murali@think.ARPA (Muralidhara Subbarao) (11/09/85)
This is a message I recieved from Kapur. Kapur regularly (every week) posts such news bulletins on the IIT Madras alumni net. Since Kapur had some problems posting this himself, I am posting this for him. From now on Kapur's news bulletins will be a regular (weekly) feature on this net unless lots of people protest. *********************************** Date: 4-NOV-1985 17:02 From: Deepak Kapur Sender: KAPUR Subject: News Bulletin To: bits@UTAH-20@smtp@tcpgateway, murali@cvl@smtp@tcpgateway, To: raju%suny-sbcs@csnet-relay@smtp@tcpgateway, To: siva@UIUC@smtp@tcpgateway, kapur@ge-crd@smtp@tcpgateway -------- News Bulletin 11/02 I. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi addressed a rally on Oct. 31 to commemorate his mother and the late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who was assassinated on the same day last year allegedly by her two bodyguards. The rally was held near Raj Path in New Delhi amidst heavy security where an 88 foot-statue of Mrs. Gandhi has been installed. Over 100,000 people reportedly attended the rally which was peaceful. II. Exactly one year ago, following Mrs. Gandhi's assassination, Sikhs were targetted in Northern India by mobs, which according to investigative reports by two civil liberties organizations and some newspaper accounts, were instigated and organized by local Congress(I) leaders. In Delhi area alone, between Nov. 1 and Nov. 4, over 2500 people, mostly Sikhs, were reportedly killed and their houses and shops were burnt, with some of the worst and inhuman massacres in post-independence history taking place in resettlement colonies of Delhi. III. Over 5000 Sikh youths reportedly belonging to the All India Sikh Students Federation demonstrated in Chandigarh on Nov. 1, demanding the release of thousands of Sikh youth allegedly detained in prisons under various acts. They were stopped by an equal number of army and paramilitary people with automatics weapons. The demonstration was peaceful. IV. A federal district judge rejected on Oct. 31 charges of negligence against the Boeing company and two other defendants in a suit related to the crash of an Air India Boeing 747 near Bombay in 1978. The plane had roller oved shortly after a night takeoff in Bombay and plunged into the Arabian sea. All 213 people on broad were killed. Judge James Fitzgerald ruled that the plaintiffs, families of the victims of the crash, had not proved their contention that the accident had been caused by malfunction of a cockpit instrument used to guide plane's turns, climbs and descents. The Judge ruled that the main cause of the accident was the negligence and distortions of the plane's pilot, Madan Kakar. He said Kakar had been unfit to fly because he had been taking drugs to control diabetes, had been dieting to help his condition and had aggravated his medical problems by drinking the night before. The judge also ruled that the co-pilot had been negligent in not watching the dashboard instruments and warning the pilot. The judge decided that the instrument claimed by plaintiffs to be faulty, had not failed. The judge also noted that the pilot had earlier being grounded for the last half of 1975 "by reason of uncontrolled diabetes and excessive use of alcohol." Judge Fitzgerald had conducted a non-jury trial on the case more than two years ago, but before he issued a ruling, the plaintiffs had asked that he hear additional evidence related to two incidents involving Boeing planes in which the cockpit instrument had malfunctioned. In the end, the plantiffs did not pursue one of the incidents because of contradictory evidence. V. Many survivors of the lethal leak of MIC and other gases from the Union Carbide's plant in Bhopal in early December last year had suffered chromosomal changes and damages to their immune systems. This was recently reported by S. Ray, Director of the Industrial Technology Research Center. According to Ray, his team of 25 scientists heard complaints from the survivors of impotency, menstrual disorders, and sleeplessness. The scientists had examined over a 1000 survivors. The damage caused to the immune system could result in theose being highly vulnerable to infections. Ray also said that those who suffered from chromosomal changes were likely to have children with genetic defects. According to official sources, over 2000 people were killed as a result of the gas leak, over 50,000 were seriously injured and 200,000 affected. VI. In a related development, a pharmacologist from McGill University, along with scientists at University of Pittsburgh has observed that the MIC gas that leaked from the Bhopal Union Carbide plant is extremely toxic to mouse fetuses. The study which was presented at the Birth Defect symposium at Albany recently by Prof. D.R. Varma showed that exposure of pregannat mice to as low as 8 parts per million of MIC for 3 hours killed all the fetuses in 80% of the animals without killing the mothers. According to most conservative estimates, the concentration of MIC in Bhopal was over 25 parts per million although other analyses indicated that the concentration could have been as high as 100 parts per million. The study also reported that the gas was more toxic to animals in late than in early pregnancy and the gas adversly affected the fertility of both male and female mice. Sources: The New York Times, India Now and India Abroad. --------