Phone sex bill drives 14-year old boy to suicide

BEIJING, Dec 3: A 14-year old Chinese boy killed himself after running up a bill of 230 dollars calling phone sex numbers, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Li Hongbin, from a village in poor northwestern Gansu province, dropped out of school last year and began calling the expensive hotlines in August.

He committed suicide by drinking pesticide after a telephone company clerk called at the family home asking for payment.

The longest conversation listed in a 16-page phone bill went on for over four hours, Xinhua said, yesterday.

Calls cost three yuan a minute, Xinhua cited the head of one service as saying. The average monthly cash income of Chinese farmers is just 300 yuan.

Phone sex services have been proliferating in recent years, with adverts in local telephone directories and newspapers, but Beijing is also attempting to crack down on pornography with a campaign that includes monitoring phone sex lines.

(AGENCIES)

Chinese river dolphin nears extinction:Xinhua

BEIJING, Dec 3: Scientists who spent nearly a month in a fruitless search for a Chinese river dolphin that is more endangered than the Giant Panda say there may be no more than 50 left alive, said the Xinhua news agency.

The Baiji, also known as the Yangtze dolphin, only lives in China's longest river but a 26-day, 1,700-km hunt by Chinese and foreign experts failed to find any of the mammals.

''We can't say the white-flag dolphin is extinct,'' Xinhua quoted Wang Ding, vice director of the hydrobiology institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as saying, yesterday.

''However, the population has dropped dramatically over the past decade ... If the situation cannot be improved, the white-flag dolphin may be extinct within 10 years,'' added Wang, who estimated the total population at no more than 50.

The last expedition in 1997 found only 13 of the dolphins, which have suffered from pollution, overfishing, shipping and dams and other water diversions along the river.

China has set up a conservation base for the dolphin in a lake in central Hubei province, but as no dolphins have been caught in recent years hopes of using a breeding programme to build up the population are fading.

(AGENCIES)

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Ho Chi Minh haunts America still

HANOI, Dec 3: A warm light bathes ''Uncle Ho's''head in the darkened mausoleum, wispy goatee floating above his black tunic, as the faithful file past the glass case where he has lain for nearly four decades.

No hats, hands in pockets, assume a solemn expression, the rules say. Four sentries stand like acolytes at the corners of the crypt. Marble engravings of the hammer and sickle and Vietnam's red star rise in the background.

It's like being in a communist church.

I came to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum while covering the Asia-Pacific summit in Hanoi last month to see the embalmed remains of an iconic figure of my age.

Fellow baby boomer President George W Bush did not, opting for a stop at the centre charged with the hunt for the remains of 1,800 Americans still listed as missing in action in the Vietnam War.

But he could hardly avoid ''Uncle Ho'', the Marxist revolutionary whose images are everywhere in Vietnam.

Photographers gratefully snapped the president grinning gamely at his official welcoming ceremony under a huge bronze bust of the founder and leader of communist North Vietnam.

A generation on, what happened in Vietnam continues to haunt American political discourse, the more so in the climate of mounting opposition to Bush's war in Iraq.

FOUR DEAD IN OHIO

It is early May 1970. Ho Chi Minh had died the previous September, six years before the communist conquest of the South when its fallen capital, Saigon, would be renamed in his honour.

President Richard Nixon, elected on the promise of a secret plan to end the war, had just announced instead an invasion of Cambodia, igniting protests across the country.

At Kent State University, members of the Ohio National Guard shot dead four students during campus protests.

I was with 100,000 anti-war demonstrators on the Mall in Washington, ringed off by police buses to keep us from getting too close to the White House.

''Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is going to win,'' the more radical among us shouted, referring to the National Liberation Front of the Viet Cong.

I recall adding my voice to ''Draft beer, not boys'' ''Hell no, we won't go'' and the ever popular ''Make love, not war''.

Some said Nixon was amongst us and we thought they must have been hallucinating on LSD. But it turns out he did talk briefly at dawn with protesters at the Lincoln Memorial.

Friends and relatives were coming back in body bags and wheelchairs. The draft was forcing painful choices: fight the ''wrong war'' or flee to Canada. Many of us just wanted America to pull out pronto.

Now our children are experiencing a similar angst. America no longer has the draft but the nearly 2,900 servicemen and women killed and more than 20,000 wounded in Iraq are again taking a toll on the psyche of Americans.

My friend Ellen Quart, who was in Washington for that 1970 protest, wrote recently to tell me of the grief and anger her two children feel after a good friend from their high school was killed in Iraq.

''I'd never seen so many young men, sitting quietly, arms folded as if trying to hold in their pain, while tears and moans burst out,'' Quart, a psychology professor, wrote of the soldier's funeral in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

CLOSING THE BOOK

The United States has had a far harder time closing the book on the Vietnam War than has Vietnam, now busily wooing foreign investors to keep the economy growing at 8 percent a year.

The conflict has figured in the past four US presidential campaigns: who served, who dodged; who was brave, who shirked; Bush the Texas National Guardsman against John Kerry, the Swift Boat lieutenant in the Mekong Delta.

The Hanoi Gallery in the Old Quarter of the picturesque capital displays hundreds of lithographed propaganda posters featuring ''Uncle Ho'' and soldiers in heroic poses rendered in the style of socialist realism.

Only one is disturbing. It shows a mother holding a bloodied baby, screaming a thunderbolt at a mean caricature of Nixon's face on a bomb dropping on Hanoi.

''It's been 30 years since our independence and the hurt has faded,'' said Minh Ngueyet, a saleswoman at the gallery. ''That's because we were the winners.''

(AGENCIES)

Mysterious epidemic may be killing Guinean chimps

CONAKRY, Dec 3: A mysterious epidemic may be responsible for the disappearance of over half the chimpanzees at a colony in southeast Guinea, one of Africa's most important research sites for the primates, officials said.

Pepe Soropogui, head of the chimpanzee investigation at the Bossou Environmental Research Institute (IREB), said no more than 12 West African chimpanzees remain from a population of around 30 in 2002.

Primate experts are baffled by the dwindling population at Bossou, close to Mount Nimba in the border region with Ivory Coast and Liberia.

''There are theories that some chimpanzees have contracted a sort of bronchitis or pneumonia probably transmitted by man, but we are not sure because chimpanzees have funeral rites and take away the bodies after death,'' said Marie Claude Gauthier of the Jane Goodall Institute for wildlife research and conservation.

Chimpanzees share around 98 per cent of man's genetic makeup and are sensitive to human diseases, she said.

Other theories include the migration of the chimps through the thick jungles towards Liberia or the Ivory Coast. ''Nothing has been ruled out. It is a mystery,'' Gauthier said.

Chimpanzees have already disappeared from four countries in West Africa, leaving Guinea and Ivory Coast with the most important populations. According to the latest census, there are more than 8,000 chimpanzees in Guinea.

The population at Bossou is one of the oldest permanent colonies identified by researchers in the wild. Its chimps are known for using stone hammers to crack open palm oil nuts -- among the most sophisticated use of tools seen in nature.

The encroachment of nearby villages has threatened their habitat and food supplies as well as introducing disease.

''This situation is worrying and we are trying to find the cause of the deaths and disappearances. We still don't have the results of the tests,'' said Christine Sagno, national head of the water and forestry department.

''In the face of this threat, we have transported to the park in upper Niger, at Faranah, a sanctuary where we are going to welcome 45 chimpanzees in captivity,'' said Sagno.

The capture of chimps in Guinea is punishable with between one and six years in prison and a fine of 116 dollars, although there are plans to increase this penalty.

(AGENCIES)

Bachchan says he has no plans to re-enter politics

LONDON, Dec 3: Scotching speculation that he will re-enter politics, superstar Amitabh Bachchan has said he has no such plans as he is "totally inadequate" for the job.

"I have no plans to enter politics," Bachchan, who was here to launch the album of his latest film Baabul, told PTI.

After the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, it was his friend Rajiv Gandhi who coaxed him into politics. Bachchan was elected from Allahabad Lok Sabha seat but resigned after only three years, not finishing his term.

"I came into Parliament and realized that politics was something I was totally inadequate for and knew nothing about," the 64-year-old actor said.

There has been frequent speculation that Bachchan, whose wife Jaya Bachchan is a Samajwadi party MP, might take another plunge into politics.

At the launch held at the Crown Plaza Hotel on Friday, Bachchan attracted the global media and answered a volley of questions.

The Sunday Times today described Bachchan as "Tom Cruise, Sean Cannery and Clint Eastwood rolled into one.

"Certainly there is no British actor alive who shares his fame," the British newspaper said. (PTI)

UN agency sees risks to privacy, security online

GENEVA, Dec 3: Computer users who type in the same username and password for multiple sites -- such as online banks, travel agencies and booksellers -- are at serious risk from identity thieves, a United Nations agency said today.

The International Telecommunication Union, a Geneva-based UN branch, said businesses and regulators need to find a solution to the spread of personal information on the Internet, possibly by developing more streamlined identification methods.

At the moment, the ITU said the sheer number of identifiers and passwords required from computer users made it nearly inevitable that they repeat codes.

''This may cause security breaches, and leave them vulnerable to the machinations of identity thieves ever increasing in number and inventiveness,'' it said in its 2006 Internet report, released ahead of a major meeting of governments and industry officials in Hong Kong.

''The lack of coordination in identification systems is a source of growing inconvenience to users and needs to be addressed rapidly,'' it said.

The agency also highlighted risks to privacy from widespread Internet use, especially from marketers tracking the preferences and traffic of browsers across a variety of sites.

If people have confidence in the way such information is stored and used, the ITU said there might be no problem from the proliferation of ''cookies'' and other data-capturing tools, often used for targeted online advertising.

But it warned that a breakdown in consumer trust could impede the future expansion of Internet-based commerce. (AGENCIES)

NKorea wants Russia support, offers uranium:Paper

TOKYO, Dec 3: North Korea has offered Russia exclusive rights to its natural uranium deposits in exchange for open support at the six-way talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons, a Japanese daily said today.

Citing Russian government sources, the Tokyo Shimbun report said Moscow and Pyongyang had been in secret talks since 2002 over a plan for Russia to import the uranium and enrich it before selling it on as nuclear fuel to China and Vietnam, in what the sources said would be a highly profitable venture.

The North Korean Government has recently shown a positive attitude towards the idea, but introduced a requirement for back-up at the stalled nuclear talks, which may resume in the next few weeks.

The United States, Japan, South Korea and China are also involved in the six-way discussions aimed at persuading the North to scrap its nuclear weapons programme.

After North Korea shocked the region by conducting a nuclear test in October, the United Nations passed a resolution barring trade with Pyongyang in dangerous weapons.

Russia would therefore need to guarantee any uranium it imported from North Korea would be used for peaceful purposes, the paper said.

Russia is already a major exporter of oil and natural gas and is also seeking to position itself as an exporter of nuclear fuel, the paper said.

(AGENCIES)

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Corpses contaminate Nile after Sudan clashes: UN

KHARTOUM, Dec 3: Corpses of people killed during heavy clashes between the Sudanese army and former southern rebels have contaminated part of the Nile river, which civilians were depending on for drinking water, says the UN.

The fighting in the southern town of Malakal this week was the heaviest between government forces and their former southern rebel foes since they signed a peace deal last year ending Africa's longest-running civil war, which erupted in 1983.

''Though United Nations peacekeepers have provided critical support to the Malakal government to dispose of the dead, the Nile remains contaminated by bodies as a result of the fighting,'' the United Nations said in a statement.

''Of particular concern is the population's access to clean water in a city where cholera outbreaks are common. The United Nations has reported that civilians are drawing drinking water from the Nile river because some of the town's water pumps have broken down,'' it said.

The United Nations would begin an assessment of Malakal's water supplies yesterday. The statement added that the United Nations and its partners had responded to 165 cases of cholera in the Malakal area since October.

There have been no official death toll figures for the clashes since they erupted on November 28, although a top southern officer has said hundreds may have been killed, including combatants and civilians. Both sides agreed to a ceasefire on Friday, the UN statement said.

The world body said hundreds of civilians and soldiers were also wounded in the clashes and appealed for volunteer nurses and support staff to help.

SUDANESE ARMY ACCUSES FORMER REBELS

The Sudanese army accused the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) of starting the clashes, saying in a statement published on Saturday that the SPLA had besieged its garrison in Malakal.

It said the attack happened after a dispute between the former rebels and Gabriel Tang, a former pro-government militia commander and now an army general.

The SPLA has said militias belonging to the northern Sudanese Armed Forces attacked its members and the local commissioner of Malakal. They then took refuge in Sudanese military barracks near the airport and full combat began.

The SPLA is the military wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement.

Yasir Arman, a senior SPLM official, said on Thursday proxy militias operating in the south posed a threat to the security arrangements agreed with the Government as part of last year's peace deal.

Tang and his aides last Sunday denied triggering the clashes and said their troops in Malakal were not militias but members of the regular armed forces.

Sudan's north-south peace deal formed separate north and south armies with joint armed units in main towns including Malakal, the capital of the Upper Nile region and potentially one of the most oil-rich regions in Sudan, which produces at least 330,000 barrels per day of crude.

The peace deal also shared power and wealth between the north and south, but implementation has been slow on key issues such as the demarcation of borders and ownership of oil fields.

The United Nations has some 10,000 peacekeepers in the south to monitor the agreement, help train police and human rights workers and provide other services.

(AGENCIES)

Philippine typhoon victims buried in mass graves

DARAGA, PHILIPPINES, Dec 3: Villagers in the central Philippines buried their dead in mass graves today after landslides and

raging flood waters triggered by Typhoon Durian killed hundreds.

Officials fear the death toll from Durian, which swept into the South China Sea on Friday, could reach 600 after torrential rain and winds of up to 225 kph sent tidal waves of mud crashing onto communities circling an active volcano.

Soldiers, miners and locals, some using their bare hands, continued to pull corpses and body parts from areas surrounding Mount Mayon, about 320 km south of Manila. There was little hope of finding anyone alive under the fetid sludge.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council said 309 people had been killed due to landslides, flooding and flying debris and 298 were still missing across the central Bicol region.

In worst-hit Albay province, unembalmed corpses littered the streets and, amidst the stench of rotting flesh, survivors were forced to pile the dead into mass plots.

''Some of the corpses are almost decomposed,'' said Cedric Daep, head of the provincial disaster coordinating council.

More than 800,000 people were affected by the typhoon, which triggered flooding so intense some people, vainly clinging onto coconut trees, were washed out to sea.

Thousands were still without food, electricity and fresh water today after nearly 120,000 homes were damaged, communication lines uprooted and fruit trees, rice paddies and irrigation systems destroyed.

FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY

Durian, one notch below a category 5 ''super typhoon'' when it hit the Philippines, later weakened to a category 1 typhoon over the South China Sea and was expected to cross Vietnam's coast tomorrow, potentially disrupting the coffee harvest.

Residents around Mayon thought they had escaped catastrophe in September when the volcano subsided after months of spewing lava and rocks, raising fears of a major eruption and forcing thousands of residents to evacuate.

The debris left behind proved deadly when Durian struck.

Once lively villages were reduced to sticks and roofs protruding from the mud.

Thousands of survivors crammed into schools and churches as disaster agencies called for fresh water, food and medicine.

Named after a pungent Asian fruit, Durian was the fourth typhoon to hit the Philippines in three months. Forecasters expect one more before the end of the year.

In September, 213 people were killed when Typhoon Xangsane battered the north and centre of the country, leaving millions without electricity or running water for days.

Xangsane also killed dozens in Vietnam. (AGENCIES)

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