UN warns over swine flu in birds

The discovery of swine flu in birds in Chile raises concerns about the spread of the virus, the UN warns.
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Last week the H1N1 virus was found in turkeys on farms in Chile. The UN now says poultry farms elsewhere in the world could also become infected.
Scientists are worried that the virus could theoretically mix with more dangerous strains. It has previously spread from humans to pigs.
However, swine flu remains no more severe than seasonal flu.
Safe to eat
Chilean authorities first reported the incident last week. Two poultry farms are affected near the seaport of Valparaiso.
Juan Lubroth, interim chief veterinary officer of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said: "Once the sick birds have recovered, safe production and processing can continue. They do not pose a threat to the food chain."
Chilean authorities have established a temporary quarantine and have decided to allow the infected birds to recover rather than culling them.
It is thought the incident represents a "spill-over" from infected farm workers to turkeys.
Canada, Argentina and Australia have previously reported spread of the H1N1 swine flu virus from farm workers to pigs.
Dangerous strains
The emergence of a more dangerous strain of flu remains a theoretical risk. Different strains of virus can mix together in a process called genetic reassortment or recombination.
So far there have been no cases of H5N1 bird flu in flocks in Chile.
However, Dr Lubroth said: "In Southeast Asia there is a lot of the (H5N1) virus circulating in poultry.
"The introduction of H1N1 in these populations would be of greater concern."
Colin Butter from the UK's Institute of Animal Health agrees.
"We hope it is a rare event and we must monitor closely what happens next," he told BBC News.
"However, it is not just about the H5N1 strain. Any further spread of the H1N1 virus between birds, or from birds to humans would not be good.
"It might make the virus harder to control, because it would be more likely to change."
William Karesh, vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who studies the spread of animal diseases, says he is not surprised by what has happened.
"The location is surprising, but it could be that Chile has a better surveillance system.
"However, the only constant is that the situation keeps changing."

Khan warns to unveil sensitive issues if maltreatment continues

ISLAMABAD: Atomic scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan said if mischievous attitude continued with him in the name of security protocol, he will unveil sensitive issues.
In an exclusive interview to Geo News after Lahore High Court’s verdict, Dr. Qadeer said the elements he served most treated him maliciously. He said he never talked with anyone during five-year home confinement.
Dr. Khan expressed sorrow over the maltreatment and said in reply of accusations, I am leaving this issue on God.
Replying to a question, Dr. Khan said he will go to Supreme Court if Lahore High Court decision could not implemented. He praised the judiciary and said present judiciary comprised of brave judges. Dr. Khan said he wants freedom of movement like any other free citizen of the country.

US nuke gurus see signs of more Indian nuclear tests

WASHINGTON: US nuclear pundits feel the Indian establishment -- political, scientific, or both in concert – may be lining up to conduct more nuclear tests to validate and improve the country’s arsenal before the Obama administration shuts the door on nuclear explosions.
''You bet he wants to test again,'' said Henry Sokolski, Executive Director of the Washington DC-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, when asked about the remarks from a key Indian nuclear scientist suggesting India’s thermonuclear test was not up to mark. ''Imagine you are a nuclear weapons designer who has corrected the mistakes and ironed out the wrinkles. You would be crazy not to want to test again.''
''You have to look at the DNA of a weapons designer. They always want to make the weapons smaller, lighter, more powerful,'' Sokolski added. ''If you blindfold them, tie their hands and leave them in the middle of a forest, they will still make their way to a test site.''
While Sokolski addressed the Indian motivations largely from the technology validation standpoint, Washington has long believed that geo-political objectives rather than scientific or technical metrics drives New Delhi’s nuclear weapons quest. The argument has gotten another boost following the remarks by a key Indian scientist, K.Santhanam, questioning the potency of India’s thermonuclear bomb.
While ''We told you so,'' was pretty much the reaction in the US scientific and strategic community on the renewed controversy over the yield of the thermo-nuclear device in Shakti series of nuclear test arising from remarks by Santhanam, there is lingering suspicion here that the disclosure in politically driven. It’s rare for Indian scientists to break ranks on a sensitive national security issue.
Why would Santhanam go public, with such deliberation, on something that was commonly discussed and widely acknowledged in scientific circles, a decade after the questions first surfaced?
The answer, according to some nuclear pundits mulling on the issue on blogs: To ward off growing American pressure on India to sign various nuclear containment treaties and perhaps enable India to conduct one last series of tests to validate and improve its nuclear arsenal.
In scores of research papers and studies in the immediate weeks and months of the 1998 nuclear tests in Pokhran, US scientists repeatedly questioned the reported yield of the thermo-nuclear device, saying it was well below India’s claim of 43-45 kilotons. In fact, some scientists, notably Terry Wallace, then with the University of Arizona and now attached to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, put the combined yield of the three May 11 tests at as low as 10 to 15 kilotons.
Two other tests on May 13 involved sub-kiloton devices for tactical weapons, which US scientists doubted even took place. Even the six nuclear tests claimed by Pakistan were treated with derision, with US scientists saying only two of them involved nuclear devices.
''This is quite clearly a case where governments tested for a political reason rather than scientific reasons, so we have to be suspicious of what they say,'' Wallace, the country’s top nuclear seismology expert, had said about the reported yields.
On Thursday, suspicion lingered in strategic circles that even Santhanam’s ''admission'' was cloaked in politics, aimed primarily at warding off US pressure on New Delhi to sign CTBT, the long-sought treaty to ban nuclear tests, and making ground for a further series of tests. There is renewed energy in Washington under the Democratic dispensation to push forward with such nuclear containment treaties after the previous Bush administration put them on the backburner.
Some US nuclear gurus also believe any break-out test at this point will be detrimental to India, even if it is aimed at validating its thermo-nuclear device, or the so-called Hydrogen Bomb.
"An Indian test would be very toxic to cooperation it has just gained under the nuclear deal. It’s hard to see what India would gain," said Gary Milholin Director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.
Ensuring a reliable thermonuclear bomb? Milholin scoffed at the idea. "There are people who say American nuclear bombs won’t work because we have not tested for so long," he laughed. "I don’t think anyone would want to test that assumption."
Similarly, he said, it would be risky for any country to count on India’s thermonuclear weapon to have a low yield.
"There are now ways other than testing to increase confidence," Milholin added. "And I think India has enough computing power to do that."

Saudi anti-terror chief escapes murder attempt

Deputy interior minister survives Qaeda suicide bomb
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RIYADH: Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, deputy interior minister responsible for anti-terror fight, escapes an assassination attempt late on Thursday in Jeddah after a suicide bomber who claimed wanted to give himself up to authoritiesin got close to him and detonated his explosives.
Prince bin Nayef was meeting well-wishers for the Moslem fasting month of Ramadan on Thursday when a man blew himself up with explosives he was carrying, the Saudi News Agency said reported.
Qaeda’s role
The suicide bomber was a wanted militant who had insisted on meeting the prince to announce he was giving himself up to authorities, SPA added. It said the man, whom it did not name, was the only casualty.
The Saudi wing of al-Qaeda was swift in claiming responsibility. In a statement posted on an Islamist website late Thursday, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said it was behind the bomb, according to the U.S.-based monitoring group, SITE Intelligence.
The attack was the first to directly target a member of the royal family since the start of a wave of violence by Qaeda sympathizers in 2003 against the saudi monarchy.
"This will only increase our determination to eradicate this (terrorism)," said Prince bin Nayef, apparently slightly injured, in a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz who was visiting him in the hospital.
Jamal Khashaqji, editor-in-Chief of the Saudi newspaper al-Watan, told Al Arabiya that targeting Prince bin Nayef, as a member of the royal family, represents Qaeda’s fight for power and authority, not for reform as it claims.
Earlier this month, Saudi authorities announced the arrest of 44 Qaeda-linked suspects and the seizure of explosives, detonators and firearms.
In 2004, suspected terrorists rammed a vehicle laden with explosives into the entrance of the Interior Ministry headquarters in the capital Riyadh.

File-sharers' TV tastes revealed

Millions of television viewers are now using illegal file-sharing services to access free and unauthorised copies of programmes, research has revealed.
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US drama Heroes was the most popular illegal download this year, according to research firm Big Champagne.
Around 55 million people downloaded the show, whilst 51 million chose to access Lost, the second most popular show.
Visits to leading "torrent" sites, which index video and music files, have also nearly doubled in the last year.
The proportion of file-sharing involving films and television rather than music is continuing to rise, the research shows.
"Millions of television viewers now access free, unauthorised versions of favourite shows at least some of the time," says Eric Garland the chief executive of Big Champagne.
"This is a socially acceptable form of casual piracy - and it is replacing viewing hours."
Film show
All of the programmes in the top 10 were American, but the survey also examined unauthorised downloads of popular BBC show Top Gear.
During the most recent series, the figures show around 300,000 downloads of each episode in the days immediately following their broadcast in the UK.
But the UK accounted for just 4% of the download activity, with 47% coming from the United States.
Big Champagne says Top Gear has been among the most pirated television programmes internationally.
The series appears on BBC America some time after it is shown in the UK, and it appears that some American fans are eager to download it before it is available legally.
The research also looks at unauthorised film downloads and shows they are getting lower audiences than those for TV programmes.
Top of the chart was Watchmen, downloaded nearly 17 million times, followed by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with 13 million.
The Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, a relatively low budget film compared with the two Hollywood blockbusters, was viewed by nearly 9 million unauthorised downloaders.
The research will be presented on Saturday at the Edinburgh Television Festival in a session on what television can learn from the music industry's experience with online piracy.
Mr Garland says there are major differences between the two industries and the impact on television may not be as severe as some TV executives fear: "We may see a lot of disruption but it is premature to say 'we're next'."
"The effect on the business is going to be very different."
Big Champagne's research also shows that the rate of piracy for live events, such as sport or talent shows, is much lower than that for popular drama series.

Boeing 787 to fly by year's end

The first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner will take place by the end of 2009, the company has announced.
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Boeing also said it hoped to deliver the first plane for service in the last quarter of 2010.
There have been a series of delays in the development of the aircraft, and it is now running almost two years behind its original schedule.
Boeing chairman Jim McNerney said the extra time would enable the remaining work to be completed.
"The design details and implementation plan are nearly complete, and the team is preparing airplanes for modification and testing," he said.
Write-off
The delay was partly caused by an area within the side-of-body section of the aircraft which needed to be reinforced, Boeing added.
The latest delay in the project, announced in June this year, was the fifth time the launch had been put back.
The company estimated that the cost of the first three test planes, which have no commercial value, would be $2.5bn. This, it said, would be included as a one-off charge in its July to September results.
"This charge will have no impact on the company's cash outlook going forward," Boeing said.
While analysts generally welcomed Boeing's announcement, some cautioned that future delays may still have to be announced.
"Risk remains the new schedule could slip given the current challenge of re-fitting the wing-body join, the possibility of changes to the electrical and environmental control systems, and simply the poor 787 track record," said Credit Suisse analyst Robert Spingarn.
Important plane
Boeing hopes to be making 10 of the 787 planes a month by the end of 2013.
Last month, the firm said it already had 850 orders.
It also revealed that it had received 13 new orders for 787s between April and June, but that airlines had cancelled 41 others.
The 787 Dreamliner is a hugely important plane for US-based Boeing in its long standing rivalry with Europe's Airbus.
It was the first unveiled in July 2007 and is the firm's first all-new jet since 1995.
It is designed to make use of carbon fibre to make it much lighter and more fuel efficient than traditional aluminium planes.

US envoy 'in angry Karzai talks'

The US special envoy to Afghanistan has held an "explosive" meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the country's election, the BBC has learnt.
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KABUL: Richard Holbrooke raised concerns about ballot-stuffing and fraud, by a number of candidates' teams, sources say.
The US envoy also said a second-round run-off could make the election process more credible, the sources said.
Concerns have already been raised about Afghanistan's election, although final results are not due until September.
A number of senior sources have confirmed the details of a meeting between Mr Holbrooke and Mr Karzai held on 21 August, one day after the election.
The meeting was described as "explosive" and "a dramatic bust-up".
Mr Holbrooke is said to have twice raised the idea of holding a second round run-off because of concerns about the voting process.
He is believed to have complained about the use of fraud and ballot stuffing by some members of the president's campaign team, as well as other candidates.
Mr Karzai reacted very angrily and the meeting ended shortly afterwards, the sources said.
However, a spokeswoman for the US embassy in Kabul denied there had been any shouting or that Mr Holbrooke had stormed out.
She refused to discuss the details of the meeting.
A spokesman for the presidential palace denied the account of the conversation.
There have been many doubts raised about the Afghan presidential election, about the turnout and irregularities.
But this is the first time that a leading Western official has apparently expressed it quite so openly.
It will raise more uestions about the credibility of the whole process and could well make the plan to establish a meaningful government in a stable country all the harder to achieve.

Sex braggart trial may net others

JEDDAH: Investigations in the case of Mazen Abdul Jawad, the Saudi who appeared on LBC’s “Bold Red Line” last month bragging about his sex life, may lead to charges against other individuals, an anonymous source at the Investigation and Prosecution Commission (IPC) told Arab News on Thursday.
Already three other men who appeared in the segment and whose names have not been released have been detained as accomplices.
“This has led to the delay in taking suspects to the court for trial,” said the source, adding that the four men are probably going to spend Ramadan and Eid behind bars. “They cannot be taken to court before sometime in October.”
The source would not elaborate on who else if anyone would be facing charges, but it has been suggested in previous reports that the producers of the program could become involved. Saudi authorities recently shuttered LBC’s Saudi offices. LBC is a major Saudi-owned, Lebanon-based broadcaster.
For his part, Abdul Jawad claims that the show’s producers took four hours of footage of him talking about sex and reduced it to a few minutes of the most extreme off-the-cuff comments where, among other things, Abdul Jawad claims he engaged in pre-marital sex at 14 and regularly cruises the streets of Jeddah looking for hook-ups with women via his mobile phone’s Bluetooth application. He could face charges of promoting sinful behavior (publicizing vice), which is considered a crime in Shariah law.
The IPC has brought in voice experts to prove that the video footage wasn’t dubbed or creatively edited and LBC producers have been subpoenaed to verify that Abdul Jawad participated in the program and that it was he who made the incriminating comments.

Pokhran II not fully successful: Indian scientist

NEW DELHI: The 1998 Pokhran II nuclear tests might have been far from the success they have been claimed to be. The yield of the thermonuclear explosions was actually much below expectations and the tests were perhaps more a fizzle rather than a big bang.
The controversy over the yield of the tests, previously questioned by foreign agencies, has been given a fresh lease of life with K Santhanam, senior scientist and DRDO representative at Pokhran II, admitting for the first time that the only thermonuclear device tested was a "fizzle". In nuclear parlance, a test is described as a fizzle when it fails to meet the desired yield.
Santhanam, who was director for 1998 test site preparations, said that the yield for the thermonuclear test, or hydrogen bomb in popular usage, was much lower than what was claimed. Santhanam, who was DRDO's chief advisor, could well have opened up the debate on whether or not India should sign CTBT as claims that India has all the data required and can manage with simulations is bound to be called into question.
``Based upon the seismic measurements and expert opinion from world over, it is clear that the yield in the thermonuclear device test was much lower than what was claimed. I think it is well documented and that is why I assert that India should not rush into signing the CTBT,'' said Santhanam.
He emphasized the need for India to conduct more tests to improve its nuclear weapon programme.
The test was said to have yielded 45 kilotons (KT) but was challenged by western experts who said it was not more than 20 KT.
The exact yield of the thermonuclear explosion is important as during the heated debate on the India.