Month: January 2010

Woman alive but declared dead

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Kolkata, January 27: Furious relatives of a patient admitted in a state-run hospital held an impromptu agitation after it wrote out a wrong death certificate when she was actually battling for her life.

Mariam Bibi was admitted to SSKM hospital with ulcer Monday. “At around 7.30 p.m. we received a call from hospital officials informing us that Mariam’s condition was serious. When we reached the hospital we saw a death certificate has already been issued although Mariam was alive and doing fine,” said a relative of Mariam Bibi.

Iraqi Woman Want Job Quota

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Baghdad, January 27: When she lost her husband in 2006 to raging violence, the pandemic of post-invasion Iraq, Hessa found herself totally helpless.
The mother of four went out looking for a descent job to feed her family, but nothing safe and moral was available.

“I couldn’t find a job,” Hessa, 38, told IslamOnline.net.

“The few jobs available for women are given to those who have better education than I do.”

Women in Iraq suffer from a high level of illiteracy, with nearly 25 percent of them unable to read and writing.

Murray ousts Nadal as Henin dream run continues

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Melbourne, January 27: Andy Murray stayed on track for his first Australian Open final when defending champion Rafael Nadal pulled out injured on Tuesday, as Justine Henin’s dream run gathered pace.

The fifth seeded Scot became the first Briton since John Lloyd in 1977 to make the semi-finals in Melbourne after Nadal retired with right knee pain when trailing 6-3, 7-6 (7/2), 3-0.

Murray had looked the goods during the match, pumping down 13 aces and moving around the court effortlessly as he set up a showdown with surprise package Marin Cilic.

Taliban ready to negotiate, says Kabul minister

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Kabul, January 27: Afghanistan’s finance minister has raised the prospect of involving the Taliban across all strata of government, at both district and national level, as part of a plan for their reintegration and brokering peace.

“Negotiations could begin as early as tomorrow if we have international backing,” he said.

Before tomorrow’s opening of an international conference on Afghanistan in London that will address plans for an exit strategy for western forces, Omar Zakhilwal told that he believed that the Taliban was ready to negotiate.

Congressmen Ask Obama to End Gaza Siege

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Washington, January 27: Fifty members of Congress have sent US President Barack Obama a letter urging him to work for lifting the years-long Israeli blockade on Gaza Strip and the consequent enormous suffering of its nearly 1.5 million people.

“We write to you with great concern about the ongoing crisis in Gaza,” they wrote in the letter.

Amidst threats & boycotts, India celebrates R-Day peacefully

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New Delhi, January 27: From Jammu and Kashmir to Kerala, from Gujarat to Assam, Indians celebrated a peaceful 61st Republic Day Tuesday, undaunted by terror threats, Maoist shutdowns, separatist boycotts or even the morning fog that blanketed New Delhi where thousands congregated for the grand parade of military might and cultural diversity.

“We No Longer Sleep”

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Lagos, January 27: Danladi Ali, a middle-aged Hausa Fulani Muslim, is a resident of Kuru Kurama, a village some 35 kilometers from the volatile city of Jos and where 150 Muslim bodies were found stuffed into wells earlier this week.

“We didn’t do anything, but we were just victims of reprisals by our fellow village dwellers who are Christians,” he told in an interview in Jos, shortly after a stakeholders’ meeting called by Plateau Governor Jonah Jang.

Ali lost four of his own family relatives in the attack mounted against their village at around 1 a.m. Tuesday.

Pak bid to push India out of Kabul

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Islamabad, January 27: Pakistan has revived an eight-country grouping to counter US pressure for giving India a greater role in war-torn Afghanistan’s reconstruction, according to a media reported.

Following an initiative spearheaded by Islamabad, Afghanistan’s neighbours met in Turkey seeking a “single voice” before a London conference to set a timetable for handing security over to Afghans and find ways to negotiate peace with the Taliban.

Don’t rush to Delhi: Congress to Andhra camps

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New Delhi, January 27: Eager not to be caught in a crossfire from rival groups if Telangana issue erupts again on January 28, the deadline given by Joint Action Committee for follow-up action on statehood, Congress has decided to shun rival lobbies from Andhra Pradesh.

The party has asked its legislators from Telangana and Andhra not to rush to the central leadership for lobbying. The decision came a day after four Telangana leaders urged the Centre to move on the issue of bifurcation.

French imams support burqa ban

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Paris, January 27: A prominent French imams group is backing a ban on face-veil for doing disservice to the interests of the Muslim minority in the country, but the group’s stance drew rebuke from other Muslim leaders.

“We support any law that bans the wearing of face veil in France,” Hassan Chalghoumi, Chairman of the Conference of French Imams, told.

A parliamentary commission is due to publish much-awaited recommendations next Tuesday about banning face-veils in public.

UN prepares for donor conference for Haiti in March

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New York, January 27: The UN is studying the ‘best mechanism’ to fund the reconstruction of Haiti following the destructive earthquake of Jan 12, UN officials said Tuesday.

Technical experts from various international financial institutions and the UN have already begun what is known as the post-disaster needs assessment to work out a list of initial demands for the international donor conference scheduled to take place in New

York in late March.

Not wasting time, SP to fill up posts vacated by Amar

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New Delhi, January 27: The Samajwadi Party appears all set to shut the doors on Amar Singh by filling up the positions that fell vacant after his resignation early this month. SP sources said the party was likely to fill up “very soon” the posts of general secretary and spokesperson.

The party will also announce the name of its vice-president and leader in the Rajya Sabha — both of which fell vacant after the death of Janeshwar Mishra.

Bin Laden son Omar said No “love” among Qaeda-Taliban

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Kabul, January 27: Al Qaeda and the Taliban are only allies of convenience and “do not love one another”, according to a son of Osama bin Laden, who grew up partly in a group of al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

The ties between the two groups are of intense interest because international forces are contemplating talks with the Afghan Taliban to forge a political settlement in Afghanistan and foment a rift between the group and al Qaeda.

C P Joshi, Rural Development Minister for Bhilwara

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New Delhi, January 27: Congress leader C P Joshi, who heads the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Ministry, has chosen his own constituency, Bhilwara in Rajasthan, as the laboratory for all development schemes of his Ministry.

He has been working overtime with officials of the Congress-led Rajasthan government on an ambitious pilot project to turn Bhilwara into a “developmental model” for the country.

18-year-old girl kidnapped, raped at knifepoint

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New Delhi, January 27: An 18-year-old girl was kidnapped from outside her house and alleged gangraped by three friends on Tuesday night. The incident was reported at 9.30 pm from Outer Delhi’s Shahbad Dairy area.

The police said the girl had come to Delhi from Bihar five months ago for medical treatment. On Tuesday night, the girl, who is staying with her uncle in the city, had just gone out when her neighbour, identified as 21-year-old Sanjeev, kidnapped her at knifepoint. The accused took her to his house and called two of his friends.

Mars to be biggest, brightest on Friday

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New Delhi, January 27: Skygazers can observe planet Mars at its biggest and brightest best on the midnight of January 29.

The ‘Red Planet’ will come this close to Earth after two years. “After two years, Mars will appear the brightest,” Amitabh Pandey, founder president, Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), said. “On January 27, Mars will be closest to Earth and on the midnight of January 29, it will be in line with the Sun and the Earth.”

Mars comes close to Earth every two years, “every 26 months to be precise”, according to experts.

Mars to be biggest, brightest on Friday

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New Delhi, January 27: Skygazers can observe planet Mars at its biggest and brightest best on the midnight of January 29.

The ‘Red Planet’ will come this close to Earth after two years. “After two years, Mars will appear the brightest,” Amitabh Pandey, founder president, Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), said. “On January 27, Mars will be closest to Earth and on the midnight of January 29, it will be in line with the Sun and the Earth.”

Mars comes close to Earth every two years, “every 26 months to be precise”, according to experts.

Infiltration bids, heavy firing on border near Jammu

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Srinagar, January 27: Three major infiltration bids were made by a group of suspected terrorists on the International Border in Kanachak area of Jammu district on Tuesday, Republic Day, with the Border Security Force foiling the attempts after a five-hour-long exchange of fire.

Official sources said the three BSF border outposts in Kanachak, about 30 km from Jammu, came under heavy fire from Pakistani soil around 2 am on Tuesday morning. The firing, believed to have been supported by Pakistan Rangers, continued till 7 am.

Mob frees arrested person from thana

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Kolkata, January 27: Even as there was a general security high-alert on Republic Day, a serious lapse occurred when a police thana in the coastal district of South 24 Parganas in West Bengal was attacked, and an arrested person was freed from the lockup, allegedly by supporters of the Trinamool Congress, on Tuesday morning.

The incident occurred when Republic day celebrations were in progress at the Chotomollar Khali thana, a newly-raised police station on an island in the Sunderbans.

We’ll be ready, says Neotel

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Johannesburg, January 26: Telecommunications company Neotel on Tuesday said it will be ready for individual number porting in April.

“The porting of numbers in blocks of 10 000 or 1000 has been available for some months now,” Angus Hay, executive head – technology at Neotel said in a statement.

This had excluded many businesses as it was only relevant to very large corporations, Hay said.

Exercise helps you age better

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Washington, January 26: Taking regular exercise helps you to stay physically healthier and mentally sharper into old age, four studies published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed on Monday.

One of the studies found that women who exercised more during middle age – defined as an average age of 60 by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School – were less likely after 70 to develop chronic diseases, heart surgery or any physical, cognitive or mental impairment.

Blood pressure, dementia link

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Washington, January 26: If the cardiologist’s warnings do not scare you, consider this: Controlling blood pressure just might be the best protection yet known against dementia.

In a flurry of new research, scientists scanned people’s brains to show hypertension fuels a kind of scarring linked to later development of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Those scars can start building up in middle age, decades before memory problems will appear.

Teachers a cause of math fear

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Washington, January 26: Little girls may learn fear of math from their earliest teachers.

Women long lagged men in math achievement, although they have made gains in recent years. They still trail men in some areas, however, and the question of why has provoked controversy. Researchers may have found at least part of the answer.

A study of first- and second-grade students suggests that female elementary school teachers who are anxious about their own math skills may pass that along to the little girls they teach.

Judge slashes ‘monstrous’ fine

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Washington, January 26: Condemning a $2m fine meted out to a Minnesota woman for illegally downloading music over the Internet as “monstrous and shocking”, a judge has slashed the penalty to $54 000.

US District Court Michael Davis said the fine imposed by a jury on Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four from the town of Brainerd, veered into the “realm of gross injustice”.

In a high-profile music piracy case, Thomas-Rasset was found liable in June of violating music copyrights for using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network to download 24 songs.

Childhood cancer DNA studied

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Washington, January 26: Researchers announced a new project on Monday to sequence all the genes in childhood tumours to try to discover previously unknown causes of cancer.

They also hope they can use the research to help tailor treatments for children, to spare them radiation and chemotherapy that may do them little good.

The collaboration between St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis parallels a similar project funded by the US government to sequence all the genes in 20 common adult cancers.