Mumbai court pardons David Headley, accepts him as witness in 26/11 terror attacks case

Mumbai: A local court on Thursday granted pardon to David Coleman Headley, one of the main accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case, and accepted him as a witness on certain conditions.

The court agreed to Headley's plea to turn an approver in return for pardon and wants Headley to reveal roles of him and co-conspirators in 26/11 attacks.

Headley, the Pakistani-American LeT terrorist serving prison sentence in the US, told the court that he was ready to depose and turn approver in the 26/11 trial if he was given pardon.

Headley appeared before the sessions court here through a video link from an undisclosed location in the US. Ujjwal Nikam, the special public prosecutor, told the judge G A Sanap that Headley was ready to turn "approver" if given pardon.

As Nikam sought some time to consult the investigating officers, the court adjourned the proceedings for half an hour this evening.

"I have received the charging document filed against me in this court. It charges me with same conduct for which I was charged in the US. I had pleaded guilty to the charges in the US and I admitted that I was participant in these charges," Headley told the court.

"I accepted responsibility for my role in those offences in my plea agreement (in US). I also agreed to make myself available as a witness in this court. I appear here ready to answer questions regarding these events if I receive a pardon from this court," he said.

At this point, Nikam said that Headley had proposed to become an approver provided he was given pardon. The prosecutor then requested the judge to adjourn the hearing for half an hour, so that he could consult the investigating officers about Headley's offer.

Earlier, the judge explained to Headley the charges against him.

On November 18, the court had said that Headley must be produced through video conference on December 10 as it allowed the Mumbai police's plea to make him an accused.

Headley is currently serving 35 years in an American prison for his role in the Mumbai terror attacks. The police had said he should be tried by the Mumbai court along with the key conspirator Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal.

Following this, the court took 'cognisance of offences' against Headley.

The offences with which Headley is likely to be charged by Mumbai court are distinct and separate than the offences with which he had been charged and punished in the US, the police had said then.

The police's application also noted that Headley entered into a plea bargain agreement with US authorities in 2010, and thereby willingly and voluntarily agreed that he was part of the conspiracy behind the November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai which claimed 166 lives.

He is accused of conducting a special reconnaissance of targets before the Mumbai terror attacks. His reconnaissance provided vital information for the 10 LeT terrorists and their handlers.

Facebook network and stress levels may be tied together

A small study suggests that for adolescents, their number of Facebook friends may be related to their stress levels, with more than 300 friends associated with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

The study only included 88 participants at one point in time, so it can’t indicate whether changes in Facebook metrics cause an increase in stress, or vice versa. Other important external factors are also responsible for cortisol levels, but Facebook involvement may have its own effect, senior author Sonia Lupien of Montreal Mental Health University Institute said in a statement.

"We were able to show that beyond 300 Facebook friends, adolescents showed higher cortisol levels; we can therefore imagine that those who have 1,000 or 2,000 friends on Facebook may be subjected to even greater stress,” she said. The 88 teens in the study, age 12 to 17, answered questions about their Facebook use frequency, number of friends, self-promoting behavior and supporting behavior of friends. The researchers measured the teens’ cortisol levels four times a day for three days.

Kids who had more than 300 Facebook friends tended to have higher cortisol levels than those with fewer friends, the researchers reported in Psychoneuroendocrinology. With more peer interaction on Facebook, however, cortisol levels tended to be lower. Neither depression nor self-esteem were related to cortisol levels.

Cortisol levels in early adolescence may influence risk of depression years later, the authors wrote. Wenhong Chen of the department of Radio-TV-Film and the department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not part of the new study, points out that the research is about Facebook, and so the findings can’t necessarily be generalized to other forms of social media use.

It may also not be generalizable to other age groups, Chen said. “The preliminary nature of our findings will require refined measurement of Facebook behaviors in relation to physiological functioning and we will need to undertake future studies to determine whether these effects exist in younger children and adults,” Lupien said. “Developmental analysis could also reveal whether virtual stress is indeed ‘getting over the screen and under the skin’ to modulate neurobiological processes related to adaptation.”

Offline friend network size was also related to cortisol levels. “It may not be about the number of friends either online or offline, it may be more about potential communication overload,” Chen told Reuters Health by email. Larger networks may mean more peers and more drama, she said.

Rather than using the overall number of friends online or offline it may be more revealing to examine network composition, strong ties and weak ties, as well as individuals’ position in their networks, she said.

Exercise as young adult related to heart health decades later

Young adults who exercise may have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and higher survival odds decades later than their peers who aren’t as active early in life, a U.S. study suggests. Fitness has long been linked to a reduced risk of heart disease in older adults. The new study, however, offers fresh evidence that workout routines started years before cardiovascular problems are generally encountered may help keep them from developing in the first place.

“Each additional minute a person could exercise on a treadmill in early adulthood was associated with substantially lower likelihood of risk of dying or developing cardiovascular diseases over 25 years later,” lead study author Dr. Ravi Shah of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston said by email.

The study included about 4,900 adults aged 18 to 30 who performed treadmill tests in 1985 and 1986, with roughly half of them repeating the exercise assessments again seven years later. The tests consisted of as many as nine two-minute stages of gradually increasing difficulty. Over the next several decades, the researchers monitored participants for obesity, hardening in the coronary arteries, heart muscle weakness, and incidents related to cardiovascular disease such as heart attacks or strokes. Half the subjects were followed for at least 27 years.

Overall, 273 people died, though just 73 of these fatalities were related to cardiovascular disease, the researchers report in JAMA Internal Medicine. In addition, 193 people survived events such as heart attacks or strokes.

Each extra minute participants lasted during the treadmill test as young adults was linked to a 12 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease and 15 percent lower odds of death by the end of the study period. Every one-minute increase in treadmill time was also linked to less strain on the heart muscle, but exercise test duration wasn’t tied to changes in hardening of the coronary arteries.

Among the subset of participants who did the second treadmill test seven years after the initial assessment, each one minute reduction in exercise tolerance was linked with a 20 percent increase in cardiovascular events and 21 percent greater odds of death. The increased risks persisted after the researchers accounted for individuals’ age, race, gender, obesity, and other cardiovascular disease risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, elevated blood pressure and high cholesterol.

The fact that even obesity didn’t change the outcome highlights the need to think about exercise as more than merely a tool for weight management, noted study co-author Dr. Venkatesh Murthy of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“Being fit and maintaining fitness over time are very important to your heart and overall health for everyone – especially starting in early adulthood – and not only for people who are trying to lose or to maintain weight,” Murthy said by email.

It’s possible that some of the association between fitness and heart health may be explained by improved diet, the authors concede. A different measure of cardiorespiratory fitness, known as a peak aerobic capacity test, might also get different results than the treadmill assessments.

Even so, the findings offer a substantive confirmation of the importance of physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, Dr. David Chiriboga and Dr. Ira Ockene of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester wrote in an accompanying editorial. Beyond fitness and exercise, patients should also understand the importance of limiting sedentary time, Ockene said by email. Many daily habits that contribute to inactivity – whether it’s channel surfing, using drive-through windows at the bank or the fast food restaurant, or emailing co-workers instead of walking down the hall to talk – all contribute to decreased fitness and increased weight.

“I spend a lot of time talking to folks not just about literal exercise but also about the extraordinary value of day-to-day activity,” Ockene said.