I am watching television right now and every news channel is reporting the latest interview by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. This interview came as a surprise to many people here in Pakistan and is sending shock waves around the world (wait and see after 4th July holiday in US).
Dr. Khan, who remains popular across Pakistan has lived in the shadows since 2004, confined to his Islamabad home. People of Pakistan last saw him in a tearful televised confession in which he admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. President Musharraf has been telling Pakistanis since 2004 that Dr. Khan did it for money and personal greed. In his interview on May 30 2008, given to British newspaper Guardian, Dr. Khan claimed that he took the blame on himself in the national interest. Dr. Khan has been in the news for last few weeks because of his detention case in the Islamabad High Court but today he returned to the spotlight with a new twist: that North Korea received centrifuges from Pakistan in a 2000 shipment supervised by the security forces during the rule of President Pervez Musharraf.
According to Dr. Khan, the uranium enrichment equipment was sent from Pakistan in a North Korean plane that was loaded under the supervision of Pakistani security officials. He claims that the security forces had “complete knowledge” of the shipment and that it must have been sent with the consent of President Pervez Musharraf. Dr. Khan also disclosed that North Korea gave 200 missiles to Pakistan during Kargil War on his request without any payment. However, the government sources have completely rejected the statement, saying such reports are part of propaganda against Pakistan’s nuclear program.
Dr. Khan has often insisted in recent past too that if anything at all was smuggled to North Korea, Iran or Libya, it was in complete knowledge of Pakistan Army, particularly the ISI Chief Gen. Mahmood Ali Durrani (later the Pak Ambassador to US and currently national security adviser) and other officials in-charge of logistics etc. as it was not possible for him to do something like that alone. The centrifuges are large cylinders which cannot be just transported in a brief case. They need special care for transportation. American officials have even given the flight numbers which allegedly transported the nuclear material.
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As reader zamanov has reminded us elsewhere, today marks Dr. Abdus Salam’s 10th death anniversary.
It should be a moment of deep reflection for all of us. He would have been as great a man as he was even if he did not won the Nobel Award in physics. But we would have conveniently forgotten him. That he did win the Nobel Award is a source of cosmetic and hollow pride for many Pakistanis. Cosmetic and hollow because it is also a source of visible unease. Even when we acknowledge that he was a great scientist (after all, the Nobel Committee thought so), we are uncomfortable acknowledging that he was a great man whose significance goes beyond his science.
As a brutally honest editorial in today’s Daily Times points out, “we are scared of honoring Dr. Salam.” We must not be.
The Daily Times editorial says all that needs to be said; it is worth reading, worth thinking about, and worth quoting in full:
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Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/
MIAMI - For less than $15, you can buy a cell phone loaded with minutes. You can buy more as you go whenever those minutes run out. Best of all, you aren’t locked into a long-term contract.
But in South Florida, New York, California, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, traffickers have figured out they can make big profits by purchasing thousands of these low-cost phones and tweaking the software so that calls can be made on any cell network. The altered phones are then sold all over the world — costing the phone companies tens of millions of dollars.
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Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/
SAN FRANCISCO - In the latest expansion beyond its main mission of organizing the world’s information, Internet search leader Google Inc. hopes to orchestrate more fantasizing on the Web.The Mountain View-based company unveiled a free service Tuesday in which three-dimensional software enables people to congregate in electronic rooms and other computer-manufactured versions of real life. The service, called “Lively,” represents Google’s answer to a 5-year-old site, Second Life, where people deploy animated alter egos known as avatars to navigate through virtual reality.
Google thinks Lively will encourage even more people to dive into alternate realities because it isn’t tethered to one Web site like Second Life, and it doesn’t cost anything to use. After installing a small packet of software, a user can enter Lively from other Web sites, like social networking sites and blogs.The Lively application already works on Facebook, one of the Web’s hottest hangouts, and Google is working on a version suitable for an even larger online social network, News Corp.’s MySpace.
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Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/
NEW YORK - Shares of Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. rose in premarket trading Wednesday as the Wall Street Journal reported Microsoft has talked to other media companies about teaming up to buy Yahoo’s search business. The paper reported Microsoft has spoken to News Corp., Time Warner Inc. and others about a way to complete the proposed deal, which was first announced on Feb. 1. Microsoft ultimately withdrew a $47.4 billion bid for Yahoo in May.
The Journal suggested that Microsoft would buy Yahoo’s Internet search business, and the rest of the company would be combined with another outlet, like News Corp.’s MySpace or Time Warner’s AOL.The talks were described as preliminary, and citing sources familiar with the talks, the Journal indicated Microsoft may be having difficulty finding a partner.In premarket trading, shares of Yahoo climbed $1.89, or 9.4 percent, to $22.09. The stock finished at $20.20 Monday, and is trading at its lowest levels since late January. Microsoft shares gained 17 cents to $27.04.
Calls to both Microsoft and Yahoo were not immediately returned.
Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/
WASHINGTON - The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world’s oceans are in trouble, scientists now say. Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper.
A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans.
“Now we’re seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world,” said conservation biologist P. Dee Boersma, author of the paper published in the July edition of the journal Bioscience. “Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that’s not true.”
Scientists figure there are between 16 to 19 species of penguins. About a dozen are in some form of trouble, Boersma wrote. A few, such as the king penguin found in islands north of Antarctica, are improving in numbers, she said.
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Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/
LOS ANGELES - Scientists believe NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of ice while recently digging a trench in the soil of the Martian arctic, the mission’s principal investigator said Thursday.Crumbs of bright material initially photographed in the trench later vanished, meaning they must have been frozen water that vaporized after being exposed, Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a statement.
“These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice,” Smith said. “There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.”
Phoenix Mars is studying whether the arctic region of the Red Planet could be habitable. The probe is using its robotic arm to dig up soil samples, and scientists hope it will find frozen water.However, an initial soil sample heated in a science instrument failed to yield evidence of water.
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Reference: http://health.yahoo.com/
MONDAY, June 16 (HealthDay News) — Want to know how much hair you’re losing?
Start counting — the hairs on your comb, not on your head.
In the June issue of Archives of Dermatology, scientists demonstrate that a so-called “60-second hair count” is a simple and reliable away to get a grip on whether you’re balding and, if so, how fast.The procedure, which can be carried out in the convenience of your own home, may reassure the adult male — or not.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp.’s abandoned takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. appears to have culminated with a disheartening thud for those two companies but amounted to yet another coup for online search leader Google Inc What began in January as Microsoft’s most audacious attack yet on Google instead paved the way for the Internet’s most powerful company to gain even more clout through a deal that gives Google access to a large chunk of Yahoo’s advertising space.
By submitting to a partnership that endorses Google’s search advertising technology as a better choice than its own, Yahoo is giving online marketers even more incentive to spend most of their money with its biggest rival, according to industry analysts.It looks like such a sweet deal for Google that the U.S. Justice Department and lawmakers are expected to take a hard look at the arrangement to make sure it doesn’t give Google too much control over the Internet’s search advertising market.
Google currently has about 75 percent of the U.S. search advertising market followed by Yahoo at 9 percent, according to the research firm eMarketer Inc.Although they contend their alliance won’t lessen competition, Google and Yahoo have agreed to wait until late September to begin working together so the U.S. government has more time to assess the potential impact.
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