2.3 m Nazi slaves still alive
NEW YORK, Aug 21 — About 2.3 million persons who survived enslavement by the Nazis are still alive, according to a soon-to-be released study, or more than one-fifth of the 12 million compelled to work as slaves or forced labourers.

Liz Taylor hospitalised
LOS ANGELES, Aug 21 — Elizabeth Taylor was hospitalised after breaking a bone in her back during a fall.

Another big quake likely in Turkey

WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) — Turkey’s massive earthquake this week can could be followed by another one just as big, judging from the way the dangerous North Anatolian fault that caused it has behaved this century, US quake experts have said.

More than almost any other geological fault of its kind in the world, the North Anatolian fault line has a way of producing regular series of deadly quakes, they said.

And Tuesday’s quake could well have added to stresses along the fault line.

“This fault is unparalleled in the spectacular nature of its progressive rupture”, said Mr Ross Stein, an expert on quakes in the Turkish region at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

“It has this regular progressive character ... whereas most sites seem to be more random and complex”.

Mr Stein described the quakes along the fault as coming in a pattern like falling dominoes. He said 10 quakes with a magnitude of more than 6.7 had been registered along the fault between 1939 and 1992, “providing an unsurpassed opportunity to study how one large shock sets up the next”.

Even more frighteningly, the next quake could well strike further to the west — nearer Istanbul, a city of 12 million persons that was hit hard in the quake.

“It’s not rocket science to say a quake should occur to the west”, he said.

No quake expert would claim to be able to predict the timing of an earthquake.

But Mr Nafi Toksoz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pointed out that this region of Turkey had a history of fairly large quakes that could set one another off.

The quake was at one end of the North Anatolian Fault, which started 1,000 km to the east of Izmit.

“Then it goes right under Izmit into the Sea of Marmara and then into the Aegean”, Mr Toksoz said.

Tuesday’s quake registered 7.4 on the Richter scale and it knocked down numerous buildings and bridges.

There was a quake, of a magnitude of 7.4 in 1912 at the other end of the fault. And there had been numerous smaller quakes since, running from one end to the other.

Mr Stein was considerably more cautious when the Turkish-born Toksoz said Istanbul might be at particular risk.

“Istanbul is at risk. That’s true”, he said. The ancient city, which straddles the Strait of Bosphorus that divides the European continent from Asia, lies about 40 km north of where the North Anatolian fault runs.

What concerns Mr Toksoz is what he considers lack of preparation in a city as big as Istanbul.

“If something happens close to Istanbul, a place with a population of 12 million persons, the damage and casualties could be much worse (than Tuesday’s quake)”, he said. “Its social significance and its damage potential is much greater”.

He said a quake of magnitude 7 would cause the ground to be displaced by about 2 metres right at the epicentre of a fault. How badly the surrounding area shakes depends on the local geology, whether the ground consists of sand or rock, the direction of the shaking and other factors.

Mr Toksoz called on the Turkish authorities to take action to prepare large cities for the quakes he and other experts said were certain to come.

Pak willing for serious talks with India

ISLAMABAD, Aug 21 (PTI) — Pakistan has expressed willingness to hold talks with India on the nuclear issue but said it should be "serious, fruitful and result-oriented."

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Tariq Altaf was today quoted by a leading newspaper as saying that Pakistan was willing to hold talks with India but they should revolve around both countries’ resolve not to use nuclear weapons.

The talks should not only be for the sake of dialogue but it should be "serious, fruitful and result-oriented," Urdu daily Jung quoted Altaf.

The spokesman was responding to the offer of talks made by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in Chandigarh yesterday when he told reporters that India was willing to discuss its nuclear weapons policy with all countries, including Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday held one-to-one meeting with Army chief and chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC) General Pervez Musharraf during which they were reported to have discussed India’s draft nuclear doctrine and also gave final touches to a National Command Authority (NCA) for the use of nuclear weapons, another daily today said.

"The News" quoting sources claimed that the Prime Minister and the Army chief discussed the restructuring of the Higher Defence Organisations (HDOs) and the establishment of a NCA for the use of weapons of mass destruction.

"The News" claimed that Sharif and Musharraf also discussed India’s proposed nuclear doctrine and "new threats" that are emerging from New Delhi.

"Efforts are being made to finalise the NCA by restructuring the HDO," a cabinet member said, adding "one should be aware of what is happening in the region," the newspaper reported.

The paper said the final touches to the NCA were being given and the political authority to use the weapons of mass destruction would be in the hands of the Prime Minister while the chairman of JCSC would be its strategic commander.

India announced its proposed nuclear doctrine on Tuesday, which Pakistan alleged was a step towards "deployment and operationalism" of the nuclear weapons by New Delhi. It urged the international community to ask India to exercise restraint and threatened to follow suit in its defence.

Russia claims 100 rebels killed

MAKHACHKALA (Russia), Aug 21 (AP) — Russia’s military command today said that its forces had killed up to 100 Muslim rebels over a single day of fighting in the southern area of Dagestan, but acknowledged that the situation there remained “complex”.

Russian troops managed to capture strategic heights near two villages in Dagestan, earlier seized by the guerrillas, while aviation and other forces destroyed the militants’ ammunition depot and several vehicles coming from breakaway Chechnya to assist the rebels, the Defence Ministry said.

The military claimed that up to 100 Islamic guerrillas were killed since yesterday, but the report could not be independently verified. It gave no figures about casualties among the government troops.

Russian warplanes and combat helicopters yesterday flew 37 air missions, pounding the rebels’ positions around the villages of Ansalta and Tando, the Interior Ministry said.

They also hit Islamic rebel units inside Chechnya, a rare case of Russian forces attacking the rebellious region that raised the prospect of widening the two-week conflict.

Russian Premier Vladimir Putin said the military would go after the guerrillas even inside Chechnya. But so far Moscow had refrained from ground operations in the republic where the Russian military suffered a humiliating defeat during the 1994-96 war with the separatists.

Hundreds of Chechan reservists were yesterday digging trenches along the Dagestan border, a Chechen defence official said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Killing of 4 Americans
Death sentence for 2 Pakistanis

KARACHI, Aug 21 (AP) — A special anti-terrorist court today convicted and sentenced to death two Pakistani men in the case of slaying of four American oil workers, who were shot death in November, 1997, in the port city of Karachi.

The men, Ahmed Saeed and Mohammed Salim, are members of the ethnic-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which represents Urdu-speaking people who migrated from India in 1947.

The men were also sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment for possession of illegal weapons.

When the verdict and death sentence was announced Saeed said "I was mentally prepared for this conviction, but I am innocent."

Saeed told newspersons that he was in the hospital having his appendix removed when the killings took place. "I have submitted my hospital records," he said.

The men are expected to appeal their conviction.

The verdict, originally stated for last Wednesday was delayed when a government lawyer asked for the cross-examination of two more witnesses.

The court is headed by Judge Hussain Bukhsh Khoso.

The pair was charged in January, 1999, of killing the four American employees of Union Texas and their Pakistani driver in a daring daylight attack.

The four Americans — Joel Enlow, Larry Jennings, Tracy Ritchie and Ephraim Ebu, and their Pakistani driver were en route to the Union Texas oil office barely 2 km away when gunmen attacked their car.

They were in Pakistan completing an audit of the Houston-based company. Two of them had arrived in the troubled city 10 days earlier.

The US Government announced $ 2 million reward and promised to protect informants with information leading to the arrest of the killers.

The MQM and the convicts have denied any involvement in the case. The four men were killed a day after a US court convicted Pakistani national Aimal Kansi of murder in the 1993 shooting of two CIA employees outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

A previously unknown group took initial responsibility for the killings, but no link was ever proven.

In 1995, two US Consulate employees were shot and killed in Karachi. The gunmen in that slaying have not been arrested, although hundreds of people have been questioned by the police.

A reward of $ 2 million has also been offered for information leading to the capture of the gunmen.

2.3 m Nazi slaves still alive

NEW YORK, Aug 21 (Reuters) — About 2.3 million persons who survived enslavement by the Nazis are still alive, according to a soon-to-be released study, or more than one-fifth of the 12 million compelled to work as slaves or forced labourers.

The report by Nathan Associates, an Arlington, Virginia-based economic consulting firm, found that more than half of Hitler’s forced labourers were women, and most were young adults, born from 1918 to 1925.

The information was provided by Mr Michael Hausfeld, one of the private attorneys suing German companies on behalf of Holocaust victims, along with five other law firms, his Washington, D.C. based law firm commissioned the report.

The Nathan study was expected to be presented and used at reparations negotiations in Bonn that resume on August 24 -along with estimates of how much the workers are owed.

The figure will be one of the first dollar estimates of how much compensation these Holocaust survivors are owed, based on how much each year they worked was worth, and on how many years they worked. The dollar estimate was not released ahead of the Bonn talks.

The estimate of just how many former-slave and forced labourers still are alive can prove controversial.

“The sense of this part of the report is to inform all parties of the magnitude of the number of people who still are alive who are former forced labourers,” Mr John Beyer, who wrote the report, said in an interview.

At the talks, co-hosted by the USA and Germany, negotiators would try to resolve plans for a new compensation fund, which 16 German companies in February decided to set up to settle billion-dollar suits filed against them in US Courts by Holocaust victims.

The firms demanded that in return for creating the fund, initially pegged at $ 1.7 billion, they would get a guarantee that no new Holocaust claims be filed against them.

One of the biggest controversies in the fund negotiations was over which forced labourers should be compensated.

Mr Wolfgang Gibowski, the fund’s spokesman, had estimated that 1,00,000 to 2,00,000 slave labourers and about 6,00,000 former-forced labourers would qualify for payment under the fund’s criteria.

The consulting firm’s estimate of the number of slave and forced labourers who were still alive 54 years after the end of World War II, was based on the 1.76 million survivors known to be alive-because they were listed with survivors’ groups, for example-or estimated to be alive but not registered.

Jewish slave labourers, whom the Nazis tried to work to death as part of their genocidal programme, were included in this broad estimate of forced labourers.

Spying suspect’s bid to avoid prosecution

WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) — A physicist suspected of passing nuclear secrets to China is talking with US Justice Department officials in an effort to avoid prosecution, the Scientist’s Attorney has said.

Mr Wen Ho Lee was fired in March from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Centre of the US Government nuclear weapons research, for security violations and was suspected of giving classified nuclear information to China.

The scientist had not been charged with any crime and US Officials said espionage charges were unlikely because of lack of evidence to convict him. But other charges were possible.

“We are in discussions with the Department of Justice to try and convince them not to charge Mr Lee,” Mr Mark Holscher of O’Melveny Myers said yesterday. “And we hope to convince them not to bring any charges against Mr Lee.”

Mr Lee denied committing espionage but acknowledged downloading classified information into his unclassified computer, calling it a common practice.

Ms Carole Florman, Justice Department spokeswoman, had no comment on the Lee case. “We will not comment, this is an ongoing matter,” she said.

The Justice Department was also in talks with the Energy Department, which oversaw the nuclear research laboratories, over what information from the China spying investigation could be declassified for use if there was a prosecution.

All depositions of scientists — who could be potential witnesses if any case was brought against Mr Lee — were classified unless the Energy Department decided to declassify them.

Such negotiations were normal proceedings when dealing with classified material in such cases, and not a suggestion of whether any charges would be brought against Mr Lee, said a government official who requested anonymity.

Mr Lee, who came to the USA in 1964 from Taiwan, said in a CBS “60 minutes” interview that he thinks he was targeted in the investigation because of his ethnicity.

Energy Department officials had denied ethnicity played a role in the Chinese spying investigation.

Mr Robert Vrooman, former counter-intelligence chief at Los Alamos, said in newspaper interviews that investigators lacked evidence that Mr Lee leaked nuclear secrets to China and that his ethnicity was a major factor in the case.

Mr Vrooman was one of three Los Alamos employees against whom Energy Secretary Bill Richardson had recommended disciplinary action related to the espionage case.

A Congressional report this year accused China of stealing US secrets on seven nuclear warheads and the neutron bomb over two decades, which China had steadfastly denied.

Liz Taylor hospitalised

LOS ANGELES, Aug 21 (AP) — Elizabeth Taylor was hospitalised after breaking a bone in her back during a fall.

The actress fell in her Bel Air home on Thursday night and was later admitted to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, her publicist said in a statement released yesterday.

“As a result of the fall, Elizabeth sustained a compressive fracture of the 12th thoracic vertebra,” neurosurgeon, Dr Patrick Rhoten, said in the statement. “She is in no danger from a neurological viewpoint and she is resting comfortably,” he said.

She would need four to five weeks to recuperate, the statement said.

Elizabeth (67) has been facing with health problems in recent years, including a broken back last year and lengthy recuperation from hip surgeries. She also had a brain surgery in 1997 to remove a benign tumour.

Boy gets life term
BARTOW (USA): A 15-year-old boy has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for beating and stabbing an eight-year-old girl in his neighbourhood whose body was found days later stuffed in the frame of his waterbed. Joshua Phillips was tried as an adult last month and convicted on Friday on first-degree murder in the November 3 death of Maddie Clifton. — AP

Thievish priest
NEILLSVILLE, (USA): A Catholic priest has confessed to stealing church items, including candelabra and an antique incense burner, then returning them after apparently becoming stricken with guilt, the police said on Friday. Rev. Glen Gardner (38) and an accomplice, church organist Kurt Schione (41) were charged with burglary and theft and were set to make a court appearance in Clark county circuit court next week. — Reuters

Free Viagra
BRASILIA: A Brazilian politician has proposed handing out Viagra tablets free of cost to stimulate the sexual appetites of ageing rubber tappers in order to keep alive their dying trade in a remote Amazon state. “They are ageing, they have very hard lives, they need stimulation to improve their sexual performance,” Mr Wagner Salles, a deputy in the acre state legislature said, according to private news agency Agencia Estado. — Reuters

‘Pornographic’ ad
MADRID: What a difference some shorts make. A Spanish fashion shop advertisement, originally rejected as “pornographic” for showing a woman on her knees sewing a man’s underpants as he wears them, appeared on Madrid metro stations on Friday with the offending skimpy briefs replaced by shorts. The kneeling woman, dressed in a sleeveless shirt and gazing up adoringly as she stitches, remains unchanged. — Reuters

Sex supplement
HONG KONG: A nutritional supplement intended to boost sex is being introduced in Asia this year, and this one is for women as well. Arginmax claims to be the only nutritional supplement for sexual health that has been confirmed by a major clinical study with rigorous control and valuation techniques. Chairman of US based Daily Wellness Co that developed the product, said Arginmax had a more gradual and gentle effect than drugs, with no major side effects. — Reuters

Off endangered list
WASHINGTON: The peregrine falcon, the world’s fastest bird that can fly at up to 200 miles an hour, was removed from the endangered species list on Friday. The peregrine falcon was first placed on the US fish and wildlife service’s endangered list in 1970 after widespread use of the pesticide DDT decimated its population. Officials credit federal conservation laws as the main reason the falcon has survived. — Reuters

Software piracy
PORTLAND: A US college student has pleaded guilty to illegally distributing movies, music and software programs from his web site in what federal prosecutors said was the first Internet piracy conviction under a 1997 law. Jeffrey Levy, who pleaded guilty on Friday, was arrested in February last after investigators found thousands of pirated software programs and digitally recorded movies and music had been distributed through equipment at his apartment. — AP

Getty has secret family
SAN FRANCISCO: Billionaire Gordon Getty, a San Francisco socialite and heir to one of America’s great family fortunes, has admitted to keeping a secret “second family” in Los Angeles for more than a decade, the San Jose Mercury News reported on Friday. Getty, once listed by Forbes magazine as the richest man in America, told the newspaper through a spokesman that he was willing to admit fathering three daughters with his mistress Cynthia Beck. — Reuters