Caption :: King Abdullah on Wedensday welcomes Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
Hamas deploys 3,000-member security force across Gaza Strip (click on for article content)
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Ahmadinejad scorns EU atomic incentives
Caption :: King Abdullah on Wedensday welcomes Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
Hamas deploys 3,000-member security force across Gaza Strip (click on for article content)
The Jihadist Empire and it's ever encompassing growth. Even Jordan. (click on)
The greatest failure by the Bush Administration, crony Republican Senate and House was to PREVENT the ever emerging 'network' of nations now seeking nuclear weapons while identifying with their Anti-West and Anti-Israeli roots.
Currently Hamas is over taking any civilized form of government while the Civil War in Iraq is bioling over. The only strip of land between the two is Jordan. There has definately been an increasing military 'demeanor' of the Jordanian King, especially since the bombings by Iraqi terrorists. Now he is shaking hands with representatives of Iran in the "Jordan Times."
Beyond the Iraqi border is Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Do I have to spell out the complete ineffectiveness of the Bush White House and the USA military? Is it any surprise Rumsfeld is back peddling on reducing the USA troop number by the holiday season of 2006? The countries surrounding Iraq are preparing to eliminate the American presence. We need to 'off shore' deploy our military near Israel if that country is to survive and we need to redeploy larger numbers of USA troops back into Afghanistan along with the Brits.
Morning Papers - continued ...
BBC
Afghanistan sees violence upsurge
Hundreds of UK troops are leading security operations in Helmand
Up to 100 people have died in some of Afghanistan's fiercest fighting since US-led forces ousted the Taleban regime in 2001.
Taleban fighters are battling police in Helmand province where officials say 50 militants and 13 police died.
Coalition and Afghan troops conducted more operations in Kandahar, and say at least 25 militants died in two separate clashes there.
A US national was killed by a suicide bomber in Herat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4992462.stm
Fighting a strengthening Taleban
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Afghanistan
Taleban fighters are able to attack, then melt away into communities
Southern Afghanistan was the birthplace of the Taleban and over the past few months it seems the remnants of the former government are still determined to fight.
The attacks have taken the form of confrontations, like that seen in Helmand and Kandahar over the last 24 hours; suicide attacks - there were two on Thursday - or roadside bombs targeting military convoys.
There is no doubt the strength of the insurgents has been increasing and the thousands of British and international troops moving into the south of the country will have their hands full.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4994448.stm
Pakistan's Taleban gamble
By Aamer Ahmed Khan
BBC News, Peshawar
Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters escaped the Tora Bora assault
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf says his country's battle against al-Qaeda in the lawless tribal region has almost been won.
He says he is more worried about the rise of Taleban-like extremism in the tribal area of Waziristan.
But those watching the current conflict in Waziristan say it is unrealistic to separate the two entities.
They argue that al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in fact locked in a symbiotic relationship in which a crackdown on the former automatically galvanises the latter.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4972390.stm
Afghan history's warning to UK troops
The British have made some disastrous decisions in Afghanistan - one led to one of the worst massacres in the UK's military history.
Next month the British army will make its biggest deployment in southern Afghanistan in more than a century.
The plan is to help the newly-formed Afghan National Army (ANA) fight the increasingly violent militant groups based around the Pakistan border and curb the drugs trade that funds them.
More than 3,000 British troops will be based in the southern province of Helmand which alone produces nearly 20% of the world's opium.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4926628.stm
Canada's Afghan mission extended
Prime Minister Harper fought hard to get his motion through
Canadian legislators have narrowly voted to extend the country's combat mission in Afghanistan by two years, until February 2009.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's motion passed by 149 votes to 145, despite opposition complaints of being rushed.
Canada currently has 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan, mainly in the south where the Taleban-led resistance is strong.
The vote came after news that a female Canadian soldier had been killed in combat in the war-torn country.
Public opinion polls suggest that popular backing for the deployment, which had been due to expire in February 2007, is slipping.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4992380.stm
Nigerian president will step down
Mr Obasanjo said he had been maligned in the press
Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo says his party accepts the Senate's rejection of a bill that would have allowed him to seek a third term.
He said the People's Democratic Party needed to put the acrimony behind it and prepare for next year's election as the constitution currently stands.
Confirmation that Mr Obasanjo will not stand again leaves Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as a strong candidate.
The two fell out over the issue that also deeply divided the country.
Two former military rulers, Ibrahim Babangida and Muhammadu Buhari, have also emerged as likely candidates
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4994298.stm
Vote to curb Nepal king's powers
Nepal's king reinstated parliament after mass protests
MPs in Nepal have unanimously approved a landmark plan to drastically curtail the powers of King Gyanendra, including stripping him of control of the army.
Under the plans, the royal family will pay tax and parliament will control the army and name the heir to the throne.
The proclamation has been described as a Nepalese Magna Carta, effectively making the king a ceremonial figure.
The move follows mass street protests in April which led the king to recall parliament and end direct palace rule.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4992508.stm
Zimbabwe voices: Mary
Mary is one of the thousands whose homes were demolished last year
Zimbabwe is in economic meltdown, with the world's highest rate of inflation of 1,000% and chronic unemployment. Here Mary, 41, an HIV-positive widow, whose home was demolished by the authorities last year, reflects on her life.
My husband passed away in 2000. He was a soldier, he was HIV-positive. My baby was born and then passed away.
My husband, my three sons, they passed away - I'm the only one.
In time I was tested and [when] the result was out, I just laughed - I'm HIV positive, then what can I do?
"A loaf of bread used to be about 70 cents - Now we don't even have cents
The doctors said: "No, here we just test you, we don't have anything to give you."
Then I said: "Why have you tested me - you have just put me on a death sentence because I'm scared now because I know I am HIV positive. If you test me, it was to give me tablets."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4989930.stm
Violence mars Cairo court hearing
Judges found themselves at the forefront of the reform debate
An Egyptian judge has been reprimanded for speaking out about election fraud in last year's presidential elections.
In a case that has become a rallying point for the pro-reform movement, Hesham Bastawisi avoided being sacked as a senior appeals court judge.
Another judge in the same case was acquitted at the disciplinary hearing.
Police attacked demonstrators in streets outside the High Court, where the case was heard, arresting dozens and beating protesters to the ground.
In another room at the same courthouse, a judge rejected the appeal of jailed opposition leader Ayman Nour.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4992502.stm
Trial brings no solace to Beslan
By Artyom Liss
BBC News, Beslan, Russia
The school gym has become a monument to the dead
Almost two years on from the tragedy of Beslan in the gym of School Number 1, there are still fresh flowers everywhere you look.
Their sweet smell is so overwhelming, so strong, that at times it almost feels that you could touch it.
On the walls are 331 photographs of those who died here. The pictures flutter in the wind, faces of the dead coming in and out of view.
Outside, water runs down two marble blocks - a reminder of the unbearable thirst that tormented more than 1,000 people. The hostage-takers did not even allow the captive children to wet their lips.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4992622.stm
Communicating with Vietnam's war dead
By Joe Phua
Producer, Psychic Vietnam
Although the Vietnam War ended in 1975, some families are still searching for loved ones missing in action and are turning to psychics for help.
Every day Vietnamese army units hack through malarial jungles. Their single aim is to bring back the dead.
Even by conservative estimates, the war claimed the lives of more than three million Vietnamese, among them a million North Vietnamese soldiers.
Thirty years on, more than half are still missing.
As time passes, memories are fading and leads are running cold.
Meaningless numbers
On this occasion one group of veterans have been lucky.
In Chu Chi, ex-soldier Tran Van Ban gently wraps the remains of the missing men from the Cat Bi unit he served in.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4989480.stm
Cannes film hit by legal tussle
Gus Van Sant directed one segment of Paris Je T'Aime
A film showing at the Cannes festival has been blighted by a legal wrangle between its producers.
Emmanuel Benbihy has obtained a court order blocking the distribution of Paris Je T'Aime after rejecting the final cut of the film.
He is unhappy that two segments have been dropped by co-producer Claudie Ossard and says he will not attend Thursday night's gala screening.
The film is a series of shorts made by 20 directors including Gus Van Sant.
'Cut out'
But contributions from film-makers Raphael Nadjari and Christoffer Boffe ended up on the cutting room floor.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4992902.stm
'New York Times' Researcher Faces Further Charges
By Benjamin Robertson
Beijing
15 May 2006
Chinese prosecutors have issued new indictments against New York Times researcher Zhao Yan, less than two months after the original charges against were dropped.
Hopes for the release of journalist Zhao Yan faded Monday after his lawyer announced that prosecutors had recently referred the case back to Beijing's court system. Unclear what charges the new indictment included, Zhao's lawyer, Mo Shaoping said the authorities had told him they were "resuming a criminal investigation."
Zhao, a researcher for the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, was charged in October 2004 with divulging state secrets and has been in police custody ever since. Officials appeared to blame him for a newspaper story correctly predicting that former President Jiang Zemin's would resign as the head of the country's armed forces. The charges carried the maximum penalty of death.
However, the charges were suddenly dropped in March prior to Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the United States, leading to expectations Zhao would be freed. Mo says he is now struggling to understand what the new charges may be.
"There is no regulation in Chinese law that provides for another appeal. So, if they do not have any new evidence and they make another appeal on Zhao Yan's case, it is illegal," he said.
The New York Times has repeatedly denied that Zhao did anything improper and has appealed for his release.
Zhao's case has received repeated attention from U.S. officials, including President Bush, who has raised the issue in meetings with Chinese leaders.
Chinese authorities have very broad and vague definitions of what is a state secret, and the law is used frequently against journalists who publicize bad news about the government. In addition, some journalists and academics have been jailed for printing information in foreign publications that had already been printed in Chinese documents.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-05-15-voa14.cfm
Former editor sentenced to 18 months in prison on years-old defamation charge
(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a 12 May 2006 CPJ press release:
ETHIOPIA: Another journalist jailed on years-old defamation charge
New York, May 12, 2006 - Another Ethiopian journalist has been sentenced to jail under the country's draconian press law, in a case that dates back at least seven years, the Committee to Protect Journalists has confirmed. Tesehalene Mengesha, a former editor at the defunct Amharic-language weekly Mebruk, was convicted of criminal defamation over a week ago and sentenced to 18 months in prison, CPJ sources said.
Mengesha is currently in Kality Prison on the outskirts of the capital, Addis Ababa, the same detention center where 14 journalists are being held along with opposition leaders while facing trial on antistate charges. Mengesha's imprisonment brings the number of journalists jailed for their work in Ethiopia to at least 17.
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/74409/
Liberia: More Questions than Answers as Press Union Debate Heats Up
May 15, 2006
by Ralph Geeplay / Contributing Writer
The Press Union of Liberia (PUL), constitute the most respected, astute and benign organization over the years that has stood for press freedom, while strongly seeking the rights and general well being of the Liberian journalist. Inviting Joe Mulbah, therefore, the erstwhile notorious former Liberian president Charles Taylor Information Minister under whose leadership the media was crushed, to address the Liberia press crops on World Press freedom Day came as a total shock.
As a first hand observer to the many abuses perpetrated against the media while Joseph Mulbah was Information Minister, I am baffled, stupefied and totally annoyed that the Press Union of Liberia could not find a better candidate to address the Liberian press crops on such an important occasion. The crimes that were committed against the Liberian people while Charles Taylor led the Liberia state were not his doing alone. For every sector of the Liberian of the state that was abused, Taylor had a partner in crime: forestry, maritime, finance, banking, foreign affairs, security etc. Joe Mulbah was one of Taylor point men on information as he muscled; censored and castrated the Liberian media in what international observers say was one of the darkest periods in Liberia’s long and turbulent media history. Joseph Mulbah was not just your ordinary Charles Taylor aide. While he served Taylor in their “Greater Liberia,” he was the main architect on misinformation while the rebel led National Patriotic Reconstruction Government (NPARG) waged massive propaganda on the state and the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) peacekeepers, in their bid to capture state power. What drove Mr. Mulbah while he served as Liberia’s Information Minister were greed and the interest of Charles Taylor and not the ordinary Liberian people or the press. His feud with Milton Teajay are well known: two self-aggrandizing individuals who lost their pride as they fought and destroyed government property while wrestling with each other to assert influence and to gain the favor of the Liberia presidency, during the heydays of the Taylor administration. This fact is well noted and can be remembered by a lot of Liberians.
http://www.theliberiantimes.com/article_2006_05_15_1301.html
Cynical, sick cowardly journalists
Grant Gordon
Abu Dhabi, UAE
May 15, 2006
-- When are we going to stand up to newspaper people who abuse their self-proclaimed "rights of free speech"? First came the Danish Mohammed cartoons that riled millions of Muslims, and now the Bulgarian cartoons that put the lives of Bulgarian nurses in jeopardy ("Bulgaria cartoons may harm jailed nurses", May 12).
When are we in the West going to say enough is enough and reign in the cynical, sick cowardly journalists who push their choice of news and views on us?
The cartoons published in a Bulgarian newspaper attacking Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi are as criminal as we claim the Libyans are for their politicized murder trial of the nurses. They've been in jail for six years. They're surely psychologically wrecked by now.
Rather than irresponsibly inflaming Qadhafi and Libyans and make a fair trial even less possible than it is now why don't those journalists offer themselves in place of the nurses until the trial is done.
The one condition that they can make is that they're permitted from within their Libyan jail cells to draw cartoons and write articles.
I wonder how brave they will be then.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060515-052420-7590r
Journalism at Risk
BUSH URGED TO HIGHLIGHT FREE EXPRESSION AT SUMMIT TALKS
Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have called on U.S. President George W. Bush to put freedom of expression on the agenda when he meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington, D.C. for bilateral talks on 20 April 2006.
In letters to President Bush, Human Rights Watch and CPJ have highlighted China's poor record on free expression and press freedom, and called for the release of jailed dissidents.
Human Rights Watch says Chinese authorities have intensified efforts to restrict information within China in the past year. "The vaguely defined crimes of subversion, endangering state security, leaking state secrets, and endangering public order enable Chinese authorities to arbitrarily detain, indict, try, and sentence opinion-makers, journalists, bloggers, activists, and dissidents," the group says.
Often the so-called crimes involve criticisms of government or Communist Party policy or dissemination of opinion and news that authorities want to keep hidden from the public.
Human Rights Watch also called attention to the complicity of U.S. companies in the Chinese government's efforts to censor information on the Internet.
It cited the case of Yahoo's involvement in helping Chinese authorities jail journalist Shi Tao. Yahoo identified Shi Tao as the sender of an e-mail to an overseas news website that divulged information about press censorship in China.
CPJ says since taking office in 2003, President Hu has overseen the most severe crackdown on the media since the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
"Propaganda authorities have increased the number of topics off limits for media coverage, tightened official censorship rules, and intensified restrictions on the Internet. They have also continued their policy of jailing journalists who offend government officials or cross lines set by censors," the group says.
At the end of 2005, CPJ documented at least 32 journalists imprisoned for their work in China, more than any other country. CPJ urged President Bush to raise three of the most recent cases - Li Jianping, Wu Hao and Li Changqing.
RSF raised concerns about censorship in China in an open letter to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who met President Hu on 18 April in Seattle at the start of Hu's visit to the United States.
RSF said it disapproved of Miscrosoft's decision to censor the Chinese version of its blog software MSN Spaces. The software automatically rejects search strings such as "4 June" (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre) or "human rights in China." Microsoft also shut down the blog of a popular Chinese blogger, Michael Anti, following pressure from the Chinese authorities.
In recent weeks, Beijing has imposed measures to tighten its control over state media. The General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) has launched a crackdown on "illegal foreign publications" and ordered a freeze on the granting of publishing licences to joint ventures in the media sector. The GAPP's new policy aims both to boost the foreign sales of Chinese magazines and to reduce the influx of foreign publications, reflecting a concern about their impact on the Chinese public.
In a further restriction, on 11 April, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) ordered Chinese television stations not to use footage offered by international news agencies. Local TV stations were told to use only images produced or approved by authorised Chinese agencies. The SARFT accused "certain international news agencies of selling images with clearly political intentions" and called for more "political discipline."
The SARFT also announced that local authorities would be required to verify the content of TV series. Scripts will have to be approved every month to prevent "errors" of a political and historical nature.
RSF notes that the new directive follows a ban on a programme called "Supergirl" on Hunan provincial television, which was inspired by the U.S. pop music talent show "Star Academy" and allowed viewers to vote for the candidate of their choice. The state-owned "China Daily" said the programme illustrated "the perversions of an unprepared democracy."
Visit these links:
- Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/05/china13132.htm
- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/protests/06ltrs/asia/china17apr06pl.html
- RSF Letter to Gates: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=17113
- Freedom House Report: http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/33.pdf
- IPI World Press Freedom Review: http://tinyurl.com/lt556
- U.S. Congressional Committee Hearing on Internet Censorship in China:
http://boss.streamos.com/real/hir/56_af021506.smi
- Internet Filtering in China: http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/
- Where's Hu Now? http://www.ir2008.org/whereshu/
- Human Rights in China: http://www.hrichina.org
- China Digital Times: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/
China begins probe of detained researcher
JOE McDONALD
Associated Press
BEIJING - Prosecutors have launched a new investigation of a detained Chinese researcher for The New York Times after a court dropped state secrets charges against him last month, his defense lawyer said Tuesday.
The investigation could lead to prosecutors filing new charges against Zhao Yan, said his lawyer, Mo Shaoping.
The disclosure came as Chinese President Hu Jintao left Tuesday for the United States on a high-profile trip that includes a White House meeting with President Bush.
Zhao was detained in 2004. His family was told he was accused of leaking state secrets to foreigners, but the government has not released details of the case.
The case is believed to stem from a Times report about former Chinese President Jiang Zemin's plans to step down from a key military post.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/14368225.htm
Saudi press told to stop printing pictures of women
11.20am Thursday May 18, 2006
By Daniel Howden
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has told the country's newspapers to stop publishing pictures of women as the could lead young men astray.
The move surprised some observers as the absolute monarch has sought to portray himself as a quiet reformer since taking the throne last year in the ultraconservative country.
All media in the kingdom is either owned by the state or run by it, but in recent months some Saudi newspapers have published pictures of women, always with the hair covered and only their face showing.
The images of women wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf were used to illustrate stories connected to women's issues, including the right to vote and drive, both of which are withheld in Saudi.
The Saudi Embassy in London declined to comment on the apparent ban.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382411
Chinese Writer Faces Subversion Charges
BEIJING — A Chinese journalist who posted essays on overseas Web sites about political issues was tried this week on subversion charges but insisted he is innocent, his lawyer said Saturday.
Li Yuanlong, a 45-year-old writer for the newspaper Bijie Daily in the poor southern province of Guizhou, was indicted on Feb. 9, five months after he was detained.
Li pleaded innocent at his trial Thursday in the southern city of Bijie, which lasted 2 1/2 hours, lawyer Li Jianqiang said. A verdict was expected within about 15 days.
An earlier statement on his case from the New York-based group Human Rights in China said Li's essays, written under the pen name Ye Lang or "Night Wolf," included "On Becoming an American in Spirit" and "The Banal Nature of Life and the Lamentable Nature of Death."
They were published on Web sites that are banned in China, including Boxun News, the Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times, ChinaEWeekly, and New Century Net, the group said.
Press freedom and human rights groups say China has jailed dozens of people for writings posted online.
The press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists appealed Friday for Li's release.
"Like many committed reporters in China, Li Yuanlong began posting his articles online after facing censorship at his newspaper," Ann Cooper, executive director of the New York-based group, said in a statement. "He is guilty of nothing more than expressing his criticism of official actions and should never have been brought to trial."
Li could face between one and three years in jail, his lawyer said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/3861326.html
Chinese internet writer sentenced to 12 years
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese internet writer was jailed for 12 years on Tuesday for "subversion of state power" after backing a movement by exiled dissidents to hold free elections, his lawyer said.
Yang Tianshui, 45, who has been in custody since last December, did not plan to appeal, a protest against a trial he felt was illegal, his lawyer, Li Jianqiang, said.
"We expected the result, but we are still dissatisfied because he is innocent," Li told Reuters.
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=32665
Anniversary of elections evokes worldwide complaint
Region :None
Country :Ethiopia
Topic :Press Freedom
17/05/2006
Press freedom watchdogs marked the first anniversary of Ethiopia’s legislative elections by calling on Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to free 21 jailed journalists, some of whom face the death penalty.
Last year's May 15, 2005, elections were troubled by violence and allegations of electoral fraud. Security forces opened fire on demonstrations in June and again in November, killing about 80 people, according to Amnesty International.
Those elections gave the ruling party two-thirds of Parliament, which international observers say has granted Zenawi nearly absolute control of the country. Meanwhile, press freedom watchdogs like Reporters Without Borders (RSF) say that since those elections, the government has used threats, arrests and incarcerations in a crackdown on the news media.
RSF sent Zenawi a May 12 letter denouncing the crackdown and calling for amnesty for those currently imprisoned.
East African journalists at a May 5 meeting in Tanzania condemned the crackdown in Ethiopia. "We find it shameful that Ethiopia is emerging as a pariah state on the African continent,” the participants of the African Media Conference said in a signed statement.
http://www.ijnet.org/Director.aspx?P=Article&ID=304986&LID=1
Blogger jailed for backing elections
By Jane Macartney
China is cracking down on dissidents who promote democracy by using the internet
CHINA sentenced a veteran dissident writer to 12 years in jail for subversion yesterday, after he posted essays on the internet supporting a movement by exiles to hold free elections.
The sentence on Yang Tianshui, 45, is one of the harshest to be handed down to a political dissident since the trials that came after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on students demanding greater democracy. It underscores the determination of the ruling Communist Party to brook no opposition and to maintain a tight grip on the internet.
Yang is one of several writers and dissidents to be tried over the content of internet postings. He has no plans to appeal because he regards his trial as illegal. Li Jianqiang, his lawyer, said: “He is most dissatisfied but he had expected such a sentence. He refused to answer questions because he does not recognise the legality of the court.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-2183839,00.html
Amnesty International Urges Release of Jailed Ethiopian Protesters
By VOA News
16 May 2006
A leading human rights group has called on Ethiopia to release 76 people accused of treason and other charges for protesting national elections last year.
In a statement, Amnesty International said the detainees were "prisoners of conscience" and included opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists.
The London-based group also expressed doubt about the government's promise that the accused would receive fair trials.
The Ethiopian government has charged 129 people with treason and plotting to overthrow the government in connection with election protests.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-05-16-voa55.cfm
Journalists Jailed for Filming Da Vinci Code Protest
Posted Tuesday, May 16 2006 @ 06:41 AM PDT by
Apparently, a private television channel, Mega, aired a segment showing how the cameraman and journalist were filming the leaflet distribution at a cathedral in Athens when a priest ordered the police to arrest them. "You are disturbing the adoration of God," he told them, Mega reported. "This is a holy place.
However, the Archbishop of Athens later intervened on their behalf and they were freed.
"The Greek Orthodox Church has taken the position that the film 'attacks and undermines' religious faith and that the thesis of the novel is 'completely false.' About 200,000 copies of the Greek translation of the novel have been sold in Greece, where 97 percent of the population is Orthodox Christian," reports the New York Times.
http://www.slashfilm.com/article.php/20060515104151153
Jean pledges Canada's support during Haitian homecoming
Governor General to attend swearing-in of troubled country's new president
Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean is presented with flowers as she arrives at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, under tight security yesterday. Ms. Jean said the Haiti of today is a far cry from the country her family fled when she was only 11 years old. 'There was no freedom. You could be jailed for a word,' she said.
Photograph by : Fred Chartrand, The Canadian Press
Elizabeth Thompson, The Montreal Gazette
Published: Sunday, May 14, 2006
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean arrived in the land of her birth yesterday, bearing a message of hope and a pledge that Canada will help rebuild this troubled country.
"Haiti cannot get out (of misery) alone. Happily, there are countries, including Canada, that are prepared to support Haiti, and who knows, maybe this time will be the good one," an enthusiastic Ms. Jean told reporters.
However, it will take time, she warned.
"People expected Haiti to change from one day to another. It is not possible. You cannot come out of decades of dictatorship and expect that things will change from one day to another. It takes time and we have to support Haiti with a real will to see things change in this country. This country really deserves it. The people do deserve it."
Today, Ms. Jean will represent Canada at the swearing-in of Haiti's new president, Rene Preval, an event that many hope will signal a new start for a country that has lurched from dictatorships to anarchy for much of its history and where 80 per cent of the population live in abject poverty that is unimaginable for most Canadians.
Speaking to reporters a couple of hours after being formally welcomed to the country with dignitaries and a band playing the Haitian and Canadian national anthems, Ms. Jean said the Haiti of today is a far cry from the country her family fled when she was only 11 years old.
"There was no freedom. You could be jailed for a word."
Since 1986, there has been more freedom of speech in the country, largely through the efforts of Haitian journalists.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=03987a67-2595-47d4-908d-b0932364b350
An infection that spreads at terrifying speed
By Dana Robbins
The Hamilton Spectator
More articles by this columnist
(May 13, 2006)
It's a debilitating affliction that strikes people in their prime, and for reasons that scientists have not been able to determine, politicians and journalists are its usual victims.
It's called Outrage Creep (OC), and it's highly contagious, often spreading with terrifying speed between politicos and the people who chronicle their foibles.
Like many infections, OC outbreaks can be traced to a single spore-producing bacillus, specifically, an act or statement of sufficient stupidity to generate broad public censure.
That's how the infection starts.
What distinguishes OC from a garden-variety, people-say-stupid-things pathogen is the explosive growth of indignation that is symptomatic of this illness.
Take the example of Tory MP Colin Mayes, whose faux pas -- a French expression meaning "to accidentally blurt out what you're really thinking" -- landed him in trouble a few weeks back. You'll recall that Mayes was excoriated after publicly offering up some instances under which he'd like to see Canadian journalists jailed.
By any fair measure, Mayes' I-wish-we-had-our-own-gulag rant was high on the goofy scale. And, as his critics were quick to point out, it certainly did little to reassure anyone that he appreciates or values a free press.
What's received less attention, though, is that, as bizarre as Mayes' remarks may have been, they have grown ever more bizarre in the reporting of them.
Let's start with what he did say: "Boy, would the public get accurate and true information if a few reporters were hauled away to jail!'" Mayes mused in a column to a local newspaper. "Maybe it is time that we hauled off in handcuffs reporters that fabricate stories or twist information and even falsely accuse citizens."
One Toronto newspaper translated that to mean that Mayes was suggesting reporters be jailed if they "distort news stories." Not an absolutely literal translation of Mayes' remarks, perhaps, but at least in the same neighbourhood. Other newspapers said Mayes wanted to jail scribes who wrote "misleading stories." Still close, if not exactly a bull's eye.
Yet another newspaper, though, said Mayes would put behind bars any journalists guilty of "poor reporting." Hmm. Probably even Mayes would find that an unworkable, albeit delicious, proposition.
Our colleagues in broadcast, whose proficiency with short-hand is unmatched in the media world, helped take Mayes' cement-headed philosophy over the top. One anchor had Mayes jailing reporters whose work is "critical" of the government.
My favourite by far, though, was the report that had Mayes advocating incarceration of reporters who pen any stories "the government doesn't like."
Outrageous! He ought to be locked up. And did you hear the one about the MP who said Supreme Court judges hate Mother Teresa?
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1147470613693&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1014656511815
Subpoenas may help effort to shield sources
Some lawmakers decry feds' demand on Chronicle writers
Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Hearst Newspapers
Friday, May 12, 2006
Washington -- A congressional drive to protect journalists from revealing sources got a boost when the Justice Department issued subpoenas to Chronicle reporters to identify who leaked grand jury information on steroid use by baseball slugger Barry Bonds and other athletes.
In this most recent attempt by the government to pry into reporters' notebooks, a U.S. attorney in Los Angeles wants to learn who gave reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada transcripts of closed-door grand jury testimony by professional athletes. Subpoenas were issued May 5.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/05/12/MNGO3IQNB41.DTL
Mozambique: Three Journalists Released After Being Detained On Criminal Libel Charges
PRESS RELEASE
May 12, 2006
Posted to the web May 12, 2006
Editor Sebastiao Canjera, news editor Joao Mascarenhas, and reporter Pateque Francisco, of the community newspaper "Mabarwe", all of whom had been detained on criminal libel charges since 3 May 2006, were released on 10 May.
The journalists were jailed on the orders of the Manica provincial deputy attorney, Jose Abede, and charged with libel following their publishing of a news item on the arrest of a local businessman, Tiago Pangaia. Pangaia was accused of stealing 70 head of cattle and spent three months in jail. However, he was released when prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence to bring the case to trial. Pangaia sued the paper for libel soon after his release.
Since their arrest, MISA-Mozambique has actively sought to secure the release of the journalists through a public campaign, including audiences with the Manica chief attorney, Tomas Zandamela, and the Attorney General's office. In the end, the Attorney General's office gave the order to set the journalists free.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200605120718.html
Iraq: New Kurdish Administration Comes Under Scrutiny
By Kathleen Ridolfo
The parliament of Iraq's Kurdish region unanimously approved the 42-member cabinet of the Kurdish region government on May 7, installing the first post-Saddam Hussein unified Kurdish administration. While reunification has been hailed as a step forward for the region's two major parties -- the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which fought a bitter civil war in the 1990s -- the new government faces tough demands from its electorate.
PRAGUE, May 12, 2006 (RFE/RL)--- Iraqi Kurds have become increasingly vocal in their demands in recent months for free speech and press rights, greater administrative transparency, and an end to corruption. They have also called on the KDP, led by Mas'ud Barzani, and the PUK, led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, to allow for greater political pluralism.
Facing Some Daunting Tasks
The new government's response to such issues will demonstrate whether the Kurdish autonomous region is, as its leaders bill it, an model of democracy and stability for the rest of Iraq to emulate or, as its detractors claim, a region whose two main parties have entrenched their hold on power.
One of the most urgent issues facing the unified government is the demand for free speech and press, particularly following a crackdown by both parties on demonstrators, intellectuals, and journalists over the past seven months. Kurdish intellectual Kamal Sayyid Qadir, who holds Austrian citizenship, was jailed by the KDP last year for articles he wrote criticizing Kurdish Region President Mas'ud Barzani's administration. He was sentenced in December to 30 years in prison for "defamation of the Kurdish leadership."
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/05/4b58e7a7-5456-4d67-a1f1-b5df2e2ad5b4.html
EGYPT: Nobel laureate Mahfouz calls for release of jailed Arab journalists
New York, May 5, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins acclaimed Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz in calling on Arab governments to free jailed journalists including two Egyptian reporters detained last week while covering demonstrations in Cairo. Mahfouz, who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature, launched his appeal in an interview with the semi-official Egyptian daily Al-Ahram on Wednesday, World Press Freedom day.
“I am calling on this day, World Press Freedom day, for the release of all the journalists imprisoned in the Arab world in cases related to freedom of opinion and for the need to drop all sentences issued against journalists involved in publication cases,” Mahfouz said.
Dozens of journalists face criminal prosecution and the threat of imprisonment in the Arab world under repressive press laws and penal codes that criminalize free speech. At least four journalists are behind bars today for their journalistic work, according to CPJ research.
Egyptian newspaper journalists Saher al Gad of Al-Geel and Ibrahim Sahari of Al-Alam Al-Youm were detained by security agents in Cairo last week.
http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/mideast/egypt05may06na.html
The Revolt of Journalists: Can It happen in Canada?
by Wahida C. Valiante
(Friday May 05 2006)
"...we are fed what the publishers and editors think will sell the most, and preserve their own status quo. In doing so, these media barons not only curtail the freedom of journalists to carry out their jobs, but ultimately deny the public's right to know. This should not be tolerated in any free society. It is an abuse of everyone's hard-earned freedom -- the freedom to be informed and the journalist’s freedom to inform. Real democracy depends on the free flow of ideas, of debate and disagreement, and newspapers are the best forum for those debates."
In his book The Power to Inform, Servan-Schreiber writes that the very first journalists’ revolt began in France with the founding of the Journalist Association of Le Monde in 1951. What triggered this revolt was the resignation of Hubert Beuve Mery after a policy disagreement over articles printed in Le Monde questioning the "validity of NATO and the Atlantic pact."
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/29990
Sri Lanka fails to guarantee media freedom- IFJ
May 5, 2006, 19:02 [TNS]
By Sophia Anton
This week, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) released their Fourth Annual South Asia Press Freedom Report detailing issues related to state-owned media and acts of injustice taken against journalists in various countries in South Asia including Sri Lanka. With poor security for journalists and pressure from the government to not report critically on their approach to the peace process, Sri Lanka has generated a high level of media self-censorship, the IFJ report said
According to the report, “four media workers – all Tamil – were killed and many were assaulted during the past 12 months in Sri Lanka. Tamil language media in particular was targeted both by extremists and by rival Tamil groups.”
http://www.tamileelamnews.com/news/publish/tns_5265.shtml
Ethiopia: CPJ Demands Justice for Journalists as Treason Trial Resumes
May 5, 2006
Posted to the web May 5, 2006
Initial proceedings in the treason trial of 14 Ethiopian journalists have reinforced concerns that the defendants may not get a fair trial, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. Prosecutors are due to start presenting evidence on May 8 against the journalists and dozens of opposition leaders accused of conspiring to overthrow the government.
''CPJ has analyzed a sample of the journalists' writing which prosecutors have collected and found no merit to the charges,'' said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. ''We will be watching the proceedings very closely, and call again for these journalists to be released immediately and unconditionally.''
http://allafrica.com/stories/200605050858.html
Egypt's Copts Speak Up
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
April 24, 2006
This morning, in front of the United Nations, demonstrators will gather in support of the Coptic Christians of Egypt, and the action is coming none too soon, if you ask me. For the better part of 20 centuries, Alexandria, the grand port built by Alexander the Great, stood as a bastion of culture, a melting pot of Roman, Macedonian, Greek, Italian, Egyptian, Muslim, and Christian Levantine tolerance. As recently as 1958, the English author Lawrence Durrell celebrated the city's luminous diversity in his enchanting "Alexandria Quartet" books.
Last week, however, Alexandria's churches and Christian neighborhoods burned with fires of sectarian strife as the dark shadows of ignorant, fundamentalist frenzy reached a pearl of the Mediterranean.
http://www.nysun.com/article/31487
IN DEFENSE OF VENEZUELA
Justice describes 'profound change' in MIIS speech
By VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Salinas Bureau
As tension mounts between the administrations of George W. Bush and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a supreme court justice from that South American country brought the message of Venezuela's constitutional revolution to Monterey on Monday.
Justice Fernando Ramon Vegas Torrealba told a crowd of more than 100 at the Monterey Institute of International Studies that "deep and profound changes" are happening in Venezuela since the inception of the new constitution, an "instrument of empowerment" written since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez.
For the first time, in a country where the majority of people lived in extreme poverty, he said, all are guaranteed housing and free health care and education. Many have been able to see doctors for the first time in their lives.
"The people feel very united around this constitution," Vegas said. "They feel they have something of their own, that they have their rights in their hands and can exercise them."
Other changes in the constitution include a reorganization of the very structure of the government, which now includes not only the traditional legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, he said, but also an electoral branch and the "moral republic power," which monitors the ethical activities of the other branches.
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/14367342.htm
Press Freedom Awards Honor Chinese, Brazilian, Uzbek Journalists, Zimbabwean Lawyer
By Barbara Schoetzau
New York
22 November 2005
The recipients of the 2005 Independent Press Freedom awards include a jailed Chinese Internet journalist, an exiled Uzbek correspondent and a pioneering Brazilian editor. And for the first time, the independent Committee to Protect Journalists is also honoring a lawyer with its annual award in New York Tuesday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, gives its annual awards to journalists who put their lives at risk in order to do their jobs. An increasing number of journalists are doing just that, according to the group's director, Ann Cooper. She says media freedom is deteriorating, partly due to the war on terrorism.
"Increasingly, governments see that they can crack down on the press and use the excuse of fighting terrorism to justify their crackdowns," said Ms. Cooper. "Some of them even occasionally accuse journalists themselves of being terrorists or of aiding and abetting terrorism just because they're reporting on terrorist groups or perhaps doing an interview with a leader who the government doesn't want shown on TV or heard on the radio."
Ms. Cooper says the Philippines tops the group's list of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, followed by Iraq, Bangladesh, Russia and Colombia.
"The cycle of violence against journalists in those countries just continues year after year and we've got to break that, not only to save journalists' lives, but to make all journalists in those countries feel that they can go out and report the news without fear of death threats or violent attack," she said.
Shi Tao
The New York-based group is honoring Chinese freelance journalist Shi Tao, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for posting notes on an overseas Web site from a government directive on how journalists should cover the 15th anniversary of the Tianamen Square crackdown. The government charged him with "leaking state secrets abroad."
Mr. Shi's case has become an international cause celebre because Internet giant Yahoo helped the Chinese government identify him through his e-mail account.
Uzbek journalist Galima Bukharbaeva faces criminal charges because of her reporting on the killing of hundreds of anti-government protesters in May in the northeastern Uzbek city of Andijan. She is accused of conducting "open warfare against the state."
Ann Cooper says Ms. Bukharbaeva typifies the award winners.
"What we are looking at is journalists who are working in extremely difficult conditions," explained Ms. Cooper. "These are people who we have worked to defend -- are defending -- their right to report the news independently, and that's precisely what Galima has done."
Galima Bukharbaeva
Ms. Bukharbaeva now lives in New York, where she is attending Columbia University's School of Journalism. She says the award shows her jailed colleagues that people care about their plight.
"It is not just recognition of my work as a journalist but also it is recognition of the very hard situation, political and economic situation, in Uzbekistan and also a recognition of the conditions in which journalists in Uzbekistan have to work," she commented.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says the third honorere, Brazilian publisher and editor Lucio Flavio Pinto, faces a constant barrage of civil and criminal lawsuits designed to silence his reporting on corruption, drug trafficking and environmental disaster.
This year the CPJ is also honoring a media lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, for her efforts to defend journalists and press freedom in Zimbabwe. Ms. Mtetwa says she was stunned to find herself so honored, but pleased that the award will help keep the Zimbabwe story in the news.
Beatrice Mtetwa at VOA
"There is so much going on in the world now that when you hear nothing from Zimbabwe, because journalists have fled, newspapers have been shut down, people tend to think that things are okay," said Ms. Mtetwa. "But an award like this for me, personally, means that the Zimbabwean story continues to remain at least in the limelight for debate."
CPJ says Beatrice Mtetwa has been arrested, assaulted and threatened as part of a government campaign to intimidate her. Ms. Mtetwa says her motivation is simple.
"I believe very, very strongly that without media freedom it is really impossible to enjoy any of the other fundamental freedoms and that to enjoy those other freedoms people must have a free flow of information," she said. "People should be able to debate issues without restriction."
The press freedom group also honored Peter Jennings, the U.S. television correspondent and anchor who died in August, with a lifetime achievement award. Mr. Jennings was particularly well known for his foreign reporting.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-11/2005-11-22-voa58.cfm?CFID=9289356&CFTOKEN=26017032
The Boston Globe
For flooded, a fearful cost
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/>
For flooded, a fearful cost
Romney urges Bush to send disaster aid
By Brian MacQuarrie and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
As thousands of residents returned to flood-ravaged homes, many began to grapple with another big problem: Nearly all of them lack flood insurance.
Governor Mitt Romney officially asked President Bush yesterday to declare Massachusetts a disaster area and send financial help immediately. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency can offer short-term rental subsidies and help pay for minor repairs within days, more substantial help, in the form of low-interest loans for extensive repairs or replacement of property, is expected to take longer from a government already strained from last year's hurricanes.
http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2006/05/18/for_flooded_a_fearful_cost/
Massachusetts court strikes a blow to tobacco defense
By Denise Lavoie, AP Legal Affairs Writer May 18, 2006
BOSTON --The state's highest court on Thursday rejected one of the tobacco industry's most successful defenses in wrongful death lawsuits, ruling the companies cannot shield themselves from liability simply by claiming that smokers should know cigarettes are dangerous.
The court's ruling came in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Philip Morris Inc. by Brenda Haglund, a former Douglas woman whose husband died of lung cancer in May 2000.
The lawsuit was dismissed by a lower court judge.
But the state Supreme Judicial Court reinstated Haglund's lawsuit, ruling that the so-called "personal choice defense" often used by tobacco companies cannot be used by Philip Morris in Haglund's case. The court ruled that type of defense can only be used if a reasonably safe product was used in an unreasonable way.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/18/massachusetts_court_strikes_a_blow_to_tobacco_defense/
Cervical cancer vaccine may get OK
FDA panel also to decide if young girls to have shots
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Federal advisers are expected to recommend today whether the Food and Drug Administration should approve a vaccine against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, and whether it should be given to girls as young as 9 years old.
A Mayo Clinic doctor said the vaccine, Gardasil, is the most important advance in the fight against cervical cancer in 50 years. Merck & Co., its maker, says Gardasil offers optimum protection when girls are inoculated before they become sexually active.
Prevention is ''the ultimate goal in the war on cancer," said Dr. Bobbie Gostout, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Mayo Clinic. ''While Pap smears are wonderful, this is the first time we can talk about prevention before any disease is established."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/05/18/cervical_cancer_vaccine_may_get_ok/
6 candidates, 6 plans to curb Mass. exodus
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
The candidates agree that the situation is dire: Thousands of residents -- college graduates, retirees, and families -- leave Massachusetts every year, sapping the state of taxpayers, workers, and wisdom.
But six candidates for governor offer sharply divergent plans -- ranging from hiking the minimum wage by $2 an hour to slashing the personal income tax rate -- to keep more residents in the state and possibly even lure some back.
Their ideas reveal philosophical differences about what makes Massachusetts attractive and about what has changed over the past half-decade to push a quarter-million residents to other states, in one of the biggest population losses by any state in the nation.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/18/6_candidates_6_plans_to_curb_mass_exodus/
Answering the call of duty, again
Veterans salute returning troops
By Tom Long, Globe Correspondent May 18, 2006
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- Charles Nichols never went to bed Tuesday night. The twice-wounded 80-year-old veteran of World War II sat in his home in Eliot, Maine, afraid he might sleep too late.
Nichols wanted to make sure he was on hand to greet a Marine Corps detachment when it first set foot on American soil after a six-month deployment to Afghanistan.
So shortly after 3 a.m. he hopped into his Mazda and drove the 20 minutes to Pease International Tradeport, a former Air Force base that is now the site of several returning military flights.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/18/answering_the_call_of_duty_again_veterans_salute_returning_troops/
Tactics honed as debate nears on banning gay marriage
On both sides, activists prepare
By Scott Helman, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
As state lawmakers gird for the upcoming debate on a proposed ban on same-sex marriage, activists on both sides are busy honing their tactics, some of them overt, some of them below the radar.
Married same-sex couples and their supporters, for example, showed up at legislators' State House offices yesterday to hand out bouquets of hydrangea, roses, and buplerum to mark the two-year anniversary of the day gay weddings became legal. The bouquets are as much a lobbying tool as they are a celebratory gift.
Lawmakers are scheduled to vote July 12 on whether to advance a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex weddings in 2008. At least 50 lawmakers each in this legislative session and the 2007-2008 session have to approve the amendment before it goes on the ballot.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/05/18/tactics_honed_as_debate_nears_on_banning_gay_marriage/
Defying Abbas, Hamas deploys police
Palestinian rivals battle for control of security forces
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times May 18, 2006
GAZA CITY -- In a sharp challenge to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas-led government yesterday deployed a newly created police force made up mainly of members of Palestinian militant groups.
Israeli soldiers protect Palestinian schoolchildren on way past settlers. A17.
Clutching Kalashnikov assault rifles, the gunmen fanned out across the Gaza Strip, moving in twos and threes along city streets and in refugee-camp alleyways. On a grassy traffic median, small groups of them shouldered their weapons and spread prayer rugs when the afternoon call to prayer wafted across the car-choked streets.
Abbas vetoed the creation of the 3,000-member force last month when it was announced by Interior Minister Said Siyam, a Hamas loyalist.
Hamas ignored the presidential decree, although it stayed quiet about the role of a well-known Palestinian militant, Jamal abu Samhadana, who had been named as the new force's commander.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/05/18/defying_abbas_hamas_deploys_police/
Iran's leader scoffs at accepting incentives to halt nuclear activity
Europeans seek way to coax cooperation
By Karl Vick, Washington Post May 18, 2006
TEHRAN -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday swept aside the notion of Iran accepting incentives in exchange for halting uranium enrichment, dismissing an offer that European powers had yet to actually extend.
''Do you think you are dealing with a 4-year-old child to whom you can give some walnuts and chocolates and get gold in return?" Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd in Arak, where Iran is building a heavy-water nuclear facility. A reactor that uses light water, a technology less likely to produce fuel suitable for nuclear weapons, is expected to be the centerpiece of a package three European governments are preparing in hopes of revitalizing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.
''They say they want to offer us incentives," Ahmadinejad said. ''We tell them: Keep the incentives as a gift for yourself. We have no hope of anything good from you."
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/05/18/irans_leader_scoffs_at_accepting_incentives_to_halt_nuclear_activity/
Taliban mount attacks across two provinces
May 18, 2006
KANDAHAR -- Heavy fighting involving hundreds of Taliban fighters and Afghan and coalition forces broke out in two provinces of volatile southern Afghanistan, killing about a dozen police, a Canadian soldier, and more than 30 militants, officials said today. A large-scale attack on a police and government headquarters in Helmand province involved several hundred militants and lasted about eight hours, an Afghan official said. The Canadian soldier was killed in an attack in Kandahar province. At least a dozen militants died there as US and British forces provided air support. Meanwhile, Canadian lawmakers approved a two-year extension of Canada's military mission in the country. Approval came despite increasing criticism over the deployment since four Canadian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb last month, the deadliest attack against the 2,300-person strong Canadian contingent. The House of Commons voted 149-145 to support Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to extend the mission in Kandahar to 2009.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/05/18/taliban_mount_attacks_across_two_provinces/
Gunman kills judge and hurts 4 in Turkey
By Associated Press May 18, 2006
ANKARA, Turkey -- A gunman opened fire yesterday in Turkey's highest administrative court, killing a prominent judge and wounding four others in an attack the suspect called retaliation for a ruling against a teacher who wore an Islamic head scarf.
Four of the justices, including Judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin, who died of gunshot wounds to the head, had voted in February against the promotion of an elementary school teacher who wore an Islamic-style head scarf outside of work.
The judges' photos were published by the pro-Islamic Vakit newspaper.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/05/18/gunman_kills_judge_and_hurts_4_in_turkey/
Soldier, spy
Some see a troubling 'militarization' of American intelligence. What that means for national security may have less to do with bureaucratic turf wars than with what the military thinks intelligence is for.
A satellite image of Hilla, Iraq, overlaid with information from Army engineers. Images such as these have provided tactical intelligence to soldiers on the ground. (The New York Times)
By Drake Bennett May 14, 2006
THE CIA WAS CREATED in 1947 in response to what was at the time the greatest intelligence failure in American history: the inability to foresee, despite myriad clues, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The military had little interest in the creation of a competitor to its own intelligence services. But, according to Thomas Powers, a historian of intelligence and author of ''The Man Who Kept the Secrets" (1979), a biography of the CIA director Richard Helms, the decision to put the new intelligence agency under civilian rather than military control grew partly out of the disdain with which the military officer corps regarded intelligence work.
''Serious military officers didn't want intelligence assignments, they wanted to control troops in the field," Powers says. ''Intelligence assignments took one off the track for a general's star."
Today, the Defense Department can safely be said to take intelligence more seriously. Eighty percent of the national intelligence budget goes to the Pentagon, which contains the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the intelligence branches of each of the armed services. Traditionally, though, the CIA, because it coordinated all of the other intelligence agencies and packaged the resulting information into the president's daily intelligence briefing, was preeminent.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/05/14/soldier_spy/
Boston Scientific aims to end Guidant brand
Firm seeks to distance itself from bad press after defibrillator woes
By Stephen Heuser, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
When Boston Scientific Corp. closed its $27 billion deal for Guidant Corp. last month, the Natick medical device maker planted its flag in the multibillion-dollar business of implantable defibrillators, the tiny and highly profitable machines that keep the heart from suddenly stopping.
It also ended up with a challenge: How to deal with the Guidant name.
The Indiana company was the second largest maker of implantable defibrillators in the country, but its reputation and sales took a sharp dive last year after malfunctions were reported in its devices. Thousands were recalled, and several patients died.
Now, as Boston Scientific folds Guidant into an expanding empire, it is launching a campaign to make the Guidant brand disappear, and to win over doctors who implant the $30,000 devices Guidant manufactures.
http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2006/05/18/boston_scientific_aims_to_end_guidant_brand/
'Da Vinci's' imaginary world
By Ethan Gilsdorf May 18, 2006
THE WORLD is bracing for tomorrow's opening of ''The Da Vinci Code" film, based on the massively selling novel by Dan Brown and directed by Ron Howard.
Think what you will of the novel: Some say work of literature, others say trashy read. But remember: It is a work of fiction. So is the film. Brown and Howard are entitled to twist the reality of both past and present -- geography, physics, theology -- to suit the needs of their narratives. They aren't the first novelists or directors to do so.
The problem is not with Brown's book. It's with his readership and, soon, the audience of the film. The real danger is that some fans take the events of ''The Da Vinci Code" as truth, not as a work of fiction. They mistake a compelling if formulaic page-turner for actual history.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/05/18/da_vincis_imaginary_world/
continued …
Afghanistan sees violence upsurge
Hundreds of UK troops are leading security operations in Helmand
Up to 100 people have died in some of Afghanistan's fiercest fighting since US-led forces ousted the Taleban regime in 2001.
Taleban fighters are battling police in Helmand province where officials say 50 militants and 13 police died.
Coalition and Afghan troops conducted more operations in Kandahar, and say at least 25 militants died in two separate clashes there.
A US national was killed by a suicide bomber in Herat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4992462.stm
Fighting a strengthening Taleban
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Afghanistan
Taleban fighters are able to attack, then melt away into communities
Southern Afghanistan was the birthplace of the Taleban and over the past few months it seems the remnants of the former government are still determined to fight.
The attacks have taken the form of confrontations, like that seen in Helmand and Kandahar over the last 24 hours; suicide attacks - there were two on Thursday - or roadside bombs targeting military convoys.
There is no doubt the strength of the insurgents has been increasing and the thousands of British and international troops moving into the south of the country will have their hands full.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4994448.stm
Pakistan's Taleban gamble
By Aamer Ahmed Khan
BBC News, Peshawar
Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters escaped the Tora Bora assault
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf says his country's battle against al-Qaeda in the lawless tribal region has almost been won.
He says he is more worried about the rise of Taleban-like extremism in the tribal area of Waziristan.
But those watching the current conflict in Waziristan say it is unrealistic to separate the two entities.
They argue that al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in fact locked in a symbiotic relationship in which a crackdown on the former automatically galvanises the latter.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4972390.stm
Afghan history's warning to UK troops
The British have made some disastrous decisions in Afghanistan - one led to one of the worst massacres in the UK's military history.
Next month the British army will make its biggest deployment in southern Afghanistan in more than a century.
The plan is to help the newly-formed Afghan National Army (ANA) fight the increasingly violent militant groups based around the Pakistan border and curb the drugs trade that funds them.
More than 3,000 British troops will be based in the southern province of Helmand which alone produces nearly 20% of the world's opium.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4926628.stm
Canada's Afghan mission extended
Prime Minister Harper fought hard to get his motion through
Canadian legislators have narrowly voted to extend the country's combat mission in Afghanistan by two years, until February 2009.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's motion passed by 149 votes to 145, despite opposition complaints of being rushed.
Canada currently has 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan, mainly in the south where the Taleban-led resistance is strong.
The vote came after news that a female Canadian soldier had been killed in combat in the war-torn country.
Public opinion polls suggest that popular backing for the deployment, which had been due to expire in February 2007, is slipping.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4992380.stm
Nigerian president will step down
Mr Obasanjo said he had been maligned in the press
Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo says his party accepts the Senate's rejection of a bill that would have allowed him to seek a third term.
He said the People's Democratic Party needed to put the acrimony behind it and prepare for next year's election as the constitution currently stands.
Confirmation that Mr Obasanjo will not stand again leaves Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as a strong candidate.
The two fell out over the issue that also deeply divided the country.
Two former military rulers, Ibrahim Babangida and Muhammadu Buhari, have also emerged as likely candidates
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4994298.stm
Vote to curb Nepal king's powers
Nepal's king reinstated parliament after mass protests
MPs in Nepal have unanimously approved a landmark plan to drastically curtail the powers of King Gyanendra, including stripping him of control of the army.
Under the plans, the royal family will pay tax and parliament will control the army and name the heir to the throne.
The proclamation has been described as a Nepalese Magna Carta, effectively making the king a ceremonial figure.
The move follows mass street protests in April which led the king to recall parliament and end direct palace rule.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4992508.stm
Zimbabwe voices: Mary
Mary is one of the thousands whose homes were demolished last year
Zimbabwe is in economic meltdown, with the world's highest rate of inflation of 1,000% and chronic unemployment. Here Mary, 41, an HIV-positive widow, whose home was demolished by the authorities last year, reflects on her life.
My husband passed away in 2000. He was a soldier, he was HIV-positive. My baby was born and then passed away.
My husband, my three sons, they passed away - I'm the only one.
In time I was tested and [when] the result was out, I just laughed - I'm HIV positive, then what can I do?
"A loaf of bread used to be about 70 cents - Now we don't even have cents
The doctors said: "No, here we just test you, we don't have anything to give you."
Then I said: "Why have you tested me - you have just put me on a death sentence because I'm scared now because I know I am HIV positive. If you test me, it was to give me tablets."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4989930.stm
Violence mars Cairo court hearing
Judges found themselves at the forefront of the reform debate
An Egyptian judge has been reprimanded for speaking out about election fraud in last year's presidential elections.
In a case that has become a rallying point for the pro-reform movement, Hesham Bastawisi avoided being sacked as a senior appeals court judge.
Another judge in the same case was acquitted at the disciplinary hearing.
Police attacked demonstrators in streets outside the High Court, where the case was heard, arresting dozens and beating protesters to the ground.
In another room at the same courthouse, a judge rejected the appeal of jailed opposition leader Ayman Nour.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4992502.stm
Trial brings no solace to Beslan
By Artyom Liss
BBC News, Beslan, Russia
The school gym has become a monument to the dead
Almost two years on from the tragedy of Beslan in the gym of School Number 1, there are still fresh flowers everywhere you look.
Their sweet smell is so overwhelming, so strong, that at times it almost feels that you could touch it.
On the walls are 331 photographs of those who died here. The pictures flutter in the wind, faces of the dead coming in and out of view.
Outside, water runs down two marble blocks - a reminder of the unbearable thirst that tormented more than 1,000 people. The hostage-takers did not even allow the captive children to wet their lips.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4992622.stm
Communicating with Vietnam's war dead
By Joe Phua
Producer, Psychic Vietnam
Although the Vietnam War ended in 1975, some families are still searching for loved ones missing in action and are turning to psychics for help.
Every day Vietnamese army units hack through malarial jungles. Their single aim is to bring back the dead.
Even by conservative estimates, the war claimed the lives of more than three million Vietnamese, among them a million North Vietnamese soldiers.
Thirty years on, more than half are still missing.
As time passes, memories are fading and leads are running cold.
Meaningless numbers
On this occasion one group of veterans have been lucky.
In Chu Chi, ex-soldier Tran Van Ban gently wraps the remains of the missing men from the Cat Bi unit he served in.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4989480.stm
Cannes film hit by legal tussle
Gus Van Sant directed one segment of Paris Je T'Aime
A film showing at the Cannes festival has been blighted by a legal wrangle between its producers.
Emmanuel Benbihy has obtained a court order blocking the distribution of Paris Je T'Aime after rejecting the final cut of the film.
He is unhappy that two segments have been dropped by co-producer Claudie Ossard and says he will not attend Thursday night's gala screening.
The film is a series of shorts made by 20 directors including Gus Van Sant.
'Cut out'
But contributions from film-makers Raphael Nadjari and Christoffer Boffe ended up on the cutting room floor.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4992902.stm
'New York Times' Researcher Faces Further Charges
By Benjamin Robertson
Beijing
15 May 2006
Chinese prosecutors have issued new indictments against New York Times researcher Zhao Yan, less than two months after the original charges against were dropped.
Hopes for the release of journalist Zhao Yan faded Monday after his lawyer announced that prosecutors had recently referred the case back to Beijing's court system. Unclear what charges the new indictment included, Zhao's lawyer, Mo Shaoping said the authorities had told him they were "resuming a criminal investigation."
Zhao, a researcher for the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, was charged in October 2004 with divulging state secrets and has been in police custody ever since. Officials appeared to blame him for a newspaper story correctly predicting that former President Jiang Zemin's would resign as the head of the country's armed forces. The charges carried the maximum penalty of death.
However, the charges were suddenly dropped in March prior to Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the United States, leading to expectations Zhao would be freed. Mo says he is now struggling to understand what the new charges may be.
"There is no regulation in Chinese law that provides for another appeal. So, if they do not have any new evidence and they make another appeal on Zhao Yan's case, it is illegal," he said.
The New York Times has repeatedly denied that Zhao did anything improper and has appealed for his release.
Zhao's case has received repeated attention from U.S. officials, including President Bush, who has raised the issue in meetings with Chinese leaders.
Chinese authorities have very broad and vague definitions of what is a state secret, and the law is used frequently against journalists who publicize bad news about the government. In addition, some journalists and academics have been jailed for printing information in foreign publications that had already been printed in Chinese documents.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-05-15-voa14.cfm
Former editor sentenced to 18 months in prison on years-old defamation charge
(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a 12 May 2006 CPJ press release:
ETHIOPIA: Another journalist jailed on years-old defamation charge
New York, May 12, 2006 - Another Ethiopian journalist has been sentenced to jail under the country's draconian press law, in a case that dates back at least seven years, the Committee to Protect Journalists has confirmed. Tesehalene Mengesha, a former editor at the defunct Amharic-language weekly Mebruk, was convicted of criminal defamation over a week ago and sentenced to 18 months in prison, CPJ sources said.
Mengesha is currently in Kality Prison on the outskirts of the capital, Addis Ababa, the same detention center where 14 journalists are being held along with opposition leaders while facing trial on antistate charges. Mengesha's imprisonment brings the number of journalists jailed for their work in Ethiopia to at least 17.
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/74409/
Liberia: More Questions than Answers as Press Union Debate Heats Up
May 15, 2006
by Ralph Geeplay / Contributing Writer
The Press Union of Liberia (PUL), constitute the most respected, astute and benign organization over the years that has stood for press freedom, while strongly seeking the rights and general well being of the Liberian journalist. Inviting Joe Mulbah, therefore, the erstwhile notorious former Liberian president Charles Taylor Information Minister under whose leadership the media was crushed, to address the Liberia press crops on World Press freedom Day came as a total shock.
As a first hand observer to the many abuses perpetrated against the media while Joseph Mulbah was Information Minister, I am baffled, stupefied and totally annoyed that the Press Union of Liberia could not find a better candidate to address the Liberian press crops on such an important occasion. The crimes that were committed against the Liberian people while Charles Taylor led the Liberia state were not his doing alone. For every sector of the Liberian of the state that was abused, Taylor had a partner in crime: forestry, maritime, finance, banking, foreign affairs, security etc. Joe Mulbah was one of Taylor point men on information as he muscled; censored and castrated the Liberian media in what international observers say was one of the darkest periods in Liberia’s long and turbulent media history. Joseph Mulbah was not just your ordinary Charles Taylor aide. While he served Taylor in their “Greater Liberia,” he was the main architect on misinformation while the rebel led National Patriotic Reconstruction Government (NPARG) waged massive propaganda on the state and the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) peacekeepers, in their bid to capture state power. What drove Mr. Mulbah while he served as Liberia’s Information Minister were greed and the interest of Charles Taylor and not the ordinary Liberian people or the press. His feud with Milton Teajay are well known: two self-aggrandizing individuals who lost their pride as they fought and destroyed government property while wrestling with each other to assert influence and to gain the favor of the Liberia presidency, during the heydays of the Taylor administration. This fact is well noted and can be remembered by a lot of Liberians.
http://www.theliberiantimes.com/article_2006_05_15_1301.html
Cynical, sick cowardly journalists
Grant Gordon
Abu Dhabi, UAE
May 15, 2006
-- When are we going to stand up to newspaper people who abuse their self-proclaimed "rights of free speech"? First came the Danish Mohammed cartoons that riled millions of Muslims, and now the Bulgarian cartoons that put the lives of Bulgarian nurses in jeopardy ("Bulgaria cartoons may harm jailed nurses", May 12).
When are we in the West going to say enough is enough and reign in the cynical, sick cowardly journalists who push their choice of news and views on us?
The cartoons published in a Bulgarian newspaper attacking Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi are as criminal as we claim the Libyans are for their politicized murder trial of the nurses. They've been in jail for six years. They're surely psychologically wrecked by now.
Rather than irresponsibly inflaming Qadhafi and Libyans and make a fair trial even less possible than it is now why don't those journalists offer themselves in place of the nurses until the trial is done.
The one condition that they can make is that they're permitted from within their Libyan jail cells to draw cartoons and write articles.
I wonder how brave they will be then.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060515-052420-7590r
Journalism at Risk
BUSH URGED TO HIGHLIGHT FREE EXPRESSION AT SUMMIT TALKS
Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have called on U.S. President George W. Bush to put freedom of expression on the agenda when he meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington, D.C. for bilateral talks on 20 April 2006.
In letters to President Bush, Human Rights Watch and CPJ have highlighted China's poor record on free expression and press freedom, and called for the release of jailed dissidents.
Human Rights Watch says Chinese authorities have intensified efforts to restrict information within China in the past year. "The vaguely defined crimes of subversion, endangering state security, leaking state secrets, and endangering public order enable Chinese authorities to arbitrarily detain, indict, try, and sentence opinion-makers, journalists, bloggers, activists, and dissidents," the group says.
Often the so-called crimes involve criticisms of government or Communist Party policy or dissemination of opinion and news that authorities want to keep hidden from the public.
Human Rights Watch also called attention to the complicity of U.S. companies in the Chinese government's efforts to censor information on the Internet.
It cited the case of Yahoo's involvement in helping Chinese authorities jail journalist Shi Tao. Yahoo identified Shi Tao as the sender of an e-mail to an overseas news website that divulged information about press censorship in China.
CPJ says since taking office in 2003, President Hu has overseen the most severe crackdown on the media since the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
"Propaganda authorities have increased the number of topics off limits for media coverage, tightened official censorship rules, and intensified restrictions on the Internet. They have also continued their policy of jailing journalists who offend government officials or cross lines set by censors," the group says.
At the end of 2005, CPJ documented at least 32 journalists imprisoned for their work in China, more than any other country. CPJ urged President Bush to raise three of the most recent cases - Li Jianping, Wu Hao and Li Changqing.
RSF raised concerns about censorship in China in an open letter to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who met President Hu on 18 April in Seattle at the start of Hu's visit to the United States.
RSF said it disapproved of Miscrosoft's decision to censor the Chinese version of its blog software MSN Spaces. The software automatically rejects search strings such as "4 June" (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre) or "human rights in China." Microsoft also shut down the blog of a popular Chinese blogger, Michael Anti, following pressure from the Chinese authorities.
In recent weeks, Beijing has imposed measures to tighten its control over state media. The General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) has launched a crackdown on "illegal foreign publications" and ordered a freeze on the granting of publishing licences to joint ventures in the media sector. The GAPP's new policy aims both to boost the foreign sales of Chinese magazines and to reduce the influx of foreign publications, reflecting a concern about their impact on the Chinese public.
In a further restriction, on 11 April, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) ordered Chinese television stations not to use footage offered by international news agencies. Local TV stations were told to use only images produced or approved by authorised Chinese agencies. The SARFT accused "certain international news agencies of selling images with clearly political intentions" and called for more "political discipline."
The SARFT also announced that local authorities would be required to verify the content of TV series. Scripts will have to be approved every month to prevent "errors" of a political and historical nature.
RSF notes that the new directive follows a ban on a programme called "Supergirl" on Hunan provincial television, which was inspired by the U.S. pop music talent show "Star Academy" and allowed viewers to vote for the candidate of their choice. The state-owned "China Daily" said the programme illustrated "the perversions of an unprepared democracy."
Visit these links:
- Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/05/china13132.htm
- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/protests/06ltrs/asia/china17apr06pl.html
- RSF Letter to Gates: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=17113
- Freedom House Report: http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/33.pdf
- IPI World Press Freedom Review: http://tinyurl.com/lt556
- U.S. Congressional Committee Hearing on Internet Censorship in China:
http://boss.streamos.com/real/hir/56_af021506.smi
- Internet Filtering in China: http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/
- Where's Hu Now? http://www.ir2008.org/whereshu/
- Human Rights in China: http://www.hrichina.org
- China Digital Times: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/
China begins probe of detained researcher
JOE McDONALD
Associated Press
BEIJING - Prosecutors have launched a new investigation of a detained Chinese researcher for The New York Times after a court dropped state secrets charges against him last month, his defense lawyer said Tuesday.
The investigation could lead to prosecutors filing new charges against Zhao Yan, said his lawyer, Mo Shaoping.
The disclosure came as Chinese President Hu Jintao left Tuesday for the United States on a high-profile trip that includes a White House meeting with President Bush.
Zhao was detained in 2004. His family was told he was accused of leaking state secrets to foreigners, but the government has not released details of the case.
The case is believed to stem from a Times report about former Chinese President Jiang Zemin's plans to step down from a key military post.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/14368225.htm
Saudi press told to stop printing pictures of women
11.20am Thursday May 18, 2006
By Daniel Howden
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has told the country's newspapers to stop publishing pictures of women as the could lead young men astray.
The move surprised some observers as the absolute monarch has sought to portray himself as a quiet reformer since taking the throne last year in the ultraconservative country.
All media in the kingdom is either owned by the state or run by it, but in recent months some Saudi newspapers have published pictures of women, always with the hair covered and only their face showing.
The images of women wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf were used to illustrate stories connected to women's issues, including the right to vote and drive, both of which are withheld in Saudi.
The Saudi Embassy in London declined to comment on the apparent ban.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382411
Chinese Writer Faces Subversion Charges
BEIJING — A Chinese journalist who posted essays on overseas Web sites about political issues was tried this week on subversion charges but insisted he is innocent, his lawyer said Saturday.
Li Yuanlong, a 45-year-old writer for the newspaper Bijie Daily in the poor southern province of Guizhou, was indicted on Feb. 9, five months after he was detained.
Li pleaded innocent at his trial Thursday in the southern city of Bijie, which lasted 2 1/2 hours, lawyer Li Jianqiang said. A verdict was expected within about 15 days.
An earlier statement on his case from the New York-based group Human Rights in China said Li's essays, written under the pen name Ye Lang or "Night Wolf," included "On Becoming an American in Spirit" and "The Banal Nature of Life and the Lamentable Nature of Death."
They were published on Web sites that are banned in China, including Boxun News, the Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times, ChinaEWeekly, and New Century Net, the group said.
Press freedom and human rights groups say China has jailed dozens of people for writings posted online.
The press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists appealed Friday for Li's release.
"Like many committed reporters in China, Li Yuanlong began posting his articles online after facing censorship at his newspaper," Ann Cooper, executive director of the New York-based group, said in a statement. "He is guilty of nothing more than expressing his criticism of official actions and should never have been brought to trial."
Li could face between one and three years in jail, his lawyer said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/3861326.html
Chinese internet writer sentenced to 12 years
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese internet writer was jailed for 12 years on Tuesday for "subversion of state power" after backing a movement by exiled dissidents to hold free elections, his lawyer said.
Yang Tianshui, 45, who has been in custody since last December, did not plan to appeal, a protest against a trial he felt was illegal, his lawyer, Li Jianqiang, said.
"We expected the result, but we are still dissatisfied because he is innocent," Li told Reuters.
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=32665
Anniversary of elections evokes worldwide complaint
Region :None
Country :Ethiopia
Topic :Press Freedom
17/05/2006
Press freedom watchdogs marked the first anniversary of Ethiopia’s legislative elections by calling on Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to free 21 jailed journalists, some of whom face the death penalty.
Last year's May 15, 2005, elections were troubled by violence and allegations of electoral fraud. Security forces opened fire on demonstrations in June and again in November, killing about 80 people, according to Amnesty International.
Those elections gave the ruling party two-thirds of Parliament, which international observers say has granted Zenawi nearly absolute control of the country. Meanwhile, press freedom watchdogs like Reporters Without Borders (RSF) say that since those elections, the government has used threats, arrests and incarcerations in a crackdown on the news media.
RSF sent Zenawi a May 12 letter denouncing the crackdown and calling for amnesty for those currently imprisoned.
East African journalists at a May 5 meeting in Tanzania condemned the crackdown in Ethiopia. "We find it shameful that Ethiopia is emerging as a pariah state on the African continent,” the participants of the African Media Conference said in a signed statement.
http://www.ijnet.org/Director.aspx?P=Article&ID=304986&LID=1
Blogger jailed for backing elections
By Jane Macartney
China is cracking down on dissidents who promote democracy by using the internet
CHINA sentenced a veteran dissident writer to 12 years in jail for subversion yesterday, after he posted essays on the internet supporting a movement by exiles to hold free elections.
The sentence on Yang Tianshui, 45, is one of the harshest to be handed down to a political dissident since the trials that came after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on students demanding greater democracy. It underscores the determination of the ruling Communist Party to brook no opposition and to maintain a tight grip on the internet.
Yang is one of several writers and dissidents to be tried over the content of internet postings. He has no plans to appeal because he regards his trial as illegal. Li Jianqiang, his lawyer, said: “He is most dissatisfied but he had expected such a sentence. He refused to answer questions because he does not recognise the legality of the court.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-2183839,00.html
Amnesty International Urges Release of Jailed Ethiopian Protesters
By VOA News
16 May 2006
A leading human rights group has called on Ethiopia to release 76 people accused of treason and other charges for protesting national elections last year.
In a statement, Amnesty International said the detainees were "prisoners of conscience" and included opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists.
The London-based group also expressed doubt about the government's promise that the accused would receive fair trials.
The Ethiopian government has charged 129 people with treason and plotting to overthrow the government in connection with election protests.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-05-16-voa55.cfm
Journalists Jailed for Filming Da Vinci Code Protest
Posted Tuesday, May 16 2006 @ 06:41 AM PDT by
Apparently, a private television channel, Mega, aired a segment showing how the cameraman and journalist were filming the leaflet distribution at a cathedral in Athens when a priest ordered the police to arrest them. "You are disturbing the adoration of God," he told them, Mega reported. "This is a holy place.
However, the Archbishop of Athens later intervened on their behalf and they were freed.
"The Greek Orthodox Church has taken the position that the film 'attacks and undermines' religious faith and that the thesis of the novel is 'completely false.' About 200,000 copies of the Greek translation of the novel have been sold in Greece, where 97 percent of the population is Orthodox Christian," reports the New York Times.
http://www.slashfilm.com/article.php/20060515104151153
Jean pledges Canada's support during Haitian homecoming
Governor General to attend swearing-in of troubled country's new president
Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean is presented with flowers as she arrives at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, under tight security yesterday. Ms. Jean said the Haiti of today is a far cry from the country her family fled when she was only 11 years old. 'There was no freedom. You could be jailed for a word,' she said.
Photograph by : Fred Chartrand, The Canadian Press
Elizabeth Thompson, The Montreal Gazette
Published: Sunday, May 14, 2006
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean arrived in the land of her birth yesterday, bearing a message of hope and a pledge that Canada will help rebuild this troubled country.
"Haiti cannot get out (of misery) alone. Happily, there are countries, including Canada, that are prepared to support Haiti, and who knows, maybe this time will be the good one," an enthusiastic Ms. Jean told reporters.
However, it will take time, she warned.
"People expected Haiti to change from one day to another. It is not possible. You cannot come out of decades of dictatorship and expect that things will change from one day to another. It takes time and we have to support Haiti with a real will to see things change in this country. This country really deserves it. The people do deserve it."
Today, Ms. Jean will represent Canada at the swearing-in of Haiti's new president, Rene Preval, an event that many hope will signal a new start for a country that has lurched from dictatorships to anarchy for much of its history and where 80 per cent of the population live in abject poverty that is unimaginable for most Canadians.
Speaking to reporters a couple of hours after being formally welcomed to the country with dignitaries and a band playing the Haitian and Canadian national anthems, Ms. Jean said the Haiti of today is a far cry from the country her family fled when she was only 11 years old.
"There was no freedom. You could be jailed for a word."
Since 1986, there has been more freedom of speech in the country, largely through the efforts of Haitian journalists.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=03987a67-2595-47d4-908d-b0932364b350
An infection that spreads at terrifying speed
By Dana Robbins
The Hamilton Spectator
More articles by this columnist
(May 13, 2006)
It's a debilitating affliction that strikes people in their prime, and for reasons that scientists have not been able to determine, politicians and journalists are its usual victims.
It's called Outrage Creep (OC), and it's highly contagious, often spreading with terrifying speed between politicos and the people who chronicle their foibles.
Like many infections, OC outbreaks can be traced to a single spore-producing bacillus, specifically, an act or statement of sufficient stupidity to generate broad public censure.
That's how the infection starts.
What distinguishes OC from a garden-variety, people-say-stupid-things pathogen is the explosive growth of indignation that is symptomatic of this illness.
Take the example of Tory MP Colin Mayes, whose faux pas -- a French expression meaning "to accidentally blurt out what you're really thinking" -- landed him in trouble a few weeks back. You'll recall that Mayes was excoriated after publicly offering up some instances under which he'd like to see Canadian journalists jailed.
By any fair measure, Mayes' I-wish-we-had-our-own-gulag rant was high on the goofy scale. And, as his critics were quick to point out, it certainly did little to reassure anyone that he appreciates or values a free press.
What's received less attention, though, is that, as bizarre as Mayes' remarks may have been, they have grown ever more bizarre in the reporting of them.
Let's start with what he did say: "Boy, would the public get accurate and true information if a few reporters were hauled away to jail!'" Mayes mused in a column to a local newspaper. "Maybe it is time that we hauled off in handcuffs reporters that fabricate stories or twist information and even falsely accuse citizens."
One Toronto newspaper translated that to mean that Mayes was suggesting reporters be jailed if they "distort news stories." Not an absolutely literal translation of Mayes' remarks, perhaps, but at least in the same neighbourhood. Other newspapers said Mayes wanted to jail scribes who wrote "misleading stories." Still close, if not exactly a bull's eye.
Yet another newspaper, though, said Mayes would put behind bars any journalists guilty of "poor reporting." Hmm. Probably even Mayes would find that an unworkable, albeit delicious, proposition.
Our colleagues in broadcast, whose proficiency with short-hand is unmatched in the media world, helped take Mayes' cement-headed philosophy over the top. One anchor had Mayes jailing reporters whose work is "critical" of the government.
My favourite by far, though, was the report that had Mayes advocating incarceration of reporters who pen any stories "the government doesn't like."
Outrageous! He ought to be locked up. And did you hear the one about the MP who said Supreme Court judges hate Mother Teresa?
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1147470613693&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1014656511815
Subpoenas may help effort to shield sources
Some lawmakers decry feds' demand on Chronicle writers
Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Hearst Newspapers
Friday, May 12, 2006
Washington -- A congressional drive to protect journalists from revealing sources got a boost when the Justice Department issued subpoenas to Chronicle reporters to identify who leaked grand jury information on steroid use by baseball slugger Barry Bonds and other athletes.
In this most recent attempt by the government to pry into reporters' notebooks, a U.S. attorney in Los Angeles wants to learn who gave reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada transcripts of closed-door grand jury testimony by professional athletes. Subpoenas were issued May 5.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/05/12/MNGO3IQNB41.DTL
Mozambique: Three Journalists Released After Being Detained On Criminal Libel Charges
PRESS RELEASE
May 12, 2006
Posted to the web May 12, 2006
Editor Sebastiao Canjera, news editor Joao Mascarenhas, and reporter Pateque Francisco, of the community newspaper "Mabarwe", all of whom had been detained on criminal libel charges since 3 May 2006, were released on 10 May.
The journalists were jailed on the orders of the Manica provincial deputy attorney, Jose Abede, and charged with libel following their publishing of a news item on the arrest of a local businessman, Tiago Pangaia. Pangaia was accused of stealing 70 head of cattle and spent three months in jail. However, he was released when prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence to bring the case to trial. Pangaia sued the paper for libel soon after his release.
Since their arrest, MISA-Mozambique has actively sought to secure the release of the journalists through a public campaign, including audiences with the Manica chief attorney, Tomas Zandamela, and the Attorney General's office. In the end, the Attorney General's office gave the order to set the journalists free.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200605120718.html
Iraq: New Kurdish Administration Comes Under Scrutiny
By Kathleen Ridolfo
The parliament of Iraq's Kurdish region unanimously approved the 42-member cabinet of the Kurdish region government on May 7, installing the first post-Saddam Hussein unified Kurdish administration. While reunification has been hailed as a step forward for the region's two major parties -- the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which fought a bitter civil war in the 1990s -- the new government faces tough demands from its electorate.
PRAGUE, May 12, 2006 (RFE/RL)--- Iraqi Kurds have become increasingly vocal in their demands in recent months for free speech and press rights, greater administrative transparency, and an end to corruption. They have also called on the KDP, led by Mas'ud Barzani, and the PUK, led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, to allow for greater political pluralism.
Facing Some Daunting Tasks
The new government's response to such issues will demonstrate whether the Kurdish autonomous region is, as its leaders bill it, an model of democracy and stability for the rest of Iraq to emulate or, as its detractors claim, a region whose two main parties have entrenched their hold on power.
One of the most urgent issues facing the unified government is the demand for free speech and press, particularly following a crackdown by both parties on demonstrators, intellectuals, and journalists over the past seven months. Kurdish intellectual Kamal Sayyid Qadir, who holds Austrian citizenship, was jailed by the KDP last year for articles he wrote criticizing Kurdish Region President Mas'ud Barzani's administration. He was sentenced in December to 30 years in prison for "defamation of the Kurdish leadership."
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/05/4b58e7a7-5456-4d67-a1f1-b5df2e2ad5b4.html
EGYPT: Nobel laureate Mahfouz calls for release of jailed Arab journalists
New York, May 5, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins acclaimed Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz in calling on Arab governments to free jailed journalists including two Egyptian reporters detained last week while covering demonstrations in Cairo. Mahfouz, who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature, launched his appeal in an interview with the semi-official Egyptian daily Al-Ahram on Wednesday, World Press Freedom day.
“I am calling on this day, World Press Freedom day, for the release of all the journalists imprisoned in the Arab world in cases related to freedom of opinion and for the need to drop all sentences issued against journalists involved in publication cases,” Mahfouz said.
Dozens of journalists face criminal prosecution and the threat of imprisonment in the Arab world under repressive press laws and penal codes that criminalize free speech. At least four journalists are behind bars today for their journalistic work, according to CPJ research.
Egyptian newspaper journalists Saher al Gad of Al-Geel and Ibrahim Sahari of Al-Alam Al-Youm were detained by security agents in Cairo last week.
http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/mideast/egypt05may06na.html
The Revolt of Journalists: Can It happen in Canada?
by Wahida C. Valiante
(Friday May 05 2006)
"...we are fed what the publishers and editors think will sell the most, and preserve their own status quo. In doing so, these media barons not only curtail the freedom of journalists to carry out their jobs, but ultimately deny the public's right to know. This should not be tolerated in any free society. It is an abuse of everyone's hard-earned freedom -- the freedom to be informed and the journalist’s freedom to inform. Real democracy depends on the free flow of ideas, of debate and disagreement, and newspapers are the best forum for those debates."
In his book The Power to Inform, Servan-Schreiber writes that the very first journalists’ revolt began in France with the founding of the Journalist Association of Le Monde in 1951. What triggered this revolt was the resignation of Hubert Beuve Mery after a policy disagreement over articles printed in Le Monde questioning the "validity of NATO and the Atlantic pact."
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/29990
Sri Lanka fails to guarantee media freedom- IFJ
May 5, 2006, 19:02 [TNS]
By Sophia Anton
This week, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) released their Fourth Annual South Asia Press Freedom Report detailing issues related to state-owned media and acts of injustice taken against journalists in various countries in South Asia including Sri Lanka. With poor security for journalists and pressure from the government to not report critically on their approach to the peace process, Sri Lanka has generated a high level of media self-censorship, the IFJ report said
According to the report, “four media workers – all Tamil – were killed and many were assaulted during the past 12 months in Sri Lanka. Tamil language media in particular was targeted both by extremists and by rival Tamil groups.”
http://www.tamileelamnews.com/news/publish/tns_5265.shtml
Ethiopia: CPJ Demands Justice for Journalists as Treason Trial Resumes
May 5, 2006
Posted to the web May 5, 2006
Initial proceedings in the treason trial of 14 Ethiopian journalists have reinforced concerns that the defendants may not get a fair trial, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. Prosecutors are due to start presenting evidence on May 8 against the journalists and dozens of opposition leaders accused of conspiring to overthrow the government.
''CPJ has analyzed a sample of the journalists' writing which prosecutors have collected and found no merit to the charges,'' said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. ''We will be watching the proceedings very closely, and call again for these journalists to be released immediately and unconditionally.''
http://allafrica.com/stories/200605050858.html
Egypt's Copts Speak Up
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
April 24, 2006
This morning, in front of the United Nations, demonstrators will gather in support of the Coptic Christians of Egypt, and the action is coming none too soon, if you ask me. For the better part of 20 centuries, Alexandria, the grand port built by Alexander the Great, stood as a bastion of culture, a melting pot of Roman, Macedonian, Greek, Italian, Egyptian, Muslim, and Christian Levantine tolerance. As recently as 1958, the English author Lawrence Durrell celebrated the city's luminous diversity in his enchanting "Alexandria Quartet" books.
Last week, however, Alexandria's churches and Christian neighborhoods burned with fires of sectarian strife as the dark shadows of ignorant, fundamentalist frenzy reached a pearl of the Mediterranean.
http://www.nysun.com/article/31487
IN DEFENSE OF VENEZUELA
Justice describes 'profound change' in MIIS speech
By VIRGINIA HENNESSEY
Herald Salinas Bureau
As tension mounts between the administrations of George W. Bush and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a supreme court justice from that South American country brought the message of Venezuela's constitutional revolution to Monterey on Monday.
Justice Fernando Ramon Vegas Torrealba told a crowd of more than 100 at the Monterey Institute of International Studies that "deep and profound changes" are happening in Venezuela since the inception of the new constitution, an "instrument of empowerment" written since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez.
For the first time, in a country where the majority of people lived in extreme poverty, he said, all are guaranteed housing and free health care and education. Many have been able to see doctors for the first time in their lives.
"The people feel very united around this constitution," Vegas said. "They feel they have something of their own, that they have their rights in their hands and can exercise them."
Other changes in the constitution include a reorganization of the very structure of the government, which now includes not only the traditional legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, he said, but also an electoral branch and the "moral republic power," which monitors the ethical activities of the other branches.
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/14367342.htm
Press Freedom Awards Honor Chinese, Brazilian, Uzbek Journalists, Zimbabwean Lawyer
By Barbara Schoetzau
New York
22 November 2005
The recipients of the 2005 Independent Press Freedom awards include a jailed Chinese Internet journalist, an exiled Uzbek correspondent and a pioneering Brazilian editor. And for the first time, the independent Committee to Protect Journalists is also honoring a lawyer with its annual award in New York Tuesday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, gives its annual awards to journalists who put their lives at risk in order to do their jobs. An increasing number of journalists are doing just that, according to the group's director, Ann Cooper. She says media freedom is deteriorating, partly due to the war on terrorism.
"Increasingly, governments see that they can crack down on the press and use the excuse of fighting terrorism to justify their crackdowns," said Ms. Cooper. "Some of them even occasionally accuse journalists themselves of being terrorists or of aiding and abetting terrorism just because they're reporting on terrorist groups or perhaps doing an interview with a leader who the government doesn't want shown on TV or heard on the radio."
Ms. Cooper says the Philippines tops the group's list of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, followed by Iraq, Bangladesh, Russia and Colombia.
"The cycle of violence against journalists in those countries just continues year after year and we've got to break that, not only to save journalists' lives, but to make all journalists in those countries feel that they can go out and report the news without fear of death threats or violent attack," she said.
Shi Tao
The New York-based group is honoring Chinese freelance journalist Shi Tao, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for posting notes on an overseas Web site from a government directive on how journalists should cover the 15th anniversary of the Tianamen Square crackdown. The government charged him with "leaking state secrets abroad."
Mr. Shi's case has become an international cause celebre because Internet giant Yahoo helped the Chinese government identify him through his e-mail account.
Uzbek journalist Galima Bukharbaeva faces criminal charges because of her reporting on the killing of hundreds of anti-government protesters in May in the northeastern Uzbek city of Andijan. She is accused of conducting "open warfare against the state."
Ann Cooper says Ms. Bukharbaeva typifies the award winners.
"What we are looking at is journalists who are working in extremely difficult conditions," explained Ms. Cooper. "These are people who we have worked to defend -- are defending -- their right to report the news independently, and that's precisely what Galima has done."
Galima Bukharbaeva
Ms. Bukharbaeva now lives in New York, where she is attending Columbia University's School of Journalism. She says the award shows her jailed colleagues that people care about their plight.
"It is not just recognition of my work as a journalist but also it is recognition of the very hard situation, political and economic situation, in Uzbekistan and also a recognition of the conditions in which journalists in Uzbekistan have to work," she commented.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says the third honorere, Brazilian publisher and editor Lucio Flavio Pinto, faces a constant barrage of civil and criminal lawsuits designed to silence his reporting on corruption, drug trafficking and environmental disaster.
This year the CPJ is also honoring a media lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, for her efforts to defend journalists and press freedom in Zimbabwe. Ms. Mtetwa says she was stunned to find herself so honored, but pleased that the award will help keep the Zimbabwe story in the news.
Beatrice Mtetwa at VOA
"There is so much going on in the world now that when you hear nothing from Zimbabwe, because journalists have fled, newspapers have been shut down, people tend to think that things are okay," said Ms. Mtetwa. "But an award like this for me, personally, means that the Zimbabwean story continues to remain at least in the limelight for debate."
CPJ says Beatrice Mtetwa has been arrested, assaulted and threatened as part of a government campaign to intimidate her. Ms. Mtetwa says her motivation is simple.
"I believe very, very strongly that without media freedom it is really impossible to enjoy any of the other fundamental freedoms and that to enjoy those other freedoms people must have a free flow of information," she said. "People should be able to debate issues without restriction."
The press freedom group also honored Peter Jennings, the U.S. television correspondent and anchor who died in August, with a lifetime achievement award. Mr. Jennings was particularly well known for his foreign reporting.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-11/2005-11-22-voa58.cfm?CFID=9289356&CFTOKEN=26017032
The Boston Globe
For flooded, a fearful cost
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/>
For flooded, a fearful cost
Romney urges Bush to send disaster aid
By Brian MacQuarrie and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
As thousands of residents returned to flood-ravaged homes, many began to grapple with another big problem: Nearly all of them lack flood insurance.
Governor Mitt Romney officially asked President Bush yesterday to declare Massachusetts a disaster area and send financial help immediately. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency can offer short-term rental subsidies and help pay for minor repairs within days, more substantial help, in the form of low-interest loans for extensive repairs or replacement of property, is expected to take longer from a government already strained from last year's hurricanes.
http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2006/05/18/for_flooded_a_fearful_cost/
Massachusetts court strikes a blow to tobacco defense
By Denise Lavoie, AP Legal Affairs Writer May 18, 2006
BOSTON --The state's highest court on Thursday rejected one of the tobacco industry's most successful defenses in wrongful death lawsuits, ruling the companies cannot shield themselves from liability simply by claiming that smokers should know cigarettes are dangerous.
The court's ruling came in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Philip Morris Inc. by Brenda Haglund, a former Douglas woman whose husband died of lung cancer in May 2000.
The lawsuit was dismissed by a lower court judge.
But the state Supreme Judicial Court reinstated Haglund's lawsuit, ruling that the so-called "personal choice defense" often used by tobacco companies cannot be used by Philip Morris in Haglund's case. The court ruled that type of defense can only be used if a reasonably safe product was used in an unreasonable way.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/18/massachusetts_court_strikes_a_blow_to_tobacco_defense/
Cervical cancer vaccine may get OK
FDA panel also to decide if young girls to have shots
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Federal advisers are expected to recommend today whether the Food and Drug Administration should approve a vaccine against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, and whether it should be given to girls as young as 9 years old.
A Mayo Clinic doctor said the vaccine, Gardasil, is the most important advance in the fight against cervical cancer in 50 years. Merck & Co., its maker, says Gardasil offers optimum protection when girls are inoculated before they become sexually active.
Prevention is ''the ultimate goal in the war on cancer," said Dr. Bobbie Gostout, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Mayo Clinic. ''While Pap smears are wonderful, this is the first time we can talk about prevention before any disease is established."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/05/18/cervical_cancer_vaccine_may_get_ok/
6 candidates, 6 plans to curb Mass. exodus
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
The candidates agree that the situation is dire: Thousands of residents -- college graduates, retirees, and families -- leave Massachusetts every year, sapping the state of taxpayers, workers, and wisdom.
But six candidates for governor offer sharply divergent plans -- ranging from hiking the minimum wage by $2 an hour to slashing the personal income tax rate -- to keep more residents in the state and possibly even lure some back.
Their ideas reveal philosophical differences about what makes Massachusetts attractive and about what has changed over the past half-decade to push a quarter-million residents to other states, in one of the biggest population losses by any state in the nation.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/18/6_candidates_6_plans_to_curb_mass_exodus/
Answering the call of duty, again
Veterans salute returning troops
By Tom Long, Globe Correspondent May 18, 2006
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- Charles Nichols never went to bed Tuesday night. The twice-wounded 80-year-old veteran of World War II sat in his home in Eliot, Maine, afraid he might sleep too late.
Nichols wanted to make sure he was on hand to greet a Marine Corps detachment when it first set foot on American soil after a six-month deployment to Afghanistan.
So shortly after 3 a.m. he hopped into his Mazda and drove the 20 minutes to Pease International Tradeport, a former Air Force base that is now the site of several returning military flights.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/18/answering_the_call_of_duty_again_veterans_salute_returning_troops/
Tactics honed as debate nears on banning gay marriage
On both sides, activists prepare
By Scott Helman, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
As state lawmakers gird for the upcoming debate on a proposed ban on same-sex marriage, activists on both sides are busy honing their tactics, some of them overt, some of them below the radar.
Married same-sex couples and their supporters, for example, showed up at legislators' State House offices yesterday to hand out bouquets of hydrangea, roses, and buplerum to mark the two-year anniversary of the day gay weddings became legal. The bouquets are as much a lobbying tool as they are a celebratory gift.
Lawmakers are scheduled to vote July 12 on whether to advance a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex weddings in 2008. At least 50 lawmakers each in this legislative session and the 2007-2008 session have to approve the amendment before it goes on the ballot.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/05/18/tactics_honed_as_debate_nears_on_banning_gay_marriage/
Defying Abbas, Hamas deploys police
Palestinian rivals battle for control of security forces
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times May 18, 2006
GAZA CITY -- In a sharp challenge to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas-led government yesterday deployed a newly created police force made up mainly of members of Palestinian militant groups.
Israeli soldiers protect Palestinian schoolchildren on way past settlers. A17.
Clutching Kalashnikov assault rifles, the gunmen fanned out across the Gaza Strip, moving in twos and threes along city streets and in refugee-camp alleyways. On a grassy traffic median, small groups of them shouldered their weapons and spread prayer rugs when the afternoon call to prayer wafted across the car-choked streets.
Abbas vetoed the creation of the 3,000-member force last month when it was announced by Interior Minister Said Siyam, a Hamas loyalist.
Hamas ignored the presidential decree, although it stayed quiet about the role of a well-known Palestinian militant, Jamal abu Samhadana, who had been named as the new force's commander.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/05/18/defying_abbas_hamas_deploys_police/
Iran's leader scoffs at accepting incentives to halt nuclear activity
Europeans seek way to coax cooperation
By Karl Vick, Washington Post May 18, 2006
TEHRAN -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday swept aside the notion of Iran accepting incentives in exchange for halting uranium enrichment, dismissing an offer that European powers had yet to actually extend.
''Do you think you are dealing with a 4-year-old child to whom you can give some walnuts and chocolates and get gold in return?" Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd in Arak, where Iran is building a heavy-water nuclear facility. A reactor that uses light water, a technology less likely to produce fuel suitable for nuclear weapons, is expected to be the centerpiece of a package three European governments are preparing in hopes of revitalizing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.
''They say they want to offer us incentives," Ahmadinejad said. ''We tell them: Keep the incentives as a gift for yourself. We have no hope of anything good from you."
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/05/18/irans_leader_scoffs_at_accepting_incentives_to_halt_nuclear_activity/
Taliban mount attacks across two provinces
May 18, 2006
KANDAHAR -- Heavy fighting involving hundreds of Taliban fighters and Afghan and coalition forces broke out in two provinces of volatile southern Afghanistan, killing about a dozen police, a Canadian soldier, and more than 30 militants, officials said today. A large-scale attack on a police and government headquarters in Helmand province involved several hundred militants and lasted about eight hours, an Afghan official said. The Canadian soldier was killed in an attack in Kandahar province. At least a dozen militants died there as US and British forces provided air support. Meanwhile, Canadian lawmakers approved a two-year extension of Canada's military mission in the country. Approval came despite increasing criticism over the deployment since four Canadian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb last month, the deadliest attack against the 2,300-person strong Canadian contingent. The House of Commons voted 149-145 to support Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to extend the mission in Kandahar to 2009.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/05/18/taliban_mount_attacks_across_two_provinces/
Gunman kills judge and hurts 4 in Turkey
By Associated Press May 18, 2006
ANKARA, Turkey -- A gunman opened fire yesterday in Turkey's highest administrative court, killing a prominent judge and wounding four others in an attack the suspect called retaliation for a ruling against a teacher who wore an Islamic head scarf.
Four of the justices, including Judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin, who died of gunshot wounds to the head, had voted in February against the promotion of an elementary school teacher who wore an Islamic-style head scarf outside of work.
The judges' photos were published by the pro-Islamic Vakit newspaper.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/05/18/gunman_kills_judge_and_hurts_4_in_turkey/
Soldier, spy
Some see a troubling 'militarization' of American intelligence. What that means for national security may have less to do with bureaucratic turf wars than with what the military thinks intelligence is for.
A satellite image of Hilla, Iraq, overlaid with information from Army engineers. Images such as these have provided tactical intelligence to soldiers on the ground. (The New York Times)
By Drake Bennett May 14, 2006
THE CIA WAS CREATED in 1947 in response to what was at the time the greatest intelligence failure in American history: the inability to foresee, despite myriad clues, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The military had little interest in the creation of a competitor to its own intelligence services. But, according to Thomas Powers, a historian of intelligence and author of ''The Man Who Kept the Secrets" (1979), a biography of the CIA director Richard Helms, the decision to put the new intelligence agency under civilian rather than military control grew partly out of the disdain with which the military officer corps regarded intelligence work.
''Serious military officers didn't want intelligence assignments, they wanted to control troops in the field," Powers says. ''Intelligence assignments took one off the track for a general's star."
Today, the Defense Department can safely be said to take intelligence more seriously. Eighty percent of the national intelligence budget goes to the Pentagon, which contains the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the intelligence branches of each of the armed services. Traditionally, though, the CIA, because it coordinated all of the other intelligence agencies and packaged the resulting information into the president's daily intelligence briefing, was preeminent.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/05/14/soldier_spy/
Boston Scientific aims to end Guidant brand
Firm seeks to distance itself from bad press after defibrillator woes
By Stephen Heuser, Globe Staff May 18, 2006
When Boston Scientific Corp. closed its $27 billion deal for Guidant Corp. last month, the Natick medical device maker planted its flag in the multibillion-dollar business of implantable defibrillators, the tiny and highly profitable machines that keep the heart from suddenly stopping.
It also ended up with a challenge: How to deal with the Guidant name.
The Indiana company was the second largest maker of implantable defibrillators in the country, but its reputation and sales took a sharp dive last year after malfunctions were reported in its devices. Thousands were recalled, and several patients died.
Now, as Boston Scientific folds Guidant into an expanding empire, it is launching a campaign to make the Guidant brand disappear, and to win over doctors who implant the $30,000 devices Guidant manufactures.
http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2006/05/18/boston_scientific_aims_to_end_guidant_brand/
'Da Vinci's' imaginary world
By Ethan Gilsdorf May 18, 2006
THE WORLD is bracing for tomorrow's opening of ''The Da Vinci Code" film, based on the massively selling novel by Dan Brown and directed by Ron Howard.
Think what you will of the novel: Some say work of literature, others say trashy read. But remember: It is a work of fiction. So is the film. Brown and Howard are entitled to twist the reality of both past and present -- geography, physics, theology -- to suit the needs of their narratives. They aren't the first novelists or directors to do so.
The problem is not with Brown's book. It's with his readership and, soon, the audience of the film. The real danger is that some fans take the events of ''The Da Vinci Code" as truth, not as a work of fiction. They mistake a compelling if formulaic page-turner for actual history.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/05/18/da_vincis_imaginary_world/
continued …
Mt. Merapi in 1999 (BBC is the link here to an article "Krakatoa: The first modern tsunami.")
It is not the first time that a major seismic event in Indonesia has made front-page news around the world. In the 1880s, close to the epicentre of this Boxing Day's earthquake, huge waves crashed into countries all around the Indian Ocean. It was the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa.
Currently erupting Merapi Volcano
On the island of Java, Merapi Volcano ranks among Indonesia’s most active volcanoes. Merapi is a stratovolcano, composed of layers of hardened lava, volcanic ash, and rocks ejected by earlier eruptions. The area around Merapi is densely populated, and the volcano’s previous eruptions have claimed human lives and devastated cultivated crops.
Morning Papers - continued ...
Buenos Aires Herald
And where were we three years ago? Starting an illegal war in Iraq. And where are we today? Conducting an illegal war in Iraq with skyrocketing oil prices, insoluble debt and inflation.
Biggest Dow slide in 3 years
Investors sold shares in banks, industrial conglomerates and other rate-sensitive stocks. An index of bank stocks slid 1.8 percent, while shares of blue-chip Citigroup Inc. dropped 1.4 percent.
The blue-chip Dow dropped more than 200 points, the biggest slide since March 2003, and the Nasdaq had its longest losing streak in five years.
"Inflation, which is the principal focus of the Fed, is higher than Chairman Bernanke will feel comfortable with," said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at Johnson Illington Advisors.
The drop impacted Latin markets, with the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange dropping 3.45 percent. See Argentina
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/argentina/note.jsp?idContent=280855&hideIntro=true
52nd Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education
Students Remember Brown vs. Board Decision
Stephanie Wurtz
Members of the Little Rock 9 traveled to Topeka for the celebration.
The group worked in 1957 to put the court's decision into action.
Now they have a message for today's students.
"The 9 of us as a group felt that it was time for change," says Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock 9, "living under the conditions we lived under in Little Rock made no sense."
So at 15, Roberts did something.
He was one of the first black students to enroll in an all white school after the Brown vs. Board decision ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional.
"They were the first public test of how the country was going to respond to Brown vs. Board," says Cheryl Brown Henderson of the Brown Foundation, that sponsored a banquet Wednesday honoring the Little Rock 9.
"So many Americans have that attitude: if it's too painful, I don't want to see it, be a part of it, know about it and what what we did may or may not have an impact," Roberts says.
That's why Roberts and Henderson want young people to remember and understand what the Brown vs. Board decision meant for America.
And understand that they have the power to make changes.
"It's time to wake up, to develop awareness," says Roberts, "each one of us has a responsibility to make a contribution to this society."
"This group is now in their 50s and 60s, but they were only teenagers when they took a stand," Henderson says, "I don't think our young people realize how much power they have."
To learn more about the Brown vs. Board decision, you can visit the Brown vs. Board Historic Site daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for free.
You can also check brownvboard.org or call the Brown Foundation at (785) 235-3939
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/2823066.html
Table 370.
Unemployment rate of persons 16 years old and over, by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment: 2002, 2003, and 2004
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_370.asp
PDF - Microsoft Excel of the above statistics
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/xls/tabn370.xls
The Jakarta Post
RI bird flu deaths reach 30: WHO
Tb. Arie Rukmantara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Five more bird flu deaths, including four from one North Sumatra family, were confirmed Wednesday, bringing the official death toll in the country to 30.
World Health Organization spokeswoman Sari P. Setiogi said the deaths in Karo regency, North Sumatra, were from a new cluster of H5N1, while the other death was in Surabaya, East Java.
"We're still waiting another test result of a bird flu case also found in North Sumatra," she said, referring to tests being carried out at the WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong on a 10-year-old boy who died.
The WHO reported the dead were a 19 and 17-year-old male, a 29-year-old female and an 18-month-old baby. A fifth person, a 25-year-old male, was infected but alive, AFP quoted the agency as saying.
Indonesia's 39 diagnosed H5N1 cases is the second highest in the world after Vietnam (42). It has been reported in poultry in 27 of the country's 33 provinces.
As well as the new cluster in Medan, five clusters have been found in Tangerang (two clusters), Jakarta, Lampung in southern Sumatra and Indramayu in West Java.
Some health experts worry the prevalence of the clusters will increase the possibility of the virus mutating into a more pathogenic form that could be easily transmitted between humans.
Although the Agriculture Ministry said it did not find evidence of H5N1 in local fowl in the Karo area, Sari said it was no indication the virus had spread through human-to-human contact.
"The good news is, in this case, that the virus did not infect others outside the seven patients," she said.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said a ministry team was trying to determine if there were other sources of infection, such as the use of chicken droppings as fertilizer.
"We'll try to investigate whether the source of the transmission came from fertilizers, pigs or other sources," she told Antara newswire.
Siti said she was shocked by news of the Karo outbreak, because the virus was not considered endemic in the area. She believed it was the H5N1 genotype and not a mutation.
"Based on our research and that of WHO, the type of the virus is still the same," she said.
A senior official of the newly formed National Commission on Bird Flu, Emil Agustiono, told The Jakarta Post the confirmation of the North Sumatra cluster showed the government needed to increase its efforts to curb the virus' spread.
"I urge the health and agriculture ministries, as well as WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization, to work together to solve these problems," he said.
"At present, there's still a tendency for these agencies to work individually."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20060518.@03&irec=6
Bird flu outbreak might 'burn itself out': Scientist
BOSTON, The U.S. (Bloomberg): The outbreak of lethal bird flu that has spread from Asia to Africa, the Middle East and Europe might "burn itself out" before becoming a human pandemic, the top U.S. infectious-disease researcher said Thursday.
While scientists fear the deadly H5N1 virus will mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, it's just as likely that the outbreak in birds will fade, said Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"It's entirely conceivable that this will just burn itself out and be a dead end," Fauci said in an interview. "It's just as likely to do that as evolve into something that's a serious problem."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518110047&irec=6
Sacred rite goes on in Merapi's dangerous path
Tarko Sudiarno and Hyginus Hardoyo, The Jakarta Post, Sleman/Yogyakarta
Despite the threat of an eruption from smoldering Mt. Merapi, believers in its mystical powers are performing a ritual at a hallowed site on its slopes.
They are following in the venerable footsteps of Mbah Marijan, the volcano's spiritual guardian who has refused to leave the area.
At least nine people gathered at Sri Manganti, one of the sacred spots lying about three kilometers from the mount's crater, for three days of prayers that began Wednesday.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20060518.@01&irec=0
U.S. assists Mt. Merapi emergency response
JAKARTA (JP): The U.S. government has provided an additional US$50,000 to support emergency efforts in response to increasing volcanic activity at Mt. Merapi. That brings its total aid to $100,000, the U.S. embassy in Jakarta said Thursday.
Last Saturday, the Indonesian Volcano Technology Development and Research Agency (BPPTK) raised the alert at Mt. Merapi to the highest level after the volcano released ominous clouds of ash, with a giant lava dome bulging over its slopes.
The current status requires residents living on the slopes of the volcano are to leave their houses for temporary shelters.Some 10,000 people have been evacuated, but many of them have returned home, saying they have to tend to their fields or take care of their livestock.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518135720&irec=2
Refugees complain of prison-like conditions
MOUNT MERAPI, Central Java (AP): Thousands of villagers fed up with living in cramped camps have returned to their homes on the slopes of erupting Mount Merapi, ignoring warnings that the peakremains highly dangerous, an official said Thursday.
One camp that earlier this week held some 2,500 people was empty Thursday after a mass departure of refugees a day earlier, said Insan, an official at the shelter in a government building on the lower slopes of the mountain."They said it was like living in a prison," said Insan. "We tried to keep them entertained, but then rumors started spreading that their houses were being looted."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518120807&irec=5
Protesters want charges against Soeharto reinstated
JAKARTA (Agencies): Protesters in Indonesia's capital demanded Thursday that prosecutors reinstate criminal charges against former president Soeharto, still hospitalized after colon surgery earlier this month.
Soeharto was ousted after 32 years in power in 1998 amid student protests and nationwide riots. In 2000, he was indicted on allegations of embezzling US$600 million, but has never been tried because his lawyers say he is too ill after suffering a series of strokes.
Thursday's protest in front of the State Palace was one of several anti-Soeharto gatherings since Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh announced nearly a week ago that charges against Soeharto were being dropped.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518154557&irec=0
Why Soeharto's trial should continue
Agung Yudhawiranata, Jakarta
Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh has announced the termination of former president Soeharto's prosecution, citing his ill health over the past six years.
The decision to close the multimillion-dollar corruption case involving the former strongman deals the country's reform movement a major blow. This is because the People's Consultative Assembly ordered a just and fair legal process against Soeharto, his family, and his cronies in its 1998 decree on corruption, collusion and nepotism-free state administration.
The controversial move by the Attorney General capped systematic efforts to foil Soeharto's prosecution for alleged graft, stretching back to 2000 when the case was opened.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20060518.E02&irec=3
Regional chaos reflects frustration
Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta
The current political standoff in Banyuwangi and the recent violence in Tuban are two separate and distinctive issues, both of which rocked East Java.
In the Banyuwangi case, local elite groups backed by ulema and their followers are trying to oust Regent Ratna Ani Lestari, claiming that her less than year-old administration is ineffective. In Tuban, supporters of a losing candidate in the regent election burned down the local election commission office and property belonging to Regent Haeny Relawati, who won reelection.
Despite the differences, both incidents were triggered by the same factor. The outrage in the two regencies reflected people's frustration toward what they perceive as injustice.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20060518.F01&irec=1
'USNS Mercy' starts 5-month Asian deployment
MANILA (AP): The U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy will return to Southeast Asia later this week on a five-month humanitarian mission, a year after treating victims of the 2004 tsunami, the U.S. Embassy in Manila said Thursday.
The white-hulled vessel, one of two American hospital ships, will first stop in the volatile southern Philippines, where U.S. troops are building schools and roads and training Filipino soldiers in counterterrorism in efforts to combat al-Qaida-linkedmilitants, the embassy said in a statement.
Other stops were expected to include Indonesia, Bangladesh and East Timor, where medical personnel will offer free treatment for civilians.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518121536&irec=4
The Washington Post
China's Symbol, and Source, of Power
Three Gorges Dam Nears Completion, at High Human Cost
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A01
THREE GORGES DAM, China, May 17 -- After 13 years of breakneck construction that displaced more than a million villagers, China is about to pour the final concrete on an enormous dam across the mighty Yangtze River, seeking to tame the flood-prone waterway that has nurtured and tormented the Chinese people for 5,000 years.
Engineers, many of whom have spent their entire careers on the site, will gather on Saturday for a ceremony to mark their achievement: The dun-colored barrier at last has reached its full height of 606 feet and stretches 7,575 feet across the Yangtze's murky green waters in the Three Gorges area of central China's Hubei province, 600 miles southwest of Beijing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702157.html
Saudi Warns Against Isolating Hamas
Envoy Says U.S. Will Release 16 Guantanamo Detainees
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A18
The Bush administration's policy of isolating the Hamas-led Palestinian government is based on a "twisted logic" that will end up only radicalizing the Palestinian population against a peaceful solution, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said yesterday.
Separately, Saud said the United States would release 16 Saudi citizens from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this week and return them to Saudi Arabia for possible trial and incarceration. Only nine of the 136 Saudi detainees have been released since 2003, and these appear to be the first that will be subject to the Saudi justice system.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702078.html
Ethics Panel Starts 3 Probes
Ney, Jefferson And Cunningham Cases End Hiatus
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A01
After 16 months of inactivity and partisan infighting, the House ethics committee launched investigations last night into bribery allegations against Reps. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and William Jefferson (D-La.) and a separate inquiry into the widening scandal surrounding former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.).
The committee said it would have ordered another investigation, into the overseas trips of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), had the once-powerful lawmaker not announced that he will resign from the House on June 9.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701779.html
Google's Goal: A Worldwide Web of Books
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page D01
It's odd to hear Vinton Cerf, regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, to gush over ink-on-paper books.
The electronic pioneer and computer scientist, who now works as Google's chief Internet evangelist, is also a bibliophile who has a collection of about 10,000 hard-copy volumes lining shelves at his home in McLean.
These days, Cerf is busy promoting Google's plan to marry his two passions -- books and the Internet -- by digitizing millions of library books. He recently dropped by my office to explain the controversial plan and talk about its implications for book lovers.
As Cerf talked about his personal book collection and the limitations of having knowledge fixed on paper, he got me thinking about how reading will be transformed when static libraries join the more dynamic world of cross-referenced knowledge on the Web.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702016.html
Anti-Incumbent Voters Sent Messages Tuesday
By Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A03
Pennsylvania voters dumped two Republican leaders in the state Senate and scared a GOP member of Congress, while Oregon voters sent a warning they are unhappy with the Democratic governor.
Cumulatively, the results Tuesday were the latest signals of brewing unrest that could threaten incumbents of both parties in the November elections.
More than a dozen legislators in Pennsylvania lost their jobs in a revolt over a pay raise for lawmakers that was enacted and later repealed but which provoked outrage among the electorate.
In Oregon, Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) won his primary election but claimed just 54 percent of the vote. He is one of several Democratic executives who face tough reelection contests in a year when Democrats are generally optimistic about their prospects in U.S. House and Senate races. Other embattled Democrats include Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701901.html
Judge Killed in Attack On Turkish High Court
By Yesim Borg and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A19
ISTANBUL, May 17 -- A gunman opened fire on judges in Turkey's highest administrative court on Wednesday, killing one and wounding four after shouting "God is great!" and "We are God's ambassadors!"
Police and witnesses said the attacker, who was arrested and being interrogated by anti-terrorist police, was a lawyer who was incensed over a ruling further restricting Islamic dress in Turkey. The shooting occurred at midmorning in the heart of Ankara, the capital of a republic founded 83 years ago on principles that regard Islam as a threat to democratic governance in a country that is 99 percent Muslim.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701898.html
Judge Rejects Call to Release AT& T Papers
Justice Dept. Cites National Security; Privacy Group Says Documents Prove NSA Link
By Karen Gullo and Joel Rosenblatt
Bloomberg News
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page D05
A federal judge yesterday rejected a privacy group's request to release documents that it claims show AT&T Inc. helped the National Security Agency spy on Americans by providing access to customers' phone calls.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker said at a hearing in San Francisco that the documents may contain AT&T trade secrets. The judge also ruled against an AT&T request to have the privacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, return the documents to the company on the grounds that they were stolen.
The case has helped put AT&T, the largest U.S. telephone company, at the center of the controversy over the NSA domestic surveillance program. Even if the documents remain secret and the suit is thrown out, the case ties AT&T to a program that has troubled politicians and privacy groups, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702165.html
Troop Cuts Uncertain, Rumsfeld Testifies
Pentagon Chief Hopeful About 2006 Reduction in Iraq but 'Can't Promise It'
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A03
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he cannot guarantee that there will be substantial withdrawals of U.S. troops from Iraq this year, and warned instead that leaving that country precipitously could create a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other terrorists.
Rumsfeld told a Senate panel yesterday that he still hopes a big troop cut will occur this year but added, "I can't promise it."
He also emphasized the possible negative consequences of a swift pullout. "For it to be turned over to extremists would be a terrible thing for that part of the world and for the free world and for free people everywhere," he said. There are about 133,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, down from a peak of about 160,000 earlier this year but near the average level for the last three years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701935.html
The New Zealand Herald
Average mum now over 30
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
The average age of women giving birth in New Zealand is now above 30.
Latest figures from Statistics New Zealand, for the year to March, show the average age of women giving birth is now between 30 and 34.
In 1996, the average was in the 25 to 29 age group.
The births of 28,590 girls and 29,850 boys were registered in the year.
Over the same period there were 27,430 deaths registered, of which 13,810 were females and 13,620 males, equating to approximately two births for every death.
The natural increase of the population - the excess of births over deaths - was 31,010.
According to the latest national population projections, natural increase is projected to decline in the future, reaching about zero in 2041. From 2042, deaths are expected to outnumber births by an increasing margin.
New Zealand's total fertility rate has been relatively stable over the last 20 years, averaging 2.0 births per woman.
This figure is below the level required by a population to replace itself in the long term without migration (2.1 births per woman).
The lowest ever infant mortality rate was also recorded.
The latest statistics showed the infant mortality rate -- deaths of children under one year per 1000 live births -- was 4.8 -- the lowest recorded in New Zealand in any year.
The mortality rate in 1996 was 6.5.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10382422
Legal Action against family tax credit given go ahead
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has won its bid to take legal action against the Government's Working for Families package.
CPAG claimed Working for Families' In Work Payment and its predecessor, the Child Tax Credit, discriminated against 250,000 children whose families did not qualify for payments.
In a landmark case last year the Human Rights Tribunal ruled in favour of CPAG challenging the Working for Families package.
The Government appealed the decision in the High Court in Wellington, claiming the tribunal did not have jurisdiction to hear CPAG's case.
But in a reserved decision in the High Court today, Justice Ronald Young dismissed the challenge to the case going ahead.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10382423
Dipping economy will cause belt tightening, says Treasury
4.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Ian Llewellyn
People will be spending less in the coming year as they face up to falling house prices, high interest rates and increasing fuel costs, Treasury predicted today.
The Government's financial advisor said high personal spending in recent times on the back of a housing boom and cheap credit was coming to an end more sharply than it previously predicted.
Many households were now having to face higher mortgage costs as long term mortgages expired and had to be refinanced.
Treasury also estimated that the 24 per cent increase in fuel prices to March 2006 would add up to $700 million to households' annual fuel bill.
While some people would use their cars less, many would have to reduce their spending elsewhere, Treasury said.
Any further increases in oil costs would just bring further belt tightening.
Those hoping to lever more money out of their homes could also be out of luck with Treasury forecasting "average house prices declining 5 per cent in the year to mid 2007".
Treasury are optimistic that the downturn will be mild and short-lived with growth in personal investment beginning to recover in late 2007 as higher export incomes flow through, the labour market strengthens and interest rates fall.
Inflation is expected to stay above or around 3 per cent in the coming years, which means that any interest rate relief is unlikely until March 2007.
Tougher times for households in the months ahead will be reflected in a gloomier time for the general economy as well.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10382446
New FIJI PM on collision course with military
UPDATED 4.35pm Thursday May 18, 2006
SUVA - Fiji's indigenous prime minister won a one-seat majority in racially charged general elections today but is on a collision course with the military, which has warned him not to grant amnesty to leaders of a 2000 coup.
Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said his indigenous SDL party had won 36 seats in the 71-seat parliament and also had the support of two independents.
"That should give us a comfortable working majority," Qarase told local radio before going to the president's office in the capital, Suva, to be sworn in for a new term.
Qarase has vowed to reintroduce a bill to grant amnesty to those involved in a 2000 coup, which toppled the South Pacific island nation's first ethnic Indian prime minister.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10382435
New FIJI PM on collision course with military
UPDATED 4.35pm Thursday May 18, 2006
SUVA - Fiji's indigenous prime minister won a one-seat majority in racially charged general elections today but is on a collision course with the military, which has warned him not to grant amnesty to leaders of a 2000 coup.
Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said his indigenous SDL party had won 36 seats in the 71-seat parliament and also had the support of two independents.
"That should give us a comfortable working majority," Qarase told local radio before going to the president's office in the capital, Suva, to be sworn in for a new term.
Qarase has vowed to reintroduce a bill to grant amnesty to those involved in a 2000 coup, which toppled the South Pacific island nation's first ethnic Indian prime minister.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10382435
Sao Paulo violence exposes Brazil's shortcomings
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Terry Wade
SAO PAULO - Deadly clashes in Sao Paulo between gangs and police in the past six days have exposed Brazil's deep social problems at time when Latin America's largest country is trying to assert itself as a global leader in business and politics.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says Brazil deserves a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and is the natural leader in South America. Economic planners see massive Brazil competing toe-to-toe with emerging powers like China and India.
From crime that breeds in the wide gaps between rich and poor, to overcrowded prisons and police with itchy trigger fingers who often shoot to kill, the violence has highlighted the domestic political challenges Brazil must overcome to attract long-term foreign investment and cement a role as a stabilising force in the region.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382418
Brazil riot toll up to 133
5.20am Thursday May 18, 2006
Gang violence rocking Brazil's Sao Paulo state has claimed a total of 133 lives, authorities said.
The new toll came after police tallied 18 inmates killed in the prison rioting that ended yesterday.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382349
Abbas, Hamas mount rival shows of force in Gaza
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA - President Mahmoud Abbas ordered the deployment of thousands of Palestinian police in the Gaza Strip today after the new Hamas government, in a challenge to his authority, posted its own armed contingent on the streets.
A senior Palestinian security official said the deployment, to be fully implemented by Friday, would be the largest since police fanned out ahead of last year's Israeli pullout from the impoverished coastal territory after 38 years of occupation.
Both Abbas and the Hamas interior minister said they sought to stem bloodshed by rival Gaza gunmen. But with the security forces' loyalties often divided between Hamas and Abbas' long-dominant Fatah faction, further violence remained possible.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382413
Suicide bomber kills 7 in Russia's south
5.35pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
MOSCOW - A suicide bomber killed seven people including a top Russian policeman today when he drove his car into a police convoy in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia, local media reported.
Russian news agencies reported that among the dead was Dzhabrail Kostoyev, deputy head of the Ingushetia interior ministry, two of his guards, and four civilians. It was not clear if the suicide bomber was included in the total.
Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya and is inhabited by people closely related to the Chechens, has in recent years been infected by the fighting that has plagued its neighbour since the end of the Soviet Union.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382303
Railway sued for wartime transport of Jews
1.00pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
TOULOUSE, France - A French politician and his sister sued France's state-run SNCF railway today for transporting their father and three relatives to a wartime transit camp that sent Jews off to Nazi concentration camps.
Alain Lipietz, a Greens European Parliament deputy, and his sister Helene accused the SNCF of organising the transport of French Jews to the Drancy transit camp near Paris and billing the wartime government for its services.
A lawyer for the railway argued the statute of limitations had run out for the deportation of Jews, which stopped with the end of the four-year German occupation in 1944, and that the SNCF had been run by the collaborationist Vichy government.
"The SNCF was quite autonomous when it came to earning money, so it has to assume its responsibility for its choices in how it treated the Jews," said Alain Lipietz.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382263
Bali bomb suspect accuses police of torture
12.20pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
One of the men accused of involvement in the suicide bombings at three Bali restaurants last October has accused Indonesian police of torturing him to extract admissions.
Mohamad Cholily's lawyer has asked Denpasar's District Court to disregard two statements included in police evidence.
In his statements to police, Mohamad Cholily says he was with Jemaah Islamiah's master bomb-maker, Azahari Husin, when he heard the news of the second Bali bombings.
Cholily told police that Azahari said "Allah Akbar, our project is successful" when the news came over the radio.
The police dossier also records Cholily saying he knew that Noordin Top's code phrase, "my mum's cosmetic box" actually referred to a bomb delivered by Cholily.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382239
Israeli troops kill 2 Palestinian militants
4.10pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
NABLUS, West Bank - Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian militants during a raid in the occupied West Bank today, Palestinian security sources and medics said.
They said the two gunmen were killed during an exchange of gunfire with Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Nablus.
An Israeli military source said soldiers had identified hitting three gunmen inside a building in the city which a force had encircled trying to arrest a wanted militant inside.
It was not clear at this stage which group the gunmen belonged to.
On Sunday Israeli troops killed seven Palestinians including a leading Islamic Jihad militant in the bloodiest fighting in weeks in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli military official and Palestinian sources said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382292
Jack the Ripper 'may have been a woman'
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Kathy Marks
SYDNEY - The notorious serial killer who stalked London's East End, butchering prostitutes and terrorising the population, may not have been Jack the Ripper - but Jill.
An Australian scientist has used swabs from letters supposedly sent to police by the Ripper to build a partial DNA profile of the killer.
The results suggest that the person who murdered and mutilated at least five women from 1888 onwards may have been a woman.
Ian Findlay, a professor of molecular and forensic diagnostics, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that he had developed a profiling technique that could extract DNA from a single cell or strand of hair up to 160 years old.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382412
Human-to-human bird flu infection feared
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Achmad Sukarsono and Diyan Jari
JAKARTA - The World Health Organisation confirmed six more human cases of bird flu infections in Indonesia today, including five members of a family whose case has triggered fears of human-to-human transmission.
"There are six confirmations. One from Surabaya and five from Medan. One from Medan is still alive," said Sari Setiogi, the WHO's Indonesia spokeswoman.
Separately, Indonesia's health ministry said a 12-year-old boy died of bird flu four days ago in Jakarta's eastern suburb of Bekasi, according to local tests.
Blood samples have been sent to a WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation, ministry spokeswoman Lily Sulistyowati said. Local tests are not considered definitive.
An outbreak of H5N1 bird flu involving about seven members of a family at Medan in North Sumatra province has worried health agencies around the world but a Health Ministry official said today it was not a case of human-to-human transmission.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382425
Genetic study reveals surprises in human evolution
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
LONDON - Humans' evolutionary split from their closest relatives, chimpanzees, may have been more complicated, taken longer and probably occurred more recently than previously thought, scientists said today.
After comparing the genomes, or genetic codes, of the two species they suggest the initial split took place no more than 6.3 million years ago and probably less than 5.4 million years ago.
The process of separation may have taken about 4 million years and there could have been some inter-breeding before the final break.
"The study gave unexpected results about how we separated from our closest relatives, the chimpanzees," said David Reich of the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics in Massachusetts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382424
Miners in the money as mates fear for their Beaconsfield jobs
Thursday May 18, 2006
By Greg Ansley
The two Tasmanian miners trapped almost 1km below ground for 14 days yesterday appeared set to become millionaires as their rescuers feared for their jobs.
Todd Russell and Brant Webb have signed a deal reportedly worth up to A$2 million ($2.4 million) with the Nine network after a bidding war with rival Channel Seven.
But while further riches from book, film and American television rights also appeared likely, union negotiators could win no guarantee that the Beaconsfield gold mine would remain open.
The mine has been closed until investigations into its safety have been completed, but with the joint venture that operates it remaining in liquidation with debts of tens of millions of dollars, its future is in doubt.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382362
Blair says nuclear power back on agenda
1.00pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
By Katherine Baldwin and Jeremy Lovell
LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair provoked outrage today by saying the replacement of ageing nuclear power plants was back on the agenda due to global warming and rising reliance on imported energy.
Environmentalists said the remarks in a speech to business chiefs showed Blair had decided to back nuclear power even before the government's own energy review had been completed.
"These facts put the replacement of nuclear power stations, a big push on renewables and a step change on energy efficiency, engaging both business and consumers, back on the agenda with a vengeance," Blair told the Confederation of British Industry.
His remarks, in the middle of a wide-ranging speech covering globalisation, education, pensions and public sector reform, followed a private briefing by the energy minister on the progress of the review which is due to be concluded by July.
Nuclear power stations supply one-fifth of the nation's electricity.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382251
Children's inclusion 'is form of abuse'
Thursday May 18, 2006
LONDON - Thousands of children have had their lives damaged by the Government policy of inclusion which has left pupils with special needs and severe medical problems struggling in mainstream schools, a union warned.
Teachers are regularly forced to clean out tracheotomy tubes and change nappies because children with serious medical conditions have been placed in mainstream schools, the National Union of Teachers said.
Schools had to cope with pupils with severe mental health problems, including schizophrenia, self-harming and even attempted suicides and to try to support youngsters from the UK's most troubled homes, the study by Cambridge University academics said.
NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said that forcing children with special needs to struggle in mainstream school was "a form of abuse". "Inclusion has failed many children," he said. "It can work but we have discovered some really structural problems with it. Children can be excluded by sitting in a classroom that is not meeting their needs."
Many schools often lacked the money to hire specialist staff and provide the facilities needed to cope with special needs students, the study found.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382309
Skies clear over New England after historic floods
1.15pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
By Jason Szep
BOSTON - The skies cleared over New England today after five days of torrential rain and the worst floods in 70 years, but hundreds of people crowded into makeshift shelters after mass evacuations from swamped homes.
"We've turned a corner here," said Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge. "The vast majority of rivers have crested. Now it's a matter of getting them down below flood stage over the next day or so."
Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine since Monday as rivers threatened to overflow their banks or broke through sand-bag barriers erected by National Guard troops and rescue workers.
By this morning, washed-out roads, badly damaged buildings and the danger of buckling damns had prevented many residents from returning home. The Red Cross said 372 people had moved into shelters in New Hampshire and 209 in Massachusetts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382269
continued …
And where were we three years ago? Starting an illegal war in Iraq. And where are we today? Conducting an illegal war in Iraq with skyrocketing oil prices, insoluble debt and inflation.
Biggest Dow slide in 3 years
Investors sold shares in banks, industrial conglomerates and other rate-sensitive stocks. An index of bank stocks slid 1.8 percent, while shares of blue-chip Citigroup Inc. dropped 1.4 percent.
The blue-chip Dow dropped more than 200 points, the biggest slide since March 2003, and the Nasdaq had its longest losing streak in five years.
"Inflation, which is the principal focus of the Fed, is higher than Chairman Bernanke will feel comfortable with," said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer at Johnson Illington Advisors.
The drop impacted Latin markets, with the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange dropping 3.45 percent. See Argentina
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/argentina/note.jsp?idContent=280855&hideIntro=true
52nd Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education
Students Remember Brown vs. Board Decision
Stephanie Wurtz
Members of the Little Rock 9 traveled to Topeka for the celebration.
The group worked in 1957 to put the court's decision into action.
Now they have a message for today's students.
"The 9 of us as a group felt that it was time for change," says Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock 9, "living under the conditions we lived under in Little Rock made no sense."
So at 15, Roberts did something.
He was one of the first black students to enroll in an all white school after the Brown vs. Board decision ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional.
"They were the first public test of how the country was going to respond to Brown vs. Board," says Cheryl Brown Henderson of the Brown Foundation, that sponsored a banquet Wednesday honoring the Little Rock 9.
"So many Americans have that attitude: if it's too painful, I don't want to see it, be a part of it, know about it and what what we did may or may not have an impact," Roberts says.
That's why Roberts and Henderson want young people to remember and understand what the Brown vs. Board decision meant for America.
And understand that they have the power to make changes.
"It's time to wake up, to develop awareness," says Roberts, "each one of us has a responsibility to make a contribution to this society."
"This group is now in their 50s and 60s, but they were only teenagers when they took a stand," Henderson says, "I don't think our young people realize how much power they have."
To learn more about the Brown vs. Board decision, you can visit the Brown vs. Board Historic Site daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for free.
You can also check brownvboard.org or call the Brown Foundation at (785) 235-3939
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/2823066.html
Table 370.
Unemployment rate of persons 16 years old and over, by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment: 2002, 2003, and 2004
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_370.asp
PDF - Microsoft Excel of the above statistics
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/xls/tabn370.xls
The Jakarta Post
RI bird flu deaths reach 30: WHO
Tb. Arie Rukmantara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Five more bird flu deaths, including four from one North Sumatra family, were confirmed Wednesday, bringing the official death toll in the country to 30.
World Health Organization spokeswoman Sari P. Setiogi said the deaths in Karo regency, North Sumatra, were from a new cluster of H5N1, while the other death was in Surabaya, East Java.
"We're still waiting another test result of a bird flu case also found in North Sumatra," she said, referring to tests being carried out at the WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong on a 10-year-old boy who died.
The WHO reported the dead were a 19 and 17-year-old male, a 29-year-old female and an 18-month-old baby. A fifth person, a 25-year-old male, was infected but alive, AFP quoted the agency as saying.
Indonesia's 39 diagnosed H5N1 cases is the second highest in the world after Vietnam (42). It has been reported in poultry in 27 of the country's 33 provinces.
As well as the new cluster in Medan, five clusters have been found in Tangerang (two clusters), Jakarta, Lampung in southern Sumatra and Indramayu in West Java.
Some health experts worry the prevalence of the clusters will increase the possibility of the virus mutating into a more pathogenic form that could be easily transmitted between humans.
Although the Agriculture Ministry said it did not find evidence of H5N1 in local fowl in the Karo area, Sari said it was no indication the virus had spread through human-to-human contact.
"The good news is, in this case, that the virus did not infect others outside the seven patients," she said.
Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said a ministry team was trying to determine if there were other sources of infection, such as the use of chicken droppings as fertilizer.
"We'll try to investigate whether the source of the transmission came from fertilizers, pigs or other sources," she told Antara newswire.
Siti said she was shocked by news of the Karo outbreak, because the virus was not considered endemic in the area. She believed it was the H5N1 genotype and not a mutation.
"Based on our research and that of WHO, the type of the virus is still the same," she said.
A senior official of the newly formed National Commission on Bird Flu, Emil Agustiono, told The Jakarta Post the confirmation of the North Sumatra cluster showed the government needed to increase its efforts to curb the virus' spread.
"I urge the health and agriculture ministries, as well as WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization, to work together to solve these problems," he said.
"At present, there's still a tendency for these agencies to work individually."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20060518.@03&irec=6
Bird flu outbreak might 'burn itself out': Scientist
BOSTON, The U.S. (Bloomberg): The outbreak of lethal bird flu that has spread from Asia to Africa, the Middle East and Europe might "burn itself out" before becoming a human pandemic, the top U.S. infectious-disease researcher said Thursday.
While scientists fear the deadly H5N1 virus will mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, it's just as likely that the outbreak in birds will fade, said Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"It's entirely conceivable that this will just burn itself out and be a dead end," Fauci said in an interview. "It's just as likely to do that as evolve into something that's a serious problem."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518110047&irec=6
Sacred rite goes on in Merapi's dangerous path
Tarko Sudiarno and Hyginus Hardoyo, The Jakarta Post, Sleman/Yogyakarta
Despite the threat of an eruption from smoldering Mt. Merapi, believers in its mystical powers are performing a ritual at a hallowed site on its slopes.
They are following in the venerable footsteps of Mbah Marijan, the volcano's spiritual guardian who has refused to leave the area.
At least nine people gathered at Sri Manganti, one of the sacred spots lying about three kilometers from the mount's crater, for three days of prayers that began Wednesday.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailheadlines.asp?fileid=20060518.@01&irec=0
U.S. assists Mt. Merapi emergency response
JAKARTA (JP): The U.S. government has provided an additional US$50,000 to support emergency efforts in response to increasing volcanic activity at Mt. Merapi. That brings its total aid to $100,000, the U.S. embassy in Jakarta said Thursday.
Last Saturday, the Indonesian Volcano Technology Development and Research Agency (BPPTK) raised the alert at Mt. Merapi to the highest level after the volcano released ominous clouds of ash, with a giant lava dome bulging over its slopes.
The current status requires residents living on the slopes of the volcano are to leave their houses for temporary shelters.Some 10,000 people have been evacuated, but many of them have returned home, saying they have to tend to their fields or take care of their livestock.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518135720&irec=2
Refugees complain of prison-like conditions
MOUNT MERAPI, Central Java (AP): Thousands of villagers fed up with living in cramped camps have returned to their homes on the slopes of erupting Mount Merapi, ignoring warnings that the peakremains highly dangerous, an official said Thursday.
One camp that earlier this week held some 2,500 people was empty Thursday after a mass departure of refugees a day earlier, said Insan, an official at the shelter in a government building on the lower slopes of the mountain."They said it was like living in a prison," said Insan. "We tried to keep them entertained, but then rumors started spreading that their houses were being looted."
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518120807&irec=5
Protesters want charges against Soeharto reinstated
JAKARTA (Agencies): Protesters in Indonesia's capital demanded Thursday that prosecutors reinstate criminal charges against former president Soeharto, still hospitalized after colon surgery earlier this month.
Soeharto was ousted after 32 years in power in 1998 amid student protests and nationwide riots. In 2000, he was indicted on allegations of embezzling US$600 million, but has never been tried because his lawyers say he is too ill after suffering a series of strokes.
Thursday's protest in front of the State Palace was one of several anti-Soeharto gatherings since Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh announced nearly a week ago that charges against Soeharto were being dropped.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518154557&irec=0
Why Soeharto's trial should continue
Agung Yudhawiranata, Jakarta
Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh has announced the termination of former president Soeharto's prosecution, citing his ill health over the past six years.
The decision to close the multimillion-dollar corruption case involving the former strongman deals the country's reform movement a major blow. This is because the People's Consultative Assembly ordered a just and fair legal process against Soeharto, his family, and his cronies in its 1998 decree on corruption, collusion and nepotism-free state administration.
The controversial move by the Attorney General capped systematic efforts to foil Soeharto's prosecution for alleged graft, stretching back to 2000 when the case was opened.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20060518.E02&irec=3
Regional chaos reflects frustration
Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta
The current political standoff in Banyuwangi and the recent violence in Tuban are two separate and distinctive issues, both of which rocked East Java.
In the Banyuwangi case, local elite groups backed by ulema and their followers are trying to oust Regent Ratna Ani Lestari, claiming that her less than year-old administration is ineffective. In Tuban, supporters of a losing candidate in the regent election burned down the local election commission office and property belonging to Regent Haeny Relawati, who won reelection.
Despite the differences, both incidents were triggered by the same factor. The outrage in the two regencies reflected people's frustration toward what they perceive as injustice.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20060518.F01&irec=1
'USNS Mercy' starts 5-month Asian deployment
MANILA (AP): The U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy will return to Southeast Asia later this week on a five-month humanitarian mission, a year after treating victims of the 2004 tsunami, the U.S. Embassy in Manila said Thursday.
The white-hulled vessel, one of two American hospital ships, will first stop in the volatile southern Philippines, where U.S. troops are building schools and roads and training Filipino soldiers in counterterrorism in efforts to combat al-Qaida-linkedmilitants, the embassy said in a statement.
Other stops were expected to include Indonesia, Bangladesh and East Timor, where medical personnel will offer free treatment for civilians.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060518121536&irec=4
The Washington Post
China's Symbol, and Source, of Power
Three Gorges Dam Nears Completion, at High Human Cost
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A01
THREE GORGES DAM, China, May 17 -- After 13 years of breakneck construction that displaced more than a million villagers, China is about to pour the final concrete on an enormous dam across the mighty Yangtze River, seeking to tame the flood-prone waterway that has nurtured and tormented the Chinese people for 5,000 years.
Engineers, many of whom have spent their entire careers on the site, will gather on Saturday for a ceremony to mark their achievement: The dun-colored barrier at last has reached its full height of 606 feet and stretches 7,575 feet across the Yangtze's murky green waters in the Three Gorges area of central China's Hubei province, 600 miles southwest of Beijing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702157.html
Saudi Warns Against Isolating Hamas
Envoy Says U.S. Will Release 16 Guantanamo Detainees
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A18
The Bush administration's policy of isolating the Hamas-led Palestinian government is based on a "twisted logic" that will end up only radicalizing the Palestinian population against a peaceful solution, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said yesterday.
Separately, Saud said the United States would release 16 Saudi citizens from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this week and return them to Saudi Arabia for possible trial and incarceration. Only nine of the 136 Saudi detainees have been released since 2003, and these appear to be the first that will be subject to the Saudi justice system.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702078.html
Ethics Panel Starts 3 Probes
Ney, Jefferson And Cunningham Cases End Hiatus
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A01
After 16 months of inactivity and partisan infighting, the House ethics committee launched investigations last night into bribery allegations against Reps. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and William Jefferson (D-La.) and a separate inquiry into the widening scandal surrounding former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.).
The committee said it would have ordered another investigation, into the overseas trips of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), had the once-powerful lawmaker not announced that he will resign from the House on June 9.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701779.html
Google's Goal: A Worldwide Web of Books
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page D01
It's odd to hear Vinton Cerf, regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, to gush over ink-on-paper books.
The electronic pioneer and computer scientist, who now works as Google's chief Internet evangelist, is also a bibliophile who has a collection of about 10,000 hard-copy volumes lining shelves at his home in McLean.
These days, Cerf is busy promoting Google's plan to marry his two passions -- books and the Internet -- by digitizing millions of library books. He recently dropped by my office to explain the controversial plan and talk about its implications for book lovers.
As Cerf talked about his personal book collection and the limitations of having knowledge fixed on paper, he got me thinking about how reading will be transformed when static libraries join the more dynamic world of cross-referenced knowledge on the Web.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702016.html
Anti-Incumbent Voters Sent Messages Tuesday
By Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A03
Pennsylvania voters dumped two Republican leaders in the state Senate and scared a GOP member of Congress, while Oregon voters sent a warning they are unhappy with the Democratic governor.
Cumulatively, the results Tuesday were the latest signals of brewing unrest that could threaten incumbents of both parties in the November elections.
More than a dozen legislators in Pennsylvania lost their jobs in a revolt over a pay raise for lawmakers that was enacted and later repealed but which provoked outrage among the electorate.
In Oregon, Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) won his primary election but claimed just 54 percent of the vote. He is one of several Democratic executives who face tough reelection contests in a year when Democrats are generally optimistic about their prospects in U.S. House and Senate races. Other embattled Democrats include Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701901.html
Judge Killed in Attack On Turkish High Court
By Yesim Borg and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A19
ISTANBUL, May 17 -- A gunman opened fire on judges in Turkey's highest administrative court on Wednesday, killing one and wounding four after shouting "God is great!" and "We are God's ambassadors!"
Police and witnesses said the attacker, who was arrested and being interrogated by anti-terrorist police, was a lawyer who was incensed over a ruling further restricting Islamic dress in Turkey. The shooting occurred at midmorning in the heart of Ankara, the capital of a republic founded 83 years ago on principles that regard Islam as a threat to democratic governance in a country that is 99 percent Muslim.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701898.html
Judge Rejects Call to Release AT& T Papers
Justice Dept. Cites National Security; Privacy Group Says Documents Prove NSA Link
By Karen Gullo and Joel Rosenblatt
Bloomberg News
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page D05
A federal judge yesterday rejected a privacy group's request to release documents that it claims show AT&T Inc. helped the National Security Agency spy on Americans by providing access to customers' phone calls.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker said at a hearing in San Francisco that the documents may contain AT&T trade secrets. The judge also ruled against an AT&T request to have the privacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, return the documents to the company on the grounds that they were stolen.
The case has helped put AT&T, the largest U.S. telephone company, at the center of the controversy over the NSA domestic surveillance program. Even if the documents remain secret and the suit is thrown out, the case ties AT&T to a program that has troubled politicians and privacy groups, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702165.html
Troop Cuts Uncertain, Rumsfeld Testifies
Pentagon Chief Hopeful About 2006 Reduction in Iraq but 'Can't Promise It'
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A03
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he cannot guarantee that there will be substantial withdrawals of U.S. troops from Iraq this year, and warned instead that leaving that country precipitously could create a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other terrorists.
Rumsfeld told a Senate panel yesterday that he still hopes a big troop cut will occur this year but added, "I can't promise it."
He also emphasized the possible negative consequences of a swift pullout. "For it to be turned over to extremists would be a terrible thing for that part of the world and for the free world and for free people everywhere," he said. There are about 133,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, down from a peak of about 160,000 earlier this year but near the average level for the last three years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701935.html
The New Zealand Herald
Average mum now over 30
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
The average age of women giving birth in New Zealand is now above 30.
Latest figures from Statistics New Zealand, for the year to March, show the average age of women giving birth is now between 30 and 34.
In 1996, the average was in the 25 to 29 age group.
The births of 28,590 girls and 29,850 boys were registered in the year.
Over the same period there were 27,430 deaths registered, of which 13,810 were females and 13,620 males, equating to approximately two births for every death.
The natural increase of the population - the excess of births over deaths - was 31,010.
According to the latest national population projections, natural increase is projected to decline in the future, reaching about zero in 2041. From 2042, deaths are expected to outnumber births by an increasing margin.
New Zealand's total fertility rate has been relatively stable over the last 20 years, averaging 2.0 births per woman.
This figure is below the level required by a population to replace itself in the long term without migration (2.1 births per woman).
The lowest ever infant mortality rate was also recorded.
The latest statistics showed the infant mortality rate -- deaths of children under one year per 1000 live births -- was 4.8 -- the lowest recorded in New Zealand in any year.
The mortality rate in 1996 was 6.5.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10382422
Legal Action against family tax credit given go ahead
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has won its bid to take legal action against the Government's Working for Families package.
CPAG claimed Working for Families' In Work Payment and its predecessor, the Child Tax Credit, discriminated against 250,000 children whose families did not qualify for payments.
In a landmark case last year the Human Rights Tribunal ruled in favour of CPAG challenging the Working for Families package.
The Government appealed the decision in the High Court in Wellington, claiming the tribunal did not have jurisdiction to hear CPAG's case.
But in a reserved decision in the High Court today, Justice Ronald Young dismissed the challenge to the case going ahead.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10382423
Dipping economy will cause belt tightening, says Treasury
4.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Ian Llewellyn
People will be spending less in the coming year as they face up to falling house prices, high interest rates and increasing fuel costs, Treasury predicted today.
The Government's financial advisor said high personal spending in recent times on the back of a housing boom and cheap credit was coming to an end more sharply than it previously predicted.
Many households were now having to face higher mortgage costs as long term mortgages expired and had to be refinanced.
Treasury also estimated that the 24 per cent increase in fuel prices to March 2006 would add up to $700 million to households' annual fuel bill.
While some people would use their cars less, many would have to reduce their spending elsewhere, Treasury said.
Any further increases in oil costs would just bring further belt tightening.
Those hoping to lever more money out of their homes could also be out of luck with Treasury forecasting "average house prices declining 5 per cent in the year to mid 2007".
Treasury are optimistic that the downturn will be mild and short-lived with growth in personal investment beginning to recover in late 2007 as higher export incomes flow through, the labour market strengthens and interest rates fall.
Inflation is expected to stay above or around 3 per cent in the coming years, which means that any interest rate relief is unlikely until March 2007.
Tougher times for households in the months ahead will be reflected in a gloomier time for the general economy as well.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10382446
New FIJI PM on collision course with military
UPDATED 4.35pm Thursday May 18, 2006
SUVA - Fiji's indigenous prime minister won a one-seat majority in racially charged general elections today but is on a collision course with the military, which has warned him not to grant amnesty to leaders of a 2000 coup.
Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said his indigenous SDL party had won 36 seats in the 71-seat parliament and also had the support of two independents.
"That should give us a comfortable working majority," Qarase told local radio before going to the president's office in the capital, Suva, to be sworn in for a new term.
Qarase has vowed to reintroduce a bill to grant amnesty to those involved in a 2000 coup, which toppled the South Pacific island nation's first ethnic Indian prime minister.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10382435
New FIJI PM on collision course with military
UPDATED 4.35pm Thursday May 18, 2006
SUVA - Fiji's indigenous prime minister won a one-seat majority in racially charged general elections today but is on a collision course with the military, which has warned him not to grant amnesty to leaders of a 2000 coup.
Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase said his indigenous SDL party had won 36 seats in the 71-seat parliament and also had the support of two independents.
"That should give us a comfortable working majority," Qarase told local radio before going to the president's office in the capital, Suva, to be sworn in for a new term.
Qarase has vowed to reintroduce a bill to grant amnesty to those involved in a 2000 coup, which toppled the South Pacific island nation's first ethnic Indian prime minister.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10382435
Sao Paulo violence exposes Brazil's shortcomings
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Terry Wade
SAO PAULO - Deadly clashes in Sao Paulo between gangs and police in the past six days have exposed Brazil's deep social problems at time when Latin America's largest country is trying to assert itself as a global leader in business and politics.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says Brazil deserves a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and is the natural leader in South America. Economic planners see massive Brazil competing toe-to-toe with emerging powers like China and India.
From crime that breeds in the wide gaps between rich and poor, to overcrowded prisons and police with itchy trigger fingers who often shoot to kill, the violence has highlighted the domestic political challenges Brazil must overcome to attract long-term foreign investment and cement a role as a stabilising force in the region.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382418
Brazil riot toll up to 133
5.20am Thursday May 18, 2006
Gang violence rocking Brazil's Sao Paulo state has claimed a total of 133 lives, authorities said.
The new toll came after police tallied 18 inmates killed in the prison rioting that ended yesterday.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382349
Abbas, Hamas mount rival shows of force in Gaza
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA - President Mahmoud Abbas ordered the deployment of thousands of Palestinian police in the Gaza Strip today after the new Hamas government, in a challenge to his authority, posted its own armed contingent on the streets.
A senior Palestinian security official said the deployment, to be fully implemented by Friday, would be the largest since police fanned out ahead of last year's Israeli pullout from the impoverished coastal territory after 38 years of occupation.
Both Abbas and the Hamas interior minister said they sought to stem bloodshed by rival Gaza gunmen. But with the security forces' loyalties often divided between Hamas and Abbas' long-dominant Fatah faction, further violence remained possible.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382413
Suicide bomber kills 7 in Russia's south
5.35pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
MOSCOW - A suicide bomber killed seven people including a top Russian policeman today when he drove his car into a police convoy in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia, local media reported.
Russian news agencies reported that among the dead was Dzhabrail Kostoyev, deputy head of the Ingushetia interior ministry, two of his guards, and four civilians. It was not clear if the suicide bomber was included in the total.
Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya and is inhabited by people closely related to the Chechens, has in recent years been infected by the fighting that has plagued its neighbour since the end of the Soviet Union.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382303
Railway sued for wartime transport of Jews
1.00pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
TOULOUSE, France - A French politician and his sister sued France's state-run SNCF railway today for transporting their father and three relatives to a wartime transit camp that sent Jews off to Nazi concentration camps.
Alain Lipietz, a Greens European Parliament deputy, and his sister Helene accused the SNCF of organising the transport of French Jews to the Drancy transit camp near Paris and billing the wartime government for its services.
A lawyer for the railway argued the statute of limitations had run out for the deportation of Jews, which stopped with the end of the four-year German occupation in 1944, and that the SNCF had been run by the collaborationist Vichy government.
"The SNCF was quite autonomous when it came to earning money, so it has to assume its responsibility for its choices in how it treated the Jews," said Alain Lipietz.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382263
Bali bomb suspect accuses police of torture
12.20pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
One of the men accused of involvement in the suicide bombings at three Bali restaurants last October has accused Indonesian police of torturing him to extract admissions.
Mohamad Cholily's lawyer has asked Denpasar's District Court to disregard two statements included in police evidence.
In his statements to police, Mohamad Cholily says he was with Jemaah Islamiah's master bomb-maker, Azahari Husin, when he heard the news of the second Bali bombings.
Cholily told police that Azahari said "Allah Akbar, our project is successful" when the news came over the radio.
The police dossier also records Cholily saying he knew that Noordin Top's code phrase, "my mum's cosmetic box" actually referred to a bomb delivered by Cholily.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382239
Israeli troops kill 2 Palestinian militants
4.10pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
NABLUS, West Bank - Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian militants during a raid in the occupied West Bank today, Palestinian security sources and medics said.
They said the two gunmen were killed during an exchange of gunfire with Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Nablus.
An Israeli military source said soldiers had identified hitting three gunmen inside a building in the city which a force had encircled trying to arrest a wanted militant inside.
It was not clear at this stage which group the gunmen belonged to.
On Sunday Israeli troops killed seven Palestinians including a leading Islamic Jihad militant in the bloodiest fighting in weeks in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli military official and Palestinian sources said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382292
Jack the Ripper 'may have been a woman'
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Kathy Marks
SYDNEY - The notorious serial killer who stalked London's East End, butchering prostitutes and terrorising the population, may not have been Jack the Ripper - but Jill.
An Australian scientist has used swabs from letters supposedly sent to police by the Ripper to build a partial DNA profile of the killer.
The results suggest that the person who murdered and mutilated at least five women from 1888 onwards may have been a woman.
Ian Findlay, a professor of molecular and forensic diagnostics, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that he had developed a profiling technique that could extract DNA from a single cell or strand of hair up to 160 years old.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382412
Human-to-human bird flu infection feared
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
By Achmad Sukarsono and Diyan Jari
JAKARTA - The World Health Organisation confirmed six more human cases of bird flu infections in Indonesia today, including five members of a family whose case has triggered fears of human-to-human transmission.
"There are six confirmations. One from Surabaya and five from Medan. One from Medan is still alive," said Sari Setiogi, the WHO's Indonesia spokeswoman.
Separately, Indonesia's health ministry said a 12-year-old boy died of bird flu four days ago in Jakarta's eastern suburb of Bekasi, according to local tests.
Blood samples have been sent to a WHO-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong for confirmation, ministry spokeswoman Lily Sulistyowati said. Local tests are not considered definitive.
An outbreak of H5N1 bird flu involving about seven members of a family at Medan in North Sumatra province has worried health agencies around the world but a Health Ministry official said today it was not a case of human-to-human transmission.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382425
Genetic study reveals surprises in human evolution
1.00pm Thursday May 18, 2006
LONDON - Humans' evolutionary split from their closest relatives, chimpanzees, may have been more complicated, taken longer and probably occurred more recently than previously thought, scientists said today.
After comparing the genomes, or genetic codes, of the two species they suggest the initial split took place no more than 6.3 million years ago and probably less than 5.4 million years ago.
The process of separation may have taken about 4 million years and there could have been some inter-breeding before the final break.
"The study gave unexpected results about how we separated from our closest relatives, the chimpanzees," said David Reich of the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics in Massachusetts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382424
Miners in the money as mates fear for their Beaconsfield jobs
Thursday May 18, 2006
By Greg Ansley
The two Tasmanian miners trapped almost 1km below ground for 14 days yesterday appeared set to become millionaires as their rescuers feared for their jobs.
Todd Russell and Brant Webb have signed a deal reportedly worth up to A$2 million ($2.4 million) with the Nine network after a bidding war with rival Channel Seven.
But while further riches from book, film and American television rights also appeared likely, union negotiators could win no guarantee that the Beaconsfield gold mine would remain open.
The mine has been closed until investigations into its safety have been completed, but with the joint venture that operates it remaining in liquidation with debts of tens of millions of dollars, its future is in doubt.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382362
Blair says nuclear power back on agenda
1.00pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
By Katherine Baldwin and Jeremy Lovell
LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair provoked outrage today by saying the replacement of ageing nuclear power plants was back on the agenda due to global warming and rising reliance on imported energy.
Environmentalists said the remarks in a speech to business chiefs showed Blair had decided to back nuclear power even before the government's own energy review had been completed.
"These facts put the replacement of nuclear power stations, a big push on renewables and a step change on energy efficiency, engaging both business and consumers, back on the agenda with a vengeance," Blair told the Confederation of British Industry.
His remarks, in the middle of a wide-ranging speech covering globalisation, education, pensions and public sector reform, followed a private briefing by the energy minister on the progress of the review which is due to be concluded by July.
Nuclear power stations supply one-fifth of the nation's electricity.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382251
Children's inclusion 'is form of abuse'
Thursday May 18, 2006
LONDON - Thousands of children have had their lives damaged by the Government policy of inclusion which has left pupils with special needs and severe medical problems struggling in mainstream schools, a union warned.
Teachers are regularly forced to clean out tracheotomy tubes and change nappies because children with serious medical conditions have been placed in mainstream schools, the National Union of Teachers said.
Schools had to cope with pupils with severe mental health problems, including schizophrenia, self-harming and even attempted suicides and to try to support youngsters from the UK's most troubled homes, the study by Cambridge University academics said.
NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said that forcing children with special needs to struggle in mainstream school was "a form of abuse". "Inclusion has failed many children," he said. "It can work but we have discovered some really structural problems with it. Children can be excluded by sitting in a classroom that is not meeting their needs."
Many schools often lacked the money to hire specialist staff and provide the facilities needed to cope with special needs students, the study found.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382309
Skies clear over New England after historic floods
1.15pm Wednesday May 17, 2006
By Jason Szep
BOSTON - The skies cleared over New England today after five days of torrential rain and the worst floods in 70 years, but hundreds of people crowded into makeshift shelters after mass evacuations from swamped homes.
"We've turned a corner here," said Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge. "The vast majority of rivers have crested. Now it's a matter of getting them down below flood stage over the next day or so."
Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine since Monday as rivers threatened to overflow their banks or broke through sand-bag barriers erected by National Guard troops and rescue workers.
By this morning, washed-out roads, badly damaged buildings and the danger of buckling damns had prevented many residents from returning home. The Red Cross said 372 people had moved into shelters in New Hampshire and 209 in Massachusetts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10382269
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