Dhaka turns to magic lamp to save power

Bangladesh, facing critical electricity shortages, has turned to Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL), described by officials as “magic lamps” to save power.

And to help ensure smooth electricity supply to millions of farmers during irrigation season, the government, headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is set to distribute 10 million CFLs to the consumers which will save around 200 to 300 megawatt of electricity.

“We are trying to minimise the gap between the supply and demand with our limited generation through improving our management side and introducing efficient appliances in the system”, State Minister for Power Division Brigadier General (retired) Enamul Haq, said.

He was addressing as the chief guest at the opening ceremony on installation of CFL and electronic blasts in Dhaka.

Secretary for the Power Division Abul Kalam Azad and top officials of the Power Ministry were present.

“These installation will save one MW electricity from the Mouchak-Gulbag feeder in Dhaka city alone. However, examining its all sides we will install seven more CFL in the city areas”, Azad said.

However, Dhaka Power Distribution Company (DPDC) on Sunday kicked off the much awaiting free distribution programme of 1.5 million Compact Fluorescent Lights to the consumers in the capital.

DPDC will install 17,000 pieces of 23 Watt CFL and 6,000 pieces of 14 Watt CFL among its consumers along with 23,000 electronic blasts.

GTZ, the German development support agency, has provided 100,000 EURO for purchasing the bulbs made by the local manufacturer.

“We are installing the energy saving bulb to increase energy efficiency. We wants media support in this regard as it’s a new idea and the price of this bulb is much higher than the traditional one but if we calculate the other benefit including saving money using same quantity of electricity thus finally help the government to improve power supply quality”, the state minister said.

“To popularize the use of CFL initially the consumer will give us the two incandescent bulbs and then they will get 2 CFL from us”, Azad said.

The Power Division will give soon the CFL to the domestic consumers of utility services who use incandescent bulbs that consume more electricity.

Bangladesh earlier put the clock one hour ahead to use day light in a frantic bid to conserve electricity.

US fails to reach goals in Afghanistan

With its troops struggling against the growing Taliban insurgency to stabilize Afghanistan, the United States has not reached its civilian goals in the war-ravaged country, a leading American newspaper reported on Monday.
Citing administration officials, The New York Times reported on Sunday that Washington was falling far short of its goals in fighting Afghanistan’s endemic corruption, creating a functioning government and legal system and training a police force.

The officials told the newspaper nearly seven months after President Barack Obama announced a stepped up civilian effort to bolster his deployment of 17,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan, many civil institutions are deteriorating as much as the country’s security.

According to the officials, Afghanistan is now so dangerous that many aid workers cannot travel outside the capital city of Kabul to advise farmers on crops.

Agricultural assistance was a key part of Obama’s announcement in March that he was deploying hundreds of additional civilians to work in the country.

The judiciary is so weak that Afghans are increasingly turning to a shadow Taliban court system because, a senior military official said, “a lot of the rural people see the Taliban justice as at least something,” The Times said.

Administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity also described Obama as impatient with civilian progress so far.  “The president is not satisfied on any of this,” the paper quoted a senior administration official as saying.

Since the beginning of the war in 2001, Washington has allocated nearly $13 billion for civilian aid to Afghanistan, officials at the State Department said.

However, the Defence Department report in January noted that although the Afghan Ministry of Finance is responsible for tracking international aid, there is “no reliable data on the total amount of international assistance that has been pledged or dispersed to the country.”

President Obama is considering troop reinforcements after US and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal warned that the war could be lost unless more troops are sent to Afghanistan.

Despite the presence of over 100,000 US and NATO ‘boots on the ground’, the escalated militancy has made the current year the deadliest yet for foreign forces, as well as Afghan civilians.

More than 1,500 civilians, the main victims of the controversial war, have been killed and many others wounded in the first six months of 2009, which shows a 24 percent increase compared to the same period last year, according to the latest UN report. 

2009 Nobel Prize winners

With Monday's prize in economics, all the 2009 Nobel Prizes have been announced. The winners will receive them on Dec. 10 in twin ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo.
Here is a look at this year's winners and their work:

Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine to Americans Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak for discovering how chromosomes protect themselves as cells divide, work that has inspired experimental cancer therapies and may offer insights into aging.

Nobel Prize in physics to Americans Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith. Kao was honored for discovering how to transmit light signals long distance through hair-thin glass fibers. Boyle and Smith received the prize for opening the door to digital cameras by inventing a sensor that turns light into electrical signals.

Nobel Prize in chemistry to Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz and Israel's Ada Yonath — the first woman to receive it since 1964 — for creating detailed blueprints of ribosomes, the protein-making machinery within cells, research that's being used to develop new antibiotics.

Nobel Prize in literature to Germany's Herta Mueller, a Romanian-born writer honored for work that "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." The Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision drew praise, derision and plenty of puzzlement.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson for their work in economic governance. Ostrom was the first woman to win the prize since it was founded in 1968, and the fifth woman to win a Nobel award this year — a Nobel record.

Army top brass shows concern on US aid bill

Consuming a fair share of the time, top military brass of the country on Wednesday expressed its concerns over the conditions posed by the Kerry-Lugar bill to deliver the civilian aid to Pakistan by US as the Pakistan Army's Corps Commanders met here today. 

The Corp Commanders conference held at the General Headquarters with Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaque Pervez Kayani in chair. All formation commanders of the Army attended the meeting.

The deliberation on US bicameral legislation now awaits President Barack Obama's signature was on top of the agenda, while the corps commanders also discussed the progress of operation against militants in Swat and the future army offensive in South Waziristan and other tribal areas.

The National Assembly session is also underway in the capital to debate on the Kerry-Lugar bill in today’s proceedings.

The bill triples the annual US civilian economic assistance to Pakistan for the next five years.

A key English newspaper of Pakistan Tuesday reported that Pakistan Army conveyed its part of protest to the US over the language and observations in the bill on Pakistan’s military services and intelligence agencies, when Commander of International Forces in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal met Gen Kayani at the GHQ on Tuesday

“General McChrystal returned from the GHQ with an unambiguous message that the terms set in the Kerry-Lugar Bill on the national security interests of Pakistan are insulting and are unacceptable in their present formulation,” the newspaper said in its report.

however, on the other hand Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has defended the bill, portraying it as a ‘big success’ of the democratic government.

“The passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill is a big success of the government as it is for the first time that the United States has supported a democratic government in Pakistan instead of dictatorship,” he said while addressing a meeting of the parliamentary party of the coalition partners of the government on Tuesday.

President Asif Ali Zardari has also urged PPP leaders and ministers to vigorously respond to criticism of party and government’s policies by political adversaries.

NASA telescope discovers giant ring around Saturn

The Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced late Tuesday.

The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane, the laboratory said.

JPL spokeswoman Whitney Clavin said the ring is very diffuse and doesn't reflect much visible light but the infrared Spitzer telescope was able to detect it.

Although the ring dust is very cold — minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit — it shines with thermal radiation.

No one had looked at its location with an infrared instrument until now, Clavin said.

The bulk of the ring material starts about 3.7 million miles from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4 million miles.

The newly found ring is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it, JPL said.

Before the discovery Saturn was known to have seven main rings named A through E and several faint unnamed rings.

A paper on the discovery was to be published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

"This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Her co-authors are Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, and Michael Skrutskie, also of the University of Virginia.

Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within the ring and is believed to be the source of the material.

The ring also may answer the riddle of another moon, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side.

The ring circles in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn's other moons go the opposite way. Scientists think material from the outer ring moves inward and slams into Iapetus.

"Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn's outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Hamilton. "This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship."

The Spitzer mission, launched in 2003, is managed by JPL in Pasadena. Spitzer is 66 million miles from Earth in orbit around the sun.

India should justify its large presence in Afghanistan: FM

Voicing Islamabad’s concern over large scale Indian presence in Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said New Delhi needs to justify its interest in Pakistan’s war torn western neighbor, which shares no border with India.

“They have to justify their interest. They do not share a border with Afghanistan, whereas we do. So the level of engagement has to be commensurate with that,” he told the Los Angeles Times when asked in an interview about implications of India’s building up its commercial and political presence in Afghanistan.

“If there is no massive (Indian) reconstruction (in Afghanistan), if there are not long queues in Delhi waiting for visas to travel to Kabul, why do you have such a large presence in Afghanistan? At times it concerns us,” he added.

The foreign minister’s comments came a day after top American experts told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Islamabad’s concerns over Indian influence in Afghanistan are real and now being taken more seriously by Washington.

Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal in a report to Pentagon recently feared serious regional implications of expanding Indian influence in Afghanistan. Pakistan suspects an Indian hand behind unrest in parts of its southern Balochistan province and earlier this year Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani raised the issue with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, in Sherm el Sheikh, which were reflected in a joint statement issued by the two South Asian powers.

In the interview with the Times, Qureshi saw a “realization on both sides that dialogue is the only way forward.” “Any other option would be mutually destructive—suicidal,” he said about prospects of resumption of dialogue process, stalled since late last year’s attacks in Mumbai, blamed on a Pakistan based militant group. “Now, the Mumbai attack was a hiccup. But what I have tried to convey to the Indians is: who has benefited from Mumbai? I bid you, not us. The real beneficiary is that element that does not want normalization,”

Qureshi said, “By disengaging from each other, we are falling into the trap of that very element that wants us disengaged. The only way we can defeat their designs is to have a continuous engagement and resume that dialogue. “That will have a positive impact in South Asia. If you want Pakistan focused more on the (threat from extremists along the Afghan border) west, then we have to feel more secure on the east. There is a linkage there,” he added.

The foreign minister stated that the South Asian region is hostage to the unresolved Jammu and Kashmir dispute, the peaceful resolution of which through uninterrupted dialogue is the only way forward.
Earlier, he told a think tank in Los Angeles about Pakistan’s constructive diplomacy with India on reducing South Asian tensions.
He declared that Pakistan is fully committed to peace, security and development in the region.
Achieving peace and stability in Afghanistan is crucial for security and economic development of Pakistan, he said, adding that no country had suffered more than Pakistan due to the wars in Afghanistan.

Bolivia to buy six Karakoram-8 planes from Pakistan

The Bolivian government has approved the 57.8-million-dollar purchase of six planes made in Pakistan with Chinese technology for use in anti-drug operations, media here reported on Friday.

The deal was finalised on Wednesday in consultation with ministers and stipulated that the aircraft would provide a “contribution to the regional battle against narco-trafficking, ensuring requisite control of national air spaces and areas prone to and affected by this problem,” reported local independent media agency Fides.The government has not explicitly confirmed the deal but “the president will announce it on October 10,” according to Defence Minister Walker San Miguel, who was cited by La Razon newspaper.  The K-8, or Karakorum, plane is a light fighter jet jointly developed by China and Pakistan in the early 1990s. It is used primarily as a training aircraft, but can also be used for airfield defence.  Bolivia is also waiting for five US-made Huey helicopters to be delivered by Brazil. Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Thursday the delivery was being delayed by the United States, which had yet to give the project a green light.  Morales accused Washington of “boycotting” Bolivia’s anti-drug efforts after the country expelled agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008.  Bolivia is the third largest cocaine producer in the world, behind Colombia and Peru.

The Pakistan Navy has acquired Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) helicopters Z9EC from China. 

The induction ceremony was held here on Wednesday at Naval Aviation Base. Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Noman Bashir was the chief guest on the occasion. This is the first batch of the series of six helicopters to be procured as per the contract signed with China National Aero Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC). 

Z9EC helicopters have been built according to the specific requirements of Pakistan Navy and are capable to detect and destroy submarines. The aircraft is configured to carry torpedoes and is fitted with state of the art Pulse Compression Radar, Low Frequency Dipping Sonar, Radar Warning Receiver and Doppler Navigation System.

Talking to the mediamen after inauguration, the Naval Chief said that these days the Indian Ocean is experiencing intense activity and around 100 ships from different countries are operating at all times for safeguarding their interests. These extraordinary developments are an indicator of the importance of the trade routes in these waters. Pakistan Navy is also conducting continuous deployment of ships and aircraft to guarantee guarding our maritime interests.

Commenting on the regional stability, he denied being part of any arms race but expressed resolve to maintain quality in naval platforms and enhancement of capabilities in consonance with the developments in the region. He also expressed his full confidence in Chinese technology and termed it compatible to Western. “Pak-China relationship is time-tested and would further be strengthened with such defence collaborations like F-22 P frigates and Z9EC helicopters projects,” he added. Earlier in his welcome address, Commander Pakistan Fleet Rear Admiral Asif Sandila highlighted salient features of Z9EC project. 

He apprised that apart from China, Pakistan is the first country that would operating these helicopters in Anti Submarine Warfare role. Later, the helicopter made fly and staged demonstration of its characteristics and maneuverability. The ceremony was attended by the Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Luo Zhao Hui, representatives of M/s CATIC and a large number of senior naval officers and Aviators of Pakistan Navy.

Quetta:US new concern

The United States has now turned its focus to Quetta, claiming that it has now become a major Taliban base from where Mullah Omar and his commanders plan and launch cross-border strikes into Afghanistan.

 

On Tuesday, The Washington Post quoted US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson as saying that Quetta was high on Washington’s list of terrorist bases in the region.

 

‘In the past, we focussed on Al Qaeda because they were a threat to us. The Quetta Shura mattered less to us because we had no troops in the region,’ she said. ‘Now our troops are there on the other side of the border, and the Quetta Shura is high onWashington’s list.’

 

Gen Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, has also raised alarms about the Quetta Shura, describing it in his recent report to President Barack Obama as a major command centre for the widening wave of Taliban bombings and attacks.

 

Other US officials claim that virtually all of the Afghan Taliban’s strategic decisions are made by the Quetta Shura. Decisions flow from the group ‘to Taliban field commanders, who in turn make tactical decisions that support the Shura’s strategic direction,’ one such official told the US media.

 

Ambassador Patterson acknowledged that the United States is far less familiar with the vast desert region than with Fata, where it has been cooperating closely with Pakistan for several years in the hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and where it periodically kills insurgents with missiles fired from remotely piloted aircraft.

 

‘Our intelligence on Quetta is vastly less. We have no people there, no cross-border operations, no Predators,’ the ambassador said.

 

She said Pakistani officials were growing ‘extremely nervous’ that the current policy disputes in Washington would lead to a premature US pullout from Afghanistan. ‘They will not rush to cut ties with the Taliban if they think they will be back in charge there again,’ she said.

 

Although the media have often quoted unnamed US officials as expressing doubts onPakistan’s sincerity to fight the Quetta Taliban, this marks the first time a senior US official has publicly endorsed such claims.

 

Pakistan’s chief military spokesman, Maj-Gen Athar Abbas, however, rejected such claims as incorrect.

 

‘From our judgment, there are no Taliban in Balochistan,’ he said. Asked about the names of Quetta Shura leaders provided by Afghan and US officials, he said: ‘Six to 10 of them have been killed, two are in Afghanistan, and two are insignificant. When people call Mullah Omar, the mayor of Quetta, that is incorrect.’

 

The Post report quoted Pakistani analysts as saying that the Taliban’s presence in theQuetta region is more discreet than it was earlier in the decade, when Mullah Omar fled there from US and Afghan military attacks. He was joined by thousands of fighters, who blended into ethnic Pashtun neighbourhoods and refugee camps. The report claims that Pakistani officials have allowed the Taliban movement to regroup in the Quetta area because they view it as a strategic asset rather than a domestic threat.

 

Michael Semple, a former UN official in Afghanistan now based in Islamabad, told the Post that the Quetta region’s refugee camps were ‘a great reserve army’ for the Taliban. He said Pashtun tribes in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan, the Taliban’s ethnic and spiritual base, have strong ties with those on the Pakistan side.

 

During Ramazan, posters appeared on walls across Quetta, asking people to contribute their money, vehicles and sons to the ‘fight against occupying forces’ across the border inAfghanistan.

 

Experts who spoke to the Post said unlike Pakistani Taliban groups in Fata, the Quetta Shura is considered uninterested in operations inside Pakistan.

 

Maj-Gen Abbas, however, rejected the suggestion that because the Quetta Taliban were not attacking Pakistani targets, Pakistan was not interested in combating them.

 

He said he hoped the Swat campaign had overcome any concerns Washington might have about Pakistan’s willingness to take on the insurgents. If the United States has information about Taliban leaders in Balochistan, ‘tell us who and where they are,’ he said. ‘We will not allow your forces inside, but if you lead, we will follow.’

 

But Ambassador Patterson said Pakistani officials had ‘made it crystal clear that they have different priorities from ours,’ being far more concerned about Taliban attacks insidePakistan than across the border. She noted that Pakistan had once trained religious fighters to operate against India and elsewhere and that the same groups had now turned against the state.

 

‘You cannot tolerate vipers in your bosom without getting bitten,’ Ambassador Patterson said. ‘Our concern is whether Pakistan really controls its territory. There are people who do not threaten Pakistan but who are extremely important to us.’