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Colombian Indians want time to forget their land SABANA CRESPO, COLOMBIA, Oct 15: Coca leaves, the raw material of cocaine, should speed you up and give you a buzz. But you’d never know it .....more New
Atlas shows fast WASHINGTON, Oct 15: From new place names, shrinking seas and terror attacks to soaring internet usage, the world is changing at a more rapid .....more Chinese head for Pakistan to investigate kidnap case BEIJING, Oct 15: A Chinese Government team leaves for Pakistan today to investigate the kidnap and ill-fated rescue of two Chinese engineers. ...more Putin’s China visit leaves question marks about oil BEIJING, Oct 15: Russian President Vladimir Putin met several top officials in Beijing, winding up two days of official talks which were rich in symbolism ......more |
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Activists plan for a better world at social forum LONDON, Oct 15: Tens of thousands of activists from across Europe flocked to London yesterday for three days of speeches and seminars......more Suspected N Koreans enter S Korean China mission BEIJING, Oct 15: Twenty men, women and children claiming to be North Koreans broke into the South Korean consulate in Beijing today seeking ......more Israeli police search for crocodiles sold as pets JERUSALEM, Oct 15: Israeli wildlife experts are desperately searching for hundreds of stolen baby crocodiles sold as household pets amid fears they .....more Chiron submits marketing application for lung drug NEW YORK, Oct 15: Chiron corp said yesterday it submitted an application to US regulators to market its experimental.....more |
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Colombian Indians want time to forget their land SABANA CRESPO, COLOMBIA, Oct 15: Coca leaves, the raw material of cocaine, should speed you up and give you a buzz. But you’d never know it to look at the arhuaco Indians of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada, who must be strong contenders for the title of world’s most laid-back people. Cistercian Monks would make more of a racket in deep contemplation than two Arhuaco men when they meet. They grin and whisper a few words in their soft-sounding language, dipping their fingers into little cloth bags to make the ritual greeting of exchanging coca leaf. Male Arhuacos chew coca almost all the time, their cheeks permanently bulging with darkening green cud. Yet, despite the stimulant, they pad around in sandals and flowing white robes in as quiet and unhurried a way as if the last few hundred years of frenetic human development had never happened. Which is exactly how they would have liked it. At a meeting in late September, advised by coca-chewing Shamans, or "Mamos", the Arhuacos decided to tell the "white" civilisation of the rest of Colombia to leave them alone in their ancestral home in the Sierra Nevada mountains. "As of today we won’t permit the construction of any new roads because they destroy sacred sites," said Jeremias Torres, a senior member of the council representing the 20,000 Arhuacos. He spoke in Sabana Crespo village, a collection of simple cabins in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada — the world’s tallest coastal mountain range whose snowy peaks rise above the jungles of Colombia’s Caribbean shore. "The things we need here already exist. Like the water, like the air, like the soil and the sun which shines on us," said Torres, as he chewed. Unfortunately for the Arhuacos, while Colombia’s 1991 constitution concedes a degree of Indian self-Government on traditional lands, it gives them very little power to stop infrastructure projects. Reinaldo Villalba, a lawyer from the Celectivo De Abogados who works on human rights cases, said their best hope would be to mobilise international opinion. But the Arhuacos are suspicious of outsiders, particularly journalists. Torres spoke to a reporter only after a ruminative Assembly in a thatched mud hut granted approval. "We’re not going to permit electricity either," said Torres. Asked about a telephone mast in the tiny village he replied sharply: "We’re going to get rid of it. We don’t want it any more." A crowd listened while he spoke. The men wore white caps the shape of flattened ice cream cones and steadily rubbed and poked ritual gourds with sticks — a movement which has religious significance and represents the conjunction of male and female. The women were bare headed and carried silent babies bound in blankets to their backs. They are particularly angry about Government plans to build the Besotes dam on the Guatapuri river for the water supply of the city of Valledupar. "It pains us to think they could tap the rivers because our spirits travel through them when we die. We don’t want our spirits to get stuck in the public water pipes," said Torres. But, while the regional Government is moving forward with plans for Besotes, cultural disintegration is not the Arhuacos’s only fear. They have an enemy no court has been able to control and which pays no attention to international opinion. Outlaw far-right militias have targeted them in their push for control of the strategically important Sierra Nevada. Coca plantations, which, unlike those belonging to the Indians, are illegal and used to make cocaine, are now hidden in the mountains’ jungle-covered folds. "They killed two Indians near here. They cut them up into pieces," said Torres. After the killings late last year, the paramilitaries said they had made a mistake and had been misinformed that the Indians were helping Marxist rebels, who are fighting a 40-year-old war. But, torres said: "There is no pardon for what they did." The Colombian Government is negotiating peace with the paramilitaries, although it accuses them of regularly violating a ceasefire. While members of the army have often cooperated with the "Paras" against their common rebel foe, the military does pursue them when caught law-breaking. The Arhuacos are very exposed in their mountain villages. "We have been facing the situation with words. We repeat our position that this is our land and we govern ourselves, and we ask for respect, although we have received very little," Torres said, adding that the paramilitaries don’t let the Indians bring food into the Sierra Nevada in case it ends up feeding rebels. Nonetheless, the Arhuacos are determined to face off both the juggernaut of western civilisation and the guns of the paramilitaries. They don’t want tourists gawking at them or anthropologists studying them. And they don’t want to change the way they think. "According to European histories, we crossed the Bering Straits and came here via the Polynesian islands, and we don’t accept that," said Torres. " We were born here, together with the stones, the soil and the air." (AGENCIES) |
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New Atlas shows fast pace of changing world WASHINGTON, Oct 15: From new place names, shrinking seas and terror attacks to soaring internet usage, the world is changing at a more rapid pace than in previous decades, says National Geographic’s Chief Cartographer. The national geographic society is launching the eighth edition of its "Atlas of the world" this month and has made a record 17,000 updates and editorial changes from its edition five years ago. "This pace of change mainly has to do with two factors, a still rapidly growing population and an ever-more international economy," said Allen Carroll, the society’s chief map-maker. The new Atlas uses the latest digital mapping techniques and satellite imagery and for the first time, each page has an internet address where readers can find more information. "The goal is to get people excited about the world and to increase people’s understanding. There is too much local focus but not enough understanding of how what happens in the world affects our lives," said Carroll. The 416-page, 7 Lb (3.2-kg) book includes maps and graphics that reflect global challenges, such as "conflict and terror". Others portray migration and refugee flows and health and literacy rates. When mapping out what they described as terror attacks, Carroll said they purposefully did not indicate where Al-Qaeda — blamed by the United States for many attacks including those on Sept 11, 2001 — or other groups were based as this was a shifting target. Carroll says that more than ever, the political and economic maps reflect a growing gap between the developing and the developed world. For example, a map of undersea fibre-optic cables shows a jumbled mass of cables between Europe and the United States but a lone one snaking around the west coast of Africa and skipping much of east Africa. A map on internet hosts paints a similar picture, with Europe, parts of Asia and North America dominating the scene. "This shows us that Africa is still relatively isolated both economically and technologically," said Carroll in an interview from his office in Washington DC. Surrounded by different sized globes and with piles of maps spread out on his table, Carroll said there was a lot of internal debate about what to include and what not to in the political and economic maps section. "We have bent over very far backward to make sure we are objective and fair and as nonpartisan as we can be here," he said. "We are very careful to use as many sources as we can and not follow the policies of any one organisation." East Timor — the first new nation this century — is mapped for the first time in the latest Atlas and the recently defined border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia is also shown as are the administrative divisions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Other notable changes include the fact that Mount Everest, earth’s highest point, is recorded seven feet (2.1 m) higher at 29,035 feet (8,850 metres) — not because it has grown but because measurement data is more accurate. Earth’s lowest point, the dead sea, has dropped 26 feet (7.9 metres), down to minus 1,365 feet (416 metres) because of increased water consumption in that area, said Carroll. The Atlas also shows environmental degradation. For example, Lake Chad has shrunk due to an ongoing drought and the Aral sea has been affected by the siphoning of water. Carroll says most environmental changes are subtle and unnoticeable to the human eye. "Thank goodness, otherwise thousands of people would be fleeing as seas encroached and things like that," he said. Some of the more impressive satellite imagery in the Atlas is a compilation of night time shots taken over several months and pieced together to show human settlements according to the number of bright lights. Predictably, North America’s east and west coasts, western Europe, parts of India and Japan, have the biggest number of lights, while parts of Australia are engulfed in fires. When it comes to naming towns and cities, Carroll says they use the name people would identify if travelling to that area. For example, Italy’s capital is identified as "Roma" with the English translation "Rome" next to it. National geographic printed its first Atlas in 1963. At 165 a copy, the first print run this time round will be 165,000. A single map plate contains up to 8,000 labels and the 136-page index has 140,000 place names. (AGENCIES) |
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Chinese head for Pakistan to investigate kidnap case BEIJING, Oct 15: A Chinese Government team leaves for Pakistan today to investigate the kidnap and ill-fated rescue of two Chinese engineers. One of the engineers held hostage by Al-Qaeda-linked militants was killed on Thursday and his colleague rescued in a commando assault that killed their five kidnappers. "The team will convey the condolences from the leadership of the Communist Party of China and from the state council to the victims and Chinese personnel in Pakistan," Xinhua news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry source as saying. Chinese engineers wang ende and Wang Peng were heading to work on a dam project in the remote south Waziristan tribal region when they were kidnapped on Saturday by Uzbek and Pakistani militants led by a former Guantanamo bay detainee. Wang Peng, who had worked as a surveyor on the project, was critically wounded by gunfire from the kidnappers and later died, said Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan. Wang Ende was unharmed. Both men worked for state-run Chinese firm sino hydro corp. The Chinese Government team, headed by Chen Jian, assistant to the Minister of Commerce, includes personnel from the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Commerce and the Commission for supervision and management of state-owned properties under the state council, Xinhua news agency said. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Thursday sent letters of condolence to Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. The Beijing news quoted Chinese Academy of Science Scholar Zhang Yulan saying the hostage case would not influence Sino-Pakistan ties. "But (I) suggest Chinese companies in Pakistan tighten security for staff, or withdraw some of them, no matter if it delays projects," he said. In an analysis, the newspaper said the case might influence foreign investment in Pakistan and tourism. "Many Chinese delegations have cancelled their visits to Pakistan," it said without elaborating. The kidnapping was the second time this year Chinese workers have come to harm at the hands of militants opposed to Pakistan’s role in the US-led war on terror. In May, three technicians working on a port project were killed and nine wounded in a bomb attack in the southern Pakistani city of Gwadar. (AGENCIES) |
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Putin’s China visit leaves question marks about oil BEIJING, Oct 15: Russian President Vladimir Putin met several top officials in Beijing, winding up two days of official talks which were rich in symbolism but left unanswered many key questions about energy supplies to China today. Putin’s largely ceremonial meetings with Parliament chief Wu Banguo and Premier Wen Jiabao followed extended talks yesterday with President Hu Jintao which were crowned by the signing of 13 documents, including a common, tough position against terrorism. The Russian leader was due to fly later today to the western city of Xian, home of the famed Terracotta warriors, where he was to meet heads of northwestern Chinese provinces to discuss prospects of cross-border cooperation. Putin is the second prominent European leader to visit China in a week. French President Jacques Chirac last weekend sealed nearly 5 billion worth of deals. Putin and Hu have praised a border agreement, which finally draws a 4,300-km (2,670-mile) frontier between the two states after 40 years of talks. Putin also outlined an ambitious plan to boost bilateral trade from 15.7 billion now to 60 billion in 2008. Despite his calls to the Chinese partners to increase the quota of high-tech in bilateral trade, Russian officials said off the record that supplies of oil and expected sales of natural gas to China would remain dominant. However, Russia’s reputation as a reliable partner was put in question just weeks before Putin’s visit when embattled oil major Yukos, whose main production unit Yuganskneftegaz faces sale to cover a multi-billion tax bill, slashed supplies to China. The company, whose former head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, faces trial on fraud and tax evasion charges widely seen as a Kremlin punishment for his political ambitions, said its supplies to China’s state oil company CNPC this year by rail could reach only 5.5 million tonnes, instead of a planned 6.6 million tonnes. Russian Government officials, heavily pressed last month by visiting Premier Wen, have promised to fix the problem by late October. One more project of the disgraced Yukos — to run an oil pipeline to deliver at least 30 billion tonnes of oil — stalled after Putin said he would rather have it running to the port of Nakhodka on Russia’s Pacific coast. Members of Putin’s delegation said that the pipeline was not discussed in detail during the Beijing talks. The head of Putin’s team of economic experts, Arkadi Dvorkovich, told reporters that laying a pipeline to China was not immediately on the Russian agenda. "It is important that the pipeline runs close to the Chinese border," he told reporters, referring to the plan of running the pipeline to Nakhodka. "I do not know whether there will be a link to China. There is an option that the Chinese pick up the oil by rail." Asked whether all 30 million tonnes a year promised to China could be delivered by rail, he said: "Yes, it is possible." Among the deals, Russian gas giant Gazprom and CNPC signed a strategic partnership during Putin’s visit. Russia currently does not sell gas to China, but the chief executive of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, said his company was keen to jump into the Chinese market, which he believed would need up to 20 billion cubic metres of gas annually by 2010. However, he said the partnership agreement did not tackle separate projects, including the one by joint venture TNK-BP to run a gas pipeline to China from Kovykta in Siberia, stalled after Gazprom muscled into the deal. Miller told reporters in Beijing on Thursday that a committee set up by his company and CNPC would work hard on separate projects, including the Kovykta, but made clear that a solution was nowhere close. (AGENCIES) |
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Activists plan for a better world at social forum LONDON, Oct 15: Tens of thousands of activists from across Europe flocked to London yesterday for three days of speeches and seminars hoping to push politicians to get back in touch with their disaffected electorates. The European Social Forum (ESF) is an umbrella organisation of groups with a bewildering array of aims and interests ranging from racism and religion to world trade and the war in Iraq. "Across Europe voter turnout at elections is falling. We want politicians to look at events like this and begin asking why they are not engaged with the younger generation," an ESF spokesman said yesterday. "These people are involved, but they are being ignored by the established political parties," he added, indicating crowds of people queuing to register for the event that opens on Friday and ends with a demonstration in central London on Sunday. Dreadlocked Austrian student Severin Zotter, 22, said he had come to find out how to change the world. "I want the world to have people, not money, at its centre," he said. Now in its third year, the 2004 forum has six main themes and as many subtexts as there are visitors. (AGENCIES) |
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Suspected N Koreans enter S Korean China mission BEIJING, Oct 15: Twenty men, women and children claiming to be North Koreans broke into the South Korean consulate in Beijing today seeking asylum, a diplomatic source said. South Korean YTN television footage showed the group clawing through a barbed-wire fence and scaling a wall to enter the compound in a leafy diplomatic area at dawn. The group included four children and was made up of 14 females and six males, he said. Consulate officials were not immediately available for comment. Two sections of an inner wire fence had been snipped away but it was unclear how the outer fence had been breached. At 8.30 a.m., two police cars were outside the compound and officers were taking notes. Last month, 44 North Korean asylum seekers used makeshift ladders to scale the fence and leap into the Canadian embassy in Beijing. Hundreds of asylum seekers from reclusive North Korea have broken into foreign embassies and consulates in China since 2002, hoping to secure passage to wealthier South Korea, but usually in smaller groups. Activists estimate that possibly as many as 100,000 North Korean refugees are camped out or in hiding, most of them in China but increasingly in southeast Asia, after fleeing poverty and repression in the north. More than 460 North Korean refugees were airlifted to South Korea in July from Vietnam in a secret South Korean operation that enraged the north’s rulers. Despite having an agreement with Pyongyang to repatriate North Koreans who enter China illegally, Beijing has let most of those who have entered foreign diplomatic missions travel to South Korea via a third country. (AGENCIES) |
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Israeli police search for crocodiles sold as pets JERUSALEM, Oct 15: Israeli wildlife experts are desperately searching for hundreds of stolen baby crocodiles sold as household pets amid fears they might be released into the country’s waterways. The African crocodiles, which can grow to about seven metres (23 feet), hatched from eggs about two months ago shortly after they were stolen from a crocodile-breeding farm in southern Israel. "It is a race against time," said Amnon Nachmias, a spokesman for the nature and parks authority. "These crocodiles grow to a size that is dangerous to a man within three years. After a year they can bite off a hand." So far wildlife officials and police have found 10 crocodiles in raids on apartments in central Israel where the baby reptiles were found swimming in bathtubs and sinks. "The concern is they will enter fresh water lakes and rivers where they will be a threat to people and to the environment," Nachmias said. Crocodiles were introduced to the holy land about 2,000 years ago by the Romans who imported them for gladiator fights, Nachmias said. They disappeared decades ago, although an escaped crocodile was caught in the Jordan river last year. The farm breeds the crocodiles for their skins. (AGENCIES) |
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Chiron submits marketing application for lung drug NEW YORK, Oct 15: Chiron corp said yesterday it submitted an application to US regulators to market its experimental drug to prevent the bodies of patients receiving lung transplants from rejecting the new organs. The treatment, Pulminiq, is an inhaled version of the anti-rejection drug cyclosporine. In the company’s late-stage clinical trial, 46.7 percent of the placebo-treated patient group, or 14 patients, died before the trial was completed. That compared with 11.5 percent, or three patients, who took the drug. (AGENCIES) Britain’s Blair says left needs to engage US BUDAPEST, Oct 15: The European left cannot ignore the United States if it wants its trade, development and environmental issues on the international agenda, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told left of centre leaders yesterday. "Our task is to broaden the international agenda and not reject some of those issues America and other countries are prioritising," Blair told Prime Ministers from five countries at a conference in Budapest. Blair faces a deep anti-American strand in his Labour party, and much of the European left is opposed to the war in Iraq, as well as greater globalisation pushed by the United States. "We need to reach out to each one to the other," he said. Blair co-founded the progressive governance network with ex-US President Bill Clinton. Ferenc Gyurcsany, the new Hungarian Prime Minister, south Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, Ricardo Lagos from Chile, Adrian Nastase from Romania and Helen Clark from New Zealand were also at yesterday’s meeting in Budapest. The left also needs to make common cause around a simple agenda, including global poverty, sustainable development, climate change and developing international institutions, Blair said. Britain will hold the Presidency of the European Union and the group of eight rich nations in 2005 and will push that agenda, he said. (AGENCIES) Anglicans try again to heal rift over gays LONDON, Oct 15: The Anglican Church will announce on Monday if it is to sanction liberals in North America who ordained an openly gay Bishop and approved same-sex marriages. A long-awaited report seeks a solution to the sexuality issue, which has plunged the 70-million-strong Anglican communion into its biggest crisis for a decade and sparked fears of a schism after 450 years of unity by consensus. The crisis erupted last year when Canadian Anglicans voted to approve same-sex marriages and US Anglicans, known as Episcopalians, consecrated Gene Robinson, a homosexual divorced father, as a Bishop. Both moves flouted official Church policy and drew howls of protest from conservatives both in north america and in africa, Latin America and Asia, where Anglican worshippers are more numerous and tend to be more traditional than in the west. The conservatives want Anglican leader Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, to punish the liberals, while the liberals say they are simply reflecting the wishes of their parishioners. Monday’s report will be launched in the grandeur of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral by Irish Anglican leader Robin Eames, known in the Church as "the divine optimist" for his tireless pursuit of peace in northern Ireland. It is expected to criticise the north American liberals, but it is unclear what it will say about punishing them. "The one thing we won’t get on Monday is any sort of quick fix," said Paul Handley, editor of the leading Anglican newspaper the Church Times. "The indication ... Is that they want to commend the report for study and that it will be discussed at the next primates’ meeting." (AGENCIES) India asks rich nations to provide help to poor countries UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15: India has asked the rich nations to fulfil their commitment of providing assistance to poor countries to enable them to meet the goals of reducing poverty and hunger by half by 2015. Addressing the 191-member United Nations general Assembly on the occasion of tenth anniversary of International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed regretted that the "international assistance promised at the meet to the poor nations have fallen short of the commitments". Pointing out that rate of population growth over the past decade has been higher in the poorer nations with four out of every five persons living in the less developed regions, he said the emphasis on sustained economic growth and sustainable development has become "extremely relevant". Ahamed expressed strong support for the ICPD’s plan of actions which calls for raising the quality of life of human beings and promoting human development. He said the nations at ICPD conference, held in Cairo, had agreed to forge a balance among population, sustained economic growth and sustainable development. "The balance was based on the premises that actions by Government of developing nations would be matched by assistance for donor community. But the international assistance and support that was to be provided to the developing countries has fallen short", Ahamed said, appealing to the rich nations to fulfill their pledges. (PTI) Study confirms ephedrine diet supplements can kill WASHINGTON, Oct 15: A study in dogs confirms that ephedrine weight loss supplements can kill, US researchers said supporting the US Food and Drug Administration’s action to ban them. The supplements containing ephedrine — originally a herbal extract taken from a shrub and also used as a decongestant — had little effect on healthy dogs, the study found. But in dogs that had their arteries artificially blocked, ephedrine had dangerous effects, said Dr Philip Adamson of the University of Oklahoma yesterday. "For our experiment, we went to the local health food store, bought ephedrine supplements and gave our animals the dose recommended on the label," Adamson told a briefing sponsored by the American medical association. "In past experiments on obese, otherwise healthy individuals, ephedrine did not raise their heart rates when they were either at rest or exercising," Adamson added. (AGENCIES) |
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