted by the New Hampshire Assembly has reached the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Senate for consideration. The resolution moved by Robert Giuda and Saghir Tahir stressed on the solution of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan and asked Congress to open an inquiry into the vexed problem, reports the News.

           The resolution laid stress on the need for "increased diplomacy to achieve a just, peaceful, and rapid resolution of the conflict. While voicing its utmost concern over the "documented and unspeakable" human rights abuses in India-administered Kashmir, it called for "cessation of atrocities against the people there and to reduce the threat of nuclear war in South Asia.

           The adoption of the resolution 'caused a stir' in the ranks of Indian diplomats here, leading to denial of a visa request by lawmaker Robert Giuda to visit Kashmir, and the Indian ambassador to the US Lalit Mansingh Lal protested against adoption of the resolution, stating that "the legislators did not have all the facts when they adopted the resolution".

Pakistan tests air-to-air missile (Go To Top)

          Islamabad, Apr 22: Pakistan claims to have successfully test-fired an indigenously manufactured, air to air, anti- aircraft missile on Monday. According to sources, the H-4 missile, fired from a Mirage jet, targeted a flying object. The sources added the missile can hit even the out-of-sight target.

Property worth millions gutted in Lucknow (Go To Top)

          Lucknow, Apr 22: Property worth Rs 150 million was gutted in a devastating fire in a market place in Lucknow on Tuesday. Around a dozen garment shops were reduced to ashes in the busy Aminabad market in the old quarters of the city. The cause of the fire which began around 11 in the morning was not known. Banwari Lal Bansal, a trader, blamed the state electricity department for negligence.

Bihar BJP slams 'lathi rally' (Go To Top)

          Patna, Apr 22: Laloo Yadav's proposed 'Lathi Jutawan' rally on April 30 is facing severe criticism from the Opposition BJP. To protest against the rally, BJP workers organised a march towards the Governor's residence in Patna. The BJP MLAs met the Governor and gave him a memorandum. They said Laloo Yadav has appealed to his supporters to come to the rally with sticks on April 30. They alleged that he has openly instructed them to hit people below the knees so that there is no problem in getting bail.

           Laloo Yadav's proposed rally is already creating a lot of controversy in the state. BJP has been criticising this rally because they are the targets of this rally. In the memorandum the BJP leaders gave to the Governor they cited some examples of how the RJD workers are making mockery of 'law and order' in the state in the name of the rally.

Four killed in bomb blast near Srinagar (Go To Top)

          Srinagar, Apr 22: Four civilians were killed and 12 wounded on Tuesday when a powerful bomb planted by militants exploded in Tral, south of Srinagar. No militant group claimed responsibility for the explosion that followed a weekend visit to Jammu and Kashmir by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Vajpayee said he wanted to begin talks with Pakistan to ease tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours but Islamabad must first abandon "cross-border infiltration".

Roma, not Romulus, may have founded Rome (Go To Top)

          London, Apr 22: Amid claims that Rome may have been founded by a Trojan woman called Roma and not, as legend has it, by Romulus, the city celebrated its 2,756th birthday on Monday. Legend says that Romulus, one of the male twins descended from Aeneas, prince of Troy, and suckled by a she-wolf after being cast adrift on the Tiber, founded ancient Rome in 753 BC, after slaying his brother Remus.

           A fragment of writing by the Graeco-Sicilian poet Stesichorus (638-555 BC) recounts how a woman named Roma arrived with a Trojan fleet in an idyllic place that could easily be Rome, according to Rome's Il Messaggero newspaper. So goes the tale that Roma fell in love with the spot and conspired with the other women to burn all the ships, so that the party would have to stay. Once they were stranded, the group agreed that they should name the place after her.

           According to the Telegraph, the tale's claims are strengthened by the fact that Stesichorus was born just 115 years after the founding of Rome. About 1,000 people dressed as gladiators, centurions, emperors and maidens marched through the city on Monday led by Goddess Roma clutching a spear and an orb.

All measures taken to tackle Sars in India (Go To Top)

          (Contd) "Excepting sore throat and excepting a little bit of cough and fever, none of them has any problems, absolutely no problems. Their X-ray is normal, their blood reports are normal, all their investigations, excepting the NIV (National Institute of Virology) investigations, is totally normal. But (if not) for this result I would have very gladly requested the doctor concerned to discharge them. They are right now very fit for discharge. But now because the results are in front of us we do not want to take any chances," Salunke told reporters in Pune. The affected family, which had flown in from Indonesia into Mumbai three weeks ago, are residents of Pune.

           Meanwhile, Union Health Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday urged the people not to panic saying the government was fully geared to handle the Sars cases. Making a statement in the Lok Sabha, Swaraj said an emergency meeting of all state health secretaries has been called in New Delhi on Thursday to discuss the Sars crisis.

           Monday's confirmation for the three Sars affected brought the number of cases in India to four. Last Friday, doctors reported India's first case of Sars in a marine engineer from Goa who had travelled to Hong Kong and Singapore and showed symptoms of Sars on his return. Doctors say the man now has recovered.

           In Nasik, 185 km from Mumbai, doctors are awaiting results of Sars tests on a man who arrived from the United States and had symptoms of the contagious illness, which can be fatal and has no known cure. A patient suspected to have Sars has been isolated in Jaipur as well. The man, a non-resident Indian from America, displayed symptoms of pneumonia and was admitted to the infectious diseases ward of a city hospital Monday night.

           Some doctors have expressed the fear that Sars could reach epidemic proportions in India, the world's second most populous nation with more than a billion people, due to its congested cities, overstretched health system and media reports of lax airport screening. The Sars virus, which has been found fatal in about five per cent of cases, has now killed at least 225 people and infected more than 3,900 around the world after first surfacing in southern China last year.