India, Emirates launch 'International Express Money Order

DUBAI, Jan 7: Financial transactions between people of India and the UAE will become easier as they will be able to send 'International Express Money Orders' through the postal network, powered by UPU’s (Universal Postal Union) secure International Financial System (IFS) from next month.

An agreement facilitating the system was signed here by Director General of India Post IMG Khan and Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Post Ibrahim Karam Ali Bin Karam, recently.

UAE residents can now transfer money speedily to any part of India through India_s postal network, the largest in the world.

Customers sending money to India through Emirates Post offices will have two options. They can either have the money delivered to the addressee_s residence, or ask the addressee to collect the money from any authorised post office in India. On the other hand, Money Orders sent from India through India Post will be payable at post offices in the UAE.

The agreement stipulates that a single Money Order issued by Emirates Post for payment in India shall not exceed 2,500 dollar or its equivalent. It also lays down that only 12 Money Orders addressed to one beneficiary will be allowed in a calendar year. Amounts of less than Rs 50,000 will be paid in cash, and those exceeding Rs 50,000 will be payable by cheque.

India has a network of 155,333 post offices, the largest in the world, covering the remotest corners of the country. (UNI)

Scrapping of ceasefire has weakened Lanka’s position: Opp

COLOMBO, Jan 7: Accusing the Government of "war- mongering", Sri Lanka’s main opposition party today claimed the decision to scarp the ceasefire had benefitted LTTE’s aspirations for a separate state, weakened the country and "disappointed" the international community, including India.

"This self-serving decision of President Mahinda Rajapakse has weakened us (Sri Lanka) both internationally and domestically; it benefits only the LTTE’s aspirations for a separate state," the United National Party said in a statement.

"Friendly countries such as the US, Japan and India as well as the UN have voiced their strong disappointment and disapproval of the current situation. Many donor countries are of the same view," it said reacting to the decision to scrap CFA with effect from Jan 16.

The UNP said military assistance to Sri Lanka from the US, India and the UK "symbolised the international community’s faith in the ceasefire agreement and their backing for the ongoing peace initiative".

"It is clear that not only have the blood-thirsty and war-mongering rulers of this country lost touch with reality but they do not have the capacity to learn from past experiences-both internationally or locally," the UNP said.

The party sought to know how the President intended to conduct peace talks with the LTTE from "this weakened position".

"President Rajapakse should explain to the people of Sri Lanka why he was abandoned the framework for a negotiated settlement to the conflict in the country. (PTI)

Bereaved US family campaigns for Edwards

MANCHESTER, NH, Jan 7: A family who says its daughter died because a health insurance company refused to pay for an operation campaigned with Democrat John Edwards reinforcing his election message that corporate greed is hurting Americans.

The parents and brother of 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who died of leukemia on December 20, recounted their story to an audience of around 500 and said Edwards struck a chord with their grief.

The event, two days before a nominating vote in New Hampshire where Edwards trails rivals Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, dramatized his message that the US middle class is being threatened by corporate greed.

Edwards finished a distant second to Obama in Iowa last week, the first contest in the state-by-state process to pick candidates for the November election, and his campaign could lose momentum without a strong showing tomorrow.

"This (the cause of Sarkisyan and others) is what drives me every single day. This is what this fight is all about. ... I am in it with heart and soul and with every fiber of my being," Edwards said to applause.

Edwards, who is proposing a 120 billion dollars plan that would give health insurance to all, says many drug and insurance companies are responsible for creating a situation in which millions of Americans either lack health insurance or have cover inadequate for their needs.

Sarkisyan contracted leukemia at 14 and was treated with chemotherapy under her father’s health insurance plan. Last summer the leukemia returned and she received a bone marrow transplant from her older brother Bedig.

Complications arose, her liver ceased to function and doctors at UCLA hospital recommended a transplant.

"But CIGNA HealthCare ruled that the treatment was ‘experimental’ because of the leukemia and not covered by her policy," said a statement from the Edwards campaign. The family would have had to pay 75,000 dollars for an operation, it said.

Cigna eventually agreed to pay but Nataline died the same day. In a statement after her death, CIGNA said her father’s insurance plan had not covered the transplant but that it had decided to make an exception.

"My heart is a hole. I didn’t know any insurance company ... (could be so) careless," mother Hilda Sarkisyan said of her daughter who died aged.

"I haven’t cried. I can’t cry. It’s very difficult ... I want to thank Sen. John Edwards and I wish you the best and I hope you become our president," she said.

Apparently drawing a distinction with Obama, former North Carolina senator Edwards said he was the candidate who would fight hardest to change the system.

"What kind of fighter do you need on your side when you’re family is faced with this kind of crisis," Edwards said.

"Do you want somebody who has the right ideas and philosophy, or do you want somebody who has the right ideas and philosophy and the fight to bring about change because that’s what this is about."

(AGENCIES)

Saakashvili wins Georgian Presidential election

TBILISI, Jan 7: Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili was today celebrating Orthodox Christmas and victory in a presidential election his opponents called rigged.

The central election commission said late yesterday Saakaashvili had won 52.8 per cent of votes cast on Saturday, almost twice as many as his nearest challenger, 43-year-old wine producer Levan Gachechiladze, with 27 per cent.

The two political rivals both later joined a Christmas eve service in a Tbilisi cathedral.

Saakashvili called the elections after tens of thousands of people joined protests in November to demand an early poll, four years after the peaceful revolution that swept him to power.

He said the weekend vote had been "in many ways a triumph for democracy".

"I took a huge political risk and gamble to go into this election," he told the BBC.

"They (the voters) carried out the verdict not only on the events (of November) but also the reforms that preceded the events and that’s why we needed a fresh mandate to continue the reforms."

At a rally yesterday attended by up to 7,000 people, Gachechiladze called on supporters to protest against the election result daily from January 8, after the Christmas holiday.

"Mikhail Saakashvili, you cannot defeat the Georgian people," Gachechiladze, his fist clenched, told protesters.

Western monitors said there had been voting violations but the result was a true expression of Georgians’ will.

By gaining more than half of the ballots Saakashvili won outright, without having to contest a second-round run-off. Votes from overseas polling stations remained to be counted but were too few to change the overall result.

INFLUENCE

Georgia lies on the route of a major pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Europe and is the scene of a tussle for regional influence between Russia and the United States.

Saakashvili shocked Western allies in November by ordering police to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters.

The election result represents a huge drop in popularity for the 40-year-old, who enjoyed the support of about 90 per cent of voters when elected to his first term.

His critics say his reforms-lauded by the West-have failed to help the poor, and call him an autocrat who pays only lip service to democratic freedoms. The opposition however broadly supports his pro-Western stance.

The OSCE report said the election was the first truly competitive contest in Georgia since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Past elections have either been completely one-sided or deemed unfair.

But observers also said there were serious shortcomings, with the campaign skewed in Saakashvili’s favour.

Saakashvili has steered Georgia towards NATO membership, angering former colonial master Russia.

Russia, which backs two separatist regions of Georgia, condemned the election as unfair.

"The presidential race has been marked by widespread use of ‘administrative resources’, blatant pressure on the opposition candidates, stringent restriction of access to financial and media resources," Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. (AGENCIES)

Dhaka postpones BIMSTEC ministerial meet at last minute

DHAKA, Jan 7: Bangladesh has postponed the ministerial meeting of seven-nation group BIMSTEC on poverty alleviation citing "poor response from the member nations" as the reason, officials said.

Dhaka was forced to postpone the two-day meeting scheduled to be held on January 9 and 10 "because of poor response from the members" due to political turmoil in most countries of the bloc, a foreign office spokesman said late yesterday.

A Planning Commission release, without giving any details, said Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) meeting was postponed for "unavoidable reasons".

The 9th BIMSTEC ministerial meeting was held in New Delhi on August 9, 2006 which approved Dhaka's proposal for hosting the first meeting on poverty alleviation in the light of Bangladesh's experience in poverty alleviation initiatives such as micro-credit.

But officials said the last minute postponement might delay the regional organisation's efforts to include poverty alleviation in the main agenda of its summit due this year in New Delhi.

The group was launched in June 2007 as a sub-regional forum of Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand and was named BIST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation).

After the inclusion of Myanmar in December 1997, the grouping was renamed as BIMST-EC or Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand Economic Cooperation.

The grouping was again renamed as BIMSTEC or Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation after the inclusion of Bhutan and Nepal in 2004. (PTI)

Sony Ericsson phone quiets when waved at

LAS VEGAS, Jan 7: Sony Ericsson, the world's No. 4 mobile phone maker, on Sunday unveiled a cell phone that can be silenced by a wave of hand.

Sony Ericsson, owned by Sony Corp and Ericsson, said a user can simply wave their hand over the phone to mute the ring tone and ignore a call on the Z555 flip cover phone, which will be available in the first quarter.

Similarly a consumer using the phone as an alarm clock can activate the snooze function by waving across the phone.

The company also announced two new phones for its Walkman music handset line-up including the Walkman W760 music phone with satellite positioning technology that, combined with mapping software from Google, lets users follow step by step directions to their destination.

It will be available from the second quarter, said Sony Ericsson, which has seen strong success with its Walkman branded music phones but trails Nokia Oyj, Samsung Electronics and Motorola in the global market for mobile phones.

Like its other rivals, it also faces stiff competition from iPhone, the first cell phone from digital music player market leader Apple Inc

The devices were expected to be shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, which opens to the public in Las Vegas on Monday. The company did not reveal retail pricing. (AGENCIES)

Racial disparities persist in US cancer treatment

WASHINGTON, Jan 7: US blacks continue to get inferior cancer treatment compared to whites, researchers said today in a study showing that disparities first documented in the early 1990s persist despite efforts to erase them.

The researchers assessed the type of treatment given to more than 143,000 Americans over age 65 for lung, breast, colon, rectal and prostate cancer from 1992 to 2002 under the Medicare government health insurance program.

Black patients were consistently less likely than whites to receive the recommended types of treatment, the study found, and the problem was just as bad in 2002 as in 1992.

The findings were published in the journal Cancer, published by the American Cancer Society.

''What we found was that the racial disparities did not change during that 10-year time interval,'' Dr Cary Gross of the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Despite the publication of studies in the early 1990s documenting the disparities and despite steps taken by some doctors and hospitals to understand and address the problem, the study found little in the way of progress.

The reasons for racial disparities in cancer care and many other areas of health care in the United States remain a contentious issue that touches on the question of whether outright racism exists in the US medical system.

''This sort of thing has been a problem in the United States for a long, long time,'' Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said in a telephone interview.

''I think individual racism likely accounts for a small amount of it, but not a large amount. What I would refer to as institutional or societal racism accounts for a much larger component of it,'' Brawley added, referring to enduring educational and socioeconomic inequities faced by US blacks.

SOCIETAL INEQUITIES

The disparities were widest in lung, colon and rectal cancer in the study period of 1992 to 2002.

Among patients with early-stage lung cancer, blacks were 19 percent less likely than whites to get surgical removal of the tumor. Blacks with rectal cancer were 27 per cent less likely to get additional chemotherapy to get rid of any remaining cancer cells after surgical removal of a tumor. And blacks with colon cancer were 24 percent less likely to get such chemotherapy.

Among breast cancer patients who had a lumpectomy, black women were 7 per cent less likely than whites to get radiation therapy. And black men diagnosed with prostate cancer were 11 per cent less likely to get surgical or radiation treatment.

''It documents the inequities in our society more so than documenting racism among individual providers,'' Gross said.

Gross cited other possible factors, including blacks having less access to quality care due to socioeconomic and other reasons, some blacks being more likely to have other chronic medical conditions like diabetes that could complicate cancer therapy, and blacks perhaps being less trusting of the medical establishment.

Gross said the study did not look at whether there have been improvements since 2002, noting that some initiatives have been put in place since then that might help close the gap. (AGENCIES)

Pakistanis want Islamic democracy, distrust US:Poll

WASHINGTON, Jan 7: Most Pakistanis want their country to be a democratic Islamic state but are deeply distrustful of the United States and its war on terrorism, according to a poll released.

Funded by the US Institute of Peace, or USIP, the poll was taken in the nuclear-armed nation before President Pervez Musharraf's six-week state of emergency and the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last month.

The results, released yesterday about six weeks before elections scheduled for February. 18, show that a large majority of Pakistanis see democracy as fully compatible with Islam, the pollsters said. Democracy ranked especially high among the 60 per cent of respondents who wanted Muslim-based Sharia law to play a larger role in legal affairs.

''It shows there is no major Western-oriented secular sub-group in Pakistan. People want more Islam. They don't think Pakistan is pious enough or that Islamic values are adequately expressed in daily life,'' said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.Org, a non-profit group affiliated with the University of Maryland that conducted the poll for USIP.

USIP is a non-partisan institution funded by Congress to address issues concerning international conflict.

The poll, which has a 3.3 percentage point margin of error, surveyed 907 adults in 19 Pakistani cities from September 12-28. About 49 percent of the respondents were women.

Pakistan, which has been ruled by the military for more than half of the 61 years since independence in 1947, was under emergency rule from November 3 to December 15, imposed by Musharraf, then military chief as well as president, to combat what he said were threats from Islamic militants.

Kull said a large moderate middle-bloc of voters could be seen in the 64 percent of Pakistanis who said they support government reform of religious schools known as madrassas, which have been blamed for spreading Islamist militancy.

The poll showed that 59 per cent of the public want to hold the line against the encroachment of conservative Muslim mores known as ''Talibanization,'' he said.

SUPPORT FOR BIN LADEN

But the results also indicated support for Islamist militant groups including al Qaeda among substantial minorities of Pakistanis, and illustrated the huge challenge facing the Bush administration as it pursues relations with its key ally in its war on terrorism.

Over two-thirds of Pakistanis said they do not trust the United States to act responsibly in the world, while 70 percent believe definitely that it is a US goal to weaken and divide the Islam.

About half disapproved of Pakistan's relations with the United States and said Washington was in control of most or nearly all major events inside their country.

At least 60 per cent of respondents agreed that Al-Qaeda and Taliban activities pose a threat to their country's vital interests over the next 10 years. But more than 80 per cent said the same of the US military presence in Asia, including Afghanistan.

Thirty-one per cent expressed a positive view of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, while another 19 per cent had mixed feelings about him. Nearly 40 per cent opposed capturing bin Laden if he were discovered inside Pakistan.

Fewer than one in four said Pakistan should use military force in the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a region analysts describe as a refuge for the Taliban and al Qaeda and a hub for militant attacks in Afghanistan.

Forty-six per cent of respondents instead favored negotiating with the Taliban, while 12 per cent said Pakistani forces should be withdrawn from the region.

More than three-quarters said foreign troops should not be allowed to pursue Al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters inside Pakistan.

Thirty per cent of Pakistanis approved of Taliban attacks on NATO troops in Afghanistan while another 18 per cent had mixed feelings. Fifteen percent disapproved.

Nine per cent said the current Afghan government had the best approach to governing Afghanistan, while 34 per cent preferred the former Taliban regime.

(AGENCIES)

Scientists discover new key to flu transmission.....

CHICAGO, Jan 7: Flu viruses must be able to pick a very specific type of lock before entering human respiratory cells, US researchers said, offering a new understanding of how flu viruses work.

The discovery may help scientists better monitor changes in the H5N1 bird flu virus that could trigger a deadly pandemic in humans. And it may lead to better ways to fight it, they said yesterday.

The scientists found that a flu virus must be able to attach itself to an umbrella-shaped receptor coating human respiratory cells before it can infect cells in the upper airways.

''What the lock needs is the right key. It opens the door,'' said Ram Sasisekharan, a professor of biological engineering and health sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The H5N1 avian flu virus now almost exclusively infects birds. But it can occasionally pass to a person.

Experts have feared that the bird flu virus would evolve slightly into a form that people can easily catch and pass to one another, triggering an epidemic.

''We now know what to look for,'' said Sasisekharan, whose study appears in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Before a flu virus can enter a human respiratory cell, a protein on the surface of the virus must bind with chains of sugars called glycans that sit on the outside of the cells.

Scientists have classified these chains according to how they are linked together chemically. In birds, the virus binds with alpha 2-3 receptors; in humans, it binds with alpha 2-6 receptors.

To infect humans, scientists thought the H5N1 bird flu virus would need to simply mutate so it could bind with alpha 2-6 receptors. But it turns out not all alpha 2-6 receptors are the same. Some are short and cone-shaped and some are long and umbrella-shaped.

''Defining human and bird receptors just by linkage forgets to take shape into account,'' Sasisekharan said in a telephone interview.

VIRUS SURVEILLANCE

Shape difference may explain why humans can get bird flu from a bird and not pass it along easily to other humans, he said.

So far, the bird flu virus has found a way to bind only to the cone-shaped structures in human upper airways. The virus has already killed 216 people and infected 348 people in 14 countries, according to the World Health Organization.

But the study found that the most infectious human flu viruses bind with the umbrella-shaped receptors in the upper respiratory tract. The researchers believe the H5N1 bird flu virus would need to adapt so it could latch on to these umbrella-shaped receptors before it could be spread readily from human to human.

Understanding this mechanism could lead to better surveillance of changes in the virus and may lead to the development of new and better drugs to treat flu viruses.

''It opens up ways for people to bring in different kinds of small molecule approaches for new drug development,'' Sasisekharan said, adding the work could help seasonal flu sufferers as well.

(AGENCIES)

Bill Gates says world on cusp of next digital decade.....

LAS VEGAS, Jan 7: Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates on Sunday took center stage at the world's largest technology show for the last time and predicted that his industry was on the cusp of the next ''digital decade.''

Gates, who plans to switch in July to a more limited role at the company he co-founded in 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen, said computing will become a pervasive part of everyday life.

''In many ways, we are at the very beginning,'' Gates told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. ''During the next Digital Decade, technology will make our lives richer, more connected, more productive, and more fulfilling.''

Microsoft has said this will be Gates' last keynote address to CES -- at least in his current role. In the future, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, will take a central role in delivering the address.

Gates predicted that people would interact more naturally with technology through methods like speech and touch over the next decade. It is a prediction Gates has made for years, touting devices like the tablet computer, which have had slow adoption.

However, devices like Apple Inc iPhone and Nintendo Co Ltd's are proving that more ''natural'' user interfaces have a broad appeal with consumers.

''All of those are just starting to show you that natural interaction pattern really breaks you out of the keyboard and mouse,'' Gates said in an embargoed interview with Reuters before the speech. ''The next big surprise for people will be how this natural interface becomes pervasive.''

Microsoft has also developed its own products that capitalize on speech and touch.

Last year at CES, Microsoft unveiled the Sync car audio and mobile phone system for cars offered by Ford Motor Co Sync recognizes voice commands to play music and make phone calls.

Gates also displayed the company's Surface computer, a coffee table shaped PC that works like a large touch-screen PC and can respond to objects placed on top of it, such as describing the wine in a bottle with an embedded microchip.

The company also unveiled a set of partnerships with media companies including a deal with General Electric's NBC Universal to power its Web site for the 2008 Summer Olympics

In Beijing.

Using Microsoft's Silverlight Web video technology, a rival to Adobe System Inc's Flash video technology, the Web site ''NBCOlympics.Com on MSN'' will offer more than 3,000 hours of live and on-demand sports coverage.

Microsoft also said it struck a deal with Walt Disney Co to bring ABC and Disney Channel shows to Xbox Live Marketplace, the online video game and entertainment store tethered to its Xbox 360 game console.

It also said MGM Studios will be bringing its library of movies including titles like ''Rocky,'' ''Terminator'' and ''Legally Blonde'' to Xbox Live.

(AGENCIES)

Oprah effect brings microlending to US Main Street....

NEW YORK, Jan 7: The credit crisis may be fouling up billion-dollar takeover deals, but if you're a poor African seamstress who needs a loan for a new sewing machine, you could not ask for a better borrowing market to expand your business.

Anyone with 25 dollars to spare and an Internet connection can now become an international microfinancier through Kiva an organization that matches individual lenders with impoverished entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Steve Thomas, 50, a property tax consultant in Chicago, got started by lending 50 dollars to a man in Togo who makes a living refurbishing used sneakers for resale. The loan was repaid in full and Thomas has gone on to fund 83 other ventures ranging from a cyber cafe in Ecuador to a mushroom-growing enterprise in Moldova.

Microlending has been in use for decades. Muhammad Yunus shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with Grameen Bank, the lender he founded in the early 1980s to help empower Bangladesh's rural poor. Several other institutions have developed since then, but Kiva is the first to open direct microlending opportunities to the general public with an online platform.

Kiva hit the publicity jackpot in September when Oprah Winfrey featured the organization on her daytime television program, attracting a tidal wave of interest from Middle America. Its 211,000 uses have lent out a total of 18.7 million dollars.

Demand was so high the day the episode aired, every loan on the site was fulfilled. Since then, Kiva has limited lenders to a 25-dollar portion of each loan, the average of which is about 600 dollars. Even with the 25 cap dollars, Kiva's lenders manage to fully fund each loan in 0.97 days, on average.

The recent holiday season brought a fresh crop of lenders -- Kiva sold 2.2 million dollars in gift certificates, which the givers were able to print out from their own computers.

Such ease of use and affordability is what Thomas credits with Kiva's popularity. He also sees long-term political and economic benefits for the United States.

''They're risky, but marginal improvements can make the big bang,'' Thomas said. ''This is also the most effective homeland security. Prosperity is the best antidote for chaos and mayhem. It's much cheaper to be the world's businessman than the world's cop.''

UNITY

Aiesha Turman, 33, was Web surfing when she stumbled upon Kiva. Intrigued by the organization's name, which comes from the Swahili word for ''agreement'' or ''unity'','' the Brooklyn-based museum educator browsed through lender profiles. She identified with a Tanzanian shopkeeper who shared the same first name and, like Turman, was mother to one child.

The shopkeeper paid Turman back in full, consistent with Kiva's 99.82 per cent of all loans. Instead of reclaiming her $25, she went on to fund new loans, zeroing in on women of color with children.

''It's particularly harder for women in general to move up the ladder, but especially in a developing nation,'' Turman said, adding that by lending to mothers, ''you're not just helping an individual, you're helping a community.'' entrepreneurs involved in food production, like a peanut-butter producer featured by Oprah Winfrey. Afghan and Iraqi loans also ''just fly off the site,'' said Kiva spokeswoman Fiona Ramsey.

Kiva does have plans to begin offering lenders interest-paying loans in 2008 from some of the larger partners whose administrative overhead is less costly.

To be sure, Kiva's success doesn't mean that the needs of the world's impoverished self-employed are being wholly met. The bottleneck rests in the local loan partners who are responsible for vetting each borrower and collecting repayments. Kiva is reluctant to press the organizations to increase their client base to match the growing number of lenders who want to participate.

''If you have an organization visiting all their clients every day on bicycle, it's going to be hard for them to scale,'' Ramsey said.

Instead, Kiva is trying to increase the number of partner organizations it works with, but the process of adding a new partner requires months of financial reviews and reference checks. Scrimping on due diligence runs the risk of endangering the transparency and low default rate that makes the program so popular.

Loans from southern Sudan will soon be coming online as Kiva adds a new partner from the war-torn region. If the popularity of the Iraqi and Afghan entrepreneurs is any guide, lenders will have to act fast to get a piece. (AGENCIES)

China lets off steam over perfectly round buns ....

BEIJING, Jan 7: Thousands of Chinese snack vendors are happily digesting news that China’s ubiquitous steamed bun, or "mantou", does not have to be perfectly round.

China has battled to boost food quality and standards in the wake of a string of food safety scandals, but media reports of a new standard for "mantou", a cheap wheat-based snack sold on street corners, outraged Internet users and academics.

China’s quality watch-dog denied that standards recommending a "perfect shape" for mantou held the force of law.

"There are no specific regulations on the shape of wheat-flour mantou in the standard," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its Web site.

State media hailed the clarification as timely and blamed the uproar on authorities for failing to communicate clearly and on local reporters for "sensationalism".

"The episode offers something for the authorities to chew on-if the public was properly informed ... Such a situation may not have occurred at all," an editorial in the China Daily said today.

"That said, we are sad to learn our innocent public has fallen victim again to bogus reporting."

Steamed buns have previously been at the heart of China’s battle to improve food quality amidst low government transparency and salacious news reporting.

China jailed a reporter after scandalous TV footage of a Beijing snack vendor stuffing steamed buns, or "baozi", with flavoured cardboard was aired on state channels and later found to be faked last year.

But many Chinese refused to believe the story was faked and accused local authorities of covering up the truth amidst the series of global food scandals.

(AGENCIES)