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Suicides as China BEIJING, Jan 29: More than 1,200 members of China’s Communist party killed themselves and about 8,000 fled abroad in the first half of 2003 amid .....more Despite
the bombs, BAGHDAD, Jan 29: On the set of Rahin Al Mahbasein (hostage of two prisons), the first television series shot in .....more Bird flu outbreak began a year ago-magazine says LONDON, Jan 29: An "official cover-up and questionable farming practices" allowed Asia’s outbreak of bird flu to. ....more Maternal diet influences longevity in mice LONDON, Jan 29: Changes in a mother’s diet during pregnancy can increase her offspring’s lifespan by more ....more |
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Bricks from historic SINGAPORE, Jan 29: Bricks from Singapore’s national library will be available for sale to those mourning the demolition of the ......more Japanese
director ROTTERDAM, Jan 29: Bullet riddled bodies, eyes gouged by chopsticks, fingers sliced off — Japanese film director Takeshi Kitano says he wants to .....more Switzerland wants information from Iraq on bribes paid to Saddam GENEVA, Jan 29: Switzerland plans to lodge criminal proceedings against 11 Swiss firms ........more Indonesia
hands life BALI, INDONESIA, Jan 29: An Indonesian Court today sentenced a man to life in jail for helping to make the bombs ....more |
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Suicides as China cracks down on corruption: Paper BEIJING, Jan 29: More than 1,200 members of China’s Communist party killed themselves and about 8,000 fled abroad in the first half of 2003 amid a crackdown on graft, a Beijing-funded Hong Kong newspaper said today. And President Hu Jintao plans to seek the extradition of corrupt party and Government officials who have fled the country, a party source told . A total of 8,371 party members or cadres fled abroad, while 6,528 were listed as missing, said the Wen Wei Po daily, China’s mouthpiece in Hong Kong. It did not give any comparative figures. The booming southern province of Guangdong topped the list with 1,240 officials absconding, the newspaper said. China’s most populous province, central Henan, ranked second with 854 officials, followed by the southeastern province of Fujian with 586. Corruption was virtually wiped out in the years after the Puritan Communists swept to power in 1949, but has staged a comeback in the wake of economic reforms introduced in the late 1970s. The party has about 65 million members. A total of 1,252 party cadres or members killed themselves in the first half of 2003, the newspaper said, without giving details. Most of the suicides and disappearances went unreported in China’s tightly controlled state media. In one case that was publicised, state media reported that Zhu Shengwen, former Vice Mayor of the northeastern city of Harbin, who was serving a 17-year prison sentence for corruption, jumped out of a toilet window in December. But Chinese-language media in Hong Kong and the United States speculated that the Italian-educated Zhu had been murdered. China’s leaders have warned in recent years the party faced self-destruction if it failed to crack down on corruption, a scourge that has toppled many dynasties. Hu, who became Communist Party chief in November 2002 and state president in March 2003, plans to seek the extradition of corrupt party and government officials and "princelings" who have fled abroad, the party source said. Corrupt princelings, children of China’s political elite, are believed to have fled abroad with about 40 billion yuan (4.8 billion dollars) in Government funds, said the party source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He did not elaborate. "Hu Jintao intends to clean out a batch of princelings," the source said. In the most recent scandal involving a princeling, CAI Xiaohong, a son of a former Justice Minister, was detained in China last year for selling state secrets to the British, other party sources have said. Cai was Secretary General of the Liaison office of the Central Government in Hong Kong, making him one of China’s top officials in the former British colony when he was summoned to Beijing to attend a meeting and taken into custody. In December China signed a landmark UN convention against corruption, aimed at increasing international cooperation in recovering funds and bringing suspects to justice. The most senior Chinese official to be ensnared in a corruption scandal, Chen Xitong, was sacked as Beijing’s party boss and lost his seat in the party’s omnipotent politburo in 1995. He was jailed for 16 years. The most senior Chinese official to be put to death for corruption, Cheng Kejie, a former Vice-Chairman of Parliament, was executed in 2000. (AGENCIES) |
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Despite the bombs, Iraqi actors say show must go on BAGHDAD, Jan 29: On the set of Rahin Al Mahbasein (hostage of two prisons), the first television series shot in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, filming is often interrupted by the whirr of US helicopters swooping overhead. It is a far cry from Hollywood. The crew has to contend with power cuts, warplanes and daily explosions which cut through the birdsong at Baghdad’s equestrian club where they are trying to film a historical drama about a 10th century blind Arab poet. "It takes three hours sometimes to shoot a scene because planes are coming over all the time," said producer Abbas Kamil. "But I wanted to work even in this environment to show that Iraqis are cultured, still on the scene. "Even if we don’t have electricity, don’t have security...As actors and artists we wanted to make something so that art doesn’t stop in Iraq." The sets are little more than a tree and a few horses, or a field backed by a fiery sunset over the troubled Iraqi capital. There is one microphone, one old camera, one electric light. The make-up box is a meagre selection of powders and broken lipsticks. The actors are paid just 100 dollars per episode. But there is a buzz about the crew, a feeling that even if things have yet to improve for Iraqi actors since Saddam’s fall, the death of his heavy censorship brings also the promise of better things to come. "Before we were completely censored, everything had to be explained," Kamil said. "Now there will be more freedom to express ourselves and choose the things which we want to do. We want to be completely independent from the Government." Under Saddam, art was censored and artists scrutinised. Many hope the changes in Iraq will unleash a wave of creativity as people experiment freely for the first time in decades. Most also say the country needs time. "There is no change," said 16-year-old Desdemona, who plays the sister-in-law of Rahin-al-Mahbasein’s hero, the poet Abu Ala al-Maari, known as the hostage to two prisons because of his blindness and a spell in jail. "Now we are stopped from working by planes and explosions, and there’s not as much work. It’s true there was censorship which restricted work, and that now we can work on what we want to. But what good is that if there’s no security and no work?" Awatif-al-Salman, a well-known Iraqi actress who plays the mother of the poet, used to work for the Government theatre company under Saddam, but was thrown out after a disagreement. When she later made a privately-funded television series she was told it would not be shown, with no reason given. It was eventually screened months after was Saddam ousted, but she remains cautious about the time needed for mind-sets to change. "At the moment we are living in a time very close to the fall of Saddam," she said. "I don’t think the infrastructure has changed enough to have any effect on art. There’s still no stability, a bad economy, lots of negative things. For now there’s chaos in Iraq, no state, no Government." Some actors in Baghdad were too scared to talk on the record, saying conditions were too uncertain and their career exposed to hate from many corners. There is a pervasive feeling that Iraq is in a vacuum, the war not really over, the future politics undecided. The uncertainty makes many unwilling to speak out. "The fear which Saddam planted in people is still living," film director Carlo Haruntyun said in his Baghdad home. "Maybe after democracy is accepted by the people, thoroughly understood, I think maybe at that time we can be free." Iraq’s new Culture Minister told he was optimistic about the future of Iraqi drama in the longer term. "I think...There’s quite a new atmosphere of freedom and this is really a new phenomenon," said Mufid-al-Jazairi. "I think that no one could be a real artist under the Government of Saddam Hussein because every artist had to deny the fact he was an artist by celebrating Saddam in every step and every moment. "You know for an intellectual, a creator, to work in an atmosphere of fear, it’s difficult to expect he could really create something artistic of real value." Some disagree. As filming wrapped up for the day, Rahin-al-Mahbasein’s director Ali Abu seif said the main problems emained financial and technical and that only an injection of external interest could really boost Iraqi drama. "Yes drama should have more choice now, but the most important thing is the means of production, technical issues," he said as the night chill set in and his crew headed home. "Art has no relation to Saddam, art is always art." (agencies) |
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Bird flu outbreak began a year ago-magazine says LONDON, Jan 29: An "official cover-up and questionable farming practices" allowed Asia’s outbreak of bird flu to turn into an epidemic, sweeping through 10 countries and killing eight people, a science magazine has said. Like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), health experts suspect the avian flu began in China, probably in the first half of 2003, according to new scientist magazine. "A combination of official cover-up and questionable farming practices allowed it to turn into the epidemic now under way," the weekly magazine said. As health experts met in Bangkok to try to stem the spread of the avian flu, the magazine said a decision by China’s poultry producers to vaccinate birds after an outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997 may have been a mistake and could have contributed to the current problem. Hong Kong conducted a mass slaughter of chickens when the H5N1 bird flu killed six people. To protect its poultry Chinese producers used an inactivated H5N1 virus after the outbreak. "If the vaccine is not a good match for the virus — as is the case with the H5N1 strain now sweeping Asia — it can still replicate but most animals do not show signs of the disease," the magazine said. Health officials fear the H5N1 avian flu virus might mix with human influenza and unleash a pandemic among people with no immunity to it. So far there is no sign of human to human transmission. Tests on samples of the bird flu virus are still being done but because the strains showing up in Asia are similar they may have originated from one outbreak. "We are aware of samples taken early last year that turned out to be this strain exactly," according to Klaus Stohr of the World Heath Organisation (WHO). Although Stohr would not say where the early samples came from, new scientist said comments from other experts suggested it was China. The magazine added that the pattern of the spread of the virus suggested it had been carried by people smuggling poultry, which is reportedly widespread in south-east Asia. But Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College in London, said it may be premature to draw conclusions. "I would put some caution on over-interpreting what is very, very limited data at the moment," he explained. Laurence Tiley, a professor of molecular virology at Cambridge University in England, said the current bird flu is similar to the one that was around in 1997. "The trouble with flu vaccinations is that it doesn’t give what is known as sterile immunity. What can happen is that you can have the virus circulating in your production birds without obvious disease," he said in an interview. The vaccinated birds would still be capable of transmitting it on to non-vaccinated birds. Tiley said the difference between this outbreak and the one in 1997 was that the earlier one was restricted to the markets in Hong Kong. "The more countries that have it, the harder it is to contain it and the longer it persists the more opportunity it has to potentially adapt to transmission in humans," Tiley said. (AGENCIES) |
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Maternal diet influences longevity in mice LONDON, Jan 29: Changes in a mother’s diet during pregnancy can increase her offspring’s lifespan by more than 50 percent — at least in mice. But scientists at the university of Cambridge in England said yesterday the same may hold true for humans. "We have shown that minor manipulation of maternal diet can increase life expectancy in mice by more than 50 percent, a discovery that calls for attention to this aspect of growth and nutrition in humans," said biochemist Susan Ozanne. Ozanne and her colleague, Nicholas Hales, showed that poor eating habits during pregnancy restricted the growth of the mouse foetus and reduced its overall lifespan. The research also showed that diet after birth had a further impact on lifespan. Mice fed a high-protein, western-style diet had a shorter life expectancy than those fed a healthy diet. "It’s like a double hit," Ozanne, whose research is published in the latest edition of the science journal nature, said in an interview, referring to poor nutrition both in the womb and after birth. Ozanne said the research shows the importance of eating a healthy, balanced diet during pregnancy for mice and humans. (AGENCIES) |
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Bricks from historic Singapore library to be sold off SINGAPORE, Jan 29: Bricks from Singapore’s national library will be available for sale to those mourning the demolition of the landmark, the institution said today. Some of the familiar red bricks are to be salvaged and sold to the public after April 1, with the proceeds going to charity, the library said. Patrons told the Strait Times that they were unlikely to want chunks of the building, which opened in 1960. "Selling the bricks does not help to preserve precious memories of the building," architect Ho Went Hin, 29, was quoted as saying. "After a while, a brick is still a brick," he added. A new 200-million-Singapore-dollar (117-million dollars) library will be opened in the latter part of next year. The announcement in 1998 that the library would make way for the Singapore management university campus and a tunnel triggered many protests from those who argued it should be preserved as a significant part of the city-state’s history. Visitors can take free tours of the facility during the first two weekends in February for some behind-the-scenes revelations, such as the fumigation chamber where old books were cleared of insects. (DPA) |
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Japanese director targets realistic violence ROTTERDAM, Jan 29: Bullet riddled bodies, eyes gouged by chopsticks, fingers sliced off — Japanese film director Takeshi Kitano says he wants to depict violence in his movies as realistically as possible to show its depravity. "Violence is a very abhorrent thing that you can only despise and that is the way I want to depict it in my movies," Kitano, who also writes and acts, told in an interview. "Films like ‘terminator’, the way they approach violence, have nothing to do with reality. In most of my movies I try to depict it as realistically as possible, as painful as possible because violence is a painful thing in real life." kitano, in the Netherlands for the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, said computer generated images and special effects in film too often glamorised violence. "(These) are ways in which I would never approach it because that just leads to the imitation of violence in real life," he told through an interpreter. The director, whose popular nickname "Beat" dates from the start of his career as a comedian, said his film style was influenced by a famous picture of a suspected viet Cong guerrilla being shot in the head by a soldier during the 1968 tet offensive. "That was a very shocking image. It certainly affected my way of capturing violence, especially its sudden appearance," he said. (AGENCIES) |
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Switzerland wants information from Iraq on bribes paid to Saddam GENEVA, Jan 29: Switzerland plans to lodge criminal proceedings against 11 Swiss firms suspected of having paid bribery money to Iraq’s ousted President Saddam Hussein, Swiss officials said. Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Finance in bern indicated yesterday that the Swiss embassy in Baghdad had been asked to obtain additional information from Iraq’s Oil Ministry about the case. Under the Swiss embargo laws that went into effect in January 2003, violations can bring prison sentences from one to five years and fines from 398,000 to 795,000 dollars. According to the newspaper France-Soir, the firms in question include media, delta service, Iblom, Sepool, Klinko, Lakia, Alkon, Toros, Petrogas, Finar and Napkes. (DPA) |
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Indonesia hands life sentence to Bali bombmaker BALI, INDONESIA, Jan 29: An Indonesian Court today sentenced a man to life in jail for helping to make the bombs that tore through two nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002. Sarjiyo, alias Zaenal Abidin, 32, was found guilty of helping to carry out an act of terrorism, which resulted in the deaths of 202 people. "The defendant participated in the planning meetings...And was assigned to assemble the bombs," Chief Judge Arif Supratman told the Bali District Court. (AGENCIES) |
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Nepal Maoists free 150 students abducted a week ago KATHMANDU, Jan 29: Maoist insurgents have released all 150 students, who were abducted and forced to join Maoist meetings in various parts of Nepal’s far west Achham district, the Nepali language daily "Kantipur" reported today. The rebels allegedly abducted them a week ago from Bannatoli and other villages in Achham district, about 460 Km west of the capital, to join their insurgency campaign. The students were moved to different villages in the district where they were forced to give speeches supporting the Maoist ideology, the newspaper quoted villagers as saying. The rebels also forcibly collected donations from villagers in rural areas. Meanwhile, the security system in the Kathmandu valley has been placed under a "unified command" to systematize the law and order situation in the capital, the official nepalese news agency RSS said today quoting Nepalese Home Ministry officials. Home Ministry Spokesman Gopendra Bahadur Pandey made it clear that the Army was not being mobilized to contain the movement of the five main political parties, according to RSS. Nepal’s five biggest political parties, backed by their student wings, are protesting against what they call King Gyanendra’s "regressive" move of October 2002 to dismiss an elected Government. Pandey added that the Army will not be used to contain the anti-king movement "as long as the protestors remained within the parameters and rights specified by the Constitution". But, the Government would detain elements involved in anti-Constitutional activities, such as throwing stones at security personnel, vandalizing public transport vehicles, arson and inciting rebellion, the spokesman was quoted as saying. He also said the local administration detained 103 demonstrators participating in demonstrations and involved in vandalism and arson in separate incidents yesterday. (DPA) US mad cow safeguards hit ethnic delicacies WASHINGTON, Jan 29: A traditional Polka song poses the question, "someone stole the Kishka. Someone stole the Kishka. Who stole the Kishka, from the butcher’s shop?" Finally, there’s an answer. The US department of agriculture stole the Kishka, not to mention the Tripas and the Pho Tai Sach — all ethnic delicacies made with cow and bull small intestines. The discovery in December of the first case of mad cow disease in the United States prompted the USDA this month to put a stop to human consumption of cattle intestines. For the cattle and beef industries, which have long prided themselves on being able to market just about everything except the "moo," the USDA decision marked one of the few times when an animal part was banned for human consumption. It was taken out of fear that cattle intestines carry the abnormal protein thought to cause mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a fatal neurological illness humans can get from eating contaminated beef. "The actions we are taking...Are steps to enact additional safeguards to protect the public health," said Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman. The Government Decre means that Mexico, the second-biggest importer of US beef, no longer can buy the small intestines of american cattle. The guts typically are chopped, then fried or barbecued, and sold as "tripas" by Mexican street vendors. The same goes for Vietnamese restaurants in the United States that offer up hot bowls of noodle soup called "Pho Tai Sach," complete with beef stuffed into intestines or stomach linings. (AGENCIUES) Japan’s Yakuza gangs targeted by new crime bill TOKYO, Jan 29: Eight years after police officer Tsuyoshi Fujitake was shot dead in a case of mistaken identity, his wife and three children are still waiting for compensation. Pursuing a claim against Japan’s most feared gang leader was never likely to be simple. But the Government is introducing a bill that would make it easier for victims of violent gang disputes to do just that, by holding wealthy mafia bosses legally responsible for their underlings’ crimes. "The lower members of a gang don’t have that much money," Tatsuya Kato of the organised crime control department at the national police agency explained in a recent interview. "If you sue them you may win. But they won’t be able to pay so there’s no point," he added. By targeting gang "godfathers", Kato says police hope to be able to drain whole criminal organisations of funds. Fujitake’s family won a historic legal victory last year when they were awarded 80 million yen in compensation from Yoshinori Watanabe, leader of the Yamaguchi-Gumi gang — Japan’s largest with 38,000 members — and three others. Watanabe, however, has appealed the decision over the shooting in Japan’s former capital of Kyoto and the case remains before the Supreme Court. The new bill comes as gang membership creeps up after taking a blow with the passage of an anti-gang law in 1992. Police figures show there were an estimated 85,800 gang members at the end of 2003, up by more than 4,000 in five years. (AGENCIES) Strong quake rocks eastern Indonesian islands JAKARTA, Jan 29: An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the richter scale jolted Indonesia’s eastern Moluccas island chain today and could have caused a Tsunami, officials said. Officials from the state meteorology and geophysics agency said the epicentre for the early morning quake was in the Seram sea, more than 100 Km northwest of the Moluccas’ main city, Ambon. Aftershocks were also reported. "It was quite big but we have not received any damage or casualty reports yet. Earthquakes with such power and depth like this have a high possibility of causing Tsunami waves," Benny Sipollo, the head of a state geophysics station in Ambon, told . Earthquakes frequently hit Indonesia, occasionally causing widespread damage and loss of life. In 1992, an earthquake with similar power struck another eastern Indonesian chain of islands, causing Tsunamis and killing more than 2,000 people. (AGENCIES) |
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