North Korean beer great taste, low proliferation risk

PYONGYANG, Mar 10: After a hard day of contributing to the cult of personality around Asia's only communist dynasty and vexing the world with a nuclear arms programme, there is no better way for a North Korean cadre to relax than with a cold beer.

The impoverished state best known for its communist propaganda and sabre rattling has quietly been brewing one of the highest-quality beers on the peninsula for several years.

But due to the North's poor infrastructure, limited trading links and minimal skills in the capitalist world, its Taedonggang beer will likely remain a little known product.

North Korea's quest to produce decent beer began in earnest in 2000 when it started talks with Britain's Ushers brewery about acquiring its Trowbridge, Wiltshire plant that had ceased operations.

The North Koreans took apart the brewery that had been producing country ales for about 180 years, shipped it piece by piece to Pyongyang and reassembled it under the banner of its Taedonggang Beer Factory.

By April 2002, it was up and running. In June 2002, the North's leader Kim Jong-il, known for his fondness of expensive brandy and wines, went on a brewery tour.

''Watching good quality beer coming out in an uninterrupted flow for a long while, he noted with great pleasure that it has now become possible to supply more fresh beer to people in all seasons,'' North Korea's official KCNA news agency said.

Taedonggang beer, named for a river that runs through Pyongyang, is a full-bodied lager a little on the sweet side, with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

A few critics who have sampled it in Pyongyang say it is a highly respectable, but not award winning, brew. Available in Seoul until last year, foreigners say the beer is infinitely superior to the mass-marketed beers in South Korea.

At a Pyongyang hotel for foreigners where goods are overpriced across the board, a 640 ml bottle of Taedonggang sells for half a euro (0.75 dollars). On tap, the beer is a golden to burnt orange in colour with a clean, white foam.

THE CHOICE OF THE DEAR LEADER

Taedonggang is one of several brews in North Korea and it has quickly become the top brand, according to foreigners living in the reclusive country.

Park Myung-jin, of distributor Vintage Korea which used to sell the beer in the South, said the North's leader Kim wanted a showpiece brewery.

''They used the best quality material without thinking of the production cost,'' Park said. He stopped selling the beer in the South in 2007 due largely to a sudden price hike.

The North taps into overseas markets for ingredients, Park said. It has abundant supplies of fresh water because its hobbled factories do not produce enough to cause pollution problems.

Beer is not the drink of choice for most North Koreans, who prefer cheaper rice-based liquor that packs a big punch.

''They need to be able to drink more at the same price,'' said Choi Soo-young, an expert on the North at the South's Korea Institute for National Unification.

Choi said the brewery is a favourite project of the ruling communist party, whose members can afford beer and will make sure the factory receives all the ingredients it needs even though the North cannot produce enough food to feeds it 22 million people.

North Korean defector Jong Su-ban, who came to the South in 2000, said impoverished farmers would scrounge for anything they could find to concoct their own home brews.

''We found corn flower and hops and made something that came out a weird milky colour. At least it was fizzy like beer,'' he said.

But do not expect to see Taedonggang or any North Korean beer invading overseas markets any time soon.

North Korea may have solved the riddle of making a robust beer but it has not completely solved the problem of bottling it.

The brewery has occasional trouble sealing bottles properly and the glass it uses is fragile.

The transport system in North Korea is also a mess, making it unlikely that the beer can become one of the few legitimate exports from a country shunned by the developed world for its defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons and a human rights record cited by the United States as one of the world's worst.

Distributor Park said he had to print labels in the South and send bottles from China in order to package the beer for export.

Even though he no longer sells the beer, he is still a fan.

''The taste is superb,'' he said.

(AGENCIES)

Structure of brain receptor implicated in epilepsy, PMT found

LONDON, Mar 10: A ray of hope for sufferers of epilepsy or pre-menstrual tension! Scientists claim to have identified the structure of a receptor in the brain implicated in these conditions.

The international researchers have determined the arrangement of the constituent parts of the receptor called GABA which is actually a protein present in the brain. The same receptor is also known to be sensitive to alcohol.

According to them, the GABA receptor is found in small numbers in the body and plays an important role in controlling our state of consciousness.

"This type of GABA receptor plays a crucial role in the body's response to a range of stimuli. Scientists think that when there is a problem in the signalling, conditions such as epilepsy and PMT can occur.

"Now we have identified the detailed structure of the receptor we are in a better position to design drugs that bind to it," lead researcher Dr Mike Edwardson of the Cambridge University said.

In their study, the researchers used rodents and found the amount waxes and wanes in nerves over the menstrual cycle, making it a potential candidate for the cause of PMT, the 'Molecular Pharmacology' journal has reported. (PTI)

Plant toxin studied to determine how it attacks human cells

NEW YORK, Mar 10: A powerful plant toxin ricin, widely feared for its bioterrorism potential, may one day be tamed using findings about how the toxin attacks cells, researchers say.

The findings may also help scientists combat food poisoning episodes such as those recently caused by bacteria-tainted produce and ground meat.

Biotechnology researchers at Rutgers University have discovered that ricin, extracted from abundant castor beans, kills cells by a previously unrecognized activity that appears to work in concert with its ability to damage protein synthesis.

Writing in the March 7 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Rutgers plant biology and pathology professor Nilgun Tumer and her colleagues report that ricin tricks a cell into turning off a natural defence mechanism that destroys foreign proteins. If ricin did not first deactivate the cell's defences, the cell would be able to turn on a stress response to get rid of the toxin. The discovery allows scientists to explore new ways to disarm ricin.

"Because there are no specific medical treatment options for ricin intoxication, we felt it essential to dig deeper into the mechanism of ricin-induced cell death," said Tumer. "The new mechanism we discovered provides new targets for possible therapeutic agents."

Tumer discovered that ricin is inhibiting a cell defence mechanism known as unfolded protein response or UPR. Proteins that a cell synthesizes need to have their long molecular chains folded in a precise pattern. The UPR causes proteins that don't fold, or that fold incorrectly, to be degraded and removed from the place in a cell where folding occurs, known as the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). (PTI)

India, Bahrain to sign MoU on labour cooperation

DUBAI, Mar 10: India and Bahrain will sign a memorandum of understanding on labour and manpower co-operation during Labour Minister Majeed Al Alawi's visit to New Delhi next month.

"I shall make use of the opportunity to sign the MoU, which will help further strengthen the ties between Bahrain and India in labour and manpower areas," Alwai, who met the Indian Ambassador Balkrishna Shetty in Manama, was quoted as saying in local media today.

India was this month forced to put on hold a proposed measure which disallowed its unskilled workers to leave for Bahrain unless they had contracts from employers stipulating the minimum wage of BD100 (around Rs 10,481) following resistance from the Gulf country.

Alwai said the relations between the two countries go beyond labour matters. "Historically and culturally we are strong partners. Every effort should be made to take this relationship to new heights," the Bahrain Minister said.

During an Abu Dhabi meeting on labour export in January, Alawi had met Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vyalar Ravi who had called on Bahrain to sign the MoU as other Gulf nations including the UAE had inked similar agreements.

Shetty said the MoU would protect the welfare of Indian workers in Bahrain. "It also helps ensure the smooth flow of workers from India to Bahrain as per the requirements of the kingdom. The MoU will cover a clause to ensure that the right person is recruited for the right job with proper salary."

Another highlight of the MoU will be provision for joint recruitment and training of workers by both countries, said Shetty, adding it comes at a time when both Bahrain and India are implementing major labour reforms. (PTI)

Malaysia's Mukhriz calls for PM to resign -aide

KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 10: Malaysian ruling party MP Mukhriz Mahathir will call for the country's Prime Minister to resign over the weekend's election disaster, becoming the first ruling party MP to do, an aide to Mukhriz said today.

Mukhriz, a senior executive member of the UMNO youth wing, commands factional support within the party. He is the son of former premier Mahathir Mohamad, who has also urged the prime minister to resign over the party's worst election setback in its 50-year rule.

''Mukhriz Mahathir and several UMNO youth division leaders from Penang, Kedah and Perak will hold a joint press conference at 3 pm (2230 IST) in Penang to ask the prime minister to resign,'' Azri Zizal, press aide to Mukhriz, told Reuters. He did not say why the group was seeking Abdullah's resignation.

Islamists and leftist opposition parties won control of five of Malaysia's 13 state assemblies and just over a third of federal parliament, prompting speculation that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi could quit, but he has refused to go.

Abdullah was sworn in as leader today. (AGENCIES)

Gamble and Huff Philly Soul to Rock Hall of Fame

NEW YORK, Mar 10: Three years after The O'Jays were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the two men who wrote and produced their biggest hit, ''Love Train,'' will be joining them

Today.

Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the architects of the Philly Soul sound of the 1970's, will be the first recipients of the Ahmet Ertegun Award, in memory of the late co-founder of Atlantic Records.

''It's a dream come true for me because I always wanted to become a songwriter,'' Huff said in a recent interview with Reuters.

Performers like the O'Jays, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the Intruders, the Three Degrees, Jerry Butler, Lou Rawls and Dee Dee Sharp recorded Gamble and Huff songs and made Philadelphia the capital of soul after Motown left Detroit and Memphis' Stax Records withered.

Along with ''Love Train,'' their biggest hits were Billy Paul's ''Me and Mrs. Jones,'' the theme for the television dance show ''Soul Train,'' ''TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)'' and ''If You Don't Know Me By Now,'' Simply Red's version of which earned Gamble and Huff the Best R&B Song Grammy.

The two are responsible for 70 No. 1 pop and R&B singles, 175 gold, platinum and multi-platinum records, five Grammys and more than 3,500 songs to date.

''I have seen the power of music and it is real,'' Gamble said. ''A great song's got to make people feel good. When all the elements come together and you say, 'Turn that up a little bit.'

''Some songs might have hardly any words like 'shoo-bop, shoo-bop' with a good groove and be number one.''

For Huff, a good song can also pull the heartstrings. ''I've been at parties and one of our songs came on and I watched this girl crying. It was 'Stairway to Heaven' by the O'Jays,'' he said.

''It's a powerful force -- to stir up someone's inner emotions,'' Gamble said. ''You write a song that makes them reflect back to a break-up or whatever. There's some gospel songs that will make you get up and run around the church.''

''RATTLIN' THEM OFF''

The pair, both 64, originally got together 45 years ago, in a band, The Romeos, playing clubs in Philadelphia.

''We performed everything,'' Gamble said. ''All the Top 10 records -- Marvin Gaye, Chuck Jackson, The Temptations, anything. Anybody had a hit, we did it. But we would rearrange them.

''We had a comedian, dancers, go-go girls. And the band was so good that The Intruders used to come over, the Delfonics, Bunny Sigler, Harold Melvin. You'd have local artists come by just to hear us and they would ask: 'Can we do a number?'''

When the band broke up, the pair had the connections to move onto writing and producing. ''Writing was spontaneous,'' Huff said. ''We came up with five or six songs in that first sitting. We was rattlin' them off just like that!

''Titles can come out of conversation. I might get them out of books or papers or I might hear someone say something.''

''Most of all we write specifically for an artist,'' Gamble said. ''You would have that artist in your mind when you write.''

One of their biggest songs came about when they were playing a restaurant and noticed an older man coming in regularly with a younger woman. ''I knew the man and I knew this woman was not the woman he was supposed to be with,'' Huff said.

''And Gamble said, 'He was in here yesterday with the same woman,' that must be Mr. And Mrs. Jones.''

''Love Train'' meanwhile, was just a catchy title that came out at a time of the Vietnam War and the peace movement. ''Gamble was dancing on his seat when I played it,'' Huff said.

''That song is relevant today because it's the same people we got in that song still doing the same crazy stuff,'' Gamble said.

(AGENCIES)

Could Arctic ice melt spawn new kind of cold war?

WASHINGTON, Mar 10: With oil above 100 dollars a barrel and Arctic ice melting faster than ever, some of the world's most powerful countries -- including the United States and Russia -- are looking north to a possible energy bonanza.

This prospective scramble for buried Arctic mineral wealth made more accessible by freshly melted seas could bring on a completely different kind of cold war, a scholar and former Coast Guard officer says.

While a US government official questioned the risk of polar conflict, Washington still would like to join a 25-year-old international treaty meant to figure out who owns the rights to the oceans, including the Arctic Ocean. So far, the Senate has not approved it.

Unlike the first Cold War, dominated by tensions between the two late-20th century superpowers, this century's model could pit countries that border the Arctic Ocean against each other to claim mineral rights. The Arctic powers include the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway.

The irony is that the burning of fossil fuels is at least in part responsible for the Arctic melt -- due to climate change -- and the Arctic melt could pave the way for a 21st century rush to exploit even more fossil fuels.

The stakes are enormous, according to Scott Borgerson of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former US Coast Guard lieutenant commander.

The Arctic could hold as much as one-quarter of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and gas deposits, Borgerson wrote in the current issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.

Russia has claimed 460,000 square miles of Arctic waters, with an eye-catching effort that included planting its flag on the ocean floor at the North Pole last summer. Days later, Moscow sent strategic bomber flights over the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War.

''I think you can say planting a flag on the sea bottom and renewing strategic bomber flights is provocative,'' Borgerson said in a telephone interview.

SCRAMBLING AND SLEEPWALKING

By contrast, he said of the U.S. Position, ''I don't think we're scrambling. We're sleepwalking ... I think the Russians are scrambling and I think the Norwegians and Canadians and Danes are keenly aware.''

Borgerson said that now would be an appropriate time for the United States to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which codifies which countries have rights to what parts of the world's oceans.

The Bush administration agrees. So do many environmental groups, the U.S. Military and energy companies looking to explore the Arctic, now that enough ice is seasonally gone to open up sea lanes as soon as the next decade.

''There's no ice cold war,'' said one US government official familiar with the Arctic Ocean rights issue. However, the official noted that joining the Law of the Sea pact would give greater legal certainty to U.S. Claims in the area.

That is becoming more crucial, as measurements of the US continental shelf get more precise.

Coastal nations like those that border the Arctic have sovereign rights over natural resources of their continental shelves, generally recognized to reach 200 nautical miles out from their coasts.

But in February, researchers from the University of New Hampshire and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data suggesting that the continental shelf north of Alaska extends more than 100 nautical miles farther than previously presumed.

A commission set up by the Law of the Sea lets countries expand their sea floor resource rights if they meet certain conditions and back them up with scientific data.

The treaty also governs navigation rights, suddenly more important as scientists last year reported the opening of the normally ice-choked waters of the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

''Of course we need to be at the table as ocean law develops,'' the U.S. Official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''It's not like ocean law is going to stop developing if we're not in there. It's just going to develop without us.''

(AGENCIES)

Gourmet demand revives Central America cocoa farms

ALMIRANTE, PANAMA, Mar 10: Indigenous people grew cocoa here more than 2,000 years ago. Now, their descendants are reviving the crop to meet world demand for high-quality chocolate.

Throughout Central America, farmers like Manuel Abrigo are planting cocoa, taking advantage of high world cocoa prices and the premium their cocoa commands.

''I sowed cocoa because I saw my neighbor had it and I wanted more income, too,'' Abrigo, an Ngobe indian, said in broken Spanish. His hillside farm, near the port of Almirante in western Panama, overlooks a glistening bay where Christopher Columbus dropped anchor in 1502.

Grown by the ancient Maya in Mexico and Central America long before the arrival of the Spanish, cocoa also has a long tradition with the Ngobe people, native to the Panama-Costa Rica border region, as well as indigenous communities in Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Spanish explorers recorded that indigenous people used cocoa beans as currency. Ten could buy a night with a prostitute, 100 could buy a slave, according to archeologist Michael Coe, joint author of a book called ''The True History of Chocolate.''

In the 1990s Abrigo and other farmers abandoned the crop when the trees were hit by fungus and world prices were low.

Now gourmet chocolate companies are turning to growers in Central America to supply cocoa that can be labeled organic and ''fair trade,'' under which companies pledge to pay third-world farmers more for their crops.

The bulk of the world's cocoa is grown in Africa, where cacao trees were imported by Portuguese colonizers in the 1800s. But human rights groups accuse producers in Ivory Coast, the world's No. 1 supplier, of using the labor of child slaves.

Abrigo belongs to a 1,500-farmer cooperative that sells most of its bean to a small Swiss company called Pronatec AG, which markets organic products to independent candy makers.

In southern Belize, near the border with Guatemala, a group of Mayan farmers produce cocoa beans for Green & Black's, a division of Cadbury Schweppes <CBRY.L>.

Their cocoa is shipped to Italy and mixed with orange flavor and spices to make ''Maya Gold'' chocolate, sold in Europe and the United States for 3 dollar a bar.

Between 2002 and 2006, global sales of organic chocolate grew 120 percent to 401.3 million dollar, less than 0.5 percent of the world chocolate market. But demand is enough to convince small farmers from Belize to Panama to produce more.

''People calculate they could easily double their output and not have any problems with finding a market,'' said Eduardo Somarriba, a cocoa expert at the Costa Rica-based tropical research center CATIE.

UPWARD TREND

Somarriba estimates Central America's cocoa output rose 40 per cent over the last three years to between 4,000 and 5,000 tonnes in the 2006/2007 harvest.

Planted area reached 21,000 hectares (52,000 acres), and another 2,000 hectares are expected to be planted this year, Somarriba said.

''Cocoa is one of the few cash crop alternatives in poor, indigenous areas,'' he said.

US cocoa futures on the ICE exchange recently soared to a 28-year high as investment funds pour money into commodities.

Higher prices help farmers boost output by investing in methods to improve crop quality and avoid fungus outbreaks.

A fungus known as ''frosty pod'' wiped out much of Central America's crop in the 1990s.

Despite efforts to plant more cocoa, the scale of operations is still tiny on most Central American plots.

Abrigo's cooperative produced just over 600 tonnes of mostly organic cocoa in 2007, one of their biggest harvests in decades.

By comparison, the Ivory Coast produces more than 1 million tonnes of cocoa a year.

Central American farmers hand ferment their cocoa beans -- the seed of a fleshy fruit -- under banana leaves in hardwood boxes and dry them in the sun, a process that Green & Black's documents in its marketing.

Gregor Hargrove, Green & Black's project manager in Belize, said consumers like to know about the lives of the cocoa farmers. But taste comes first, he said.

''Our business is not to make some feelgood chocolate -- people will always buy the 'taste-good' stuff.'' (AGENCIES)

Picky Chinese workers spell end of cheap labour

FENGQIU COUNTY, CHINA, Mar 10: For decades, China's massive workforce of factory hands and construction workers had little choice but to work long hours in often poor conditions for pitifully low salaries.

But a mushrooming of factories, even in the country's sluggish interior, mean that these days workers have more clout than ever when hunting for jobs. Wages are being pushed up and firms' margins are being squeezed.

''Companies are finding it harder and harder to get people,'' said Xue Guojie, visiting his parents' three-room farmhouse in Henan, a central province which is home to millions of migrant labourers who fan across China ever year.

Business might be booming in China but the workforce is shrinking as the ''one child policy'' generation -- products of a 1979 law banning couples from having more than one child -- enters the crucial 18-35 age bracket, the main workforce for factories.

Sporting a jean jacket and skateboarding shoes, Xue is a perfect example.

The 23-year-old air conditioner factory worker expects to receive a 100 yuan (13.98 dollars) increase to his 1500 yuan monthly wage when he returns back to work after extending his Chinese New Year holiday by two weeks, something unheard of in the past.

''My boss would rather give me more than find and train someone new,'' Xue said.

It seems far-fetched that China's vast pool of workers in a population of 1.3 billion, nearly half of whom still live on farmland, could be drying up.

But a shrinking labour force at a time when factories are springing up across the country, including in dusty rural districts such as Fengjui County in central China, means that workers can afford to be more selective about where they work.

Most migrant labourers still head to coastal cities to find work, seeing their families once a year over the New Year festival and then rushing back to their jobs.

A growing number, though, are choosing jobs closer to home.

Droves of smaller factories have moved inland as the government, aiming to spread China's development more evenly, uses tax breaks and looser pollution controls to lure them to poorer central provinces, away from the traditional manufacturing heartland near Hong Kong.

A smaller workforce for more jobs in more locales translates into stiffer competition among businesses for new hires. Migrant workers' pay is increasing by as much as 15 percent a year from low single-digit growth a few years earlier, UBS economist Jonathan Anderson calculates.

FACTORY HANDS, FARM HANDS

China's poor hinterland has already despatched 130 million cooks, waiters, cleaners, builders and line workers across the country, according to the national agricultural census.

The remaining rural labour force of 530 million is about the number that economists think can earn a fair living off the land. In other words, the countryside no longer has vast reserves of hand-to-mouth farmers whose only hope is to move to a city.

''This village is just old people and children. Everyone else has already left,'' said Du Shicheng, 51, a farmer in Henan's Fengjiu county whose two adult children work at a mobile phone factory in the east.

Money sent back by the children allowed Du and his wife to build a two-storey home last year, though it is half empty as the bottom floor offers more than enough space for the two of them and one grandchild.

It is a story that rings true throughout the countryside. Migration has delivered as much as 50 per cent of rural China's income through remittances but at the same time it has depleted villages and broken up families, explained Ran Tao, a rural expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. (AGENCIES)

Gene 'linked to higher gout risk' identified

LONDON, Mar 10: Scientists have identified a gene linked to higher gout risk, which they claim could be the reason why millions worldwide fall prey to the painful joint condition.

The researchers at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh have found a variation in the SLC2A gene which makes it harder for the body to remove uric acid from the blood and thereby increasing the risk of developing gout.

According to lead researcher Prof Alan Wright, "The gene is a key player in determining the efficiency of uric acid transport across the membranes of the kidney."

Added co-researcher Harry Campbell: "Some people will have higher or lower risk of gout depending on the form of the gene they inherited. This discovery may allow better diagnostic tools for gout to be developed."

The researchers came to the conclusion after they carried out genetic analysis of over 12,000 people. They found that the gene variant raises the risk -- the results of the study have been published in the 'Nature Genetics' journal.

According to them, the SLC2A gene and the protein it controls might one day be targeted by new gout drugs. At the moment, drug treatment for patients is limited.

Dr Andrew Bamji, the President of the British Society for Rheumatology, said that the research supported a recent study which suggested that too many sugary soft drinks could trigger gout.

"It appears that this gene also plays a role in the control of levels of fructose sugar in the body, which would explain the finding that soft drinks were linked to attacks," the 'BBC News' portal quoted him as saying. (PTI)

Key component of Earth's crust formed from moving molten rock

WASHINGTON, Mar 10: Earth scientists are reverting back into history and geography of the earth's crust to extrapolate what happened millions of years ago based on what they can observe now.

The scientists are concenrating their research on the formation of a fine grained metamorphic rock of the earth's crust called 'granulite'.

The researchers decided to mathematically recreate the formation of granulite at various depths, to see if they could come up a method that mirrors the natural formation of the rock, Science Daily reported.

By studying what were once pockets of hot, melted rock 13 kilometers deep in the Earth's crust 55 million years ago and calculating the period of cooling, the scientists were able to explain how granulite is formed as the molten rock migrates up through the crust.

Granulite, composed mainly of feldspars, has no residual water and is called metamorphic because it is formed in temperatures of greater than 800 degrees Celsius. It is a major component of the continental crust.

Looking at the melting process is like looking at the process of the formation of continents, Andronicos explained.

''If you look over geologic time, not all the rocks are the same age, and the reason for that is they got formed at different times,'' he said.

''So if you can get a handle on the temperature, which is what controls melting and metamorphism, then you have a better idea of some of the fundamental controls that lead to rock formation, and therefore continents,'' he added.

The computer model, he said, will hopefully provide further insight into the energy balance of the Earth during crustal formation.

(UNI)

China officials urged to curb social smoking

BEIJING, Mar 10: Chinese Government employees should be banned from offering or receiving cigarettes on social occasions, a member of parliament said, a move that would reverse an entrenched tradition and is unlikely to see the light of day.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promised in 2004 that August's Beijing Games would be ''smoke-free'', but there has been no announcement of Olympic restrictions with just months to go until the opening ceremony.

Beijing banned smoking in taxis last October, and in 1995 the city designated hospitals, schools, theatres, libraries, banks, shops and all public transport as smoke-free areas, a ban that is commonly ignored.

''Government departments and their employees are responsible for taking the lead in China's tobacco control,'' Xinhua news agency today quoted Yan Aoshuang, a Beijing deputy to the National People's Congress, as saying.

Yan said government employees should not be allowed to accept cigarettes for free or at discounted prices from tobacco companies.

''Besides, all government offices should ban smoking in the workplace to ensure a smoking-free environment,'' she said on the sidelines of the annual parliamentary session.

Yan also said the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and Ministry of Culture should draft regulations to ban disguised tobacco adverts and smoking scenes in films and on television.

China is the world's largest cigarette producer and Chinese are the world's most enthusiastic smokers, with a growing market of about 320 million making it a magnet for multinationals and focus of international health concern.

Chinese cigarettes are also among the cheapest in the world, with a packet costing as little as 0.08 dollars. Business deals are commonly signed in a pall of smoke and cigarettes are commonly offered as gifts.

(AGENCIES)