Hanoi rounds up street kids pre-APEC: Rights group

HANOI, Nov 13: Homeless children have been removed from Hanoi streets and mistreated in detention centres before important events such as this week's Asia-Pacific summit in the Vietnamese capital, US-based Human Rights Watch said today.

The group said its research over three years showed street children ''are subject to routine beatings, verbal abuse and mistreatment by staff'' during detentions that last two weeks to six months in the Dong Dau Social Protection Center near Hanoi.

A government spokesman did not immediately comment on the report, ''Children of the Dust: Abuse of Hanoi Street Children in Detention'', which contains testimonies from street children, who are sometimes called ''bui doi'' in Vietnamese, meaning ''the dust of life''.

''Human Rights Watch is concerned that street children are particularly vulnerable to arrest now, as the Vietnamese government attempts to present its best face'' for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Hanoi is hosting the 21-member forum's leaders' week November 12-19 including US President George W Bush, President Hu Jintao of China and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the biggest conference in the Communist-run country's history.

The New York-based rights group's 77-page report covering 2003-2006, said there were similar campaigns to remove homeless people before the 2003 South East Asian Games and the 2004 Asia-Europe Summit Meeting in the capital.

Vietnam has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world after China and like its giant northern neighbour, there has been an increase in migration to cities from the countryside.

Homeless children are seen walking the streets offering to polish shoes and they sell chewing gum, postcards and copies of guide books and novels to tourists. They earn about 1.25 dollars or less a day, the rights group said.

Government statistics estimate there are 23,000 street children in Vietnam, about 1,500 of them in Hanoi. (AGENCIES)

Rice paddies bring food, hope to Mali's Timbuktu

TIMBUKTU, MALI, Nov 13: Driving down a tree-lined avenue winding through lush paddy fields, it is hard to believe you are just a few kilometres (miles) from Timbuktu, the fabled gateway to the vast Sahara.

The land here used to be parched earth, one of the last stretches of Mali's barren savannah before it gives way to the dunes and rocks of the desert just to the north.

Now women wrapped in bright cloth tend hundreds of hectares of rice fields, their slender green leaves a shock of colour against the dusty landscape that surrounds them.

Long dependent on expensive food imports, Timbuktu has become self-sufficient thanks to a foreign-funded irrigation project which donors hope can be replicated across one of the world's poorest countries.

The city, founded in 1100 by Tuareg nomads, was once the richest in the region, where merchants would trade gold from West Africa in exchange for salt mined in the remote oasis of Taoudenni deep in the desert.

But times have changed in the sun-blasted city of mud-brick mosques and sand-covered streets.

''Before, the riches of Timbuktu were the salt coming down from Taoudenni,'' Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure told Reuters in his palace in the capital, Bamako.

''Today its riches are the irrigated plains, the rice production. They manage two harvests a year,'' he said.

Small motor pumps drive water from the Niger river, which winds its way lazily along the southern fringe of the desert, into channels where it is shared by smallholders who allow it to flow through sluices to neighbours' plots.

The result is 1,600 hectares (3,950 acres) of irrigated land spread across seven villages around Timbuktu. They produce 6,640 tonnes of rice a year, enough to feed the local area and to export as far afield as Burkina Faso.

''There was no cultivation here before. It used to be just hard mud. Now we can feed the population with locally produced rice,'' said Abdoul N'Diaye, head of rural development in the area. (AGENCIES)

Royal to French Socialists only I can win 2007 vote

PARIS, Nov 13: Defiant French regional leader Segolene Royal, snared in a row over teachers, urged Socialists to make her the party's presidential candidate in a vote this week, saying she alone could defeat the right next spring.

Brushing off a row over her criticism of the nation's teachers, Royal said she embodied the change France hungered for after 12 years of rule by conservative President Jacques Chirac.

Asked by the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) weekly why the party's 200,000 members should vote for her in Thursday's internal ballot, she said:

''Because I can win. I am the only one able to beat the right. I embody the profound change that people are demanding.''

Royal, who runs the western Poitou-Charentes region, said she was the anti-establishment candidate who could shake things up: ''People have such a need to believe in change, to believe in the power of politics.''

A JDD poll yesterday showed she remained the overwhelming favourite to win on the first round on Thursday, with 58 per cent of Socialist sympathisers backing her compared to 32 per cent for her nearest rival Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

However, the poll was of Socialist sympathisers, not party members and it remained unclear what impact Royal's comments on teachers -- who account for 15 per cent to 20 per cent of party members -- would have on the ballot.

Video footage, apparently shot during a January meeting in the western town of Angers, appeared on Web sites late last week showing Royal saying teachers should spend more time in schools and less time giving private lessons.

In the clip, Royal said she didn't want her views shouted from the roof tops because they would anger unions. The clip sparked charges of foul play by Royal supporters and risked deepening divisions stoked by weeks of campaigning.

Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister who has gained ground thanks to six candidate debates in which he performed well, continued to snipe at Royal in the Le Parisien newspaper.

''We will only reform education with the teachers, not against them,'' Strauss-Kahn, who says he can force Royal into a run-off ballot on November 23, told Sunday's paper.

Nevertheless, opinion polls suggest only Royal has a chance of defeating the mainstream right's most likely candidate next spring -- Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

While his ruling UMP party is expected to back Sarkozy in January, the Socialists still face a tough battle if they are to unseat the right, notwithstanding the government's unpopularity.

Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin missed the run-off ballot in 2002, coming in third to far-right, anti-immigrant campaigner Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Many blamed his humiliation on the 20 per cent of the ballot taken by a rival leftist, Green and hard left candidates.

The Communists yesterday backed their leader Marie-George Buffet as a contender to lead an anti-globalisation coalition, which aims to build on the ''No'' campaign's victory in a 2005 referendum on the EU Constitution.

(AGENCIES)

Gaza students lament ban on studying in West Bank

GAZA, Nov 13: Palestinian student Huda Abu El-Roos enrolled at Bethlehem University in the occupied West Bank in 2003. But Abu El-Roos, who lives in the Gaza Strip, has never set foot inside the campus.

Citing security reasons, Israel has prohibited the 21-year-old and nine colleagues from attending classes on occupational therapy in the biblical town.

Instead, the students listen to lectures via a video conference link from Gaza's Al-Aqsa University.

They are among hundreds of students from the Gaza Strip who have been barred from West Bank universities. Israel's high court -- referring to the case of the 10 students -- recently challenged that sweeping ban and gave the state until mid-December to explain its policy.

''We feel lost,'' Abu El-Roos said.

''The Israeli army has displaced an entire people. It is not difficult for them to displace 10 students and prevent them from studying at their university,'' she said.

Israel placed heavy curbs on Palestinian travel between Gaza and the West Bank -- which are separated by the Jewish state -- when a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 following the collapse of peace talks.

Those rules, which Israel says aim to stop suicide bombings, have been tightened since the Islamist militant group Hamas formed a government in March after winning elections.

The students, who are in their final year, said it was hard to learn occupational therapy from a screen. Bethlehem University is the only one in the Palestinian territories offering the course.

Occupational therapists treat people with disabilities, helping them develop or regain skills that could enable them to find work. It's a profession in great demand in Gaza, where years of conflict with Israel have taken their toll on life and limb.

Gaza has just one expert in this field, according to Israeli human rights group Gisha, which has challenged the ban in court.

STUDENTS A ''THREAT''

The students said the army had rejected several applications for them to travel through Israel to the West Bank, which has better educational facilities than Gaza, a poor, arid strip of land that is home to around 1.4 million Palestinians.

Permission to enter the West Bank from Jordan had also been denied, they said.

Practical training provided by foreign occupational therapists had dried up because of a wave of kidnappings of aid workers and journalists in the past 12 months.

And there is the distraction of constant violence in the coastal strip: Israeli military assaults, internal fighting between rival Palestinian factions or ordinary crime.

Last week, an Israeli artillery barrage killed 18 civilians in the Gaza Strip in the deadliest military strike in four years. Palestinian militants vowed revenge and Israeli leaders voiced remorse for the killings.

Shlomo Dror, an Israeli Defence Ministry spokesman, said the students were not being targeted, but that no Palestinians were allowed to travel between Gaza and the West Bank because of broad security concerns.

''We know there have been attempts to smuggle explosives and infiltrate into Israel. Students can pose a threat because they are younger and have less to lose and are easily approached by terror organisations,'' Dror said.

The dispute was taken up by Israel's high court after Gisha challenged the ban on behalf of the 10 occupational therapy students.

LOOKING ABROAD

Lawyer Sari Bashi, a director of Gisha, said the court rejected the state's argument that the students were potentially ''dangerous'' in a hearing on Nov. 2 and demanded it explain why applicants shouldn't be considered on an individual basis.

Another occupational therapy student, Mohammad Azaiza, said the group had once gone to Egypt for practical study.

''The problem is that if we cannot get to the West Bank, we will need to go again to Egypt. But that is not guaranteed,'' Azaiza said.

Palestinians cross into neighbouring Egypt via the Rafah terminal in southern Gaza. That has been closed often this year, especially since militants abducted an Israeli soldier from Gaza in June, triggering an Israeli offensive in the strip.

Some 24,000 disabled people in Gaza need the help of occupational therapists, Gisha said. Many were hurt in Israeli offensives, especially since the start of the Palestinian revolt in 2000 while others are victims or internal or gangland violence.

Gisha said Israel, which controls Gaza's borders, was obliged to ensure occupational therapy services were provided.

''Since the uprising, the handicapped have crowded health centres. We need to rehabilitate these people and enable them to practice a normal life as much as possible,'' Azaiza said.

While the occupational therapy students have persisted in their studies, Abu El-Roos said many other students simply opted to study abroad.

''Some students were able to get to foreign countries. But they cannot get to a university in their homeland,'' she said. (AGENCIES)

Canada faces UN grilling over Kyoto abandonment

OTTAWA, Nov 13: This is likely to be another rough week for embattled Canadian Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, who must explain to a summit on global warming why Ottawa has effectively abandoned the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

The minority Conservative government, which says Canada cannot meet emissions cuts mandated by Kyoto, last month proposed clean air legislation that ignored the protocol and promised to impose binding cuts only by 2020-2025.

Ambrose, the focus of attacks from the media, opposition parties and green groups, flew to Nairobi yesterday for U N climate change talks on finding a successor to Kyoto, the first stage of which ends in 2012. Signatories to the protocol are gathered in the Kenyan capital for a two-week conference.

Ambrose is the outgoing president of the talks but rather than attend the opening last week she sent a video of remarks instead, to the irritation of some delegates.

Opposition politicians, saying the planned clean air law would damage Canada's international reputation, demanded Prime Minister Stephen Harper stick to the first stage of Kyoto and also agree to binding long-term targets.

''What we are asking is that (he) change a course which is a disaster for our environment, a disaster for our foreign policy and a gross abandonment of our responsibility for the world,'' said Liberal leader Bill Graham.

Canada's three opposition parties have a majority of seats in Parliament and say they will block the clear air bill. All three are sending legislators to Nairobi and vow to openly criticize Ambrose.

HYPOCRISY ACCUSATIONS

The Conservatives, who won power in January, paint the Liberals as hypocrites who did nothing about Kyoto after winning an election in 1993.

''Now (they) have the gall to actually suggest they would go to Nairobi and commit us to even more targets while we are still waiting to see their plan after 13 years,'' Harper said.

Kyoto committed Canada to cutting emissions by 6 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012. Emissions are now 35 percent above that target and are set to rise more rapidly as oil-rich tar sands are opened up in western Canada, which happens to be the Conservatives' power base.

Ambrose says Canada needs a different approach to global warming but denies it will follow the lead of U S President George W. Bush and pull out of Kyoto altogether.

''Canada is on track to meet all of our Kyoto obligations except for our target,'' she told Parliament last week in the kind of comment that has prompted increasing mockery.

In her year as president of the talks she briefly attended one conference on the environment and skipped two others.

''(She) is missing so many meetings that her international colleagues are thinking about putting her face on a milk carton,'' remarked Liberal legislator Lucienne Robillard.

Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert said Ottawa's effective abandonment of Kyoto ''casts a pall on the value of Canada's word'' to the international community.

''If a country such as Canada can treat its signature on a treaty as a passing inconvenience, how many other nation-states will feel entitled to shrug off cumbersome obligations in the future?'' she wrote.

Harper's problem is that green issues are becoming more important to Canadians, especially in the influential French-speaking province of Quebec, where he must boost support if he is to win a majority in the next election.

A poll for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Last week showed the environment was second only to health care as a priority for voters. Almost three-quarters of those surveyed said the government was not doing enough to fight climate change.

(AGENCIES)

Elton John wants "hateful" religion banned

LONDON, Nov 13: Elton John has said organised religion should be banned because it promotes homophobia and turns some people into ''hateful lemmings''.

''I would ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it,'' the British singer said in an interview with the Observer newspaper yesterday.

''Religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it is not really compassionate.''

The singer, who tied the knot with long-term partner David Furnish in a civil ceremony last year, said he admired the teachings of Jesus Christ, but disliked religious bodies.

''The reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work,'' he added.

The 59-year-old singer, who has sold an estimated 200 million records, is no stranger to controversy.

In 2000, he hit out at the ''ignorance'' of the Roman Catholic church after a priest said homosexuals were engaged in ''a lifestyle that can never respond to the deepest longings of the human heart''.

Since then he has received blanket media coverage for a series of high-profile outbursts.

In May, he launched an expletive-laden tirade against the press at the Cannes film festival, telling photographers: ''You should all be shot.''

In 2004, he was filmed shouting at Taiwanese photographers for surprising him as he arrived at Taipei airport, calling them ''rude, vile pigs''.

He criticised pop star Madonna a week later, accusing her of charging fans outrageous prices to see her lip-synch in concert.

In an interview, he said his ''bad temper and irrationality'' emerged only when he was tired.

(AGENCIES)

UN envoy "very satisfied" with Myanmar visi

YANGON, Nov 13: UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari said on Sunday he was ''very satisfied'' with his rare visit to military-ruled Myanmar during which he saw detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

But he gave no details of what the United Nations said in a statement were ''frank and extensive'' talks with junta supremo Senior General Than Shwe.

Nor did he say when he might return to Myanmar, a country under scrutiny by the UN Security Council, which held its first official session on what the United States calls an ''outpost of tyranny'' in September.

''I'm very satisfied,'' Gambari told reporters yesterday before leaving at the end of a four-day visit.

''I don't know,'' he replied when asked when he might return, ''since the subject of discussion depends on a number of factors''.

Gambari had brought a message from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealing for the release of political prisoners, especially Suu Kyi, a UN official said. He did not say what the reaction from the junta was.

The UN said Gambari had pressed for better access for humanitarian aid and an ''all inclusive and transparent'' roadmap to democracy as well as the release of political prisoners,.

''Mr. Gambari stressed that there can be no development without peace, no durable peace without sustainable development and neither peace nor development without democratisation and respect for human rights,'' it said.

Chief among the political prisoners is Suu Kyi, head of the National League of Democracy which won elections in 1990 only for the military, which has ruled the former Burma since 1962 in one form or another, to ignore the result.

She has been under some form of detention for more than 10 of the last 17 years and Gambari was the first outsider to meet the Nobel peace laureate in two years when he visited in May.

She has seen few, if any, since then, confined to her lakeside villa in Yangon without a telephone and requiring permission from the military to receive visitors.

On Saturday, as he did on his first visit, Gambari saw her at a government guesthouse in Yangon and the UN said she asked for more regular visits by her doctor.

But she was happy the United Nations was getting involved in Myanmar, where some of the longest guerrilla wars of the modern age are still being fought, a UN statement said.

''She welcomes continued engagement by the United Nations in hopes that it can be of help in addressing the many issues that have been raised by Gambari during his visit,'' it added. (AGENCIES)

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Philosopher seeks truth in sequel to "On Bullshit"

WASHINGTON, Nov 13: Bullshit sells but can truth do as well? First there was ''On Bullshit,'' a slim philosophical treatise whose phenomenal success took the publishing industry by surprise. Then came a succession of books with the word ''bullshit'' in the title.

And now there is ''On Truth,'' a sequel to ''On Bullshit'' that its author, Princeton University philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt says is meant to plug an analytical gap in his first book -- why does truth matter?

In the introduction to ''On Truth,'' Frankfurt revisits his premise that ''bullshitters ... Are fakers and phonies who are attempting by what they say to manipulate the opinions of those to whom they speak.''

Those engaging in bullshit do not care whether what they say is true or not as long as it is effective in manipulating those who listen.

''I had entirely omitted ... Any explanation of exactly why truth actually is so important to us, or why we should especially care about it.'' On Truth is meant to provide the explanation.

Since ''On Bullshit'' was published, reviews in learned journals and debates on the Internet have tried to resolve a question still not fully answered: did Frankfurt's first book owe its success to compelling reasoning, clever marketing, a provocative title, or a growing public distaste of the verbal nonsense most people encounter daily?

There is no dispute over its success. ''Nobody expected it,'' said Andrew DeSio, a spokesman for Princeton University Press, its publisher. ''The first print run, in March last year, was 3,000 copies. Since then, we printed another 460,000 and most of them were sold.''

''On Bullshit'' has been translated into 25 languages and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for months.

''On Truth'' hit bookstores in November with an initial print run of 115,000 copies, said Sarah Robinson of the book's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House.

BACKLASH AGAINST BULL?

It is too early to gauge whether ''On Truth'' will match the success of its predecessor. None of the other books carrying provocative word in the title rose to 400,000-plus best-selling heights.

To name a few -- ''Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit;'' ''The Business of Bullshit;'' ''The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit: An A to Z Lexicon of Empty, Enraging and Just Plain Stupid Office Talk;'' ''Bullshit and Philosophy;'' ''100 Bullshit Jobs ... And How to Get Them;'' ''The Dictionary of Bullshit.''

Judging from online discussions about the subject, a good many Americans see the profusion of titles playing on the word word as evidence of a gathering backlash against what those prone to euphemisms call BS or bull.

In his new book, Frankfurt notes that, ''We live at a time when, strange to say, many quite cultivated individuals consider truth to be unworthy of any particular respect.

''It is well known, of course, that a cavalier attitude towards truth is more or less endemic within the ranks of publicists and politicians, breeds whose exemplars characteristically luxuriate in the production of bullshit, of lies and of whatever other modes of fakery and fraudulence they are able to devise.''

Frankfurt quotes the philosophers Baruch Spinoza and Immanuel Kant to bolster his central argument -- societies that disrespect the truth are bound to decline.

''Any society that manages to be even minimally functional must have, it seems to me, a robust appreciation of the endlessly protean utility of truth. After all, how could a society that cared too little for truth make sufficiently well-informed judgments and decisions?''

PACKAGING TRUTH IN GOLD

DeSio, of Princeton University Press, ascribed the popularity of ''On Bullshit'' partly to timing. ''Society was ready for it, the time was ripe.'' But, he added, ''packaging helped.''

Like its predecessor, ''On Truth'' has an unusual format for a serious work. It is hard-cover and, at 4 by 6 inches, so small it fits into a coat pocket.

The cover of the slim volume, 101 pages, is in gold of precisely the same shade as an upscale make of chocolate sold alongside books in major U.S. Chains.

But getting impulse buyers to pick up the book in the mistaken belief it was a box of chocolates was not the intention of designers at Knopf, according to Paul Bogaards, the company's executive director of publicity. ''They wanted to create an image that suggests weight and import.''

Frankfurt, who is 77 and has an impish sense of humor, has deadpan responses to remarks about the brevity of his two books.

''On Bullshit'' was all of 67 pages, ''On Truth'' is not much longer.

''What I think is that a shorty book can contain a lot of bullshit, but a long book almost inevitably contains a lot of bullshit,'' he told an interviewer from the New York Times recently. (AGENCIES)

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Australian air guitar T-shirt actually rocks

SYDNEY, Nov 13: Australian scientists have invented a T-shirt that allows air guitarists to play actual music as they strum the air.

The T-shirt, created by scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), is called a ''wearable instrument shirt''.

The shirt has censors in each elbow and sleeves to detect and interpret the air guitarist's arm movements -- one arm chooses chords and the other strums imaginary strings.

The gestures are then connected wirelessly to guitar audio samples to generate the music.

''It's an easy to use, virtual instrument that allows real time music making, even by players without significant musical or computing skills,'' said CSIRO engineer Richard Helmer.

''It allows you to jump around and the sound generated is just like an original mp3,'' Helmer said in a statement today.

Researchers specialising in computing, musical composition and textile manufacture combined their skills to create the musical T-shirt.

''The technology, which is adaptable to almost any kind of apparel, takes clothing beyond its traditional role of protection and fashion into the realms of entertainment,'' said Helmer.

A video of Helmer demonstrating the air-guitar t-shirt is available on the CSIRO's website,

www.Scienceimage.Csiro.Au/mediarelease/air-guitar. (AGENCIES)

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