Chicken sold in some British Asian restaurants is being secretly bulked out with a water and chemical cocktail that contains both beef and pork.

Under UK law, added ingredients are not permitted for fresh chicken meat bought from super markets or butchers.

But the rules do not seem to apply for frozen products and ready-made meals where adding water is permitted for improving the succulence of the meat. Chemicals used in these water injections typically include salt, phosphates as well as hydrolysed animal proteins.

The discovery that beef and pork materials are being used is a cause of alarm for the UK's two million Hindus, Jews and Muslims who are forbidden for religious reasons from eating either beef or pork products.

Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA), which carried out an exploratory study into injection powders, said there was no evidence of a widespread problem with undeclared proteins in chicken products.

But the FSA statement confirmed that a new methodology used by food inspectors had confirmed the existence of beef and pork proteins in some of the chicken breast samples that had been analysed.

'Hydrolysed pork and beef proteins can be used as water retaining agents in chicken as long as they are properly labelled,' the FSA statement said. 'Use of these proteins does not make chicken products unsafe, but it is important that people are given accurate information about their food.'

Simulating Afghan conditions

More than 60 years after colonial rule ended in South Asia, British military planers are being forced to simulate conditions from there to prepare young soldiers poised for overseas combat.

Only folk memories remain of British military campaigns that were waged less than a hundred years ago from the borders of Afghanistan to Bengal.
Now, as a new generation of soldiers prepares for active service in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence in London is doing its best to prepare them for what lies ahead.

These preparations include the creation of a replica Afghan village in which pre-deployment training allows soldiers to engage in combat and non-combat exercises with UK-based Afghan nationals and some Gurkhas for the exercise.

The village is a copy of Sindh Kalay in Helmand province with food stalls, wood smoke, functioning bakeries and village elders holding impromptu meetings of their shura council.

Commenting on the £14 million mock village, a senior British army officer explained that the facilities are 'providing a carefully tailored package that not only allows us to experience bombs and fire-fight but also to see some of the nuances of daily life. This will really orientate the battle group to what we may face in the future.'

Lieutenant Colonel Toby Gray of the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards added, 'The facilities at Sindh Kalay are superb. Not only is the physical infrastructure strikingly realistic, but the attention to detail is second-to-none. The bazaar, which is peopled by Dari-speaking, retired Gurkhas is as close as we can get to the real thing outside Afghanistan.'

Another officer, Lieutenant Nick Lock of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Welsh commented, 'It gives the soldiers the opportunity to understand and practise engaging with the civil population as well as being able to practise a combat role against the role-playing insurgents.

'The guys are enjoying the training and can see real value in being able to practise in a replica situation. They are focused on developing their soldiering skills and this exercise means that they will not be over-faced by what they will find when they arrive on an operation.'

Bilawal in White House!

Pictures of Bilawal Bhutto in the White House, sitting cheek by jowl with his father President Asif Zardari of Pakistan, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and U.S. President Barack Obama, have aroused caustic comments from overseas Pakistanis.

Before she died, Benazir Bhutto anointed Bilawal as her political heir and future head of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. But as Bilawal at 20, a student at Oxford University, is too young and inexperienced, the affairs of Pakistan and the PPP are being managed by his father Asif.

Nevertheless, Zardari in recent months has taken the first cautious steps of introducing Bilawal to the nuances of international diplomacy. This included taking him to the White House and introducing him to senior U.S. officials.
A picture of Bilawal in the White House, sitting next to his father, apparently as a member of the visiting Pakistani delegation, has provoked howls of protest from other Pakistanis.

'What on Earth is Bilawal doing in this meeting???' one anguished Pakistani says in a widely circulated email. 'Please see this picture closely because, for the life of me, I can't get over Bilawal Bhutto accompanying his father to a high-level meeting with Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai. (Can you ever imagine Obama bringing one of his daughters to a meeting like this?...) I know there are more important crises in Pakistan right now (the refugees, the economy, the Taliban), but I can't let this go, even though I probably should.

I just have one question: Why is Bilawal Sitting There? A 20 year old who does not even know how to tie his shoes — but then come to think of it neither does his father. Actually, I have one more question: what does it say about Zardari's priorities that Bilawal is sitting closer to his father and Barack Obama than either Pakistan's Foreign Minister (Shah Mahmood Qureshi, on Bilawal's left) or Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the U.S. (to Qureshi's left)?
There is no rational reason why Bilawal Bhutto should be sitting in on an extremely important meeting with extremely important leaders. Could this be the 'Divine Right of the Kings' doctrine being implemented? Are these the new King and Crown Prince for us poor miserable Pakistanis???'

Husain painting fetches record price

Three South Asian artists have attracted record-busting prices for their work at a recent London auction held at the premises of Christie's.

Rashid Rana from Pakistan and India's fabled M.F. Husain each achieved six figure sums for their respective works. A third artist, Delhi-based Subodh Gupta, managed to sell his sculpture for just under £100,000.

Husain's painting from the Ragamala series, which achieved the highest sales figure of £397,250, was painted in 1960 and is described as paying homage to Indian cultural traditions in their classical forms, invoking the inter-disciplinary nature of music, sculpture, dance, painting and film.

Lahore-born Rana's work, part of his red carpet series, is a collage of different prints and photographs that captures the images of goats being slaughtered. Rana's visit to the Lahore slaughter house happened to coincide with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, prompting the artist to comment, 'I flipped on the TV to see that Bhutto's return, the joyous event which I had seen in the morning, had turned into carnage because of a suicide bomb attack on her life.

'I couldn't help but connect the images I had seen in the slaughterhouse with the blood and gore on every single news channel.'
Bihar-born Gupta's sculpture based on fixed steel buckets placed one inside the other, is likened to his paintings that also rely on ready-made objects to marry pop and photorealist sensibilities with surrealist touches.

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