Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Chinese children killed in school bus crash
At least 15 children dead and eight other injured after bus slides off icy road into ditch in eastern China
At least 15 children have been killed in eastern China when their school bus slipped off an icy country road into an irrigation ditch.
At least eight other children were injured, one of them seriously, a spokesman for the Jiangsu provincial government said on Tuesday.
The accident happened on Monday evening as the bus was travelling along a rural highway outside the city of Xuzhou in the province's north.
Chinese news reports said the bus careened off the road after swerving to avoid a rickshaw.
The official Xinhua News Agency said 29 students were on board at the time of the crash, and that the bus was designed for 52 people and was not overloaded.
Witnesses cited by China News Service said the bus fell into a two-metre wide irrigation ditch.
Workers from a nearby food processing plant rushed to help, jumping into the icy water to save the children.
The head of the emergency team at Feng Xian People's hospital, where the injured were taken, said many passengers on appeared to have drowned.
The crash comes amid a national discussion over the poor condition of Chinese school buses and chronic underfunding of public schools, particularly in rural areas which have lagged far behind cities over the past three decades of rapid economic development.
Last month, 19 students and two adults were killed when a nine-seat private school van packed with 62 children crashed head-on with a truck in northwest Gansu province.
That was followed by a pledge from Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, that new rules to ensure school safety would be drafted within a month.
Wen said central and local governments would bear the cost of bringing often-shoddy school buses up to standard.
New regulations proposed on Sunday by China's cabinet provide guidelines such as forbidding private vehicles from overtaking buses when students are getting on or off, but did not address to what extent the government would fund school transport.
Many school buses are operated by car rental companies and even co-financed by parents.
 |
| The crash in Jiangsu province comes amid a national discussion over the poor condition of Chinese school buses |
At least eight other children were injured, one of them seriously, a spokesman for the Jiangsu provincial government said on Tuesday.
The accident happened on Monday evening as the bus was travelling along a rural highway outside the city of Xuzhou in the province's north.
Chinese news reports said the bus careened off the road after swerving to avoid a rickshaw.
The official Xinhua News Agency said 29 students were on board at the time of the crash, and that the bus was designed for 52 people and was not overloaded.
Witnesses cited by China News Service said the bus fell into a two-metre wide irrigation ditch.
Workers from a nearby food processing plant rushed to help, jumping into the icy water to save the children.
The head of the emergency team at Feng Xian People's hospital, where the injured were taken, said many passengers on appeared to have drowned.
The crash comes amid a national discussion over the poor condition of Chinese school buses and chronic underfunding of public schools, particularly in rural areas which have lagged far behind cities over the past three decades of rapid economic development.
Last month, 19 students and two adults were killed when a nine-seat private school van packed with 62 children crashed head-on with a truck in northwest Gansu province.
That was followed by a pledge from Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, that new rules to ensure school safety would be drafted within a month.
Wen said central and local governments would bear the cost of bringing often-shoddy school buses up to standard.
New regulations proposed on Sunday by China's cabinet provide guidelines such as forbidding private vehicles from overtaking buses when students are getting on or off, but did not address to what extent the government would fund school transport.
Many school buses are operated by car rental companies and even co-financed by parents.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Bruce Lee's Birthday
Bruce Lee has gone to the Heaven for 71 years, but He lives in our hearts forever
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Steve Jobs dies at 56
Steve Jobs dies at 56; Apple's co-founder transformed computers and culture
His legacy of blockbuster products includes the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Meanwhile, Jobs' other firm, Pixar, revolutionized computer animation.
Steve Jobs' death saddens Apple workers and fans
Flags fly at half-staff at the company's sprawling Silicon Valley campus, where workers describe the mood inside as eerie and somber. At Apple stores around the world, fans mourn and set up makeshift memorials.
An image of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is projected inside the Apple store in Santa Monica on Wednesday. So many fans gathered at the store after the announcement of Jobs' death that an Apple employee came from inside — where business continued uninterrupted — and politely asked mourners to step back and not block the entrance. (Luis Sinco, Los Angeles Times / October 6, 2011)
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.
Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge." Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.
At the same time, Mr. Krugman has written extensively for a broader public audience. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.
On October 13, 2008, it was announced that Mr. Krugman would receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.
Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge." Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.
At the same time, Mr. Krugman has written extensively for a broader public audience. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.
On October 13, 2008, it was announced that Mr. Krugman would receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Monday, August 1, 2011
18 Killed in Ancient Chinese City of Kashgar in Xinjiang
BEIJING — A weekend of violence in China’s far western Xinjiang region has left at least 18 people dead in the ancient city of Kashgar, state-controlled media reported Sunday. It was the second major episode of violence in the last several weeks in an area racked by ethnic tensions.
The police in Kashgar killed five suspects Sunday after “a group of armed terrorists” stormed into a restaurant in the city center, killing the owner and a waiter and then setting the restaurant on fire, the Kashgar city government said in two statements on its Web site, according to The Associated Press. They then ran out of the restaurant and stabbed civilians indiscriminately, leaving another four people dead and 12 injured, it said.
Earlier, Xinhua quoted local sources as saying that two civilians and one police officer had died, either from a bomb explosion or from an attack by “rioters.”
Those deaths followed a Saturday night attack, which was reported as being carried out by knife-wielding assailants, in which seven people died.
Two Kashgar residents contacted by telephone late Sunday said that the city appeared calm and that traffic was flowing normally.
The government media offered no explanation for any of the killings. But there have been repeated outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang in recent years, often the result of tensions between ethnic Uighurs and the country’s majority ethnic group, the Han, who have steadily moved into the area, dominated its economic activity and placed curbs on the Uighurs’ Islamic practices.
Chinese authorities blamed Uighur separatists for an attack in Kashgar three years ago that killed 16 people. Less than a year later, ethnic rioting erupted in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, leaving almost 200 people dead. Two weeks ago, 18 people died after rioters in a predominantly Uighur district of Hotan, a Xinjiang desert city, stormed a police station.
Details of the latest bloodshed, limited to conflicting reports from the state media, were sketchy and could not be independently confirmed. Xinhua said that the violence in Kashgar broke out shortly before midnight on Saturday, about an hour after residents heard two explosions, one inside a minivan and the other along a popular street lined with food stalls. The reports quoted police officials as saying that two men later hijacked a truck, stabbed its driver to death and drove the vehicle to the street of food stalls, where they attacked people with knives.
Seven were said to have died and another 22 were reported injured. The officials were quoted as saying that one of the attackers was killed and the second apprehended.
The second spate of violence occurred about 4:30 p.m. after rioting broke out in an unidentified location in the city.
The police in Kashgar killed five suspects Sunday after “a group of armed terrorists” stormed into a restaurant in the city center, killing the owner and a waiter and then setting the restaurant on fire, the Kashgar city government said in two statements on its Web site, according to The Associated Press. They then ran out of the restaurant and stabbed civilians indiscriminately, leaving another four people dead and 12 injured, it said.
Earlier, Xinhua quoted local sources as saying that two civilians and one police officer had died, either from a bomb explosion or from an attack by “rioters.”
Those deaths followed a Saturday night attack, which was reported as being carried out by knife-wielding assailants, in which seven people died.
Two Kashgar residents contacted by telephone late Sunday said that the city appeared calm and that traffic was flowing normally.
The government media offered no explanation for any of the killings. But there have been repeated outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang in recent years, often the result of tensions between ethnic Uighurs and the country’s majority ethnic group, the Han, who have steadily moved into the area, dominated its economic activity and placed curbs on the Uighurs’ Islamic practices.
Chinese authorities blamed Uighur separatists for an attack in Kashgar three years ago that killed 16 people. Less than a year later, ethnic rioting erupted in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, leaving almost 200 people dead. Two weeks ago, 18 people died after rioters in a predominantly Uighur district of Hotan, a Xinjiang desert city, stormed a police station.
Details of the latest bloodshed, limited to conflicting reports from the state media, were sketchy and could not be independently confirmed. Xinhua said that the violence in Kashgar broke out shortly before midnight on Saturday, about an hour after residents heard two explosions, one inside a minivan and the other along a popular street lined with food stalls. The reports quoted police officials as saying that two men later hijacked a truck, stabbed its driver to death and drove the vehicle to the street of food stalls, where they attacked people with knives.
Seven were said to have died and another 22 were reported injured. The officials were quoted as saying that one of the attackers was killed and the second apprehended.
The second spate of violence occurred about 4:30 p.m. after rioting broke out in an unidentified location in the city.
Bring Back Poppy
WATCHING today’s Republicans being led around by an extremist Tea Party faction, with no adult supervision, I find my mind drifting back to the late 1980s when I was assigned to cover the administration of George H.W. Bush, who I believe is one of our most underrated presidents. I have long admired the elder Bush for the deftness with which he dealt with the collapse of the Soviet empire. But, in later years, I came to admire him even more for the fact that he believed that math and science were not matters of opinion — a view increasingly rare in today’s G.O.P.
Despite having run on the promise of “Read my lips: No new taxes,” when the deficit started spiraling to dangerous levels under his presidency, Bush agreed to a compromise with Democrats to raise several taxes, along with spending cuts, as part of a 1990 budget deal that helped to pave the way for the prosperity of that decade. It definitely hurt his re-election, but he did it anyway.George H.W. Bush also believed in science. How many Republicans know that he and his aide Boyden Gray pioneered the use of cap-and-trade to deal — very effectively — with the problem of acid rain produced by power-plant emissions?
In an article, “The Political History of Cap and Trade,” published in Smithsonian Magazine in August 2009, Richard Conniff details how “an unlikely mix of environmentalists and free-market conservatives hammered out the strategy known as cap-and-trade.” As Conniff explained it, “Gray liked the marketplace approach, and even before the Reagan administration expired, he put [Environmental Defense Fund] staffers to work drafting legislation to make it happen. ... John Sununu, the White House chief of staff, was furious. He said the cap ‘was going to shut the economy down,’ Boyden Gray recalls. But the in-house debate ‘went very, very fast. We didn’t have time to fool around with it.’ President Bush not only accepted the cap, he overruled his advisers’ recommendation of an eight million-ton cut in annual acid rain emissions in favor of the 10 million-ton cut advocated by environmentalists. ... [Today,] the cap-and-trade system continues to let polluters figure out the least expensive way to reduce their acid rain emissions.”
George H.W. Bush also believed that to be a conservative was to act with “prudence,” one of his favorite words and a philosophy he demonstrated in foreign policy by deciding, once he defeated Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, not to follow him to Baghdad.
I find it hard to look at today’s G.O.P. without thinking how far it has drifted from the kind of balanced conservatism the elder Bush brought to politics. Today’s G.O.P. has gone from espousing cap-and-trade to deal with pollution to espousing the notion that all the world’s climate scientists have secretly gotten together and perpetrated a “hoax,” called climate change, in order to expand government — all of this at a time of record heat waves and climate disruptions.
On the economy, the G.O.P. has gone from the magical thinking of Vice President Dick Cheney — who argued that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” and used this argument to help run up the deficit to its current astronomical levels with huge tax cuts — to an anti-tax cult that spurned a “Grand Bargain” with President Obama because it would have not only cut $3 trillion in spending over the next decade but also involved $1 trillion in tax increases. Somehow, the G.O.P. has forgotten that even Ronald Reagan didn’t believe deficits don’t matter and he raised taxes when our fiscal stability demanded it. As for prudence today, well, the willingness to risk a default on America’s financial obligations by refusing to raise the debt ceiling may be many things, but it is not prudent.
Where have all the adults in this party gone? Where is Dick Lugar, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Colin Powell, Hank Paulson and Big Business? Are you telling me that they are ready to fall in line behind Michele Bachmann, Grover Norquist, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin? Are these really the pacesetters of modern conservatism?
I wish President Obama had embraced the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan when it was announced last November and then added his own long-term investment plans on top of it and then built a national mandate for this “Grand Bargain” — before we got to this point. But the president has now embraced such a deal, which is important and constructive, though he needs to spell out this Grand Bargain more emphatically, publicly, repeatedly and specifically.
Because it is the only long-term solution — and it is coming. Either the market will impose a Grand Bargain on us in a haphazard way or we can do it rationally by a Democratic and Republican consensus. The president says that he is ready and that his party is behind him. I hope so. But without a Republican Party that returns to the sane conservatism of the likes of George H.W. Bush — which accepts that both spending and tax increases are, reluctantly, needed to fix our budget and maintain social stability — we’re not going to get even a minibargain, let alone a grand one. It is time for a counterrevolution in the G.O.P.
In Afghanistan, Rage at Young Lovers
HERAT, Afghanistan — The two teenagers met inside an ice cream factory through darting glances before roll call, murmured hellos as supervisors looked away and, finally, a phone number folded up and tossed discreetly onto the workroom floor.
It was the beginning of an Afghan love story that flouted dominant traditions of arranged marriages and close family scrutiny, a romance between two teenagers of different ethnicities that tested a village’s tolerance for more modern whims of the heart. The results were delivered with brutal speed.
This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.
When security forces swooped in and rescued the couple, the mob’s anger exploded. They overwhelmed the local police, set fire to cars and stormed a police station six miles from the center of Herat, raising questions about the strength of law in a corner of western Afghanistan and in one of the first cities that has made the formal transition to Afghan-led security.
The riot, which lasted for hours, ended with one man dead, a police station charred and the two teenagers, Halima Mohammedi and her boyfriend, Rafi Mohammed, confined to juvenile prison. Officially, their fates lie in the hands of an unsteady legal system. But they face harsher judgments of family and community.
Ms. Mohammedi’s uncle visited her in jail to say she had shamed the family, and promised that they would kill her once she was released. Her father, an illiterate laborer who works in Iran, sorrowfully concurred. He cried during two visits to the jail, saying almost nothing to his daughter. Blood, he said, was perhaps the only way out.
“What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them,” said the father, Kher Mohammed.
The teenagers, embarrassed to talk about love, said plainly that they were ready for death. But they were baffled by why they should have to be killed.
Mr. Mohammed, who is 17, said: “I feel so bad. I just pray that God gives this girl back to me. I’m ready to lose my life. I just want her safe release.”
Ms. Mohammedi, who believes she is 17, said: “We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?”
The case has resonated in Herat, in part because it stirred memories of a brutal stoning ordered by the Taliban last summer in northern Afghanistan.
A young couple in Kunduz was stoned to death by scores of people — including family members — after they eloped. The stoning marked a brutal application of Shariah law, captured on a video recording released online months later. Afghan officials promised to investigate after an international outcry, but no one has faced criminal charges.
The immediate response to the violence in Herat was heartening by comparison. Top clerics declined to condemn the couple. Police officers risked their lives to pull the two teenagers to safety and deposit them into the legal system, rather than the hands of angry relatives. And the police reported that five or six girls had fled the city with their boyfriends and fiancés in the weeks after the riot.
After discussing the case, the provincial council decided that Mr. Mohammed and Ms. Mohammedi deserved the government’s protection because neither was engaged, and because each said they wanted to get married.
“They are not criminals, even if they have committed sexual activities,” said Abdul Zahir, the council’s leader.
But so far, their words have not freed either of the teenagers or lent them any long-term security.
Ms. Mohammedi was initially taken to the only women’s shelter in this province of more than 1.5 million people, but the police transferred her quickly to the city’s juvenile detention center, a sun-washed building where about 40 girls and 40 boys sleep in separate dormitories. The police said they had referred the teenagers’ cases to prosecutors.
It was the beginning of an Afghan love story that flouted dominant traditions of arranged marriages and close family scrutiny, a romance between two teenagers of different ethnicities that tested a village’s tolerance for more modern whims of the heart. The results were delivered with brutal speed.
This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.
When security forces swooped in and rescued the couple, the mob’s anger exploded. They overwhelmed the local police, set fire to cars and stormed a police station six miles from the center of Herat, raising questions about the strength of law in a corner of western Afghanistan and in one of the first cities that has made the formal transition to Afghan-led security.
The riot, which lasted for hours, ended with one man dead, a police station charred and the two teenagers, Halima Mohammedi and her boyfriend, Rafi Mohammed, confined to juvenile prison. Officially, their fates lie in the hands of an unsteady legal system. But they face harsher judgments of family and community.
Ms. Mohammedi’s uncle visited her in jail to say she had shamed the family, and promised that they would kill her once she was released. Her father, an illiterate laborer who works in Iran, sorrowfully concurred. He cried during two visits to the jail, saying almost nothing to his daughter. Blood, he said, was perhaps the only way out.
“What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them,” said the father, Kher Mohammed.
The teenagers, embarrassed to talk about love, said plainly that they were ready for death. But they were baffled by why they should have to be killed.
Mr. Mohammed, who is 17, said: “I feel so bad. I just pray that God gives this girl back to me. I’m ready to lose my life. I just want her safe release.”
Ms. Mohammedi, who believes she is 17, said: “We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?”
The case has resonated in Herat, in part because it stirred memories of a brutal stoning ordered by the Taliban last summer in northern Afghanistan.
A young couple in Kunduz was stoned to death by scores of people — including family members — after they eloped. The stoning marked a brutal application of Shariah law, captured on a video recording released online months later. Afghan officials promised to investigate after an international outcry, but no one has faced criminal charges.
The immediate response to the violence in Herat was heartening by comparison. Top clerics declined to condemn the couple. Police officers risked their lives to pull the two teenagers to safety and deposit them into the legal system, rather than the hands of angry relatives. And the police reported that five or six girls had fled the city with their boyfriends and fiancés in the weeks after the riot.
After discussing the case, the provincial council decided that Mr. Mohammed and Ms. Mohammedi deserved the government’s protection because neither was engaged, and because each said they wanted to get married.
“They are not criminals, even if they have committed sexual activities,” said Abdul Zahir, the council’s leader.
But so far, their words have not freed either of the teenagers or lent them any long-term security.
Ms. Mohammedi was initially taken to the only women’s shelter in this province of more than 1.5 million people, but the police transferred her quickly to the city’s juvenile detention center, a sun-washed building where about 40 girls and 40 boys sleep in separate dormitories. The police said they had referred the teenagers’ cases to prosecutors.
Iran to 'rule soon on US spy suspects'
Court to issue verdict on August 7 over two Americans arrested on unmarked border, lawyer says after hearing on Sunday.
Two US citizens jailed in Iran on charges of espionage and illegal entry are expected to receive a court verdict on August 7, their lawyer said after a court hearing in the capital, Tehran.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, were arrested along with Sarah Shourd, 32, on the unmarked border between Iran and Iraq on July 31, 2009.
The verdict is be issued "soon", Al-Alam television, an Iranian Arabic station said, quoting Iran's general prosecutor, following Sunday's hearing.
All three defendants have denied the charges and said they were only hiking in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Dorsa Jabbari, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, spoke to the lawyer representing the three Americans.
"He expected a verdict to be delivered within a week, but according to a judiciary spokesman the verdict will handed down "at some point in the near future". Their lawyer is confident that the proceedings went his way and that his clients will be freed very shortly. However, this case is a very sensitive one in the Islamic Republic. There has been speculation in the past that the Americans will be released.
"I think the verdict being handed down within a week's time is certainly an optimistic opinion from the lawyer at this stage," Jabbari said.
Sara Shourd had not been summoned to attend the hearing, a sign the lawyer believed to indicate that this his clients could be freed immediately.
Shourd, who is being tried in absentia, returned to the US following her release on humanitarian and medical grounds in September 2010, for which a bail of about $500,000 was paid.
'Happy ending?'
"Since the hearing date coincides with the two year anniversary of their arrest, and it is the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, I am hopeful that this case has a happy ending," their lawyer Masoud Shafii told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
"I believe that they are innocent; the espionage charges have no relevance. Even if the court does not accept my defence, the two years they've spent behind bars is punishment enough."
Ahead of the new hearing, the families of the detained issued a statement on Friday in New York, and Shourd used her statement to wish Muslims in Iran and everywhere a blessed Ramadan on behalf of the families of the two men.
"Please, if you could make a little room in your prayers on the eve of Ramadan for my fiancé, my friend and our families, it would mean the world to us," she said.
The trial has been hit by a number of delays since November 6, 2010, when it was postponed to February 6, 2011 over what was termed "an error in the judicial proceedings".
Another hearing scheduled for May 11 this year was cancelled after Fattal and Bauer were not brought before the court, according to Shafii.
Shourd, who did not attend the February 6 hearing, told AFP in Washington that she will not return to Iran to join the other two in the dock.
She said she had sent Iran's revolutionary court a five-page evaluation by a clinical forensic psychologist, who concluded she was at high risk of psychological problems if she returned to face espionage charges.
Strained US-Iran relations
Shafii said he has met Bauer and Fattal only twice, the last time on February 6, 2011 when they appeared in court for the first hearing.
"I still have not met them (for) the lawyer-client meeting that I have requested. They told me that they will inform me and I am still pursuing it," he said.
The US government has appealed for the two men to be released, insisting that they have done nothing wrong.
Iran and the US have no direct diplomatic relations, so Washington has been relying on an interests section at the Swiss embassy to follow the case.
 |
| Sara Shourd, centre, is being tried in absentia following her release from Iran on medical grounds [GALLO/GETTY] |
|
| Sara Shourd, centre, is being tried in absentia following her release from Iran on medical grounds [GALLO/GETTY] |
Two US citizens jailed in Iran on charges of espionage and illegal entry are expected to receive a court verdict on August 7, their lawyer said after a court hearing in the capital, Tehran.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, were arrested along with Sarah Shourd, 32, on the unmarked border between Iran and Iraq on July 31, 2009.
The verdict is be issued "soon", Al-Alam television, an Iranian Arabic station said, quoting Iran's general prosecutor, following Sunday's hearing.
All three defendants have denied the charges and said they were only hiking in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Dorsa Jabbari, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, spoke to the lawyer representing the three Americans.
"He expected a verdict to be delivered within a week, but according to a judiciary spokesman the verdict will handed down "at some point in the near future". Their lawyer is confident that the proceedings went his way and that his clients will be freed very shortly. However, this case is a very sensitive one in the Islamic Republic. There has been speculation in the past that the Americans will be released.
"I think the verdict being handed down within a week's time is certainly an optimistic opinion from the lawyer at this stage," Jabbari said.
Sara Shourd had not been summoned to attend the hearing, a sign the lawyer believed to indicate that this his clients could be freed immediately.
Shourd, who is being tried in absentia, returned to the US following her release on humanitarian and medical grounds in September 2010, for which a bail of about $500,000 was paid.
'Happy ending?'
"Since the hearing date coincides with the two year anniversary of their arrest, and it is the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, I am hopeful that this case has a happy ending," their lawyer Masoud Shafii told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
"I believe that they are innocent; the espionage charges have no relevance. Even if the court does not accept my defence, the two years they've spent behind bars is punishment enough."
Ahead of the new hearing, the families of the detained issued a statement on Friday in New York, and Shourd used her statement to wish Muslims in Iran and everywhere a blessed Ramadan on behalf of the families of the two men.
"Please, if you could make a little room in your prayers on the eve of Ramadan for my fiancé, my friend and our families, it would mean the world to us," she said.
The trial has been hit by a number of delays since November 6, 2010, when it was postponed to February 6, 2011 over what was termed "an error in the judicial proceedings".
Another hearing scheduled for May 11 this year was cancelled after Fattal and Bauer were not brought before the court, according to Shafii.
Shourd, who did not attend the February 6 hearing, told AFP in Washington that she will not return to Iran to join the other two in the dock.
She said she had sent Iran's revolutionary court a five-page evaluation by a clinical forensic psychologist, who concluded she was at high risk of psychological problems if she returned to face espionage charges.
Strained US-Iran relations
Shafii said he has met Bauer and Fattal only twice, the last time on February 6, 2011 when they appeared in court for the first hearing.
"I still have not met them (for) the lawyer-client meeting that I have requested. They told me that they will inform me and I am still pursuing it," he said.
The US government has appealed for the two men to be released, insisting that they have done nothing wrong.
Iran and the US have no direct diplomatic relations, so Washington has been relying on an interests section at the Swiss embassy to follow the case.
Mexico 'drug enforcer admits 1,500 killings'
Officials say detained ex-police officer has confessed to ordering deaths while working for Ciudad Juarez drug cartel.
Mexican police say a suspected drug cartel leader they arrested last week has confessed to ordering the killing of 1,500 people in northern Chihuahua state.
Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez is also a suspect in the murder of a United States consulate employee last year near a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez.
Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, said on Sunday that the capture was "the biggest blow" to organised crime in Ciudad Juarez since he first sent about 5,000 federal police personnel to the city in April 2010 in a bid to curb violence in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Acosta, 33, was caught on Friday in the northern city of Chihuahua, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-drug unit.
The arrest was not confirmed until Sunday, just before Acosta was displayed to the media in Mexico City.
He was limping as he was brought before the cameras, escorted by two masked federal police officers.
Acosta, who is nicknamed "El Diego", told federal police that he had ordered 1,500 killings, Pequeno announced at the news conference.
Investigators say that he was also the mastermind behind an attack that killed a US consulate employee, her husband and the husband of another consulate worker, in Ciudad Juarez.
US prosecutors say they want to try him in that case, and a federal indictment filed in the western district of Texas names Acosta and nine others as conspiring to kill the three US citizens.
Pequeno said that he expects an extradition request to be filed by the US government.
Mexican authorities have identified Acosta as the head of La Linea, a gang of hit men and corrupt police officers who have been acting as the enforcers of the Juarez cartel.
Pequeno said that Acosta acknowledged that he had ordered such crimes as the detonation of a July 2010 car bomb and a massacre that killed 15 people at a birthday party. Both events took place in Ciudad Juarez.
The Juarez cartel, allegedly led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, has been losing ground in recent times to the Sinaloa drug trafficking organisation, headed by Joaqiun "El Chapo" Guzman.
The two groups have been locked in a three-year battle over the border city's smuggling corridors.
Fuentes and Juan Pablo Ledezma, allegedly his top lieutenant, remain at large.
'Hands-on manager'
Acosta is a former state police officer, and built a criminal empire out of leading a gang of contract killers for the Juarez cartel and extorting businesses, as well as carrying out kidnappings for ransom, said Tony Payan, an expert on the drug war at the University of Texas at El Paso.
"This is an enforcer and the financial arm of the Juarez Cartel,'' said Payan, whose research comes from both newspaper accounts and people living in Ciudad Juarez.
Payan said Acosta was able to gather intelligence using informants from within local police forces, given his own past experience with law enforcement.
He said that Acosta's arrest could reduce the number of murders in Juarez, where more than 3,000 murders were recorded last year.
"He was a very hands-on manager that was practically involved in the management and organisation, personally brokering every single activity and every single murder," Payan said.
Mexican police say a suspected drug cartel leader they arrested last week has confessed to ordering the killing of 1,500 people in northern Chihuahua state.
Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez is also a suspect in the murder of a United States consulate employee last year near a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez.
Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, said on Sunday that the capture was "the biggest blow" to organised crime in Ciudad Juarez since he first sent about 5,000 federal police personnel to the city in April 2010 in a bid to curb violence in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Acosta, 33, was caught on Friday in the northern city of Chihuahua, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-drug unit.
The arrest was not confirmed until Sunday, just before Acosta was displayed to the media in Mexico City.
He was limping as he was brought before the cameras, escorted by two masked federal police officers.
Acosta, who is nicknamed "El Diego", told federal police that he had ordered 1,500 killings, Pequeno announced at the news conference.
Investigators say that he was also the mastermind behind an attack that killed a US consulate employee, her husband and the husband of another consulate worker, in Ciudad Juarez.
US prosecutors say they want to try him in that case, and a federal indictment filed in the western district of Texas names Acosta and nine others as conspiring to kill the three US citizens.
Pequeno said that he expects an extradition request to be filed by the US government.
Mexican authorities have identified Acosta as the head of La Linea, a gang of hit men and corrupt police officers who have been acting as the enforcers of the Juarez cartel.
Pequeno said that Acosta acknowledged that he had ordered such crimes as the detonation of a July 2010 car bomb and a massacre that killed 15 people at a birthday party. Both events took place in Ciudad Juarez.
The Juarez cartel, allegedly led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, has been losing ground in recent times to the Sinaloa drug trafficking organisation, headed by Joaqiun "El Chapo" Guzman.
The two groups have been locked in a three-year battle over the border city's smuggling corridors.
Fuentes and Juan Pablo Ledezma, allegedly his top lieutenant, remain at large.
'Hands-on manager'
Acosta is a former state police officer, and built a criminal empire out of leading a gang of contract killers for the Juarez cartel and extorting businesses, as well as carrying out kidnappings for ransom, said Tony Payan, an expert on the drug war at the University of Texas at El Paso.
"This is an enforcer and the financial arm of the Juarez Cartel,'' said Payan, whose research comes from both newspaper accounts and people living in Ciudad Juarez.
Payan said Acosta was able to gather intelligence using informants from within local police forces, given his own past experience with law enforcement.
He said that Acosta's arrest could reduce the number of murders in Juarez, where more than 3,000 murders were recorded last year.
"He was a very hands-on manager that was practically involved in the management and organisation, personally brokering every single activity and every single murder," Payan said.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables
WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits? The need is indisputable, since heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the Standard American Diet. (Yes, it’s SAD.)
Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives.
And — not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending — a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs.
Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix.
Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks. The resulting income should be earmarked for a program that encourages a sound diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available.
The average American consumes 44.7 gallons of soft drinks annually. (Although that includes diet sodas, it does not include noncarbonated sweetened beverages, which add up to at least 17 gallons a person per year.) Sweetened drinks could be taxed at 2 cents per ounce, so a six-pack of Pepsi would cost $1.44 more than it does now. An equivalent tax on fries might be 50 cents per serving; a quarter extra for a doughnut. (We have experts who can figure out how “bad” a food should be to qualify, and what the rate should be; right now they’re busy calculating ethanol subsidies. Diet sodas would not be taxed.)
Simply put: taxes would reduce consumption of unhealthful foods and generate billions of dollars annually. That money could be used to subsidize the purchase of staple foods like seasonal greens, vegetables, whole grains, dried legumes and fruit.
We could sell those staples cheap — let’s say for 50 cents a pound — and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas, supermarkets, liquor stores, even schools, libraries and other community centers.
This program would, of course, upset the processed food industry. Oh well. It would also bug those who might resent paying more for soda and chips and argue that their right to eat whatever they wanted was being breached. But public health is the role of the government, and our diet is right up there with any other public responsibility you can name, from water treatment to mass transit.
Some advocates for the poor say taxes like these are unfair because low-income people pay a higher percentage of their income for food and would find it more difficult to buy soda or junk. But since poor people suffer disproportionately from the cost of high-quality, fresh foods, subsidizing those foods would be particularly beneficial to them.
Right now it’s harder for many people to buy fruit than Froot Loops; chips and Coke are a common breakfast. And since the rate of diabetes continues to soar — one-third of all Americans either have diabetes or are pre-diabetic, most with Type 2 diabetes, the kind associated with bad eating habits — and because our health care bills are on the verge of becoming truly insurmountable, this is urgent for economic sanity as well as national health.
Justifying a Tax
At least 30 cities and states have considered taxes on soda or all sugar-sweetened beverages, and they’re a logical target: of the 278 additional calories Americans on average consumed per day between 1977 and 2001, more than 40 percent came from soda, “fruit” drinks, mixes like Kool-Aid and Crystal Light, and beverages like Red Bull, Gatorade and dubious offerings like Vitamin Water, which contains half as much sugar as Coke.
Some states already have taxes on soda — mostly low, ineffective sales taxes paid at the register. The current talk is of excise taxes, levied before purchase.
Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives.
And — not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending — a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs.
Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix.
Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks. The resulting income should be earmarked for a program that encourages a sound diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available.
The average American consumes 44.7 gallons of soft drinks annually. (Although that includes diet sodas, it does not include noncarbonated sweetened beverages, which add up to at least 17 gallons a person per year.) Sweetened drinks could be taxed at 2 cents per ounce, so a six-pack of Pepsi would cost $1.44 more than it does now. An equivalent tax on fries might be 50 cents per serving; a quarter extra for a doughnut. (We have experts who can figure out how “bad” a food should be to qualify, and what the rate should be; right now they’re busy calculating ethanol subsidies. Diet sodas would not be taxed.)
Simply put: taxes would reduce consumption of unhealthful foods and generate billions of dollars annually. That money could be used to subsidize the purchase of staple foods like seasonal greens, vegetables, whole grains, dried legumes and fruit.
We could sell those staples cheap — let’s say for 50 cents a pound — and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas, supermarkets, liquor stores, even schools, libraries and other community centers.
This program would, of course, upset the processed food industry. Oh well. It would also bug those who might resent paying more for soda and chips and argue that their right to eat whatever they wanted was being breached. But public health is the role of the government, and our diet is right up there with any other public responsibility you can name, from water treatment to mass transit.
Some advocates for the poor say taxes like these are unfair because low-income people pay a higher percentage of their income for food and would find it more difficult to buy soda or junk. But since poor people suffer disproportionately from the cost of high-quality, fresh foods, subsidizing those foods would be particularly beneficial to them.
Right now it’s harder for many people to buy fruit than Froot Loops; chips and Coke are a common breakfast. And since the rate of diabetes continues to soar — one-third of all Americans either have diabetes or are pre-diabetic, most with Type 2 diabetes, the kind associated with bad eating habits — and because our health care bills are on the verge of becoming truly insurmountable, this is urgent for economic sanity as well as national health.
Justifying a Tax
At least 30 cities and states have considered taxes on soda or all sugar-sweetened beverages, and they’re a logical target: of the 278 additional calories Americans on average consumed per day between 1977 and 2001, more than 40 percent came from soda, “fruit” drinks, mixes like Kool-Aid and Crystal Light, and beverages like Red Bull, Gatorade and dubious offerings like Vitamin Water, which contains half as much sugar as Coke.
Some states already have taxes on soda — mostly low, ineffective sales taxes paid at the register. The current talk is of excise taxes, levied before purchase.
Police Say Oslo Suspect Admits ‘Facts’ in Massacre
OSLO — The Norwegian man charged the with attacks in and near Oslo that killed over 90 people has admitted “to the facts” of the case, the police and his lawyer said on Sunday, and says he acted alone in a strike eerily foretold in a detailed manifesto calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination.
The attacks on Friday — a bombing in central Oslo closely followed by a bloody rampage against young people on nearby Utoya Island — was the deadliest attack in this Nordic nation since World War II, and it stunned many in a population of about five million who consider their country to be a haven of peace.
The police said on Sunday that the number of fatalities had risen to 93 from 92 with the death of one of the 97 people who had been reported as injured. Most of the bodies were found on Utoya Island, where young people from the governing Labor Party had gathered for an annual camp.
The police identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian. Acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.
Police divers were still searching the lake around Utoya Island for bodies, and said there were fears the death toll could rise again. “We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said Saturday. “What we know is that he is right wing and a Christian fundamentalist.”
Armed officers raided a location in eastern Oslo on Sunday and briefly detained several people before releasing them. Nothing had been found linking them to terrorism, the police said.
On Sunday, muted and shaken by the magnitude of the killings, many people gathered at the Lutheran cathedral here in Oslo to mourn. King Harald V and Queen Sonja, both dabbing tears, joined Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and other dignitaries for a service inside.
“We are crying with you; we feel for you,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. The two days since the killings “feels like an eternity — hours and days and nights filled with shock and angst and weeping,” he said.
“Each and every one of those who has left us is a tragedy,” he added. “Together, it is a national tragedy.”
A minister told mourners packed into the pews under the cathedral’s chandeliered ceiling that “hate cannot triumph over love.” Hundreds of others gathered on a rain-swept plaza outside, where they left carpets of flowers and candles. “That is why we are holding one another today,” the minister said.
Tured Mong, a pensioner, said she had driven 40 miles with her husband to bring flowers from her garden and a candle she wanted to light. “I only want to lay them down here,” Ms. Mong said outside the cathedral. “I am sorry for all the parents waiting to find some news who don’t know about their children.”
Evy Andersen, from Oslo, brought a sunflower from her garden. “I have a niece who has been to this camp twice, and she has many friends who are missing. She is wondering about them. I did this for her and for myself.”
News reports spoke of immigrants arriving at the cathedral before the service to show respect for the dead. Lemeo Le, a refugee from Vietnam 21 years ago, said: “Norway helped the Vietnamese people to come here. They were very welcoming. I have a job and a family, and I wanted to come. It is very sad for all the young people.”
Borge Wilhemsen, a Labor Party activist, said he drove for five hours to be at the memorial service and brought his 6-year-old daughter. “You can’t take them away from everything,” he said, referring to his daughter. “They have to learn that life is sometimes hard. I have not told her everything. I told her that there were two big accidents.”
In video footage broadcast by Norwegian television stations on Sunday, Geir Lippestad, Mr. Breivik’s lawyer, said his client would address a court hearing on Monday about what he had done. “He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary,” the lawyer said. Mr. Breivik has “admitted his guilt to the actual facts,” the lawyer said, declining to go into detail. He added, “This is an action that has been planned for some time.”
Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press
Women wept at a memorial service at Oslo Cathedral on Sunday for the victims of the attacks in and near Oslo
But “he is not admitting criminal guilt,” the acting police chief in Oslo, Sveinung Sponheim, told a news conference, and his claim to have acted alone contrasted with “some of the witness statements,” Reuters reported. The attacks on Friday — a bombing in central Oslo closely followed by a bloody rampage against young people on nearby Utoya Island — was the deadliest attack in this Nordic nation since World War II, and it stunned many in a population of about five million who consider their country to be a haven of peace.
The police said on Sunday that the number of fatalities had risen to 93 from 92 with the death of one of the 97 people who had been reported as injured. Most of the bodies were found on Utoya Island, where young people from the governing Labor Party had gathered for an annual camp.
The police identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian. Acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.
Police divers were still searching the lake around Utoya Island for bodies, and said there were fears the death toll could rise again. “We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said Saturday. “What we know is that he is right wing and a Christian fundamentalist.”
Armed officers raided a location in eastern Oslo on Sunday and briefly detained several people before releasing them. Nothing had been found linking them to terrorism, the police said.
On Sunday, muted and shaken by the magnitude of the killings, many people gathered at the Lutheran cathedral here in Oslo to mourn. King Harald V and Queen Sonja, both dabbing tears, joined Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and other dignitaries for a service inside.
“We are crying with you; we feel for you,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. The two days since the killings “feels like an eternity — hours and days and nights filled with shock and angst and weeping,” he said.
“Each and every one of those who has left us is a tragedy,” he added. “Together, it is a national tragedy.”
A minister told mourners packed into the pews under the cathedral’s chandeliered ceiling that “hate cannot triumph over love.” Hundreds of others gathered on a rain-swept plaza outside, where they left carpets of flowers and candles. “That is why we are holding one another today,” the minister said.
Tured Mong, a pensioner, said she had driven 40 miles with her husband to bring flowers from her garden and a candle she wanted to light. “I only want to lay them down here,” Ms. Mong said outside the cathedral. “I am sorry for all the parents waiting to find some news who don’t know about their children.”
Evy Andersen, from Oslo, brought a sunflower from her garden. “I have a niece who has been to this camp twice, and she has many friends who are missing. She is wondering about them. I did this for her and for myself.”
News reports spoke of immigrants arriving at the cathedral before the service to show respect for the dead. Lemeo Le, a refugee from Vietnam 21 years ago, said: “Norway helped the Vietnamese people to come here. They were very welcoming. I have a job and a family, and I wanted to come. It is very sad for all the young people.”
Borge Wilhemsen, a Labor Party activist, said he drove for five hours to be at the memorial service and brought his 6-year-old daughter. “You can’t take them away from everything,” he said, referring to his daughter. “They have to learn that life is sometimes hard. I have not told her everything. I told her that there were two big accidents.”
In video footage broadcast by Norwegian television stations on Sunday, Geir Lippestad, Mr. Breivik’s lawyer, said his client would address a court hearing on Monday about what he had done. “He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary,” the lawyer said. Mr. Breivik has “admitted his guilt to the actual facts,” the lawyer said, declining to go into detail. He added, “This is an action that has been planned for some time.”
Train Wreck in China
BEIJING — A train accident in eastern China over the weekend has added to a national sense that safety is taking a back seat to the country’s spectacular infrastructure development.
By Sunday night, rescuers said they did not expect to recover more bodies, although some of the dead were still being identified.
Government officials responded switftly, with President Hu Jintao calling the rescue work a national priority. China’s railway minister, Sheng Guangzu, rushed to the scene to supervise operations. Mr. Sheng took control of the powerful ministry earlier this year after his predecessor and several associates were fired and investigated for corruption.
But China’s vocal online bloggers expressed anger at the priorities highlighted by the rescue.
Photos on the popular Weibo microblogging service showed backhoes burying the wrecked train near the site. Critics said the wreckage needed to be carefully examined for causes of the malfunction, but the railway ministry said that the trains contain valuable national technology and could not be left in the open in case it fell into the wrong hands.
Foreign companies maintain that some crucial technology was stolen from their imported trains. But more importantly to domestic audiences is the perception of a coverup. Initial reports of how the accident occurred are already being partly contradicted by reports in the official media.
The Railway Ministry issued a statement Saturday night that said the first train had been struck by lightning and lost power. It did not explain why the second train was not signaled to stop. In addition, new reports on Xinhua indicate that the first train had started to move by the time it was struck. The ministry has not explained the discrepency.
The wreck is one of several high-profile public transportation accidents in China recently. Early Friday, 41 people died when an overloaded bus caught fire in central China’s Henan province.
Earlier this month, an escalator at a subway station in Beijing collapsed, killing one and injuring 28. Last week alone, four bridges collapsed in various Chinese cities.
Signaling government concern over growing public unease, the government issued a directive Saturday calling for “intensified efforts in preventing major deadly accidents.”
Discussion of accidents in China, however, is haphazard. In an unusually frank editorial in the Communist Party paper, People’s Daily earlier this month, a commentator said China needed “zero tolerance for concealing major accidents.” But the commentator said many disasters are covered up, such as a major oil spill that was hidden from public view for over a month.
The sense that transparency and safety is secondary to other concerns was present in many Weibo postings Sunday. One blogger in particular posted an eloquent appeal for more care and caution in China’s rapid development:
“China, please stop your flying pace, wait for your people, wait for your soul, wait for your morality, wait for your conscience! Don’t let the train run out off track, don’t let the bridges collapse, don’t let the roads become traps, don’t let houses become ruins. Walk slowly, allowing every life to have freedom and dignity. No one should be left behind by our era.”
Zhaoyun/European Pressphoto Agency
Workers sorted through the wreckage of train carriages which had fallen off a bridge in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang province on Sunday. At least 35 people were killed and 210 injured.
The wreck on Saturday night killed 35 and injured 210 after a high-speed train lost power for more than 20 minutes and then was rear-ended by another train, according to the Xinhua news agency. Six cars derailed and two fell off a viaduct near the city of Wenzhou. By Sunday night, rescuers said they did not expect to recover more bodies, although some of the dead were still being identified.
Government officials responded switftly, with President Hu Jintao calling the rescue work a national priority. China’s railway minister, Sheng Guangzu, rushed to the scene to supervise operations. Mr. Sheng took control of the powerful ministry earlier this year after his predecessor and several associates were fired and investigated for corruption.
But China’s vocal online bloggers expressed anger at the priorities highlighted by the rescue.
Photos on the popular Weibo microblogging service showed backhoes burying the wrecked train near the site. Critics said the wreckage needed to be carefully examined for causes of the malfunction, but the railway ministry said that the trains contain valuable national technology and could not be left in the open in case it fell into the wrong hands.
Foreign companies maintain that some crucial technology was stolen from their imported trains. But more importantly to domestic audiences is the perception of a coverup. Initial reports of how the accident occurred are already being partly contradicted by reports in the official media.
The Railway Ministry issued a statement Saturday night that said the first train had been struck by lightning and lost power. It did not explain why the second train was not signaled to stop. In addition, new reports on Xinhua indicate that the first train had started to move by the time it was struck. The ministry has not explained the discrepency.
The wreck is one of several high-profile public transportation accidents in China recently. Early Friday, 41 people died when an overloaded bus caught fire in central China’s Henan province.
Earlier this month, an escalator at a subway station in Beijing collapsed, killing one and injuring 28. Last week alone, four bridges collapsed in various Chinese cities.
Signaling government concern over growing public unease, the government issued a directive Saturday calling for “intensified efforts in preventing major deadly accidents.”
Discussion of accidents in China, however, is haphazard. In an unusually frank editorial in the Communist Party paper, People’s Daily earlier this month, a commentator said China needed “zero tolerance for concealing major accidents.” But the commentator said many disasters are covered up, such as a major oil spill that was hidden from public view for over a month.
The sense that transparency and safety is secondary to other concerns was present in many Weibo postings Sunday. One blogger in particular posted an eloquent appeal for more care and caution in China’s rapid development:
“China, please stop your flying pace, wait for your people, wait for your soul, wait for your morality, wait for your conscience! Don’t let the train run out off track, don’t let the bridges collapse, don’t let the roads become traps, don’t let houses become ruins. Walk slowly, allowing every life to have freedom and dignity. No one should be left behind by our era.”
Saturday, July 23, 2011
China: Death Toll Increases in Sinkiang
The authorities have increased the death toll in a clash on Monday in the restive western border region of Xinjiang, saying now that 18 people died in the violence. The state media reported on Monday that two police officers and two hostages had died in an attack on a police station in the city of Hotan. But state media said Wednesday that 14 others had also died in the attack. Exile groups representing the region’s largest minority, the Uighurs, said that the police had opened fired on unarmed demonstrators. But the state media said that protesters had attacked the station with grenades and explosives. Over the past two years, a series of riots and protests against the country’s majority ethnic group, the Han, has resulted in hundreds of deaths.
China: Fire on Overloaded Bus Kills 41
An overloaded double-decker bus burst into flames on a highway in central China early Friday, killing 41 people on board and injuring 6, the state media said. The official Xinhua News Agency said the six passengers who managed to escape the fire in Xinyang, in Henan Province, were all hospitalized, with one in critical condition. It said the bus, a sleeper coach, had a 35-passenger limit but was carrying 47 people It was unclear what caused the blaze.
Death Toll Rises to 91 in Norway Attacks
OSLO — The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a 32-year-old man, whom they identified as a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing connections, over the bombing of a government center here and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together left at least 91 people dead.
The police said they did not know if the man, identified in the Norwegian press as Anders Behring Breivik, was part of a larger conspiracy. He is being questioned under the country’s terrorism laws and is cooperating with the investigation, they said.
“We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised press conference, adding: “What we know is that he is right-wing and a Christian fundamentalist.” So far Mr. Breivik has not been linked to any anti-jihadist groups, he said.
Johan Fredriksen, chief of staff for the Oslo police, said they “are not surprised” that the attack had been the work of an ethnic Norwegian, a blond, blue-eyed man, saying “we think about scenarios.”
Soldiers were arriving in Oslo early Saturday to secure government buildings a day after the attacks, the deadliest on Norwegian soil since World War II.
The explosions in Oslo, from one or more bombs, turned the tidy Scandinavian capital into a scene reminiscent of terrorist attacks in Baghdad or Oklahoma City, panicking people and blowing out the windows of several government buildings, including one housing the office of the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who was unharmed.
Even as the police locked down a large area of the city after the blasts, the suspect, dressed as a police officer, entered the youth camp on the island of Utoya, about 19 miles northwest of Oslo, a Norwegian security official said, and opened fire. “He said it was a routine check in connection with the terror attack in Oslo,” one witness told VG Nett, the Web site of a national newspaper.
The police said the suspect had used “a machine pistol” in the attack, but declined to provide further details.
Of the at least 84 people killed on the island, some were as young as 16, the police said on national television early Saturday. They said the death toll could rise further as they continue to search for bodies in the waters around the island.
Terrified youths jumped into the water to escape. “Kids have started to swim in a panic, and Utoya is far from the mainland,” said Bjorn Jarle Roberg-Larsen, a Labor Party member who spoke by phone with teenagers on the island, which has no bridge to the mainland. “Others are hiding. Those I spoke with don’t want to talk more. They’re scared to death.”
Many could not flee in time.
“He first shot people on the island,” a 15-year-old camper named Elise told The Associated Press. “Afterward he started shooting people in the water.”
Most of the campers were teenagers but there were also adults on the island, who may have been among the victims.
After the shooting the police seized a 32-year-old Norwegian man on the island, according to the police and Justice Minister Knut Storberget. He was later identified as Anders Behring Breivik and characterized by officials as a right-wing extremist, citing previous writings including on his Facebook page.
The acting police chief, Sveinung Sponheim, said the suspect’s Internet postings “suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views, but if that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen.”
He said the suspect had also been seen in Oslo before the explosions. The police and other authorities declined to say what the suspect’s motivations might have been, but many speculated that the target was Mr. Stoltenberg’s liberal government.
“The police have every reason to believe there is a connection between the explosions and what happened at Utoya,” the police said. They said they later recovered explosives on the island.
Mr. Breivik had registered a farm-related business in Rena, in eastern Norway, which the authorities said allowed him to order a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient that can be used to make explosives. Authorities were investigating whether the chemical may have been used in the bombing.
The police said they did not know if the man, identified in the Norwegian press as Anders Behring Breivik, was part of a larger conspiracy. He is being questioned under the country’s terrorism laws and is cooperating with the investigation, they said.
“We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised press conference, adding: “What we know is that he is right-wing and a Christian fundamentalist.” So far Mr. Breivik has not been linked to any anti-jihadist groups, he said.
Johan Fredriksen, chief of staff for the Oslo police, said they “are not surprised” that the attack had been the work of an ethnic Norwegian, a blond, blue-eyed man, saying “we think about scenarios.”
Soldiers were arriving in Oslo early Saturday to secure government buildings a day after the attacks, the deadliest on Norwegian soil since World War II.
The explosions in Oslo, from one or more bombs, turned the tidy Scandinavian capital into a scene reminiscent of terrorist attacks in Baghdad or Oklahoma City, panicking people and blowing out the windows of several government buildings, including one housing the office of the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who was unharmed.
Even as the police locked down a large area of the city after the blasts, the suspect, dressed as a police officer, entered the youth camp on the island of Utoya, about 19 miles northwest of Oslo, a Norwegian security official said, and opened fire. “He said it was a routine check in connection with the terror attack in Oslo,” one witness told VG Nett, the Web site of a national newspaper.
The police said the suspect had used “a machine pistol” in the attack, but declined to provide further details.
Of the at least 84 people killed on the island, some were as young as 16, the police said on national television early Saturday. They said the death toll could rise further as they continue to search for bodies in the waters around the island.
Terrified youths jumped into the water to escape. “Kids have started to swim in a panic, and Utoya is far from the mainland,” said Bjorn Jarle Roberg-Larsen, a Labor Party member who spoke by phone with teenagers on the island, which has no bridge to the mainland. “Others are hiding. Those I spoke with don’t want to talk more. They’re scared to death.”
Many could not flee in time.
“He first shot people on the island,” a 15-year-old camper named Elise told The Associated Press. “Afterward he started shooting people in the water.”
Most of the campers were teenagers but there were also adults on the island, who may have been among the victims.
After the shooting the police seized a 32-year-old Norwegian man on the island, according to the police and Justice Minister Knut Storberget. He was later identified as Anders Behring Breivik and characterized by officials as a right-wing extremist, citing previous writings including on his Facebook page.
The acting police chief, Sveinung Sponheim, said the suspect’s Internet postings “suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views, but if that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen.”
He said the suspect had also been seen in Oslo before the explosions. The police and other authorities declined to say what the suspect’s motivations might have been, but many speculated that the target was Mr. Stoltenberg’s liberal government.
“The police have every reason to believe there is a connection between the explosions and what happened at Utoya,” the police said. They said they later recovered explosives on the island.
Mr. Breivik had registered a farm-related business in Rena, in eastern Norway, which the authorities said allowed him to order a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient that can be used to make explosives. Authorities were investigating whether the chemical may have been used in the bombing.
Latest news about Norway attack kills 87
Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old suspect in Friday's attacks in Norway, held right-wing views, say police.
Both Mr Breivik's Facebook and Twitter entries are only a few days old
Police chief Sveinung Sponheim said his internet postings "suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views".
"But whether that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen," he told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Little is currently known about him apart from what has appeared on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter - and these entries appear to have been set up just days ago.
On the Facebook page attributed to him, he describes himself as a Christian and a conservative. The Facebook page is no longer available but it also listed interests such as body-building and freemasonry.
The gunman was described by witnesses who saw him on Utoeya island as tall and blond - and dressed in a police uniform. The image of him posted on Facebook depict a blond, blue-eyed man.
The Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang quoted a friend as saying that the suspect turned to right-wing extremism when in his late 20s. The paper also said that he participated in online forums expressing strong nationalistic views.
Bomb ingredient Mr Breivik is thought to have studied at the Oslo Commerce School and his work is listed as Breivik Geofarm, a company Norwegian media is describing as a farming sole proprietorship.
The company was set up to cultivate vegetables, melons, roots and tubers, Norway's TV2 says, and speculation in local media is rife that through such a link he may have had access to fertiliser, an ingredient used in bomb-making.
A Twitter account attributed to the suspect has also emerged but it only has one post, which is a quote from philosopher John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."
As with his Facebook page, the tweet was posted on 17 July.
It reveals very little about the man except an interest in libertarianism and a clear belief in the power of the individual.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Egypt sentences ex-trade minister
Egypt's former Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid has been sentenced to five years in prison in absentia for embezzling public funds.
Rachid fled his home country after the uprisingA number of former top ministers who served under ousted President Hosni Mubarak are currently being detained on various charges.
Mr Mubarak was forced from power in February after 18 days of protests.
The former leader, who is in custody at a military hospital, is due to go on trial on 3 August, alongside his sons, Alaa and Gamal.
Earlier this month, a court sentenced former Egyptian finance minister Yussef Boutros Ghali to 30 years in prison in absentia, also on corruption charges.
Deadly suicide attack on Afghan hospital
At least 30 people killed and many others injured in bombing in eastern Logar province.
At least 30 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack at a hospital in Afghanistan.
Estimates of the casualties, which included patients and medical staff, varied widely as chaos enveloped the facility in Azra district of eastern Logar province, which is just south of capital Kabul. Dozens more were wounded in the attack.
Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar provincial government, said as many as 35 people were killed, although Afghanistan's Interior Ministry put the death toll at 20.
"The exact target is still not clear," Interior minister deputy spokesman Najib Nikzad said.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack in which he said "tens of civilians" were killed.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied responsibility for the attack. "We condemn this attack on a hospital ... whoever has done this wants to defame the Taliban," he said.
Din Mohammad Darwaish said the bomber had been driving an "an SUV packed with explosives".
"The target of the blast is not clear but what is obvious is that a hospital was attacked and civilians were killed ... The casualties are all patients, their visitors and relatives and hospital personnel."
Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Kabul, said the hospital was mainly treating women and children. He said the explosion had been described as "enormous" and had completely razed the building and one next to it.
The head of Logar's provincial council, Abdul Wali Wakeel, said local officials had contacted foreign forces to ask for help in evacuating the wounded to hospital.
Counterterrorism summit
Saturday's attack came as Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a counterterrorism summit in Iran that despite his government's efforts, militancy was on the rise in both his country and the region.
"Unfortunately, despite all the achievements in the fields of education, infrastructure and reconstruction, not only has Afghanistan not yet achieved peace and security, but terrorism is expanding and threatening more than ever Afghanistan and the region," he told the opening session.
On Friday, 10 people were killed by a bicycle bomb, which went off in a busy bazaar in Khad Abad district of the northern province of Kunduz.
Earlier this week, US President Barack Obama announced that 33,000 US forces would leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer.
All foreign combat forces are due to pull out of the country by the end of 2014. There are currently up to 150,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan, including around 99,000 from the US.
Some analysts fear that Afghan security forces may struggle to contain violence, which has reached record levels, as withdrawals start to get under way.
Nearly 2,800 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year, according to the United Nations.
 |
At least 30 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack at a hospital in Afghanistan.
Estimates of the casualties, which included patients and medical staff, varied widely as chaos enveloped the facility in Azra district of eastern Logar province, which is just south of capital Kabul. Dozens more were wounded in the attack.
Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar provincial government, said as many as 35 people were killed, although Afghanistan's Interior Ministry put the death toll at 20.
"The exact target is still not clear," Interior minister deputy spokesman Najib Nikzad said.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack in which he said "tens of civilians" were killed.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied responsibility for the attack. "We condemn this attack on a hospital ... whoever has done this wants to defame the Taliban," he said.
Din Mohammad Darwaish said the bomber had been driving an "an SUV packed with explosives".
"The target of the blast is not clear but what is obvious is that a hospital was attacked and civilians were killed ... The casualties are all patients, their visitors and relatives and hospital personnel."
Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Kabul, said the hospital was mainly treating women and children. He said the explosion had been described as "enormous" and had completely razed the building and one next to it.
The head of Logar's provincial council, Abdul Wali Wakeel, said local officials had contacted foreign forces to ask for help in evacuating the wounded to hospital.
Counterterrorism summit
| Afghan civilian casualties | ||
| ||
Saturday's attack came as Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a counterterrorism summit in Iran that despite his government's efforts, militancy was on the rise in both his country and the region.
"Unfortunately, despite all the achievements in the fields of education, infrastructure and reconstruction, not only has Afghanistan not yet achieved peace and security, but terrorism is expanding and threatening more than ever Afghanistan and the region," he told the opening session.
On Friday, 10 people were killed by a bicycle bomb, which went off in a busy bazaar in Khad Abad district of the northern province of Kunduz.
Earlier this week, US President Barack Obama announced that 33,000 US forces would leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer.
All foreign combat forces are due to pull out of the country by the end of 2014. There are currently up to 150,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan, including around 99,000 from the US.
Some analysts fear that Afghan security forces may struggle to contain violence, which has reached record levels, as withdrawals start to get under way.
Nearly 2,800 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year, according to the United Nations.
CNN sportscaster Nick Charles dies at 64
ATLANTA – Broadcaster Nick Charles, who became CNN's first sports anchor, has died after a two-year fight with bladder cancer. He was 64.
The Atlanta-based cable network said Charles died in Santa Fe, N.M. He had been with the network from its beginning in 1980.
CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton said Saturday Charles helped put CNN on the map with his intelligence, style and passion.
Walton said in a statement that his passing is a loss to CNN, to the sports world and to fans and friends everywhere.
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