US blames Russia, China for Annan mission failure

Washington, Aug 3: The resignation of UN and Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan highlights the failure of Russia and China to back strong action against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the White House has said.

Annan, who assumed his post in February and authored a six-point peace plan aimed at ending the Syrian conflict, announced on Thursday that he would quit by the end of the month citing the deadlock at the UN Security Council over ways to resolve the current political crisis in the country.

“Annan’s resignation highlights the failure at the UN Security Council of Russia and China to support resolutions -- meaningful resolutions against Assad that would have held Assad accountable for his failure to abide by his commitments under the Annan plan,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Thursday.

Russia and China have vetoed all Western-backed UN resolutions on Syria over fears that they could lead to foreign military intervention in the violence-torn Middle East country.

“Those vetoes, as we’ve said repeatedly, were highly regrettable, and place both Russia and China on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of the Syrian people,” Carney said.

The UN General Assembly is expected to vote on Friday on a draft resolution on Syria proposed by Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which urges the Syrian government to refrain from using chemical weapons, to halt violence and bring to justice those responsible for human rights violations in Syria.

The Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday that Russia would not support this document either as it “places responsibility only on the Syrian authorities, while the opposition remains outside the international community’s demands”.

Although resolutions approved by the 193-member UN General Assembly are not mandatory, their adoption has a moral authority. Voting is by simple majority, with no right of veto as in the Security Council votes, which Russia and China have used recently to block adoption of resolutions on Syria.

The Syrian conflict has claimed 14,000-20,000 lives since March 2011, according to estimates by Syrian opposition groups and the UN. The West is pushing for Assad’s ouster, while Russia and China are trying to prevent outside interference in Syria, claiming the Assad regime and the opposition are both to blame for the bloodshed. (IANS/RIA Novosti)

2011 British riots could be repeated: Survey

London, Aug 3: Many young people in Britain believe there could be a repeat this year of the riots of 2011 as the worsening employment conditions that contributed to the disorder remain unchanged, a survey has found.

The killing of drug dealer and gangster Mark Duggan by police officers triggered the riots in London and other major cities - Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Nottingham, Bristol, Leeds - and continued for five days and nights.

Five people died, 4,000 were arrested, and many shops, flats and businesses were destroyed. The damage was worth more than 200 million pounds, The Independent said.

According to Sky News, a poll commissioned by StreetChance and Barclays Spaces for Sports found that more than one in four among 12 to 18-year-olds believe there could be more violence this summer. More than half of those questioned said the riots spread because young people were copying what others were doing and more than a third (37.5 per cent) said youngsters got involved so they could boast to friends.

A total of 36.6 per cent thought boredom among young people was a cause, with a fifth - 20.4 per cent - saying there was concern about their futures and jealousy of other people’s money and possessions. Among those who predicted there could be a repeat of the violence, the main reason given was that many young people believe their chances of getting a job have either not improved or worsened.

Though youth unemployment fell by 29,000 in the first three months of 2012, around 1.01 million 16 to 24-year-olds are still without employment. A total of 37.9 per cent do not believe the government has done enough to address the needs of the younger generation, while 35.7 per cent said the gap between rich and poor has either widened or stayed the same.

Many of those questioned for the poll criticised the role of the police. Of the more than 13 per cent that said police were a cause of the violence, two-fifths (40.3 per cent) said it was because police are seen as racist by young people.

A Home Affairs Select Committee report published in December said police were too slow to react to the disorder and the perception that they had lost control encouraged the spread of the violence. (IANS)

Britain to step up help for Syrian rebels: Hague

London, Aug 3: British Foreign Secretary William Hague says the government has been helping Syrian rebels in a “practical and non-lethal way” and intends to step up such help.

The foreign secretary spelled out the British government’s refusal to rely solely on diplomacy in the face of the stalemate on the UN security council, and the resignation of UN envoy Kofi Annan on Thursday.

Hague said Annan’s decision to quit because of the failure of what he had said had become “mission impossible” over Syria was a “bleak moment” both for the people of Syria and for the diplomatic effort by the international community. “Diplomacy has not worked so far, diplomacy has so far failed the people of Syria,” Hague said. “That doesn’t mean that we give up on diplomacy.”

Hague declined to comment on any potential involvement of British intelligence but said Britain for its part has been offering support help in terms of communication and “matters of that kind”.

“We have helped them with communications and matters of that kind, and we will help them more. We will help them in this situation, given the scale of death and suffering and the failures of the diplomatic process, we will over the coming weeks increase our practical but non-lethal support to the opposition,” Hague said.

Hague, however, said the support would not involve sending arms.

“Above all we will be sending the humanitarian assistance that the people of Syria so desperately need,” he said.

“We’ve seen hundreds of thousands cross borders, Britain is the second largest donor to the UN funds which are used to try and look after those people. We may have to do more and certainly the rest of the world needs to do more in that regard and we will do still more to isolate the Assad regime from its remaining associates, or friends, in the world from other parts of the Arab world, we are achieving considerable success, and do still more to document the human rights abuses that are taking place so that one day justice can be done,” he said. (IANS)

Multi-linguilism shapes children's emotional development

Washington, Aug 3: In television classic I Love Lucy, Ricky Ricardo switched into rapid-fire Spanish whenever he was upset, despite the fact that Lucy had no idea what her Cuban husband was saying. This kind of code-switching, or switching back and forth between different languages, happens all the time in multi-lingual environments, and often in emotive situations. Psychological scientists Stephen Chen and Qing Zhou of the University of California, Berkeley, and Morgan Kennedy of Bard College, have sought to demystify this linguistic phenomenon. Drawing on research from psychology and linguistics, the researchers seek to understand better how using different languages to discuss and express emotions in a multi-lingual family might play an important role in children’s emotional development, according to a California statement. Bilingual parents may use a specific language to express an emotional concept because they feel that language provides a better cultural context for expressing an emotion. Thus, the language that a parent chooses to express a particular concept can help to provide cues that reveal his or her emotional state. Language choice may also influence how children experience emotion and such expressions can potentially elicit a greater emotional response when spoken in the child’s native language. (IANS)

What travellers do to shun other commuters

London, Aug 3: Commuters on a train employ all kinds of tactics to avoid interaction with other travellers. These include the “hate stare” or one that says “don’t bother me”, says a new study. The study by Yale University says commuters use many other tactics, including putting their bag on the next seat, checking the phone, putting on headphones and pretending to be asleep. The research published in journal Symbolic Interaction found that the tactics had nothing to do with age, race or social background, but based on people’s desire for comfort.  Passengers keep a free seat by leaning against the window and stretching their legs out, pretending to be asleep and putting a large bag on the seat. Some put a coat on the seat so it looks taken, while others lie and say it is already occupied by someone else. Passengers even sit in the aisle seat with music turned up so they can pretend not to hear when someone asks for the empty window seat. Some place several items on the spare seat and people find it is too much hassle waiting for them to be moved. Some commuters gaze out the window with a blank stare, while some just avoid eye contact. One rider told the study the objective was just getting through the ride, and that fat people who sweat more and may be more likely to smell should be avoided. (IANS)

Weight loss secures lasting benefits

Washington, Aug 3: The loss of 20 pounds can help overweight or obese individuals secure a decade's worth of health benefits, even if they regain the weight later that decade, according to a new research. Rena Wing, professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, referred to her work from the Diabetes Prevention Programme, a study of 3,000 overweight people, who were motivated to change their behaviour rather than given drugs. It showed that even modest weight loss, an average of 14 pounds, reduced people’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 58 per cent. The benefits of this weight loss lasted up to 10 years, even if people gained the weight back over this time, said Wing, according to a university statement. Participants practiced basic behavioural strategies to help them lose weight, including tracking everything they ate and reducing the amount of unhealthy foods they kept in their home, she said. They also met with coaches frequently and increased their physical activity over the course of the study. “Helping people find ways to change their eating and activity behaviours and developing interventions other than medication to reinforce a healthy lifestyle have made a huge difference in preventing one of the major health problems in this country,” Wing said. “Weight losses of just 10 per cent of a person’s body weight (or about 20 pounds in those who weigh 200 pounds) have also been shown to have a long-term impact on sleep apnea, hypertension and quality of life, and to slow the decline in mobility that occurs as people age,” added Wing. Wing is leading a 13-year trial of 5,000 people with Type 2 diabetes. This study is testing whether an intensive behavioural intervention can decrease the risk of heart disease and heart attacks. “We are trying to show that behaviour changes not only make people healthier in terms of reducing heart disease risk factors but actually can make them live longer,” she said. (IANS)

Men, women eye objects differently, says research

Washington, Aug 3: Eyes of men and women meander in different ways, suggests a new finding, challenging the way that scientists generally conceive of attention, or how sensory information is prioritised. While previous study of vision and attention disregarded individual factors such as sex, race and age, Laurent Itti and doctoral student John Shen from the University of Southern California (USC), demonstrated that men and women pay visual attention in different ways. Itti’s lab studied 34 participants as they watched videos of people being interviewed. Behind the interview subjects, within the video frame, pedestrians, bicycles and cars passed by. The distractions were included to pull attention away from the filmed conversation. While participants watched and listened to the interview, another camera was pointed at participants' eyes, recording the movement of their pupils as they glanced across the screen, according to a university statement. Researchers discovered that men, when focused on the person being interviewed, parked their eyes on the speaker’s mouth. They tended to be most distracted by distinctive movement behind the interview subjects. Conversely, women shift their focus between the interview subject’s eyes and body. When they were distracted, it was typically by other people entering the video frame.  (IANS)

Mindfulness helps women deliver healthier babies

Washington, Aug 3: First-time pregnant women who heed their own emotional and physical changes, tend to give birth to healthier babies than others who don’t, according to a latest research. “These findings continue more than 40 years of research that has made clear that whether you are mindless or mindful makes a big difference in every aspect of your health and well-being - from competence to longevity,” said Ellen Langer, professor of psychology at Harvard University and a pioneer in researching mindfulness. For Langer’s recent study, researchers trained women pregnant with their first child in mindfulness with instructions to notice subtle changes in their feelings and physical sensations each day, she said, according to a university statement. When compared with two other groups of first-time pregnant mothers, who did not have the mindfulness training, these women reported more well-being and positive feelings and less emotional distress. “They had higher self-esteem and life satisfaction during this period of their pregnancy and up to at least a month after birth,” Langer said. “And this also had a positive impact on their deliveries and overall health of the newborns.” Teaching mindfulness through attention to variability may be helpful for many disorders, including asthma, depression and learning disabilities, to name a few, according to Langer. (IANS)

Woman accidentally swallows knife after laughing at wrong moment

New York,Aug 3: A woman in Atlanta landed herself in an emergency room after accidentally swallowing a butter knife while laughing. The New England Journal of Medicine published X-ray images showing the knife lodged in the 30-year-old’s esophagus. Drs Aida Venado and Sarah Prebil said the woman had a history of bulimia, and stuck the knife down her throat to prove to her friends that she no longer had a gag reflex because of it. Something made her laugh, and the knife slid down into her esophagus. She rushed to the emergency department at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, vomiting blood and complaining of chest pain. Doctors were able to remove the knife through an endoscopy, and the woman did not suffer any damage to her throat or stomach. Incredibly, her husband said she had swallowed a knife four years earlier. That time, surgery was required to remove it. The woman was transferred to a psychiatric unit after the knife was removed, Drs Venado and Prebil said. (Agencies)

Man bombs sister-in-law's home, burns son's house, kills self

Moscow, Aug 3: A Russian fought with his wife out of jealousy and she left him to live with their elder son. The man, demanding his wife’s return, hurled a grenade into his sister-in-law’s yard, set fire to his younger son’s house, and then committed suicide. The 61-year-old man lived in Armavir in southwestern region of Krasnodar. On Thursday, the man, whose name was not released, arrived at his sister-in-law’s to demand that his wife return home. “He demanded that his wife return home to him, threatening violence at the same time. He made a similar demand to his younger son, who lives in the neighbourhood. Without waiting for any response, the man detonated a grenade in her yard,” according to an investigator’s statement. After detonating the grenade, the man set fire to his son’s home, who was away at the time, and then returned to his own home, set fire to it, locked the door from inside, and shot himself. (IANS)

Thief's diary writing habit costs him

Beijing, Aug 3: A Chinese thief’s habit of writing a diary cost him badly when police seized his notebook in which he had recorded details of all 88 motorbikes that he stole in the last five months. The thief, surnamed Zhang, was caught while scooping the 89th motorbike in Sichuan province, after he boldly offered a tricycle driver five yuan to help him carry away a locked motorbike. This act drew a policeman’s suspicion who was standing nearby. During Zhang’s house search, the police discovered his treasured diary containing history of all the motorbikes he had stolen and the prices at which he sold them faithfully noted down in it.  Zhang was accused of theft and arrested. (IANS)

'Dead' woman comes alive in China

Beijing, Aug 3: A doctor in China has been suspended for declaring as dead an elderly woman who was still alive. She woke up from slumber when a forensic official was taking her body’s photograph. The incident occurred on Wednesday after the 85-year-old attempted to commit suicide by cutting her wrist. She gradually opened her eyes and gently started moving her hands while being photographed about 30 minutes after the first-aid doctor had declared her dead.  Her relatives said the woman was now stable. Her shocked relatives and neighbours called the medical emergency hotline again and rushed her to hospital. Pudong Medical Emergency Centre officials apologised to the family, saying the incident was caused by the first-aid doctor’s “improper rescue efforts”. Tang Zhihong, vice director of Pudong Medical Emergency Centre, said the doctor has been suspended. (IANS)