China withdraws guaranteed jobs to Tibetan graduates

BEIJING, Nov 28: China has withdrawn guaranteed government job offer to Tibetan graduates as part of the introduction of market-oriented reforms in the Himalayan region.

A university degree is no longer a passport to a steady job in Tibet, the last Chinese locality to axe guaranteed jobs for college graduates.

Guaranteed jobs for all Tibetan graduates will be phased out next year, according to new regulations issued by the regional government in May to break the "iron rice bowl" of jobs assigned by the government.

Despite the impact on the students, experts say the move will ultimately improve personnel training in Tibet and adapt it to the needs of the local job market.

About 2,730 three-year college graduates -- those who don't get a bachelor's degree upon graduation -- became the first group of Tibetan students to face the job market this summer, and about 700 of them were still looking for work, Xinhua news agency quoted Purbu Cering, an official with the regional education department, as saying.

Tibet staged its first ever recruitment fair for college students last week in Lhasa, with 53 companies offering more than 700 openings for sales representatives, secretaries, IT engineers, tour guides and hotel staff.

"It's hard to adapt to the changes," said Tibetan University graduate Lhamo Cering as she passes around her bio-data.

Lhamo Cering has failed to secure a job since her graduation four months ago. "I've got to learn to be more sociable."

But Soinam Toinzhub, a senior student, said he loves the changes because "instead of being assigned a job, students are given more opportunities", the report claimed.

Lhasa city has offered training to prepare the first-time job seekers for the competition, an official with the city's labour and social security bureau, Dang Feng said.

He said about 356 graduates in Lhasa, about one-third of this year's total, are still looking for jobs.

Employment was never an issue during the era of central planning, when only one per cent of secondary students gained entry to university and the government assigned everyone a job.

That system changed in 1988 with the first graduate job fair at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. The last guaranteed job was axed in most Chinese cities in 2000.

Ministry of Education statistics show 4.13 million college students graduated this year, three quarters of a million more than last year.

The number of college graduates in 2007 will be close to five million, about 1.24 million of whom will have no immediate job offers. (PTI)

Cosmetic surgery helps make sixties new middle age

LONDON, Nov 28: Cosmetic surgery is altering not just how people look but how they feel by changing perceptions of middle age, a study showed.

Global research group AC Nielsen surveyed people in 42 countries and found 60 percent of Americans, the world's biggest consumers of cosmetic surgery and anti-ageing skincare, believe their sixties are the new middle age.

On a global scale, three out of five consumers believed forties was the new thirties.

''Our forties are being celebrated as the decade where we can be comfortable and confident in both personal and financial terms. The majority of global consumers really believe life starts at forty,'' AC Nielsen Europe President and CEO Frank Martell said yesterday.

But that doesn't mean they want to look their age.

Healthier eating, longer lifespans and higher disposable incomes have helped to hold back the years. However, for many people the biggest boost is coming from the surgeon's scalpel, the survey found.

Confirming Russians' status among the world's biggest consumers of luxury goods, 48 per cent of them, the highest percentage globally, said they would consider cosmetic surgery to maintain their looks. One in three Irish consumers, 28 per cent of Italians and Portuguese, and one in four US, French and British consumers felt the same.

''Cosmetic surgery has become more acceptable and financially it's become affordable. Our mothers might have gone to Tupperware parties but this generation is more likely to be invited to Botox parties,'' Martell said.

LUNCHTIME 'LIPO'

With wrinkle-buster botox now considered mainstream, Martell's tip for the next beauty trend was fat-removing liposuction in your lunch break.

''Lunchtime 'lipo' is likely to become the next cosmetic ''special'' on the menu,'' he said.

AC Nielsen's findings underline how a quest for youth has created one of the world's fastest growing businesses.

Cosmetic surgery surged 35 percent in Britain in 2005 compared with a year earlier, data showed from The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.

Top sellers in the UK are botox at 400 pounds, eye surgery at 5,000 pounds and combined face and eyelift at 8,000 pounds.

''We're seeing more and more facial procedures, particularly people having their eyes done, we are getting people of all ages, even people in their eighties are getting surgery to refresh them,'' said Douglas McGeorge, president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.

Those who blanch at the idea of going under the knife are fuelling another boom with sales of anti-ageing skincare the fastest growing in the skincare business, AC Nielsen said.

And to tap that multibillion dollar seam, companies are scrambling to discover ever more unusual products.

French beauty group Clarins will launch in January what it says is the world's first spray to protect skin from the electromagnetic radiation created by mobile phones and electronic devices like laptops.

It says the spray contains molecules derived from microorganisms living near undersea volcanoes and from plants which survive in extreme conditions such as alongside motorways and in Siberia. (AGENCIES)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Muslim Turkey to host Pope amid anger, tight security

ANKARA, Nov 28: Turkey greets Pope Benedict today for a four-day official visit, but the welcome will be distinctly cool due to simmering Muslim anger over his comments on Islam and his past opposition to Ankara's EU ambitions.

Underlining the tensions, Benedict, on his first visit to a Muslim country since becoming Pontiff last year, will travel through the streets of Ankara and Istanbul in a closed car, not in the glass-sided ''popemobile'' usually used on papal trips.

Most Turks seem indifferent to the visit by the Pope, who is spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics, but security will be very tight with protests expected by a small but vociferous minority of Islamists and hardline nationalists.

''The Pope is head of the Catholic world and maintaining good ties between the Islamic world and the Catholic world is in everybody's interests,'' Ali Bardakoglu, Turkey's top Muslim official, told Reuters in a recent interview.

''Disagreeing with somebody does not mean we are not hospitable to that person,'' said Bardakoglu, who heads Ankara's religious affairs directorate, or Diyanet.

Benedict infuriated Muslims worldwide in September with a lecture that seemed to depict Islam as an irrational religion tainted with violence. He later expressed regret at the pain his comments caused but stopped short of a full apology.

More than 20,000 Muslim protesters rallied against the Pope's trip on Sunday in Istanbul, chanting ''Pope don't come''.

CHRISTIAN UNITY

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a devout Muslim, will hold brief talks with the Pope at Ankara airport today before leaving for a NATO summit in Riga. He originally said he was too busy to see the Pope, sparking talk of a Turkish snub.

Even before becoming Pope, Benedict upset Turks by speaking out against their bid to join the European Union, citing religious and cultural differences. The Vatican now says it is not opposed to Turkish membership.

After talks in Ankara with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Bardakoglu, the Pope will visit a site near the Aegean port of Izmir where the Virgin Mary is reputed to have lived and died.

The main focus of his trip will be talks on Christian unity with Patriarch Bartholomew, Istanbul-based spiritual head of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians. But in a gesture to Muslims, Benedict will also visit Istanbul's famous Blue Mosque.

One of the few Turks really keen to meet the Pope is Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to assassinate Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, in Rome in 1981.

Now serving a jail sentence in Istanbul for crimes committed in the 1970s, Agca said through his lawyer on Monday: ''I (Mehmet Ali Agca) asked the Turkish government to release me for one day so that I can discuss theological issues with (the Pope).''

The authorities are not expected to grant his request. (AGENCIES)

Pamela Anderson, Kid Rock to divorce

LOS ANGELES, Nov 28: Actress Pamela Anderson and her husband, recording star Kid Rock, filed for divorce from each other after just four months of marriage, according to court papers.

The divorce petitions, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, cite irreconcilable differences as the reason for the couple's split.

''Yes, it's true. Unfortunately impossible,'' Anderson, 39, wrote in the ''diary'' section of her Web site at www.Pamelaanderson.Com, under the heading ''divorce.''

Earlier yesterday, People magazine quoted Anderson's New York-based publicist, Tracy Nguyen, as saying the former ''Baywatch'' star had filed for divorce last week.

''It wasn't a happy Thanksgiving,'' Nguyen told People.

Nguyen was not immediately available to comment further.

Canadian-born Anderson, a former Playboy magazine model who starred as lifeguard C J Parker on the long-running TV show ''Baywatch,'' and Rock, whose hit albums include 1998's ''Devil Without a Cause,'' were married in late July aboard a yacht near the French Riviera resort of St. Tropez.

Anderson and Rock, 35, whose real name is Robert Ritchie, had been involved in a long, on-again, off-again relationship that began as early as 2000. After a widely publicised break-up in 2003, she and the lanky rap-rock singer got back together earlier this year.

''Yes, I'm finally getting remarried ... I'm in love. I'm happy,'' Anderson had written on her site in July to confirm the wedding plans.

Anderson has two children from her previous marriage to drummer Tommy Lee of the rock band Motley Crue.

She and Kid Rock have no children together. Earlier this month, celebrity magazines reported that Anderson had a miscarriage but that could not be confirmed.

Her divorce filing is the fourth involving major celebrity couples this month, following those of pop singer Britney Spears and dancer Kevin Federline; film stars Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe; and actress Kate Hudson and Black Crowes singer Christopher Robinson.(AGENCIES)

Canada minister quits over Quebec "nation" vote

OTTAWA, Nov 28: Canada's minority Conservative Government lost one of its cabinet ministers because of the Government's motion to recognise Quebecers as a ''nation'' within Canada.

The Government's survival was not placed in jeopardy by the resignation of Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Michael Chong, but the move underlined tensions over the motion, which was designed to head off a parliamentary maneuver by the separatist Bloc Quebecois party, which wants independence for the largely French-speaking province of Quebec.

Chong, ironically, was responsible for national unity issues, including Ottawa's relations with Quebec and the other provinces. He said he remains a Conservative member of Parliament and loyal to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

''I believe in this great country of ours, and I believe in one nation, undivided, called Canada,'' Chong told a news conference yesterday.

''While I'm loyal to my party and to my leader, my first loyalty is to my country.''

Chong is the first cabinet minister Harper has lost since the Conservatives defeated the Liberals in January's general election.

His decision to quit the cabinet was necessitated by the fact that the government was whipping a vote on the motion last night at 8:15 pm local time (0115 GMT Tuesday) -- meaning that cabinet ministers would be dismissed if they did not vote yes.

The motion to recognise Quebecers as a nation within a united Canada has no legal authority, but the Bloc has already said it will use it to demand extra powers for Quebec, including the right to speak at international meetings.

Chong said the separatists would use it to sow confusion.

''They will argue that if the Quebecois are a nation within Canada, then they are certainly a nation without Canada,'' he said.

Harper drafted the motion last week in response to one from the Bloc that recognized Quebecers as a nation, but did not include the words ''within a united Canada.''

The Bloc supported the new language because it recognized the concept of nationhood for Quebecers, albeit within Canada.

In 1995 separatists came within a percentage point of winning a referendum on breaking away from Canada, and they have pledged to try again in the future.

The province already calls its legislature the Quebec National Assembly and calls Quebec City its national capital.

''It won't change anything in their day-to-day lives,'' Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, a leading Quebec legislator, insisted during parliamentary debate. ''It won't give Quebecers more powers.''

Many Canadian politicians have welcomed the motion as a way of easing separatist pressures within Quebec, but others warned it risked opening the door to the break-up of Canada down the road.

At least two of the eight candidates for leadership of the opposition Liberal Party have come out against it, as well as a couple of backbench Liberal members of Parliament. (AGENCIES)

Clinton to visit to Tsunami-affected countries as UN envoy

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28: Former US President Bill Clinton will make his final visit to countries affected by the tsunami, including India, in early December in his role as the top UN envoy for the tsunami recovery effort.

Clinton, whose two-year appointment as Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy ends on December 31, will visit India, Thailand and Indonesia, three of the countries hardest-hit by the December 26, 2004, tsunami that killed over 216,000 people.

Clinton's office said yesterday he will first travel to Cuddalore on December one to see a new housing complex constructed for fishermen whose homes were destroyed by the tsunami and a rehabilitated school. He will also visit a cyclone shelter with a newly installed early warning system and witness an early warning test and mock drill.

On the morning of December 2, Clinton will be in Phuket where he will visit a small community of sea gypsies known as Moken whose members have begun to rebuild their livelihoods and housing through a community driven process. He will plant a mangrove tree in the village to officially launch the World Conservation Union's Mangroves for the Future Initiative.

Clinton will then fly to Aceh, the hardest-hit region, where on the afternoon of December 2 he will visit temporary barracks built by the government for displaced people, a transitional shelter site run by the Australian Red Cross, and a recently completed permanent school and some permanent homes in a devastated community. (AGENCIES)

Smokers must quit, not just cut down:Health study

LONDON, Nov 28: Smokers eager to cut the risk of dying early from tobacco-related illnesses must quit completely, researchers said today, because cutting down -- even by half -- is not enough.

''Smokers should quit -- you can't give your health a better present than to quit smoking,'' said Dr Kjell Bjartveit, former director of the National Health Screening Service, in Oslo.

In a 20-year study of 51,000 men and women in Norway, Bjartveit and his team studied the impact of cutting down smoking on deaths from heart disease, lung cancer and other tobacco-related cancers.

All the people at the start of the study were between 20-34 years old. They were assessed for their risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease at the beginning of the project and twice during the 20-year follow up period.

The aim of the research, published in the journal Tobacco Control, was to determine the health benefits if heavy smokers who got through more than 15 cigarettes a day cut their consumption by half or more.

''The long-term effects of a substantial reduction in smoking did not show any benefits in comparison with persistent heavy smoking,'' Bjartveit told Reuters.

The researchers found no significant difference in early death rates from cardiovascular disease, cancers and other causes between heavy smokers who continued their habit and people who had halved their consumption during the study.

The results were the same for both men and women.

''In health education and patient counselling, it may give people false expectations to advise that reduction in consumption is associated with reduction in harm,'' Bjartveit added.

Smoking is a leading cause of preventable death. In addition to being a risk factor for heart attack and stroke and certain types of cancer, it is also the leading cause of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

Health experts estimate the annual global deaths associated with smoking could double to 10 million or more by 2020.

''The study proves quite clearly the only safe way out of the risk caused by smoking: people who quit smoking have achieved a risk level that is remarkably lower than those who continued to smoke,'' Bjartveit said in the journal. (AGENCIES)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yo-yo diets yield gallstones in men:Study

CHICAGO, Nov 28: Men who lose weight and gain it back in a pattern often called yo-yo dieting run a higher risk of developing gallstones later on, a study said.

When weight is regained after a loss, much of what is put back on is body fat, said the report yesterday from the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington.

''Studies have shown that large swings of body weight, especially the phase of weight recovery, are particularly sensitive to the accumulation of body fat and to the development of metabolic abnormalities, including insulin resistance, and thereby may facilitate gallstone formation,'' said the report, which was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Men in the group who had lost between 5 and 9 pounds and regained it ran a 21 per cent increased risk for gallstones compared to those who had a steady weight. The risk was 38 per cent higher for those who lost and regained between 10 and 19 pounds and 76 per cent higher for those who lost and regained 20 pounds or more.

The number of times the subject's weight went up and down also made the risk higher.

In addition, certain hormones in the blood have been shown to be higher in people whose weight bounces back and forth than in those who maintain a steady weight, which could also contribute to gallstone risk, the report said.

The findings came from a multiyear study involving more than 24,000 male health professionals who provided information about weight fluctuations between 1988 and 1992 and were then queried on their health periodically for the following 10 years.

Gallstones are solid masses of cholesterol, bile and calcium salts that form in the gall bladder and are common among adults in Western countries. Obesity in general increases the risk for their development. Only about 20 percent of such stones cause problems, usually when they become stuck in the duct leading from the gallbladder, causing intense pain.(AGENCIES)

China uncovers blackmail scam in Shanghai fund scandal .

BEIJING, Nov 28: China has arrested a man who passed himself off as an investigator and blackmailed more than 100 officials in Shanghai where a pension fund scandal has netted the city's Communist Party boss, a newspaper said today.

Beijing has sent more than 100 investigators to Shanghai to trace money siphoned off from the financial hub's 10 billion yuan social security fund for illicit loans and investments.

More than 50 government officials and businessmen, including Chen Liangyu, the city party chief, and Zhang Rongkun, one of China's richest men, have been taken into custody since the scandal erupted months ago.

In late October, a 50-year-old man sent threatening mail in the name of one of the Beijing investigators to ''leading officials in various party and government organs in Shanghai'', citing their involvement in Chen's case, the Yanzhao Metropolis Daily said.

Police tracked the man down when he checked his bank accounts provided in the letters on ATM machines near his rural home in the northern province of Hebei and manged to confirm his handwriting, the newspaper said.

The man, whom the newspaper named and said had blackmailed managers at China's top appliance maker Haier Group in 2003, was arrested last week, the paper said on its Web site.

Police found unsent letters and government directories in his house, the newspaper said. It did not say if any of the threatened officials had handed over money.

Chinese newspapers regularly report details of a defendant's supposed guilt before a verdict has been reached, and courts are commonly viewed as venues merely for passing sentence.

Chinese media have reported similar extortion cases, in which the blackmailers randomly select a number of officials, make up several graft allegations and demand hush money.

Analysts say the phenomenon illustrates widespread corruption and the lack of meaningful checks and balances of power with officials are accountable only to their superiors. (AGENCIES)

| home | state | national | business| editorial | advertisement | sports |
| international | weather | mailbag | suggestions | search | subscribe | send mail |