UPA cannot fight Narendra Modi politically, misuses CBI and NIA: Arun Jaitley

Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, has said that the Congress is targeting Modi and his former home minister Amit Shah for the past few years.

The government has been misusing investigating agencies like CBI, IB and NIA to settle scores with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as it has realised that it cannot fight them politically, Rajya Sabha leader of opposition Arun Jaitley has alleged in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

In the 15-page letter to the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha has said that the Congress is targeting Modi and his former home minister Amit Shah for the past few years.

"The Congress strategy in the face if its depleting popularity is clear. Congress cannot fight the BJP and Narendra Modi politically. Defeat stares them in the face. By misuse of investigative agencies they have so far tried various methods of falsely implicating Modi and his former Home Minister Amit Shah," Jaitley said in his letter.

Jaitley had written the letter on September 27 but the BJP was silent about it as the Prime Minister was on a visit to the US.

Prominent "examples" of misuse of probe agencies by the government that have been cited by Jaitley include the three encounter cases of Sohrabuddin, Tulsi Prajapati and Ishrat Jahan. He also states in his letter that former Home Minister of Rajasthan Gulab Chand Kataria was arrested in the Prajapati encounter case due to the role of the investigating agencies.

Similarly, former Rajasthan PWD Minister Rajinder Rathore was named in alleged fake encounter of local mafia Dara Singh.

Referring to the Sohrabuddin encounter case in his letter, Jaitley said, "The probable purpose of the CBI in this case was to try and implicate the political establishment of Gujarat, setting aside the pretence of federal character of India's governance. The CBI targeted Amit Shah with the ultimate desire of implicating Modi."

Avahan AIDS project prevented over 6 lakh HIV infections: Study

Washington: Around 600,000 people in India may have been saved from becoming infected with HIV over ten years with the help of a programme funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to a study.

In an evaluation of the 2003-launched AIDS project Avahan, researchers from the School of Public Health at Imperial College, London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that Avahan prevented more than half of the infections that would have occurred without its intervention.

An investment of over 250 million dollars for the Foundation, Avahan involves outreach and risk reduction education programmes, condom distribution and social marketing to build community resilience and reduce the stigma attached to HIV

The main part of the evaluation was based on data from 24 districts in south India where Avahan operated, covering the period from 2004 to 2008, and it found that in these districts, 62,800 infections were prevented in the first four years of the programme, which increased to 606,000 over a decade.

According to researchers, Avahan can be effective at controlling HIV in the population at large, adding that if the programme is replicated, it is possible that the large scale expansion of this intervention to other settings in Asia and Africa could have a demonstrable impact on the worldwide HIV epidemic over the next decade.

ANI

Facebook's 1.2 billion profile pictures collated on single page

Sydney: Facebook has brought in the profile pictures of all its members on a single page called 'Faces of Facebook', which appears like a television static but zooming in shows the profile picture of each of the site's 1.2 billion-and counting users. 

The task would have taken more than 36 years to look through, but Miami-based 'creative technologist' Natalia Rojas collected the pictures through the online app Faces of Facebook. 

Rojas said that she accidentally discovered how to access all the profile pictures from everyone on Facebook when she was playing around with their API. 

According to an English daily, each face has been added to the site in chronological order, starting with founder Mark Zuckerberg as the first face on the Faces of Facebook. 

Users can enter their Facebook details and will be shown their location in the huge collage of faces, while faces of those who join the site will be added to the page automatically. 

The report said that only those pictures set as profile picture which are public by default on Facebook will be shown on the app, and no other images are accessible from the site. 

Rojas said that they are not breaking any Facebook privacy rules because they don't store anyone's private information, pictures or names, the report added. 

Antarctica's Deep Lake harbours 'promiscuous' microbes

Washington: Antarctica's Vestfold Hills, Deep Lake, which became isolated from the ocean 3,500 years ago by the Antarctic continent rising, have provided scientists a unique niche for studying the evolution of the microbes that now thrive under such conditions. 

Deep Lake's microscopic inhabitants are dominated by haloarchaea, microbes that require high salt concentrations to grow and are naturally adapted to conditions - at minus 20 degree Celsius - that would prove lethally cold to other organisms. 

A team led by Rick Cavicchioli of the University of New South Wales, Australia partnered with the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) to generate sequence data from DNA isolated from individual microbes and compared them with metagenomic (microbial community) information sampled at various depths of Deep Lake. 

Cavicchioli said that understanding how haloarchaea can thrive in Deep Lake could be used to develop engineering concepts for reducing energy costs in a variety of situations, such as for cleaning up contaminated sites in permanently or seasonally cold regions. 

He said that owing to the ability of salt-loving enzymes to function under extremes, asserting they could also be used as catalysts for peptide synthesis and enhanced oil recovery, and can function in water-organic solvent mixtures. 

Cavicchioli said that these enzymes will be especially useful for transforming contaminated sites with particularly high levels of petroleum-based products. 

Four isolates in the study represented about 72 percent of the cells in the community. Though gene exchange across species boundaries is considered infrequent, the researchers observed that haloarchaea living in the Lake's hypersaline environment practice it comparatively often, like neighbors "chewing the fat" in a small-town coffee klatch. 

The study has been published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Syria chemical weapons disarmament mission starts today

Damascus: An international team of experts is about to reach Damascus on Tuesday to kick-start the mission to destroy Syria’s 1000-ton chemical weapons stockpile as stipulated by a joint US-Russia agreement. 

Also Read: Syria rakes up 9/11 attacks, rebels 'eating human heart' issue at UN 

A team of international chemical weapons inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OCPW) are expected to access all facilities of chemical arms within a month.

The mission is in line with a UN resolution passed last week according to which Syria must abide by the OCPW’s dismantling plan and allow the international experts to visit all chemical weapons storage sites. 

The resolution also has a provision for punitive measures against Syria in case of any violation. The punitive measures may include sanctions or military action. 

Speaking at the UN General assembly, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem today assured that Syria will co-operate with the mission. 

The plan to destroy Syria’s massive chemical arms is first of its kind as it is the first time that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been asked to destroy a country's chemical arms during a war. 

Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is believed to contain more than 1,000 tonnes of sarin, mustard gas and other banned lethal agents. 

Syria chemical weapons issue created a furore in the international community when August 21 chemical attack, according to the US claimed 1429 lives, and was orchestrated by the regime. 

Narendra Modi's Gujarat Assembly approves Lokayukta Aayog Bill 2013, Guv's recommendations ignored

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat Lokayukta Commission Bill 2013 got state Assembly nod on Tuesday which was recently returned by the State Governor Kamla Beniwal. 

As per reports, the bill was passed without making changes sought by the Governor. 

The three-day monsoon session of the Gujarat Assembly had begun yesterday and now the bill will be sent again to the Governor for her approval. 

However, as the bill will reach to the Governor for the second time, she is obliged to sign it or send it to the President of India for the appoval.

The Lokayukta Aayog Bill, 2013 proposes to give all the powers of the appointment to a selection committee headed by Chief Minister and wants Governor to act on the recommendations of this committee. 

The above feature of the bill was not agreeable by Beniwal as the bill will virtually eliminate the governor as well as the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court from the process. 

The new bill also proposed a special provision which gives pivotal power to the state government in excluding any ‘public functionaries’ from the jurisdiction of the Lokayukta, reports said.

The Gujarta Assembly session will end on October 3. However, the House will meet for only three days as October 2 is a holiday in view of Gandhi Jayanti. The state government is also expected to bring a resolution congratulating chief minister Narendra Modi as the BJP's PM candidate. 

Today when the bill was passed the opposition was not present in the assembly. The Modi government took the full advantage of this situation and passed the controversial bill without any consultation, according to reports.

Rs 25 lakh robbery in Ghaziabad factory

Ghaziabad: Armed robbers made away with brassware and other goods worth over Rs 25 lakh from a hardware manufacturing factory here in Uttar Pradesh. 

Police said the robbers broke into the factory around Monday midnight. They dumped all the precious raw and finished material onto the truck they had brought along and escaped. 

A security guard is missing since the incident happened. The police are searching for him. Also looted were manufacturing machinery, police officer Ran Vijay Singh.