'Africa needs India for education'

ADDIS ABABA, July 29: “The Chinese will come and build roads, stadiums and infrastructure. They will build labs, but who will run the labs?,” asks Jean-Pierre Ezin, the AU’s chief pointsperson for education. He pauses for a while, and then replies: “Africa needs India for developing its most precious resource: human capital.”

Sitting barely a few metres away from the new Chinese-built towering building of the African Union in his office in the old building, Ezin resists being drawn into the much-touted India-China comparison, but agrees that there is a world of difference between the engagement of India and China in Africa.

“The Chinese are good at building, but we need skilled people to run these establishments. They are not really interested in what we really need - the transfer of knowledge,” said Ezin, AU’s Commissioner for human resource and science and technology, in an interview.

India, one the other hand, Ezin points out, is strong in training and skill-building and has some of the finest educational institutions. “We need to develop skills in Africa. India is building 10 vocational educational centres at the rate of two per region. We need an acceleration of India’s efforts in this direction,” he said. India is a critical partner in developing Africa’s human capital, he stressed, adding that Africa is looking to India to set up higher education institutes in the continent.

Ezin, who has a doctorate in mathematical science from a French university and has held key posts in international scientific research centers, is a firm believer that the so-called African renaissance or resurgence can only happen through transforming the continent’s educational landscape.

“The authorities in the continent are not aware of the fact that the biggest need of Africa is human capital. They need infrastructure, roads and airports, but above all, without robust human capital, we can’t move ahead.”

It is in this sphere of education and capacity building that India can make a big difference, he said, while pointing to over 100 training institutes India has pledged to build all over the continent at the last two India-Africa Forum summits held in New Delhi and Addis Ababa.

These institutions encompass a wide array of areas ranging from agriculture, rural development and food processing to information technology, vocational training, English language centres, and entrepreneurial development institutes.

The four institutions India has offered at the Pan-African level include the Institute of Information Technology will be established in Ghana, the Institute of Foreign Trade in Uganda, India Africa Diamond Institute in Botswana and the Institute for Education Planning and Administration in Burundi.

These training institutes, together with vocational centres, Africa hopes, will help alleviate the problem of massive youth unemployment. The African youth make up 40 per cent of Africa’s population, but they account for 60 per cent of the unemployed. Around 95 million young people in sub-Saharan Africa are illiterate and are either unemployed or in low-paid jobs.

Ezin is also all praise for the India-aided Pan-Africa e-network that seeks to bring tele-education and tele-medicine to African people as a sign of India’s empowering engagement with the continent. (IANS)

Governor among 18 killed in Afghanistan

KABUL, July 29: An Afghan governor and at least 17 Taliban militants were killed in violence, authorities said on Sunday.

Mohammad Ismael Wafa, the governor of Chak district was on his way to office when Taliban militants fired at his vehicle on Sunday.

Seventeen militants were killed by Afghan police, army and NATO-led forces in different Afghan provinces in the past 24 hours till Sunday noon.

A huge quantity of weapons, including rocket propelled grenades, machine guns and pistols, were seized. Eighteen militants were arrested, the interior ministry said. (IANS)

Obama adviser, Sherry Rehman trade barbs

WASHINGTON, July 29: Tensions flared between the US and Pakistan as two top officials traded accusations of doing too little to combat Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The tart exchange between Douglas E Lute, President Barack Obama’s top adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, took place during a conference in Aspen, Colorado on Friday.

Under questioning from Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes,” Rehman said Pakistani Taliban fighters, who have taken refuge in two remote provinces in eastern Afghanistan, were increasingly carrying out rocket attacks and cross-border raids against Pakistan.

“These are critical masses of people that come in; this is not just potshots,” said Rehman, speaking on videoconference from Washington.

She said that on 52 different occasions in the last eight months Pakistan had provided to American and NATO commanders in Afghanistan the locations from which the militants were attacking, to no avail.

Immediately, Lute, a retired three-star army general and deputy national security adviser who rarely speaks in public, fired back.

“There’s no comparison of the Pakistani Taliban’s relatively recent, small-in-scale presence inside Afghanistan to the decades-long experience and relationship between elements of the Pakistani Government and the Afghan Taliban,” he said.

“To compare these is simply unfair,” said Lute.

Pakistani officials have long faced criticizm from Americans and Afghans for what they say is Islamabad’s failure to stop militant assaults originating from safe havens in Pakistan.

But in the past several months, Pakistani officials have started accusing American and allied officials of the same problem coming from Afghanistan. (IANS)

Julian Assange's mom in Ecuador to seek son's asylum

MOSCOW, July 29: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s mother has arrived in Quito to urge Ecuadorian authorities to grant her son political asylum on Sunday.

“Surely, the president, Rafael Correa and his staff will make the best decision,” said Christine Assange.

Assange has been hiding at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for over a month to avoid his extradition to Sweden, where he faces a rape trial he calls politically motivated.

Assange’s whistleblowing site WikiLeaks made an enemy of the US government in 2010, when it leaked hundreds of thousands of American diplomatic cables.

The US authorities have not ruled out requesting his extradition from Sweden. Assange has requested asylum in Ecuador, whose president is still considering the request.

If her son is sent to the US, he “could expect a sentence of death or many years in prison with torture as they are doing now with Bradley Manning,” said Christine Assange.

Manning is a US Army intelligence analyst who is suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military and State Department documents while serving in Iraq.

Many of the documents ended up on the WikiLeaks website.

He is being held on the charges of aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the internet, transmitting national defence information and theft of public property or records. He could be sentenced to life imprisonment, if convicted. (IANS)

Russia denies plans to grant asylum to Assad

MOSCOW, July 29: Russia has no plans to provide asylum to embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

“We are not even thinking about it. Those who are trying to plant this idea into the minds of the international community, pursue their dirty goals,” Lavrov said.

“It’s just provocations by those who want to put the entire blame for what is going on in Syria on Russia and China, allegedly because we have been blocking something,” he said.

“We are blocking only an attempt to support one side in an internal conflict by a UN Security Council decision,” the Russian Foreign Minister added. Lavrov also said another Syrian settlement meeting with Russia’s participation will be held soon.

“We are meeting with all parties to the Syrian conflict, we have some contacts scheduled in future both in Russia and abroad,” he said.

Up to 17,000 people have been killed in clashes between Assad’s troops and opposition fighters since the beginning of the conflict 17 months ago, according to UN estimates based on accounts provided by Syrian activists. (IANS)

President Zardari wants Punjab broken up

ISLAMABAD, July 29: President Asif Ali Zardari has promised to break up Punjab and create a new province of Janoobi (South) Punjab.

Zardari was quoted sying so while addressing a delegation of his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) activists.

“The creation of a Janoobi Punjab province will help provide the people of south Punjab with openings and opportunities for their socio-economic development,” the President said.

A PPP team from South Punjab led by Makhdoom Shahab-ud-Din called on the President.

Punjab is one of Pakistan’s four provinces, and reputedly wields the most influence in national politics. (IANS)

Skin bugs protects body from infection

WASHINGTON, July 29: Bugs that normally inhabit the skin may actually protect the body from infection, shows a study.

By the virtue of being the largest organ of the body, the skin represents a major site of interaction with microbes outside.

Although immune cells in the skin protect against harmful organisms, until now it has not been known if the millions of naturally occurring bugs on the skin, collectively known as the skin microbiota (skin flora), also have a beneficial role.

Using mouse models, the National Institute of Health (NIH) observed that such skin bugs contribute to protective immunity by interacting with the immune cells in the skin.

The investigators colonized germ-free mice (mice bred with no naturally occurring microbes in the gut or skin) with the human skin commensal Staphylococcus epidermidis, according to a NIH statement.

The team observed that colonizing the mice with this one species of good bugs enabled an immune cell in the mouse skin to produce a cell-signalling molecule needed to protect against harmful microbes.

Researchers subsequently infected both colonized and non-colonized germ-free mice with a parasite. Mice that were not colonized with the bacteria did not mount an effective immune response to the parasite; mice that were colonized did.

The study was led by investigators in the labs of Yasmine Belkaid, at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in collaboration with Julie Segre, at the National Human Genome Research Institute, and Giorgio Trinchieri and Heidi Kong, at the National Cancer Institute. All three Institutes are NIH components. (IANS)

Women who flirt get better deal

LONDON, July 29: Feminine charm is a measurable phenomenon, scientists have established, with women who employ it enjoying the most success in negotiations. Results from the first academic study of the technique shows that it can increase success rates in negotiations with both men and women by as much as a third. Effective feminine charm combines flirtation with friendliness and women who get it right can get around 20 percent off the price of a car, according to the study. But getting the right balance between flirting and being friendly is vital, because women who are too straightforwardly friendly lose out, according to Laura Kray who led the study.  Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the London School of Economics, carried out four separate experiments to investigate female charm, the newspaper added.  They say that, while there is a commonly held assumption that feminine charm boosts a woman’s effectiveness in negotiations, it has not until now been investigated by researchers. (IANS)

Boys' impulsiveness linked to better math ability

WASHINGTON, July 29: Girls and boys start grade school with different approaches to arithmetic problems - girls favour a slow and accurate approach and boys a faster but more error-prone approach. The girls’ approach gives them an early advantage, but by the end of the sixth grade, boys had surpassed the girls, a study by the University of Missouri says. The study found that boys showed more preference for solving arithmetic problems by reciting an answer from memory, whereas girls were more likely to compute the answer by counting.  Understanding these results may help teachers and parents guide students better, says Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. “The observed difference in arithmetic accuracy between the sexes may arise from a the willingness to risk being wrong by answering from memory before one is sure of the correct answer,” said Drew Bailey, study author and a recent recipient of a PhD in psychological science from University of Missouri, according to a Missouri statement. “In our study, we found that boys were more likely to call out answers than girls, even though they were less accurate early in school. Over time, though, this practice at remembering answers may have allowed boys to surpass girls in accuracy,” Bailey added. The study followed approximately 300 children as they progressed from first to sixth grade. In the first and second grades, the boys’ tendency to give an answer quickly led to more answers in total, but also more wrong answers. Girls, on the other hand, were right more often, but responded more slowly and to fewer questions. By sixth grade, the boys were answering more problems and getting more correct. “Developing mathematical skill may be part ‘practice makes perfect’ and part ‘perfect makes practice,’” Bailey said. “Attempting more answers from memory gives risk-takers more practice, which may eventually lead to improvements in accuracy. It also is possible that children who are skilled at certain strategies are more likely to use them and therefore acquire more practice.” (IANS)

Nepal's tiger numbers up

KATHMANDU, July 29: Nepal on Sunday reported an increase in the number of its tigers. According to the latest census report released on the occasion of World Tiger Day on Sunday, Nepal has 176 tigers, 21 more than the previous official count. The 2010 census found 155 tigers. Nepal is among the 13 tiger range countries. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an international NGO, has urged the governments to raise efforts to curb poaching, a major threat to wild tigers. India is home to most of the world’s wild tigers, with about 1,700 animals.  At the start of the 20th century, the number of wild tigers around the world was estimated at over 100,000. Currently, there are less than 3,500 tigers in the wild. Poaching and deforestation have been major threats to the tigers’ survival. (IANS)

34,000 Syrian refugees reach Lebanon: UN

BEIRUT, July 29: Nearly 34,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in Lebanon, after fleeing the clashes in their country, the UN agency for refugees said. “There are currently nearly 34,000 Syrian refugees receiving aid in Lebanon through the efforts exerted by the Lebanese cabinet and its UN and non-governmental organization partners,” a statement from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. According to the statement, 31,596 Syrians have been registered with the UNHCR. (IANS)

Cultural relics found in South China Sea

BEIJING, July 29: Twelve underwater cultural relics sites were discovered in South China Sea. The sites near Xisha Islands contain ancient pottery and porcelain wares, copper coins and boat parts, said the Hainan cultural heritage bureau on Sunday. The Xisha Islands consist of a cluster of about 40 islets, sand banks and reefs. In ancient days, many Chinese merchant ships struck the reefs and sank while sailing to Southeast Asia, India and Middle East, leaving treasures and cultural relics in the sea. (IANS)