Chinese medal for Indian scientist
BEIJING, June 2 — Indian farm scientist Sanjaya Rajaram, who has worked on breeding different strains of wheat was presented Friendship medal, the highest award for a foreigner working in China.

UNSCOM action Russia moves UN
UNITED NATIONS, June 2 — The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting, yesterday at the request of Russia, which was “alarmed” by claims that UN weapons inspectors had stored toxic material in their Baghdad offices, diplomats said.

I voted for SA, says Mandela
JOHANNESBURG, June 2 — President Nelson Mandela was among the first South Africans to vote in the country’s second democratic elections today, saying he felt "absolutely wonderful".

Drug to clear blood clots
DALLAS, June 2 — A new regimen for treating heart attacks could save thousands of patients who aren’t helped by current clot-busting therapy and could eliminate the need for some angioplasty or bypass surgery, a new study shows.

Yugoslav plea for ceasefire rejected

THE HAGUE, June 2 (AP) — The International Court of Justice today rejected a request by Yugoslavia for an immediate ceasefire in NATO’s air campaign, dashing a move by Belgrade to stop punishing airstrikes that it contends violate international law.

By a ruling of 12-4, the UN court rejected Yugoslavia’s request that Belgium immediately stop its involvement in the alliance’s military operation, and was issuing decisions throughout the day on identical cases involving nine other NATO members, including the USA.

The court rejected Yugoslavia’s contention that the alliance was committing genocide with its campaign, saying there was no clear indication of an attempt to bring about (Yugoslavia’s) physical destruction in whole or in part, and that it had no jurisdiction to order a cessation of hostilities based on such a claim.

Yugoslavia filed the lawsuits on April 29, more than a month after the airstrikes began on March 24, challenging the international legality of the alliance’s use of force.

Yugoslavia asked the court, the United Nations’ highest judicial arm, to order an immediate ceasefire as a first step while it considers whether the airstrikes are illegal a process which could take years.

In addition to the USA and Belgium, Yugoslavia filed complaints against Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, asserting that the airstrikes breach international agreements including the UN charter and international conventions on genocide.

The rulings come less than a week after another UN court in The Hague, the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, announced the indictments of Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and four other senior officials on charges of crimes against humanity in Kosovo.

But the court’s rulings today were destined to have little effect. If the court ordered a halt to airstrikes and the NATO continued bombing, Yugoslavia’s only resort would be to report the alliance to the Security Council, which is dominated by NATO.

The 16-judge world court, has no enforcement powers and relies on nations to comply voluntarily with its decisions, which are not binding.

UNITED NATIONS, PTI adds: The United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) has gathered substantial evidence of “gross human rights violations” in Kosovo and called for “immediate and unconditional” withdrawal of all Yugoslav military and paramilitary units from Kosovo.

In her latest report on Kosovo, the world body’s top human rights official, Mr Mary Robinson simultaneously NATO to respect international law, including the principle of proportionality, in its military action.

Ms Robinson called for intensification of political negotiations to find a solution to the crisis but said “any durable solution to the crisis will have to be built on a solid foundation of respect for human rights.”

LTTE “admits” to human bombs

COLOMBO, June 2 (UNI) — In apparent acknowledgement of the use of human bombs against its opponents, the LTTE, perhaps for the first time, has “ accepted” the body of a suicide bomber who slew a self-styled Army Commander last week.

International Red Cross sources said the rebels accepted the body of the suicide bomber who on Saturday blew up Muthulingam Ganeshkumar, alias Razak, a Commander of the Sri Lankan National Guard fighting with Army support against the LTTE.

The suicide cadre killed Razak, who was also a former activist of the Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front, along with two others near the Batticaloa bus depot.

The Batticaloa police offered to send to the LTTE the body of the unidentified bomber through the Red Cross, which transferred the remains to the body the rebel organisation on Sunday afternoon, the police said.

Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was also the target of a human bomb way back in 1991.

Jaffna peninsula today observed a hartal protesting the killing of an elected representative of a local body by the LTTE yesterday.

The peninsula which has been witnessing some of the worst violence during the past 15 years observed a hartal for the first time to protest the spate of killings of the elected representatives by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

During the hartal sponsored by the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP), shops, banks and schools remained closed in the peninsula and barring local transport and hospitals, nothing functioned.

In another development, seven members of a village council in the peninsula who were elected last year resigned their seats following death threats from the LTTE, sources in Jaffna said today.

All the seven belonged to the Peoples’ Liberation Organisation for Tamil Eelam (PLOTE).

PLOTE also said in a Press release that their members from remaining local bodies would also resign if the government failed to provide protection.

The Vice-Chairman of Nallur village council was killed yesterday by LTTE’s pistol gang. So far 12 out of 234 representatives of local bodies have been killed in the peninsula, including two mayors of Jaffna town.

Mir may be downed next year

MOSCOW, June 2 (PTI) — The world’s largest manned orbital station, Mir, may be downed early next year as Russia faces financial constraints to sustain it and is forced to spend its meagre resources for the US-controlled joint orbital project, Itar-Tass news agency reported today.

The council of chief designers of the Russian space industry yesterday voted to sink Mir in the Pacific latest by March 2000. The experts’ suggestion would be conveyed to the government and the President for a final decision.

“This decision is not the most pleasant, but is a forced one,” the chief of the manned programmes of the Russian Space Agency (RSA), Mr Mikhail Sinelschikov, told Itar-Tass.

He said the funds allocated for maintaining Mir would exhaust by mid-August and the agency would be left with no money to send the next crew in space. The orbital station would then fly unmanned till it is burnt in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

The three-member crew comprising two Russians and a French currently working on board Mir are to return to earth in mid-August and the space station will continue its flight at a lower orbit for its ultimate tryst with destiny.

The RSA is planning to send an equipment-laden cargo ship, Progress, for remote guidance of the orbital station.

To lower the power consumption, the temperature inside the station would be dropped to 10°C and life sustaining systems would be shut by the returning crew, the agency said.

Last year, the then Premier Mr Primakov, had promised to finance orbital flights aboard Mir to retain Russia’s “cosmic independence”. The Stepashin government has yet to announce its stand on the orbital station as the annual cost of financing it comes to $ 250 million.

The US space agency, NASA, wants Russia to spend this money on the speedy construction of a second module for the international orbital station, Freedom, and is not willing to have a rival in Mir, a Russian space expert told PTI on condition of anonymity.

Chinese medal for Indian scientist

BEIJING, June 2 (PTI) — Indian farm scientist Sanjaya Rajaram, who has worked on breeding different strains of wheat was presented Friendship medal, the highest award for a foreigner working in China.

Mr Song Ping, a former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, presented the award on behalf of the Chinese government to Mr Rajaram at Beijing's Great Hall of the People yesterday for his cooperation with China in agriculture.

Nearly 420 foreigners have received the honour, so far, Xinhua reported.

Mr Rajaram has cooperated with the China Agricultural Science Academy since the 1980s and helped promote exchanges between Beijing and other countries in wheat breeding and in training Chinese agronomists.

In collaboration with Chinese experts, he has developed five new strains of wheat that are being used on 670,000 hectares of land each year.

UNSCOM action Russia moves UN

UNITED NATIONS, June 2 (AFP) — The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting, yesterday at the request of Russia, which was “alarmed” by claims that UN weapons inspectors had stored toxic material in their Baghdad offices, diplomats said.

Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Sergei Lavrov, requested the meeting “to discuss alarming information which became known to us regarding the situation around the former UNSCOM offices in Baghdad”.

UNSCOM left “dangerous poisonous substances in the very centre of Baghdad”, which was hit by the United States of America and British strikes in December last year, Lavrov charged at the meeting.

Although, he did not specify which toxic materials, diplomats said it could be VX gas, which is used in chemical weapons.

An American diplomat downplayed the matter, describing it as a “technical matter”.

Richard Butler, head of the UN Special Commission on Disarmament (UNSCOM) also dismissed the incident before the meeting, saying there was nothing to be alarmed about.

No threat to Clinton marriage
By Martin Kettle in Washington

After a week of renewed speculation that their marriage is on the rocks, Bill and Hillary Clinton are this weekend pointedly holidaying together on Florida’s Atlantic coast.

They are staying at the exclusive white oak plantation. They have gone cycling together, admired the resort’s private wildlife collection — featuring giraffe, cheetah and a white rhino — and caught up on a reading list which includes a book by theologian Tony Campolo, one of Mr Clinton’s Lewinsky-era spiritual advisers.

For both Clintons, decisions may be taken in their holiday retreat that deeply affect the rest of their political lives. Mr Clinton faces the dilemma of whether to commit ground forces to Kosovo. Mrs Clinton must decide whether to take the first formal steps towards a campaign for the New York Senate seat next year.

Most of the signs point to Bill deciding no, but Hillary yes. Her increasing confidence, and the urgings of admirers, will help propel her into what will be the most eagerly covered story of the 2000 campaign.

What will confound many US commentators is that these choices are likely to be taken jointly. Speculation that Mrs Clinton was planning a single-person’s life in New York may prove premature.

A few months ago, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, any joint closeting by the Clintons was a newsworthy event, and every nuance of the troubled couple’s body language would be scrutinised for signs of marital discord.

Even the most high-minded of US newspapers began to deconstruct such issues as the way the Clintons walked across the White House lawns while political columnists pondered Mrs Clinton’s tendency to wear dark glasses on even the dullest of winter days.

Less inhibited by far, the US supermarket tabloids trumpeted exclusive inside stories on the first couple’s latest shouting matches, alongside tales of their collapsing marriage.

When the Clintons cut short a skiing weekend in Utah in March — allegedly because of her bad back — cybergossips announced with confidence that the couple had begun a trial separation.

This week, in complete contrast, the only sounds about the Clintons’ joint holiday emerging from the watching media on Amelia island, near Jacksonville, have been respectful silence. As a sign of these changed times, CBS carried a rare interview with Mrs Clinton on Wednesday in which a guarded series of exchanges about her marriage raised no discernible US media interest.

Asked bluntly by the veteran interviewer Dan Rather: “Why are you still with this man?”, she replied. “Oh, you know, we’ve been together for, I guess, 28 years. We’ve been married, we’ll be married for 24 years this year. And we have a deep and abiding commitment to each other. And it is something that has been part of our lives, really, almost from the time we met”.

With Mrs Clinton now increasingly likely to take the plunge and set up an “exploratory committee” while she considers running for the Senate, longtime Clinton-watchers are weighing another looming choice which faces them.

In two months the Clintons must take their annual summer vacation. If the President had his way, the couple would almost certainly return to exclusive Martha’s Vineyard off the Massachusetts coast, where Mr Clinton can chill out in style with his Hollywood friends.

But with Mrs Clinton needing to establish some credentials in New York, the betting is that the Clintons will have to opt for the Empire State.
— Guardian News Service

I voted for SA, says Mandela

JOHANNESBURG, June 2 (AFP) — President Nelson Mandela was among the first South Africans to vote in the country’s second democratic elections today, saying he felt "absolutely wonderful".

"It’s a very exciting day," 80-year-old Mandela said after pointing out that he was casting his ballot for only the second time. The first was at historic all-race elections in 1994 which brought his African National Congress to power.

Smiling broadly, Mandela was accompanied by his wife Graca when he voted in the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton. The couple were surrounded by a crush of photographers and journalists.

As he entered the polling booth, an aide passed Mandela his reading glasses so he could see the ballot paper.

He gave the "thumbs up" sign after he voted.

Asked who he voted for, he responded: "Well, I feel proud that I voted. I voted for South Africa.

Drug to clear blood clots

DALLAS, June 2 (AP) — A new regimen for treating heart attacks could save thousands of patients who aren’t helped by current clot-busting therapy and could eliminate the need for some angioplasty or bypass surgery, a new study shows.

Doctors added a super-aspirin called abciximab, or reopro, to a standard clot buster, altepase, also known as activase. They found it restored normal blood flow in the hearts of more than three-quarters of heart attack victims.

The international study was published in today’s edition of Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association. It was intended to see if abciximab could boost the effectiveness of altepase. Altepase and similar drugs such as TPA (tissue plasminogen activator) are already a mainstay of heart attack treatment.

“We demonstrated that a combination of two drugs is better than one drug for opening blocked arteries”, said Dr Elliott M. Antman, Director of the Coronary Care Unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “We can open up blocked arteries faster and more extensively, he added.

Both drugs are administered intravenously.

Indian scientist
WASHINGTON: US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has denied that any Indian scientist was expelled from the Los Alamos lab on account of espionage. He made this denial in response to a story in the latest issue of Newsweek magazine alleging that “last year Los Alamos (lab) expelled an Indian scientist when it was discovered he had ties to India’s nuclear bomb programme”. Clarifying the situation on a television programme, Mr Richardson said, “It doesn’t have anything to do with espionage”. — UNI

Loverboy executed
AJMAN (UAE): A 23-year-old Pakistani, who murdered a 15-year-old girl after her parents refused him her hand in marriage, has been executed, newspapers reported on Wednesday. Mohammed Arshad was put to death on Tuesday in the main prison square at Ajman, the smallest of the seven members of the United Arab Emirates, Khaleej Times reported. He admitted to stabbing Rubiana Gul Mohammed near her home in 1993, the police said. — AFP

200 killed in Nigeria
LAGOS: Up to 200 persons are feared to have been killed in inter-communal fighting in southern Nigeria’s oil-producing delta region, press reports said today. Reports in most newspapers put the toll of the clashes, which began on Saturday with an attack on the town of Arunton, at around 200, the worst in the area for some time. The Guardian said a squad of 150 soldiers had been dispatched to the area of the fighting, around Escravos, South of the major oil town of Warri in an attempt to deter further violence. — AFP

Novgorod’s b’day
NOVGOROD: Novgorod, Russia’s most ancient town and a major centre of European civilisation in the Middle Ages, is busily preparing to celebrate in style its 1,140th anniversary next month. Renowned for its beautiful architecture and a school of fresco and icon painting, officials hope the June 12-14 anniversary celebrations will boost Novgorod’s reputation as a tourist attraction. — AFP

‘Generous’ Japan
TOKYO: Japan is expected to waive 400 billion yen ($ 3.3 billion) in official development assistance (ODA) loans under an international initiative to rescue heavily indebted poor countries. The conditional ODA loan waiver will cover 37 of the 41 countries in the sub-Saharan Africa and other regions of the world, identified by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as heavily indebted poor nations, Kyodo reported the Asahi Shimbun as saying. — PTI

Quake in Colombia
BOGOTA: An earthquake measuring 5.2 on the open-ended Richter scale has shook central eastern Colombia and rattled the capital, the national seismology network said. No major damage or injuries were reported, but some areas in Bogota were without electricity or telephone service. The epicentre of the temblor was located in Guayabetal village, 60 km east of here. On January 25, a 6 magnitude earthquake in southern Colombia killed 1,185 people and left 1,58,981 homeless. — AFP

Navy goes nuclear
MOSCOW: Pakistan has announced that it is going to equip its navy with nuclear weapons. This disclosure was made by a Pakistani naval spokesman in Karachi, according to the Voice of Russia. Regretting the report in practically every broadcast on Tuesday, the state radio expressed concern over the turn of events in nuclear arms race in South Asia. The radio also referred to Pakistan’s recent threat to use any type of weapon in its conflict with its neighbour, holding Pakistani infiltrators responsible for the Kargil episode. — UNI

Man of the Century
NEW YORK: Former US President Gerald Ford has nominated assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat as Time magazine’s Person of the Century. “By embracing his former enemies during his historic visit to Israel, this courageous Arab transformed the course of events in the region and around the world,” Mr Ford said. — AFP