Blair faces test of Bush friendship on environment

LONDON, Dec 15: British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the highest profile friend of the environment among major world leaders, faces a test of his mettle when he becomes head of the group of eight (G8) rich nations next month.

He has pledged to put climate change — seen by many as the most urgent problem facing the world — at the top of his agenda for the 12 months that britain has the helm of the G8.

But US President George W Bush, whom Blair has supported wholeheartedly in the invasion of Iraq to great loss of public support at home, has refused to sign up to the Kyoto treaty to combat global warming.

"I have always thought that it was a very high risk strategy for Tony Blair to put climate change so high on the G8’s agenda," Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Director of the Royal Institute of international affairs think-tank, told .

"The question is can he persuade the United States to move closer to the European view on the environment, and the answer is ‘no,’ he added.

Environmentalists insist that now is payback time. "It is time Blair used his diplomatic capital and persuaded the United States to agree to international commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions," said greenpeace head Stephen Tindale.

"But the signs are not good. At the moment it looks like Blair is all mouth and no trousers on climate change and that he is a serial flunker of challenges. He has yet to stand up to Bush on anything," he told .

And if Blair can’t do it, no one can, friends of the earth head Tony Juniper said.

"If there is anyone in the world who can challenge the Bush administration’s position on the environment it is him," he told . "But climate seems to be treated almost as a taboo subject in meetings between them."

The Kyoto treaty, derided by many as too little, too late, is aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Years in negotiation and then abeyance waiting for enough nations to sign up, Kyoto finally comes into force in February after Russia ratified it.

Even so climate experts have warned that a cut of those proportions will not stop the world warming, seas rising as the polar ice caps melt and extreme weather events like droughts and storms becoming the norm.

But the world’s greatest polluter, the United States, does not even accept that man-made climate change is happening let alone agreeing any action to deal with it.

In the knowledge that whatever happens Washington will not change its mind on Kyoto, Blair’s officials have been negotiating to try to produce some agreement on the science of climate change to take the deal beyond 2012.

"If they could persuade the Bush administration to accept that man-made climate change is happening it would be a small but welcome step," Tindale said. "But even that is a long shot."

"Anything is better than nothing. If they could persuade them to sign up to the science it would make some of their existing policies look bizarre if not insane," said Juniper.

However, Bulmer-Thomas said trying and failing might not necessarily be damaging to Blair — facing an election expected in May.

"He may be able to say this shows we are independent of the United States. There could be lots of mileage among those voters who feel that Blair has been Bush’s poodle," he added. (AGENCIES)

‘American desi’ TV network launched for south Asians in US

NEW YORK, Dec 15: American desi, the first 24-hour English-language us television network providing programmes on the ‘desi’ experience and lifestyle of south Asians in this country, was launched here today, targeting the 3.4 million desis in the US.

Echostar communications corporation’s dish network satellite TV service is scheduled to begin carrying the new network in January 2005, Prnewswire-Asianet said in a release.

The network, which is headquartered in studios in New Jersey and New York, will offer a full schedule of unique programming geared to the desi experience and lifestyle, targeting all key desi demographics and age groups.

"Desi" is south Asian terminology that identifies those "from the homeland". Today in the United States there are over 3.4 million desi family members, many of them in the upper income bracket, with over 20 per cent of desis of Indian descent having achieved millionaire status.

"It is a perfect time for this important segment of the population to have its own television network that will stand as a virtual meeting place in which to keep touch with desi culture and share it with others," said Vimal Verma, chairman and CEO of desi.

"As desi people we are well aware of our roots, but we are also aware that our lives are intertwined with the american culture that we have adopted, making it vitally important for our programming to be English-language based," he said.

The new network offers a series of "firsts" for the desi community — desi-themed daily morning newscasts; Daily animated children’s fare; A multi-generational lifestyle talk show for women; Cutting-edge afternoon teen shows; A sports news and magazine show showcasing international and American sports; Nightly interview programmes; A late-night desi comedy block; With Bollywood movies rounding out the mix.

"In keeping with our commitment to offer programming services that meet the needs of all of our subscribers, dish network is very proud to become the new home of American desi," said Tracy Thompson, vice president of international programming for dish network.

"It is a natural fit for dish network to add American desi to our line-up, serving the English-language south Asians in America who come from many different countries," he said.

The AD-supported American desi network promises to be very attractive to marketers, as the desi market is generally young and affluent according to the latest US census data, which states that desi households in the United States have median income of USD 63,000, compared with USD 42,000 for all US households, the release said. (PTI)

Japan sanctions would be war declaration

TOKYO, Dec 15: North Korea warned Japan today that it would treat economic sanctions as a "declaration of war" and threatened to try to exclude Tokyo from six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programmes.

Calls are growing from the Japanese public and politicians for the Government to impose sanctions on North Korea after Tokyo said bones Pyongyang had identified as those of Japanese it kidnapped were from other people.

"If sanctions are applied against the DPRK (North Korea) due to the moves of the ultra-right forces (in Japan), we will regard it as a declaration of war against our country and promptly react to the action by an effective physical method," a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said.

North Korea handed over the bones at talks in Pyongyang in November, saying they were the remains of Megumi Yokota and Kaoru Matsuki, two of 13 Japanese whom Pyongyang has admitted abducting in the 1970s and 1980s to teach its spies about Japan.

Japan, which does not have diplomatic ties with North Korea, lodged a protest with Pyongyang and demanded clarification on the fate of 10 Japanese who Tokyo believes were kidnapped and are still unaccounted for.

The North Korean spokesman said it was "unimaginable" that the bones handed over by Yokota’s North Korean husband were not hers.

"Let’s suppose he handed the remains of other person to the Japanese side, as claimed by it, then what did he expect from doing so?" The spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean central news agency, monitored in Tokyo.

The north admitted in 2002 to kidnapping the 13 Japanese, and Japan believes another two were also abducted. Five have returned to Japan.

North Korea has repeatedly said in the past that any imposition of economic sanctions by Japan would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

A hefty majority of Japanese citizens favour economic sanctions on North Korea, media polls have shown. However, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has taken a cautious stance, apparently for fear of jeopardising the six-party process.

Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper said on Tuesday that 74 percent of respondents to a nationwide survey believed Japan should impose sanctions on North Korea if there was no progress on the abduction issue, up from 68 percent in September.

Koizumi said on Monday he could understand the public anger but shied away from saying Tokyo should take punitive steps against North Korea.

Hiroyuki Hosoda, Japan’s top Government spokesman, played down North Korea’s reaction.

"We can’t see the value of making such comments," Hosoda told reporters.

Shinzo Abe, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s task force on the abduction issue, said Japan should be tougher in dealing with the reclusive communist state.

"It has become clear that there is no point in continuing to negotiate with them the way we have been," he told reporters.

Some analysts believe imposing economic sanctions could make it difficult to resume the stalled six-party talks.

The North Korean spokesman also said Pyongyang might call for the exclusion of Japan from talks on its nuclear arms programmes involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

"We will seriously reconsider the issue of taking part in the six-party talks together with Japan as long as such premeditated and provocative campaign of the ultra-right forces against the DPRK goes on," he said.

Three rounds of six-party talks have made little progress and a fourth round set for September did not materialise.

Pyongyang said on Monday that it was seriously reconsidering its role in the talks because of what it sees as a concerted campaign to topple its ruling system.

The five regional powers are seeking to persuade the North to ditch its nuclear weapons ambitions in return for aid and security guarantees.

Joseph Detrani, the Chief US envoy on North Korea, visited China, South Korea and Japan this month to discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear programmes after holding secret talks with North Korean diplomats in New York. (AGENCIES)

Air ticket electronic age flies in

GENEVA, Dec 15: Ticketless travel will become a global reality by the end of 2007, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) that represents over 270 airlines comprising 95 per cent of international scheduled air traffic.

IATA will discontinue the distribution of paper tickets to airlines by the end of 2007, said IATA officials. The move will save the airline industry three billion dollars year.

Each paper ticket now costs an airline nine dollars which includes its production, handling and processing, while the cost of an e-ticket will come to just one dollar.

While in India, e-ticketing is yet to take off in a big way, it is estimated that e-ticket penetration in the United States and Europe has crossed the 80 per cent mark.

With the increase in use of electronic ticketing by carriers worldwide, interlinking with such airlines will become easier.

IATA also plans to introduce radio frequency baggage identification which will replace the current bar-coded baggage tags, officials say. This will reduce the rate of baggage mishandling.

Currently, airlines lose 700 million dollars a year to trace mishandled baggage and get it back to passengers.

Plan are afoot to introduce the common use of self-service boarding machines around the world. There are such machines for individual airlines in airports in western countries. The idea is to have the same machine producing boarding cards for all airlines.

IATA is also planning to help passengers download and print bar-coded boarding passes from their personal computers using the latest technology.

Airlines worldwide have lost 35 billion dollars over the past three years which is more than their combined profits since 1945.

Officials say more low cost carriers will emerge around the world in the coming years because of the low operating costs. The operating cost per passenger seat kilometre for a low cost carrier is 4.19 cents against 9.87 cents for a full service carrier. (UNI)

China colliery accidents kill 5,286 miners this year

BEIJING, Dec 15: Colliery accidents in China killed 5,286 miners in the first 11 months of the year, but the Government cast the figure in a positive light, saying it was at an all-time low relative to production.

China produced 35 percent of the world’s coal but reported 80 percent of global deaths in colliery accidents at a rate of three fatalities per million tonnes of coal.

"This is the lowest in history," the official Xinhua news agency reported Wang Xianzheng, head of the state administration of work safety, as saying.

Last year, the average Chinese miner produced 321 tonnes of coal — just 2.2 percent of what a miner in the more mechanised United States produced and 8.1 percent of what a miner in South Africa produced, Xinhua said.

But the death rate in Chinese mines is 100 times that of US mines and 30 times that of South African mines, it said.

The Government has struggled to regulate thousands of small mines, but a chronic energy shortage and the lure of profits has led many mine operators to ignore orders to close dangerous pits.

Yesterday, as the safety administration held a national teleconference, Xinhua reported six miners were killed and two missing after a gas explosion in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing.

Thirty-six miners were still trapped in a coal pit that was flooded by hidden underground water in limestone caves on Sunday in the southern province of Guizhou, it said.

Those disasters followed an explosion at a mine in northern Shanxi province that killed 28 miners on Friday, and a blast last month that killed 166 miners in the neighbouring province of Shaanxi.

Wang said the number of miners killed in accidents in the first 11 months of the year was 451 fewer than in the same period last year, Xinhua said. (AGENCIES)

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