Team should have got more time to unwind: Kapil Dev - India

30 sept 2011

Team should have got more time to unwind: Kapil Dev

The former Indian skipper feels that no cricket should have been played for a month after the World Cup

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon

Mumbai: Indian cricket legend Kapil Dev took a dig at the Cricket Board on Thursday for not giving the triumphant Indian squad more time to unwind after their fabulous World Cup triumph on April 2 and for paying much more money to represent their Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises than the country.
"The players did not get time to unwind and enjoy their World Cup victory. They had worked three years for it. They just got four days (before IPL began). They should have got more time to enjoy the (triumphant) moment," the former India skipper said here in the western Indian city.
"If you don't give time to unwind, you lose the passion to play. That's what happened in England (Team lost Test series 4-0 to the hosts). They went through the motion and there was no passion which is very important when you play sports," said Kapil, who delivered the Dilip Sardesai Memorial Lecture at the Cricket Club of India.
"What I saw at Lord's was the worst I have seen. On the second day of a Test series the captain (Mahendra Singh Dhoni) removed his wicket keeping gloves and bowled. He was asking Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar whether they were tired. I would never have let him do that and would have bowled 25 overs on that day. You need to have attitude," he said.
"No cricket should be played for at least a month anywhere in the world after a World Cup," he added.
Taking up the debate over club versus country, Kapil said he can never comprehend how players can get more money while representing their clubs (franchises in IPL) than their country.
"I got confused here every time. They are run by the same organisation. How can the same organisation (BCCI) give more money to play for club and not for playing for the country? I do not agree with that," he said.

Tendulkar's new home exempt from fine - India

29 sept 2011

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Tendulkar's new home exempt from fine

Mumbai: Sachin Tendulkar has been exempted from the penalty which was to be imposed on him for moving into his new house without obtaining an occupancy certificate from the city's civic body.

This happened after the state government intervened and asked the Bombay Municipal Corporation to issue the OC to Sachin without penalising him.

Tendulkar had shifted to his newly constructed five-storey bungalow at Perry Cross Road in suburban Bandra on Wednesday before an OC was issued.

The Master Blaster said that moving into the new house was an emotional moment for him. "Everyone has a dream of owning a house. I, too, had this dream. I am happy that I was able to fulfil it. The flat where I earlier used to live, I had received it under the sports quota. I have now vacated that place, so that some other sportsman can live there," he told reporters outside his villa in Mumbai on Wednesday.

The batting maestro's new home has been reconstructed on a plot that earlier housed a dilapidated bungalow, which Sachin had bought for Rs. 39 crore in 2007.

The villa has been secured with high-walled fencing to avoid curious onlookers. CCTV cameras and sensors have also been installed.

Besides the three storeys above the ground level, the villa, designed after taking into consideration Tendulkar's likes and dislikes, reportedly has two underground basements.

According to reports, Tendulkar and his wife Anjali are likely to have their bedroom on the top floor, while the rooms of their two children -- son Arjun and daughter Sara -- and a guest room will occupy the two floors below.

A temple, drawing and dining rooms, besides arrangements for displaying various awards and trophies won by Tendulkar, who holds most of the batting records and is one short of completing a century of international tons, will occupy most of the ground floor.

The first basement will house servant quarters and master surveillance room, while the second basement has been kept for Tendulkar's passion -- cars. It is said to have a parking capacity of a large number of cars.

Besides all these, there is a swimming pool on the terrace of the house, reports said.

Delhi markets use toxic formalin for preservation of fishes - India

26 sept 2011

Delhi markets use toxic formalin for preservation of fishes

Formalin is a toxic and carcinogenic chemical used to preserve dead bodies in mortuaries, to prevent fish from deteriorating during transportation.

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Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

The malpractice of preserving fish in formalin is widespread in Andhra Pradesh and in Delhi.

Fish lovers beware! Unscrupulous fish wholesalers are using formalin, a toxic and carcinogenic chemical commonly used to preserve dead bodies in mortuaries, to prevent fish from deteriorating during transportation.

This shocking practice came to light after fisheries department authorities in neighbouring Punjab sounded an alert.

What is alarming is that while the Punjab authorities have reacted, authorities in Delhi, from where the fish is resold to Punjab retailers, appear unaware of the malpractice.

Dr A. K. Walia, Delhi's health minister, when contacted, said, "In the past, whenever we have heard reports about adulteration in any food substance, we have carried out raids, thoroughly examined the substances and subsequently taken requisite action." "Formalin is a poisonous substance and I am hearing about its use in fish coming to Delhi only now. We will definitely enquire about it and once it is authentically established, we will take whatever action is required under food safety laws," he promised.

Japanese encephalitis strikes Delhi - India

25 sept 2011

Beware! Japanese encephalitis strikes Delhi

The virus found on pigs is usually common to Uttar Pradesh but some cases have come up in Delhi hospitals as well.

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New Delhi: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has suddenly woken up to the health and hygiene of pigs. Not because Delhiites have taken a huge liking for pork, but because cases of Japanese encephalitis ( JE) have surfaced in the city.
Now one might ask what pigs have got to do with Japanese encephalitis. The answer is that domestic pigs play host to the virus.
Mosquitoes belonging to the Culex tritaeniorhynchus group, which breeds in flooded rice fields, become infected when they draw blood from the virus carrying pigs. Infected mosquitoes then transmit the Japanese encephalitis virus to humans and animals.
The virus, in its most deadly form, can affect the central nervous system, brain and the spinal cord and cause severe complications, even death.

Anup Jalota wishes Jagjit Singh's speedy recovery - india

24  sept 2011

Anup Jalota wishes Jagjit Singh's speedy recovery

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  Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Singer Anup Jalota says that Jagjit Singh's health is slightly improving.

The singer, who is present at Mumbai's Lilavati Hospital said that he alongwith singer-wife of Jagjit Singh, Chitra Singh and Pakistani legend Ghulam Ali have been praying for the recovery of the ‘Ghazal King'.

“He had high blood pressure which resulted in a blood clot. Sometimes when you have a high BP, it leads to clotting of blood. This led to brain hemorrhage, which is what he was operated upon. After surgery, he is responding and is better than he was in the morning. He is still on (slightly) ventilator support. Please pray for him,” the singer said.

Vasant Sathe dead - India

23 sept 2011

Vasant Sathe dead

New Delhi: Veteran Congress leader and former union minister Vasant P. Sathe died late Friday evening, according to official sources. He was 86.

Sathe was a widower and is survived by a son Subhash and two daughters, Suhas and Suniti.
Born in Nashik and educated in Nagpur in Maharashtra, Sathe had authored several books and was living a retired life since over a decade in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of the capital.
Sathe served as the information and broadcasting minister during the Asian Games in 1982 and it was thanks to his efforts that Indian television switched from black-and-white to colour.

Kishtwar student a conspirator in Delhi blast, says NIA - India

22  sept 2011

Kishtwar student a conspirator in Delhi blast, says NIA

New Delhi: A college student from Kishtwar in Jammu and Kashmir was Thursday presented to a Delhi court by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as one of the conspirators behind the Sep 7 Delhi court bombing that killed 15 and left over 90 injured.

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

The NIA, which brought Amir Abbas Dev before Additional Sessions Judge H.S. Sharma, said in its remand application that Dev is one of the terrorists who was involved in the bomb blast at gate No. 5 of the Delhi High Court complex.
"He (Dev) is one of the conspirators and he needs to be interrogated thoroughly to trace out his and of his other associates' complicity in this terrorist crime," the NIA said in its remand application.
The NIA sought 15-day remand of Dev and said in its application that the student knows English and Hindi. Dev, a B.A. second-year student of Maulana Azad Urdu University, Hyderabad, was presented before Judge Sharma for in-camera proceedings.
"However, the NIA could not get remand as he (Dev) said that he has no family members behind him and has no money to hire a lawyer. Therefore, he wants the court to appoint a defence lawyer for him," said a source.

Varun Gandhi following Modi's footsteps - India

21  sept 2011

Varun Gandhi following Modi's footsteps

While Modi has been trying to metamorphose from being the Hindu Hriday Samrat to the CEO of Gujarat, Varun's trip is to get on to the Anna Hazare bandwagon and emerge as a new-age activist against corruption

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New Delhi: It seems to be the season of makeovers in the BJP. Varun Gandhi is now following the example of the other Hindutva icon, Narendra Modi, in trying to repackage himself as a new-age statesman for wider consumption.

Modi, of course, is playing for higher stakes with his fast and address to the nation at Ahmedabad. His younger colleague is not lacking in ambition, but hasn't reached the stage of aspiring for the Prime Minister's job, at least not yet.

The BJP's Varun has set his eyes on the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, where he wants to play a pivotal role. The idea is to emerge on the national stage as a widely accepted leader through the timetested heartland of UP.

For the purpose, Varun has to rid himself of the natural branding of his politics after the obnoxious spiel he delivered against Muslims during the 2009 elections. Though he has officially claimed he never uttered the "If you raise your hand on any Hindu, I swear by the Gita that I will cut off that hand" speech, he clearly realises it is not going to take him far.

Shaun Robinson flaunts Farah Khan jewellery at Emmy - India

20 sept 2011

Shaun Robinson flaunts Farah Khan jewellery at Emmy

Hollywood TV presenter Shaun Robinson sported a ring and earrings by jewellery designer Farah Khan Ali for at the 63rd Emmy awards' red carpet.

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

"My Emmy jewelry was FABULOUS! thank you! Wish I didn't have to return these jewels by Farah Khan after Emmy's! They're GORG!" Robinson posted along with a picture, on micro-blogging site Twitter.
Robinson is the weekend co-host and correspondent for entertainment news show "Access Hollywood". At the Emmy awards, she was busy interviewing winners backstage, she revealed on her Facebook page.
She looked chic with her hair neatly tied in a bun, giving onlookers a good view of the stylish earrings by Ali. Her minimalistic look also highlighted a cocktail ring by the designer, who thanked Robinson for her praises.
"The pleasure was all mine. Thank you for wearing it... Aw that is so sweet. You looked beautiful as ever. Love u," tweeted Ali, who is the daughter of actor Sanjay Khan, and sister-in-law of Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan.

Deep oceans mask global warming for decades - India

19 sept 2011

Deep oceans mask global warming for decades

Washington: Deep oceans may absorb enough heat to mask the effects of global warming for decades.

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

A study, based on computer simulations of global climate, points to ocean layers deeper than 1,000 feet where the "missing heat" is concealed during periods such as the past decade.
"We will see global warming go through hiatus periods in the future," National Center for Atmospheric Research's (NCAR) Gerald Meehl, who led the study, was quoted as saying by the journal Nature Climate Change.
"However, these periods would likely last only about a decade or so, and warming would then resume. This study illustrates one reason why global temperatures do not simply rise in a straight line," said Meehl, according to an NCAR statement.
The research by scientists at NCAR and the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, was funded by the US National Science Foundation.
The 2000-10 was Earth's warmest decade in more than a century of weather records. However, the single-year mark for warmest global temperature, which was set in 1998, remained unmatched until 2010.
Yet emissions continued to rise during the 2000s, and satellite measurements showed that the discrepancy between incoming sunshine and outgoing radiation from Earth actually increased.
This implied that heat was building up somewhere on Earth, according to a 2010 study published in Science by NCAR researchers Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo.

Facing facts: Police not ready to fight terror - India

18 sept 2011

Facing facts: Police not ready to fight terror

Delhi, Mumbai blasts have shown yet again that, riven by corruption, Indian Police is unprepared to tackle modern terror and other threats. How long will it take before they get their act together?

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

An infographic on the state of Indian police

One week after a blast ripped through the Delhi High Court premises killing 17 people, sleuths from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the National Security Guard are yet to decide on the type of explosive used. Forensic laboratories in Delhi, Chandigarh and Hyderabad gave three different reports on the bomb component. The Union home ministry has now sent the reports to a fourth laboratory at Gandhinagar to 'reconcile' the findings.
Barely had the smoke cleared when the Delhi Police released sketches of suspects that were so laughably obscure that if taken seriously, could have led to the detention of large numbers of the city's adult male population. If that wasn't enough, a frenetic blame game began between the home minister and the Lt Governor, both of whom control the city police. P. Chidambaram insisted Lt Governor Tejendra Khanna had been warned of an impending attack. Khanna denied having received any warning. The NIA swung in and arrested four persons from Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir for sending a threatening email soon after the blast from a cybercafe. It turned out that they were schoolboys from a nearby higher secondary school. This was the scene in the capital, which got a shot in the arm with a Rs 1,350-crore police modernisation grant in 2009 ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
The situation is no different in Mumbai. In the July 13 blast that killed 26 persons, forensic teams were unable to even reconstruct the bomb because at least two agencies walked away with fragments. Both unsolved blasts have left the police groping in the dark and citizens wounded.
India's police force is in disarray. Years of accumulated neglect have resulted in a force barely able to respond to a 10.9 per cent increase in crime each decade. It is incapable of an effective response to threats like terrorism. Six bomb attacks in 18 months still remain unsolved. The 20 lakh-strong force is short of nearly 5 lakh policemen. It will take another decade to make up this shortfall. India already has among the world's worst police to public ratios. Just 128 policemen per 100,000 population (the UN mandates a minimum of 222 policemen). Yet as internal security expert Ajai Sahni points out, a manpower surge may not be enough. "Police need to transform their profile through better training, equipment, orientation and deployment."

Meet the Pakistan jails spies - India

17 sept 2011

Meet the Pakistan jails spies

Here's an account of the unsung group of people which works behind enemy lines to protect the nation's interests.

New Delhi: For years they have served the country, silently and without question. They are the denizens of a shadowy world where success takes years to achieve and failure often means death. Meet the spies, the unsung group of people which works behind enemy lines to protect the nation's interests.

Many of them are languishing in Pakistan prisons and now a group of former prisoners has moved the Delhi High Court seeking adequate compensation from the government.

Buta Ram(48) is one of the applicants. Before he was caught at the Pakistan border, Ram, who claims to be a former RAW agent, had a wife and two children at home. Having spent 14 years in a Pakistan jail, Ram now wants to be compensated for all that he has lost.

"In the prison, we all felt terribly disowned," Ram said.

Police hunt for source of millions seized in Andhra - India

16 sept 2011

Police hunt for source of millions seized in Andhra

Bangalore: Karnataka police were Friday quizzing a number of people in Bellary to find out whether the millions of rupees seized by police in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh belong to arrested mining baron G. Janardhana Reddy.

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

"We are questioning several people but have not got any definite clues to the source of the money," a Bellary police spokesperson told IANS on the phone. He said no one has been detained in Bellary, the iron-ore rich district and Reddy's political base.
Bellary is about 300 kms from Bangalore. A truck said to have started from there was intercepted late Thursday near Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh and around Rs.5 crore was seized from it.
The only occupants of the truck were its driver and cleaner, both of whom have been arrested by Andhra Pradesh police.

Man who extorted money from filmmaker Rakesh Roshan gets bail - India

15 sept 2011

Man who extorted money from filmmaker Rakesh Roshan gets bail

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Mumbai:  A Sessions court on Thursday released on bail a man who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on charges of extorting money from filmmaker Rakesh Roshan.

Rajesh Ranjan was released on bond of Rs. one lakh and surety of the same amount. The court warned him not to tamper with evidence. The court enlarged him on the ground that the probe was over and his police custody was not required further.

CBI prosecutor Bharat Badami opposed his bail, saying he might tamper with evidence if released. However, Ranjan's lawyer argued that his client will cooperate with the probe.

Along with Ranjan, his accomplice Ashwini Kumar was also arrested and he is still in CBI custody. He too has applied for bail and arguments on his plea are still on.

Kumar allegedly impersonated as an officer of the Central probe agency and extorted money from Roshan. He (Kumar) was introduced as a CBI officer to Roshan by Ranjan.

Ranjan had approached Roshan saying CBI has registered a case against him and could issue an arrest warrant. Ranjan also told the filmmaker that Kumar was a senior officer.

Kumar had claimed that Ranjan and Bina Shah, who own Spectrum Entertainment, have filed a case against Roshan in connection with his 2010 Hindi film 'Kites'.

Though the suit was earlier dismissed, Roshan thought a fresh case has been filed. Kumar demanded money from the filmmaker and threatened that if his demand was not met, his entire family, including actor-son Hrithik and the latter's wife Suzanne, would be arrested, CBI told the court.

According to CBI, on June 13, Rakesh paid a "huge amount" of money to Ranjan. Suspecting something fishy, Roshan approached CBI on August 20. CBI then nabbed Ranjan after which Kumar's phone was put under surveillance and he was traced to Panipat from where he was arrested.

Chinese troops enter Indian territory; dismantle old bunkers - India

14 sept 2011

Chinese troops enter Indian territory; dismantle old bunkers

Leh: Chinese troops are reported to have entered into Indian territory and destroyed some old Army bunkers and tents in Chumar division of Nyoma sector, about 300 kilometres from here.

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

While some reports suggested that the Chinese troops in helicopters entered one-and-a-half kilometres into Indian airspace, other reports said that the helicopters landed in Chinese territory and then the troops marched into the area to dismantle the bunkers, a move aimed at displaying that the area belonged to them.
The Army denied that any such incident had taken place. But sources in the know said that two Chinese helicopters had entered into air space and landed one-and-half kilometres into the Indian territory at Chumar in Chingthang area of Tehsil Nyoma.
The Chinese troops attempted to dismantle an old army bunker, which was not used by the troops for long, the sources said. Another version quoted to eyewitnesses, who are often the grazers, said that Chinese helicopters landed near the Line of Actual Control and then marched in to destroy old bunkers of the army and tents of ITBP.

Kashmir's most-wanted terrorist killed in encounter - India

13 sept 2011

Kashmir's most-wanted terrorist killed in encounter

 

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Sopore:  Kashmir's most-wanted terrorist, Abdullah Uni, was shot today in a police encounter in Sopore in the state's Baramulla district.

Uni was the senior-most commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operating in this area.

Uni, a Pakistani resident, was behind some of the biggest attacks in the last decade in Northern Kashmir. He targeted security forces, political workers and civilians.

He was also among those accused of killing Maulana Shoukat Ahmad Shah, the cleric who headed the Jamiat-e-Ahli Hadees, a religious group of Sunni Muslims. He died in a bomb blast near a Srinagar mosque in April.

In the last two years, he was cornered eight times during different operations by security forces, but managed to escape.

Acting on a tip-off about the presence of some Lashkar militants in Baghat-e-Batpora locality in Sopore, a joint team of police and Rashtriya Rifles cordoned off the area around noon, official sources said.

As security forces began combing houses to track down the militant, the terrorists opened fire. Uni was killed.

Health of Indian politicians often treated like state secret - India

12 sept 2011

Health of Indian politicians often treated like state secret

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Jacqueline Kennedy, Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru, Indira Gandhi and President John F.
Kennedy arrive at the White House for a private
dinner in November 1961.

New York:  In the tempestuous latter half of August - marked, in India, by a prominent activist's public fast, pop-up protests, debates about corruption, and even debates about the debates about corruption - the Congress party seemed to flounder like a dinghy in a maelstrom. Perhaps it was because no one was at the tiller. Earlier in the month, a spokesman had announced that Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president, had left the country for three weeks for surgery, and that the party would, in her absence, be run by a four-man committee.

Then even that trickle dried up; the party released no official word on what she was being treated for, where she was being treated, or when precisely she would return. When presented with rumors - of cancer, of a visit to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, of an Indian-origin oncologist being mysteriously called away from holiday - the party replied with grim silence. (She's back now - or so we were told, in an equally laconic vein.)

In this, Sonia Gandhi appeared to be following in an established tradition, by which Indian political leaders guard news of their health as if it were a state secret. Not for them the publicly fought battles of Rudy Giuliani against his prostate cancer, of Dick Cheney against his troublesome heart, or of Hugo Chavez against his recent pelvic abscess. Even the example of Mahatma Gandhi - who let it all hang out, often greeting his ashram's residents with updates about his bowel movements - is an aberration in Indian politics. The health bulletins that Mr. Gandhi issued during his various imprisonments and protest fasts may have been tools of political leverage, but they were also ways to reach out to a population that loved him deeply.

Subsequent leaders have been reticent for strategic reasons. Mohammad Ali Jinnah had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in June 1946, but he kept it from public knowledge; thus, in those charged years, few knew that Mr. Jinnah had little time left to push for an independent Pakistan. He died in September 1948, a mere 13 months after the creation of Pakistan.

It was said of Jawaharlal Nehru that India's 1962 war against China - against the fraternal power in his ideal of Asianism - sickened him and hastened his demise. But even in photographs from just before the war - from September 1962, for instance, with the nuclear scientist Homi Bhabha - Mr. Nehru seems to look haggard and ill, very different from the fit, cheerful prime minister who had met Jackie and John F. Kennedy in Washington the previous November. The historian Srinath Raghavan points me to a revealing letter from his archival database, written on Valentine's Day 1962 by Mr. Nehru's sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, to Lord Mountbatten:

"You know bhai has been rather seriously ill... He has aged in a frightening manner. One can hardly hear him speak across the dinner table because his voice has almost disappeared, he walks with head and shoulders bent, he seems to have lost the keen interest in everything around him which was one of his marked characteristics... All Indian doctors are agreed that he must have a long rest - three to six months, in order to survive... There is irresponsible talk everywhere, even in the highest circles, and a whispering campaign is going on to the effect that the PM has lost his grip on the cabinet - that he cannot think clearly, cannot make decisions and so on."

Indira Gandhi would also find cause to be discreet about a disease, although at a time when she was still Nehru's daughter, and not political aspirant or Indian prime minister. In 1939, Ms. Gandhi checked into a plush sanatorium in Leysin, in Switzerland, to be treated for tuberculosis. At the time, writes Katherine Frank in Indira, consumptive patients "often had a leper complex. Tuberculosis was infectious and therefore stigmatized." Her doctor, Auguste Rollier, refused to use the word "tuberculosis," and,

"[T]o an extent, Indira and Nehru colluded in Rollier's deception, for they, too, never mentioned 'tuberculosis' in all the letters they wrote to each other... [T]o her father, she wrote only of her chronic low weight and increasing depression."

More examples abound. The Indian prime minister's office refused, in 2009, to grant a Right to Information request that sought to know how the former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had died during a state visit to Tashkent in 1966. In 2009 too, news of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's heart surgery was released less than a day before he went under the knife.

The reluctance to admit frailty is perhaps a primal political instinct, linked closely to another such: the desire to retain power. But these Indian politicians seem to have ranked the strategic benefits of secrecy over the right of their constituencies to know how fit their leaders are.

When they do, they veer toward behaving like rulers who build cults of personality, seeming to worry that weakness - even of a temporary, physiological sort - will jeopardize their power and spark new bids for their position. "The talk is about succession and nothing else," Ms. Pandit wrote to Lord Mountbatten in 1962 - a fearsome observation for India's politicians, even today.

Pregnant Aishwarya Rai prays with parents - India

11 sept 2011

Pregnant Aishwarya prays with parents

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Mom-to-be Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was spotted at the Siddhivinayak Temple with her parents. The actress looked pretty as ever and was seen wearing a saffron chunni over her suit.

Suspicious item found at Washington airport - India

10 sept 2011

Suspicious item found at Washington airport

Dr Sanjay Kumar Cardiac Cardiothoracic Heart Surgeon India

Washington:  Washington state police explosives experts gave an all-clear after investigating a "suspicious item" that forced gate evacuations at Dulles airport near Washington on the eve of 9/11 anniversary events, a spokesman said.

An item was detected around 4:30 pm, and an area around a cargo container on an airfield was evacuated, said Dulles International Airport spokesman Robert Yingling.

The evacuation area's perimeter included "a few" gates at concourse B of the facility, the largest international airport near the US capital, the spokesman said. Those gates were closed for four hours but then reopened, Yingling said.

The Virginia state police Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit declared an all-clear at 8:30 pm yesterday, he said.

"The boxes on the cargo pallet were found to have nothing harmful or hazardous," Yingling said.

During the investigation, the airport remained open and operating, the spokesman said.

The security alert came as the United States was on a tense watch ahead of the 10th anniversary of the landmark terror strikes, the worst on US soil.

One group of 9/11 hijackers took off from Dulles International, west of the US federal capital of Washington, seized the jet - American Airlines flight 77 - and crashed it into the side of the Pentagon.

On Saturday, former president George W. Bush joined current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Bush-era defence chief Donald Rumsfeld at a Pentagon wreath-laying ceremony to honor the Pentagon workers and airline passengers who died there.

Memories remain raw of the day when Al Qaeda hijackers slammed two passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York city and a jet into the Pentagon, while a fourth jet crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attacks.