Opponents of Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe have vowed to drive him from office saying the state was already at "war" with its own people. Arthur Mutambara, the leader of one of the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), yesterday delivered the strongest call for action yet against the increasingly violent regime."If there is going to be any war, this is the time to declare war," he said. The Oxford and MIT-educated professor was among those detained and beaten by police at a peaceful prayer meeting on Sunday. "I can assure Robert Mugabe that this is the end game. We are going to do it by democratic means, by being beaten up and by being arrested - but we are going to do it," Mr Mutambara said. "We are in the final stage of the final push. We are not going to allow a dictator who is sitting on us to determine the means of confrontation against him."
A relative outsider to Zimbabwean politics who was pursuing an academic and business career in the US when the MDC was set up, Mr Mutambara also signalled a truce in the factional divide that has hit the opposition. Our core business is to drive Mugabe out of town. There is no going back in working together against Robert Mugabe and his surrogates," he told supporters in Harare.
Morgan Tsvangirai, who heads the main MDC faction, was released from hospital yesterday after treatment for serious head wounds inflicted by police. The assault on the opposition leader provoked an outraged response from around the world and appears to have reunited a fractured opposition in the crisis-stricken country. However, the chorus of disapproval has not been heard in neighbouring South Africa, where the Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu strongly rebuked African leaders yesterday for their failure to rein in Robert Mugabe. "We Africans should hang our heads in shame," said Dr Tutu of the largely lukewarm response from African leaders, who have hitherto given Mr Mugabe a lifeline despite his ever escalating human rights abuses. Dr Tutu, who together with Nelson Mandela is widely regarded as South Africa's moral conscience, asked in a statement yesterday. "How can what is happening in Zimbabwe elicit hardly a word of concern let alone condemnation from us leaders of Africa?" The bishop, who once described Mr Mugabe as either "mentally deranged" or "a cartoon figure of an archetypal African dictator," said all leaders in Africa should condemn the Zimbabwe government. Dr Tutu seemed to have been particularly angered by the South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has not commented on this week's turmoil in Zimbabwe.
Mr Mbeki seems to have delegated his deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, to comment on the matter. Mr Pahad has issued one statement which infuriated the local media by its call on Zimbabwe's opposition to help in creating an environment conducive to dialogue. Although the statement also urged the Zimbabwe government to restore the rule of law, it was considered a very lukewarm response.
Mr Mandela said in a statement to The Independent that he was concerned by the situation and hoped that African institutions would help resolve it. But an unrepentant Mr Mugabe told the youth league to defend the country's independence and said the MDC was being funded by the West, which he blames for a campaign to topple him. "They think we are weak, think we have lost the resolve to defend our freedom," he charged. "They are wrong and stand for great shock if they continue to stretch our patience."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/17/2007 00:00 ||
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I get the ugly feeling that the blood is just beginning to flow in ZimBobway. Reading Mugabe's comments only adds to that that.
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However, the chorus of disapproval has not been heard in neighbouring South Africa, where the Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu strongly rebuked African leaders yesterday for their failure to rein in Robert Mugabe. "We Africans should hang our heads in shame," said Dr Tutu of the largely lukewarm response from African leaders, who have hitherto given Mr Mugabe a lifeline despite his ever escalating human rights abuses. Dr Tutu, who together with Nelson Mandela is widely regarded as South Africa's moral conscience, asked in a statement yesterday. "How can what is happening in Zimbabwe elicit hardly a word of concern let alone condemnation from us leaders of Africa?"
How nice to see Tutu finally reel in his usual blame upon the West for all of Africa's ills.
Kim du Toit is squarely on topic with his stand that it is time to "Let Africa Sink". Let moronic liberals like Tutu see how their pseudo-religious doctrine can somehow fix all (monetary) responsibility upon the West.
Worst of all, it is not just Zimbabwe that is "Africa's Shame". The whole d@mn continent is doomed by its pervasive tribalism, endemic corruption and utter lack of moral fiber. This supremely negative confluence of morally corrosive practices condemns the "Dark Continent" to just that, darkness - complete and total. Other than protecting its endangered species or innocent women and children, do not ask me why anything should be done for a culture of undeservedly privileged manhood whose sole aim is utter destruction.
Twenty importers and C & F agents, including Awami League leader Haji Mohammad Selim, have been sued for evading customs duty amounting to Tk 5 crore against the goods imported from India through Sonamasjid land port. Bhudeb Chakravorty, a customs official of Sonamasjid land port, yesterday lodged seven separate cases with Shibganj Police Station under the Special Powers Act.
According to the FIRs, the importers managed release of the goods they imported from India without paying customs duty in 2004. The accused C & F agents denied the charge and alleged that the customs authorities had filed the cases for harassing them although they duly paid customs duty on their consignments.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/17/2007 00:00 ||
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Many leaders and workers of BNP believe that the party can survive the ongoing shake-ups in the political landscape only through a radical change in its leadership. They said no way will the organisation be able to retain its popular support if it remains under the leadership of Tarique Rahman and the other big names now detained for alleged graft. Some of them think that it might even face political extinction with Chairperson Khaleda Zia or her son Tarique at the helm as their image has suffered an irreparable damage due to "corruption to an unbelievable extent". Merely serves to reinforce my belief that democracy is no better than most other political systems unless it's founded on the concept of individual liberty.
According to a BNP insider, a group of leaders want to reorganise the party under the guidance of Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan. In last two weeks, leaders from different levels met Bhuiyan and requested him to take up the leadership and steer the immediate past ruling party out of troubled waters. But the former LGRD and cooperatives minister neither welcomed nor dismissed the idea.
Things seem even more adverse for BNP with Tarique, senior joint secretary general, becoming known to have multiple foreign accounts. Allegations of graft are rife against most other senior leaders and key persons. "You just name one who should run the party. We want to do politics but who will be our leader. They all are corrupt and they have no right to lead the party or the country," a former BNP lawmaker told The Daily Star recently, talking about arrests of Tarique and a number of ex-ministers and lawmakers.
A leader of the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD), the student wing of BNP, said, "A popular party like ours cannot remain under the leadership of a group of thieves. Now we simply cannot do without self-correction."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/17/2007 00:00 ||
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If AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, who is condemned to death for the killings of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family, seeks asylum in any country, the Bangladesh Government will request that country not to give him shelter. Moreover, the government will take state level initiatives to bring him back to the country using benefits of cooperation among countries as part of their mutual anti-terrorism measures, as he is a convicted fugitive. "He will have to come back to the country if he doesn't get asylum in any other country after being deported from the US. It is almost certain that the US will not allow him to stay there," Law Adviser Mainul Hosein told The Daily Star last evening.
Asked whether the government will try to dissuade a country if Mohiuddin seeks asylum there, Mainul said, "We will request that country not to give him asylum."
When BBC Bangla Service asked Mainul what state level initiatives will be taken when there is no extradition treaty between Bangladesh and the US, he said bringing Mohiuddin back will not be a problem. "Now countries are cooperating with each other formally and informally as part of their anti-terrorism measures. So bringing him back will not be a problem, if nothing else arises," Mainul said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/17/2007 00:00 ||
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French workers are indeed more productive than their American counterparts, but what about all those unemployed French?Not long ago, Corinne Maier boasted in The New York Times that "... in many years French workers have a higher productivity rate than their American counterparts."
Measures of productivity do regularly reveal French workers to be more productive than American workers. So Ms. Maier, a trained economist, must be right to conclude that this statistic is "proof that you can work better by working less."
In fact, she's probably mistaken.
France's labor regulations are much more burdensome than those in the US. By artificially raising the cost of hiring workers in France, these regulations make it unprofitable to hire the lowest-skilled workers. One result is that only higher-skilled workers get jobs in France. But because US labor regulations are less restrictive, a higher proportion of low-skilled workers find jobs in America.
With a larger proportion of highly skilled workers, France's average productivity is bound to be higher.
But the French shouldn't be cheering.
I drive this point home to my students by asking them what would happen to average worker productivity if Uncle Sam were to impose a minimum wage of $500 per hour. The correct answer is: "The productivity of the average worker would skyrocket!" This achievement, however, would be no cause for celebration, for this higher productivity would result chiefly from the firing of all workers incapable of producing at least $500 worth of output per hour. Measured productivity in America would jump impressively even as the US economy tanked and most workers were cast into lasting unemployment.
The larger lesson is that proper interpretations of statistics often are surprisingly counterintuitive.
After all, our intuition tells us that countries with higher labor productivity do better economically than do countries with lower worker productivity. But our intuition is wrong.
Statistics can also fool us when averages change over time. Suppose that the average real-wage rate in the US falls. Do we conclude that American workers are worse off? That's one possible explanation. But before jumping to that conclusion, be aware that another, very different, explanation might better fit the facts.
If lower-skilled workers enter the labor force in unusually large numbers, the average wage rate will fall without necessarily reducing any worker's pay. Indeed, the typical worker can even see his real-wage rate rise while the average rate falls!
To see how, suppose that you calculate the average height of people in the room where you now sit and find that it is 5 ft., 6 in. Now suppose a 2-year-old child enters the room. The average height of people in that room suddenly falls. Few of us would make the mistake of concluding that those people were shrinking in size. Some of them might even have grown taller. Yet how often do we hear politicians use statistics in just this specious manner.
The same logic applies to the calculation of average wage rates. Changes in this figure can be caused by changes in the composition of the labor force rather than by changes in the wages of individual workers.
For example, if teenagers, immigrants, and other lower-skilled workers start entering the labor force in larger numbers, they will lower the average wage rate because lower-skilled workers generally are paid lower wages than those paid to higher-skilled workers.
This fall in the average wage rate, however, does not signal that workers' fortunes are declining. In fact, in this case it is evidence of economic health: The economy is sufficiently flexible to provide jobs to workers who haven't yet acquired valuable skills.
A less-flexible economy, such as France's, which makes it difficult for lower-skilled workers to find jobs, will not "suffer" any such fall in its average wage rate. But that fact, surely, is small comfort to the many poor people left unemployed.
Of course, in the other direction, if higher-skilled workers begin entering the labor force in unusually large numbers, they can pull up the average wage rate even if the wages of ordinary workers don't change.
None of this is to suggest that statistics are useless. Quite the contrary, statistics are indispensable to grasp reality better and to distinguish explanations that are correct from explanations that are merely plausible or even downright erroneous. But statistics will assist us in our quest for understanding only if we approach them critically, aware that they can mislead as easily as they can enlighten.
Donald J. Boudreaux is chairman of the economics department at George Mason University.
PRISTINA, Serbia - Kosovos prime minister said on Friday that UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari has proposed giving the disputed Serbian province independence in a plan submitted to the United Nations overnight.
The proposal for the Kosovo status is (at the UN headquarters) in New York and it is as we expected it to be, because Ahtisaari was very clear in his proposal on Kosovos status, Agim Ceku told reporters. It remains now for Ahtisaari himself on April 3 to explain the content of his proposal to the members of the Contact Group and reasons which led him to propose independence for Kosovo, said the ethnic Albanian leader.
The UN Security Council will be asked in the coming weeks to consider a plan put forward by Ahtisaari following the failure of year-long talks between Serbia and Kosovo Albanians. The plan, which Ahtisaari revised after a final round of talks that ended deadlocked on Saturday, would grant Kosovo self-rule, its own flag and anthem and membership in international organisations.
According to Albanian-language Kosovo media on Friday, the proposals sent overnight to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon contain a previously unseen annex that recommends granting Kosovo independence. The plan for solving Kosovos status contains a concrete proposal for monitored independence, said Sejdiu, adding it was crucial that the United States and European Union fully backed the process.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/17/2007 00:00 ||
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UN Plan Proposes
Right there is where I stop Reading.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/17/2007 21:27 Comments ||
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Once NATO withdraws, Serbs will show 'em independence.
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That would complete the Clinton betrayal of Serbs. Kosovo Muslims are Ottoman pollutants of Europe. Serbs have been and are, an integral part of Western Civilization.
Bosnia and Kosovo are nothing more than terror bases.
Waxman was not getting the answers he wants and uses his position as a bully-pulpit to try to shut her up when he realizes it. She handled herself really well, and Waxmans BS attacks didnt knock her off balance.
The absurdity on this is that Plame herself has committed perjury (about not recommending her husband for the Niger trip to the CIA).
Full disclosure: the child is being treated at the institution where I work.
In the first case of its kind in years, a 2-year-old boy is being treated in Chicago for a rare and life-threatening infection that he contracted from his father, a U.S. Army soldier recently vaccinated against smallpox. The Indiana boy is in critical condition with eczema vaccinatum, an unusual side effect of the smallpox vaccine that can affect people who receive the shot or their close contacts.
CDC link on eczema vaccinatum, with pics, is here.
Doctors also said the boy appears to have passed the infection to his mother, who has a much milder case of the virus in the smallpox vaccine, which is also called vaccinia. The virus is not smallpox, though it is similar enough to offer protection from that deadly disease, which was declared eradicated in 1980.
The mother and child are being treated at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital, which withheld their names at the family's request. There is no infection risk for the general population, government officials say, since the vaccine virus can spread only through close physical contact.
Correct. No cause for alarm.
But the boy's diagnosis last week has prompted a frenzy of activity and daily conference calls involving the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the state and city public health departments. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave emergency authorization for the hospital to treat the boy with ST-246, an experimental drug for smallpox that is untried as a therapy in humans.
The smallpox vaccine fell out of general use in the 1970s, but the case could be a lesson for the U.S. military, which has vaccinated 1.2 million personnel against smallpox since 2002 amid fears of bioterrorism.
We vaccinate the soldiers because we don't quite trust the thugs and dictators of the world not to possess a stock of smallpox. This is an unfortunate, though fortunately rare, complication.
It's unclear why the father was allowed to have contact with his son, who had a history of eczema, shortly after the vaccination. The skin condition is a well-known risk factor for eczema vaccinatum, and official guidelines warn that people with eczema should avoid contact with vaccinees.
That's also correct, and the investigation is necessary.
"We are looking into how this could have happened," said U.S. Army spokesman Paul Boyce.
Officials say the general population could receive smallpox vaccinations in the event of a bioterrorist attack or other unforeseen exposure. For that reason, experts want to study the Indiana family to learn more about treatment and transmission of the vaccinia infection. "There certainly are also conceivable insights into smallpox infection," said Dr. Inger Damon, chief of the CDC's poxvirus and rabies branch. Damon has been involved in the daily conference calls on the boy's treatment.
Experts said they knew of no cases of eczema vaccinatum since at least 1990, when the military last had a program of smallpox vaccination.
The father of the Indiana boy received the vaccine in late January before a planned military deployment. The Army delayed his departure and permitted him to visit his family in mid-February. Two weeks later, a rash broke out on the boy's skin. He came to the U. of C. on March 3 after being transferred from St. Catherine's Hospital in East Chicago. Doctors first identified his widespread rash as a different form of eczema, but it worsened in his first few days at the U. of C.
His mother developed sores after she and her son arrived at the Chicago hospital. Doctors believe she contracted the disease from the boy because of their lengthy close contact.
A pediatric dermatologist, Dr. Sarah Stein, noticed the boy's lesions had changed to look like round blisters with a dimple in the middle--a potential sign of vaccinia infection. The medical team took scrapings from the lesions, which they analyzed and sent to the Illinois Department of Public Health's Chicago office for further testing.
Kudos to my colleague for recognizing this -- I'm not sure the average good dermatologist would have twigged to this diagnosis right off. I'm comfortably certain that I would not have.
Rapid tests by the state and further tests at the CDC confirmed the boy had the vaccinia virus, officials at those agencies said. The hospital also sent the CDC photos of the boy's lesions.
The hospital already was using infection precautions with the boy, but staffers then added such measures as gloves and face masks. They also placed the boy in a room with negative pressure so the air would always blow inward, keeping the virus inside.
The boy's rash had spread to cover 80 percent of his body, said Dr. Madelyn Kahana, chief of pediatric intensive care medicine at the U. of C. He was going into sepsis, a devastating, systemwide infection rarely seen with viral cases. "In the later stages of [eczema vaccinatum], it can look like smallpox," said Damon of the CDC. The boy needed a ventilator to help his breathing because of the powerful pain medication he needed for the lesions.
This is very serious, and the strongest supportive care is required. As it turns out, the Comer Hospital is virtually brand new -- built two years ago. The pediatric ICU (I've been there) is very modern and has the negative-pressure rooms, isolation gear, etc, to treat this young lad. It's absolutely state of the art.
The boy received the primary treatment for eczema vaccinatum, a drug called vaccinia immune globulin, or VIG. The drug came from a stockpile the CDC keeps in case widespread vaccination ever becomes necessary. He also got an antiviral drug called cidofovir and the experimental drug ST-246, which has been shown to protect laboratory animals from exposure to smallpox. The drug recently entered preliminary human trials but had never been used in a sick patient.
U. of C. officials said the boy has shown signs of improvement since hitting a low point last weekend. His mother's health was never in serious danger, but she has remained in his hospital room to keep others from being exposed. Health officials in Chicago and Indiana have tracked all of the family's contacts and found no additional cases so far.
Kahana said the boy probably will lose 20 percent of his outer skin layer, but she hopes he will recover without the need for skin grafts. She believes the case should be a lesson to the military, which must educate service members about the risks of the vaccines it requires them to take. "I think the information simply wasn't disseminated properly or impressed in a manner that was understood," Kahana said, "because I don't think anyone would knowingly expose their child to this."
I think that's exactly right. You have a rare but extremely serious complication, and a one-time mistake in the post-vaccination protocol. 99.999% of the time it won't matter, but the one time it does, this is what happens. Prayers for the lad and his family.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/17/2007 13:18 ||
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The boy needed a ventilator to help his breathing because of the powerful pain medication he needed for the lesions
My fervent wish is that he is off the ventilator and climbing out of the pit.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/17/2007 15:44 Comments ||
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Where else but the 'Burg could one read that story and get the "rest of the story?" I read it elsewhere earlier and was clueless.
Thanks, Dr. Steve.
#4
wow Dr Steve. Thank You for sharing with us this tragic yet fascinating case.
The poor kid must be suffering like hell gauging from those images. It really hit home after looking thru the cases you provided with the link.
Heart breaking and to think of the torture the father and mother must be going through, jeeze I sure hope they have all the support they can get.
Dr. Steve is the smallpox vaccine used today any different that the vaccine us old super studs were vacinated with back in the 50s and 60s?
1) You have a pool of vacinees ie, 1.2 million service personal [not counting civilians] who have had the *new* smallpox vaccine.
2) You have one case of eczema vaccinatum.
3) Any 2 year old kid is going to have very close contact with his mom and pop.
4) Can one make the leap then that it isn't the fault of the father, or our vaccination program but that it was most probably fate that poor kid had a vulnerability, a compromised immune system which left him open to the life threatening condition?
The boy needed a ventilator to help his breathing because of the powerful pain medication he needed for the lesions.
Before I first saw the pics I was hoping against hope that at least the poor kid wasn't suffering, wishful thinking.. sounds way way bad, what medicines are they likely giving him to relieve his pain Dr. Steve?
#5
I'm very happy to see that this child is having everything possible done for him. I'll just wryly note how I wish our returning soldiers could receive even one tenth the quality of care that this kid is getting.
Another round of applause for Dr. Steve on bringing the facts behind this incident to light.
#7
In this case, Steve correct me if I'm wrong, close contact means actual touching of the smallpox vaccination site. Normally you're told about this.
I hope that the skin comes back, and as a youngster he has a better chance than others might. Still, smallpox is a scarring disease and I would expect its relatives to be also. Race is a factor since some races tend to form scars called keltoids and a much higher rate than others.
Pakistan riot police fired rubber bullets at protesters yesterday and arrested dozens of people as they tried to contain an angry protest over the sacking of the nation's top judge. Hundreds of demonstrators hurled rocks and bottles at paramilitary troops and police outside the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was due to attend a hearing into misconduct charges.
Violent clashes also broke out in the eastern city of Lahore despite overnight raids by police across the country that seized lawyers, opposition party activists and Muslim hardliners. Military ruler President Pervez Musharraf drew international condemnation when he sacked Chaudhry last week, a move that also set off days of rallies and intensified Islamist and secular opposition anger over his leadership. The opposition says Musharraf is trying to intimidate the judiciary before they hear key issues -- including his planned re-election by parliament and his dual role as president and army chief -- later this year.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/17/2007 00:00 ||
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Pak Chief Justice being forced into a car. He had sent away his car and driver, insisting he and his wife would walk to the courthouse.
Well, the Pak police had different ideas...
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/17/2007 6:49 Comments ||
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A former Pak President got arrested as well..
Riot police in Islamabad fired tear gas today and detained dozens of protesters - including an opposition leader and President Musharraf's predecessor as president (Rafiq Tarar)as demonstrations spread over the Governments sacking of Pakistans chief judge.
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/17/2007 6:50 Comments ||
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Police in Pakistan's Lahore city stormed a convention of lawyers on Saturday and arrested several of them.
Lawyers attending the meet were brutally beaten up and lawyers in the High Court struck back with stones, reports say.
The High Court has now been sealed. The violent standoff began after President Pervez Musharraf suspended Chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhry.
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/17/2007 6:59 Comments ||
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Here's the worst part of all of this: the Paks are making me feel sorry for lawyers.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/17/2007 11:59 Comments ||
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Posted by: John Frum ||
03/17/2007 14:57 Comments ||
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It is reliably learnt that a group of six corps commanders in the Pakistan Army has jointly written to President Pervez Musharraf expressing their disquiet over the unwise manner in which the case of Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury, the suspended Chief Justice, has been handled by Musharraf and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and over the shocking ransacking of the offices of the GEO TV, a private TV, channel and the manhandling of Hamid Mir, its leading journalist, who is well known all over the world, on March 16,2007.
Rattled by the continuing demonstrations, the criticism by some of his officers and the first public remarks by the US State Department indicating unease over his action, Musharraf has asked Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, the former Prime Minister, who is a good personal friend of the suspended Chief Justice, to find a face-saving. Both are from Balochistan.
The face-saving formula now under discussion envisages a ruling by the SJC that the charges against the suspended Chief Justice were not serious enough to warrant any action against him, his restoration to his position as the Chief Justice and an assurance by him that while the cases relating to the missing persons (many of them are in the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay) would continue to be on his file, he will not pursue them . He will adjourn the hearings on them repeatedly. The Chief justice is till now not prepared to give this assurance.
Musharraf has promised Jamali that if he persuades the suspended Chief Justice to co-operate, he would restore him (Jamali) to the post of the Prime Minister from which he was replaced by Shaukat Aziz in 2004.
As part of the damage control, Musharraf has blamed the police and the para-military forces for the ransacking of the GEO TV office and the manhandling of Hamid Mir. He is trying to project it as a rogue operation by the police and para-military officers, which shocked him.
He has already suspended 15 police officers for this. These suspensions have caused resentment against him in the police. Reliable police sources say that the order to silence the GEO TV and Hamid Mir came from Tariq Aziz, Musharraf's National Security Adviser. The police officers are furious that now they are being made the fall guy.
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/17/2007 15:04 Comments ||
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As India and US struggle to hammer out a civilian nuclear agreement, some heavy water is quietly flowing between the two countries. For the first time, India exported 4.4 metric tonnes of heavy water to an American firm Spectra Gases, headquartered in New Jersey with branches in the UK, Germany and Singapore.
Confirming the deal to TOI, Heavy Water Board (HWB) chief executive A L N Rao, said on Friday the consignment sailed from Mumbai on February 25 and was expected to reach US shores on March 23. He, however, declined to say from which Indian atomic facility the heavy water was sourced. The capacity utilisation of all the heavy water plants till December 2006 was 113%.
Heavy water molecules have two atoms of the hydrogen isotope deuterium bonded with an atom of oxygen, making its properties slightly different from normal water which is H2O. It's functions as a moderated in nuclear reactors which use unenriched uranium and helps stabilise the fast-paced and volatile chain reactions.
The development, according to the nuclear fraternity, indicates that tables have turned with India supplying a sensitive nuclear component to a major nuclear power like US. "Generally, it has been the other way round," remarked an atomic official. "The quantity dispatched may be small. But the export of heavy water from India to US for the first time is very important and significant in view of the on going negotiations relating to the nuke deal," said Rao.
He said that the American firm imported heavy water from India because of its excellent quality and "highest purity" level. India is the world's second largest heavy water producer and has exported it to other countries.
India sold 100 tonnes of heavy water to South Korea in 1996 and 30 tonnes to China in June 2003. An official of HWB said India joined the heavy water export club in 1996, two years before its nuclear weapons test in May 1998.
"We are not a major player at the moment because the quantity we are exporting currently is not very big. We are, however, confident the demand from India will pick up in the coming years because of the excellent quality of our heavy water," he said.
Spectra, the US heavy water buyer carries out research in areas like fibre optics, medicine, semiconductors and also high purity gases for handling what is known as the equipment market.
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/17/2007 00:00 ||
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Ask RBeeees resident immam about heavy brown water.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/17/2007 15:52 Comments ||
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from wikipedia
Experiments in mice, rats, and dogs [2] have shown that a degree of 25% deuteration causes (sometimes irreversible) sterility, because neither gametes nor zygotes can develop. High concentrations of heavy water (90 %) rapidly kills fish, tadpoles, flatworms, and drosophila. Mammals such as rats given heavy water to drink die after a week, at a time when their body water approaches about 50% deuteration. The mode of death appears to be the same as that in cytotoxic poisoning (such as chemotherapy) or in acute radiation syndrome (though, of course, deuterium is not radioactive), and is due to deuterium's action in generally inhibiting cell division. Deuterium oxide has even been tested as a chemotherapeutic agent, but it seems to offer no advantages. As in chemotherapy, deuterium-poisoned mammals die of a failure of bone marrow (bleeding and infection) and intestinal-barrier functions (diarrhea and fluid loss).
Because it would take a very great deal of heavy water to replace 25% to 50% of a human being's body water (70% of body weight) with heavy water, accidental or intentional poisoning with heavy water is unlikely to the point of practical disregard. For a poisoning, large amounts of heavy water would need to be ingested without significant normal water intake for many days to produce any noticeable toxic effects (although in a few tests, volunteers drinking large amounts of heavy water have reported dizziness, a possible effect of density changes in the fluid in the inner ear). For example, a 70 kg human containing 50 kg of water and drinking 3 liters of pure heavy water per day, would need to do this for almost 5 days to reach 25% deuteration, and for about 11 days to approach 50% deuteration. Thus, it would take a week of drinking nothing but pure heavy water for a human to begin to feel ill, and 10 days to 2 weeks (depending on water intake) for severe poisoning and death.
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/17/2007 16:28 Comments ||
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thx John, that said, I stand by my first take: don't drink it :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/17/2007 17:02 Comments ||
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Any Brewmiester worth a salt knows that a lb. of Heavy Water Beer taste much heavier than a lb. of Lite Beer.
#7
LOL Valentine - of course ...you die from something else
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/17/2007 19:26 Comments ||
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Mechanisms of cytotoxic effects of heavy water (deuterium oxide: D2O) on cancer cells.
by Takeda H et al. Shimane Medical University, Japan
D2O was found to significantly inhibit the invasion of tumor cells in a Matrigel invasion chamber assay at concentrations higher than 10% D2O. Incubation with D2O resulted in enlargement of cells, nuclear pyknosis and vacuolization, and immunostaining studies demonstrated that D2O treatment resulted in an increase in nuclear nick-end-labeling, which indicates DNA fragmentation, in KATO-3 and HepG2 cell lines. Furthermore, the nucleic acids and protein synthesis inhibition assay suggested that the inhibition of DNA synthesis may be one of the mechanisms responsible for the antitumor effects of D2O. Furthermore, oral administration of D2O resulted in a significant inhibition of the growth of Panc-1 tumor xenografted s.c. in nude mice, but survival was not prolonged. In conclusion, D2O has cytotoxic and cytostatic activities against human digestive organ cancer cell lines, and D2O may be a potential anticancer agent.
Posted by: John Frum ||
03/17/2007 19:57 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Opponents of Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe have vowed to drive him from office saying the state was already at "war" with its own people. Arthur Mutambara, the leader of one of the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), yesterday delivered the strongest call for action yet against the increasingly violent regime."If there is going to be any war, this is the time to declare war," he said. The Oxford and MIT-educated professor was among those detained and beaten by police at a peaceful prayer meeting on Sunday. "I can assure Robert Mugabe that this is the end game. We are going to do it by democratic means, by being beaten up and by being arrested - but we are going to do it," Mr Mutambara said. "We are in the final stage of the final push. We are not going to allow a dictator who is sitting on us to determine the means of confrontation against him."
As India and US struggle to hammer out a civilian nuclear agreement, some heavy water is quietly flowing between the two countries. For the first time, India exported 4.4 metric tonnes of heavy water to an American firm Spectra Gases, headquartered in New Jersey with branches in the UK, Germany and Singapore.
