Delhi can exhale, all Cobalt 60 found, moved to safety

The Department of Atomic Energy has confirmed that all the missing Cobalt 60 from Delhi University ( DU ) has been recovered. 16 pencils containing the radioactive material have been located and have been safely moved to the Narora Atomic Power Station.

Last month, one person died and seven others were hospitalized in critical condition after being exposed to Cobalt 60, a highly radioactive material in Mayapuri, a West Delhi scrap market.

Scrap dealers had bought a Gamma Irradiator machine from Delhi University's Chemistry department, which decided to auction the machine because it had not been used for 40 years. The machine contained Cobalt 60 pencils. When the scrap dealers broke open the machine's lead cover, they were exposed to radiation.

The crisis has been one of India's worst ever radiation leaks, and Delhi University faces severe punishment for violating basic safety rules in the disposal of radioactive material.

Because many pencils from the machine were missing till this morning, the fear was the Delhi was still vulnerable. These have been moved to Narora Atomic Power Station in sealed lead containers

Facebook friends as good as the real thing for teens?

"Hey, you're a dork," said the girl to the boy with a smile. "Just wanted you to know."
Thanks!" said the boy.

"Just kidding," said the girl with another smile. "You're only slightly dorky, but other than that, you're pretty normal -- sometimes."

They both laughed.

"See you tomorrow," said the boy.

"O.K., see you," said the girl.

It was a pretty typical pre-teen exchange, one familiar through the generations. Except this one had a distinctly 2010 twist. It was conducted on Facebook. The smiles were colons with brackets. The laughs were typed ha ha's. "O.K." was just "K" and "See you" was rendered as "c ya."

Children used to actually talk to their friends. Those hours spent on the family princess phone or hanging out with pals in the neighborhood after school vanished long ago. But now, even chatting on cellphones or via e-mail (through which you can at least converse in paragraphs) is passé. For today's teenagers and preteens, the give and take of friendship seems to be conducted increasingly in the abbreviated snatches of cellphone texts and instant messages, or through the very public forum of Facebook walls and MySpace bulletins. (Andy Wilson, the 11-year-old boy involved in the banter above, has 418 Facebook friends.)

Last week, the Pew Research Center found that half of American teenagers -- defined in the study as ages 12 through 17 -- send 50 or more text messages a day and that one third send more than 100 a day. Two thirds of the texters surveyed by the center's Internet and American Life Project said they were more likely to use their cellphones to text friends than to call them. Fifty-four percent said they text their friends once a day, but only 33 percent said they talk to their friends face-to-face on a daily basis. The findings came just a few months after the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that Americans between the ages of 8 and 18 spend on average 7 1/2 hours a day using some sort of electronic device, from smart phones to MP3 players to computers -- a number that startled many adults, even those who keep their BlackBerrys within arm's reach during most waking hours.

To date, much of the concern over all this use of technology has been focused on the implications for kids' intellectual development. Worry about the social repercussions has centered on the darker side of online interactions, like cyber-bullying or texting sexually explicit messages. But psychologists and other experts are starting to take a look at a less-sensational but potentially more profound phenomenon: whether technology may be changing the very nature of kids' friendships.

"In general, the worries over cyber-bullying and sexting have overshadowed a look into the really nuanced things about the way technology is affecting the closeness properties of friendship," said Jeffrey G. Parker, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama, who has been studying children's friendships since the 1980s. "We're only beginning to look at those subtle changes."

The question on researchers' minds is whether all that texting, instant messaging and online social networking allows children to become more connected and supportive of their friends -- or whether the quality of their interactions is being diminished without the intimacy and emotional give and take of regular, extended face-to-face time.

It is far too soon to know the answer. Writing in The Future of Children, a journal produced through a collaboration between the Brookings Institution and the Woodrow Wilson Center at Princeton University, Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia M. Greenfield, psychologists at California State University, Los Angeles, and U.C.L.A. respectively, noted: "Initial qualitative evidence is that the ease of electronic communication may be making teens less interested in face-to-face communication with their friends. More research is needed to see how widespread this phenomenon is and what it does to the emotional quality of a relationship."

But the question is important, people who study relationships believe, because close childhood friendships help kids build trust in people outside their families and consequently help lay the groundwork for healthy adult relationships. "These good, close relationships -- we can't allow them to wilt away. They are essential to allowing kids to develop poise and allowing kids to play with their emotions, express emotions, all the functions of support that go with adult relationships," Professor Parker said.

"These are things that we talk about all the time," said Lori Evans, a psychologist at the New York University Child Study Center. "We don't yet have a huge body of research to confirm what we clinically think is going on."

What she and many others who work with children see are exchanges that are more superficial and more public than in the past. "When we were younger we would be on the phone for hours at a time with one person," said Ms. Evans. Today instant messages are often group chats. And, she said, "Facebook is not a conversation."

One of the concerns is that, unlike their parents -- many of whom recall having intense childhood relationships with a bosom buddy with whom they would spend all their time and tell all their secrets -- today's youths may be missing out on experiences that help them develop empathy, understand emotional nuances and read social cues like facial expressions and body language. With children's technical obsessions starting at ever-younger ages -- even kindergartners will play side by side on laptops during play dates -- their brains may eventually be rewired and those skills will fade further, some researchers believe.

Kasab village watches 26/11 judgement on TV

Residents of Faridkot, home to the alleged surviving gunman of the Mumbai massacre, deny any connection with their wayward son but believe India should release him in the interests of peace.

The remote town in the Pakistani farming belt of Punjab province has earned notoriety as the home of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, accused of taking part in the 72-hour bloodbath in November 2008 that killed 166 people in Mumbai.

On Monday, as the 22-year-old Pakistani prepared to learn his fate in court, some people in Faridkot, about 26 kilometres from the Indian border, sat in groups watching TV waiting to hear the verdict, said an AFP reporter.

The day before the sentencing, a hawker distributed a weekly newspaper published by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which Indian and US officials believe is a front for the Lashkar-e-Toiba militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks.

With Faridkot's wheat harvest in full swing, workers loading grain into vehicles to a din of folk music said they were sympathetic to Kasab's "good intentions" against an "enemy" country.

Around 10,000 people live in the town. Most of the population comprises of labourers and small farmers. Few are literate.

"Are they talking about our Ajmal?" 45-year-old Noor Ahmed asked, interrupting a discussion on how residents feel about the Indian sentencing.

"No. No. We don't know him," he said, sitting on a dirty cot in a small brick and clay room on the bank of Faridkot's canal.

"But we have sympathies for him being Muslim."

Residents said they would denounce any sentence India hands down to Kasab.

"Look, don't blame him. There is nothing wrong if he did it with good intentions against an infidel country like India," said Amjad Ali, a 60-year-old farmer with white hair.
"India should forgive him and set him free to improve relations with Pakistan," he added.

Bakhat Yar, 42, a farmer wearing a traditional grey shalwar khamis, said Kasab's father left the village years ago.

"We have never seen this boy in the village. Only his grandfather's haveli (house) is here," he said. "They have left this place, I guess."

Yar first said that Kasab should be found guilty and sentenced, then later retracted his remarks: "India should not give him the death sentence. After all, he is Muslim and if he did it against India, look what our neighbour India is doing."

Co-accused Fahim Ansari, Sahabuddin, acquitted

The real punch of the 26/11 verdict lies not in the predictable judgement on Ajmal Kasab, but in the fact that two Indians who were co-accused with Kasab have been acquitted.

Judge ML Tahaliyani blasted the Mumbai police for the case it made against Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin Shaikh.

Ansari was arrested in February 2008 in Lucknow, Sahabuddin in April 2008. Both men brought to Mumbai in December after 26/11.

Ansari was accused of surveying the places to be targeted during 26/11 and of passing maps on to Shaika, who allegedly forwarded these to his Pakistani handlers. The judge said, "Google has better maps than these."

The Mumbai crime branch claimed that both Ansari and Shaikh attended training camps similar to those attended by Ksaab in Pakistan.

Kasab guilty says 26/11 verdict, 2 Indians acquitted

A special court has held Ajmal Kasab - the lone surviving terrorist from the 26/11 Mumbai attacks - guilty of murdering 7 people, abetting the murder of 159, conspiracy and of waging war against the nation. He has also been found guilty of kidnapping and hurting public officials. (Read: 26/11 Mumbai attack case: Kasab's trial)

The court held that 26/11 was a war against India. It will hear arguments on quantum of sentence tomorrow. If a death sentence is handed out against Kasab, the case will automatically go the Mumbai High Court. The accused too has recourse to appeal in the Mumbai High Court and further to the Supreme Court.(Read: 26/11 trial: Key moments | Kasab's flip flops)

Importantly, the two Indians accused, Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed, have been found not guilty of the charges against them. The two were alleged to have prepared the maps of terror targets and passed them on to the LeT for execution of their diabolic plan, but the court found the evidence against them weak. The judge lambasted the police for shoddy investigation against the two and said, "Google has better maps." (Read: Co-accused Fahim Ansari, Sahabuddin, acquitted)

On the killing of Mumbai's top cops, the verdict says Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte was killed by Kasab's partner Abu Ismail. It was not clear who killed Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare and senior Inspector Vijay Salaskar.

Kasab, who was in court when the judgment was delivered, barely reacted to the guilty verdict. The court said 26/11 was a war against India and that the plot was hatched in Pakistan. It has named Lashkar leaders Hafeez Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi among the guilty who are absconding. (Read: Kasab village watches 26/11 judgement on TV)

The court said circumstantial evidence proved the terrorists had handlers in Pakistan and that Saeed and Lakhvi were among 20 people involved in the conspiracy.

Eye-witness testimonies and Kasab's confession played a major part in the court reaching its verdict. These, CCTV footage, photographs, mobile records and forensic evidence had been stacked up against Kasab. Yet, it's not his involvement alone that the prosecution fought to establish, but the Pakistan link too. (Read: What Kasab did to Mumbai | Mind of a terrorist)

Ujjwal Nikam, the Public Prosecutor for the 26/11 trial, said before the verdict that the focus must be on the larger picture, "Not only from Kasab's evidence but also from other circumstantial evidence one can draw irrefutable and irresistible inference that some Pakistani army persons are involved in this place...David Headley has also admitted same thing, naming certain Pakistani Army people. So one thing is very clear that the security apparatus in Pakistan is behind the attack on 26/11.'' (Listen: How Pak remote controlled 26/11)

Though Kasab's turnarounds have surprised few, this largely open-and-shut case is a landmark in more ways than one. Catching a terrorist alive while he was attacking, piecing together the terror puzzle and then winding up the case within a year have been significant achievements. (Pics: Mumbai attacked | Bravehearts | In memory)

But the biggest setback, perhaps, that the masterminds are still at large.

For today, the focus is on Ajmal Kasab. This is the man the nation saw gunning down innocents. He may be a foot soldier in the larger plot, but his being found guilty is at least a symbolic justice. (Read & Watch: 26/11 team - The men who nailed Kasab)

The verdict comes 17 months after Kasab and nine other terrorists from Pakistan unleashed 62 hours of death and destruction on the country's financial capital on November 26, 2008.

The Endgame in Iran

As time runs out on the US effort to talk Iran out of acquiring nuclear weapons, attention has shifted to the UN Security Council’s attempts to impose sanctions on Iran. Will sanctions be approved? If so, will they be effective? Russia and China’s reluctance to impose sanctions implies the necessity of substantial bargaining. Moreover, historically speaking, sanctions are likely to prove ineffective, especially in Iran’s case where time is on their side.

The Middle East is nearing a strategic crossroads: Within the next 18 months or so the decisions taken by different actors will affect issues far beyond the area itself; and time is running out. Last year’s discovery of a covert enrichment plant near Qom is probably only the tip of the iceberg; for the first time in its dealings with Iran the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently openly accused Tehran of developing nuclear weapons. Many experts now estimate that the country is at most one to two years away from acquiring a functioning nuclear device. And, judging from the regime’s increasingly defiant tone, it has no intention whatsoever to diverge from its stated policy of becoming a “nuclear nation”—one that has mastered a sufficient share of civilian nuclear technology to put nuclear weapons well within its grasp.

As time runs out and the Obama administration definitively gives up on its short-lived attempt at dialogue with Tehran, attention will again shift to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), starting with renewed Western attempts to impose sanctions on the Iranian regime in the coming weeks and months. Proposals on the table include various restrictions on institutions and persons connected with the regime, and in particular, its core support base in the Revolutionary Guard. Notably, however, recent statements have been shifting towards a whole-scale embargo on Iran’s oil industry—blocking Iranian imports of refined fuels, which it cannot produce itself, and technical supplies, and perhaps also blocking oil exports from Iran with other producers making up for the shortfall.

A two-fold question arises. First, whether such sanctions would be approved by all veto-wielding UNSC members, especially Russia and China; and second, whether such sanctions would be effective. The historical evidence is stacked against both of these possibilities. Russia and China have a long track record of being reluctant in imposing sanctions on regimes deemed “rogue” by the United States and the West. Both also have serious misgivings about the effectiveness of sanctions in general, and in Iran’s particular case, both governments described them as counterproductive on numerous occasions. While no country, including Moscow and Beijing, would be interested in the serious damage a nuclear Iran could cause to regional stability and the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), both have interests in Iran that would be affected directly by a UNSC decision to that effect. Russia is a major trading partner; China has invested heavily in Iran’s oil industry in recent years.

Any imposition of sanctions would therefore involve considerable horse-trading as well as probable linkages with other issues that affect great power relations today—with Moscow and Beijing trying to extract Western concessions in matters not necessarily connected to Iran in return for cutting themselves in the flesh. This does not exclude the possibility of sanctions being ultimately pushed through at the right price. Russia’s position in particular has begun to shift in recent weeks with the foreign ministry expressing alarm at the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and Russian defense contractors delaying the delivery of the state-of-the-art S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to the Islamic Republic, ostensibly for “technical reasons.” Still, Moscow could very easily return to its original position—and China is maintaining its traditional line emphasizing the importance of a negotiated settlement.

But even if tough sanctions came into force their effect would be highly ambiguous: The historical track record of sanctions—be they of the smart or, if you will, “dumb” variety—is highly dubious. Even in cases where they have had the time to affect elites, economies and societies, they have usually not achieved their desired result in terms of changing regime behavior. The luxury of time is certainly absent in the case of Iran, and the kind of sanctions that are currently being advocated might end up accelerating rather than stopping its nuclear program. Past and current embargoes on dual-use technology may hamper Iran’s nuclear quest from the supply side, but ultimately, its drivers on the demand side remain unaddressed: Nuclear weapons, once acquired, are a watertight guarantee of regime security from external threat. This is, and will remain, the primary driver of Iran’s nuclear ambitions in the foreseeable future, sanctions or no sanctions.

Some have clung on to the idea that an oil embargo would bring about the current regime’s downfall. Certainly, a whole-scale boycott of Iranian petroleum products would hurt Iran’s oil-dependent economy in an unprecedented way, thereby undermining Iran’s ability to provide for its population. This line of thinking, however, makes three highly uncertain assumptions. First, regime change would be dependent upon the regime’s loss of control; instead, an embargo may very well give its hardliners carte blanche for even bloodier repression than has been seen up to now in the name of “national security.” Second, the assumption is also that Iran would not resist any such development. The odds are, however, that Iran would respond by using one or all of its many options—Hamas and Hezbollah come to mind, but Iraq, Afghanistan and Hormuz are also definite possibilities should the regime be backed into a corner.

The third assumption is that the regime would fall before it actually managed to obtain “the bomb.” But if anything, an oil embargo might increase the demand-side factor in Tehran’s nuclear quest—North Korea has clearly shown how the dynamics of inter-state interaction change before and after a state goes nuclear. Before, regime destabilization remains an option; after, it becomes a folly. Among the “international community’s” greatest contemporary nightmares are those of a destabilized North Korea and Pakistan. Iran probably knows that a destabilized nuclear Iran would potentially generate equal fear into the hearts of Western policymakers, even more so, than a stable nuclear Iran, which is all the more reason to obtain the bomb quickly; for once you cross the nuclear threshold, the kinds of sanctions that actually engender regime change become irrational, providing ample opportunity for brinkmanship.

If one assumes sanctions to be either unattainable or ineffective, the choice becomes one between the two evils of nuclear deterrence and military action—and it is not a straightforward one to make. The views of nuclear deterrence as a regional stabilizer are controversial at best; they also come at the price of either abandoning the NPT, thereby allowing nukes to proliferate freely in the region, or the extension of America’s nuclear umbrella, not to mention the incomparable consequences of potential deterrence failure. The military option, on the other hand, would carry with it the certainty of regional destabilization, probably with global repercussions, and great uncertainty in terms of its chances for success. In the absence of reliable intelligence—a rare commodity indeed—military strikes would at best delay Iran’s nuclear capability.

But this is exactly what might make the military option a more rational, or less irrational, choice in combination with sanctions. If embargoes are perceived to take a long time to work, a hit on Iran’s nuclear facilities might be seen as extending the possibility for sanctions to work, even if it only ends up delaying its nuclear status. Considering the fact that Israel, as a “free agent,” might actually be both able and willing to carry out such strikes, it becomes clear to what extent this is a situation fraught with danger. And, in view of all the certainties and potentialities involved, it seems the next few years will be undesirably interesting for all.

Alert at Delhi markets continues, US warns of 'imminent' terror strike

Delhi's Sunday is being spent on edge as the alert for a possible terror strike in a crowded place continues.

The government and the police say precautions added at markets like Sarojini Nagar include security cameras, metal detector and more policemen than usual.

"Delhi police are not just concentrating on markets and malls in the national capital, but we are also keeping strict vigil on all crowded areas as it's a weekend," Delhi Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told IANS.

"Additional police forces are being deployed in all the market areas like Connaught Place, Mehrauli, Karol Bagh, Sarojini Nagar and Chandni Chowk. Even big malls in and around the city have been alerted on security checks," he said.

Soon after the terror alert, the Delhi Police appealed to the public to be vigilant. "If any suspicious object, person or vehicle is noticed, information should be passed on immediately to the nearest police station, or the public can call up toll free number - 1090," Bhagat said.

On Saturday, the US, in an advisory to citizens, warned of an "imminent" attack in the capital. Americans were asked to avoid markets like Sarojini Nagar, Greater Kailash and Karol Bagh. This is the first time the US has used the word "imminent" in any advisory on a terror alert in India. Canada and Australia issued similar advisories on Saturday. (Read: US advisory warns of Delhi attack, cops on alert)

Sources in the Indian government say that Indian intelligence agencies received information on Friday night that a person had been asked to attack a crowded place on Saturday. That alert is still being followed.

Sources say the latest threat, like other recent ones, is aimed at disrupting the Commonwealth Games in Delhi later this year. Emails received by sports bodies in UK, Canada and Australia warn them not to send athletes to Delhi for the Games. Sources say these emails have been traced to servers in Pakistan. (With IANS inputs)