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‘Privacy’ on company computers is vanishing STURGIS, SD, Apr 25: Employees who use their computers at work are being increasingly monitored, authorities on privacy report...........more
US will continue to seek universal adherence to NPT: Albright UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25: United States would continue to seek universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation .....more Anti-missile defense UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25: China denounced the United States for seeking to develop an anti-missile defence ...more |
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Lower caste Hindus resist social discrimination KATHMANDU, Apr 25: Upper caste bullies who beat up a young boy, last week, for daring to enter a Hindu Temple in...more 5 injured, one brain dead WASHINGTON, Apr 25: One boy was declared brain dead and five children were injured in a firing incident at the national zoo here following a feud .......more Unrealistic steps could harm NPT regime: US UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25: The United States has said unrealistic and premature steps towards nuclear disarmament could harm......more Chinese crackdown on Falun Gong protest anniversary BEIJING, Apr 25: Dozens of China’s Falun Gong sect followers were detained while demonstrating today to mark the first anniversary...more |
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‘Privacy’ on company computers is vanishing STURGIS, SD, Apr 25: Employees who use their computers at work are being increasingly monitored, authorities on privacy report. "Areas that everyone thought were still private are no longer private," said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Work Rights Institute, Princeton, NJ "snooping is growing like a weed." "Many employers are monitoring the web sites you visit on your lunch break, which is downright scary," he said. "If you seek help from the web for an alcohol problem or if your marriage is on the rocks, your employer will know about it." And if you use your home computer for work, Maltby warned, your employer can tap your home e-mail and know each web site you visit. "New surveillance software is covertly being installed on corporate computers to invisibly capture and record employee keystrokes as they occur," said Stephen Lesavich, a Chicago Attorney and Internet Policy Advisor to the business community. He said this includes raw text, typos, backspacing, word substitutions, and electronic cut and paste operations — even if the electronic data is then erased and never saved on the computer. Lesavich termed the potential for employer misuse "enormous" and said employees fear their keystrokes may be monitored for trigger words such as "union," "organise," "strike," "boss," "HIV," "psychiatrist," and religious or sexual preference. "An employer can say, ‘I’m firing you because you were late"’ when it was because the worker spent time in a gay chat room." Lesavich, a partner in the Chicago law firm of McDonnell Bohenen Hulbert Berghoff, estimated that about 60 per cent of employee computer users "are being monitored in some way." According to the American Management ASSN, New York, last year employers gave them the following information on employees’ privacy: 27 per cent review e-mail 21 per cent review computer files 10 per cent review telephone talk and six per cent review voice mail. Lesavich asked if it wasn’t unreasonable to penalise an employee who is working late and "receives an e-mail from a daughter in college" or who uses the firm’s computer "to type up a shopping list or personal correspondence." "Not many companies have written privacy policies" on computer use, he said, but it’s a good idea for employees to know about it. Employers are justly concerned, Lesavich said, as some employees view pornography or check their stocks "for two to four hours" daily. Others "download employers’ intellectual property or trade secrets." Employees know "they can’t hang up a penthouse calendar in the workplace," Miami Attorney Elizabeth Du Fresne, of Steel Hector Davis told "industry week" magazine. But "they think they can send racial and sexist jokes via e-mail or download pornography at work." Last fall, Xerox Corp. Fired 40 employees for inapprorpriate internet use. Since then, said spokesperson Christa Carone, Stamford, Conn., "we have amended our policy to allow for casual personal use provided it’s limited in frequency and duration." According to rights institute’s Maltby, companies are "all over the lot" concerning employees’ personal computer use. "Some allow them to spend a reasonable amount of time on it, just as they have done with the telephone." So far, the courts have consistently upheld employers’ rights over employee privacy rights, attorney lesavich said. In a 1996 E-mail case, a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled that the interest of the Pillsbury Co., Minneapolis, in "preventing inappropriate and unprofessional comments or even illegal activities over its E-mail system outweighs any privacy interest the employee may have in those comments." National work rights’ Maltby said that employers "can monitor the amount of time an employee spends on the web" without gathering particular data, and take action only "when use becomes excessive." (REUTERS) |
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US will continue to seek universal adherence to NPT: Albright UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25: United States would continue to seek universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in South Asia and beyond, US Secretary of State Madeleine K Albright has said, without naming India or any other country and rejected the idea of expansion of the exclusive five-member nuclear club. There is no provision in the treaty for new nuclear weapon states: nor will there be one. For we will not break faith with all the states - from the former Soviet republics to South Africa - who made good decisions to strengthen their own security and the cause of non-proliferation by joining the NPT, she said while addressing the NPT review conference here. We want the tide of history to keep moving in the treaty’s direction towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, not their spread, Albright said. The treaty has been ratified by 187 member states. India, Pakistan, Israel and Cuba are the four states that have not joined the regime. The NPT recognizes only the United States, Britain, Russia, France and China as the nuclear weapon powers that are allowed to keep their weapons. Referring to the middle East where Washington supports Israeli position, Albright said while the United States does not oppose attention in this year’s conference to universal adherence to the NPT in the region, we believe it should be fair and balanced within the region and with other serious issues outside the region. Without elaborating, she said Washington is striving tirelessly to achieve peace between Israel and its neighbours. On Cuba, she said Havana stands alone in Americas outside NPT. And its leadership knows that there is no embargo on Cuba joining the most broadly-shared arms control agreement in the history, Albright said while referring to the unilateral economic embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba. Albright’s statement at the NPT review conference came after some of the speakers on the first day of the conference yesterday had urged the four holdouts to join the treaty to stop spread of nuclear weapons. United Nations secretary general set the tone when he criticized the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan as a serious setback to the non-proliferation regime and said they showed the need to fight proliferation. Mexican Foreign Minister Rosario Green was among those who demanded that the four join the treaty and called for creation of nuclear free zones in South Asia and the middle East. India is not participating in the conference but its Ambassador Kamlesh Sharma reiterated New Delhi’s principled position that the country could not accept the treaty as it is unequal. Stressing that India remains a very strong advocate of global nuclear disarmament despite being a nuclear power, he questioned the right of the five nuclear weapons states to keep their arms while denying the same right to the other countries. (PTI) |
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Anti-missile defense UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25: China denounced the United States for seeking to develop an anti-missile defence system, calling this another form of nuclear armament. "Disarmament should be conducive to the enhancement of every country’s general security instead of becoming the instrument and means for a few countries to strengthen their military superiority by weakening or restricting other countries," Mr Sha Zukang said yesterday. The director general of China’s Department of Arms Control and Disarmament was speaking on the opening day of a conference, held every five years, to review the implementation of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. In a speech peppered with hostile references to the United States as "a certain country" and "a certain military power," he said that a "certain superpower, which rampantly intervenes in other countries’ internal affairs and wilfully resorts to force," kept improving its overwhelming first-strike nuclear capability. At the same time, he continued, "it spares no efforts to acquire an advanced missile defence system, capable of neutralising any counterstrike that a small- and medium-sized nuclear weapon state can possibly launch after sustaining a nuclear first strike." Washington plans to decide this summer whether to move ahead with a limited defence against missiles launched by what it regards as "rogue states" or terrorists. China, along with Russia, has repeatedly warned that any tampering with the 1972 anti-ballistic-missile treaty, which bars a "star wars" type of defence against missiles, would destroy the entire edifice of nuclear disarmament. The treaty is based on the theory that anti-missile systems would only tempt the other side to build more missiles to overwhelm the defences. Mr Sha spoke immediately after U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the conference there was "no good reason" not to amend the ABM Treaty to reflect new threats from outside the big-power strategic-deterrence system. Mr Sha, whose country is still smarting from the accidental U.S. bombing of its Belgrade Embassy during last year’s NATO Kosovo campaign, said a "certain military power" was vigorously pursuing the development of a national missile defence system "in an attempt to seek absolute security of its own." Whether or not such security existed, "this kind of action is another way of nuclear armament" and would impede the international disarmament process, he said. Mr Sha also accused the united states of trying to deprive certain nations of the benefits of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, contrary to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. "Certain countries have classified the world according to their preferences and called those countries they dislike by a host of weird names, such as ‘rogue states,’ and have grossly deprived them of the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy." He said the "most rational and feasible confidence-building measures" would be for nuclear-weapons states to follow China’s lead by promising unconditionally not to be the first to use nuclear weapons and not to use or threaten to use them against states without nuclear weapons or nuclear-free zones. (REUTERS) |
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Lower caste Hindus resist social discrimination KATHMANDU, Apr 25: Upper caste bullies who beat up a young boy, last week, for daring to enter a Hindu Temple in Nepal’s North-Western Lamjung district found themselves arrested - but only on the intervention of human rights activists. Another ‘untouchable’ in the nearby Nuwakot area was not so lucky. Bire Sarki was not only beaten up mercilessly but police have not been able to trace him for over a week now. Such oppressive incidents are not rare in this backward Himalayan kingdom sandwiched between India and China - it is just that they are being reported with increasing frequency in the press. Armed with newfound freedom, the press has been laying bare the hollowness of ‘national unity’ as espoused by the previous autocratic Government — replaced ten years ago by multi-party democracy. Now, many ‘Dalits’ as the untouchable class is called here want to break out from the shackles of rigid Hinduism. They are demanding an end to discrimination, and warn that their movement could turn violent. "We have been oppressed for a long time by the so-called upper castes," says Ram Sunuwar, a Dalit who is active in the movement in Kathmandu. "We simply want equality and justice." But that is easier said than done. Nepal is unique in being the world’s only country which has for its state religion, Hinduism, a faith which stratifies society into castes. Many of Nepal’s nearly 23 million people take pride in being Hindu in spite of the rigid caste barriers that form the ugly side of the world’s oldest religion. According to statistics provided by well known ethnologist and social researcher Harka Gurung Nepal’s Dalits number an astounding 5 million or more than 20 percent of its population. But so abjectly dependent have the Dalits been that they have been unable to overcome divisions among themselves and translate their numbers into anything like social upliftment. "Dalits in nepal are a divided lot," explains Kosmos Biswokarma, one of the few Dalit journalists active in the Nepali media scene today. "They have been exploited and oppressed down the ages and even now many of them are divided because political parties continue to divide them." It is easy to believe Biswokarma. The Governing Nepali Congress Party in Nepal has four Dalit organisations in its fold — all competing with each other. The main opposition Communists patronise three other groups, and there are several more associated with other political parties. While it is tempting to lay blame entirely on Hindu obscurantism, experts point to other factors such as Nepal’s dismally low levels of illiteracy and poverty for the perpetuation of deep social inequalities. Another reasons is the poor visibility of the caste phenomenon because the worst cases of discrimination occur largely in the remote hill and border districts rather than in urban centres. At the official level, Nepal has tried to clamp down on discrimination. In 1965, the late king Mahendra decreed that Dalits should not be discriminated against but stopped short of prescribing penalties for perpetrators. It was not until the arrival of democracy in 1990 and a new constitution that social discrimination could be made punishable. "That was, and still is, the most significant anti-discrimination step taken by the state," Biswokarma said. Having a law is one thing, but practicing it is quite another as the Dalits have discovered. Experts who have studied the problem say, Dalits have too little faith in the establishment to use the law against discrimination. That much was evident from last week’s incidents at Nuwakot and Lamjung. Instead of the aggrieved parties lodging official complaints with the administration, human rights activists had to step in. "Dalits need to be more forceful in their movement," says Kapil Shrestha, a prominent human rights activist and president of Human Rights Organizations of Nepal (HURON). "They need to use the available laws and pressure for more pro-Dalit legislation to have an impact. After all, they have the strength of numbers." Biswokarma, on the other hand, feels that such tactics would work only in the distant future. For short-term progress Dalits need to pressure the ruling classes into affirmative action. "I am not talking about reservations per se, but there ought to be some concessions given to Dalits for better representation and opportunities." At present, of Nepal’s 300 -odd legislators in the two houses of Parliament only three are Dalits and all are nominated members of the Upper House. (IPS) |
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5 injured, one brain dead in shooting incident WASHINGTON, Apr 25: One boy was declared brain dead and five children were injured in a firing incident at the national zoo here following a feud between two groups of at the annual black family festival, police said. The incident occurred yesterday when the families of the children were leaving the zoo premises. Two factions started fighting and shots were fired, resulting in chaos. A boy aged 11-12 shot in the head was declared brain dead at a hospital, but is being kept alive to allow his family to donate his organs, a senior police official said on the condition of anonymity. Three children in the age group of 12-16 are said to be in a critical condition and have been rushed to the hospital. Police were looking for suspects but it could not be confirmed immediately as to whether those who were fighting were from within the group or outsiders. Although some witnesses claimed that shots were fired by one gunman, others said that three youths were involved in the incident. The victims were attending a annual black family festival of African-American families, a Washington Easter tradition at one of the most popular tourist sites in the city. (PTI) |
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Unrealistic steps could harm NPT regime: US UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25: The United States has said unrealistic and premature steps towards nuclear disarmament could harm the non-proliferation regime, but strongly defended its plan to develop anti-missile defence system to counteract possible threats from, what it terms as, rogue states. Addressing the review conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) yesterday, Secretary of State Madeleine K Albright said her country shares the frustration many feel about the pace of progress towards a world free of nuclear weapons. But we also know that if countries demand unrealistic and premature measures, they will harm the npt and setback everyone’s cause, she said. Despite Albright’s defence, the first day’s proceedings clearly revealed that the United States stood isolated on the issue as Speaker after Speaker criticized its decision, asserting that it could lead to renewed arms race. Among the most vocal critics was China which called the proposed American system a new form of armament. Its representative Sha Zukang derisively referred to the United States as certain country and certainly superpower which rampantly intervenes in other countries’ internal affairs and warned against a few countries strengthening their military power by restricting others. Sha accused the United States of continuing to improve its overwhelming first strike capability. A group of seven countries, calling themselves new agenda coalition sharply criticized the slow pace of disarmament by nuclear weapons states and warned that the world is growing increasingly impatient. Mexico spoke on behalf of the group which includes New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, Brazil and Egypt. But Albright said, none of us has within our power to create overnight the conditions in which complete nuclear disarmament is possible. But in our own regions, and in our own ways, we each have a contribution to make. Right at the outset, Secretary General Kofi Annan, slammed the united states, warning that its national missile defene system, as it calls the anti missile defence system, could jeopardize the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and lead to renewed arms race. Supporting Annan, New Zealand Minister for Disarmament said if the United States develops such a system, other countries that have the capacity would look towards that also. But Albright said 1972 ABM Treaty has been amended before and could be amended again to face threats from the rogue countries, naming North Korea and Iran as ones. Washington is trying to negotiate with Moscow the amendment to the treaty to enable it to go ahead and deploy such a system as and when it is ready. But Moscow says it could lead to collapse of all arms control arrangements. After the plenary, the four-week conference will break up into committees where various issues would be discussed in detail. Japan plans to submit a proposal calling for completion of the negotiations on banning production of fissile material by 2005. The negotiations held in geneva on the issue had failed to make any headway. (PTI) |
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Chinese crackdown on Falun Gong protest anniversary BEIJING, Apr 25: Dozens of China’s Falun Gong sect followers were detained while demonstrating today to mark the first anniversary of their mass protest that triggered a crackdown on the group, even as the Government said it will crush the outlawed cult. Witnesses said small groups of Falun Gong protesters emerged from the crowds of Chinese and foreign tourists at the Tiananmen Square to strike meditative postures of their faith or unfurl their yellow banners. The Chinese Government has won a decisive victory in its ongoing battle against Falun Gong, but the cult group led by Li Hongzhi has not recognised their defeat and continues to cause trouble, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told reporters here. He side-stepped a question on the detention of Falun Gong practitioners today, saying he was not aware of any arrests or detention and accused the group of becoming a political tool of anti-China elements in the West. Since China banned the group last July, Falun Gong members have been causing trouble on and around Tianaman Square in Central Beijing nearly every day. The group first captured world attention when over 10,000 followers staged a peaceful sit-in demonstration before the Communist Party headquarters here on April 25 last year, protesting official harassment. (PTI) |
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