Ecuador president vows to push large-scale mining






QUITO: Ecuador's re-elected President Rafael Correa said Saturday he will push large-scale mining projects during his next four years in office, despite opposition from some indigenous groups.

"The Ecuadoran people have voted to responsibly take advantage of non-renewable resources," said in a weekly address on his administration's activities.

Correa, a socialist, said his goal was to use the country's mining and oil wealth to eliminate poverty and said he was committed to "the Amazonian people and all the areas where there is mining or oil."

A year ago, Correa's government signed a contract with the Chinese company Ecuacorriente to mine copper in the Amazon basin province of Zamora-Chinchipe, in a major move to open the country to large-scale mining.

The country's largest indigenous organisation opposed the deal, however, and with the backing of opposition groups led a two-week-long protest march from the Amazon to Quito.

But Correa, who has been in power since 2007, won re-election last week in a landslide, with 56.77 per cent of the vote, and he used his speech Saturday to criticise opponents of big mining.

"To hurt the government, they are hurting the country, the poor, that Amazonian region," Correa said, adding that "we are not with the multinationals, we are with the poor."

"We cannot be beggars sitting in front of a bag of gold," he said.

- AFP/jc



Read More..

Plaint against Baba Ramdev for slamming Gandhis

BELGAUM: A complaint has been registered against yoga guru Baba Ramdev in the fourth JMF Court for allegedly making derogatory statements against AICC president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

Former KPCC member Shankar Munavalli filed the case. In a complaint, he alleged that Baba Ramdev, during his visit to Hubli on February 20, said that corruption had increased in the country because "AICC president Sonia Gandhi and his son Rahul were exporting money to Italy".

He also said that both should be expelled from the country, if the country has to become free from corruption. Munavalli claimed that Ramdev deliberately attempted to defame the image of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi without any evidence.

Besides, no complaint had been filed in any court on them as alleged by Ramdev. Munavalli urged action against the yoga guru, saying that his statement hurt the sentiments of Congress party workers.

Read More..

Elderly Abandoned at World's Largest Religious Festival


Every 12 years, the northern Indian city of Allahabad plays host to a vast gathering of Hindu pilgrims called the Maha Kumbh Mela. This year, Allahabad is expected to host an estimated 80 million pilgrims between January and March. (See Kumbh Mela: Pictures From the Hindu Holy Festival)

People come to Allahabad to wash away their sins in the sacred River Ganges. For many it's the realization of their life's goal, and they emerge feeling joyful and rejuvenated. But there is also a darker side to the world's largest religious gathering, as some take advantage of the swirling crowds to abandon elderly relatives.

"They wait for this Maha Kumbh because many people are there so nobody will know," said one human rights activist who has helped people in this predicament and who wished to remain anonymous. "Old people have become useless, they don't want to look after them, so they leave them and go."

Anshu Malviya, an Allahabad-based social worker, confirmed that both men and women have been abandoned during the religious event, though it has happened more often to elderly widows. Numbers are hard to come by, since many people genuinely become separated from their groups in the crowd, and those who have been abandoned may not admit it. But Malviya estimates that dozens of people are deliberately abandoned during a Maha Kumbh Mela, at a very rough guess.

To a foreigner, it seems puzzling that these people are not capable of finding their own way home. Malviya smiles. "If you were Indian," he said, "you wouldn't be puzzled. Often they have never left their homes. They are not educated, they don't work. A lot of the time they don't even know which district their village is in."

Once the crowd disperses and the volunteer-run lost-and-found camps that provide temporary respite have packed away their tents, the abandoned elderly may have the option of entering a government-run shelter. Conditions are notoriously bad in these homes, however, and many prefer to remain on the streets, begging. Some gravitate to other holy cities such as Varanasi or Vrindavan where, if they're lucky, they are taken in by temples or charity-funded shelters.

In these cities, they join a much larger population, predominantly women, whose families no longer wish to support them, and who have been brought there because, in the Hindu religion, to die in these holy cities is to achieve moksha or Nirvana. Mohini Giri, a Delhi-based campaigner for women's rights and former chair of India's National Commission for Women, estimates that there are 10,000 such women in Varanasi and 16,000 in Vrindavan.

But even these women are just the tip of the iceberg, says economist Jean Drèze of the University of Allahabad, who has campaigned on social issues in India since 1979. "For one woman who has been explicitly parked in Vrindavan or Varanasi, there are a thousand or ten thousand who are living next door to their sons and are as good as abandoned, literally kept on a starvation diet," he said.

According to the Hindu ideal, a woman should be looked after until the end of her life by her male relatives—with responsibility for her shifting from her father to her husband to her son. But Martha Chen, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University who published a study of widows in India in 2001, found that the reality was often very different.

Chen's survey of 562 widows of different ages revealed that about half of them were supporting themselves in households that did not include an adult male—either living alone, or with young children or other single women. Many of those who did live with their families reported harassment or even violence.

According to Drèze, the situation hasn't changed since Chen's study, despite the economic growth that has taken place in India, because widows remain vulnerable due to their lack of education and employment. In 2010, the World Bank reported that only 29 percent of the Indian workforce was female. Moreover, despite changes in the law designed to protect women's rights to property, in practice sons predominantly inherit from their parents—leaving women eternally dependent on men. In a country where 37 percent of the population still lives below the poverty line, elderly dependent relatives fall low on many people's lists of priorities.

This bleak picture is all too familiar to Devshran Singh, who oversees the Durga Kund old people's home in Varanasi. People don't pay toward the upkeep of their relatives, he said, and they rarely visit. In one case, a doctor brought an old woman to Durga Kund claiming she had been abandoned. After he had gone, the woman revealed that the doctor was her son. "In modern life," said Singh, "people don't have time for their elderly."

Drèze is currently campaigning for pensions for the elderly, including widows. Giri is working to make more women aware of their rights. And most experts agree that education, which is increasingly accessible to girls in India, will help improve women's plight. "Education is a big force of social change," said Drèze. "There's no doubt about that."


Read More..

Fiery Last-Lap Daytona Crash Injures 15 Fans











A fiery last-lap crash at the Daytona International Speedway injured a number of spectators today, who were seen being carried away from the stands on stretchers.


Fifteen spectators were taken to the hospital, according to ESPN, with one on the way to surgery with head trauma.


The 12-car crash happened moments before the end of the Nationwide race, and on the eve of the Daytona 500, one of NASCAR's biggest events.




The crash was apparently triggered when driver Regan Smith's car, which was being tailed by Brad Keselowski on his back bumper, spun to the right and shot up the track. Smith had been in the lead and said after the crash he had been trying to throw a "block."


Rookie Kyle Larson's car slammed into the wall that separates the track from the grandstands, causing his No. 32 car to go airborne and erupt in flames.


When a haze of smoke cleared and Larson's car came to a stop, he jumped out uninjured.


His engine and one of his wheels were sitting in a walkway of the grandstand.


"I was getting pushed from behind," Larson told ESPN. "Before I could react, it was too late."


Driver Michael Annett was taken to the hospital after he slammed head-on into a barrier during the chaos. NASCAR officials told ESPN the driver was awake and alert.


Tony Stewart pulled out the win, but in victory lane, what would have been a celebratory mood was tempered by concern for the injured fans.


"We've always known this is a dangerous sport," Stewart said. 'But it's hard when the fans get caught up in it."



Read More..

Catholic priests should be able to marry: British cardinal






LONDON: Roman Catholic priests should be able to marry and have children, Britain's most senior cardinal said on Friday.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who will be part of the conclave tasked with choosing a new pope to replace Benedict XVI, said the church's requirement for priests to be celibate was not of "divine origin" and should be reconsidered.

"Many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood, and felt the need of a companion, of a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family of their own," the 74-year-old told the BBC.

"The celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry -- Jesus didn't say that.

"There was a time when priests got married, and of course we know at the present time in some branches of the church -- in some branches of the Catholic church -- priests can get married," he added.

"So that is obviously not of divine origin and it could get discussed again."

O'Brien will have a say in who succeeds Benedict after he stands down on February 28.

He said he had not yet decided who should take over leadership of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, but suggested it could be time for a younger pontiff, possibly from the developing world.

"I would be open to a pope from anywhere if I thought it was the right man, whether it was Europe or Asia or Africa or wherever," he added.

Benedict stunned the world last week by becoming the first pope in more than 700 years to resign voluntarily.

No clear favourite has emerged, although the 85-year-old's announcement that he lacked the strength to lead the church indicates the need for a younger pope.

- AFP/jc



Read More..

Laptops to be Samajwadi Party's anniversary gift to students

LUCKNOW: UP chief minister AkhileshYadav is set to mark his first year in power by distributing free laptops to students who passed their intermediate examination last year during the anniversary week celebrations of his government from March 10 to 15. Free laptops were promised by Akhilesh as a poll sop for the youth.

In the first phase, 10,000 laptops will be distributed in Lucknow and Mainpuri districts to students from government and government-aided schools. Set to cost the state government a total of Rs 2,800 crore, laptops will be embossed with tamper-proof stickers of Akhilesh and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

It's not laptop alone that the students will get as 'gift'. The machines will be loaded with an open source operating system (Ubuntu) apart from Windows 7 Home Basic. The systems will also come pre-loaded with MS Office software, a specially designed computer literacy programme for first-time users, spreadsheets, multimedia and cloud computing among other things. A special software, designed by the British Council, will have 'How to Learn English', along with 'Hindi to English' and 'English to Hindi' dictionaries. The students will also have access to a photo gallery, movie maker software, photosynth and an editing software.

In another student-friendly initiative, the laptops will be pre-loaded with sample papers of engineering and medical entrance test papers of AIEEE, IIT-JEE, AIIMS, BITS, NIFT, PMT and CLAT. The laptops will come with webcam, blue tooth, wi-fi compatibility, DVD writer and a media reader. Users will have three language options- Hindi, English and Urdu.

Over 15 lakh units are to be distributed over the next seven months. A call centre will be set up in Lucknow with service centres in every district to cater to the beneficiaries. "The service centres will be made operational before the distribution begins," a senior UPEC official said.

Read More..

Businessman Dennis Tito Financing Manned Mission to Mars

Jane J. Lee


An announcement this week that a group led by the world's first space "tourist," Dennis Tito, plans to send a manned mission to flyby Mars in 2018 has lit up the Internet.

A press advisory from the new group, the Inspiration Mars Foundation, made no mention about whether there would be humans onboard.

But reports from NewSpace Journal say that there will be two crew members making the journey.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation, founded by Tito, plans to start its mission in January 2018, taking advantage of a rare launch window. Earth and Mars will be aligned in such a way that a trip that would normally take between two to three years would last about a year and a half, or 501 days.

The next such opportunity will occur in 2031, according to a Scientific American blog post.

Tito's foundation will hold a press conference on February 27 in Washington, presumably to offer more details about the trip.

The National Geographic Society is in talks with Inspiration Mars Foundation about a potential partnership around the 2018 mission.

The man behind the private Mars push is no stranger to the red planet.

In 2001 Tito paid $20 million to become the first "tourist" to rocket into space. He spent six days on the International Space Station. (Related: "7 Ways You Could Blast Off by 2023.")

Though Tito made his fortune in finance, he has a master's degree in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

While at JPL, Tito worked on Mariner 4 and 9, which flew to the red planet in the 60s and 70s respectively. Mariner 4 was the first successful flyby of Mars in 1965, beaming back the first pictures of another planet from deep space. (Watch a video about exploring Mars.)


Read More..

Jodi Arias' Friends Believe in Her Innocence












Accused murderer Jodi Arias believes she should be punished, but hopes she will not be sentenced to death, two of her closest friends told ABC News in an exclusive interview.


Ann Campbell and Donavan Bering have been a constant presence for Arias wth at least one of them sitting in the Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom along with Arias' family for almost every day of her murder trial. They befriended Arias after she first arrived in jail and believe in her innocence.


Arias admits killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander and lying for nearly two years about it, but insists she killed Alexander in self defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.








Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video









Jodi Arias Remains Calm Under Cross-Examination Watch Video









Jodi Arias Doesn't Remember Stabbing Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video





Nevertheless, she is aware of the seriousness of her lies and deceitful behavior.


The women told ABC News that they understand that Arias needs to be punished and Arias understands that too.


"She does know that, you know, she does need to pay for the crime," Campbell said. "But I don't want her to die, and I know that she has so much to give back."


Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage


The lies that Arias admits she told to police and her family have been devastating to her, Bering said.


""She said to me, 'I wish I didn't have to have lied. That destroyed me,'" Donovan said earlier this week. "Because now when it's so important for her to be believed, she has that doubt. But as she told me on the phone yesterday, she goes, 'I have nothing to lose.' So all she can do is go out there and tell the truth."


During Arias' nine days on the stand she has described in detail the oral, anal and phone sex that she and Alexander allegedly engaged in, despite being Mormons and trying to practice chastity. She also spelled out in excruciating detail what she claimed was Alexander's growing demands for sex, loyalty and subservience along with an increasingly violent temper.


Besides her two friends, Arias' mother and sometimes her father have been sitting in the front row of the courtroom during the testimony. It's been humiliating, Bering said.


"She's horrified. There's not one ounce of her life that's not out there, that's not open to the public. She's ashamed," she said.






Read More..

Group releases list of 90 medical ‘don’ts’



Those are among the 90 medical “don’ts” on a list being released Thursday by a coalition of doctor and consumer groups. They are trying to discourage the use of tests and treatments that have become common practice but may cause harm to patients or unnecessarily drive up the cost of health care.


It is the second set of recommendations from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation’s “Choosing Wisely” campaign, which launched last year amid nationwide efforts to improve medical care in the United States while making it more affordable.

The recommendations run the gamut, from geriatrics to opthalmology to maternal health. Together, they are meant to convey the message that in medicine, “sometimes less is better,” said Daniel Wolfson, executive vice president of the foundation, which funded the effort.

“Sometimes, it’s easier [for a physician] to just order the test rather than to explain to the patient why the test is not necessary,” Wolfson said. But “this is a new era. People are looking at quality and safety and real outcomes in different ways.”

The guidelines were penned by more than a dozen medical professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and ­Gynecologists.

The groups discourage the use of antibiotics in a number of instances in which they are commonly prescribed, such as for sinus infections and pink eye. They caution against using certain sedatives in the elderly and cold medicines in the very young.

In some cases, studies show that the test or treatment is costly but does not improve the quality of care for the patient, according to the groups.

But in many cases, the groups contend, the intervention could cause pain, discomfort or even death. For example, feeding tubes are often used to provide sustenance to dementia patients who cannot feed themselves, even though oral feeding is more effective and humane. And CT scans that are commonly used when children suffer minor head trauma may expose them to cancer-causing radiation.

While the recommendations are aimed in large part at physicians, they are also designed to arm patients with more information in the exam room.

“If you’re a healthy person and you’re having a straightforward surgery, and you get a list of multiple tests you need to have, we want you to sit down and talk with your doctor about whether you need to do these things,” said John Santa, director of the health ratings center at Consumer Reports, which is part of the coalition that created the guidelines.

Health-care spending in the United States has reached 17.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product and continues to rise, despite efforts to contain costs. U.S. health-care spending grew 3.9 percent in 2011, reaching $2.7 trillion, according to the journal Health Affairs.

Read More..

New death from SARS-like virus in Saudi Arabia






GENEVA: Another person suffering from a SARS-like virus has died in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, bringing the worldwide number of fatalities from the mystery illness to seven.

The Saudi health ministry informed the UN's health body that the patient had been hospitalised on January 29 and died on February 10, WHO said in a statement.

A laboratory had confirmed on February 18 that the person had died from the so-called novel coronavirus (NCoV), it added.

This brings the number of cases of the virus that have so far been reported to the WHO to 13. The virus was first detected in the middle of last year, with six previous fatalities -- three in Saudi Arabia, two in Jordan and one in Britain.

The news comes just days after a person suffering from the virus died in hospital in central England on Sunday.

That patient, who had a pre-existing health condition, was one of three people in the same family with the virus, which appeared to have been caught by one of the family members during a recent visit to the Middle East and Pakistan.

Even before the death in Britain, the WHO had on Saturday urged its member states to keep a close eye on any cases of severe acute respiratory infections, like pneumonia, and to "carefully review any unusual patterns."

Health authorities should test for NCoV in cases of unexplained pneumonia or other severe, "progressive or complicated respiratory illnesses not responding to treatment, particularly in persons travelling from or resident in areas of the world known to be affected," it said.

It also urged testing of any health workers showing such symptoms, and thorough investigations of clusters of cases, regardless of where they occur in the world.

WHO meanwhile did not recommend any travel or trade restriction in connection with the virus.

Coronaviruses cause most common colds but can also cause SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

The new virus however is different from SARS, especially in that it causes rapid kidney failure.

A SARS epidemic killed more than 800 people when it swept out of China in 2003, sparking a major international health scare.

- AFP/fa



Read More..