Higher fines, longer jail term for animal abusers proposed

SINGAPORE: The Animal Welfare Legislative Review Committee is calling for heavier penalties for animal abuse and abandonment.

After a year-long review, the committee has submitted its recommendations to the National Development Ministry for consideration.

The current penalty for animal abuse is a fine of up to S$10,000, one year in jail, or both.

The Committee calls for a more detailed penalty structure that differentiates the intent and severity of the offence, with the maximum penalty for repeat and malicious cases going up to S$50,000, three years jail and a one-year ban on keeping animals.

At the same time, the proposal calls for higher penalties for businesses - between S$20,000 and S$100,000, and a ban on animal-related business for up to a year.

The Animal Welfare Legislative Review Committee said the objective is to send a strong message to deter wrongdoers.

Another key proposal is to legally require all staff in all pet businesses to be appropriately trained in animal care and handling.

The Committee is recommending regulation for all commercial pet breeding activities, and for all pet boarding facilities to be licensed.

It also wants to see pet shops screen potential buyers to ensure pets are sold to responsible and committed owners.

On the Committee, Mr Chua Ming Kok represents the Pet Enterprises and Traders Association of Singapore, said: "There will definitely be some resistance from the smaller players. But we'll have in place schemes to train them, to try to help them come onboard this scheme. The major players in the industry have already given their consensus to be on this scheme."

Committee Chairman Mr Yeo Guat Kwang said their job is far from over.

"It's not a job that's been done. We definitely need to do more. But let's take one step at a time, and with this big step forward, I'm confident many other suggestions which are practical and reasonable will definitely also be taken into consideration in future," he said.

The Committee's report details 24 recommendations in total, including a call to set a minimum age of 16 years old for buying a pet.

- CNA/ck

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Congress MP Mukesh Gadhvi passes away

AHMEDABAD: Congress MP from Banaskantha, Mukesh Gadhvi, on Friday passed away at a private hospital in Ahmedabad, party sources said.

Gadhvi, 50, was admitted to Sterling Hospital ten days back after he suffered a brain stroke. He died of multiple organ failure on Friday, sources said.

Gadhvi was a two-time MP from Banaskantha and three-time MLA from Danta.

He is survived by wife, two daughters and a son. His father late B K Gadhvi was the Union Minister of State for Finance during the Rajiv Gandhi government and had also been the Gujarat unit party president.

Expressing grief, senior Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil tweeted: "Very sad and shocking to hear that my friend and senior Congress leader from Banaskantha is no more."

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi also expressed grief at Gadhvi's demise.

Modi tweeted: "Sad to know about the demise of Banaskantha MP Mukesh Gadhvi. My condolences to his family. May his soul rest in peace."

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

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Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

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Sequestration: Surrender Is in the Air

The budget ax is about to fall, and there's little lawmakers in Washington are doing to stop it.

Despite a parade of dire warnings from the White House, an $85 billion package of deep automatic spending cuts appears poised to take effect at the stroke of midnight on Friday.

The cuts – known in Washington-speak as the sequester – will hit every federal budget, from defense to education, and even the president's own staff.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats and Republicans each staged votes Thursday aimed at substituting the indiscriminate across-the-board cuts with more sensible ones. Democrats also called for including new tax revenue in the mix. Both measures failed.

Lleaders on both sides publicly conceded that the effort was largely for show, with little chance the opposing chamber would embrace the other's plan. They will discuss their differences with President Obama at the White House on Friday.

"It isn't a plan at all, it's a gimmick," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said today of the Democrats' legislation.

"Republicans call the plan flexibility" in how the cuts are made, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Let's call it what it is. It is a punt."

The budget crisis is the product of a longstanding failure of Congress and the White House to compromise on plans for deficit reduction. The sequester itself, enacted in late 2011, was intended to be so unpalatable as to help force a deal.

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Republicans and Democrats, however, remain gridlocked over the issue of taxes.

Obama has mandated that any steps to offset the automatic cuts must include new tax revenue through the elimination of loopholes and deductions. House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP insist the approach should be spending cuts-only, modifying the package to make it more reasonable.

"Do we want to close loopholes? We sure do. But if we are going to do tax reform, it should focus on creating jobs, not funding more government," House Speaker John Boehner said, explaining his opposition to Obama's plan.

Boehner, McConnell, Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will huddle with Obama at the White House on Friday for the first face-to-face meeting of the group this year.

"There are no preconditions to a meeting like this," White House spokesman Jay Carney said today. "The immediate purpose of the meeting is to discuss the imminent sequester deadline and to avert it."

Even if the leaders reach a deal, there's almost no chance a compromise could be enacted before the deadline. Lawmakers are expected to recess later today for a long weekend in their districts.

What will be the short-term impact of the automatic cuts?

Officials say it will be a gradual, "rolling impact" with limited visible impact across the country in the first few weeks that the cuts are allowed to stand.

Over the long term, however, the Congressional Budget Office and independent economic analysts have warned sequester could lead to economic contraction and possibly a recession.

"This is going to be a big hit on the economy," Obama said Wednesday night.

"It means that you have fewer customers with money in their pockets ready to buy your goods and services. It means that the global economy will be weaker," he said. "And the worst part of it is, it's entirely unnecessary."

Both sides say that if the cuts take effect, the next best chance for a resolution could come next month when the parties need to enact a new federal budget. Government funding runs out on March 27, raising the specter of a federal shutdown if they still can't reach a deal.

"As we anticipate an across-the-board budget cuts across our land, we still expect to see your goodness prevail, O God, " Senate Chaplain Barry Black prayed on the Senate floor this morning, "and save us from ourselves."

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Iran upbeat on nuclear talks, West still wary

ALMATY (Reuters) - Iran was upbeat on Wednesday after talks with world powers about its nuclear work ended with an agreement to meet again, but Western officials said it had yet to take concrete steps to ease their fears about its atomic ambitions.

Rapid progress was unlikely with Iran's presidential election, due in June, raising domestic political tensions, diplomats and analysts had said ahead of the February 26-27 meeting in the Kazakh city of Almaty, the first in eight months.

The United States, China, France, Russia, Britain and Germany offered modest sanctions relief in return for Iran curbing its most sensitive nuclear work but made clear that they expected no immediate breakthrough.

In an attempt to make their proposals more palatable to Iran, the six powers appeared to have softened previous demands somewhat, for example regarding their requirement that the Islamic state ship out its stockpile of higher-grade uranium.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said the powers had tried to "get closer to our viewpoint", which he said was positive.

In Paris, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry commented that the talks had been "useful" and that a serious engagement by Iran could lead to a comprehensive deal in a decade-old dispute that has threatened to trigger a new Middle East war.

Iran's foreign minister said in Vienna he was "very confident" an agreement could be reached and Jalili, the chief negotiator, said he believed the Almaty meeting could be a "turning point".

However, one diplomat said Iranian officials at the negotiations appeared to be suggesting that they were opening new avenues, but it was not clear if this was really the case.

Iran expert Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said: "Everyone is saying Iran was more positive and portrayed the talks as a win."

"I reckon the reason for that is that they are saving face internally while buying time with the West until after the elections," she said.

The two sides agreed to hold expert-level talks in Istanbul on March 18 to discuss the powers' proposals, and return to Almaty for political discussions on April 5-6, when Western diplomats made clear they wanted to see a substantive response from Iran.

"Iran knows what it needs to do, the president has made clear his determination to implement his policy that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," Kerry said.

A senior U.S. official in Almaty said, "What we care about at the end is concrete results."

ISRAELI WARNING

Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, was watching the talks closely. It has strongly hinted it might attack Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies any such aim.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said economic sanctions were failing and urged the international community to threaten Iran with military action.

Western officials said the offer presented by the six powers included an easing of a ban on trade in gold and other precious metals, and a relaxation of an import embargo on Iranian petrochemical products. They gave no further details.

In exchange, a senior U.S. official said, Iran would among other things have to suspend uranium enrichment to a fissile concentration of 20 percent at its Fordow underground facility and "constrain the ability to quickly resume operations there".

The official did not describe what was being asked of Iran as a "shutdown" of the plant as Western diplomats had said in previous meetings with Iran last year.

Iran says it has a sovereign right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and wants to fuel nuclear power plants so that it can export more oil.

But 20-percent purity is far higher than that needed for nuclear power, and rings alarm bells abroad because it is only a short technical step away from weapons-grade uranium. Iran says it produces higher-grade uranium to fuel a research reactor.

Iran's growing stockpile of 20-percent-enriched uranium is already more than half-way to a "red line" that Israel has made clear it would consider sufficient for a bomb.

In Vienna on Wednesday, a senior U.N. nuclear agency official told diplomats in a closed-door briefing that Iran was technically ready to sharply increase this higher-grade enrichment, two Western diplomats said.

"Iran can triple 20 percent production in the blink of an eye," one of the diplomats said.

The U.S. official in Almaty said the powers' latest proposal would "significantly restrict the accumulation of near-20-percent enriched uranium in Iran, while enabling the Iranians to produce sufficient fuel" for their Tehran medical reactor.

This appeared to be a softening of a previous demand that Iran ship out its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium, which it says it needs to produce medical isotopes.

Iran has often indicated that 20-percent enrichment could be up for negotiation if it received the fuel from abroad instead.

Jalili suggested Iran could discuss the issue, although he appeared to rule out shutting down Fordow. He said the powers had not made that specific demand.

The Iranian rial, which has lost more than half its foreign exchange value in the last year as sanctions bite, rose some 2 percent on Wednesday, currency tracking websites reported.

(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl and Yeganeh Torbati in Almaty, Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich, Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Timothy Heritage and Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Basketball: Knicks withstand Curry's 54 points to beat Warriors

NEW YORK: The New York Knicks withstood a dazzling 54-point display from Golden State's Stephen Curry on Wednesday to post a 109-105 NBA victory over the Warriors at Madison Square Garden.

Curry's points total was the highest in the league this season, surpassing the 52 of Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant against Dallas last month.

But his individual effort was not enough against a Knicks team that received 35 points from Carmelo Anthony and 26 off the bench from JR Smith.

Tyson Chandler contributed 16 points for New York and grabbed a career-best 28 rebounds.

Curry and the Warriors nearly claimed the victory despite the absence of David Lee, serving a one-game suspension for his role in an altercation with the Pacers' Roy Hibbert at Indiana on Tuesday that included several players and saw the shoving match spill into the spectator area behind the basket.

Curry made 11 of his 13 attempts from three-point range, one short of the league single-game record. He added seven assists and six rebounds.

Carl Landry scored 15 points and Jarrett Jack chipped in 14 for the Warriors.

Curry became the first player to score at least 50 points at Madison Square Garden since LeBron James did it with the Cavaliers in 2009.

He scored or assisted on Golden State's last 20 points. By then the New York crowd was cheering him, but the Knicks held the Warriors scoreless for the last two minutes of the contest.

After Raymond Felton denied Curry's jump shot with 1:28 remaining and the score knotted at 105-105, New York's Smith made a jump shot that gave the Knicks the lead for good.

"We closed out," Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. "We made the defensive stops we had to make coming down the stretch.

"We made plays, but boy, you've got to tip your hat to Curry. He played great."

- AFP/fa

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Assembly polls: Left Front heads for landslide victory in Tripura

AGARTALA: In a virtual status quo, the ruling formations were ahead and appeared to be romping back to power in the assembly elections in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya where counting of votes was taken up on Thursday.

Tripura's ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) led Left Front was Thursday heading for a landslide victory and seemed set to retain power for a fifth straight term.

TRIPURA

PARTY	LEADS	WINS
CONGRESS	6	1
CPM	36	10
CPI	0	0
Revolutionary Socialist Party	2	0
Others	1	0

MEGHALAYA

PARTY	LEADS	WINS
CONGRESS	24	1
UDP	4	0
NCP	2	0
National People's Party	2	0
Hill state People's Democratic party	4	0
Others	11	0

NAGALAND

PARTY	LEADS	WINS
CONGRESS	4	1
Janata Dal(United)	1	0
NPF	14	13
NCP	5	0
Rashtriya Janata Dal	1	0
Others	6	0

The Left Front government is set to come back to power for the fifth consecutive term in Tripura with leader of the coalition CPM leading in 32 of the 60 seats while its ally CPI was ahead in one.

Congress was a poor second leading only in four seats and others in one in the trends available so far.

In Meghalaya, the ruling Congress-UDP coalition is ahead in 14 of the 60 seats. Congress was ahead in 9 and its alliance partner UDP in 5.

Nagaland also continued with the same trend of favouring the ruling combination.

The Naga Peoples Front (NPF) was ahead in 15 seats while the Congress was ahead in 4, JD(U) 1 and others 2 in the 60-member assembly.

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Arias Prosecutor Too Combative, Experts Say

He has barked, yelled, been sarcastic and demanded answers from accused murderer Jodi Arias this week.

And in doing so, prosecutor Juan Martinez and his aggressive antics may be turning off the jury he is hoping to convince that Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in June 2008, experts told ABCNews.com today.

"Martinez is his own worst enemy," Mel McDonald, a prominent Phoenix defense attorney and former judge, told ABC News. "He takes it to the point where it's ad nauseam. You have difficulty recognizing when he's driving the point home because he's always angry and pushy and pacing around the courtroom. He loses the effectiveness, rather than build it up."

"He's like a rabid dog and believes you've got to go to everybody's throat," he said.

"If they convict her and give her death, they do it in spite of Juan, not because of him," McDonald added.

Martinez's needling style was on display again today as he pestered Arias to admit that she willingly participated in kinky sex with Alexander, though she previously testified that she only succumbed to his erotic fantasies to please him.

Arias, now 32, and Alexander, who was 27 at the time of his death, dated for a year and continued to sleep together for another year following their break-up.

Arias drove to his house in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008, had sex with him, they took nude photos together and she killed him in his shower. She claims it was in self-defense. If convicted, Arias could face the death penalty.

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Martinez also attempted to point out inconsistencies in her story of the killing, bickering with her over details about her journey from Yreka, Calif., to Mesa, Ariz., including why she borrowed gas cans from an ex-boyfriend, when she allegedly took naps and got lost while driving, and why she spontaneously decided to visit Alexander at his home in Mesa for a sexual liaison.

"I want to know what you're talking about," Arias said to Martinez at one point.

"No, I'm asking you," he yelled.

Later, he bellowed, "Am I asking you if you're telling the truth?"

"I don't know," Arias said, firing back at him. "Are you?"

During three days of cross examining Arias this week, Martinez has spent hours going back and forth with the defendant over word choice, her memory, and her answers to his questions.

"Everyone who takes witness stand for defense is an enemy," McDonald said. "He prides himself on being able to work by rarely referring to his notes, but what he's giving up in that is that there's so much time he wastes on stupid comments. A lot of what I've heard is utterly objectionable."

Martinez's behavior has spurred frequent objections of "witness badgering" from Arias' attorney Kirk Nurmi, who at one point Tuesday stood up in court and appealed to the judge to have a conference with all of the attorneys before questioning continued. Judge Sherry Stephens at one point admonished Martinez and Arias for speaking over one another.

Andy Hill, a former spokesperson for the Phoenix police department, and Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who has testified as an expert witness at many trials in the Phoenix area, both said that despite his aggressive style, Martinez would likely succeed in obtaining a guilty verdict.

"When it comes to cross examination, one size does not fit all," said Pitt. "But if you set aside the incessant sparring, what the prosecutor I believe is effectively doing is pointing out the various inconsistencies in the defendant's version of events."

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Ferrari goes up in flames at Teban Gardens

SINGAPORE: A red Ferrari went up in flames near Teban Gardens Road on Wednesday.

A Channel NewsAsia viewer was having his lunch at a coffee shop in the vicinity when he heard an explosion.

According to the viewer, the red Ferrari had stopped in front of block 54 Teban Gardens Road, along Penjuru Road.

The Chinese male driver had gotten out of the car before the explosion.

The driver did not appear to have been injured.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) arrived five minutes later and put out the fire.

SCDF confirmed that there were no reported injuries and that no other vehicle was involved in the incident.

The cause of the fire is being investigated.

- CNA/ck

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Chuck Hagel's remarks against India 'bizarre': BJP

NEW DELHI: Terming as "outlandish and bizarre" the statement of Chuck Hagel, the new US defence secretary, that India has financed problems for Pakistan in Afghanistan, BJP on Wednesday asked the government to exert diplomatic pressure on Washington for unconditional withdrawal of his statement.

The statement given by Hagel that India has financed problems in Pakistan is "outlandish, bizarre and baseless," BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.

He also expressed surprise over Hagel giving a clean to Pakistan, which has harboured in the backyard of its military base al-Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden, who was responsible for killing of more than 5000 Americans in the World Trade Centre attack.

"BJP is concerned at the indifference of the Indian government by not reacting to Hagel. BJP demands that government of India uses its diplomatic pressure to see that Mr Chuck Hagel retracts his statement unconditionally," Rudy said.

Hagel had made the remarks during a speech at Oklahoma's Cameron University in 2011, which has surfaced now.

"India for some time has always used Afghanistan as a second front, and India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border," the former Republican Senator had said.

His remarks are considered in sharp contrast to viewpoint of Obama Administration that has always been in praise of India's developmental role in Afghanistan and in fact has been pressing New Delhi to do more in Afghanistan.

Reacting to this, the Indian Embassy in Washington had said, "Such comments attributed to Senator Hagel, who has been a long-standing friend of India and a prominent votary of close India-US relations, are contrary to the reality of India's unbounded dedication to the welfare of Afghan people".

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