ISLAMABAD: The international community’s no confidence in what is seen as one of the most corrupt governments in the country’s history is truly reflected in official statistic of foreign assistance for 2010 flood victims with Prime Minister’s Relief Fund getting peanuts i.e. around US$ 21 million from world capitals.
The foreign countries and donors instead preferred to depend on international agencies and non-governmental organizations to ensure that the money donated is properly utilized and is not corrupted by the government, which is rated by foreign agencies as one of the most corrupt regimes in the world.
According to the official statistics the world capitals, with the exception of countries like
Afghanistan and Algeria, have shown little or no trust in the government of Pakistan to assist the more than 20 million flood affectees of 2010.
Such is the credibility of the government that out of total US$697 million assistance that the world capitals have committed to spend through the Government of Pakistan, hardly US$21 million has so far been deposited in the PM’s relief fund. Most of these countries even preferred to help in kind.
The government figures as available on the Finance Ministry’s official website and last updated on January 8, 2011, a total of US$3.042 billion foreign assistance for the flood affectees was committed. Out of this amount US$2.34 billion was committed to be spent through the United Nations or other international agencies and non-governmental organizations whereas the remaining US$696 million was committed to be spent through the Government of Pakistan. The total committed assistance includes a soft loan of US$243 million.
Amongst the major donors, the US committed US$571 million but opted to spend all this amount through international agencies like USAID etc. Not even a single dollar was donated by Washington to PM’s Relief Fund. Britain, which had pledged US$216 million, also did the same and did not contribute even a single penny to Gilani’s account.
The Turkish government committed US$53 million besides raising a total of US$142 million through a fundraiser. Turkey seems to have maximum faith in the prime minister as it contributed the most i.e. US$10 million to PM’s Relief Fund.
The Saudi government has committed US$100 million besides pledging US$23 million on behalf of Saudi Fund for Development and another US$242 million public fund relief raised from the people of Saudi Arabia. Out of this amount of US$365 million, only US$5 million was delivered through National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
Japan committed a total of US$519 million but did not give any amount for the PM’s Relief Fund. Iran too committed US$100 million but it too avoided to deposit any amount in the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.
After Turkey, which contributed US$10 million to the PM’s Relief Fund, the Asian Development Bank was a major contributor to the same fund with US$3 million contribution. Afghanistan gave US$2 million for the PM’s Relief Fund and emerged as the third largest foreign contributor having faith in the government’s fund.
Other countries, which contributed to the PM fund include Algeria with US$1 million; Bhutan with US$0.10 million; Brunei with US$0.73 million; Indonesia US$1.7 million; Korean private sector companies US$0.94 million; Maldivian philanthropists US$0.27million; Morocco US$1 million etc.
KARACHI: Rangers in this beleaguered city by the target killers have again been awarded with the powers of police under which they’ll be entitled to conduct raids, detain and interrogate suspects at their own, Geo News reported.
Rangers enjoyed these powers for months when these were conferred upon them early this year. However, the law and order situation in this mysteriously violence ridden industrial and business hub has yet to see any improvement.
While the controversial Sindh government home minister, Zulfiqar Mirza is said to be on medical leave for an indefinite period, the Federal law Minister, Rahman Malik has been frequently visiting Karachi with the promise of relieving the vexed citizens of the target killers, but to no avail.
Both the federal and provincial administrations have been claiming that they have successfully arrested almost all the target killers, yet to the misfortune of the citizens perhaps the ghosts of these killers continue the killing spree unabated, as the city finds no break in at least on the average losing six persons’ precious lives everyday.
LAHORE: Director General PEPCO Engineer Muhammad Khalid has said that 1200MW electricity would be added to national grid within two months that will help overcome loadshedding in extremely hot weather, Geo News reported.
Briefing media at Wapda House here Tuesday, DG PEPCO expressed hope that loadshedding would be less this year as compared to past as power generation at Thermal and Hydel has been improved.
Energy summit conference would be held in the first week of next month to chalk out new conservation plan, he said and added that this would save 1500MW power.
DG PEPCO further said owing to power shortfall of 2700MW loadhsedding of 6-hour in urban areas and 8 to10-hour in rural areas is being carried out.
PARIS The longer a man's fourth or ring finger is compared to his index finger, the more likely he is to be judged attractive by women, according to a study released Wednesday.
The results, published in the British Royal Society's journal Biological Sciences, unveil intricate links between foetal exposure of males to hormones, the development of certain physical traits, and what turns on the opposite sex.
It also adds to a growing body of research -- conducted under the banner of evolutionary psychology -- suggesting that the drivers of human behaviour are found, more than previously suspected, in "nature" rather than "nurture."
Earlier studies had already shown that the size ratio between the fourth and second fingers, especially of the right hand, is a reliable indicator of the extent a man was exposed to testosterone while still in the womb.
The bigger the gap between a longer ring finger and a shorter index, the greater the likely impact of the hormone.
For the new study, scientists led by Camille Ferdenzi of the University of Geneva designed an experiment to find out if women are drawn to the telltale signs of high testosterone levels in men -- a symmetrical face, a deeper voice, a particular body odour -- who have this more "masculine" finger configuration.
More than 80 women university students between 18 and 34 looked at pictures of 49 similarly aged men, and were asked to evaluate them for masculinity and attractiveness.
Smaller groups of women listened to recordings of the male voices, and smelled samples of their body odour, taken from cotton pads worn under the arm for 24 hours.
"The aim was to understand what makes a man attractive," and whether at least some of those qualities "were in part conditioned by the foetal environment," Ferdenzi said in an interview.
For the visual test, the results were unambiguous. "The longer the ring finger compared to the index -- that is, the greater the exposure to testosterone -- the more attractive the face was rated," she said by phone.
"We also found that attractiveness and symmetry in the face are highly correlated."
Such a preference might have evolved to boost a female's chances of reproductive success through mating with a more virile partner, she said.
Surprisingly, however, women did not consistently tag the same men as "masculine".
Nor did their preferences for voice or odours correspond to the longer ring-finger males.
"There wasn't any relation between the 2D-4D" -- 2nd digit, 4th digit -- "ratio and the reactions of the women to odour," Ferdenzi said.
One reason, she speculated, may be that voice and body odour are more dependent on fluctuating levels of adult testosterone than on pre-natal testosterone.
The ring-index finger ratio has also proven to be a useful indicator for gauging the risk of prostate cancer, likewise tied to high levels of testosterone.
Research published in December showed that the chances of developing the disease drop by a third in men whose index finger is longer than their ring finger.
Other studies have also found a link between exposure to hormones before birth and the development of other diseases, including breast cancer and osteoarthritis.
NEW YORK: Researchers have found that kidney cancer is not only more common among heavy smokers, it also appears to be more aggressive.
According to a study out Monday, more than one in four smokers undergoing kidney cancer surgery had advanced stages of the disease, compared to only one in five patients who didn't light up.
Researchers say about 70 percent of people with early-stage tumors survive at least five years, whereas that number plummets to just eight percent after the cancer has begun spreading.
About one in 70 Americans, most of them elderly, develop kidney cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
But the findings aren't all bad news. Indeed, former smokers who'd kicked the habit had a smaller chance of turning up with advanced cancer.
While the study wasn't designed to prove that quitting can slow tumor growth, Dr. Thomas J. Polascik, who led the work, said he believes that to be the case.
"It can't bring you down to the risk of a nonsmoker, but it can get you almost there," Polascik, a surgeon at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, told Reuters Health. His findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Polascik and his colleagues looked at data for 845 people who'd had surgery for kidney cancer at their hospital. A quarter of the patients had advanced disease, defined as cancer spreading beyond the kidney.
The odds of finding late-stage cancer were 60 percent higher in smokers -- about a fifth of the patients -- than non-smokers, even after taking age and other factors into account. And the more cigarettes they had smoked, the higher the odds.
Former smokers also had higher odds of advanced disease. But the odds fell by nine percent for every decade they had been smoke-free.
The researchers say that means smoking might not only up the chances the a tumor will form in the first place, but might also fuel cancer growth, perhaps by suppressing the immune system.
However, Alexander S. Parker, a kidney cancer expert at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, said it's also possible that smokers are less likely to seek medical care than non-smokers.
"If this is true, then it would not be the case that the biology of these tumors is different," he told Reuters Health in an email. "Rather, just that the individuals themselves have less contact with the health care system and are less likely to be diagnosed when their cancers are at an early, treatable stage."
Still, Parker, who was not involved in the new work, said the findings lined up with earlier data showing that smokers have twice the risk of developing kidney cancer, in addition to other health problems.
"In the end," he said, "we need to be clear that smoking accounts for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year in the U.S. and therefore, the overall effort should still be focused on getting people to quit smoking and to keep young people from starting in the first place."
