Vanity Fair cancels Oscar party due to strike

LOS ANGELES, Feb 6: No one will get inside one of Hollywood's most exclusive Oscar night parties this year: Vanity Fair magazine said on Tuesday it was scrapping its famous fete in support of Hollywood's writers in their three-month-old strike.

''After much consideration, and in support of the writers and everyone else affected by this strike, we have decided that this is not the appropriate year to hold our annual Oscar party,'' the magazine said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.

The announcement came just as the Writers Guild of America and the movie and television studios sent strong signals that they were on the verge of an agreement that could end the strike this week.

With the strike looming over the February 24 Academy Awards, Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said on Monday that the Oscars would take place with or without resolution of the labour conflict.

The party, hosted by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, is one of the most coveted invitations in Hollywood on Oscar night, drawing A-list stars and top Oscar winners. And the magazine said it would resume its annual bash next year.

''We want to congratulate all of this year's nominees and we look forward to hosting our 15th Oscar party next year,'' the magazine said.

(AGENCIES)

Online gap widens divide between parents and kids: Study

NEW YORK, Feb 6: Instant messaging and blogs are some of the limitless ways your child communicates online with the offline world. But, if a study is to be believed, it is only widening the divide between you and your kid.

A team of researchers at the Tel Aviv University in Israel has found that there is an enormous gap between what parents think their children are doing online and what is actually happening.

"The study tell us that parents don't know what their kids are doing. Parents don't know what their children are doing on the Net, in the same manner that they don't know what goes on at class, parties, or clubs," according to lead researcher Professor Dafna Lemish.

In fact, the researchers came to the conclusion after surveying parents and their offspring about the children's activities on the Internet.

In one part of the study, the researchers surveyed over 500 Jewish and Arab children from a variety of ages and socio-economic backgrounds, asking them if they gave out personal information online.

Seventy three per cent said that they did. The parents of the same children believed that only four per cent of their children did so.

The same children were also asked if they had been exposed to pornography while surfing, or if they had made face-to-face contact with strangers that they had met online.

Thirty six per cent from the high school group admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online. Nearly 40 per cent of these children admitted to speaking with strangers regularly (within the past week).

However, fewer than nine per cent of the parents knew that their children had been meeting with strangers, engaging in what is viewed as very risky behaviour.

In another part of the study, the researchers found that 30 per cent of children between the ages of nine and 18 delete the search history from their browsers in an attempt to protect their privacy from their parents.

According to Prof Lemish, the common filtering software may not be effective, since children will access what they are looking for elsewhere -- at a friend's house, an Internet cafe, or school.

"And if the child accesses dangerous material outside the home, they will be unprepared and uninformed when it happens," she was quoted by the 'ScienceDaily' as saying.

The researchers believe one problem is that parents are not as media-literate as they could be and tend to have no clue about what is really happening online.

"This lack of knowledge on the parents' part may be no different than the situation before the advent of the Web. Children should be encouraged to tell their parents about Internet encounters that make them uncomfortable.

"It's just common sense and parents need to teach them that. Talking with your children regularly is important," Prof Lemish said. (PTI)

N Caucasus poses problems for next Russian leader

MAKHACHKALA, RUSSIA, Feb 6: Smart cars purr along the streets of Moscow and French chefs run glitzy restaurants in thriving Russian mining towns, but in the impoverished regions of Ingushetia and Dagestan people live on a few dollars a day.

Eight years of oil-backed economic growth under President Vladimir Putin have failed to touch these volatile regions in the North Caucasus and they are likely to pose a major challenge for Dmitry Medvedev, the man Putin wants to succeed him.

Grinding poverty and anger over the tough tactics used by Moscow to quell a rebellion in neighbouring Chechnya have alienated the region's Muslims. Violence is growing, including killings and kidnappings.

''The problem is not Chechnya any more,'' said Alexei Malashenko at the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment think tank. ''Medvedev will encounter serious problems in Dagestan and Ingushetia.''

Opinion polls show Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister, will win Russia's presidential election on March 2 by a landslide. In campaign speeches he talks about improving the lives of ordinary people and continuing Putin's policies.

But the problems he is likely to face in Ingushetia, which has a population of 450,000, and in Dagestan, where there are 2.5 million people, will not be easy to tackle. Besides killings and kidnappings, they also include unemployment and power cuts.

''Show us who is doing the killing and why,'' said Khadizhat Salikhova, a nurse in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

Without electricity and stamping her feet in the cold as daylight faded, she said: ''Give us light -- I have already spent all my salary on candles.''

In the rolling, green foothills of the Caucasus mountains, witnesses say Russian soldiers have cordoned off villages to search for rebel fighters and that jets have carried out bombing raids.

RISING RADICALISM

Russia sent troops to Chechnya in 1999 to put down a separatist rebellion and has poured in millions of dollars to rebuild the province under a Kremlin-backed former Chechen rebel, Ramzan Kadyrov.

But the Chechen rebels have shifted their targets to Ingushetia and Dagestan where softer, traditional forms of Islam are losing ground to more radical versions of the faith.

Akhmet Yarlykapov, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, says the radical Muslim strand of Wahhabism is rising in the North Caucasus, particularly in Dagestan, and noted its power to recruit the disenchanted.

''The ideology of the separatists is an enormous problem for the Russian authorities,'' Yarlykapov wrote. ''Today they are not fighting for independence ... But for the destruction of the 'infidel empire' as they call Russia.''

Rebel car bombs and ambushes strike weekly in Ingushetia.

Half the population of Ingushetia have signed a petition denying voting in Russia's parliamentary election on December 2 despite an official turnout of about 99 per cent. Almost all the votes recorded went to Putin's political party, United Russia.

Frustration boiled over and about 30 young men, armed with petrol bombs and sticks, rioted last month in the city of Nazran. Scorch marks now scar a main square and the offices of a pro-government newspaper are now a burnt-out shell.

''We can't tolerate it any more,'' a 56-year-old man called Myakhdi said.

Moscow sent thousands of extra soldiers and tanks to Ingushetia last year to quell what it described as a surge in rebel attacks. Last month the Russian military declared Nazran an ''anti-terrorist zone'', restricting movement in and around the town before the rally.

Police have beaten journalists covering the demonstrations and confiscated their equipment, foreign reporters have problems accessing information and organising visits, and the local authorities have shut down the main opposition Web site.

But residents say they now have no choice but to protest.

''It's impossible to stop our action,'' said 25-year-old Magomed, another of the demonstrators in January's protest.

For more on Russia's presidential election, please see our blog ''Operation Successor'' at http://blogs.Reuters.Com/russia. (AGENCIES)

Vladimir Putin stars in tale of Kremlin romance

MOSCOW, Feb 6: A young KGB spy falls in love with an air hostess called Lyudmila and then conquers the Kremlin.

Sounds familiar? The plot of Russia's latest film bears a remarkable resemblance to the life of President Vladimir Putin.

The film, ''Kiss Me Off The Record'', breaks a taboo which has kept Putin's love life firmly under wraps.

The official release is set for Valentine's Day, two weeks before Russians vote for a successor to Putin, who is stepping down after eight years in office. Backers hope to outdo recent Hollywood hit ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' in Russian DVD sales.

Producer Anatoly Voropayev, a former deputy regional governor, told a news conference no one consulted the Kremlin about the film, which was shot from 2001 to 2003. He denied reports that Putin's wife helped write the film's plot.

''We live and work under a certain first person so when we speak about politics we cannot just ignore that,'' he said.

Putin has always tried to keep his family out of the limelight and Lyudmila, 50, has sometimes seemed nervous in public. They have two daughters Maria and Katerina but Russian media have never reported on the children.

''Kiss Me Off The Record'' features key scenes from Putin's life, including his first meeting with Lyudmila, their 1983 marriage and subsequent move to Dresden, Germany where Putin worked as a KGB spy.

Lyudmila is shown badly injured after a car accident, the future First Family is shown escaping a fire at the family dacha outside St Petersburg and Lyudmila is even shown questioning a touchy Putin about the real nature of his job in Dresden.

Putin, 55, is played by Andrei Panin, a respected actor known for his role as a corrupt policeman in Brigada, a mini-series about crime groups in the early 1990s.

When asked about the likeness with Putin, Panin said with an ironic smile: ''Am I the same, perhaps from the back ?''

Pressed about the negative qualities of the president, Panin seemed lost for words until saying: ''Yes, he is late a lot.'' Putin is known for running late.

TABOOS

Few film directors have dared to delve into the family life of Russian presidents in a country where intrusive reporting about current and former Kremlin leaders is still unthinkable.

Prominent political journalist Sergei Dorenko said taboos about delving into the political life of Putin would have made such a film hard to release when it was first finished in 2003.

''Russia is a country with a Byzantine tradition in which the family is much more of a closed affair than in Western Europe -- it would have been scary to even think about this type of film two years ago,'' he said.

''But now that everyone believes Putin will leave there is an attempt to exploit, to sell his story. It is an interesting mixture of Byzantine culture and capitalist marketing.''

And while Putin may bring in the crowds, the real heroine is Lyudmila, said the film's artistic director Oleg Fomin.

''It is a family love story above all, it is a story about a woman whose husband is very busy at work, a woman who wants a family and children and wants to see her beloved person close to her,'' he said.

Putin is known for springing surprises so it was not entirely unexpected that the film's makers refused to say how it ended.

(AGENCIES)

Britney Spears said drugged, controlled by manager

LOS ANGELES, Feb 6: Britney Spears has been ''drugged'' by her self-styled manager in a bid to take control of her home, life and finances, the troubled pop star's mother charged in court documents made public.

Lynne Spears, in a sworn declaration submitted to the court to obtain a temporary restraining order against Sam Lutfi, paints a disturbing picture of her 26-year-old daughter as confused, numbed by drugs and virtually held captive by her sometime-manager.

The Grammy-winning superstar has been hospitalized since last week for a mental evaluation, and a Los Angeles judge has appointed a psychiatrist to determine if she is capable of understanding the legal proceedings around her.

The restraining order against Lutfi, which was granted by the same judge, forbids him from contacting Spears in any way.

''Mr Lutfi drugged Britney. He has cut Britney's home phone line and removed her cell-phone chargers. He yells at her. He claims to control everything -- Britney's business manager, her attorneys and security guards at the gate,'' Lynne Spears wrote in the declaration.

She describes arriving at her daughter's Los Angeles home on January 28, days before she was forcibly hospitalized, finding Lutfi was in charge and the entertainer confused.

''Britney ... Became very agitated and could not stop moving,'' Lynne Spears wrote in the court papers.

''She cleaned the house. She changed her clothes many times. She also changed her dogs' clothes many times. Britney spoke to me in a tone and with the level of understanding of a very young girl,'' she said.

Lynne Spears said Lutfi told her and a friend that he gave Britney Spears pills ground up in her food to keep her quiet and at one point he told her she had to take ''10 pills a day'' if she wanted to see her two young children.

The bitter custody battle between Spears and her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, has been put on hold while she is hospitalized at UCLA Medical Center for her mental issues.

Her father, Jamie Spears, and attorney Andrew Wallete have been granted temporary control of her assets, including her house, pending further legal proceedings.

Spears, a former child star and chart-topping singer, has seen her personal life descend into turmoil since she filed for divorce from Federline in 2006, while in recent months Lutfi has become an almost constant presence in her life.

The Louisiana native was hospitalized in January for a mental evaluation after becoming badly agitated when Federline's representatives tried to retrieve the children. (AGENCIES)

Vaginal birth after C-sec predicts future success

ATLANTA, Feb 6: Many illegal immigrants in the United States are manual laborers on low wages. But there's another group that attracts much less attention: entrepreneurs who have set up businesses, created jobs and grown affluent.

There are up to 20,000 illegal immigrants earning upward of 100,000 dollar a year as entrepreneurs, and their existence challenges the stereotype that illegal immigrants are a drain on the US economy, according to immigration lawyers and academics.

Many say they are living the ''American Dream,'' but almost none trumpet their achievements because they fear deportation.

One example is a 38-year-old computer engineer who overstayed his visa after arriving from Colombia in 1999. Not long after, he founded a Web design firm in Miami that specializes in e-commerce.

Today it's a fast-growing, tax-paying company that recently developed a Web platform for online radio and television that could be a breakthrough technology.

''We are at a good point now, making money,'' said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his immigration status. ''We are growing every month because our customers are happy. They are US companies making a lot of money from our Web sites.''

But the man is near the end of a long administrative process that will likely lead to his deportation. Then his company would close and workers, including Americans, would be laid off.

''I have always tried to look at things in a positive way but now I am disappointed,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Michael Bander, a Miami immigration lawyer who has represented the man for six years, said his client's dilemma showed a larger flaw in the immigration system.

SPECIAL STATUS?

It is not easy to determine the number of illegal immigrants who earn six figure salaries, but there could be 20,000 of them and a significant proportion earn up to 300,000 dollar a year, said Jeff Passel, lead demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

Advocates see the group as trailblazers for the more than 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the United States, most from Mexico or other Latin American countries.

''These people should be treated like heroes not criminals,'' said Felipe Korzenny, professor of marketing and communications at Florida State University. Wealthy illegal immigrants also came from India, China, Taiwan, Israel and South Africa, he said.

Congress should address their unique situation, not least because they have more to lose than others, said George Tzamaras, spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The United States runs a Green Card residence permit program for investors but it does not apply to those already in the country illegally.

But opponents of illegal immigration said the United States should grant no special status according to wealth for people who break the law.

''They should be deported as existing law dictates. We'd like to see their assets seized to compensate American taxpayers who are losing billions of dollars due to rampant illegal immigration,'' said William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration.

''We need to send a strong message to people who would like to come to the US that disrespect for our laws will not lead to prosperity,'' said Gheen.

TEN-YEAR BAN

Under existing law, people who overstay their visas must return to their home country, and cannot re-enter for 10 years. Visas waiving this process are increasingly rare, immigration lawyers said.

More than half of Silicon Valley start-ups between 1995 and 2005 had one or more immigrants as key founders, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley and Vivek Wadhwa, founder of Relativity Technologies.

Immigrant entrepreneurs launched 25 percent of technology or engineering companies in the same period, it said.

Some can be assumed to be illegal immigrants, said Wadhwa, a columnist and professor whose company was rated by Fortune magazine as one of the 25 coolest in the world.

''You have to figure out what to do with the 12 million illegal immigrants that are unskilled,'' said Wadhwa, who was born in India. ''But what about the few hundred thousand that help us boost our competitiveness?''

(AGENCIES)

Many sex ed teachers may lack training

NEW YORK, Feb 6: A sizable minority of sex education teachers does not cover all of the basics, and many lack training to teach sex ed at all, a survey of teachers in one state suggests.

In a study of sex ed teachers at 201 Illinois schools, researchers found that one-third of teachers did not give comprehensive instruction -- defined as covering the four basic topics of abstinence, birth control, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

In addition, 30 per cent said they had no special training in teaching sex education, and these teachers were less likely to teach a comprehensive course.

''For this study, we set the bar for comprehensiveness fairly low relative to what most medical and public health organizations recommend,'' lead researcher Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau said in a statement, ''and one out of three programs failed to clear it.''

The findings suggest that doctors caring for teenagers may need to ''fill gaps'' in their knowledge of sexual health, according to Lindau and her colleagues at the University of Chicago.

They report the study results in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The study involved 335 sex ed teachers at Illinois middle schools and high schools. Lindau and her colleagues defined ''comprehensive sex education'' as courses teaching both abstinence and contraception, as well as information on HIV and other STDs.

They left out a fifth, more controversial topic often recommended by public health experts: giving students information on where to go for sexual health services, condoms and birth control.

Overall, two-thirds of teachers met this more relaxed definition of comprehensive education. In general, the most frequently covered topics were HIV and STDs, which about 96 percent of teachers said they addressed. Eighty-nine percent of teachers covered the topic of abstinence-until-marriage.

Among the least frequently taught subjects were homosexuality, abortion and information on how to use condoms or birth control properly.

''Most parents support school-based sex education and teens regard it as an important source of information,'' Lindau said, ''yet we found that several important health topics and skills are omitted, more often than not, from most Illinois public school sex-education

Criteria.''

When it came to discussing condoms and birth control, teachers who omitted the topic generally did so because it was not in the official curriculum or because of ''school or district policy.'' About half of teachers also lacked confidence in their ability to teach the topic -- rating their ability as anywhere from ''average'' to ''very poor.''

''Our study provides important new data from the teachers' perspective,'' Dr. Melissa Gilliam, another researcher on the study, said in a statement. ''It supports other recent studies showing that large numbers of teens, especially low-income and youth of color, received no instruction about birth control methods before they first had sex.''

(AGENCIES)

Rich illegal immigrants in US hide in shadows

ATLANTA, Feb 6: Many illegal immigrants in the United States are manual laborers on low wages. But there's another group that attracts much less attention: entrepreneurs who have set up businesses, created jobs and grown affluent.

There are up to 20,000 illegal immigrants earning upward of 100,000 dollar a year as entrepreneurs, and their existence challenges the stereotype that illegal immigrants are a drain on the US economy, according to immigration lawyers and academics.

Many say they are living the ''American Dream,'' but almost none trumpet their achievements because they fear deportation.

One example is a 38-year-old computer engineer who overstayed his visa after arriving from Colombia in 1999. Not long after, he founded a Web design firm in Miami that specializes in e-commerce.

Today it's a fast-growing, tax-paying company that recently developed a Web platform for online radio and television that could be a breakthrough technology.

''We are at a good point now, making money,'' said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his immigration status. ''We are growing every month because our customers are happy. They are US companies making a lot of money from our Web sites.''

But the man is near the end of a long administrative process that will likely lead to his deportation. Then his company would close and workers, including Americans, would be laid off.

''I have always tried to look at things in a positive way but now I am disappointed,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Michael Bander, a Miami immigration lawyer who has represented the man for six years, said his client's dilemma showed a larger flaw in the immigration system.

SPECIAL STATUS?

It is not easy to determine the number of illegal immigrants who earn six figure salaries, but there could be 20,000 of them and a significant proportion earn up to 300,000 dollar a year, said Jeff Passel, lead demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

Advocates see the group as trailblazers for the more than 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the United States, most from Mexico or other Latin American countries.

''These people should be treated like heroes not criminals,'' said Felipe Korzenny, professor of marketing and communications at Florida State University. Wealthy illegal immigrants also came from India, China, Taiwan, Israel and South Africa, he said.

Congress should address their unique situation, not least because they have more to lose than others, said George Tzamaras, spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The United States runs a Green Card residence permit program for investors but it does not apply to those already in the country illegally.

But opponents of illegal immigration said the United States should grant no special status according to wealth for people who break the law.

''They should be deported as existing law dictates. We'd like to see their assets seized to compensate American taxpayers who are losing billions of dollars due to rampant illegal immigration,'' said William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration.

''We need to send a strong message to people who would like to come to the US that disrespect for our laws will not lead to prosperity,'' said Gheen.

TEN-YEAR BAN

Under existing law, people who overstay their visas must return to their home country, and cannot re-enter for 10 years. Visas waiving this process are increasingly rare, immigration lawyers said.

More than half of Silicon Valley start-ups between 1995 and 2005 had one or more immigrants as key founders, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley and Vivek Wadhwa, founder of Relativity Technologies.

Immigrant entrepreneurs launched 25 percent of technology or engineering companies in the same period, it said.

Some can be assumed to be illegal immigrants, said Wadhwa, a columnist and professor whose company was rated by Fortune magazine as one of the 25 coolest in the world.

''You have to figure out what to do with the 12 million illegal immigrants that are unskilled,'' said Wadhwa, who was born in India. ''But what about the few hundred thousand that help us boost our competitiveness?''

(AGENCIES)

Stopping Plavix may carry early clotting risk....

CHICAGO, Feb 6: Patients given the blood-clot preventer Plavix after a heart attack or after receiving a stent have a far higher risk of heart attack or death in the three months after they stop taking the drug, US researchers said.

They found a cluster of heart problems occurring within 90 days of stopping the drug in people whose heart disease was treated either with drugs or a stent to prop open their arteries.

''It was almost a twofold increased risk in that initial period compared to later follow-up periods,'' said Dr P Michael Ho of the Denver VA Medical Center yesterday, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

People who have acute coronary syndrome -- an umbrella term for heart problems caused by reduced blood flow to the heart -- routinely get a prescription for Plavix, one of the world's best-selling medicines sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Sanofi-Aventis.

Known generically as clopidogrel, Plavix prevents blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes. It works by preventing disc-shaped elements of the blood called platelets from sticking together.

Some studies have suggested there may be a ''rebound effect'' of extra blood clots in the period right after people have stopped taking other anti-platelet drugs, including aspirin. Ho and colleagues wanted to see if this might be happening in patients taking Plavix.

His team studied 3,137 veterans with acute coronary syndrome who had been discharged with a prescription for Plavix after they had been treated either with a stent to open a blocked artery or with a combination of medicines designed to manage their heart disease.

They tracked the number of heart attacks and deaths in the three months, six months and nine months after people stopped taking Plavix.

Roughly 60 per cent of subsequent heart attacks and deaths occurred within the first 3 months after patients stopped taking Plavix, regardless of how their initial heart episode was treated.

Ho said the overall risk was low. Of the 3,137 patients, 268 in the medically treated group and 124 in the stent group had a heart attack or died in that first three months after stopping the drug.

Ho said the finding supports the hypothesis of a ''rebound period'' of blood clots forming shortly after stopping treatment, but other studies would need to confirm this.

And he said this rebound effect might help explain why some studies have shown a higher incidence of blood clotting long after people with clogged arteries have been treated with a stent, a tiny wire mesh tube that props open arteries.

Ultimately, Ho said the findings do not offset the benefits of Plavix use. But if this rebound effect is found in other studies, doctors may need to reconsider how long patients take the drug and how they are monitored when they stop.

''If there is a rebound effect, we need to figure out how to prevent this from happening as we take patients off the medication,'' Ho said in a telephone interview. (AGENCIES)

Beatles' Indian guru Maharishi Yogi dies

AMSTERDAM, Feb 6: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced transcendental meditation to the West, died at his Dutch home overnight, a spokesman said today. He was said to be 91.

After teaching the Beatles and other 1960s and 70s icons to meditate, the Indian mystic gained a worldwide following with six million people taking his courses.

The reclusive guru with a flowing white beard moved his headquarters to the small southern Dutch village of Vlodrop in 1990.

He periodically emerged to appeal for funds to promote world peace, building a business empire ranging from real estate dealing to a company selling ayurvedic medicine and cosmetics.

The Maharishi set up universities and schools all over the world and his Natural Law Party -- which promotes yogic flying, a practice that involves sitting in the lotus position and bouncing into the air -- has campaigned in dozens of countries.

Transcendental meditation, known as TM by its followers, involves reciting a mantra that practitioners say helps the mind stay calm even under pressure. It has gradually gained medical respect.

Last month the Maharishi stepped down as head of his organisation to concentrate on what an aide called ''the field of silence''.

Born in central India, the Maharishi rarely spoke about his early life, saying the past held little interest for him.

He first visited the United States in 1959 as part of a global tour to introduce transcendental meditation to the world, and from 1961 he began to train teachers.

The Beatles -- John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr -- visited him in India in 1968, making him a household name round the world.

According to the TM organisation, the Maharishi's message remained constant: ''Life is bliss. Man is born to enjoy. Within everyone is an unlimited reservoir of energy, intelligence, and happiness.''

(AGENCIES)

No abnormality in Chinese dumplings factory, say investigators

BEIJING, Feb 6: Investigators have found no "abnormality" at a manufacturing plant in Hebei province of China whose suspected contaminated dumplings made 10 people fall sick in Japan.

A national scare was sparked off in Japan after the dumpling poisoning incident, prompting the two countries to conduct a joint probe with investigation teams visiting each other.

"The plant is very clean and well managed, and no abnormality has been detected," a Japanese investigator was quoted as saying by official Xinhua news agency.

Japan would conduct further analysis based on the information and data collected at the plant of Tianyang Food Company, which makes the dumplings and exports them to Japan.

China and Japan had been "cooperating well" with each other and the Chinese side had let the Japanese investigators to check as many related materials and equipments as possible, Wang Daning, Director of the Department of Food Import and Export Safety under the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said.

Japanese authorities had initially said the dumplings were found contaminated with methamidophos, a pesticide.

The incident had turned into a national issue with the media saying 300 people had sought treatment so far.

The issue has however become mysterious with suspicion now being raised in Japan whether the dumplings had been deliberately contaminated with pesticide.

China had said earlier that tests conducted on samples showed that the rest of the dumplings from the same batches sold in Japan, totaling more than 2,000 packages, were safe and so were all the other food items made by the company. (PTI)

Japan wants to tap two gas fields with China:Paper ....

TOKYO, Feb 6: Japan has proposed a plan to resolve a simmering row over natural resources by jointly developing two gas fields with China in disputed waters in the East China Sea, a Japanese newspaper said on Wednesday.

Japan made the proposal earlier this month, the Yomiuri newspaper said, without citing sources.

Japanese government officials were not immediately available for comment.

Under the proposal, Japan and China would jointly develop the Tianwaitian and Chunxiao gas fields in the East China Sea, the daily said.

Japan had previously proposed jointly developing four gas fields including those two, it said.

Japan selected the two gas fields for joint development because China has abundant data on them, including their production capacities and subterranean structures, the newspaper said.

China on Tuesday denied a Japanese report that the two countries were considering splitting profits from gas fields in disputed waters in the East China Sea.

A Japanese government source told Reuters this week that Tokyo had proposed jointly developing gas fields that straddle what Japan says is the median line that separates the two countries' exclusive economic zones. The source, however, did not specify the fields that Tokyo proposed to develop with China.

China's state-controlled CNOOC Ltd has said it is ready to begin production from the Chunxiao gas field, and Japan fears that China operations could siphon off gas from fields that extend into what it sees as its own economic waters.

Estimated net known reserves in the East China Sea, where the disputed fields lie, total a relatively modest 180 million barrels of oil equivalent, Japan says.

Both sides are devoting considerable diplomatic energy to the dispute because of expectations that a lot more oil or gas may be found in the area.

China said in January it hoped to resolve the oil and gas row before spring, when President Hu Jintao is due to make the first visit to Japan by a Chinese head of state in 10 years.

The Nikkei business daily said on Monday the two countries were negotiating a compromise to set aside their long-running dispute over sovereignty in the area and move ahead with joint development and split profits.

(AGENCIES)