British Prime Minister David Cameron on India trade trip amid graft scandal

LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron arrives in India on Monday to try to win new investment in the face of fierce global competition as a scandal engulfs an Anglo-Italian helicopter deal.

Making his second visit to India as prime minister, Cameron's trip comes days after a similar trade mission by French President Francois Hollande, underlining how Europe's debt-stricken states are competing to tap into one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

His delegation, which includes representatives of over 100 companies, cultural and educational bodies, is the biggest taken abroad by a British prime minister and includes four ministers and nine lawmakers.

However, the timing of Cameron's trip is not ideal. India said on Friday it wanted to cancel a $750 million deal for a dozen helicopters made by AgustaWestland, the Anglo-Italian subsidiary of Italy's Finmeccanica, over bribery claims.

That will not make Cameron's job of persuading India to buy more civil and military hardware easier, and Indian officials have told the local press they intend to press Cameron for "a fully fledged report" on what Britain knows about the scandal.

Britain has said it wants to wait until the end of the Italian investigation before commenting in full, but has given India an interim report on the subject.

At a time when Britain's government is struggling to get its economy growing, officials see India, projected to become the world's third largest economy by 2050, as a key strategic partner in what Cameron has called a "Global Race".

"I think Britain and India can be one of the great partnerships of the 21st Century," he told the Hindustan Times. "India is going to be one of the great success stories of this century - a rising power in the world. And I want Britain to be one of your partners as you grow and succeed."

He is expected to remind the Indian government that the Eurofighter jet - which is partly built in Britain - remains an attractive option if New Delhi decides to review a multi-billion dollar deal to buy 126 French-made Rafale fighters.

A British government source said on Friday that London had noted that Hollande had not finalised the Rafale fighter jet deal during his own trip and that London would be asking how the talks with the French were going.

Companies travelling with Cameron include BP, BAE Systems, De La Rue, Diageo, EADS UK, HSBC, JCB, Lloyd's, the London Stock Exchange, London Underground, Rolls-Royce and Standard Chartered. He is also taking 30 small and medium-sized firms.

Colonial past

Cameron's visit to India, a country that won independence from Britain in 1947 and whose colonial history remains a sensitive subject for many Indians, will take in Mumbai and New Delhi.

Cameron says the two countries enjoy a "special relationship", a term usually reserved for Britain's ties with the United States, but it is a relationship undergoing profound change. For now, Britain's economy is the sixth largest in the world and India's the 10th. But India is forecast to overtake its old colonial master in the decades ahead.

TATA group, an Indian company that owns car maker Jaguar Land Rover, is now Britain's biggest employer in the manufacturing sector and, in a nod to how the relationship is evolving, London will stop giving India foreign aid after 2015.

Cameron is expected to lobby India to open up its economy to foreign investment to allow retailers, such as Britain's Tesco , to open outlets there amid frustration that many of the sectors in which British business excels remain partly or fully closed to foreign investors.

India is forecast to spend $1 trillion in the next five years on infrastructure and Britain is hoping its firms may win some of those contracts.

Some British companies have run into problems in the past. Mobile phone operator Vodafone has repeatedly clashed with the Indian authorities over taxes and oil company Royal Dutch/Shell has asked the British government to raise a tax dispute it has with India during Cameron's visit.

Cameron's aim is to double trade between the two nations from 11.5 billion pounds in 2010, when he last visited, to 23 billion pounds in 2015. Officials say that goal remains on track.

He is expected to meet Manmohan Singh, his Indian counterpart, as well as President Pranab Mukherjee, and to announce a clutch of deals, including cooperation agreements to help India develop its city metro systems.

His office said those deals would create 500 British jobs and safeguard a further 2,000. British firms were also winning contracts in India, it said, saying the Intercontinental Hotel Group planned to build 13 new hotels in the next few years.

Another big trade mission in 2010 failed to yield the gains Cameron had hoped for.

Read More..

UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

Read More..

Meteor Blast 'Something We Only Saw in Movies'

A day after a massive meteor exploded over this city in central Russia, a monumental cleanup effort is under way.

Authorities have deployed around 24,000 troops and emergencies responders to help in the effort.

Officials say more than a million square feet of windows -- the size of about 20 football fields -- were shattered by the shockwave from the meteor's blast. Around 4,000 buildings in the area were damaged.

The injury toll climbed steadily on Friday. Authorities said today it now stands at more than 1,200. Most of those injuries were from broken glass, and only a few hundred required hospitalization.

According to NASA, this was the biggest meteor to hit Earth in more than a century. Preliminary figures suggest it was 50 feet wide and weighed more than the Eiffel Tower.

SEE PHOTOS: Meteorite Crashes in Russia

NASA scientists have also estimated the force of the blast that occurred when the meteor fractured upon entering Earth's atmosphere was approximately 470 kilotons -- the equivalent of about 30 Hiroshima bombs.

Residents said today they still can't believe it happened here.

"It was something we only saw in the movies," one university student said. "We never thought we would see it ourselves."

Throughout the city, the streets are littered with broken glass. Local officials have announced an ambitious pledge to replace all the broken windows within a week. In the early morning hours, however, workers could still be heard drilling new windows into place.

Authorities have sent divers into a frozen lake outside the city, where a large chunk of the meteor is believed to have landed, creating a large hole in the ice. By the end of the day they had not found anything.

They are not the only ones looking for it.

Meteor hunters from around the world are salivating at what some are calling the opportunity of a lifetime. A small piece of the meteor could fetch thousands of dollars and larger chunks could bring in even hundreds of thousands.

Read More..

Bomb kills 64 in Pakistan's Quetta

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Sixty-four people including school children died on Saturday in a bomb attack carried out by extremists from Pakistan's Sunni Muslim majority, police said.

A spokesman for Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni group, claimed responsibility for the bomb in Quetta, which caused casualties in the town's main bazaar, a school and a computer center. Police said most of the victims were Shi'ites.

Burned school bags and books were strewn around.

"The explosion was caused by an improvised explosive device fitted to a motorcycle," said Wazir Khan Nasir, deputy inspector general of police in Quetta.

"This is a continuation of terrorism against Shi'ites."

"I saw many bodies of women and children," said an eyewitness at a hospital. "At least a dozen people were burned to death by the blast."

Most Western intelligence agencies have regarded the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda as the gravest threat to nuclear-armed Pakistan, a strategic U.S. ally.

But Pakistani law enforcement officials say Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has become a formidable force.

TENSIONS

Last month the group said it carried out a bombing in Quetta that killed nearly 100 people, one of Pakistan's worst sectarian attacks. Thousands of Shi'ites protested in several cities after that attack.

Pakistani intelligence officials say extremist groups, led by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, have escalated their bombings and shootings of Shi'ites to trigger violence that would pave the way for a Sunni theocracy in U.S.-allied Pakistan.

More than 400 Shi'ites were killed in Pakistan last year, many by hitmen or bombs, and the perpetrators are almost never caught. Some hardline Shi'ite groups have hit back by killing Sunni clerics.

The growing sectarian violence has hurt the credibility of the government, which has already faced criticism ahead of elections due in May for its inability to tackle corruption and economic stagnation.

The schism between Sunnis and Shi'ites developed after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 when his followers could not agree on a successor.

Emotions over the issue are highly potent even today, pushing some countries, including Iraq five years ago, to the brink of civil war.

Pakistan is nowhere near that stage but officials worry that Sunni extremist groups have succeeded in dramatically ratcheting up tensions and provoking revenge attacks in their bid to destabilize the country.

(Reporting by Jibran Ahmed; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Read More..

Aviation industry dons 'shark skins' to save fuel

FRANKFURT: In its never-ending quest to develop more aerodynamic, more fuel-efficient aircraft, the aviation industry believes the ocean's oldest predator, the shark, could hold the key to cutting energy consumption.

Germany's biggest airline Lufthansa announced earlier this month that two of its Airbus A340-300 jets would take part in trials starting this summer to test the properties of shark skin in flight.

For the two-year trials, eight 10 by 10 centimetre (4 by 4 inch) patches of a new type of coating are being painted on to the fuselage and wing edges of the aircraft.

A new state-of-the-art varnish, developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials (FAM) in Bremen, attempts to mimic the skins of fast-swimming sharks.

The skin of sharks is covered in tiny riblets that reduce turbulent vortices and the drag they cause, thereby diminishing surface resistance when moving at speed.

The phenomenon of the streamlined shark skin has been known for about 30 years and has fascinated research scientists in a wide range of fields, from military applications to aerospace and aeronautics and from naval construction to wind technology.

More recently, its use in sports such as swimming and athletics has brought the special properties of shark skin to much wider attention.

High-tech swimsuits were developed that enabled athletes to move ever faster through water, breaking one swimming record after the next until the suits were eventually banned as unfair in competition.

In the past, says Volkmar Stenzel, the project's head at the Fraunhofer Institute, sheets of plastic imitation shark skin were glued to the aircraft's exterior.

"But the foil had major disadvantages: it was rather heavy and the added weight cancelled out the amount of fuel that could be saved," Stenzel said.

"Also, it was difficult to stick the foil to curved surfaces without creasing and wrinkling," he said.

Another problem was that aircraft have to be stripped of their paint and recoated every five years "and that was just not possible with these foils," the expert explained.

Thus, in collaboration with European aircraft maker Airbus and the DLR German Aerospace Center, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute have developed a new technique to emboss the structures of shark skin into aircraft paints.

The idea is to make surfaces more aerodynamic and reduce fuel consumption by about one percent and lower operating costs.

The trials on Lufthansa jets represent the last phase before possible industrial application, said Denis Darracq, head of research and flight physics technology at Airbus.

"The expected results have been achieved in terms of performance. It's now a matter of measuring operational efficiency and durability," Darracq said.

"An airline must not have to clean its aircraft after every flight. The paint needs to last for several years," he said.

The engineer estimated that if an aircraft was covered by between 40-70 percent in the new paint, it can cut fuel consumption by around one percent for very little outlay.

And with high fuel prices and customers becoming increasingly sensitive to the environmental impact of flying, that would represent an "enormous benefit" for an airline, Darracq argued.

Nature is also the inspiration for another state-of-the-art technology that is already being used by the industry and may have wider applications.

The leaf of the lotus plant has a unique microstructure consisting of tiny bumps topped with tiny hairs that make the leaf highly water repellent.

Special surface coatings have been developed to mimic this effect and they are already used in the interior of the A380 to make it easier to clean.

But Airbus is also looking into whether such coatings can be used on the exterior of aircraft as well.

"De-icing is a real problem for planes and represents a substantial cost factor. If there were surfaces where water cannot collect, they wouldn't freeze over and that would represent a big step forward," said Darracq.

Airlines' growing interest could therefore help accelerate research in surface technologies "and these may be ready for industrial application in a number of years," the engineer said.

- AFP/ir

Read More..

Malik aimed to boost his relevance at home, Pak?

NEW DELHI: The Indian security agencies suspect that JKLF chief Yasin Malik may have secretly met 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed during his stay in Pakistan, apart from sharing the dais with him at a protest in Islamabad. Even as his alleged one-on-one meeting with the LeT boss is kept carefully under wraps, Malik, intelligence officials say, ensured a photo opportunity alongside Saeed to "score" over moderate Hurriyat's "secret" meeting with him last December.

Till now sidelined in Kashmir's separatist politics and desperate to win over the support of Pakistani agencies, Malik possibly saw his appearance with Saeed as a last-ditch bid to boost his relevance at home and across the border.

The intelligence agencies have already rejected Malik's defence that his sharing the stage with Saeed was co-incidental. "I was on a hunger strike for 24 hours near Islamabad Press Club. Thousands of people came there including Hafiz Saeed, who came there for 15 minutes...where did the meeting take place?" the JKLF leader had argued after his public appearance with Saeed sparked an outrage here.

Agencies, however, feel Malik's photo-opportunity with the LeT boss was intentional. "It is virtually impossible for Malik to not have known the list of big leaders who he would be sharing the stage with, particularly those with a profile as daunting as Saeed's," an official pointed out.

"Considering the interest generated by moderate Hurriyat leaders' 'secret' meeting with Saeed in December, Malik possibly thought that a public appearance with the LeT founder in Islamabad would help him score over them. His real meeting with Saeed, however, may have happened away from the public eye to ensure deniability," the official added.

Saeed's active interest in Kashmir is public knowledge. In fact, at a recent rally in Lahore to mark the Kashmir solidarity day, the LeT founder and Jamaat ud Dawah boss urged India to "leave Kashmir", warning that Indian Army would be defeated and Kashmir would get independence. He pledged support to all Kashmiri leaders and hoped for their unity.

According to an intelligence assessment, Malik, who has lately been overshadowed by Kashmiri separatist leaders of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat like hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani and the moderate Hurriyat under Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, may have sensed an opportunity to bounce back to the centrestage just by being seen with Saeed. His fast in Islamabad against the hanging of Afzal Guru provided him the right setting to pull off the photo-opportunity.

Intelligence officials point out that just like leaders of the two Hurriyat factions, which are dependent on ideological and logistical support from Pakistan to further their campaign in the Valley, the JKLF leader too has shed his hardened pro-azaadi stand and is looking for support from across the border.

Though Malik may be questioned upon his return from Pakistan on his "encounter" with Saeed, the agencies believe there the Centre can do little beyond either revoking his passport or denying its extension beyond March 31, when it is due to expire anyway. "Arresting him will only help him play the victim," an official has warned.

Read More..

UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

Read More..

Carnival Cruise Ship Hit With First Lawsuit

The first lawsuit against Carnival Cruise Lines has been filed and it is expected to be the beginning of a wave of lawsuits against the ship's owners.

Cassie Terry, 25, of Brazoria County, Texas, filed a lawsuit today in Miami federal court, calling the disabled Triumph cruise ship "a floating hell."

"Plaintiff was forced to endure unbearable and horrendous odors on the filthy and disabled vessel, and wade through human feces in order to reach food lines where the wait was counted in hours, only to receive rations of spoiled food," according to the lawsuit, obtained by ABCNews.com. "Plaintiff was forced to subsist for days in a floating toilet, a floating Petri dish, a floating hell."

Click Here for Photos of the Stranded Ship at Sea

The filing also said that during the "horrifying and excruciating tow back to the United States," the ship tilted several times "causing human waste to spill out of non-functioning toilets, flood across the vessel's floors and halls, and drip down the vessel's walls."

Terry's attorney Brent Allison told ABCNews.com that Terry knew she wanted to sue before she even got off the boat. When she was able to reach her husband, she told her husband and he contacted the attorneys.

Allison said Terry is thankful to be home with her husband, but is not feeling well and is going to a doctor.

Carnival's Triumph Passengers: 'We Were Homeless' Watch Video

Girl Disembarks Cruise Ship, Kisses the Ground Watch Video

Carnival Cruise Ship Passengers Line Up for Food Watch Video

"She's nauseated and actually has a fever," Allison said.

Terry is suing for breach of maritime contract, negligence, negligent misrepresentation and fraud as a result of the "unseaworthy, unsafe, unsanitary, and generally despicable conditions" on the crippled cruise ship.

"Plaintiff feared for her life and safety, under constant threat of contracting serious illness by the raw sewage filling the vessel, and suffering actual or some bodily injury," the lawsuit says.

Despite having their feet back on solid ground and making their way home, many passengers from the cruise ship are still fuming over their five days of squalor on the stricken ship and the cruise ship company is likely to be hit with a wave of lawsuits.

"I think people are going to file suits and rightly so," maritime trial attorney John Hickey told ABCNews.com. "I think, frankly, that the conduct of Carnival has been outrageous from the get-go."

Hickey, a Miami-based attorney, said his firm has already received "quite a few" inquiries from passengers who just got off the ship early this morning.

"What you have here is a) negligence on the part of Carnival and b) you have them, the passengers, being exposed to the risk of actual physical injury," Hickey said.

The attorney said that whether passengers can recover monetary compensation will depend on maritime law and the 15-pages of legal "gobbledygook," as Hickey described it, that passengers signed before boarding, but "nobody really agrees to."

One of the ticket conditions is that class action lawsuits are not allowed, but Hickey said there is a possibility that could be voided when all the conditions of the situation are taken into account.

One of the passengers already thinking about legal action is Tammy Hilley, a mother of two, who was on a girl's getaway with her two friends when a fire in the ship's engine room disabled the vessel's propulsion system and knocked out most of its power.

"I think that's a direction that our families will talk about, consider and see what's right for us," Hilley told "Good Morning America" when asked if she would be seeking legal action.

Read More..

Exclusive: North Korea tells China of preparations for fresh nuclear test - source

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea has told its key ally, China, that it is prepared to stage one or even two more nuclear tests this year in an effort to force the United States into diplomatic talks, said a source with direct knowledge of the message.

Further tests could also be accompanied this year by another rocket launch, said the source, who has direct access to the top levels of government in both Beijing and Pyongyang.

North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday, drawing global condemnation and a stern warning from the United States that it was a threat and a provocation.

"It's all ready. A fourth and fifth nuclear test and a rocket launch could be conducted soon, possibly this year," the source said, adding that the fourth nuclear test would be much larger than the third, at an equivalent of 10 kilotons of TNT.

The tests will be undertaken, the source said, unless Washington holds talks with North Korea and abandons its policy of what Pyongyang sees as attempts at regime change.

North Korea also reiterated its long-standing desire for the United States to sign a final peace agreement with it and establish diplomatic relations, he said. North Korea remains technically at war with both the United States and South Korea after the Korean war ended in 1953 with a truce.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urged North Korea to "refrain from additional provocative actions that would violate its international obligations" under three different sets of U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibit nuclear and missile tests.

North Korea "is not going to achieve anything in terms of the health, welfare, safety, future of its own people by these kinds of continued provocative actions. It's just going to lead to more isolation," Nuland told reporters.

The Pentagon also weighed in, calling North Korea's missile and nuclear programs "a threat to U.S. national security and to international peace and security."

"The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and steadfast in our defense commitments to allies in the region," said Pentagon spokeswoman Major Catherine Wilkinson.

Initial estimates of this week's test from South Korea's military put its yield at the equivalent of 6-7 kilotons, although a final assessment of yield and what material was used in the explosion may be weeks away.

North Korea's latest test, its third since 2006, prompted warnings from Washington and others that more sanctions would be imposed on the isolated state. The U.N. Security Council has only just tightened sanctions on Pyongyang after it launched a long-range rocket in December.

Pyongyang is banned under U.N. sanctions from developing missile or nuclear technology after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

North Korea worked to ready its nuclear test site, about 100 km (60 miles) from its border with China, throughout last year, according to commercially available satellite imagery. The images show that it may have already prepared for at least one more test, beyond Tuesday's subterranean explosion.

"Based on satellite imagery that showed there were the same activities in two tunnels, they have one tunnel left after the latest test," said Kune Y. Suh, a nuclear engineering professor at Seoul National University in South Korea.

Analysis of satellite imagery released on Friday by specialist North Korea website 38North showed activity at a rocket site that appeared to indicate it was being prepared for a launch (http://38north.org/2013/02/tonghae021413/).

NORTH 'NOT AFRAID' OF SANCTIONS

President Barack Obama pledged after this week's nuclear test "to lead the world in taking firm action in response to these threats" and diplomats at the U.N. Security Council have already started discussing potential new sanctions.

North Korea has said the test was a reaction to "U.S. hostility" following its December rocket launch. Critics say the rocket launch was aimed at developing technology for an intercontinental ballistic missile.

"(North) Korea is not afraid of (further) sanctions," the source said. "It is confident agricultural and economic reforms will boost grain harvests this year, reducing its food reliance on China."

North Korea's isolated and small economy has few links with the outside world apart from China, its major trading partner and sole influential diplomatic ally.

China signed up for international sanctions against North Korea after the 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests and for a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in January to condemn the latest rocket launch. However, Beijing has stopped short of abandoning all support for Pyongyang.

Sanctions have so far not discouraged North Korea from pursuing its nuclear ambitions.

"It is like watching the same movie over and over again," said Lee Woo-young, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies. "The idea that stronger sanctions make North Korea stop developing nuclear programs isn't effective in my view."

The source with ties to Beijing and Pyongyang said China would again support U.N. sanctions. He declined to comment on what level of sanctions Beijing would be willing to endorse.

"When China supported U.N. sanctions ... (North) Korea angrily called China a puppet of the United States," he said. "There will be new sanctions which will be harsh. China is likely to agree to it," he said, without elaborating.

He said however that Beijing would not cut food and fuel supplies to North Korea, a measure it reportedly took after a previous nuclear test.

He said North Korea's actions were a distraction for China's leadership, which was concerned that the escalations could inflame public opinion in China and hasten military build-ups in the region.

The source said he saw little room for compromise under North Korea's youthful new leader, Kim Jong-un. The third Kim to rule North Korea is just 30 years old and took over from his father in December 2011.

He appears to have followed his father, Kim Jong-il, in the "military first" strategy that has pushed North Korea ever closer to a workable nuclear missile at the expense of economic development.

"He is much tougher than his father," the source said.

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Phillip Stewart in WASHINGTON; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, David Brunnstrom and Jackie Frank)

Read More..

US cruise ship passengers' parting gift: bathrobes

WASHINGTON: The 4,000-plus exhausted passengers who lived a hellish four-day ordeal aboard the powerless and drifting Carnival Triumph cruise ship won't be left completely empty handed.

The cruise company is making a gift to the travelers of the bathrobes they were using on the ship, the company announced Friday.

"Of course the bathrobes for the Carnival Triumph are complimentary," it said in a tweet on the official @carnivalcruise account.

But the announcement has been received with less than full-throated cheers.

"Who wants a stinky robe?!" tweeted a reporter in North Carolina, Astrid Martinez, while another user of the social media site, Natalie Eshaya, enthused sarcastically, "Oh how generous."

Another skeptic, Paul Nather, wondered "What do you think the going rate for a Carnival cruise bathrobe will be on eBay tomorrow?"

The white bathrobe has become an unlikely symbol of the nightmare of the cruise-goers, who donned them to attract attention as they stood on the drifting ship.

Others used the white terrycloth as a canvas to write messages, with one passenger proclaiming, "I survived Carnival's triumph redbags" -- a reference to the bags that substituted for toilets.

The Triumph docked Friday morning in the port of Mobile, Alabama. It had originally been scheduled to return to port early Monday after a weekend stop in Cozumel in Mexico, before an engine room blaze left the massive vessel without electricity to power the kitchens, toilets, and other necessities.

- AFP/ck

Read More..