Kabul's Indian Embassy attacked, Taliban says "we did it"

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vehicle packed with explosives drove into the sidewall of the Indian Embassy in Kabul this morning. A huge blast followed. 12 people have died, and 80 have been injured. No Indians are among the casualties.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the suicide attack. On its website, it said it intended to target the Embassy. There was some speculation earlier today about whether the real target were other government buildings nearby.

"Three of our personnel from the ITBP, who were guarding the perimeter wall of the embassy, have been slightly injured from the shrapnel from the bomb blast but there has been no loss of life," Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said.

Officials say the intensity of today's blast was "more or less the same" as a major attack last year when a suicide car bomber drove into the front wall of the Indian Embassy. 41 people died and 147 others were injured in one of the deadliest attacks in the Afghan capital.


This is the fourth attack since August in Kabul, and the second attack on the Indian Embassy in a year.

India is a big target because of its large presence in Afghanistan. Post-Taliban, New Delhi has pledged over $1.26 billion in aid to war-ravaged Afghanistan, making India the fifth-largest donor nation to the country after the US, Britain, Japan and Canada.

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Rhino, tiger found dead in Kaziranga, again

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UWAHATI: A rhino and a tiger were found dead in Kaziranga on Wednesday, barely a fortnight after the national park suffered three casualties
from among its Big Five. With the latest deaths, the tiger toll has reached 12 since November 2008, while the rhino toll has risen to six this year alone.

The rhino carcass, with its horn missing, was found floating in a water body in the Bagori forest range. "The carcass was a few days old. The horn might have dropped off as the flesh started rotting," explained Bagori range officer D Kalita. The animal was fished out from near the Bimoli camp of Bagori range.

On the other hand, the carcass of a female tiger was retrieved from the Mikirjan area in the Kohra forest range of the national park. Preliminary investigations revealed the tiger was suspected to be poisoned by villagers residing on the park fringes. Samples of the animal have been sent to the State Forensic Laboratory here for toxicological tests. The post mortem report is awaited.

On September 19, a rhino was shot dead by poachers in the Burapahar forest range and a tiger was killed, allegedly in a retaliatory attack by residents at Mohpara, outside the Kohra range. On the same day, at Dolamara in Karbi Anglong, a tusker was killed by poachers, who chopped of its trunk and tusks. Three poachers involved in the rhino killing were later arrested in Nagaon district.

Park officials said poachers were not directly involved in the latest rhino death. "This is not a case of poaching as no bullet or any other injury marks were found on the body during examination. The rhino was old, and might have died of age. Its carcass was found inside the core area where poachers do not tread. Hunters generally target rhinos when they come out of the core area," said Kaziranga divisional forest officer (DFO) D D Gogoi.

However, sources claimed poachers could also be involved. There are many secret routes used by hunters' gangs around Bagori for movement between Karbi Anglong district and Kaziranga. In August this year, a female rhino was gunned down by poachers in the Bagori range.

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Train derails in Khagaria in Bihar; 1 dead, 21 injured

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ix coaches of the Amritsar-Katihar-AmrapaIi Express derailed in Khagaria in Bihar at midnight, killing one and injuring at least 21.

Railway sources described it as a miraculous escape for other passengers as the train was moving slowly.

Six coaches have derailed of which two coaches and the engine are submerged in water.

22-year- Puran Singh from Cahinpur village of Purnia district died in the accident. His body has been sent to Khagaria hospital for post mortem.

One lady passenger who received a head injury is in a critical condition and has been admitted in the hospital same hospital. The injured people have been given first aid. The rest of the passengers have been sent to Katihar by another train.

The GRP escort rescued the driver and occupants of two coaches.

Five passenger trains have been cancelled and 15 long-distance trains, including the North-east Express, have been diverted.

Traffic restoration on main line will take a couple of hours.

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India floods trigger food fears

H
eavy floods in southern India have damaged hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops and could lead to severe food shortages, aid agencies say.

More than 250 people have died and millions have been displaced in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka after the worst floods in decades.

Authorities in Karnataka have warned against the outbreak of water-borne diseases in camps for flood victims.

The rains came on the back of one of the worst droughts in India.

Relief workers are trying to transport food and medicines to hundreds of thousands of people who remain cut off in their villages by flood waters.

Growing concerns

"There could be 200,000 to 300,000 people in villages where aid has not reached," HV Parashwanath, secretary of Karnataka's disaster monitoring agency told the AFP news agency.

More than a million people are now living in temporary relief camps.

Aid workers are also supplementing the government's efforts.

Cases of villagers suffering from viral fever, diarrhoea and chikungunya, a form of malaria, have been reported from a few flood-affected districts of Karnataka, officials say.

"We have asked everybody to be alert and careful," Karnataka health secretary IR Perumal told BBC.

Teams of doctors have spread out across affected districts, and water-purifying tablets are being distributed, officials say.

"There is a danger of epidemic diseases," Red Cross official NG Narayana said.

But concern is now growing over the long-term impact of the floods.

Only last week the government announced that India had experienced its worst drought in nearly 40 years.

The floods have now dashed any hopes of a recovery in food production, according to World Vision.

"At a national level this will definitely have a say on our food stocks because these places in south India were the ones where there was some evidence of monsoon and summer crop having survived. But now that also is gone at least in Andhra, Karnataka and these districts," Jayakumar Christian, India director for World Vision said.

"Earlier there was migration due to drought and now there is migration due to monsoon," he said.

India's defence ministry said the army had delivered more than 4.5 tonnes of food to survivors who had lost their food stocks.

The rains were blamed by weather experts on a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal.

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Nobel Prize for chemistry of life

T
he 2009 chemistry Nobel Prize has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath.

The prize is awarded for the study of the structure and function of the ribosome - the cell's protein factory.

The ribosome translates genetic code into proteins - which are the building blocks of all living organisms.

It is also the main target of new antibiotics, which combat bacterial strains that have developed resistance to traditional antibiotic drugs.

These new drugs work by blocking the function of ribosomes in bacterial cells, preventing them from making the proteins they need to survive.
Their design has been made possible by research into the structure of the ribosome, because it has revealed key differences between bacterial and human ribosomes. Structures that are unique to bacteria can be targeted by drugs.

The announcement was made during a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, during which the three winners were described as "warriors in the struggle of the rising tide of incurable bacterial infections".

Professor Ramakrishnan is based at the Medical Research Council's Molecular Biology Laboratories in Cambridge, UK.

Thomas Steitz is based at Yale University in the US, and Ada Yonath is from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.

The prize is to be shared equally between the three scientists, who all contributed to revealing the ribosome's huge and complex molecular structure in detail.

Professor David Garner, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, described the three as "great scientists" and said their work was of "enormous significance".

'Molecular machine'

These scientists and their colleagues have helped build a 3D structure of the ribosome.

In doing so, they solved an important part of the the problem posed by Francis Crick and James Watson when they discovered the twisted double helix DNA structure - how does this code become a living thing?

DNA is made available to the ribosome by "transcription" of genes into chunks of messenger RNA.

In the ribosome, these are read and translated into the various amino acid sequences that make up an organism's proteins.

By looking closely at its structure, scientists are able to study how this translation process works.

The work is based on a technique called x-ray crystallography - where molecules are removed from cells, purified and made into crystals that can be examined using x-rays.

Professor Ramakrishnan told BBC News that until the ribosome's atomic structure was determined, "we knew this was a large molecular machine that translated genetic code to make proteins, but we didn't know how it worked".

"We still don't know exactly how it works, but we have made a tremendous amount of progress as a direct result of knowing what it looks like.

"It's the difference between knowing that when you put gasoline in a car and press on a pedal, it goes. But if you know that the gasoline gets ignited and pushes down pistons and drives the wheels, that's a new level of understanding."

Work together

Addressing the Nobel press conference by telephone, Professor Yonath said that modern techniques were allowing scientists to look at the structures on the atomic scale - individual bond after individual bond.


This is the 101st chemistry Nobel to be awarded since 1901, and Professor Yonath is only the fourth woman to win. She joins an illustrious list of female chemists that includes Marie Curie, who also won the physics award.

During the press conference, Professor Yonath said: "It's above and beyond my dreams and I am very thankful."

President of the American Chemical Society Thomas Lane told the BBC that the award was "a wonderful example of leaders in their disciplines - people from around the world - working towards a common goal and being able to achieve it.

"It shows that as scientists we don't just sit in our dark labs, we come together and share our research."

Professor Ramakrishnan paid tribute to the many generations of talented researchers who he said had contributed to this entire field.

Some scientists have commented negatively that the research recognised by this year's chemistry Nobel has a biological focus.

But Professor Garner pointed out that "when you get down to looking at biology at the molecular level - understanding the fundamental processes of life - it's all chemistry".

Professor Ramakrishnan said: "Ultimately, when you look at any biological question it becomes a chemical problem, because bio is done by molecules and molecules use chemical laws."

He concluded: "It's often the way with science that people study fundamental problems, like the ribosome, and they lead to important medical applications in completely unpredictable ways.

"It's important to realise that support for basic science is the seed that allows the medical applications and technology to grow."

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