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New Delhi November 8, 2010 US President  Barack Obama  backed India for a permanent seat on the  UN Security Council  on Monday, a dramatic diplomatic gesture to his hosts as he wrapped up his first visit to India. Obama  made this announcement in a speech to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament on the third and final day of his visit. "The just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a United Nations that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate," Obama said in prepared remarks. "That is why I can say today - in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member." The Associated Press added: The announcement does not mean that India will join the five current permanent  Security Council  members anytime soon. The US is backing its membership only in the context of unspecified reforms to the council that could take years to bring about. ...

Retired Justice Stevens defends plans for Islamic center By  Bill Mears , CNN Supreme Court Producer STORY HIGHLIGHTS John Paul Stevens says Muslims should be able to build, even near ground zero Experiences of World War II gave insight into need to fight prejudice, he says Plans for Islamic center have drawn protest from 9/11 victims' families Constitution protects from guilt by association, Stevens says Washington (CNN)  -- Retired Justice John Paul Stevens expressed support Thursday for a planned Islamic community center near the site of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, urging religious and ethnic tolerance. "American Muslims should enjoy the freedom to build their places of worship wherever permitted by local zoning laws," the retired Supreme Court jurist said at a luncheon where he was honored by the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation. The 90-year-old said his experiences as a veteran of World War II, when the United States was fighti...

Resurgence of polio The challenges facing Pakistan ’s anti-polio campaign are many – difficulties in outreach, war, refusal of the vaccine, and now the floods – and in that context the   emergence of 59 cases   of the disease should be seen as a setback for the country’s efforts to rid itself of this debilitating disease. In 2005, 28 cases were reported and since then the numbers have hovered in the double-digit range. As expected, the disease has resurfaced in the country’s northwest, in Fata and parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to be precise, with dozens of children reported to be suffering from it. Though polio drives have recently been launched in different provinces in the past week, many children have been missed. An estimated 100,000 children were missed in Bara because of the military operation while the health department said that   23,000 children from Upper Swat would not be inoculated   because the floods had weakened communication systems and road links. In ...

By DORE GOLD 28/09/2010 A response to former prime minister Ehud Olmert from a former Israeli ambassador to the UN. Today, he says, Israel must reestablish that red line. Right after the War of Independence, prime minister David Ben-Gurion faced inexorably difficult pressures over the future of Jerusalem . The UN planned to press its case for internationalization. Its grounds were General Assembly Resolution 181, adopted in 1947 and known as the partition plan, which not only advocated the establishment of Jewish and Arab states in former British Mandatory Palestine, but also recommended putting Jerusalem under UN control as a corpus separatum, or separate entity. True, the resolution was not legally binding; it had been forcibly rejected by the Arab states. Moreover, the UN never established the special regime for Jerusalem that it proposed. In fact, it failed to dispatch any forces to save the Old City when reports streamed in that its ancient synagogues were being syst...

UAE advancing camel breeding research and technology   By   JPOST.COM STAFF     09/30/2010 With camels fetching million dollar price tags, research centers making breeding, cloning advances with prize camels. The United Arab Emirates has risen to the vanguard of camel breeding technology, AFP reported on Thursday. According to the report, embryo transfers and cloning techniques normally seen in the world of horse breeding are being advanced at the world's most advanced camel research centers, located in the   UAE . The Veterinary Research Center in   Abu Dhabi , the only commercial center to perform embryo transfers on camels, employs four veterinarians, eight technicians, and is home to 1,500 camels, according to the AFP report. Another advanced camel research center, the Camel Reproduction Center in   Dubai , is only for research purposes and is home to 150 camels, AFP reported. The Dubai research center participated in the world's firs...

IMF seeks illiterate Pak September 24, 2010 THE countrywide protests by public sector universities reflect the extent to which the government and its IMF-thrust economic managers are prepared to destroy the quality of life for most Pakistanis by depriving them of higher education. For the members of the Federation of All Pakistan University Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA) calling for a strike is no easy move and such calls may backfire. However, the unanimity of the present protest shows how threatened these public sector universities feel.   Nor are they wrong. A statement issued by the IMF-approved Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Dr Haq declared rather imperiously that the country was facing a budgetary crunch and therefore development allocations had to be cut. Now if he was actually concerned about the future of Pakistan and not desperate to make it a country where only the rich under an exploitative capitalist system survive and thrive, he would have advo...

US Muslims at the crossroads By Mowahid Hussain Shah September 30, 2010 In an environment of non-stop pressures on Muslims in the US , a realisation is slowly dawning that something has to be done about it. The question is how. On that, opinions differ. Although US Muslims are economically able to make a living, their political judgments and strategic skills remain less than satisfactory. Some of the notables in the Muslim community recently undertook a bold initiative to brainstorm ideas, through the medium of a town hall meeting in the Washington area. The participants were well educated and professionally accomplished. Yet, when I asked the question: “How many had read the newspaper that day?”, only six hands were raised out of a gathering of nearly 100. The minimal heavy-lifting required to get the job done is not yet there. While there is a desire to see victories, there may not be a similar willingness to pay the price. Noticed was the modest attendance of young American Mus...