Pakistani President to visit flood-hit Sindh

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has flown to a flood-hit areas of the country for a first look at the crisis two weeks old, says his spokesman.

The visit follows recent criticism of his trip abroad and the perceived slow response to the disaster, which has 14 million people affected.

Mr Zardari's spokesman Farhatullah Babar, said he was informed by the Barrage Sukkur in Sindh province.

It is not yet decided whether Mr. Zardari will make a public appearance

"President Zardari has arrived in Sukkur and is currently being briefed by officials of the water, electricity and irrigation services on the flood situation and relief at Sukkur Barrage," Mr Babar told the BBC.


The Sukkur Barrage, a major flood in Sindh, has been under pressure in recent days by the massive amount of flood water flows down the river Indus.

Mr Zardari, the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was condemned at home for the settlement of the visit to the United Kingdom and France as the flooding began.

While military aid, are praised, victims of the disaster have attacked the government's response, some politicians and a visit by floods by physical violence.

The flood has caused extensive damage to major crops such as wheat, cotton and sugarcane, in a country where agriculture is an economic linchpin.

Pakistani Minister of Agriculture, Food and Nazar Muhammad Gondal told the BBC the floods had caused "huge losses" on its crops.

The UN has called for more than $ 450m (£ 290m) to help those affected. At least 1600 people died and many more are missing.

Blame for Cameron

Earlier, a high Pakistani envoy to the recent comments by British Prime Minister David Cameron on the exporting of terrorism proposed to deter the public from donating to flood relief appeal.

Mr Cameron angry Islamabad last month on a visit to regional competitor India, when he accused elements in Pakistan of Looking Both Ways on militancy.

Pakistan Permanent Representative to the UN, Hussain Abdullah Haroon, told BBC's Radio 4: "Pakistan has suffered as a result of what Mr Cameron has said, because the British people will listen to their Prime Minister."

Meanwhile, High Commissioner in London, Wajid Hassan, denied allegations of pressure group Transparency International that most of the money paid to the Pakistani government in the past for flood had lost to corruption.

READ MORE - Pakistani President to visit flood-hit Sindh

Amazon forest fires 'on the rise'

The number of fire destroying the Amazon rainforests is increasing, studies have found.

A team of scientists in the region said the fire may release similar amounts of carbon as a deliberate deforestation.

Writing in Science, they said fire occurrence rate was increased to 59% of areas with reduced deforestation.

As a result, the rise in the fire could jeopardize the long-term success of schemes to reduce emissions from deforestation, they added.

The researchers - from the University of Exeter, UK, and Brazil's National Institute for Space Research - based their findings on satellite-derived data on deforestation and forest fires.

"The result was a surprise because we expected that the fire is reduced to decrease deforestation," said co-author Luiz Aragao from the University of Exeter.

"The implications for Redd is that we first need a system that can monitor the fire," he told Science journal.

"There is also a need to shift land use in the Amazon in a system where the fire is not used."
'Slash and burn'

Redd (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest degradation) schemes aim to create a financil value for carbon stored in the developing countries' tropical forests.
It gives countries incentives to protect forest areas from a variety of effects that release carbon into the atmosphere, including tree felling and logging, agricultural expansion, land degradation.

As deforestation accounts for about 20% of the emissions resulting from human activity, the Redd program is considered a key element in global efforts to curb climate change.

"Fire the following year drought is likely to release a similar amount of carbon emissions from deforestation as deliberate," the researchers wrote.

"The higher the probability of a drier Amazon in the 21st Century predicted by several global circulation models ... Amazonia could push an amplified fire-prone system."

They added that previous studies showed that fires in the region increased after large-scale droughts in 1998 and 2005.

"Forest landscapes in Amazonia is becoming more fragmented and, therefore, a growing proportion of forests are exposed to leakage of accidental fire from neighboring farms," they suggested.

The practice of "slash and burn" is widely used by farmers in the Amazon region to clear secondary forest and allow food and cash crops cultivated.
But Dr. Aragao said: "We need to change the way people use and manage their land so that they can do it without fire."

Says the paper's findings, Andrew Mitchell, director of the canopy Global Programme, said: "These results have important implications for Redd negotiations.

"If we were to control deforestation, you have got to look at what local people are doing out of the woods," he told BBC News.

"The whole regime Redd need to encourage a more efficient use of land without fire.

"But if they do not use fire, which is cheap, and then what they are going to use - strimmers? Chainsaws? Tractors?

"It means that money from Redd programs need to go to people who not only live within the forest, but also the farmers who live outside of it."

Dr. Aragao agreed, adding that the move to fire-free land management deforested areas lie adjacent to forests could be "drastically reduce the heat and carbon emissions."

"It would be expensive," he observed, "but it will protect the stability of carbon stocks and Amazonian diversity."

Pieter van Lierop, a forestry official for Food and Agriculture Organization (yet) - a member of the UN's program Redd, said the findings are relevant to policies aimed at reducing deforestation.

"The article clearly shows that within Redd, particular attention should go to the assessment of the role of fire and propose more responsible use of fire and / or alternatives for the fire," he told BBC News.

"However, we should also consider that the article is mainly discussing fire incidence and circumstances, construed as a fire and not the size of emissions."

READ MORE - Amazon forest fires 'on the rise'

Climate change made apes vanish in ancient Europe

Great apes were swept away in the old Europe, when their environment changed dramatically around nine million years ago, scientists say.

A study of fossil teeth of grazing animals sheds light on what Europe was like during the late Miocene.

Researchers say that changes in European climate and the environment at the time replaced by many forests with grasslands - apes and monkey.

The scientists described their findings in a Royal Society Journal.

Ancient relatives of modern orang-utans, gorillas, chimpanzees and gibbons were able to survive in Asia and Africa, where these changes are not as drastic.

A team led by Dr. Claude Bernard Lyon Gildas Mercerón of a University in France, looked at fossil teeth of ancient antelope that lived alongside monkeys during the Miocene epoch - in what is now Germany, Hungary and Greece.

The researchers tried to determine what these animals ate millions of years ago.

"The best way to reconstructing the past environment is to determine the types of vegetarian diets. Here we used fossils of antelopes, because these animals dominated the fauna in Europe at the moment," Dr. Mercerón told BBC News.

The scientists then analyzed "micro scars" - the specific pattern of wear, indicating that the researchers clues about the animals' diet - in the teeth of this antelope.

They found that when these mammals on land shared with great apes, the landscape was very different from Europe became gradually.

The change does not happen overnight - it took thousands of years, says Dr. Mercerón. But when the monkeys' natural habitat change and forests disappeared, the animals slowly became extinct in Europe.

Monkeys were eventually replaced by their smaller cousins - a species of monkey called Mesopithecus, said the researcher.
Risk of extinction

Today, humans can cause changes in the environment much faster than what happened millions of years ago. People must become aware of their negative impact on the animal world, said Dr. Mercerón.
"If we cut down our forests and dry swamps, in the end we can make a very uniform environment and a decline in biodiversity", says the scientist.

"Deforestation leads to possible isolation of different populations of great apes in small woods. If their isolation, it becomes impossible for them to have a genetic exchange between populations - and the population started to decline."

Numbers of monkeys now living have fallen sharply in recent years. Elevated levels of poaching and deforestation are considered the main factors for the decline.

Many species are endangered - only about 6,000 Sumatran orangutans and so little about 700 mountain gorillas are thought to remain in the wild.

But there's more, says Dr. Mercerón's colleague, Dr. Ellen Schulz of the University of Hamburg in Germany.

"Great apes are threatened with extinction, mainly because the human habitat destruction," she said.

"But there is something else - people tend to forget that the conservation of biodiversity important for their own survival and - we never know what awaits us in the future."

READ MORE - Climate change made apes vanish in ancient Europe

US missile 'used in Yemen raid'

American missiles were used in a raid against al-Qaida in Yemen, where women and children died in December, the rights group Amnesty International says.

Amnesty has released images taken after the raid, which he says shows remnants of a US-made Tomahawk cruise missile.

Cluster bombs were apparently used in the attack, which Amnesty describes as "irresponsible".

The U.S. has said its troops gave support to the invasion of Abyan province.

But Yemeni officials have denied any U.S. involvement.
Obama congratulates

At the end of 2009 suddenly entered Yemen offensive against al-Qaeda militants.

The authorities began a series of raids, saying intelligence showed that Western targets were in great danger.

On December 17 attack on two militant targets were reportedly more than 30 militants dead, the raids were hailed as a great success in Yemen.

U.S. President Barack Obama telephoned his Yemeni counterpart, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in order to offer his congratulations.

But Amnesty says that since the U.S. actually supported the raid by cruise missiles.

"A military attack of this kind against suspected militants without an attempt to hold them to at least unlawful," said Philip Luther Amnesty.

"The fact that so many of the victims were women and children in fact indicates that the attack was in fact indefensible, particularly given the likely use of cluster munitions."

Unnamed U.S. officials have said that the elite U.S. troops support essential contradiction Yemeni government claims that it was entirely their operation, says the BBC's Sebastian Usher.

But the U.S. has denied reports it had cruise missiles - the core of the new allegations by Amnesty International released to confirm.

Analysts say the U.S. is intimately involved in station in the country against al-Qaeda.

But Yemeni leaders are not keen to appear too closely tied to U.S. interests - one reason why the U.S. is the extent of its military role in the country to keep under wraps, our correspondent adds.

READ MORE - US missile 'used in Yemen raid'

Kouchner and Hague pressure Israel over Gaza

The EU could play a greater role in ensuring aid gets into Gaza and weapons are banned, the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

He urged Israel to an international investigation into the deaths of nine activists to accept a Turkish aid ship.

He spoke alongside the British Secretary of State William Hague, who said that Europe would maintain pressure on Israel.

Israel, the Gaza Strip and blocks over fears of missile attacks, has ruled out international involvement in a probe.

The dead one week ago there was worldwide condemnation, but opposition from Israel, which claims it has the right to defend itself.

Another aid ship, owned by Irish Rachel Corrie, was intercepted by Israel on Saturday and officials began deporting the crew and activists.
'Transparency' needed

In response to criticism that Europe is not enough measures, Mr Kouchner said the EU was willing to charge to check the ships in Gaza, and more a role in the control of the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza to play .
"The European Union should participate in politics and specifically more than it already does - and does a lot already - on the road to peace," he said.

Mr Hague stopped short of calling for an international investigation, but called on Israel to a "credible and transparent" investigation to accept.

"We believe there should be an international presence on the minimum value in this investigation or the investigation," he said.

The BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris, says Mr Hague will be the same message as his Rome, Berlin and Warsaw later this week visiting key.

Earlier, the UN proposals for an international probe hardened, and their plans to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But Israel's U.S. ambassador Michael Oren said his country would reject the proposals and reiterated that an internal investigation would be held.

He said that Israel would not apologize for the incident in which eight Turkish citizens and a joint US-Turkish nationals were slain by Israeli commandos.
"State Terrorism"

One of the groups that support has helped to organize the mission to Gaza, Turkish-based IHH, new photos released of the incident on Sunday.

The images show battered and bloodied Israeli commandos surrounded by protesters at the Mavi Marmara Turkish ship, heading to Gaza as part of a flotilla aid.
The IHH apparently hoped that the images would show how the activists had medical attention paid to the affected Israelis when they were attacked.

But Israel said that the back-up views of her version of events: that the troops were attacked by "extremists" and acted in self-defense.

Turkey has strongly criticized Israel over the killings, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan labeling the command operation "state terrorism".

Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, a visit to Turkey on Monday and intends to pay his respects to the dead activists.

His government is the bitter rival of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, Mr. Abbas of the Fatah movement in 2007.

Israel - the most access to Gaza, controlled since withdrawing troops and settlers in 2005 - tightened the blockade of the Gaza Strip after the Hamas takeover.

READ MORE - Kouchner and Hague pressure Israel over Gaza

Gene test hope for personalised cancer therapy

NHS patients are offered personalized cancer treatment under a pilot project to conduct genetic testing on individual tumors.

Cancer Research UK hope the project will be up to 6,000 cancer patients per year for a series of genetic defects to be analyzed.

The results will guide physicians in choosing the most effective therapy for that patient.

The charity predicts that testing may become routine within five years.

Due to be launched in the autumn, the project will examine how best to roll-out of genetic testing in the NHS.

Six centers set up around the country where the scientists will classify the patient according to the tumor specific genetic mutations they carry.
Patients will be offered drug treatment based on the genetic makeup of their cancer.

Potentially, such an approach will enable the NHS to save money by cutting the prescribing expensive treatments that are likely to work.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said scientists now have enough genetic markers and drugs for such tests to discover a real difference.

Cancer drugs developed in recent years specifically aimed at a genetic mutation, including breast cancer treatment Herceptin.
Routine Tests

Some genetic testing has been done in the NHS cancer patients, but provision is patchy and tumors are often tested only one mutation.

James Peach, director of the charity of stratified medicine, said they wanted a national program to build, so patients with cancer in the United Kingdom to benefit from the global genetic discoveries.

"Patients have their tumors genetically tested and receive treatment based on the evidence of what does and does not work for their type of tumor.

"The advantages for patients are clear: better treatments and avoiding unnecessary side effects. But it would allow us to investigate drug driving stratified by the inclusion of the effectiveness of certain treatments for each type of tumor."

He said the first phase of the project would be developed in collaboration with the NHS, industry and government.

Once they have proven that the approach works, the plan is to roll out the scheme for all patients.

The charity is looking for similar initiatives in the U.S. to determine which mutations to test the various forms of cancer.

Professor Mike Stratton, director of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: "Discovering new cancer genes, new drug targets and new ways to predict whether patients will respond to certain therapies are accelerating, but a large challenge is to obtain the benefits of these advances for patients in the NHS.

"This initiative will form the basis for doing just that."

READ MORE - Gene test hope for personalised cancer therapy

Pakistan rules out offensive against Punjab militants

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has stressed that no plans for military action against militants in Punjab province.

His remarks came hours after he told a parliamentary committee that "Punjabi Taliban" were entrenched in the south of Punjab.

Malik said they were planning to destabilize the country.

Few Pakistani officials have acknowledged the existence of the militant bases in Punjab, despite media reports.

In recent years Pakistan has been conducting a bitter battle against militants in the north of the country.

Any suggestion that the war is now spreading to the rest of Pakistan would rise to concerns about the stability of the country - both at home and abroad.
"Effective action '

Malik's remarks come days after militants more than 90 people slain in attacks on two mosques of the Muslim minority Ahmedi community in Lahore.
The attacks are attributed to the so-called Punjabi Taliban, a loose alliance of militant groups linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda militants in northwestern tribal areas of Pakistan.

The Chief Minister Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, accused Mr Malik of "provincialism" for his use of the term "Taliban Punjab.

This is the first time a top minister has acknowledged that the militant bases in southern Punjab province, where more than half the population of the country houses.

"No military operation is planned for the forbidden [militant] outfits in Punjab ... [but] effective measures were together [with the Punjab government] should be to eliminate them," the official APP news agency quoted him as Pakistani journalists tell Wednesday.

Earlier, while briefing a parliamentary assembly of the interior, Mr Malik said the group "Punjabi Taliban were involved in attacks in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and elsewhere in Punjab province.

He said these groups were anchored in Punjab and were more dangerous.

Most parliamentarians from southern Punjab are reluctant publicly to the existence of the militants there, presumably for reasons of personal safety to admit.

The ruling party of Punjab province, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) also tried to media reports that Taliban fighters from the province of Punjab can be hiding places to drive.

A top minister of Punjab, Rana Sanaullah, recently attracted criticism for seeking the support of a militant group, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, during a by-election in March.

READ MORE - Pakistan rules out offensive against Punjab militants

India's bureaucracy is 'the most stifling in the world'

A new report has confirmed what many had long suspected Indians - their country's bureaucratic system is one of the most oppressive in the world.

The Hong Kong-based group, political and economic risk consultancy, studied more than 100 business executives in 12 Asian countries.

The poll suggested India had the worst levels of red tape reduction.

Yet this seems not to have impeded performance - he's just another set of strong growth.

But for many foreign companies that success, despite rather than because of the system they face, the report says.

There has been no response to the report of the civil service.
Bureaucracy and corruption

The report ranks bureaucracies in Asia on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the worst possible score. India scored 9.41.
Frequent promises to reform the bureaucracy, the report says, have come to nothing, mainly because the bureaucracy is a power center in its own right.

Starting a business in India is incredibly hard, and enforcement of contracts can be almost impossible.

There is a strong bond, the report says, between bureaucracy and corruption - and a widespread belief that bureaucrats are selfish and very insensitive to the needs of the people they need help.

None of this will come as a surprise for most Indians, or to many within the civil service itself.

A recent survey by the Indian bureaucracy found large numbers of officials complain of undue political interference and a widespread fear that no one questioned the scheme would be transferred to obscure posts in bureaucratic backwaters.

Given the level of dissatisfaction among foreign businessmen and the Indians themselves, the political and economic risk consultancy report is an interesting question: how much better would India need to do if they were able to reduce bureaucracy?

One consequence is that it considers the inertia generated by a stifling bureaucratic system will in the medium term to prevent India, which match the growth rates of the major Asian rival China.

READ MORE - India's bureaucracy is 'the most stifling in the world'

Emotion high as Turkey buries its Gaza flotilla dead

Emotions are running high in Turkey over the funerals of nine activists of Turkish or of Turkish origin, was killed in Israel raid on Gaza to help the fleet.

The bodies were flown from Israel to Istanbul, along with more than 450 activists, heroes welcome ".

Israel has said that there is no need for an international investigation of the incident, takes his own meet "the highest international standards".

UN Human Rights Council (HRC) voted earlier to set up an investigation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his soldiers had no choice but to stop the boat.

He argued the fleet was not to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazans, but to break the Israeli blockade.

It was a duty to defend Israel, missiles and other weapons were smuggled into Gaza to Hamas, Iran and others, "he said.

Turkey, one of the few allies in the Muslim world, Israel, recalled its ambassador after the incident on Monday.
'Barbarism and oppression'

Its president, Abdullah Gul, said relations between the two countries would "never be the same."
"This incident left a deep scar and irreparable" about relationships, told reporters in Ankara.

In a fiery speech at the airport in Istanbul, Bulent Arinc Deputy Prime Minister accused Israel of "piracy" and "barbarism and oppression."

Crowds of people, some wearing a Palestinian-style scarves, gathered in the city to meet the coffin, draped in Turkish flags, the Ottoman-era mosque-Fatih.

Funerals were held in a strongly Islamic part of town, and emotions were running high, the BBC reported Bethany Bell.

One of the bodies should be buried in Istanbul, while eight others were taken to their home towns, AFP news agency.

Turkish post-mortem examination revealed all nine of the dead had been shot, some at close range.

The dead include 19-year-old Turkish national with a U.S. passport - hit by four bullets in the head and once in the chest - a national taekwondo athlete, Turkish media say.

The bodies arrived, along with 450 activists in three aircraft leased by the Turkish Government at the Istanbul airport in the early hours of Thursday, after several hours delay.

Mr Arinc said that his government will greet the Turkish Islamic charity, the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Assistance (IHH), who played a major role in organizing the convoy - Israel charity accused of supporting terrorism.
IHH leader Bulent Yildrim said after his arrival back to Istanbul that he believed the death toll could be higher than nine, as his organization had a longer list of missing persons.

British activist Sarah Colbourne told the BBC: "I could not even count the number of ships that were in the water. It was literally bristling with ships, helicopters and gunfire. It was terrible, absolutely terrible."

Swedish author Henning Mankell, who was aboard one of the ships in the fleet, has rejected the idea that the weapons were made according to activists.

"On the ship I was on notice that the one weapon: my razor. And actually came and showed her my razor, so you can see what level it was at" the author of popular detective novels Wallander told Swedish radio.
'Double standard'

Consular staff were on hand in Istanbul to assist activists in other countries. They include 34 people who hold British passports.
Doctors in Ankara, where some of the seriously injured were taken, saying that people were treating bullet wounds. Three people are in intensive care.

Seven other activists are in serious condition and will remain in Israeli hospitals, until they move, Israeli officials say.

Another plane carrying 31 activists of the Greek, three French nationals and one American flew to Athens on Thursday shortly.

More than 100 relatives and supporters cheered and shouted pro-Palestinian slogans at the airport.

Rejection of proposed HRC investigation, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the external demands inquiry showed a double standard against the Jewish state.

When they were Americans or Britons accused of killing civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan, said it was in the U.S. or Britain, which conducted the investigation, not an international organization.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested, linked to international observers, the Israeli internal investigation.

"We have excellent lawyers ... one of whom will be willing to take, and if they want to include some sort of international members in the committee, that's okay too," he told Israel radio.

U.S., Israel's most important ally, has made it clear that it will accept an Israeli-led investigation, the BBC's Andrew North reports from Jerusalem.
New ships

Talk in Gaza is now turning to another ship on its journey across the Mediterranean Sea to try to break the blockade, the BBC's Jon Donnison reports from the area.
Rachel Corrie - the exercise of 15 people, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire - were to be part of the original fleet, but was postponed due to technical problems.

The ship could be in the region on Saturday, our correspondent reports. Israel has said it will not be allowed to dock in Gaza.

"Everyone was very angry at what happened to [the fleet]," Irish crew member Derek Graham told Reuters news agency by telephone.

"Everyone was more determined than ever to continue to Gaza."

Meanwhile, some 10,000 tons of assistance from the fleet seized by Israel was returned to the Israeli port of Ashdod after being left stranded at Gaza-Israel crossing.

The government of Hamas in Gaza refuses to accept help in the Israeli-Arab activists were released from the fleet.

READ MORE - Emotion high as Turkey buries its Gaza flotilla dead