Power plant projects in Indonesia to use local resources

JAKARTA, Dec 26: The Indonesian Government would encouarge the use of local potential, including human resources, in developing coal-fired power plants outside Java, a senior official said today.

Use of local resources, included goods, manpower and funding, will be encouraged for the construction of 25 foreign-funded coal-fired power plants, tenders for which were announced last week, Director General of Electricity and Energy Utilisation department J Purwono said.

"Although some of fund for the projects will originate from binding foreign sources, we ask contractors to make a maximum use of local potentials, including machines, construction materials and manpower," he said.

Urging domestic financial institutions to be proactive in funding such projects, he said 30 per cent of the resources used in a coal-fired power plant with a capacity of 7 MW will be local.

On state electricity company PLN's plan to issue bonds, he said the plan was not necessary because PLN is still able to finance the projects itself. (AGENCIES)

Sanctions-hit N Korea selling off gold reserves: Report

TOKYO, Dec 26: North Korea, desperate for foreign currency under US-imposed sanctions, has started to sell its gold reserves on international markets, a Japanese newspaper said today.

The United States last year blacklisted a Pyongyang-linked bank in Macau, infuriating the communist regime which walked out of disarmament talks for 13 months during which it tested an atom bomb.

Since the US crackdown on the bank, North Korea has earned 28 million dollars in foreign cash by exporting gold to Thailand, which had not imported gold from Pyongyang for the previous five years, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

North Korea exported 500 kilograms of bullion to Thailand in April and another 800 kilograms a month later, the conservative Japanese daily said without identifying its sources.

North Korea's central bank, Choson Central Bank was also relisted on May 12 for trading on the London Bullion Market, said the newspaper, quoting a spokesman for the London market.

The North Korean central bank, which can issue currency, joined the London gold market in 1976 but was delisted in June 2004 due to inactive trading, the newspaper said.

The Yomiuri, citing South Korean data, said North Korea was estimated to have between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of gold reserves.

The United States blacklisted Macau's Banco Delta Asia in September 2005, saying it suspected that 24 million dollars in North Korean accounts was linked to counterfeiting or money-laundering. (AGENCIES)

Japan's jobless rate falls to near 9-year low

TOKYO, Dec 26: Japan's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 4 percent in November, down from October 4.1 per cent, government date said today.

The rate, when calculated to two decimal places, it comes to 3.99 percent, the lowest since March 1998's 3.85 percent, Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said in a report.

The number of jobless people totaled 2.59 million in the November, down 330,000 from a year earlier, the report said.

In a separate report, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare said the ratio of offers to job seekers came to a seasonally adjusted 1.06 in November, meaning there were 106 jobs for every 100 job seekers.

The number of job offers dipped 0.1 percent in November from the previous month, while that of job seekers declined 0.3 percent.

The number of new job offers gained 1.0 percent from a year earlier, the report said. (AGENCIES)

Angelina Jolie spends Christmas with refugees in Costa Rica

SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA, Dec 26: Angelina Jolie and her boyfriend Brad Pitt spent Christmas Day with Colombian refugees in Costa Rica, as part of the actress' work as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Jolie and Pitt arrived yesterday and visited a group of refugee children and families and to meet Costa Rican officials, the refugee agency, known as the UNHCR, said in a statement. There are about 11,500 refugees in this Central American country, most of whom fled Colombia because of the conflict there between leftist guerrillas, soldiers and paramilitary forces.

"We had a marvelous Christmas Day with the Costa Rican people and the families of the Colombia refugees that we met," the Oscar-winning actress said in a statement released by the UNHCR.

Jolie and Pitt gave presents to young refugees in the capital, San Jose, and they later with representatives of the Costa Rican government.

Jolie earlier in the day described the conflict in Colombia as "the greatest humanitarian tragedy in the Western Hemisphere" that receives little international attention.

"My Christmas message to Colombian refugees and to the millions of displaced people in Colombia is that the world has not totally forgotten them."

An estimated three million Colombians have been forced from their homes by more than two decades of armed conflict, and most are internally displaced, essentially refugees in their own country. (AGENCIES)

Frank Stanton, pioneer broadcaster and CBS president, dies

NEW YORK, Dec 26: Frank Stanton, a broadcasting pioneer and CBS president for 26 years who helped turn its TV operation into the "Tiffany network" and built CBS News into a respected information source, has died. He was 98.

Stanton died in his sleep at his Boston home on Sunday, said longtime friend Elisabeth Allison.

"He took an afternoon nap and never woke up," Allison said, her voice choking with grief.

Stanton once summarised his duties as "keeping the company going." But during his long association with CBS founder William S. Paley, the psychologist helped build the company from a modest chain of radio affiliates into a communications empire whose centerpiece became the nation's pre-eminent TV network.

"If broadcasting had a patron saint, it would be Frank Stanton. If CBS is the Tiffany Network, Frank Stanton deserves the lions share of the credit," said "60 Minutes" creator Don Hewitt.

As the head of CBS beginning in 1946, Stanton oversaw varied enterprises that included Columbia Records, CBS Laboratories, a book publisher, a toy maker and, for a brief time, the New York Yankees.

Paley, a radio man, did not initially grasp the potential of television.

"He thought it would hurt radio," said Stanton, who took a chance on the new medium by signing a comic with untested appeal named Jackie Gleason, then nailing down a new sitcom, "I Love Lucy," which might otherwise have gone to NBC.

"Who else had the opportunity to take a new medium, television, and plot its future?" Stanton once said. He called the job so interesting "I would have almost paid them to do it." (AGENCIES)

Brown's widow claims she was denied entry to home she shared with singer and son

BEECH ISLANAD, US, Dec 26: James Brown's widow said she was denied access to the home she shared with the singer and their 5-year-old son, claiming the gate was padlocked at the request of Brown's lawyer and accountant.

Tomi Rae Brown, who was one of James Brown's backup singers, said yesterday she was at a retreat when her 73-year-old husband died shortly after he was hospitalised in Atlanta.

"The last thing he said to me was, 'I love you baby and I'll see you soon'," she told 'The Augusta Chronicle.'

But when she returned to their home hours after her husband died of heart failure, security guards told her James Brown's lawyer, Buddy Dallas, and accountant, David Cannon, said she was not allowed inside, she said.

She said she does not own the deed to the home, but said she had a legal right to live there.

"This is my home," she told a reporter for the newspaper outside the gate of the house. "I don't have any money. I don't have anywhere to go."

Cannon would not comment on the situation, the newspaper said. Phone messages left for Dallas was not immediately returned to The Associated Press. (AGENCIES)

China to establish database to find evaders of court verdicts

BEIJING, Dec 26: China will establish an innovative national 'deterrent' database which will record all the country's court verdicts and their enforcement situation so as to help ensure that court rulings are properly carried out.

Over two million verdicts handed out by Chinese courts as well as their enforcement situation will be entered into the national database every year, spokesman of the Supreme People's Court, Ni Shouming said.

The new database is expected to go into operation on January 1, Ni said.

The database is part of a national deterrent system in which public security authorities, industrial and commercial authorities, banks, exit and entry authorities and the real estate industry will jointly sanction those who seek to evade court verdicts.

Court verdicts in civil cases in China are poorly enforced, Xinhua news agency said.

Under the new national deterrent system, those who seek to evade court verdicts will be unable to register a new company, seek bank loans, make investments or cross frontiers.

"The database will serve as an information platform for the national deterrent system. The database will make it easier to detect and punish those who seek to evade court rulings," Ni said. (PTI)

Nathu La, train service boost Tibet's GDP growth

BEIJING, Dec 26: Thanks to the launch of the first railway and reopening of the Nathu La trade pass with India, Tibet is expected to record a GDP growth of 13.2 per cent in 2006, the highest in a decade.

The southwest Chinese autonomous region's GDP will hit USD 3.7 billion this year, secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party of China, Zhang Qingli said.

The remote Himalayan region of Tibet witnessed average annual GDP growth of 12 per cent between 2001 and 2005.

The rapid growth is mainly driven by fixed assets investment, consumption and foreign trade, all of which have grown by more than 17 per cent since last year, Xinhua news agency reported from Lhasa, the regional capital.

Per capita GDP in Tibet will touch 1,282 U.S. Dollars this year, Zhang said adding "Tibet has entered a period of fast economic growth".

The operation of the Qinghai-Tibet railway in July this year, which ended Tibet's history of no railways and linked the region more closely with other parts of China, is believed to be the key factor in the region's development.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway stretches 1,956 km from Xining to Lhasa. About 960 kms is located 4,000 meters above sea level and the highest point is 5,072 meters, at least 200 meters higher than the Peruvian railway in the Andes, the former world's highest track. (PTI)

Nuclear deal highlight of Indo-US relations in 2006

WASHINGTON, Dec 26: The intricate negotiations on the civil nuclear deal dominated Indo-US relations in the outgoing year that saw President George W Bush's Republican party swept off its feet in the US Congress, leaving the occupant of the White House a lame duck in the remaining two years of his term.

With Congress having to pave the way for civil nuclear commerce, the focus was on Capitol Hill where lawmakers cut across party lines to join the exhaustive debate on separate bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate implement the nuclear deal.

Eighteen months after the process began, Bush signed into law the Henry J Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006 on December 18, setting the stage for negotiations on a bilateral pact on nuclear cooperation.

The administration, for its part, made sure its version of the deal, including the ramifications of making changes unacceptable to India, was heard on Capitol Hill. At at the same time, it gave the impression of being flexible to consider changes that were within the spirit of the July 2005 understanding between Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Even before Bush came to India in March this year to fine-tune the nuclear deal, a parade of senior administration officials -- including Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- made presentations to Congressional panels in the House and the Senate.

The Indian American community too pitched in, using its growing clout in domestic politics to exert pressure on elected representatives to back the deal.

The Indian American community's lobbying was best reflected by the fashion in which it championed the nuclear deal in the final days of the 109th Congress when it was feared that lack of interest among law makers would push the issue to the next Congress and force the two sides to start negotiations from scratch.

The continuous pitch for the nuclear deal coupled with constant exposure in the media kept the issue alive both in America and India -- a trend that is not likely to end even after the bill being signed into law by Bush.

The deal has been billed in many quarters, especially on Capitol Hill, as the "most important strategic" initiative of Bush.

In spite of the deep-seated reservations of some lawmakers, the legislation garnered strong bi-partisan support and received overwhelming support on the floor of the House and the Senate. It cleared the House by a massive margin of 359 to 68 votes and by an impressive 85 to 12 margin in the Senate.

The Conference Report reconciling the two bills was adopted by a whopping 330 to 59 votes in the House and by a unanimous consent agreement in the Senate.

In the course of the last few weeks, there has also been the sober realisation that the passage of the legislation is only the beginning of a long-drawn process before the two countries can begin nuclear commerce.

India and the US are readying their teams for intense sessions on the so-called 123 Agreement. India will also have to initial a country-specific accord with the International Atomic Energy Agency on safeguards and the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group will have to lift restrictions.

The near domination of the civil nuclear legislation during 2006 did not mean that other aspects of bilateral relations went unnoticed. Among the prominent things that stood out is the Maritime Cooperation Framework that the two countries agreed on to enhance security in the maritime domain and to prevent piracy and other trans-national crimes at sea.

The two sides also agreed to expand cooperation in diverse areas, ranging from the fund to spread democracy around the world to space programmes, including US participation in India's mission to the moon.

Apart from the quiet forward movement in defence cooperation, which went beyond the mechanics of joint exercises on land, sea and air, what attracted considerable attention in recent months was trade and business. Here too matters progressed beyond the exchange of delegations into the nitty gritty areas of strengthening cooperation on the economic front.

Total bilateral trade in 2005 was nearly 27 billion dollars, with exports from India worth 19 billion dollars. Statistics for January-September this year show merchandise exports from India increased by nearly 19 per cent to over 16 billion dollars. And heading this list will be diamonds and precious stones, textiles, iron and steel and organic chemicals. (PTI)

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