Monday, February 8, 2010

UN political chief heads to DPR Korea for talks with senior officials

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, B. Lynn Pascoe
8 February 2010 – >The top United Nations political official will arrive in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) tomorrow for talks with senior Government officials after wrapping up meetings in Beijing and Seoul. As the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe will depart the Chinese capital tomorrow morning to hold comprehensive talks on all issues of mutual interest and concern with the DPRK during his visit to Pyongyang, slated to run from today through Friday.
While in the DPRK, he also plans to meet with the UN country team and foreign diplomats, as well as visit several UN project sites.
Over the weekend in Seoul, Mr. Pascoe held talks with officials from the Republic of Korea – including Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and the country’s chief negotiator to the Six-Party Talks, which also involve Japan, China, Russia and the United States – on its relationship with the UN as well as the DPRK, among other topics.
Mr. Pascoe also conferred with UN-related civil society leaders, including former prime minister Han Seung-soo, who is now president of the World Federation of UN Associations (WFUNA), before travelling to Beijing for talks with officials from that country.
In September, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with the DPRK’s Vice Foreign Minister Park Gil Yon at UN Headquarters in New York, where he discussed the country’s nuclear issue along with the humanitarian and human rights situations.
In a report to the General Assembly last year, Mr. Ban voiced concern over the impact of the humanitarian situation on human rights in the country, where more than one third of the nearly 24 million-strong population is in need of food assistance.
The Asian nation’s humanitarian problems – including food shortages, a crumbling health system and lack of access to safe drinking water – seriously “hamper the fulfilment of human rights of the population,” he wrote.

Iranian move to step up uranium enrichment worries UN nuclear chief

Director General Yukiya Amano

8 February 2010 – The head of the United Nations atomic watchdog expressed concern at Iran’s announcement today that it will step up its enrichment of uranium, with the country having still not signed an international agreement on fuel for its civilian nuclear research site in the capital, Tehran. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that it was informed by Iran in a letter that it will enhance its enrichment of the material to nearly 20 per cent for use at the Tehran Research Reactor, which produces medical radioisotopes for therapeutic and diagnostic procedures.
The enrichment process, the nation told the UN body, will take place at a plant in Natanz in central Iran.
According to a statement by IAEA spokesperson Gill Tudor, Director General Yukiya Amano is concerned that Iran’s move will effect “ongoing international efforts to ensure the availability of nuclear fuel” for use at the civilian research site in the capital.
“The Director General reiterated the agency’s readiness to play an intermediary role on the issue” of the Tehran reactor, Ms. Tudor said.
Last October, an agreement on fuel for the Tehran site was put forward during talks at the IAEA’s Vienna headquarters. Iran has said it needs more time to provide a response, while the other three parties to the talks – France, Russia and the United States – have all indicated their approval of the agreement.
In his last address to the IAEA Board of Governors in November, Mr. Amano’s predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei, declared that the agency had reached a “dead end” with Iran, noting that there had been no movement in over a year in resolving outstanding issues related to its nuclear programme.
The proposed agreement, he said, is a unique opportunity to address a humanitarian need and create space for negotiations.
“I am disappointed that Iran has not so far agreed to the original proposal or the alternative modalities, both of which I believe are balanced and fair and would greatly help to alleviate the concerns relating to Iran's nuclear programme,” stated Mr. ElBaradei.
“This opportunity should be seized and it would be highly regrettable if it was missed,” he added.
The IAEA has also urged Iran to clarify the purpose of an enrichment plant near the city of Qom, southwest of Tehran, after the country disclosed its existence last September.
Iran has stated that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, but some other countries contend it is driven by military ambitions. The issue has been of international concern since the discovery in 2003 that the country had concealed its nuclear activities for nearly two decades in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Microchip Technology to Present at the Thomas Weisel Partners 2010 Technology and Telecom Conference

Microchip Technology to Present at the Thomas Weisel Partners 2010 Technology and Telecom Conference



CHANDLER, Ariz., Feb 08, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Microchip Technology Incorporated /quotes/comstock/15*!mchp/quotes/nls/mchp (MCHP 26.30, +0.02, +0.08%) , a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, announced today that the Company will present at the Thomas Weisel Partners 2010 Technology and Telecom Conference on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, at 3:15 p.m. (Pacific Time). Presenting for the Company will be Mr. Steve Sanghi, President and Chief Executive Officer and Mr. Eric Bjornholt, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. A live webcast of the presentation will be made available by Thomas Weisel Partners, and can be accessed on the Microchip website at www.microchip.com.
Any forward looking statements made during the presentation are qualified in their entirety by the discussion of risks set forth in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Copies of SEC filings can be obtained for free at the SEC's Web site (www.sec.gov) or from commercial document retrieval services.
Microchip Technology Inc. is a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, providing risk-free product development, lower total system cost and faster time to market for thousands of diverse customer applications worldwide. Headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, Microchip offers outstanding technical support along with dependable delivery and quality. For more information, visit the Microchip website at www.microchip.com.
The Microchip logo and name are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated.

Swine flu 'will be contained' WHO donates vaccine for Cup

Deputy Health Minister Molefi Sefularo said swine flu would not put a damper on the World Cup in June - thanks to a donation of more than 3million doses of vaccine by the UN's World Health Organisation.

Speaking in Pretoria, Sefularo said he was confident that the virus would be contained during the World Cup.
South Africa had ordered about 1.3million doses of swine flu vaccine to deal with the expected outbreak, but the WHO offered a further 3million doses to help restrict the spread of the virus.
"Overall, we don't think swine flu will be our biggest challenge. We have learned from last year how to deal with an outbreak so it won't be a major problem," he said.
Sefularo said he hoped the vaccine donated by the WHO would be used starting in April, when South Africa embarks on a national swine flu vaccination drive.
But Sefularo warned that other diseases, such as measles, could be spread in South Africa by World Cup visitors.
He said South African border posts would carry greater risk of disease transfer than airports.
"We believe that a lot of people will be coming into the country through the borders rather than [through] the airports," he said.
"I'm very happy about the readiness around the stadiums but areas of concern are outside Fifa's authorised public viewing spaces, where people will meet in spontaneous gatherings. It's hard to plan for such gatherings," Sefularo said.
Sefularo was updating World Cup health co-ordinators from around the country involved in emergency medical services, hospital services, port health, environmental health, communicable diseases control, health promotion and the military health service.
Pumzile Kedama, the 2010 health readiness head, said the focus was on border posts to ensure that there would not be a disease outbreak.
Exotic foods carried by visitors will be checked.
"We will have port health officers stationed at the border posts to ensure that anyone entering the country is not a health risk," Kedama said.

How to fight childhood obesity in 3 steps

Obesity comes down to eating too much and not being active enough, a psychologist said.
Tuesday night, a Larry King prime-time exclusive with first lady Michelle Obama on the first family's first year in the White House. Plus, she's getting tough on childhood obesity and tells why you should too! Send us your questions for the first lady at CNN.com/LarryKing. "Larry King Live," Tuesday Night, 9 p.m. ET
(Health.com) -- Worried about your child's weight? You can do more than just nag him or her about eating too much junk food. Implementing three healthy family habits--eating dinner together, making sure they get enough sleep, and limiting TV--may help.
The combination of these three habits is associated with a lower risk of obesity in children, according to a new study.
The study, which included 8,550 4-year-olds from around the United States, found that children who ate dinner with their families more than five times a week, slept for at least 10.5 hours a night, and watched less than two hours of TV a day were 40 percent less likely to be obese than children who did none of those things.
Roughly one in seven children who practiced all three of the behaviors was obese, compared with one in four youngsters who practiced none of them, according to the study, which was published in Pediatrics.
Even maintaining just one of the routines--all of which, on their own, have been linked to a lower risk of childhood obesity in previous studies--lowered the odds that a child would be obese by about 25 percent, the study found.
"We found an independent effect of each, which suggests that doing more of them was better," says lead study author Sarah Anderson, Ph.D., an assistant professor of epidemiology at Ohio State University. "If you were doing one, adding another one--either one--was associated with a lower prevalence of obesity."
Many families in the study were already implementing at least some of the behaviors. Nearly 40 percent of the families practiced two of the three, which lowered the odds that a child was obese nearly as much as all three, the researchers found. However, just 15 percent of families practiced all three of the behaviors, according to the study.
Households were more likely to practice all three if they were white, if they were two-parent families, if the mother wasn't obese, if the mother had a bachelor's degree, or if the household income was higher.
Significantly, however, the study found that the link between the behaviors and the lower risk of obesity held even after they controlled for a family's economic status and other factors, which suggests that the behaviors are beneficial regardless of a family's circumstances.
"We should encourage parents to have these routines for young children," says Anderson. "In some families it's going to be harder to do these things [because of] social and economic constraints, but we should consider what would make it possible for them to have these routines in their household."
William T. Dalton III, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at East Tennessee State University, says that the relationship between the three routines in the study--as well as other factors that weren't studied--is complex, and that they are likely interconnected.
"If kids are getting adequate sleep, they're going to have more energy during the day to be physically active," says Dalton, who has researched the link between families and obesity but was not involved in the current study. Similarly, he adds, children who eat dinner at the table with their family aren't eating in front of the TV, a bad habit that often leads to less mindful eating and doesn't teach children how to regulate their food intake.
The larger household context needs to be considered, says Dalton, not just certain behaviors in isolation. "I think it's important to look at broader family functioning, in terms of how families work as a unit," he says. "Are the families where kids don't get enough sleep the types of families that have other challenges? [Maybe] both parents are working, so they let the kids stay up later because that's their only chance to see them, and then staying up later leads to more snacking."
Anderson acknowledges that the study, which used surveys to gauge the frequency of each routine in households, says little about how each household implemented the behaviors. "We don't know who was eating dinner with the kids, what kind of TV was watched, or how well the child slept," she says. Nor did she and her co-author assess what kind of food the children ate or how physically active they were.
Anderson and her co-author are unable to say with any certainty that eating dinner together more often, getting more sleep, and watching less TV will help any given child lose weight, because of the other factors that may contribute to a child's obesity (or that may protect normal-weight children from becoming obese).
Still, says Anderson, "We feel comfortable recommending these routines for the prevention of obesity. They may have a potential benefit for obesity, they also have a benefit for children's development, and they're not likely to cause the child any harm." Although more research is needed to prove that these routines directly lower childhood obesity, she adds, parents shouldn't wait to implement the behaviors in the study.
Nor, says Dalton, should the routines outlined in the study distract parents from the most important contributors to childhood obesity. In the end, he says, "It still comes down to eating too much and not being active enough."

Space shuttle Endeavour blasts off

Nasa's space shuttle Endeavour with its crew of six astronauts has blasted off on its last night flight.

The crew includes the British-born astronaut Dr Nicholas Patrick, a former Harrow schoolboy and Cambridge graduate from Yorkshire, who blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on one of the shuttle's last flights.
The shuttle programme is nearing retirement and there are only another four flights left.
Dr Patrick, 45, a father-of-three, will circle the earth at 17,500mph and perform three grueling space walks on his 13-day mission to the International Space Station, where he will help to fit a new module to the existing structure.
“The space station is as big as it’s ever been, and we’ll make it bigger,” he said before taking off. “It’s a great place to live and work.”
After being fascinated by the Apollo moon landings Dr Patrick left England to pursue a career in aviation and aerospace, and became a US citizen in 1994.
He worked as an engineer for General Electric and Boeing before being selected as an astronaut by Nasa in 1998. He previously flew to the space station in 2006.
His wife, Dr Rossanna Palomino, is a pediatrician. They have two sons and a daughter, aged three to seven.
Dr Patrick and his five fellow astronauts lifted off on the space shuttle Endeavour and successfully reached orbit eight-and-a-half minutes later.
The launch director, Mike Leinbach, told the crew: “We wish you good luck and Godspeed, and see you in about two weeks.”
The Endeavour mission will attach a new module called Tranquility to the space station, which will then be 90 per cent complete.
It will be the last major building job on the $100 billion (£60 billion) station which has involved 16 nations and been under construction since 1998.
Tranquility is seven metres long and weighed 15 tonnes at launch. It includes a seven window glass dome which will provide unprecedented panoramic views of Earth and space for astronauts.
Nasa’s shuttle programme ends later this year after 29 years. The space agency is re-evaluating its future after President Barack Obama effectively abandoned its plan to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020.

PET scanning system inaugurated at Shaukat Khanum

‘Modern technology essential for successful cancer treatment’

* Imran Khan says PET/CT scans to cost Rs 32,000 for those who can pay, free for poor patients
* Announces construction of cancer hospital in Karachi

LAHORE: State-of-the-art medical equipment is essential for the early diagnosis and successful treatment of cancer, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan said on Sunday.

He expressed these views at the inaugural ceremony of Pakistan’s first Positron Emission Tomography (PET) & Computer Tomography (PET/CT) scanning system at the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital.

Imran said the new system would go a long way in helping cancer patients, who had to travel to Singapore for PET/CT scans until now. “Every week, seven to eight people go to Singapore for the scan, and spend nearly Rs 3 billion on the tests every year,” Imran said.

Cost: He said a PET/CT scan would cost Rs 32,000 for those patients who can afford the expenditure, while the hospital would provide this facility free of cost to poor patients. PET scans cost $1,500 to $2,000 abroad, he added.

Imran praised renowned journalist Hamid Mir for travelling all the way from Islamabad to host the event. He also thanked Pakistan’s Trade Counsel to Belgium Abid Hussain for facilitating the deal by getting the equipment at a reasonable price.

In his opening address, Mir said nearly 70 percent of patients at Shaukat Khanum were being provided free of cost treatment. He also thanked the role of donors for their sustained support for the hospital. Imran said the PET/CT scanning system would revolutionise cancer treatment in Pakistan. The machine, which cost $5 million, is capable of scanning 12 to 13 patients every day, he said.

Pakistan’s Trade Counsel to Belgium Abid Hussain said the equipment was the finest of its kind. Quoting official statistics, he said cancer would soon replace heart disease as the major cause of death across the globe.

Journalists, doctors, donors and people from different walks of life were also present at the inauguration ceremony. People also made donations on the spot, ranging from Rs 300 to Rs 2 million. An elderly lady, Almas Hameed, donated all her assets to the Shaukat Khanum Trust.

The PTI chief distributed shields among those guests who had been involved in the materialisation of the project.

Project initiated: He also announced the construction of a new cancer hospital in Karachi, for which he has already begun collecting donations.

E.U. Slow to React to Toyota Safety Problems

BRUSSELS — The first problems with sticking accelerators in some Toyota models surfaced more than a year ago in Britain and Ireland. But it was only Friday — long after a global recall began — that the European Commission issued its first alert.
As the Japanese company prepares to issue another recall, this time for its 2010 Prius hybrid, the system for monitoring car safety across the European Union also has appeared, like the company, opaque and slow to react.
The E.U. warning came as it emerged that Toyota planned to broaden its recalls to at least 311,000 of its 2010 Prius models after receiving a flurry of complaints about the brakes on its popular hybrid. The decision on the Prius is to be announced early this week, a person briefed on the decision said late Sunday. It follows Toyota’s global recall of about eight million cars over accelerator pedals that could stick or become caught on floor mats.
The automaker, which built its reputation on vehicle quality, has been stung by the size of the recalls and questions about sluggish response to safety concerns.
The commission’s warning, posted Friday to the Web site of the commission’s Rapid Alert System for Non-Food Products, said that some Toyota “products pose a risk of injuries because there is a possibility that the accelerator pedal mechanism may, in rare instances, mechanically stick in a partially depressed position or return slowly to the idle position.”
“The precise number of involved units is still under investigation, but may reach up to 1.8 million vehicles,” it said, noting that models including the Aygo, iQ, Yaris, Corolla, Avensis and RAV4 were involved. Also involved were Auris models and Verso models, which were manufactured as recently as Jan. 5, 2010. Toyota had taken “voluntary corrective actions,” the warning said.
A group of national experts from E.U. governments met Monday behind closed doors at European Commission headquarters in Brussels to discuss exchanging information on the problems experienced by Toyota.
The commission outlined to the experts how they could share information when car companies discover deficiencies, but no decisions were made to change the system, which allows car makers to decide when to notify national agencies of problems, said Ton van Lierop, a commission spokesman.
Other commission officials emphasized that safety alerts only were issued once companies, like Toyota, actually had taken some corrective measures. The notice was posted quietly Friday on a relatively obscure Web site.
But for some observers, the delay between Toyota’s discovery of the deficiencies and the commission’s posting of the warning illustrated a gap, even in rule-bound Europe.
Car companies in Europe are among the most important employers in countries like Germany, Italy and France, and exercise enormous influence in Brussels. The companies successfully reshaped legislation on climate change measures and have helped shape the rules on relationships between automobile manufacturers and dealers.
Stephen Russell, the secretary general of ANEC, a European consumer standards association, said the problems at Toyota were shaping up to be “a test” for safety regulation in the trade bloc.
Oversight of car safety was among “gray areas when it comes to the consumer interest and where we would welcome greater efforts in the areas of notification and enforcement between the European Commission and member states,” Mr. Russell said.
The European Consumers’ Organization, an umbrella group for national consumer groups, said Monday it was unable to comment on whether the trade bloc’s alert system for automobile safety was adequate. Car safety has “never been part of our agenda,” said Dave McCullough, a spokesman for the organization. “We can’t cover everything.”
The fact that Toyota knew about accelerator deficiencies as far back as December 2008 “raises serious questions about whether car manufacturers should be more forthcoming when they identify a problem, even before a recall,” said Robert Gifford, the executive director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, a nonprofit group that seeks to advise British legislators on air, rail and road safety issues. And the apparent lack of knowledge about the deficiencies among governments “also raises questions about whether agencies are as interventionist as they should be, so that they find out about such problems in the first place,” he said.
In Ireland, the National Consumer Agency, which seeks to protect consumer interests, did not respond by Monday night for information about when it first learned of problems with accelerators in Toyota cars. The Office of Fair Trading, the British consumer and competition authority, did not respond to a similar request by Monday night.
The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, a specialized agency in Britain dealing with aspects of auto regulation, said Toyota only informed it “of the issue with U.K.-affected vehicles at the same time as the concern was released” in the United States.
A similar agency in Ireland, the Road Safety Authority, said it was “not aware of any incidents in Ireland concerning the acceleration issue in Toyota vehicles.”
Toyota executives in Brussels said the company began detecting deficiencies in European models in December 2008. They said those incidents mostly concerned the Yaris and the Aygo models that were sold in right-hand drive countries like Britain and Ireland.
Some these problems probably were detected during routine check-ups of cars by dealers, said Etienne Plas, a spokesman for Toyota in Europe.
In other cases, problems may have been detected because “a customer noticed something strange with the pedal,” he said.
Regulators in the United States opened an investigation into the brakes of the 2010 Prius last week after complaints from drivers who said they had been briefly unable to stop their cars on uneven surfaces.

West will push for more sanctions against Iran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sits in an electric vehicle during his visit to the 2nd National Festival of Innovation and Prosperity in Tehran on February 8, 2010. Iran was expected to formally announce to the UN nuclear watchdog its plans to enrich uranium to a higher level, but insisted it will stop the process if a UN-backed nuclear deal is clinched.
  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sits in an electric vehicle during his visit to the 2nd National Festival of Innovation and Prosperity in Tehran on February 8, 2010. Iran was expected to formally announce to the UN nuclear watchdog its plans to enrich uranium to a higher level, but insisted it will stop the process if a UN-backed nuclear deal is clinched.
UNITED NATIONS — Western patience with Iran ran out Monday as the Islamic republic announced new nuclear and military ambitions while intensifying a crackdown on domestic political opponents.
The United States and France pledged in Paris to push for a new set of international sanctions against Iran over its refusal to roll back its nuclear program.
Separately, the United States and the European Union issued a joint statement warning Iran's leaders to respect international human rights obligations as the country prepares to commemorate the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran is set to deliver a "punch" that will stun world powers during the week's celebrations.
But the U.S. and EU interpret that as a signal for more repression after Iranian opposition supporters pledged to launch anti-government protests on Thursday, when traditional regime-sponsored marches mark the anniversary of the revolution.
"The clerics should know that, since imprisonment, beatings and other confrontational methods are done in the name of Islam and the Islamic regime, it is hurting Islam, and we all should try to stop," said Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose supporters say his defeat in the June presidential election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power was rigged.
U.S. President Barack Obama had given Iran until the end of 2009 to agree to talks about its nuclear program, and efforts continued into the New Year.
"It's led to nothing," French Defence Minister Herve Morin said after meeting with Robert Gates, U.S. Secretary of Defence.
"We don't have any other option than to go to the (United Nations) Security Council for further measures."
Western powers have successfully pressed in the Council for three earlier sets of sanctions against Iran, arguing the Islamic republic's claim its nuclear program is peaceful is cover for a bid to build a nuclear bomb.
"We have to face the reality that if Iran continues and develops nuclear weapons it almost certainly will provoke proliferation in the Middle East," Gates said.
Though serving as council president this month, France has been among the most hawkish of the council's veto-bearing permanent members in signalling the need to increase pressure on Iran sooner rather than later.
But while Russia has begun to reverse its former hard-line opposition to what would be a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, China, whose economic expansion relies in part on continued supplies of Iranian oil, remained uncommitted.
Evidence emerging Monday that China had overtaken the EU to become Iran's largest trading partner underscores the economic tie.
Iran may also benefit from increased tensions between the Washington and Beijing over a range of unrelated issues, including the question of Internet freedom, China's pegging of its currency, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and Obama's pledge to meet the Dalai Lama, accused by China of pushing for Tibetan independence.
But Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said last month that, if Iran remained intransigent, it would face further sanctions even without UN agreement.
In Ottawa Monday, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Canada would "work with other members of the international community toward a solution that will hold Iran to account."
Iran formally told the UN's nuclear watchdog agency Monday it will begin enriching uranium to the 20 per cent level needed for powering a medical research reactor in Tehran.
Western countries had sought to avoid this out of concern such a level could be used to develop a crude nuclear device.
At the very least, it would allow Iran to move closer to gaining the capability of developing the highly enriched uranium necessary for a more sophisticated nuclear weapon.
Iran currently is enriching uranium up to 4.5 per cent for its under-construction nuclear power plant, which has been built with Russia's help, and will be operational later this year.
"Today we handed over the letter," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Iran's Arabic language al Alam state television.
He said IAEA inspectors would be invited to monitor the enrichment, which would start Tuesday.
But it remained unclear Monday whether the Iranian declaration was aimed at putting pressure on the West to accept Iran's terms for a proposed swap of its low-enriched uranium.
While the West had sought to have Iran's uranium additionally enriched outside the country so that it could not be diverted for use in a nuclear bomb-making program in the near term, the latest Iranian proposal, set out by Ahmadinejad last week, included a time frame the United States and the European powers deemed unacceptable.
Soltanieh also told al Alam Iran would, in the next Persian calendar year, which begins in March, build 10 uranium enrichment centres.
But many experts question whether Iran has the infrastructure to achieve such a goal any time soon. It currently has one functioning enrichment plant.