Border issue must not impede Sino-Indian ties in other areas

BEIJING, June 29: While upbeat on finding a mutually acceptable solution to the Sino-Indian border issue, China today ..........more

Iraq gives Bush a respite, but tough tests remain

WASHINGTON, June 29: The early handover of power in Baghdad provided President George W Bush a feel-good moment ......more

Resignation eclipses hope in China’s rust belt

SHENYANG, CHINA, June 29: Hopeless. That’s how Jacky Qu sums up his job prospects when he graduates next year .....more

India proposes setting up SAARC communication task force

ISLAMABAD, June 29: India today proposed setting up a task force to monitor and map ......more

Iran reformists fear women rights face grim future

TEHRAN, June 29: Activists fear their hard-fought efforts to improve the status of women in Iran’s male-dominated.....more

Six Indians arrested in Nepal for carrying arms

KATHMANDU, June 29: Six Indian nationals, including two armed security personnel, were arrested by the Kathmandu Police yesterday for carrying . ....more

US approves ancient bloodsuckers for therapy

WASHINGTON, June 29: Blood-sucking leeches — used for thousands of years in medicine — now have the US Government’s approval as a tool for . .....more

Israeli tanks in Gaza, one dead Palestinian source

GAZA, June 29: Israeli tanks rolled into the Gaza strip and troops killed one Palestinian today, ...more
 

Hong Kong housewife fined for paying maid 15 US Dollars a week .......

China provincial party chief jailed for life for graft .....

Hong Kong protest leaders refuse to drop ‘power to people’ slogan ......

High protein diet may affect female fertility-study ......

Border issue must not impede Sino-Indian ties in other areas

BEIJING, June 29: While upbeat on finding a mutually acceptable solution to the Sino-Indian border issue, China today hoped that bilateral ties in other areas will not be impeded by the delay in resolving the contentious territorial dispute.

"Even if our border issues are not completely settled, we are still enjoying development in our bilateral relations," Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Shen Guofang said here during a meeting with visiting Indian journalists.

"Our position is that for the issue to be properly settled through friendly talks on the basis of mutual respect so as to decrease differences and reach common understanding. In the meantime, we can help promote a stable and constant development in other areas," Shen said.

"So we hope that even if our border issues are not solved, the development in other areas will not be affected," he said.

He noted that the special representatives of the two countries on the border issue, appointed after the visit to China by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in June last year, have already met twice and a third meeting is also scheduled very soon.

"Our special representatives have already had two meetings and they had very beneficial discussions about the framework solution. We have several advantages now, for example, both countries have signed the declaration of principles for comprehensive cooperation which enshrined the guiding principles for (resolving the boundary) issue," said. (PTI)

Iraq gives Bush a respite, but tough tests remain

WASHINGTON, June 29: The early handover of power in Baghdad provided President George W Bush a feel-good moment on Monday amid a relentless run of grim news, but it also could raise hard-to-meet expectations among American voters about Iraq’s future.

The return of Iraqi sovereignty fulfills a promise by Bush, who is waging a tough re-election fight against democrat John Kerry in November and has battled public doubts about whether the handover would take place on time or at all.

A smooth transition would be a huge boost to Bush’s prospects in the short-term, easing public anxiety about the war that had started to dominate the presidential race and push Bush’s public approval ratings into dangerously low territory.

People were very, very doubtful that the handover would even take place, so Americans will be heartened by this, said Karlyn Bowman, who analyzes polls at the American enterprise institute.

But the real test for the administration is what happens to our troops over the next several months, she said.

Enormous hurdles remain to restoring order in Iraq, and more violence against US troops and citizens in the region could spark a new burst of public pessimism about the US mission and puncture Bush’s election hopes.

This is a big change in expectations that we may not be able to meet, said independent pollster Thomas Riehle of Ipsos Public Affairs.

If US troops still face the same level of violence and threats in the next few months, he said, people are going to say ‘I thought we were finished with this, when does this ever end?’

Even the circumstances of the handover — conducted two days early in hopes of forestalling bloodshed and attacks by insurgents - made clear how difficult the road ahead will be for the United States.

Bush, who was in Istanbul, Turkey, for a summit of NATO leaders, called the occasion a day of great hope for Iraqis and a day that terrorist enemies hoped never to see.

Kerry, a Massachusetts senator who voted to authorize the war but has criticized Bush’s failure to gain more global support for it, said the President still needed to obtain real international backing.

Kerry and Bush have rarely disagreed on Iraq over the last few months, with both pushing for a partnership with the United Nations and a NATO security force under US command to keep order.

Kerry, aided by the continued flow of bad news from Iraq and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, has moved at least slightly ahead of Bush in most public opinion polls in the four months since he clinched the democratic nomination.

Polls show Bush losing his edge on what had been his strongest issue, his leadership in the war on terror, and majorities of Americans doubting the wisdom and need for a war in Iraq.

A CNN/USA today poll released yesterday showed 60 per cent believed it was either very or somewhat unlikely that peace and internal security would be established in Iraq in the next five years.

Sixty per cent also said the handover was a sign that the US policy in Iraq was failing, and more than 60 per cent thought US troops would remain in Iraq at least three to five years or longer.

Analysts said an improved security environment could lift the spirits of US voters and allow Bush to score political points from the improving economy.

The biggest barrier to Bush getting political benefits out of the improving economy has been the situation in Iraq, Riehle said. If this dam breaks ... He may begin to get very good scores on the economy.

Republican pollster John Mchenry said an improved situation in Iraq would take away a crucial Kerry advantage.

There isn’t much Kerry can do except show that he is a credible alternative, he said. I still think this election gets decided by events that haven’t happened yet and are almost completely related to the President rather than Kerry. (AGENCIES)

Resignation eclipses hope in China’s rust belt

SHENYANG, CHINA, June 29: Hopeless. That’s how Jacky Qu sums up his job prospects when he graduates next year from college in the frigid northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang.

"I’ve seen both my parents lose their jobs," the 22-year-old computer studies Major said, nursing a beer in a pub where he sings part-time to earn extra cash. "There’s no work up here. I’d rather go anywhere but Shenyang."

Qu’s parents thought they would have jobs for life at state-run firms in China’s old industrial heartland.

After Beijing launched economic reforms more than two decades ago, many lumbering state firms found they could no longer keep pace with their leaner cousins along the coast who were busy attracting foreign investment.

Jobs vanished at an alarming rate. Take aviation and auto giant Harbin aviation industry group, a few hours from the Russian border. The firm chopped three-quarters of its workforce over the past 20 years, though it still employs 27,000 people.

Communist party leaders in Beijing, who value stability above all else, fear more job losses in the northeast could spread wider social unrest, threatening a decade of breakneck national economic growth and even the Chinese state itself.

Once the crown jewel of the centrally planned economy, the northeast is China’s rust belt today. The countryside is littered with the hulks of factories, and trees are reclaiming the railway sidings that once ferried goods to the rest of the country.

Things may get worse.

"Our urban unemployment rate is officially six percent," said Zhang Wenyue, Governor of Liaoning Province, where shenyang is located. "But the real figure is much higher. We have a responsibility to say what the actual situation is."

western businessmen in Shenyang — a gritty, crumbling city that was a Mongol trading centre in the 11th century — cite Government contacts as saying a more realistic jobless rate was 40 percent.

College students such as Qu will graduate into a tight labour market, with 2.5 times more graduates seeking work than in 2001, state media say. And further restructuring in the northeast has made work scarcer.

The region’s richest city, Dalian, wants to close or sell 33 major state-owned enterprises within two years, adding 100,000 to the dole queue, doubling the figure now.

Hence a recent history of unrest.

In March 2002, two of the country’s largest demonstrations erupted in the northeast, a region lauded as an industrial Utopia under Mao Zedong but long since past its glory.

Worker demands for unpaid benefits at the oil fields of daqing and protests in the flagging smelting town of Liaoyang and elsewhere forced Beijing to tackle the plight of the urban unemployed.

The province of Heilongjiang — which makes up the rust belt, together with Liaoning and Jilin — is expecting almost two million more people to be out of work in the next two years, up from about a million at the end of 2003.

And that’s just the official number. Many workers are classified not as unemployed but as "laid-off" — they still receive a modicum of social security from old work units and perhaps a pittance in salary, but no longer go to work.

They are a common sight on street corners in the northeast, holding aloft wooden boards with roughly painted characters advertising their expertise, hoping for day jobs as labourers.

Finding permanent jobs is difficult, despite the Government throwing money at shiny new labour exchanges and re-training.

"It’s next to impossible for someone like me to get work," said electrician Ning Baoquan, 50, who was laid off when the tractor factory that employed him shut last year.

"I just don’t have the skills for any of these," he said, looking gloomily at an electronic board displaying openings at a Shenyang jobs centre, many advertising for people under 35.

Even when they find jobs, former state sector workers may not stick them out.

"They’re not used to hard work," said one western executive based in Shenyang. "They try it for a week and then quit, saying they can’t cope and that they can survive perfectly well on Government assistance."

It’s attitudes like that the Government wants to change.

The registered unemployed are allowed to walk away from three jobs before their social security — about 200 yuan a month — is suspended, said Wang Yonglan, director of Shenyang’s Employment Bureau.

"But for many of these workers the only skill they may have is the ability to turn a screwdriver," she lamented.

And the northeast is rapidly becoming a source of labour for the rest of China — 110,00 people left Shenyang last year to find work elsewhere. The city even encourages richer provinces to hold employment fairs.

So what does the future hold for Qu?

"I want to go to Taiwan. I want to become a pop star." (AGENCIES)

India proposes setting up SAARC communication task force

ISLAMABAD, June 29: India today proposed setting up a task force to monitor and map developments in the communications sector among the SAARC member countries with a view to take the benefit of technology to the masses and bring down costs.

"A continuous dialogue and exchange of information on technologies, growth as well as projects will greatly help. I urge setting up of a task force to continuously monitor the development in the communications sector," Union Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran said at the SAARC Communication Ministers’ conference here.

This task force, he suggested, could be set up under the SAARC Secretariat and perform such functions as members would assign it.

Maran said the task force could develop performance indicators in the telecom sector which would serve as a guideline to the policy makers in the region.

"These could be published in a paper annually highlighting the level of universal access, tele-density and digital divide", the minister said.

In order to identify the potential for the telecom equipment in the region, Maran suggested free flow of products and accessories.

"A preferential utilisation of telecom equipment manufactured within the SAARC member countries should be considered", Maran said.

Stressing on the need for cooperation in developing technical specifications of telecom equipment to be deployed in the SAARC region, he said India could assist in devising a regional standards body for the same through its Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC).

With an eye to decrease the cost, he said member countries should optimise the use of infrastructure.

They should also use each other’s infrastructure for intra-regional communciation as it can be instrumental in lowering tariffs.

In a price-sensitive scenario, the cost of usage needs to be further brought down, he added.

As a move forward, Maran said setting up of a high bandwidth hub for extension of leased circuits using infrastructure of member countries can give a competitive advantage.

"There is strong case for hubbing bandwidth which calls for immediate action", he said.

He also stressed on providing internet and broadband facilities, digitalising inter-country links in a time-bound manner, strong cooperation in E&D in telecom and exchanging human resources to impart training on technologies. (PTI)

Iran reformists fear women rights face grim future

TEHRAN, June 29: Activists fear their hard-fought efforts to improve the status of women in Iran’s male-dominated society will be brought to a halt following the triumph of Islamic conservatives in February’s Parliamentary elections.

Led by a determined group of 13 women deputies, the previous reformist-held Parliament recorded some small, but important victories for women’s rights and ensured the issue got more attention than at any time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Reformers were swept aside in the elections which were denounced as a sham by allies of President Mohammad Khatami after thousands of reformist candidates were barred from standing.

The dozen women law makers elected to the new conservative-dominated Assembly have already signalled a radical change of tone in comments to local media, advocating the practice of Polygamy and opposition to a UN charter on discrimination against women.

"The convention on removing discrimination against women contradicts Islamic Sharia Law in some respects," Deputy Rafat Bayat was quoted as saying by the Parliament’s web site (www.Mellat.Majlis.Ir).

Female activists, determined to overhaul laws that restrict women’s divorce and custody and inheritance rights and forbid them from working or leaving the country without their husband’s permission, are dismayed.

"Most of the new deputies regard women as second-class citizens, so they will consider women’s issues from that angle and will not acknowledge any right more than that," former law maker Fatemeh Haqiqatjou told .

"Supporting Polygamy and opposing the bill to remove discrimination against women proves the backwardness of these female deputies," said activist Marziyeh Mortazi-Langhroudi.

Under Iran’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, women are required to wear clothes which disguise the shape of the body and cover the hair.

Enforcement of strict moral codes Governing women’s dress, western music and mingling of the sexes has become more lax since Khatami’s election in 1997 on a platform of social and political reform.

Emboldened young women have steadily tested the barriers of permissible dress, wearing gradually more colourful, tighter and more revealing clothes and more obvious make-up.

Iranian women have even tasted freedom on two wheels, cycling down streets in affluent northern Tehran, a practice frowned upon by conservatives.

Unlike some of their predecessors who dared to wear long loose coats and bright scarves to the chamber, the new women deputies wear the all-enveloping black chador advocated by senior clerics to protect female modesty.

One local newspaper reported that the new women deputies would no longer share a lunch table with their male colleagues, as the reformist Parliamentarians had done.

Newly-elected women Parliamentarians declined to comment .

The previous reformist Parliament improved women’s custody rights and raised the legally acceptable age of marriage for girls to 15 from nine.

But several other bills, such as reforms to women’s inheritance rights and adoption of the UN charter on discrimination, have been held up or blocked by the guardian council — a constitutional watchdog run by Islamic hardliners.

A woman’s testimony and life, in blood money terms, are worth half that of a man’s in court. A woman still cannot become President and is entitled to half the inheritance due to a man.

Activists say the new law makers cannot afford to put women’s demands on the back burner in a country where two-thirds of the population is under 30 and more than 60 percent of university graduates are women.

Iranian women have made inroads into politics and business in recent years. Shirin Ebadi, a human rights activist and the first woman judge in Iran, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October for her work on women’s and children’s rights in the Islamic republic.

Former Deputy Elaheh Koulai said there was room for hope.

"I think the female deputies will have no choice but to live up to women’s expectations and accommodate their demands." (AGENCIES)

)

Six Indians arrested in Nepal for carrying arms

KATHMANDU, June 29: Six Indian nationals, including two armed security personnel, were arrested by the Kathmandu Police yesterday for carrying arms, a senior police officer today said.

The arrested Indians include two security personnel, Raj Bahadur Singh and Chhatrapal Singh, three others identified as Brajesh Singh, Dhirendra Singh, K K Gupta apart from the driver of the vehicle, police Superintendent Dipak Ranjit said.

A gun and some pistols were recovered from the six, the SP said, adding that one of the arrested persons, Brajesh Singh, said he was the brother of UP Minister Suren Singh.

The six, who claimed that they had come to visit the famous Pashupatinath Temple, said that they were unaware of the country’s law, banning carrying of arms.

They had entered Nepal from Sunauli and were arrested at the Thankot check post in Kathmandu.

Police said that they are investigating the incident and Indian embassy has been informed about the arrests. (UNI)

US approves ancient bloodsuckers for therapy

WASHINGTON, June 29: Blood-sucking leeches — used for thousands of years in medicine — now have the US Government’s approval as a tool for healing skin grafts or restoring circulation, regulators said.

The Food and Drug Administration approved an application from French firm Ricarimpex sas to market leeches for medicinal purposes. The company has been breeding leeches for 150 years, the FDA said yesterday.

Doctors have used the small aquatic worms for several thousand years in the belief that bloodletting helps to cure a wide range of complaints from headaches to gout. They reached their height of medicinal use in the mid-1800s.

Today, doctors around the world use leeches to remove blood pooled under skin grafts for burn patients, or to restore circulation in blocked veins by removing pooled blood, the FDA said in a statement.

Leeches are particularly useful in surgeries to reattach body parts such as fingers or ears, Ricarimpex said on its web site. The leeches can help restore blood flow to reconnected veins.

The FDA said it considered the leeches a medical device. The agency approved their sale after reviewing medical literature and safety data provided by ricarimpex.

The FDA also examined information about how the leeches are fed, their environment, and the employees who handle them. (AGENCIES)

Israeli tanks in Gaza, one dead Palestinian source

GAZA, June 29: Israeli tanks rolled into the Gaza strip and troops killed one Palestinian today, Palestinian security sources said.

They said the armoured columns apparently headed towards beit hanoun, a town on the boundary with Israel frequently used by militant rocket crews to fire on the jewish state. An unidentified 25-year-old man was killed by Israeli fire, police said. The army did not immediately comment. (AGENCIES)

Hong Kong housewife fined for paying maid 15 US Dollars a week

HONG KONG, June 29: A Hong Kong housewife has been prosecuted for paying her Indonesian maid just 15 US Dollars a week, a news report said today.

Policeman’s wife Mickey Chiu gave her maid Siti Mariyam just 807 US Dollars in wages over the course of a year, the south China morning post reported.

The salary paid was just one-eighth of the 6,500 US Dollars she was entitled to under Hongkong’s minimum wage requirement for foreign domestic helpers.

The minimum wage for live-in maids in Hong Kong was 540 US Dollars a month at the time of Mariyam’s employment between October 2001 and October 2002.

When Chiu pleaded not guilty to underpaying her maid earlier this year, the labour department flew marijam back to Hong Kong from Indonesia to testify against her former employer.

Chiu was convicted and yesterday was fined 5,600 US Dollars for the offence, the highest penalty ever recorded, according to the south China morning post.

An earlier labour tribunal hearing ordered her to pay her former maid the money she owed her for employment.

More than 200,000 women from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand work as live-in maids with Hong Kong families. (DPA)

China provincial party chief jailed for life for graft

BEIJING, June 29: China has jailed a provincial communist party chief for life for accepting more than 800,000 dollars in bribes, the latest in a string of officials punished in an intensified campaign against corruption.

Liu Fangren, 68, former party chief of China’s southwest province of Guizhou, was also ordered to hand over all his personal property and repay the bribe money, Xinhua news agency reported today.

He has 10 days to appeal.

In February this year, a former Vice Governor of Anhui province was executed for accepting bribes. A former Director of the Guizhou transportation department was sentenced to death in may for the same offence.

China’s leaders have warned in recent years that the Communist party faces self-destruction if it fails to crack down on corruption, a scourge that toppled several imperial dynasties.

Corruption was virtually wiped out in the years after the Communists came to power in 1949 but has staged a comeback in the wake of economic reforms introduced in the late 1970s. (AGENCIES)

Hong Kong protest leaders refuse to drop ‘power to people’ slogan

HONG KONG, June 29: Organizers of a mass pro-democracy rally in Hong Kong expected to attract 300,000 people on July 1 said today they would not drop their march slogan "return power to the people".

Some pro-democracy groups taking part in the march agreed Sunday to drop the slogan after Beijing officials said the slogan was too confrontational.

However, one of the key groups behind the march, the civil human rights front, said it would not bend to pressure and would use the slogan on banners and in chants at Thursday’s protest.

A crowd of 300,000 is expected to demand universal suffrage for Hong Kong by 2007 and 2008, a possibility that has already been ruled out by Beijing.

China’s National People’s Congress intervened in may to say there could be no free elections in Hong Kong for at least the next four years.

Thursday’s march comes on the first anniversary of a protest attended by 500,000 in the biggest public demonstration in Hong Kong since the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre.

Rose Wu of the civil human rights front said the fact that her group was sticking with the slogan "return power to the people" did not mean there was a split in the pro-democracy camp.

"We don’t feel there is any sensitive problem in using this slogan," she said. "According to our interpretation this means that Hong Kong people strive for full democracy and we have never touched on the issue about Hong Kong independence.

"We are sticking with the slogan and we want to enable the Government and the people in Hong Kong to respect people’s freedom of expression."

Yesterday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs applauded the decision by two other pro-democracy groups taking part in Thursday’s march to drop the slogan. (DPA)

High protein diet may affect female fertility-study

BERLIN, June 29: Eating a high protein diet may make it more difficult for women to conceive, American researchers have said.

Dr David Gardner, of the Colorado center for reproductive medicine in Englewood, said diets containing 25 percent protein disrupt the development of early mice embryos and may have a similar impact in humans.

Although our investigations were conducted in Mice, our data may have implications for diet and reproduction in humans, Gardner told a fertility meeting.

In Mice the high protein diet seems to interfere with a genetic process known as imprinting, which controls the activity of genes inherited from the father and mother.

The researchers fed Mice a diet of either 25 percent or 14 percent protein for four weeks before mating them. Afterwards they examined 42 of the resulting early embryos, which are known as blastocysts, to see if imprinting for an important growth gene was altered.

They also transferred 174 early embryos into the wombs of Mice which were eating a normal diet to study the impact of maternal diet before implantation on foetal development.

We found only 36 per cent of blastocysts developed in mothers on the 25 per cent diet showed a normal imprinting pattern, compared to 70 per cent in the control group, Gardner explained.

Fewer embryos in the high protein group developed into foetuses — 65 per cent compared to 81 per cent in the lower protein group.

These findings, together with similar work carried out in cows means that it would be prudent to advise couples who are trying to conceive...To ensure that the woman’s protein intake is less than 20 per cent of their total energy consumption, Gardner told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

The available data certainly indicates that a high protein diet is not advisable while trying to conceive, he added.

But Dr Stuart Trager, the Medical Director of Atkins Nutritionals inc which developed the low-carbohydrate atkins diet, said some studies have shown a positive correlation between controlling carbohydrates and female fertility.

The differences between Mice and human embryos have recently been demonstrated by the ability to produce Mice embryos from a single parent, a process that cannot be replicated in humans, Trager said in a statement.

This casts a large discrepancy on the ability to derive conclusions about the clinical implications of this study with regard to humans, he added. (AGENCIES)



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