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Blair to follow US lead, LONDON, Feb 3: Britain’s Tony Blair will bow to growing pressure today and call an inquiry into apparent intelligence failings over Iraqi weapons after .....more Nazi
porn flicks? HAMBURG, Feb 3: A major publishing house has made headlines and raised eyebrows in Germany by agreeing to publish a steamy novel about .....more Asian piracy costs movie makers 718 mln in 2003: MPA HONG KONG, Feb 3: Video piracy in Asia cost the world’s movie makers . ....more Sharon sets Govt shaking with Gaza pullout plan JERUSALEM, Feb 3: Israel’s ruling coalition was in turmoil today after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stunned friends and foes alike by ...more |
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At least 12 dead after KONYA, TURKEY, Feb 3: Digging with their bare hands, rescue workers in central Turkey today searched for dozens feared trapped in the rubble of a . ......more Blair
announces inquiry LONDON, Feb 3: British Prime Minister Tony Blair today announced an inquiry into the pre-war intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of . .....more US Advisers seek stronger antidepressant warning BETHESDA, Feb 3: US Government advisers urged regulators to issue stronger warnings about possible risks of suicidal behavior among children . ......more Bush’s
job approval WASHINGTON, Feb 3: US President George W Bush’s job approval rating dropped below 50 per cent, and Americans . ....more |
Blair to follow US lead, call Iraq WMD inquiry LONDON, Feb 3: Britain’s Tony Blair will bow to growing pressure today and call an inquiry into apparent intelligence failings over Iraqi weapons after Washington agreed to its own probe into the justification given for war. A Government source told the Prime Minister would make the formal announcement today when he testifies to a committee of senior Parliamentarians. Until now, Blair has firmly resisted calls for an inquiry although no banned weapons have been found months after Saddam Hussein was toppled. But pressure has been mounting to explain apparent flaws in intelligence that led Blair to state, prior to the war, that Iraq was a "serious and current" threat and that it had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons. A move by President George W Bush to appoint an independent commission on US intelligence — confirmed on Monday — turned up the heat on Blair to do the same. "I think it’s humiliating that we are just being an echo of the US again," former Cabinet Minister Clare Short said. The official Government line that evidence of weapons could yet be found has been increasingly hard to sustain since Chief US Weapons hunter David Kay quit his post last month and blew a hole in the Anglo-American argument on Iraq. Kay said he believed Iraq had no stockpiles of illicit weapons and said "we were almost all wrong" in assuming it did. Blair will appear before Parliament’s liaison committee at 0900 GMT. The failure to find weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq has dealt a major blow to Blair’s credibility, sending his public trust ratings plummeting in the wake of the US-led invasion. His conservative opponents have already filed a motion urging an inquiry, a demand backed by most of the public. Two weekend opinion polls showed 61 percent and 54 percent respectively wanted an investigation into London’s evidence. Critics say the Government may now attempt to load the blame on its intelligence services. "It would be grotesque if the intelligence agencies were made to carry the can for what was ultimately a political decision," former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said. "We know there are no Weapons of Mass Destruction, we know there was no threat, we know we got it wrong," he said. The new inquiry will frustrate Blair’s attempts to draw a line under what has been the most torrid period of his six-and-a-half-year tenure. He just averted a first major defeat in Parliament last week and a day later was cleared over a weapons expert’s death. Judge Lord Hutton exonerated the Prime Minister of blame over the suicide of Government scientist David Kelly, who killed himself after being named as the source of a BBC report that Blair’s team had "sexed up" the threat from Iraq. In a further blow, Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee concluded yesterday that the failure to find Iraqi weapons was undermining Britain and America in their "war on terror" and that the war had made terror attacks on British nationals and interests more likely. (AGENCIES) |
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Nazi porn flicks? New book raises awkward questions HAMBURG, Feb 3: A major publishing house has made headlines and raised eyebrows in Germany by agreeing to publish a steamy novel about high-ranking Nazis who made hard-core pornographic stag films for the war effort. And now the same publisher has made headlines and raised eyebrows for withdrawing the hotly-awaited book from circulation at the last minute. The nation’s literary Pundits are speculating at length about Rowohlt publishing house’s embarrassing brush with Nazi porn, coming as it does on the heels of other recent embarrassments for the respected publisher. The book is entitled "endstufe" (final stage), an obvious pun on the code word used by the Nazis for the holocaust: "Endloesung" (final solution). The author is 40-year-old Thor Kunkel, a tousle-haired and telegenic writer whose previous novel, "Schwarzlicht terrarium" (black light terrarium) took Germany by storm in 2000, winning literary awards. Kunkel’s new book is fiction, but it is based on a documentary film by renowned new German cinema auteur director Alexander Kluge which delves into the seamy and steamy realm of Nazi porn for profit. Kunkel spent some three years researching the book, meeting a film collector who claims to have the only two extant "official Nazi-sanctioned stag films" and also interviewing a woman who once appeared in one of those sex films. While the dialogue and narrative drive of his book are fictional, Kunkel asserts that the historical background is backed up by fact. "Endstufe" was one of the most hotly-awaited books of the season, but Rowohlt publishing house took the extraordinary step of withdrawing it even as the press run was nearly complete and copies of the book were being readied for a March 1 delivery date. Rowohlt issued a tersely worded statement citing "differences over content and style" between Kunkel and his book editor. "That’s not true," an outraged Kunkel said on German television. "I said said we ought to bring the book out and issue a press release saying we had our differences." He never agreed to keep the book off the shelves. "I’m so disappointed I’m sick," he said. Ironically, Rowohlt did not withdraw all the advance publicity for the new book. Booksellers have been swamped with brochures from rowohlt lauding "endstufe" as the publishing sensation of the year. "In his compelling and minutely researched portrait of the Morbid Nazi society, the author deftly mixes history and sex, science and the occult for a startling new look at the fall of the third reich," Rowohlt enthuses in its publicity blurb for the book. Those who have read the book suspect the publisher realized at the last moment that it might be just too compelling for German readers. The novel is set in 1941, with axis troops on the advance on all fronts after the defeat of France, with Britain cornered by the Blitz, with the united states not yet having entered the war. But raw materials are in short supply and a cynical group of high-ranking Nazi scientists, Amateur filmmakers and sex addicts turn their hobby - making stag films - into a luridly lucrative side-line. In a tongue-in-cheek reference to Hollywood, they set up Sachsenwald (saxonwood), a hard-core porn film industry which caters to the tastes of north African potentates and Scandinavian industrialists who supply the reich with oil and iron ore in exchange for raunchy 16 MM flicks. Kunkel believes there really was a saxonwood porn film project. He tracked down a film collector named Werner Nekes, who showed him what he claimed were two genuine saxonwood flicks. The author also tracked down a Saxonwood porn star, an elderly woman now living in a nursing home near hamburg. She readily verified the whole affair. "The resulting book has it all," wrote the respected Frankfurter allgemeine Zeitung, which has obtained a copy of the finished manuscript. "It has lots and lots of sex. It has lots and lots of Nazis. That is a combination guaranteed to top the best-seller lists." But Rowohlt, one of post-war Germany’s most respected publishing houses, has been reeling in recent weeks from embarrassing new releases. One book proposed that a high school shooting massacre in erfurt was avoidable, that police had been warned in advance of it. The book’s claims have been largely discredited. Another book, by alleged Israeli Mossad secret agent Nima Zamar was withdrawn by Rowohlt amid indications that the author never was an secret agent. (DPA) |
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Asian piracy costs movie makers 718 mln in 2003: MPA HONG KONG, Feb 3: Video piracy in Asia cost the world’s movie makers US 718 million dollars last year, 12 percent more than 2002, as pirates abandoned older videocassettes for newer dvd formats, data released today showed. Authorities conducted nearly 13,000 raids in the Asia-Pacific region in 2003, seizing nearly 45 million pirated optical discs, according to the motion picture association, which represents the world’s biggest movie and TV show makers. China led the region in video piracy, accounting for 178 million dollars or about a quarter of lost sales regionally. Ninety-five percent of the discs and videocassettes sold in the country are illegal copies. Japan accounted for 147 million dollars in losses — the region’s second highest dollar total — with a piracy rate of nine percent. More than half of all disc stamping machines seized in the region were in Malaysia, where 4,679 VCD and DVD stampers were confiscated. Among DVD products, seizures of recordable DVDs, or DVD-RS, leapt 3,265 percent as pirates flocked to the state-of-the-art format. "The dramatic increase in the production of DVD-RS shows that pirates are moving toward a diversified manufacturing base," said Mike Ellis, the MPA’s regional director for Asia-Pacific anti-piracy operations, in a statement. Seizures of more common machine-stamped DVDs doubled to 12.4 million discs, while VCD seizures — still the most dominant medium for pirated discs — grew 11 percent to 27.3 million. By comparison, seizures of videocassettes dropped 55 percent over the period, according to the MPA. Ellis said that pirates are shifting to a new model of using many smaller operations rather than just a few big ones to avoid being totally shut down in the event of seizure. The figures were released just days after blockbuster inc, a unit of media giant Viacom INC, said it was shutting its 24 Hong Kong stores and abandoning plans to enter mainland China. It citied rampant piracy in China as its main reason for opting not to go to the mainland. Hong Kong is one of Asia’s film capitals and pirated movies are readily available here or in the neighbouring Southern chinese city of Shenzhen. Video pirates in mainland China often Hawk rip-offs of the latest silver screen hits for less than 1 dollars. Despite the problem, the MPA has also made some inroads in the world’s most populous market over the last year, including landmark victories in a pair of Beijing and Shanghai Court cases against sellers and makers of pirated movie discs and cassettes. China has introduced new laws and expressed its desire to crack down on such pirates, but has often lacked follow-through due to the influence of perpetrators over Government and law enforcement officials at the local levels. In the United States, warner bros film studio and Sony pictures entertainment have sued several people, including a Hollywood actor, who they claim made illegal digital copies of movies and distributed them on the internet. The US movie industry estimates video piracy costs it 3 billion annually in lost sales worldwide. The MPA’s member include the distribution arms of Walt Disney Co, Viacom’s Paramount pictures, Sony’s Columbia Tristar, news corp’s Twentieth Century Fox, Time Warner’s Warner Bros and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer INC. (AGENCIES) |
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Sharon sets Govt shaking with Gaza pullout plan JERUSALEM, Feb 3: Israel’s ruling coalition was in turmoil today after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stunned friends and foes alike by saying he planned to evacuate almost all the Jewish settlements in the Gaza strip. Sharon, once considered the Godfather of the settlement movement, said he had ordered plans to be drawn up for the evacuation of 17 settlements in the Gaza strip. "I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza," he told the Haaretz daily yesterday. A close confidant, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the plan might be implemented as early as mid-year if talks with the Palestinians remained Moribund and violence raged. "I believe in June or July these things will begin being implemented," Olmert told Channel 2 television. Sharon’s plans, which were laid out to members of his right-wing likud party in a meeting later yesterday, outraged several party members and pro-settler coalition partners. A Cabinet Minister from the right-wing national religious party responded today with a threat to resign, a day after storming out of a Parliamentary no-confidence vote which Sharon won an embarrassing single vote. "We won’t participate in this," Housing Minister Effi Eitam told Israel radio of Sharon’s plans to evict settlers. If Sharon presents such a plan to the United States, "the timing of our departure would be merely tactical," he said. The national religious party, headed by Eitam, has six seats in Parliament, and if it left the coalition, Sharon would command only a shaky majority of 62 in the 120-member legislature, including a seven-seat pro-settler party. But Sharon, who said he would take the proposal to Washington later this month, won praise from his closest ally. "It’s encouraging that Israel is considering bold steps to reduce tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in ways that will increase freedom of movement for Palestinians and reduce the burden on the Israeli military," said White House Spokesman Scott Mcclellan. Sharon also intended to remove about 10 of the 120 settlements in the West Bank, Channel 3 television reported. It was the first time Sharon had revealed plans for such an extensive pullout from land Israel captured in the 1967 West Asia war. "I am in shock," Likud Legislator Yehiel Hazan said. Members of the opposition and Palestinians were sceptical. "Usually when the Israeli Government speaks about evacuation of settlements, it aims only at public relations," Palestinian cabinet member Saeb Erekat told . Sharon’s plan, as detailed in an interview with the Haaretz daily, entails removal of all but three Jewish enclaves in the 360-sq-km coastal strip, where over a million Palestinians live in poverty beside a few thousand settlers who control 21 per cent of the land. Opinion polls show a large majority of Israelis are willing to part with Gaza settlements, which require a heavy military presence to protect them and have little of the biblical significance that draws Jews to settle in the West Bank. In excerpts from the interview, Sharon said his plan "has to be done with American agreement and support". "We are talking of a population of 7,500 people. It’s not a simple matter. We are talking of thousands of square km (miles) of hothouses, factories and packing plants," he said. A Gaza settler Spokesman called Sharon’s comments "miserable" and vowed that the nationalist camp would work "to cut short Sharon’s term as Prime Minister through legal means". (AGENCIES) |
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At least 12 dead after Turkey apartment collapses KONYA, TURKEY, Feb 3: Digging with their bare hands, rescue workers in central Turkey today searched for dozens feared trapped in the rubble of a 10-storey apartment building that collapsed and killed at least 12 people. Temperatures fell below freezing overnight as rescuers and relatives picked through the ruins of the building in the city of Konya, 250 Km south of the capital Ankara. Turkish media said the death toll stood at 12, with 28 injured. A two-year-old girl was among the dead. Rescuers feared a higher death toll. "We’re coming across many bodies but our priority is to find survivors, so we’re not doing anything about the dead at the moment," rescue worker Hakan Korkut told Anatolian News Agency. "These ruins are even worse than in the Marmara earthquake. It’s very hard to tell what is where." Two massive tremors in 1999 killed more than 18,000 people near the sea of Marmara in Turkey’s industrialised northwest. Another rescue worker said anyone on the lower floors of the building had a very small chance of survival. Bystanders cheered workers who pulled out two small girls alive eight hours after the 36-apartment block buckled at around 0000 Hrs IST yesterday, a Muslim holiday. "We don’t know how many people are trapped inside the rubble," Agriculture Minister Sami Guclu told at the scene. "We are doing everything we can to locate them." The cause was not immediately clear. Officials on the spot blamed shoddy construction, while witnesses said they heard an explosion before the apartment block came crashing down. As many as 120 people may have been inside the building in an affluent area of Konya. The Muslim feast of Eid-al-Adha meant ground-floor shops were closed, but many residents had guests in their homes. Other families had gone away for the holiday. Scores of relatives rushed to the site seeking news of casualties. Rescue workers said the crowds were making it difficult to listen for anyone buried alive, including a woman who used her mobile telephone to call for help. "It’s still not clear what caused the building to collapse," Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said. "Initial reports were that the furnace had exploded, but statements from...Officials show it may have collapsed due to an error in its construction." Nearby residents said there had been structural problems at the building and that its engineers had failed for years to win official clearance to allow people to move in. Similar disasters have in the past been blamed on Turkey’s badly enforced building regulations and poor construction. (AGENCIES) |
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Blair announces inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence LONDON, Feb 3: British Prime Minister Tony Blair today announced an inquiry into the pre-war intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction on which it based its decision to invade Iraq, a day after US President George W Bush launched a similar probe. "I think there are issues" about the intelligence that need to be looked at, Blair told a Parliamentary Committee. Blair’s announcement came after months of resisting growing demands that the Government allow an independent probe into its "intelligence failure" with regard to Iraq’s weapons capability. Despite several months of occupation, the US-UK coalition has failed to find any WMDs in Iraq. However, Blair insisted that Saddam Hussein had "Weapons of Mass Destruction capability" when the war was declared last year. He said a probe was necessary as David Kay, the former head of the US-British Iraq survey group, said last week that Hussein probably did not have illegal weapons before the war. Kay’s testimony meant "we now need a further inquiry", Blair said. "I think it is right as a result of what David Kay has said, and the fact that the Iraq survey group now probably won’t report in the very near term... That we have a look at the intelligence that we received and whether it was accurate or not. I think that is important," he said. (PTI) |
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US Advisers seek stronger antidepressant warning BETHESDA, Feb 3: US Government advisers urged regulators to issue stronger warnings about possible risks of suicidal behavior among children and teenagers taking antidepressant drugs. US Health Officials are studying whether antidepressants can make children and teenagers suicide-prone but have not yet reached a conclusion. A food and drug administration advisory panel said the agency needs to raise awareness of its concern while the probe proceeds. "Our sense is that we would like, in the interim, the FDA to go ahead and issue stronger warning indications to clinicians regarding possible risks of these medicines." yesterday said Dr Matthew Rudorfer, a psychiatrist with the National Institute of Mental Health. "We think such warnings are required to elevate the level of concern and attention that practitioners use in prescribing them," said Rudorfer, chair of the FDA Advisory Panel. New warnings also should go out to parents, other panelists said. FDA officials said data showed millions of prescriptions for antidepressants were written for children and teenagers each year. Questions about a possible link with suicidal behavior arose last year when regulators were reviewing clinical trials of children who took Glaxosmithkline PLC’s GSK.L paxil. The other antidepressants the FDA is evaluating include forest laboratories inc.’s Celexa, Solvay’s Luvox, Akzo Nobel’s Remeron, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Serzone, Pfizer’s Zoloft, Eli Lilly and Co.’s Prozac, and Wyeth’s Effexor. Only Prozac, sold generically as Fluoxetine, is approved for treating pediatric depression. The FDA already has urged doctors to carefully watch children or teenagers taking the drugs. British Health Authorities have gone further by advising doctors not to prescribe most of the drugs known as Ssris, or selective Serotonin Reuptake inhibitors, to anyone under 18. At the panel meeting, tearful parents of suicide victims urged US officials to ban pediatric use of antidepressants or place explicit warnings on them about a suicide risk. Sara Bostock said her daughter became unusually frightened and jumpy within two weeks after she started taking paxil. One night she fatally stabbed herself twice in the chest with a kitchen knife, her mother told the panel. "To die in this violent and unusual fashion ... Led me to believe Paxil must have put her over the edge," Bostock said. An autopsy showed a high level of Paxil in her daughter’s bloodstream, which indicated her body had trouble breaking down the medicine, Bostock said. Others told the panel antidepressants were life-saving. Sherri Walton said drug treatment helped lessen her daughter’s frightening, obsessive thoughts. "There is no doubt in my mind the Ssri she is taking saved her life," Walton said. "Please urge the FDA not to take away these tools." Wyeth, maker of Effexor, last year sent a letter telling doctors the drug was not recommended for use in children and noted reports of hostility and suicidal behavior in pediatric studies. Glaxosmithkline PLC has promised to work with the FDA to interpret the data. FDA officials said they will consider the panel’s recommendations. They said they plan to hold another meeting on the issue in late summer. (AGENCIES) |
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Bush’s job approval rating drops below 50 pc WASHINGTON, Feb 3: US President George W Bush’s job approval rating dropped below 50 per cent, and Americans were evenly split over the war in Iraq, according to a poll released. The President’s job approval rating fell to 49 per cent, the first time it was under 50 per cent, the CNN/USA yesterday/gallup poll showed. Bush’s rating was at 60 per cent a month ago after the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But now, Americans were more divided about the war in Iraq, with 49 per cent saying it was worth invading the country and 49 per cent saying it was not. That number also marked the first time that less than half approved of the war. Fifty-four per cent of the 1,001 adults polled said they did not think Bush deliberately misled the country about Iraq’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction. The poll also pitted the democratic Presidential hopefuls against Bush in a hypothetical head-to-head election. Of the 562 likely voters polled, 53 per cent picked Massachusetts senator John Kerry, who is the frontrunner to earn his party’s nomination to oppose Bush in the November election. Bush received 46 per cent, with the margin of error being 4 per cent. Kerry was the only democratic candidate who beat Bush in the poll. (DPA) |
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Jewish lawyer fights france’s ban on Muslim veil PARIS, Feb 3: A Jewish lawyer, fighting France’s plans to ban religious symbols from state schools, is appealing a decision to bar his Muslim daughters for wearing headscarves. Laurent Levy, who describes himself as an atheist, said yesterday he would fight a decision by his local school district to ban his daughters Lila, 19, and Alma, 16, from their high school in the suburb of aubervilliers north of Paris. The teenagers became interested in Islam recently and began covering their heads of their own free will. Their mother is a non-practising Muslim of Algerian origin. The local authority last week confirmed its decision to ban the girls, saying that wearing overt religious symbols in school was an act of provocation and propaganda liable to disrupt the functioning of the school. The French cabinet last week approved a draft law that would bar Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from school. The law will be submitted to the national assembly, the lower House of Parliament, today. Levy, a left-wing lawyer who has worked for anti-racist group mrap, said the law would exacerbate the sense of alienation felt by many children of immigrants, which has been blamed for a rise in anti-semitism in France. Although the law covers a variety of symbols, it was clear its main purpose was to ban the Muslim headscarf, he said. Levy has two months to file his appeal and, in the meantime, his daughters are being schooled at home. (AGENCIES) If a German train is an hour late you get 20 pc off BERLIN, Feb 3: It a bid to improve is its image, German rail will offer 20 per cent off the ticket price to any passenger who is delayed for more than an hour by one of its trains, DPA learned. The new policy will be unveiled before federal cabinet ministers in Berlin later this week, a German rail official told DPA yesterday. Until now, rail passengers qualified for compensation of between 10 and 25 dollars on a sliding scale for delays of between 30 to 90 minutes. While the vast majority of trains run on time in Germany, delays have increased in recent years as the organization absorbed the former east German railways system and was forced to undergo stringent economy measures. (DPA) Moldovan Airliner runs off runway in heavy snow, no injuries CHISINAU, Feb 3: Passengers and crew escaped injury when bad weather forced an air Moldova Airliner off the runway at Chisinau international airport, Infotag news agency reported. The airbus A320 leased by the national carrier was taxiing at low speed before a scheduled flight to Paris when the plane’s forward gear rolled off the Tarmac. The airport was closed for three hours before technicians were able to remove the aircraft from the runway, the report said yesterday. All 66 passengers left the Moldovan capital several hours later aboard a chartered Yak-42 jet. Investigators did not immediately determine the cause of the incident, although a combination of mechanical malfunction, pilot error, poor visibility or an icy runway could have been to blame, the report said. The accident came one month after malfunctioning equipment aboard another airbus aircraft caused an emergency exit to open during a flight from Rome to Chisinau. Air crew only noticed the problem when the plane landed, the report added. (DPA) Samba school chooses 96-year-old actress as carnival muse RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 3: One of Brazil’s oldest Samba schools has rejected scantily clad, Buxom young beauties to chose a 96-year-old actress as its muse for this year’s carnival parade, reports said. The Salgueiro Samba school yesterday named Brazilian comedienne Dercy Goncalves, a veteran performer known for off-colour humour, to the applause of thousands of Salgueiro Samba dancers. True to form, she used an expletive in her thank you speech. Not long ago, Dercy Goncalves took part in the carnival with her breasts exposed. This year, she will be fully clothed. "It’s not the clothes that matter. I’ll wear any old thing. What’s most important is me," she said. Former model Luma De Oliveira rejected an offer from Salgueiro to be its "muse of all muses" in the parade. (DPA) |
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