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Islamabad, Sep 14 (ANI): Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has said that US President Barack Obama is “powerless” to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a transcript of a tape released by the terrorist organization’s media wing.
Al Qaeda’s As-Sahab Media released a video featuring a still image of Osama and audio statement entitled “A statement to the American people,” said the organisation IntelCenter.
SITE Intelligence Group, a terrorist-monitoring firm that translated the address, says Osama blames the wars on the “pro-Israel lobby” and corporate interests.
IntelCenter, another company that monitors terrorist propaganda, reports that the 11-minute video is an address to the American people, two days after the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
The group described the release as an address to the American public. Osama usually releases a statement around September or October each year, The Times reports.
In his last previous known message in June, Osama said US President Barack Obama had planted the seeds of “revenge and hatred” towards the United States in the Muslim world and warned of decades of conflict to come.
That audiotape aired on Qatar’s Al-Jazeera news channel less than an hour after Obama landed in Saudi Arabia.
Obama “has followed the steps of his predecessor in antagonizing Muslims… and laying the foundation for long wars,” Osama said in the June release, referring to deadly clashes in Pakistan between the US-backed government and Islamist militants.
“He gave his orders to (Pakistani President Asif Ali) Zardari and his army to prevent the people of Swat from applying Sharia (Islamic) law,” he said.
“Obama and his administration have sowed new seeds of hatred against America. Let the American people prepare to harvest the crops of what the leaders of the White House plant in the next years and decades,” said the Al-Qaeda leader. (ANI)
New York, Sep. 11 (ANI): The proposed 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero is going to have 400 oak trees on the outside and disturbing graphic images of people jumping and planes hitting the towers inside the museum.
The New York Post quoted Joseph Daniels, president of the 9/11 Memorial Foundation, as saying that construction of the museum is moving forward.
The museum and memorial sprawled over eight acres is set to open in 2012.
The last column pulled out from the World Trade Center rubble has been returned to bedrock and will serve as a focal point, along with the so-called Survivors’ Stairs used by people fleeing the towers, the report says.
The Memorial Foundation has compiled 500 hours of video archives with help of a private team of filmmakers who collected professional and amateur videos from the day and its aftermath.
CameraPlanet’s archive includes a five-minute video shot in the streets of lower Manhattan on the evening of the attacks, with office stairwells filled with reams of paper and half-open offices with family pictures still inside.
A dust-covered Brooks Brothers logo is in one frame under shattered windows.
What appears to be an airliner seat is strewn in the street. “God Bless America! Unity!” is scrawled in the dust of one window. (ANI)
Wellington, Sep. 5 (ANI): New Zealand-born Indians and Chinese living in Wellington have been credited with helping the capital in its quest to become an international city.
According to an Asia NZ Foundation report by Auckland University’s Wardlow Friesen, India and China have close links with the city, as one-third of Indians and Chinese living in Wellington are New Zealand-born.
“The report shows how far the city has come in terms of diversity of its population, which was something people had generally embraced and celebrated.
“Its conclusions reflect a very important step on Wellington’s journey to becoming a truly international city,” The Dominion Post quoted Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast, as saying.
The study points out that a small Chinatown emerged in Wellington in the 19th century as Chinese moved north after the gold rush, whereas Indian settlement was more sporadic and gradual.
Thanks to diplomatic posts and international universities, Wellington is continuously attracting Asian population, which is predicted to double from 37,000 to 61,000 by 2012, it adds.
Asians living in Wellington consider the city to be “cosmopolitan”, “quiet”, and its people friendly.
“I never feel like a stranger in this city. Actually now it feels like my home,” said Sarjon Warde, originally from Iraq.
There are 121 Asian restaurants in Wellington, including 30 Indian, 29 Chinese and 15 Thai restaurants. (ANI)
Washington, Sept 5 (ANI): Here’s why broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are good for the heart – a chemical found in these vegetables can boost a natural defence mechanism to protect arteries from disease.
The build up of fatty plaques in arteries called atherosclerosis leads to heart disease.
The Imperial College London team has shown that a protein that usually protects against plaque build up called Nrf2 is inactive in areas of arteries that are prone to disease.
Treatment with a chemical found in green “brassica” vegetables such as broccoli can activate Nrf2 in these disease-prone regions.
“We found that the innermost layer of cells at branches and bends of arteries lack the active form of Nrf2, which may explain why they are prone to inflammation and disease,” BBC News quoted lead researcher Dr Paul Evans as saying.
“Treatment with the natural compound sulforaphane reduced inflammation at the high-risk areas by ‘switching on’ Nrf2.
“Sulforaphane is found naturally in broccoli, so our next steps include testing whether simply eating broccoli, or other vegetables in their ‘family’, has the same protective effect.
“We also need to see if the compound can reduce the progression of disease in affected arteries,” he added.
Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research said that the new findings provide a possible mechanism by which eating vegetables protects against heart disease.
During the study, the researchers genetically engineered mice to lack the Nrf2 protein.
The research found that in straight sections of arteries Nrf2 was present in the endothelial ‘lining’ cells. Through its action on other proteins, it prevented the cells from becoming inflamed, an early stage in the development of atherosclerosis.
The study appears in Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. (ANI)
Kolkata, Sep 4 (ANI): Minister for Corporate Affairs Salman Khurshid will inaugurate an International Conference on Convergence of Corporate Governance Norms here on Saturday.
The two-day Conference is being organized by IIT Kharagpur in association with National Foundation of Corporate Governance (NFCG) – which is a not-for-profit Trust under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
The aim of the Conference is to bring together policy framers, corporate executives, government officials, independent directors, market regulators, academicians and researchers from across the nation to deliberate upon various aspects of corporate governance norms. (ANI)
Washington, September 3 (ANI): A team of engineers from the Stanford University has designed a new earthquake-resistant structural system for buildings, which will not only help a multi-story building hold itself together during a violent quake, but also return it to standing up straight on its foundation afterward, true and plumb, with damage confined to a few easily replaceable parts.
Professor Greg Deierlein, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, used the world’s largest shake table to test a new structural design that lets buildings rock during earthquakes, then pull themselves into plumb when the shaking stops, confining damage to replaceable steel “fuses.”
During testing on a massive shake table, the system survived simulated earthquakes in excess of magnitude 7, bigger than either the 1994 Northridge earthquake or the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California.
“This new structural system has the potential to make buildings far more damage resistant and easier to repair, so people could reoccupy buildings a lot faster after a major earthquake than they can now,” said Greg Deierlein, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, who led the team that designed the new system.
The system dissipates energy through the movement of steel frames that are situated around the building’s core or along exterior walls.
The frames can be part of a building’s initial design or could be incorporated into an existing building undergoing seismic retrofitting.
They are economically feasible to build, as all the materials employed are commonly used in construction today and all the parts can be made using existing fabrication methods.
“What is unique about these frames is that, unlike conventional systems, they actually rock off their foundation under large earthquakes,” Deierlein said.
The rocking frames are steel braced-frames, the columns of which are free to rock up and down within steel “shoes” secured at their base.
To control the rocking and return the frame to vertical when the shaking stops, steel tendons run down the center of the frame from top to bottom.
These tendons are made of high-strength steel cable strands twisted together and designed to remain elastic during shaking.
When shaking is over, they rebound to their normal length, pulling the building back into proper alignment.
At the bottom of the frame sit steel “fuses” designed keep the rest of the building from sustaining damage.
“The idea of this structural system is that we concentrate the damage in replaceable fuses,” Deierlein said.
The fuses are built to flex and dissipate the shaking energy induced by the earthquake, thereby confining the damage. (ANI)
Washington, September 3 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have identified ‘tipping points’ at which sudden shifts to new conditions occur in the world.
The research was done by Martin Scheffer of Wageningen University in The Netherlands and co-authors, including William Brock and Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
They found that abrupt changes in ocean circulation and Earth’s climate, shifts in wildlife populations and ecosystems, the global finance market and its system-wide crashes, and asthma attacks and epileptic seizures share generic early-warning signals that indicate a critical threshold of change dead ahead.
The team found that similar symptoms occur in many systems as they approach a critical state of transition.
“It’s increasingly clear that many complex systems have critical thresholds – ‘tipping points’ – at which these systems shift abruptly from one state to another,” according to the scientists.
Especially relevant, they discovered, is that “catastrophic bifurcations,” a diverging of the ways, propel a system toward a new state once a certain threshold is exceeded.
A system follows a trail for so long, then often comes to a switchpoint at which it will strike out in a completely new direction.
That system may be as tiny as the alveoli in human lungs or as large as global climate.
“These are compelling insights into the transitions in human and natural systems,” said Henry Gholz, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology, which supported the research along with NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.
“The information comes at a critical time – a time when Earth’s and, our fragility, have been highlighted by global financial collapses, debates over health care reform, and concern about rapid change in climate and ecological systems,” he added.
It all comes down to what scientists call “squealing,” or “variance amplification near critical points,” when a system moves back and forth between two states.
“A system may shift permanently to an altered state if an underlying slow change in conditions persists, moving it to a new situation,” said Carpenter.
According to scientists, “In systems in which we can observe transitions repeatedly, such as lakes, ranges or fields, and such as human physiology, we may discover where the thresholds are.”
“If we have reason to suspect the possibility of a critical transition, early-warning signals may be a significant step forward in judging whether the probability of an event is increasing,” they added. (ANI)
New Delhi, Sep.2 (ANI): Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Julia Gillard, today announced in New Delhi that the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, located at the University of South Australia, will step up its cooperation with Indian partners.
Inspired by former Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, the new research centre was announced at the University of South Australia (UniSA) in 2008 at a special ceremony attended by the former PM.
The Centre is dedicated to research that seeks to define, understand and transcend the divide between Muslim and non-Muslim cultures and has already attracted $10 million (Rs40 crore) in funding support from the Australian Government and the South Australian State Government.
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the launch of the Centre in India would help to encourage more of the world’s top researchers and thinkers to engage with its important research agenda.
Ms Gillard said “faith and culture have been paramount in the development of India; one of the world’s largest and most linguistically and culturally diverse democracies. Holding the international launch of the Centre here in Delhi is appropriate because India is a nation that lives with difference on a grand scale and thrives.”
She said “There is expertise here and in many countries across the Asian region that we can learn from. The goal is to build a worldwide community of outstanding scholars with a commitment to understanding and exploring the cultural and sociological factors that influence Muslim and non-Muslim relationships,”
She said the Centre would emphasise international engagement, with an international Advisory Board and a Council of Distinguished Scholars (including Indian representatives). Former Australian PM the Honourable Bob Hawke is an ex-officio member of the board.
UNESCO Chair in Transnational Diasporas and Reconciliation Studies and UniSA Pro Vice Chancellor and Vice President for Education Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, who is leading the foundation of the Centre, said the research agenda goes far beyond religious differences.
“We also want to build the Centre as a place of engagement, so that the work we do is accessible to governments and societies. This supports a guiding principle of the research Centre – to analyse effective rapprochement between Muslim and non-Muslim communities informed by principles of social justice and reconciliation.”
Ahluwalia said the 10 international PhD scholarships, worth more than Australian dollars 26, 000 (Rs10 lakh) each plus relocation expenses would help to attract some of the brightest minds to the Centre.
“I am hoping to welcome strong applications from India that can build long lasting bilateral research relationships between Australia and India in this vital area.”
Ms Gillard is also Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. (ANI)
Mumbai, Aug 29(ANI): Mumbai police on Saturday said that counterfeit currency was flowing into Mumbai from Dubai and Bangladesh.
Speaking on the sidelines of laying the foundation stone of a Police Academy here, Mumbai’s police commissioner D. Shivanandan said: “Much of the money (fake currency) is coming from Dubai or from Calcutta (Kolkata) from Bangladesh side. We are coordinating with the Calcutta (Kolkata) police on this.”
Several cases of fake currency notes being pumped into the country have been reported across the country.
The Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), earlier in the day, arrested a key operative of a fake currency racket and seized counterfeit notes with a face value of 2,807 dollars. (ANI)
Islamabad, Aug.29 (ANI): A majority of Pakistanis believe that former President General Pervez Musharraf should be punished for his ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘extra-judicial’ actions taken on November 3, 2007, an opinion poll has revealed.
According to a survey conducted by the Gilani Research Foundation, 52 percent of people favour harsh punishment for Musharraf while 19 percent are of the view that the former Army Chief should receive only ‘mild’ punishment.
Fifteen per cent of the respondents did not support punishing Musharraf for enforcing emergency on November 3, 2007 while 14 per cent did not give any response, The News reports.
The survey also revealed that while there were no significant difference in views on punishing Musharraf across gender and age, there were notable differences across political affiliations.
People supporting parties like Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the MMA, the JUI and the ANP were more in favour of punishing Musharraf, while people supporting the MQM (19 percent) were not in favour of punishing Musharraf. (ANI)
Washington, August 29 (ANI): Elderly people with limited mobility may soon come to be served by robots in a manner as if they are being served by other persons, thanks to a collaborative study by three University of Illinois at Chicago engineers and a Rush University nursing specialist.
“We want to help elderly people communicate with robots, to tell them what they need, and to perform physical activities,” said Milos Zefran, UIC associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.
The three-year study, supported by a grant of 989,000 dollars from the National Science Foundation, is aimed at developing software to allow the elderly to communicate with robots that can respond to a wide range of verbal language, non-verbal gestures, and touch.
“If we can help the elderly remain independent and continue living in their own homes, that will improve their health outlook while relieving the burden on family members and health care providers,” said Zefran, the lead researcher.
The researchers say that their communication interface software will have at its core a novel adaptive and reliable recognition methodology called Recognition by Indexing and Sequencing (RISq), which will allow the robot to comprehend speech altered by impairments and to learn and adapt to such speech.
To enable a robot to understand and correctly respond to various forms of human touch, the researchers will combine techniques from natural language processing and haptics, a scientific term to describe the computerized sense of touch.
They say that the robot will also know how to respond to the user safely when performing everyday chores, such as cooking or making a bed.
“We’ll start by observing interaction between human helpers and the elderly. We’ll identify what kind of language, physical interactions and non-verbal interactions are used. Then we’ll develop a mathematical framework to model this interaction so it can be treated by the robot as a single way of communicating,” Zefran said.
The researchers say that they will program and test a robot, in order to devise refinements, as the project progresses.
“The human-robot interface is really a long-standing, open problem that won’t be solved in three years. But we’ll have a working prototype by then, and we’ll know what additional research needs to be done,” Zefran said.
He believes that this research project may also find widespread use in delivery of institutionally based health care, where routine tasks now done by nurses could be handled by robots.
“If robots can alleviate some of the burden nurses face, they then could spend more time where they’re really needed — providing the human contact that a robot can’t replace,” he said.
Zefran has revealed that his work will include developing seminars or a new graduate or upper-level undergraduate course that considers the various factors that allow robots to perform more sophisticated tasks. (ANI)
Amritsar. Aug.28 (ANI): In a step to give shape to a proposed Baba Guru Nanak International University (BGNIU) the Government of Pakistan has announced the name of its members of the governing committee for project management unit on Friday.
The first meeting of the governing committee is likely to be held in Islamabad in September this year. The Chairman of the PETPB would head the Committee.
The then Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz assured a delegation of the Sikh Diaspora headed by Dr. Pritpal Singh, convener American Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee (AGPC), to set up set up a university on Sikh religion and culture at Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak.
Besides the chairman of PETPB, Mian Imran Masood as a executive director, Zafer Saeed Padhiar, MNA, Rai Shah Jehan Bhatti, MPA, President PSGPC, Dr. Pritpal Singh, USA, Manmohan Singh, UK, Azhar Ehsan Advocate, Tahir Azam, Faqir Syed Saif Uddin, Sham Singh Former president PSGPC, Bishan Singh and Mastan Singh are the members of the committee.
In 2007, in a meeting with heads of the various Sikhs organizations, including Avtar Singh Makkar, president of SGPC, PS Sarna the president of Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Managemnet Committee (DGGMC) and Bishan Singh President of Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee were asured by PETPB Chairman that the proposed university would have the best architecture, curricula and research center on Sikh and other religion and culture.
It is pertinent to mention that none of the members was taken from India, neither from the SGPC, the premier body of the Sikhs or from DSGMC. However, DSGMC chief Sarna said: “I am happy that the work is on progress to build the University and it makes no difference to me whether they have not gave any representation in the committee.”
He said that whatever duties they give us we will do voluntarily.
Makkar registered his anguish and said that it is unfortunate that PETPB has not given any representation to the SGPC in the governing body.
He said that the SGPC not only represents Sikhs living in India, but also embodies all Sikhs living around the world and that includes Pakistan. He said that without the representation of the SGPC the governing committee could not be called a complete body.
According to sources, the university would be constructed in 2500 acres of land in Nankana Sahib. The foundation stone of the university would be laid in the month of September or November this year.
Talking to ANI, Dr. Pritpal Singh said that the AGPC would bear all the expenses occur on establishing the course related to Gurmat Sangeet facility.
He said that we would invite scholars from all over the world to join the university. It will be planned University that to be modelled on the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge and te University will allow to get Admissions for the Students of all over the world. By Ravinder Singh Robin (ANI)
Washington, August 28 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have determined that subtle connections between the 11-year-solar cycle, the stratosphere and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, an understanding which would help in predicting the intensity of the Indian monsoon.
“It’s been long known that weather patterns are well-correlated to very small variations in total solar energy reaching our planet during 11-year solar cycles,” said Jay Fein, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Atmospheric Sciences, which funded the research.
“What’s been an equally long mystery, however, is how they are physically connected. This remarkable study is beginning to unravel that mystery,” he added.
An international team of authors led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, used more than a century of weather observations and three powerful computer models to tackle one of the more difficult questions in meteorology: if the total energy that reaches Earth from the Sun varies by only 0.1 percent across the approximately 11-year solar cycle, how can it drive major changes in weather patterns on Earth?
The answer, according to the study, has to do with the Sun’s impact on two seemingly unrelated regions.
Chemicals in the stratosphere and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean respond during solar maximum in a way that amplifies the Sun’s influence on some aspects of air movement.
This can intensify winds and rainfall, change sea surface temperatures and cloud cover over certain tropical and subtropical regions, and ultimately influence global weather.
“The Sun, the stratosphere, and the oceans are connected in ways that can influence events such as winter rainfall in North America,” said NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, the lead author of the paper.
“Understanding the role of the solar cycle can provide added insight as scientists work over the next decade or two toward predicting regional weather patterns,” he added.
The Indian monsoon, Pacific precipitation and sea surface temperatures, and other regional climate patterns are largely driven by rising and sinking air in Earth’s tropics and subtropics.
The new study could help scientists use solar-cycle predictions to estimate how that circulation, and the regional climate patterns related to it, might vary over the next decade or two. (ANI)
London, Aug 26 (ANI/Business Wire India): Experimentus (www.experimentus.com), the software quality management consulting firm, announced that they have partnered with Edista Testing Institute (www.edistatesting.com), a 100 per cent subsidiary of QAI Global (www.qaiglobal.com) to implement TMMi (Test Maturity Model integrated) all across the Asia Pacific region.
TMMi is the de facto standard that organisations can use to measure and enable them to improve Testing and Quality related activities.
The partnership between ETI and Experimentus, offers access to accredited TMMi training and Assessments to QAI and ETI clients.
As a part of the alliance, Experimentus, using their team of accredited TMMi Foundation appraisers will offer a 1 day Overview Program on TMMi, a 3 day Program on TMMi, Assessment Services for TMMi. ETI will provide follow on consulting activities.
Experimentus, with it’s accredited in house assessment method and consultants, has obtained global recognition for the work it has been doing with the Test Maturity Model integrated and has helped many organisations clearly understand their level of risk across the development lifecycle, reducing cost and improving software quality.
ETI is fully focused on Operational Excellence and Workforce Development with specific focus on Testing Organizations.
ETI Currently works with over 54+ and has trained over 3000+ professionals across India, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, UAE, UK and USA.
Julian Clarke, Director of Sales and Marketing at Experimentus, said, “We are delighted to be working with ETI and QAI to promote TMMi across the Asia-Pacific region.
Delivering IT projects to market on time and of an acceptable level of quality is even more paramount to the business in the current climate. Testing is all about Risk Mitigation, validating the level of quality achieved in development before a software application goes live.
The cost of rework, loss of benefit to a business as well as the potential damage to an organisation’s brand can have significant commercial ramifications. This is even more so in today’s “dog eat dog” environment. Therefore, ensuring that Testing is effective and efficient is a must for corporate survival.”
Commenting on the partnership, Pradeep Chennavajhula, CEO of ETI said, “Testing is a critical function, and a growing business area for many IT service providesr in India.
Many of the Asian IT service providers, and Independent Testing service providers are in need of a structured framework for improving efficiency, and continuously improve their testing process. TMMi will play a crucial role in filling this gap. Just like CMMI for Software Engineering, TMMi will act as a key differentiator for winning large scale contracts with customers from UK and USA.” (ANI)
Washington, August 26 (ANI): A new research has determined that global warming threatens the existence of tropical species, the ecosystem and its by-products.
The research was done by herpetologist Laurie Vitt, curator of reptiles and George Lynn Cross Research Professor at the University of Oklahoma’s Sam Noble Museum of Natural History.
Vitt has studied the ecology of lizards in rain forests around the world and, for the past 20 years, as part of a biodiversity project in the Amazon.
As a fellow researcher on a study funded by the National Science Foundation, Vitt investigated the affects of global warming on tropical lizards and the diversity of the ecosystem.
“We depend on these tropical lizards and other species of animals and plants for food, materials, and pharmaceuticals, but we are losing these species as a result of global warming,” Vitt said.
Tropical species are affected more by the very narrow temperature range of their typically warm climate than are ectotherms living where the temperatures fluctuate in greater degrees.
Even the smallest change in the tropics makes a difference to the tropical species most susceptible to climate change.
“Climatic shifts are part of our natural history, but years of research indicate global warming has increased the rate at which climate change is taking place,” said Vitt.
As populations grow around the world, so does consumption. In the densest areas of the world, the elimination of animals that feed on disease vectors, such as mosquitoes and flies, adds to our growing human health problem.
“The loss of these predators, like tropical species, upset the natural biodiversity of the ecosystem,” said Vitt. “The effects may not be so obvious in the short term, but the long-term effects will be irreversible,” he added.
“Our ability to connect with nature and better understand tropical lizards is important because these animals serve as model organisms for detecting the effects of global warming,” Vitt summarized.
“Ecosystems are complex and interdependent. When one species becomes extinct, the entire system is affected. The long-term effects on human health can be dramatic,” he said. (ANI)
Washington, Aug 26 (ANI): By 2015, at least 2.1 million people will die each year because of tobacco-induced cancers, revealed The Tobacco Atlas, Third Edition.
Published by the American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation, the Atlas has estimated that tobacco use kills some six million people each year (more than a third of whom will die from cancer), and drains 500 billion dollars annually from global economies.
The Atlas graphically displays how tobacco is devastating both global health and economies, especially in middle- and low-resource countries, and tracks progress and outcomes in tobacco control.
Not only the death toll due to tobacco-induced cancers will go around 2 million by 2015, the Atlas predicted that by 2030, 83 percent of these deaths will occur in low and middle-income countries.
However, unlike other cancer-causing agents, the danger of tobacco is completely preventable through proven public policies.
Major measures include tobacco taxes, advertising bans, smokefree public places, and effective health warnings on packages.
These cost-effective policies are among those included in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a global treaty endorsed by more than 160 countries, and recommended by the World Health Organization MPOWER policy package.
The Atlas revealed that the global economy lost a staggering 500 billion dollars due to tobacco use.
These economic costs come as a result of lost productivity, misused resources, missed opportunities for taxation, and premature death.
The Atlas revealed that in 2006, about 600 billion smuggled cigarettes made it to the market, representing an enormous missed tax opportunity for governments, as well as a missed opportunity to prevent many people from starting to smoke and encourage others to quit.
Tobacco replaces potential food production on almost 4 million hectares of the world’s agricultural land, equal to all of the world’s orange groves or banana plantations.
In developing countries, smokers spend disproportionate sums of money relative to their incomes that could otherwise be spent on food, healthcare, and other necessities.
The Tobacco Atlas established an undeniable trend-the tobacco industry has shifted its marketing and sales efforts to countries that have less effective public health policies and fewer tobacco control resources in place:
It predicted that in 2010, 72 percent of those who die from tobacco related illnesses would be in low- and middle-income countries.
It revealed that since 1960 global tobacco production has increased three-fold in low- and middle-resource countries while halving in high-resource countries.
“The Tobacco Atlas is crucial to helping advocates in every nation get the knowledge they need to combat the most preventable global health epidemic,” said Dr. John R. Seffrin, chief executive officer, American Cancer Society.
The Tobacco Atlas was unveiled at the LIVESTRONG Global Cancer Summit. (ANI)
New Delhi, Aug.24 (ANI): Thirteen of Canada’s elite universities will be in India from August 23 to September 4 to hold information sessions on Canada as a destination for higher education.
The delegation is led by Ginette Sanfaçon of HEC Montréal (Business school affiliated with the Université de Montréal) and Michelle Beaton of Ryerson University in Toronto.
The tour is organized by the Canadian Higher Education Committee under the aegis of the Council of International Schools (CIS).
The Council’s fifth annual tour to India will begin in Mumbai and continue in Pune, Delhi and Bangalore.
According to a Canadian High Commission press release, the tour is of special interest to Standard XI and Standard XII students who exhibit strong academic standing, their school guidance counselors as well as to their parents. The schedule includes school visits, information fairs, and an indepth Canadian university admission workshop for guidance counselors.
“India is a key undergraduate student market for Canadian universities,” said Ginette Sanfaçon of HEC-Montréal and Tour Director. “Indian students are sought for their academic strength and their rich contribution to student life on Canadian university campuses. In turn, increasing numbers of Indian students are making Canada their first choice for study – as evidenced on this tour.
Indian students are drawn to our universities’ common attributes of international reputation for academic excellence, state of the art resources, and safe campuses in welcoming locations,” Sanfaçon said.
Each year, tour organizers strengthen existing relationships with secondary schools in cities they visit and also expand outreach to new regions. For example, guidance counselors from schools in Dehra Dun, Hyderabad, Chennai and Chandigarh as well as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are receiving invitations to attend the Tour’s counselor workshop in Delhi.
List of participating universities:
The University of British Columbia; Carleton University; Dalhousie University; HEC MONTRÉAL (Business School affiliated with Université de Montréal); Memorial University of Newfoundland; University of Manitoba; University of New Brunswick; Ryerson University; University of Saskatchewan; University of Toronto; Vancouver Island University; University of Waterloo; York University.
Canadian universities are engaged internationally as leaders in education through teaching, research and partnerships. Undergraduate education in Canada is a hybrid of US and UK styles offering breadth of program options, flexibility in choice and a degree that is ultimately recognized world-wide.
Indian students choose Canada because a strong education and a positive international experience is the foundation for their exciting and successful futures. The quality, affordability and renowned research opportunities are key factors in this decision. University campuses across Canada offer multicultural environments, beautiful spaces and friendly people. As a leader in business, political diplomacy, arts and culture and technology – Canada’s education system is at the core of its success and its graduates are players on the world stage. (ANI)
Melbourne, Aug 24 (ANI): In wake of the increasing number of eating disorder cases, experts have warned that kids should be banned from watching weight loss shows.
Figures from Queensland Health show the number of children aged 13 or under being diagnosed with eating disorders at community mental health services jumped from 14 in 2002-2003 to 57 in 2007-2008.
The most severe child eating disorder cases rose slightly in five years, from 13 children aged under 14 admitted to hospital in the public sector between 2002-2003 to 17 in 2007-2008.
Queensland Health said the figures could underestimate the extent of cases, as more children were seen by the private sector.
Julie Parker, general manager of the Butterfly Foundation, which supports people with eating disorders, said that weight loss shows are ‘dangerous’ for children.
“We constantly have a dieting and thin culture in front of us and children and young people are exposed like never before,” the Courier Mail quoted Parker as saying.
She said kids in particular should not be exposed to extreme weight loss programs as they presented “a very warped and unrealistic view of exercise, dieting and health”.
Eating Disorders Association (Qld) Resource Centre co-ordinator Desi Achilleos said any information that made people feel bad about themselves for not having an ideal body weight and size was unsafe for children. (ANI)
London, Aug 23(ANI): Australian cricketer Marcus North, who took four wickets with his part time off-spinners on the low turning pitch in England’s second innings of the final Ashes Test at The Oval, has said that his team might be able to chase down a record 546.
“History is against us. It’s too early to look that far ahead. There is still a lot of cricket to be played,” The Daily Telegraph quoted North, as saying. What you’ll see are 11 guys, who have got a lot of character to show, who are going to give everything for every contest for every over. Hopefully, that can lay the foundation to give us a chance,” he added.
North said that if past second innings scores are taken into consideration, Australia has a good chance to retain the Ashes. At Lord’s Australia scored 406 before losing and in the rain-ruined match at Edgbaston they had scored 5-375 to save the game.
“Our first objective was to get through tonight unscathed and Simon and Watto did that superbly. To walk off at 0 for 80, it’s the position we need to be in,” North said.
“We batted well at Lord’s, had some big partnerships, and laid some foundations to give us some opportunity to chase that target down. This is a different Test, different conditions. Again, we’ll have to show some character,” he added.
Australia will resume at 0-80 today, they are still 465 behind with two days to play. (ANI)
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