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Lahore Bomb Blast Kills Several in Pakistan

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:14:59 +0000

Lahore, May 27: Several people were killed when a massive blast shook the Civil Lines area of Pakistan’s Lahore city Wednesday morning.
The blast occurred in 15 Building adjacent to CCPO office, where the additional inspector general of police sits, reported The News.

US and Israel dodge settlement confrontation

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:50:49 +0000

During the vice-president’s visit, Benjamin Netanyahu presented Joe Biden with a framed certificate but managed to lean on it, shattering the glass.One Israeli newspaper had a cartoon showing an Israeli settler with a leaf-blower, blasting the shattered glass into Mr Biden’s face. The settler was presumably from Ramat Shlomo, where Israel has just announced it would be building 1,600 new homes on occupied land.
The Americans weren’t buying Israel’s explanation that this was the result of a slow-moving bureaucratic process which caught Mr Netanyahu and other senior officials unawares.

Immediately following the announcement, the vice president kept the Israeli prime minister waiting 90 minutes for an official dinner.

That was taken as a sign of Mr Biden’s displeasure.

It also reflected the time needed to work out the line to take with President Barack Obama about the settlement issue.

In the end, the Americans seem to have acquiesced in a face-saving formula drawn up by Mr Netanyahu.

Warm speech

This says procedures will be put in place so that in future such announcements are not made at sensitive junctures in the peace process.

It also states that building at Ramat Shlomo will not start for several years.

In his speech in Tel Aviv, Mr Biden seized on this to say that negotiations should start immediately – there would be time later to work issues such as Ramat Shlomo (along with the division of Jerusalem, control of the holy sites, what is to happen to Palestinian refugees and the final borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state).

Mr Biden used his speech to reiterate yesterday’s unequivocal condemnation of the Israeli decision to build these 1,600 new homes on occupied land.

He said it undermined the trust needed for negotiations to succeed. But the speech was nevertheless warm and non-confrontational.

Indeed Mr Biden began it by saying that he had been a friend and supporter of Israel’s for the past 37 years as an elected public official.

‘Don’t bomb Iran’

An important section of Mr Biden’s speech was devoted to Iran.

Part of Mr Biden’s speech was aimed at Israel’s fears over Iran
Some Israeli commentators have raised the question of whether the United States will be able to fully trust Israel over the sensitive and vital issue of how to deal with Iran if Israel was prepared to humiliate Mr Biden over the settlements issue.

To dispel such thoughts, the vice-president attempted to reassure Israelis that they would not have to face what they assume to be an Iranian nuclear threat alone.

He did however plead for sanctions and diplomacy to be given a chance to work before any military action.

A big part of his private discussions with Israeli leaders is thought to have been about delivering the message: don’t bomb Iran.

Mr Biden’s visit was about resuscitating a peace process which doesn’t seem to have much life of its own – indeed one key part of his speech in Tel Aviv was to tell both parties to the conflict that the United States could not want peace more than they did.

Talks in doubt

So it seems that the White House had decided to try to avoid another damaging and protracted tussle with the Israeli prime minister about settlements.

After all, Israel came out on top in the last test of wills, agreeing to something far less than the total settlement freeze that Washington – and the Palestinians – had been demanding.

All this leaves the Palestinians in a very difficult position.

Backed by the Arab League, they have said that it will be very difficult for them to enter indirect talks unless the Ramat Shlomo project is cancelled.

Yesterday, they were feeling pretty pleased that Israel was at odds with its main ally.

Now the Palestinians must decide if they will go along with the formula adopted by Mr Netanyahu.

For the time being then, the much-delayed peace talks remain in doubt.

Chile earthquake may have shortened days

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:09:59 +0000

Seventh strongest quake in recorded history may have shifted Earth’s axis
The massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile may have changed the entire Earth’s rotation and shortened the length of days on our planet, a NASA scientist said Monday.The quake, the seventh strongest earthquake in recorded history,hit Chile Saturday and should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second), according to research scientist Richard Gross at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth’s axis,” NASA officials said in a Monday update.The computer model used by Gross and his colleagues to determine the effects of the Chile earthquake effect also found that it should have moved Earth’s figure axis by about 3 inches (8 centimeters or 2.7 milliarcseconds).
Earth’s figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis, which it
spins around once every day at a speed of about 1,000 mph (1,604 kilometers per hour). The figure axis is the axis around which Earth’s mass is balanced. It is offset from the Earth’s north-south axis by about 33 feet (10 meters).Strong earthquakes have altered Earth’s days and its axis in the past. The magnitude-9.1 Sumatran earthquake in 2004, which set off a deadly tsunami, should have shortened Earth’s
days by 6.8 microseconds and shifted its axis by about 2.76
inches (7 centimeters, or 2.32 milliarcseconds).
One Earth day is about 24 hours long. Over the course of a year, the length of a day normally changes gradually by one millisecond. It increases in the winter, when Earth rotates more slowly, and decreases in the summer, Gross has said in the past.The Chile earthquake was much smaller than the Sumatran temblor, but its effects on Earth’s figure axis were a bit larger because of its location. Its epicenter was located in the Earth’s mid-latitudes rather than near the equator like the Sumatran event.The fault responsible for the 2010 Chile quake also slices through Earth at a steeper angle than the Sumatran quake’s fault, NASA scientists said. “This makes the Chile fault more effective in moving Earth’s mass vertically and hence more effective in shifting Earth’s figure axis,” NASA officials said.Gross said his findings are based on early data available on the Chile earthquake. As more information about its characteristics are revealed, his prediction of its effects will likely change.The Chile earthquake has killed more than 700 people and caused widespread devastation in the South American country.
Several major telescopes in Chile’s Atacama Desert have escaped damage, according to the European Southern Observatory, which manages those facilities.

US plans ‘dramatic reductions’ in nuclear weapons

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:52:18 +0000

US President Barack Obama is planning “dramatic reductions” in the country’s nuclear arsenal, a senior US administration official has said.
This would come as part of a sweeping policy review designed to prevent the spread of atomic weapons, he said.
He added that the new strategy will point to a greater role for conventional weapons.Mr Obama is to meet his Defence Secretary Robert Gates later on Monday to discuss the new nuclear strategy.
The review “will point to dramatic reductions in the stockpile, while maintaining a strong and reliable deterrent through the investments that have been made in the budget,” the official said.He said the review would go further than previous reviews in “embracing the aims of non-proliferation. “Officials say thousands of nuclear weapons could be cut, in many cases by retiring weapons that are now kept in storage.
The new strategy will also seek to abandon plans put in place by the previous administration to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons for penetrating underground targets known as “bunker busters.”
The officials say the strategy will be an important step towards Mr Obama’s declared aim of reversing the spread of nuclear weapons and seeking a world without them.New partnerships Last April, Mr Obama outlined his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons in a major speech in the Czech capital Prague.
He spoke of putting an end to Cold War thinking, a process in which, he insisted, the US was morally obliged to play a leading role.
He called for the forging of new partnerships to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and a global summit on nuclear security, which will take place next month.
Ahead of the summit, the Obama administration began a wide-ranging nuclear policy review, which was initially supposed to have been released in December.
The BBC’s Jonathan Marcus says all the signs are that the first draft of the document has been rejected as being too wedded to the status quo and not sufficiently “transformational” to use the language favoured by the Obama administration.He says the review will be read closely to see what it might say about the potential circumstances in which nuclear weapons would be used, an issue Mr Obama is to discuss with Mr Gates.The review comes as the US and Russia appear close to a new deal to cut their nuclear arsenals, despite Moscow’s concerns over Washington’s missile defence plans.
The document will also set the tone for the next five-yearly review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT agreement, to be held in May.The Obama administration is hoping to bolster the NPT, amid growing concern over Iranian and North Korean nuclear programmes.Jonathan Marcus says Mr Obama will want to prevent the weakening NPT regime from unravelling, and to do so he needs to have powerful evidence that the US is taking its disarmament responsibilities seriously.

Chile troops tackle quake looters

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:45:51 +0000

The Chilean military tries to restore order after the country’s devastating earthquake, arresting dozens and shooting a man dead.