Number of millionaires in US more than doubled in 1995-1999

WASHINGTON, Feb 8: The number of Americans who earned more than a million dollars per year more than doubled with the stock-market boom from 1995 to 1999, the New York Times reported.

Citing statistics from the internal revenue service, the US tax agency, The Times said yesterday that about 205,000 US taxpayers earned a million dollars or more in 1999, compared to 87,000 in 1995. The 1999 number accounted for 1 of every 625 taxpayers.

The millionaires’ average income also rose, from 568,000 dollars to 3.2 million dollars during the time period.

Although the richest Americans earned more during the period, they paid less in taxes, with 27.9 per cent of their incomes going to taxes in 1999, down from 31.4 per cent in 1995. That development was due to a 1997 reduction in taxes on capital gains, a large part of their incomes.

Meanwhile, however, taxes for all other Americans went up from 12.5 per cent to 12.8 per cent. Their incomes grew as well during those five years, but by far less than the millionaires. They earned on average 41,000 dollars in 1999, up about 22 per cent from 1995, while the millionaires’ incomes underwent a 463-per-cent increase.

1999 was the latest year in which tax information was available. (DPA)

FX, artisan developing TV movie on Enron scandal

LOS ANGELES, Feb 8: The financial collapse of former energy powerhouse Enron Corp. has consumed Government officials regulators and, certainly, investors.

But how will questionable accounting practices, complicated off-balance-sheet financings, and multiple congressional hearings play on the big screen?

Those questions will all be answered soon enough as hollywood has jumped onto the Enron bandwagon.

In a move that many in tinsel town said was inevitable, cable network FX and artisan television have signed former "60 minutes" producer Lowell Bergman, who was portrayed by Al Pacino in "the insider" to serve as consultant for the television movie about the financial debacle.

The companies said they also expect to sign further deals with individuals for an inside look into the energy company’s financial scam which has covered the front page of newspapers for months and is now the subject of congressional hearings.

"We are committed to making a credible and compelling movie out of this pretty incredible and complex story," said Kevin Reilly, president of entertainment at FX.

Many writers and producers polled in hollywood recently said the financial undoing of Enron wasn’t sexy enough to draw viewers, although with the right talent like writers, directors and stars, a movie is possible.

Many said it was only a matter of time for moviemakers to move in on the Enron scandal, now that it has moved from a wall street story to a political saga.

Other big movies involving corporate intrigue include "the insider," which starred Russell Crowe as a tobacco industry whistleblower at the heart of Bergman’s investigation "Erin Brockovich," starring Julia Roberts as a single mother who becomes an environmental crusader and the 1993 TV movie "barbarians at the gate," about the fight to control RJR Nabisco.

The Oscar-nominated 1976 hit "All the president’s men," chronicled how journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, played respectively by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, uncovered the watergate scandal that doomed President Richard Nixon.

Thousands of people have lost their jobs and savings as a result of the financial collapse at Enron, which filed for bankruptcy in December, embroiled in allegations of influence peddling, abuse of power, and conflicts of interest.

In Washington, the administration now faces increasing scrutiny about both President George W. Bush’s and Vice President Dick Cheney’s ties to the energy trading company.

"Lowell Bergman has made his mark getting to the bottom of complicated stories and that’s why we are in the best possible hands as we strive to get the facts straight and distill the issues," Reilly said.

"However, the dramatic guts of the story — cronyism, dishonesty, ambition, and capitalism gone awry — are taking shape with each passing day," he said.

Artisan pictures Chief Executive Bob Cooper, who will be executive producer of the project, has produced several television films. As president of HBO pictures, he was involved in "barbarians at the gate."

"We want to create a story that echoes powerful ideas and images in the same vein as such seminal productions as ‘barbarians at the gate,’ ‘and the band played on,’ and ‘all the president’s men,"’ said Cooper. (AGENCIES)

Sheikh Omar, the charming kidnapper

KARACHI, Feb 8: He has been described as a charming man and a model student.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh had a privileged upbringing in England, before his transformation into the radical Islamic militant who is now prime suspect in the hunt for kidnapped US reporter Daniel Pearl.

After dropping out of the London School of Economics, Sheikh Omar, as he became known, shot to prominence in 1994 for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping of three Britons and an American tourist in India.

Omar used his charm and his perfect english to lure his prey away from the Indian capital New Delhi and to a remote village in the interior.

Then he sprung his trap. Suddenly, his captors said, Omar was a transformed man, tying his victims to a stake and threatening to behead them one by one unless Indian authorities released two Islamic militants fighting for an end to Indian rule in Kashmir.

The four were freed after 10 days of captivity in a shootout in which a kidnapper and two policemen were killed.

Pearl’s kidnap has some of the same hallmarks. The wall street journal reporter was also lured into what investigators have described as a perfect trap.

Omar and his associates spent several days winning Pearl’s confidence, pretending they were trying to arrange a meeting with an elusive Islamic radical leader.

Finally, they called Pearl on his mobile phone and asked for an urgent meeting outside a restaurant on a busy street in Southern Karachi. But instead of taking him to see elusive radical Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, they took Pearl into captivity.

In the following week, emails were sent showing pearl bound in chains and with a gun to his head. He would be killed, his captors said, unless the United States released its prisoners from the Afghan war.

The son of a wholesale clothes merchant from Wanstead in East London, Omar was born in 1974.

He attended the prestigious, fee-paying forest school in north London, where teachers described him as an "all-round and supportive" pupil, who became a house prefect.

"He was in the premier league of students, there was absolutely nothing there, no sign whatsoever of this (militancy)," said Omar’s economics teacher, George Paynter.

Omar was captured in 1994 after fight with an Indian policeman on the outskirts of New Delhi and accused of involvement in the tourist kidnaps.

During his interrogation he told police he had been disturbed by ethnic strife in the Balkans and went to Croatia in 1993 with a relief organisation called the "the convoy of mercy".

There he met Islamic activists and soon after went to Pakistan, linking up with a militant group and receiving training at a guerrilla camp in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Indian investigators say Omar left a 35-page handwritten diary in his cell at the high-security Delhi jail where he was held for five years.

The diary, seen by Reuters, covers the period leading up to the kidnap, and tells of his excitement during his gradual immersion in the radical Islamic cause.

The diary says Omar arrived in Delhi from the Pakistani city of Lahore in July 1994 and looked to befriend Americans, Britons and French, in that order.

"Every place I visited I analysed from various points of view as a future conqueror — as I fondly imagined myself to be," the text says. Once he had his captives he took photographs.

"I remembered the Beirut hostages incidents some years back and how pictures of the hostages with newspapers in the background used to be issued," the diary says.

One of the first photographs of Pearl in captivity shows him holding a copy of Pakistan’s dawn newspaper.

Omar and other top militants were freed from an Indian jail in 1999, in exchange for 155 hostages held on an Indian Airliner hijacked to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

Omar slipped back across the border into Pakistan and quietly disappeared from public view with his wife and new-born son.

Indian police have since linked omar to the September 11 plane attacks on the United States, accusing him of involvement in the transfer of 100,000 dollars to Mohammad Atta, one of the pilots who flew airliners into New York’s World Trade Center. (AGENCIES)

Pak plans crackdown on militant seminaries

ISLAMABAD, Feb 8: Pakistan has said it was determined to crackdown on Islamic militancy and warned hardline Islamic schools, or Madrassas, would be identified and action taken.

Religious Affairs Minister Mehmood Ahmed Ghazi told news agency television in an interview yesterday that the Government was trying to identify which among the Muslim country’s estimated 10,000 Madrassas were involved in staging or promoting violence.

"Those Madrassas which are found to be involved in terrorist activities will be taken care of (and) the Government will have a crackdown," he said.

Long unregulated, Madrassas are seen as a breeding ground for Islamic militancy, some fostering Afghanistan’s now vanquished Taliban, and others accused of nurturing sectarian hatred between the majority Sunni and minority Shi’ite sects of Islam in Pakistan.

A bloody December attack on the Indian Parliament, blamed by New Delhi on Pakistan-based Islamic militants, sparked a tense military standoff between Pakistan and India and the mobilisation of around one million troops.

More than 2,000 radical activists were detained, and Musharraf said Madrassas would in future be regulated and have to teach a broad range of subjects and not just offer narrow Koranic teachings.

"We have prepared a comprehensive policy seeking to proceed in the direction of regulating the Madrassas and bringing them nearer to the mainstream (education)," Ghazi said.

He said in future, Madrassas would have to include the core subjects of english, mathematics and social sciences alongside religious instruction.

"We are establishing some model Madrassas which will provide a model to be emulated by other Madrassas," Ghazi said.

However, cash-strapped Pakistan, unable to provide even basic education for many of its impoverished people, needed up to 700 million rupees (11.6 million dollars) to implement the reforms, he said.

"We don’t have that money...That is the dilemma we are facing now," he added, saying the financial burden could be eased by the gradual introduction of reforms.

Ghazi brushed off fears of a violent backlash from hardline groups against Musharraf’s support for the US-led war in Afghanistan and measures to rein in Madrassas.

"They might have political influence among the student community but that does not mean that they are running the Madrassas," he said.

Madrassas boomed in Pakistan during the 1977-88 Islamisation campaign of military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq and again as Pakistan and then United States teamed up to counter the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan by promoting Jihad, or holy war, against the communist invaders. (AGENCIES)

| home | state | national | business | editorial | advertisement | sports
| international | weather | mailbag | suggestions | search | subscribe | send mail |