Terrorism jumps to a new level:cyberwar.

The classification of 2007 events which were not given the necessary attention by the media for various reasons of freedom of speech limitations, speaks about a new type of war with an alarming amplitude, the cyber war.

The country which created this type of war is Russia through information attacks against the government, the police and the Estonian banks.

Beijing, a financial power, takes control over information.

In June 2007, the Pentagon accused the Chinese army of hacking into the computers used by the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates` subalterns.

In order to counteract the new type of attacks the USA military aviation decided to establish The Cyberspace Commandment.

This will become completely operational in October 2009 and it will be assigned to protecting army and officials computers.

This commandment will have 500 fighters against virtual space enemies.

Today A cyber spy network based mainly in China has tapped into classified documents from government and private organizations in 103 countries, including the computers of Tibetan exiles.

The work of the Information Warfare Monitor initially focused on allegations of Chinese cyber espionage against the Tibetan community in exile, and eventually led to a much wider network of compromised machines, the Internet-based research group said.

“We uncovered real-time evidence of malware that had penetrated Tibetan computer systems, extracting sensitive documents from the private office of the Dalai Lama,” investigator Greg Walton said.

The research group said that while it’s analysis points to China as the main source of the network, it has not conclusively been able to detect the exact identity or motivation of the hackers.

The researchers detected a cyber espionage network involving over 1,295 compromised computers from the ministries of foreign affairs of Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Barbados and Bhutan. They also discovered hacked systems in the embassies of India, South Korea, Indonesia, Romania, Cyprus, Malta, Thailand, Taiwan, Portugal, Germany and Pakistan and the war continues like a cancer to modern society already vulnerable.

By Burca Alice Larisa

Iran, in gesture to U.S., promises help on drugs

By Sue Pleming and David Brunnstrom

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Iran offered help in combating the Afghan drugs trade on Tuesday, in a gesture to a U.S. call for regional support in Afghanistan that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described as promising.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh told an international meeting on Afghanistan in The Hague that Tehran was ready to help both in fighting the country’s opium trade and in reconstruction.

Clinton, seeking support for a revamped strategy unveiled by President Barack Obama to tackle Islamist militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, welcomed his comments.

“I did think that the Iranian intervention this morning was promising,” she told reporters.

While Clinton herself had not expected any substantive discussions with the Iranian delegation, she said U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke had a cordial and unplanned meeting with Akhoundzadeh.

“It did not focus on anything substantive. It was cordial; it was unplanned and they agreed to stay in touch.”

She also told the meeting the United States was ready to offer an “honorable form of reconciliation” to Afghan insurgents who renounced violence.

“We must … support efforts by the government of Afghanistan to separate the extremists of al Qaeda and the Taliban from those who have joined their ranks not out of conviction, but out of desperation,” she said.

“They should be offered an honorable form of reconciliation and reintegration into a peaceful society, if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al Qaeda, and support the constitution,” Clinton said.

HELP FROM NEIGHBOURS

She also called for all of Afghanistan’s neighbors to play a constructive role in stabilizing the country.

“Just as these problems cannot be solved without the Afghan people, they cannot be solved without the help of Afghanistan’s neighbors,” she said.

Clinton had played down any major overtures with Iran at the meeting in The Hague meeting and said beforehand she had no plans for a separate meeting with its deputy foreign minister.

But the joint presence of the U.S. and Iranian delegations was an easing the policy of the former Bush administration which stuck to a years-long stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Akhoundzadeh reaffirmed Iran’s long-standing opposition to the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, which has left it facing an American military presence both there and in neighboring Iraq.

reuters.com

Official confusion over Lahore(Pakistan) siege

Official confusion over Lahore siege

Pakistan’s interior minister has urged the country to unite against insurgents

The attack on the Manawan police academy near Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore has underlined the vulnerability of the country to militant attacks.

The BBC’s Ilyas Khan in Islamabad looks at the official response to the siege.

Eight hours of siege, eight policemen killed, nearly 100 injured, and at the end of the day what do we know about the stand off at the Manawan police academy?

Very little, as usual.

And just as usual, analysts have continued to point out on television news shows that Pakistan has yet to stop being casual about the militant threat.

The handling of the police academy siege by top Pakistani officials goes to prove their point.

More than 24 hours after the siege, we still do not know how many militants stormed the academy, how many were killed, whether they took police recruits hostage, or whether they wore police uniforms.

Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, fired the first salvo two hours into the siege when he told the media that four people in civilian clothes had stormed the academy and gunned down the recruits.

Mr Malik: ‘Injured police numbered 95′ – nearly double the army figure

A construction worker present near the academy just before the attack told the BBC he saw five men wearing backpacks disembark from a white pickup truck in front of the academy’s main gate and scale its walls “commando-style”.

Head of the Interior Ministry, Rehman Malik, and the Punjab police chief, Khwaja Khalid Farooq, later put the number of attackers at between eight and 10.

This was contradicted by some injured police recruits interviewed by the BBC at the hospital, who claimed the attackers must have been more than 20 in number.

There is also confusion over the details of the attack.

The Manawan academy is essentially a composite of two buildings arranged in a single row. There is a long, and rather tall one-storey building to the west and a three-storey building to the east.

There is a huge parade ground in front of the two buildings, along the road to the south, and another ground at the back, to the north. Behind the northern ground is open country covered with knee-high wheat crop.

The entire compound is enclosed by a seven-foot tall wall.

Differing numbers

So, while four or five attackers came in from the front, did others scale the back wall and join up with their comrades in the central building area where the main drama unfolded?

Officials from the head of the interior ministry and the army spokesman to the provincial police chief failed to clear this up.

The question is, why do top Pakistani officials continue to make off the cuff remarks about a problem that appears to be ripping the country apart?

They did not even agree on how many attackers had been killed. While interior ministry official Rehman Malik said that three attackers “blew themselves up”, an army official at the scene told newsmen that “four attackers have been killed”.

Did the fourth attacker also blow himself up, or was he shot did? In the latter case, where is his body? No answers.

Their versions on the number of injured policemen also differed, with Mr Malik giving the figure of 95 while the army official put it at 50.

Apparently, no-one did a last body count at the academy, and no serious attempt was made by the officials to interrogate eyewitnesses even though there were hundreds of them inside and outside the academy.

During the standoff, the police officials had told the media that some of the recruits had been taken hostage by the attackers.

Later, when three of the attackers blew themselves up, there was no mention of any of the hostages having been killed as a consequence.

‘Rookie bombers’

The only confusion Mr Malik tried to clear towards the end of the day was to identify the attackers, saying they were sent by Baitullah Mehsud, a Taleban warlord based in South Waziristan.

The Taleban commander did indeed accept the responsibility for the attack on Tuesday.

But that hardly helps the credibility of the government.

Baitullah Mehsud has been blamed by the Pakistani government for carrying out the highly sophisticated operation which led to the assassination of former PM Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.

Some official quarters had also tended to implicate him in the daring attack on Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore earlier this month which virtually brought an end to South Asian cricket, at least for the time being.

But the attack on the police academy matches these earlier attacks neither in sophistication nor in impact.

It is not known how many militants stormed the academy and how many were killed

As one veteran crime reporter based in Lahore put it, “these were rookie suicide bombers, too eager to blow themselves up”.

The question is, why do top Pakistani officials continue to make off the cuff remarks about a problem that appears to be ripping the country apart?

Defence analysts in Pakistan may not say it in so many words, but some of them have been indicating between the lines that this apparent nonchalance is largely due to the continued interest of some sections in its powerful defence establishment to keep the militants afloat.

This deceptive duality breeds conspiracy theories for which Pakistanis are so famous.

The latest buzz in Lahore is that recent attacks in the city are part of the ground work being done by the “powers that be” – a veiled reference to the military – to depose President Asif Zardari, who they view as too eager to cooperate with the West in eliminating the Taleban.

bbc.co.uk

Where is God in the quantum physics debate?

What do you get if you divide science by God?

A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God, asks Mark Vernon.

The Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”, has been won by French physicist Bernard d’Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.

Quantum physics is a hugely successful theory: the predictions it makes about the behaviour of subatomic particles are extraordinarily accurate. And yet, it raises profound puzzles about reality that remain as yet to be understood.

WHAT IS QUANTUM PHYSICS? Originated in work conducted by Max Planck and Albert Einstein at start of 20th Century They discovered that light comes in discrete packets, or quanta, which we call photons The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle says certain features of subatomic particles like momentum and position cannot be known precisely at the same time Gaps remain, like attempts to find the ‘God Particle’ that scientists hope to spot in the Large Hadron Collider. It is required to give other particles mass

The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.

Some suggest that observers play a key part in determining the nature of things. Legendary physicist John Wheeler said the cosmos “has not really happened, it is not a phenomenon, until it has been observed to happen.”

D’Espagnat worked with Wheeler, though he himself reckons quantum theory suggests something different. For him, quantum physics shows us that reality is ultimately “veiled” from us.

The equations and predictions of the science, super-accurate though they are, offer us only a glimpse behind that veil. Moreover, that hidden reality is, in some sense, divine. Along with some philosophers, he has called it “Being”.

In an effort to seek the answers to the “meaning of physics”, I spoke to five leading scientists.

1. THE ATHEIST

Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg is well-known as an atheist. For him, physics reflects the “chilling impersonality” of the universe.

He would be thinking here of, say, the vast tracts of empty space, billions of light years across, that mock human meaning.

He says: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.”

So for Weinberg, the notion that there might be an overlap between science and spirituality is entirely mistaken.

2. THE SCEPTIC

The Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, shows a distinct reserve when speculating about what physics might mean, whether that be pointlessness or meaningfulness.

He has “no strong opinions” on the interpretation of quantum theory: only time will tell whether the theory becomes better understood.

“The implications of cosmology for these realms of thought may be profound, but diffidence prevents me from venturing into them,” he has written.

In short, it is good to be humble in the face of the mysteries that physics throws up.

3. THE PLATONIST

Oxford physicist Roger Penrose differs again. He believes that mathematics suggests there is a world beyond the immediate, material one.

Can science explain all of life’s meaning?

Ask yourself this question: would one plus one equal two even if I didn’t think it? The answer is yes.

Would it equal two even if no-one thought it? Again, presumably, yes.

Would it equal two even if the universe didn’t exist? That is more tricky to contemplate, but again, there are good grounds for a positive response.

Penrose, therefore, argues that there is what can be called a Platonic world beyond the material world that “contains” mathematics and other abstractions.

4. THE BELIEVER

John Polkinghorne worked on quantum physics in the first part of his career, but then took up a different line of work: he was ordained an Anglican priest. For him, science and religion are entirely compatible.

The ordered universe science reveals is only what you’d expect if it was made by an orderly God. However, the two disciplines are different. He calls them “intellectual cousins”.

“Physics is showing the world to be both more supple and subtle, but you need to be careful,” he says.

If you want to understand the meaning of things you have to go beyond science, and the religious direction is, he argues, the best.

5. THE PANTHEIST

Brian Swimme is a cosmologist, and with the theologian Thomas Berry, wrote a book called The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era.

It is avidly read by individuals in New Age and ecological circles, and tells the scientific story of the universe, from the Big Bang to the emergence of human consciousness, but does so as a new sacred myth.

Swimme believes that “the universe is attempting to be felt”, which makes him a pantheist, someone who believes the cosmos in its entirety can be called God.

Mark Vernon is author of After Atheism: Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life

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A selection of your comments appears below.

As a Hindu I can agree with them all. There is a (centuries old) western short-sightedness approach to science that is generally backed up Abrahamic beliefs. Science is being polarised or is seen in that manner ie if A is right B must be wrong, rather like the concept of heaven and hell. In Hinduism and other ‘Dharmic’ beliefs it has always been said that we live in the age of “maya” or illusion or even ‘veil’ and that what we see is made from ‘cosmic vibrations’. Nothing that we see is how it is, it is our eyes that can only take in limited information which our brain processes to fill in the gaps. Is a rock just a rock or is it billions of particles resonating at a certain frequency to make the ‘image’ of the rock ’seen’ by our eyes. The answer is both! Seeing may be believing, but it depends on whether you see with your eyes or an electron microscope.
Dipen, Stanmore

I am a physicist and evangelical Christian, so I think Penrose and Polkinghorne are closest to the truth. I’m pleased to hear that people are beginning to look again at the foundations of quantum theory. In recent decades physics has been dominated by what I call ‘quantum mechanics’ (like ‘garage mechanics’) – people who can do the sums but don’t think about what they mean. The deeper questions in physics are bound to interact with the religious/philosophical assumptions of the physicist.
Dave, St Neots

I agree with Weinberg. The maths might show up the complexities in nature and point to some profound conclusions, but the whole idea of something supernatural pulling the levers of the universe just escapes me.
Dan Wildsmith, Barnsley

When my ego is flaring I’m with the atheist simply because all thoughts, perceptions and concepts come from that wonderful delusional and often ignorant creature we call the mind. When the self is in check I’m with the sceptic…for the same reason! Only mankind’s arrogance, brought about by that delusional self, has to believe they exist for some “special” purpose.
Billy, Garnerville, New York

Obviously the great Martin Rees, but for more detail and a lot of work on the scientific view [eg, ch.6 in "Exploring Reality"], I go with Polkinghorne. My own view is ‘99% Dawkins’ – but what a difference 1% Christ makes. Your equation should be something about exobiology, or evolution of altruism: the Price equation, or just rB > C. Biology describes the world; physics is a special case.
Valerie Jeffries, Faversham, England

As a Christian I would agree with John Polkinghorne. Science just reveals how awesome the world is, a world which God created and designed. It is ironic that many scientists try and disprove God but in many instances only demonstrate just how complex and wonderful the world is. There had to be an author of creation. We are not here by chance.
Nathan Goodearl, Guildford

I most agree with Martin Rees. He seems to accept that we are not currently in a position to understand the universe in it’s entirety. I would be interested to hear his views on the so-called ‘God Particle’ (Higgs Boson). I fundamentally disagree with the view that science and religion are compatible and fail to see why some people who choose to exercise faith in a religious belief choose to do so via science. Religion can exist without science, and science without religion.
Rachael Amato, Bristol

I agree with the Atheist. For as long as anyone can remember the things we don’t understand have been given the explanation ‘God’, or ‘Gods’ and throughout history science, little by little, provides non-God explanations for things (suns, stars, comets, animals, plants etc.). This pattern looks set to repeat itself ad infinitum. In time we will be looking at our current religious theories and thinking how primitive and quite frankly wrong they look in the context of modern knowledge. But belief seems to be a need for many humans and I have no doubt their beliefs and Gods will move on in to the future gaps in our understanding.
Julian Harrison, Shrewsbury

4. THE BELIEVER is correct InshAllah. Many scientific facts have been found to be consistent with The Quran. Science is the rational study of creation, and its facts are consistent with revelation.
Saqib Pervaiz, Wolverhampton

The Atheist makes the most sense. The Universe is full of mystery that Mathematics and Physics will, in time, unravel. However, I don’t understand why Steven Weinberg needs to believe that the Universe should have a personality and why he deems it as pointless. Everything in life is pointless from that point of view, experiences – my enjoyment of living is my spirituality, for me there is no God and why does that matter?
David Hunt, Cambridge

bbc.co.uk

Is life so terrifying that we need TV cop shows?

Good cop, bad cop, very bad cop

The Wire’s protagonist Jimmy McNulty, centre, is no textbook law enforcer

TV show The Wire portrays police, politicians and lawyers working on the wrong side of the law. It’s a break from the norm, says dramatist GF Newman, whose own attempt at showing all sides of the story in 1970s Britain caused uproar. But cop shows still have a long way to come.

When I wrote the original Law and Order in the late 1970s there was no model in police drama that showed policemen as other than heroic.

Troy Kennedy Martin had previously portrayed them as stressed and human in Z-Cars, but nonetheless getting their man. Nothing in television police drama ever revealed the criminal’s viewpoint.

1970s miniseries Law and Order depicted corruption in the police

Just post-Dixon of Dock Green, as Law and Order was, all criminals were viewed as a sub-human species beneath contempt.

Thirty years on there is still no British model that regularly depicts the reality of policing and policemen. I always argued that there was a certain pathology that drew entrants to the police service, and that it was almost exactly similar to that of the criminal.

Left to their own devices and unchecked, many policemen have availed themselves of corrupt opportunities and easy solutions for keeping up their arrest numbers.

Where do we regularly and persistently see policemen behaving corruptly, or in a racist and prejudiced fashion, repeatedly making mistakes and obsessively covering them up?

COP SHOW HISTORY Dragnet: US show that ran from 1951, and introduced audience to police terminology and procedures Dixon of Dock Green: Ran from 1955 to 1976 and featured rose-tinted view of East End policing Z-Cars: Grittier portrayal of 1960s patrol units The Sweeney: Made its debut in 1975 and showed Flying Squad detectives tackling violent robbers Hill Street Blues: Award-winning 1980s US show that set the template for many modern shows The Shield: Based on the real-life LA Ramparts police scandal, this show finally showed officers behaving with outright criminality

Contemporary TV cops sport the occasional flaw, but for the most part are idealised visions and are invariably too old – don’t any of those producers look at policemen in the street, or those fronting news bulletins, and notice how young they actually are?

Perhaps life is so terrifying that the collective consciousness of television is to create and extend a huge and hugely reassuring comfort zone with our popular police drama.

But the strategy is subject to the law of diminishing returns. We’re anything but reassured by these old or flabby detectives who are so divorced from reality all the while we see and read about the increasing lawlessness around us.

Are we any less comforted by detectives like DI Pyle, from the original Law and Order, who was “swift” when it came to putting villains away?

Or Jack Regan, from The Sweeney, when he roughed up a suspect? The fact is, most of us are indifferent to the treatment of persistent and parasitical criminals who plague us and constantly strip away our quality of life.

Yet we remain paradoxical creatures who, while trying to get away with what we can often get away with, will invariably turn out to protest at an injustice, regardless.

Z-Cars was gritty but still tame by modern standards

It is ironic that the BBC is transmitting the long-running cult cop drama The Wire, with central characters who are not merely stressed and flawed representations of humanity, but openly corrupt, incompetent, corner-cutting racists, who will readily move heaven and earth to cover themselves.

Set in Baltimore, The Wire chronicles some cops trying to do a good job, others indifferent, superiors stopping policing with machinations, and corrupt and devious politicians above them.

The show also reveals criminal viewpoints, and not simply as inexplicable aberrations, but with some insight, even sympathy.

I don’t believe either presentation is likely to corrupt the youth of today or cause it to swell the ranks of either side. Instead, what this mainstream screening of The Wire might usefully do is influence a whole generation of writers of television to take a more realistic or original view of the genre, as I tried to do back in 1978 with Law and Order.

Then the world was a far more tender and sensitive place, of course, the television-viewing public obviously far more susceptible to corrupt influence.

Murky waters

This because following the furore my drama caused – as much the result of the never-before-seen quasi-documentary style in which the films were shot, as their content – the four episodes were summarily judged, found to be unfit for public viewing and put away for 30 years.

The group I’d most like to see influenced by The Wire is that minority of TV executives which signs off on all commissioning.

As a result they might think it safe at last to venture into similarly murky waters of realism here, rather than relying on imports from the US.

Dixon of Dock Green rarely had to beat a confession out of a suspect

How and by what means we get to that point I don’t much mind. That we get there and break out of this non-radicalised, non-politicised straightjacket television writers have been encouraged to wear under a surreptitiously repressive and watchful government, is essential to the very survival of drama on the box.

If we can’t reflect a reality nearer to the common experience then there really is no hope.

The Wire is a complicated show, one that you have to learn to watch. That in itself is good.

All too often we get lazy and complacent in our viewing expectations, with writers too often stooping to meet those expectations rather than making the audience work, even at the risk of losing them. Persevere and you will be rewarded.

G F Newman’s original Law and Order is currently running on BBC Four on Tuesdays at 2250 BST. He is the author of Crime and Punishment, a fictional history of crime. The Wire is on BBC Two at 2320 BST.

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Below is a selection of your comments.

Has everyone forgotten Tony Garnett’s The Cops? Bleak, real and deeply, darkly funny.
Tim Footman, London/Bangkok

I doubt The Wire will be able to maintain much hold on the UK audience, because of the impenetrably authentic ‘hood dialogue, the plethora of throwaway characters, and the fact that it’s really only works watched in long sittings – one episode a week following series-long story arcs will test anybody’s concentration. And while it’s unarguably fine television, the characterisation of women in it is very weak.
Robin Kelly, Leith, Scotland

I was given the DVD boxset for the Wire (all 5 seasons) and I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable shows I’ve ever watched.
Kientic, Derry

I couldn’t agree more with G. F. Newman’s comments. If there is a TV commissioning executive around, he or she is yet to raise their head. There was a story that ITV had picked up the rights to The Wire, with the intention of producing a British version of the show – to date though, nothing! However, one British show which does now seem to be unfairly neglected was Tony Garnetts late 90’s/early 00’s TV series “The Cops”. Set in Leeds it was a genuinely discomfiting view of the British Police, a brave attempt to portray them as fallible individuals, only just falling short of the overall ambition of The Wire.
Chris Butler, Bristol, UK

One notable exception from that list is the BBC programme “The Cops” shown from 1999 to 2000. If that wasn’t gritty and realistic with its documentary style production I don’t know what is!
John, Gateshead, United Kingdom

All of these writers and executives who are pushing for more realism on our screens seem to forget that there are plenty of us viewers who like and want the sanitised version. The news is full of tales of corrupt policemen, bankers and government – relaxing at the end of the day I want to watch something where the good-guys are really good, honest, incorruptible and always get their man.
ElleUSA, Utah (ex-pat)

There may not have been a model of crooked British police in television, but there certainly were several in British movies. My favourite is He Who Rides the Tiger (1965), starring Tom Bell, about the world of a full-time thief. At one point, the “hero” Rayston bungs a detective who has little evidence against him but might cause him a problem. This is portrayed as a professional expense. I also doubt if it’s true that television police series never revealed the criminal’s viewpoint: I remember for example Villains (1972), an excellent anthology series about different criminals after they escape from a prison van.
John Gammon, Brighton, UK

The Wire is not about good or bad, right or wrong it is about survival and ambition the strong and the weak and should not be classed as a police drama more a story of morality, race and corruption. UK cop shows have long been about the search for right and wrong in a Britain that is losing touch with these ideals and becoming more clouded and the grey areas bigger. The Wire will without doubt shake up mainstream TV and bring the realism of what is happening on streets corners not only in Baltimore but also in the UK into our living rooms, whether we accept the fact or choose to ignore it, is debately as we Brits especially those in the leafy burbs like the idealism of the ‘Heartbeat’ or ‘Lewis’ police drama and the way of life that is represented which as any city up and down the country will tell you is completely outdated.
Gavin Roberts, Newport, UK

Without doubt the Wire is a masterpiece. However the one very gritty UK based police drama that has been over-looked is The Cops, which was on BBC in the early 00’s, I think it was a Tony Garnett production, there’s nothing come close to it from the UK since.
Andrew Grainger, Edinburgh

“Break out of this non-radicalised, non-politicised straightjacket television writers have been encouraged to wear under a surreptitiously repressive and watchful government”? Is this man on the same planet as the rest of us? Hardly a day goes past without the police being portrayed somewhere in the media as racist and incompetent. The last thing most British people want is Mr Newman and his friends imposing more of their anti-police propaganda on us.
Mark, London

bbc.co.uk

How do young children handle the untimely death of a parent?

Sudhir Sharma’s daughters were three and six when their mother died of cancer. As the BBC’s Newsround looks at how children cope with bereavement, Mr Sharma tells how a young family has come through its profound loss.

I had never known anyone with cancer and when I was told my wife, Renu, had stage four ovarian cancer, I walked away from the specialist not really knowing what he had said.

But then you talk to people and you realise that you are not the only one whose life cancer has touched. They are all around you. Some still fighting and others, like Renu, who have lost the fight.

Remembering mum – the family look over old photos

For us it came out of the blue and was all consuming. Our whole life was put on hold and started to revolve around this thing none of us could see. I was on the internet reading up about it, to understand how it takes a hold of the body and how it is treated.

Everyone I met would ask: “How is she doing?” But very few asked me: “How are you doing?” My identity had gone with this thing; not only as a father but as a husband and person. I was now a full-time carer who could not work and was too tired to look after his young daughters.

I now look back at the whole illness as a journey. People ask: “How did you cope?” Well, what other option was there, you just have to cope. It is the hand you are dealt and you have to play it.

My eldest at six years old became mum to a three-year-old Sudhir Sharma

Some friends called and would cry. “How can you be so strong?” they would ask.

I had no control of the disease but I could control the way I handled it and the way Renu saw me react, so I presented her with a smile. All my crying was done in private, away from everyone.

I remember when Renu was taken by ambulance to Oxford Hospital for her last few weeks and I stood in the drive watching the ambulance pull away knowing she was never coming back home. I have never felt so alone in my life. I could have been on a remote island in the Pacific.

Never before had I given carers or single parents a second thought but now, having done both jobs, I have a newfound understanding and respect for them. Things look very different from this side of the track.

The girls had to cope with the loss

I have had to evolve from being a husband – a title I no longer hold – to being a single dad, a housekeeper and the sole breadwinner; a very different role. I do not have the luxury of a partner to share things with. Now it is all down to me.

My daughters have had to deal with a dad who does not always cope well and they have to do more themselves. My eldest at six years old became mum to a three-year-old and would help her get dressed, feed her and get her ready for bed. Now at 11 she still tries to mother her eight-year-old sister even though I tell her that role is no longer hers. It belongs to me.

But what we must not forget is the person who went through all the pain and treatments and operations and how they were affected, because they lost the most. Renu lost watching her daughters grow into fine young ladies, helping them with their homework and planning birthday parties. The things we all take for granted.

It is also strange how one incident can change your outlook. Renu had a severe anaphylactic shock due to her chemotherapy, which led to cardiac arrest and respiratory arrest. In other words, she died and was brought back. This changed her view on life. She was not afraid of dying any more because she had been there once.

Family portrait: Renu had a severe reaction to her chemotherapy

Her words were: “I am not afraid to die because when I do, nothing will be my problem. It will all be yours (Sudhir).” And she was right. Everything I do now has to be done for me and the girls.

She will always be in our thoughts and we will always go to Renu’s favourite restaurant for her birthday. But life also moves on and the past has to stay there. You have to grasp the future with both hands… something we occasionally forget.

Newsround: Gone will be broadcast on Monday 30 March at 1830 BST on the CBBC Channel and again on Tuesday 31 March at 1655 BST on BBC One.

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Below is a selection of your comments.

I had personally known Renu as a young girl and attended her wedding. I met her on her last day. She was a lovely, bubbly and always smiling. Sudhir was everything to her, and I must commend him for the love and care he always gave her and stood by her and now as a dad, he is one of the nicest people I have ever met.
Nina Dua, Langley, Slough

My first wife died aged 32 after two years coping with a brain tumour. Our boys were aged 7, 6 and 4 when she died. We were all ready for her going – she had prepared the boys well. She wrote 18th birthday cards and journals for them while she was well enough to do so. Kids of that age don’t have the same hang-ups about death that many adults do. We coped well after she died in part due to her preparation. Some of her friends took her death badly though. The boys seem to have grown up to be well adjusted young men. I’m now re-married and have another two (pre-school) boys.
Alan, Edinburgh

I was also six when my mother died of heart disease (I’m now almost 40) and there was no thought about how to cope, my father and I just did. Of course, we both felt devastated, and cried, but there was an unspoken rule of trying not to upset each other. This concern for the living family brought us through it all – and to be able to look back and know that we gained so much from each other. I would never have known my father so well, had he not also taken on the role that Mr Sharma has had to, and we had a wonderfully open and honest relationship with each other. I cherish that more than my childish memories of my mother.
Michelle Gosney, Leeds

My stepsister died of cancer, leaving her husband with two small children. The sound of the two of them saying “Thank you for coming to my mummy’s funeral” is the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever heard.
Deborah, Surrey

My mother died leaving a husband and four young children aged 14 months to six years. Forty years later our darling father also succumbed to cancer. He gave us far more love and attention than most children get with two parents. None of us ever fell out with him. We knew what losing a parent meant and cherished him. During his last months one of us was always with him and he never complained about his illness or pain. I told him how much I loved him and thanked him for doing so much for us. When I told him he was the best father anyone could ever have, he replied that he knew. That still makes me smile. He knew he had done a great job. All his children were happily married with lovely children. His love has carried on.
Frances McLean, London

How hard it must have been, still is, to completely change your way of life after the very tragic passing away of your wife. Thank you for putting into words your feelings, doubts and panic, and I wish you all the very best for the future.
Caroline, Leeds

My husband died unexpectedly 4 years ago. My sons were 14 and 16. He left with huge financial problems and it has been a long arduous journey. Both boys have integrated extremely well and my life is getting back on track. When you become a widow or widower it is difficult for those around to understand the loneliness and emptiness. It is not a divorce or separation where there is another parent. You are left totally on your own to be mother, father and breadwinner. My prayers go out to that silent number who are largely ignored by society.
Barbara Sharma, London

Although I was not as young as your writer from the age of 12 I watched my mother die of Cancer – through “being ill”, to bed-ridden at home, to the last nine months in hospital to her death a few weeks after my 16th birthday. I am now 55 and the answer to the question “how do children cope and deal with it?” is still the same to me now as it was then. We don’t very well and the trauma of that period of my life still haunts me today.
Gordon Seekings, Crawley, England

I was so touched by this story, and the bravery of the whole family in dealing with this tragedy. Sudhir, you can be very proud of both yourself and your daughters for the excellent way you have managed to pick up the pieces of your lives and cope with the loss of an integral part of your lives. I wish you and your family every future happiness, as I am sure that is what your wife would have wished for you, and what you deserve.
Suzanne, Cardiff

bbc.co.uk

This week’s G20 summit will demonstrate how fast the balance of power is shifting from the old U.S.-led economic order towards

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By Brian Love – Analysis

PARIS (Reuters) – This week’s G20 summit will demonstrate how fast the balance of power is shifting from the old U.S.-led economic order towards emerging market nations, although it is way too early for a productive debate about a new world currency.

Beijing is pushing for more power in key institutions such as International Monetary Fund and, more dramatically, China and Russia are both saying it is now time to consider shifting away from a dollar-dominated world.

While the immediacy of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression may leave little room for conclusive discussion at the summit, Beijing and Russia have already opened the debate about a more fundamental shift in the global economic order.

In one sense, their timing is right, because the entire world is hit by a crisis that snowballed out of the United States.

In another, it is awful because nobody at the G20 summit really wants to fray financial market nerves any further.

“The rich countries are going to have to move over and make room,” says Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the Washington-based IMF. “It’s not a battle that’s won in two hours but it can start at this G20.”

Moscow has called outright for the G20 to start looking for alternatives to the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev renewed that call over the weekend.

“It is quite obvious that the existing currency system has not coped with the existing challenges,” he told the BBC in an interview, relayed by the Kremlin website. www.kremlin.ru

China, key because it is owner of the world’s biggest stock of foreign exchange reserves, went public with much the same argument in a speech delivered last week by central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan.

Does all that mean the idea will start to gain traction any time soon?

Not at the London summit in any case, it seems.

According to an aide of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, it will simply not be discussed by leaders, if only because the summit aim is above all to reassure scared financial markets and voters, not dent the dollar.

“It might be a good thing in the longer term but right now it is perhaps best the dollar doesn’t drop too much,” said the official.

As for the merits of a new reserve currency though, there is no shortage of economists who think it could make sense.

A UN panel published a report last week which said that an alternative reserve currency system based on the SDR, a unit of account used by the IMF, could help contribute to global financial stability and strength.  Continued…

reuters.com

Senior Chinese and Taiwanese military officers will meet for the first time since the end of a civil war in 1949 at a forum in Hawaii this summer

BEIJING (Reuters) – Senior Chinese and Taiwanese military officers will meet for the first time since the end of a civil war in 1949 at a forum in Hawaii this summer, state media said on Tuesday, in a further sign of improving ties between the political rivals.

Officials from both sides will attend August’s Transnational Security Cooperation forum organized by the U.S. Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, an institute under the U.S. Department of Defense, the official China Daily said.

The newspaper said senior military officials in Beijing had confirmed that military personnel from the two sides would meet at the forum.

“Another military source in Beijing also suggested that some cross-Straits military exchanges may take place before August, but declined to reveal more details as yet,” the report added.

A Taiwan defense spokesman said on Monday that military officials may meet in August.

China has claimed Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Communists won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.

Since Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou took office last May, the China-friendly leader has eased tension with Beijing through trade and tourism deals, although military distrust lingers.

Taiwan estimates China still has more than 1,000 missiles aimed at the island, and is continuing to expand its arsenal despite a warming of relations.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard, Editing by Dean Yates)

reuters.com

Russia and the United States should rebuild their relations and work together on key global issues,

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Russia and the United States should rebuild their relations and work together on key global issues, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an article on Tuesday in the Washington Post.

Medvedev said neither Russia nor the United States can tolerate “drift and indifference” in their relationship.

Russian-U.S. relations came to a standstill last year amid disputes over U.S. plans to deploy elements of its anti-missile system in central Europe and Russia’s war in ex-Soviet Georgia.

The United States remains suspicious of Russia’s ties with Iran, while Moscow opposes Washington’s drive to grant NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia.

“I believe that removing such obstacles to good relations would be beneficial to our countries — essentially removing ‘toxic assets’ to make good a negative balance sheet,” Medvedev wrote.

Medvedev is scheduled to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in London on Wednesday at the G20 summit. He said he was ready to begin rebuilding the relationship at their first meeting.

He said letters he exchanged with Obama earlier this year showed a mutual readiness to build relations in a pragmatic and businesslike manner.

“To begin with, we should agree that overcoming our common negative legacy is possible only by ensuring equality and mutual benefit,” Medvedev said.

He listed several areas for possible cooperation, including Afghanistan where a U.S.-led force is fighting a resurgent Taliban.

He said he agrees with Obama that disarmament should become an immediate priority. The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expires in December. Differences have stalled work on a replacement deal.

Medvedev also said Russia and the United States could help lead the effort to establish universal rules and discipline in the financial system.

“The world expects Russia and the United States to take energetic steps to establish a climate of trust and good will in global politics, not to languish in inaction and disengagement,” Medvedev said. “We cannot fail to meet those expectations.”

(Reporting by Joanne Allen, Editing by Alan Elsner)

reuters.com

Iran rejected the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan

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By Aaron Gray-Block and Sue Pleming

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Iran rejected the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, putting it at odds with the United States before Tuesday’s first major conference on the war since President Barack Obama unveiled his strategy.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is hoping to win support at the 90-nation conference for greater military involvement along with increased economic development and army and police training to defeat al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents.

In a reversal of the policy of the former Bush administration, Obama’s team views Iran as vital to any lasting solution in its neighbor, and has sought engagement despite the continuing stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“The presence of foreign troops cannot bring peace and stability for Afghanistan,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzade was quoted as saying in The Hague on Monday by Iran’s official IRNA news agency.

“It encourages radicalism,” he said, adding that a regional solution was needed.

“This policy (the Western countries) decide for the Afghan nation and for the Afghan officials does not work out any more.”

Before the conference, Clinton said the Obama administration had stopped using the phrase “war on terror,” rhetoric used by the Bush administration after September 11 attacks in 2001 to justify counter-terrorist methods criticised by rights groups.

“The (Obama) administration has stopped using the phrase and I think that speaks for itself,” Clinton said.

More than 70,000 U.S. and NATO troops are in Afghanistan battling a growing insurgency by the Sunni Islamist Taliban movement, which is also spreading its influence in Pakistan through the porous mountain border between the two countries.

Since taking office in January, Obama has ordered 17,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to tackle violence ahead of elections, and a further 4,000 to help train the army.

IRANIAN ROLE

Clinton, who says she has no plans for direct talks with Iranian officials at the conference, said she wanted Iran’s help on border security and fighting drugs in Afghanistan.

Iran had been cooperative after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to oust the then Taliban government, she said.

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Iran’s presence at the conference was a logical part of efforts to produce peace for Afghans.

“How can you talk about Afghanistan and exclude one of the countries that’s a bordering, neighbouring state?” he told reporters in The Hague. “The presence of Iran here is obvious.”

reuters.com