FMT News |  |
- Don’t believe opinion polls, Shafie tells Sabahans
- Opposition becoming desperate, says Hisham
- Issue individual NCR titles, says Sarawak PKR
- Teen mental health worrying govt
- Assaulted DAP man receives ‘threat’ calls
- Why discriminate Paralympic winners?
- Budget 2013: Quit political fiction, adopt market principles
- Mahabharata – Bahagian 1
- Stubborn Umno ‘killing’ race relations
- Helping the poor can get you into trouble
- Najib to visit Sabah, again
- 48 hours on the Belgian coast
- Hug friends via Facebook
- Asian men pampering their skin
- India divided over FDI in retail
- River is not just a source of water
- Brothers angered by lack of compensation for land
- No RM7.2 bil capital outflow, says Pua
- City sink Sunderland to get back on track
- Falcao reveals Premier League ambition
- Djokovic to face Tsonga in Beijing final
- Sharapova beats Li to make China Open final
- Murray beaten by Raonic in Japan shock
- Hiroshima keep J-League lead
- Delighted Vettel leads Red Bull lock-out
- Kimi spin cost me, says Alonso
- Hamilton warns he may struggle in Japan
- In boost to campaign, Obama takes in US$181 million
- In Venezuelan vote, all eyes will be on loser’s reaction
- Obama touts jobs report as he seeks to lift campaign
- Ex-papal butler convicted, sentenced to 18 months jail
- Man dies in UK from Congo fever after Afghanistan flight
- Turkey strikes back at Syria after Erdogan warning
- Islamist cleric from Britain to appear in US court
- North Korean soldier defects to South across land border
- Yemen foils al Qaeda plan to bomb air base used by United States
- Somali president names political newcomer as prime minister
- Iran denies offering new plan on nuclear impasse
| Don’t believe opinion polls, Shafie tells Sabahans Posted: 07 Oct 2012 03:31 AM PDT
Mohd Shafie, who is also Member of Parliament for Semporna, said what was important is that Sabah leaders had been working hard to develop the state and were not overawed by an approval rating. The state government has performed its duties well and the people should support the development agenda, he told reporters after closing Kemas kindergarten’s ‘Potential Day’ at Sekolah Menengah Teknik Likas here today. A survey by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research has detected that the satisfaction of Sabah voters towards Musa, who has been chief minister for almost a decade, has dropped from 60 per cent in November 2009 to below 50 per cent in September 2012. Mohd Shafie, who is also Rural and Regional Development Minister, said about 4,000 Community Development Department (Kemas) teachers had their salary upgraded to Grade S27 after completing their diploma in pre-school education. In his speech, he said Sabah boasted 1,360 Kemas kindergartens with 27,014 children. -Bernama tag: Sabah, Merdeka Centre Survey, voters, elction |
| Opposition becoming desperate, says Hisham Posted: 07 Oct 2012 01:57 AM PDT
Speaking to reporters at the Taman Seri Lambak health tour carnival launch of the 1Malaysia clinic at the housing estate here today, Hishamuddin, who is also Umno vice-president, said the opposition was resorting to this because it was losing support from the people. “When they meet Christians, they (opposition) say like this.. but when they meet with Muslims and Buddhists, they say like that. “They predict the general election will be held soon so they think they can shore up support by inciting racial and religious issues,” he said. The Sembrong MP member was commenting on Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s call to Christians not to stay silent if they were faced with wrongdoings. Lim is alleged to have said this in a speech to some 300 church leaders recently. -Bernama |
| Issue individual NCR titles, says Sarawak PKR Posted: 07 Oct 2012 01:56 AM PDT
Sarawak PKR chairman Baru Bian said the people wanted individual titles issued on the native customary rights lands surveyed. "In my area of Lawas, the people have been asking the Land and survey Department to survey their native customary right land and then issue titles individually. "So many letters have been sent requesting them to do. I even wrote letters to the department concerned requesting the NCR land to be surveyed. "To this day nothing has been done," said Bian. Bian, who is the Ba'Kelalan assemblyman, was commenting on a statement made by Special functions Minister Adenan Satem who called on longhouse people to have their land surveyed and to be issued titles. "NCR land should be surveyed and given titles so that the landowners would feel their land had been secured and protected under the law," Adenan had said when he presented land titles to 17 longhouses in Sibu. Bian who supported Adenan’s statement however said: "We will support (his stand) (but) it appears that they are pushing (land survey) under section 6 of the Land code which is a very unclear area of the law. And that I of course do not support. "If you talk about NCR it should be preferred to have it surveyed under section 18 where individual titles should be issued. "What the native landowners do not want is that once their land surveyed under section 6 it will be categorised as 'communal native reserve'. This is on the grace of the government or at the discretion of the government to the people. "Our past experience showed that in some cases native communal reserves may not be compensated once it is taken back and extinguished for a public purpose project. "The important thing now is to carry out a survey and straight away issue titles to individual land owners. "Why should you waste your time? Why are you doing the job twice?" he asked. Fodder for opposition The perimeter survey of NCR land was a hot issue in the last state election and it is going to be an important issue to be used by opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition in the coming election. In fact under its 'Buku Jingga' (manifesto), the Pakatan Rakyat government proposes to establish a Land Commission to study all NCR land cases and to issue titles to the rightful owners. Meanwhile, Sibu Land and Survey superintendent Peggy Ronin Edin said since September 2010, the department had carried out survey work totalling 9,127.6 hectares with 2,667 hectares being gazetted under Section 6 of the Land Code. The department was also in the process of gazetting 6,460 hectares of land involving 46 longhouses in four areas in Pasai-Siong, Jalan Ulu Oya and Batang Igan, she said. The project was initiated by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak just before the start of the state election last year. |
| Teen mental health worrying govt Posted: 07 Oct 2012 12:38 AM PDT
Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the statistics showed mental health problems involving the group rose to 13 per cent in 1996, 19.4 per cent in 2006 and 20 per cent in 2011. “We are very worried about the worsening trend on mental health of teenagers and children because this will afffect national development as they are national He drew attention to the fact that teens and children today were heavily influenced by the Internet and communications technology to the point it was leading to less parent-child interaction while parents busy with their careers were also treating lightly the supportive role they needed to play when it came to their children. As such, Liow said the ministry would make efforts to tackle the problem including preparing a national strategic plan on mental health and increasing the number of Community Health Centres from next year. Liow said the plan among others would stress on the aspects of promoting mental health and smart partnerships involving various agencies and NGOs. According to him, opening up more Community Health Centres would enable patients to receive treatment in a more conducive environment as compared to hospitals. He said services like psychological support, counseling and information on mental health were available at such centres. The first Community Mental Health Centre in the country was launched in Presint 11, Putrajaya last year. -Bernama |
| Assaulted DAP man receives ‘threat’ calls Posted: 07 Oct 2012 12:10 AM PDT
"I received the first phone call at 10.23pm from an unknown Indian man. The caller wanted to kick, beat and chop me up. "I also received another threatening call, this time from a private number about 26 minutes later," said Taman Murni DAP branch chairman, A Thirumalvalavan in his police report. The police report was lodged a short while later at Sepang district police headquarters in Bandar Baru Salak Tinggi. He claimed that the threatening calls were made as a result of his allegations that DAP has gangsters within the party fold. "The man threatened me because I spoke to the media on Friday," said Thirumalvalavan. On Friday, he and another party member R Selvan alleged that they were assaulted by gangsters when they attempted to give a memorandum that also included allegations of gangsterism within the party. Both Thirumalvalavan and Selvan along with Pantai Putra Sepang branch secretary Rashid Md Gani also questioned the DAP secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng and Selangor DAP chief, Teresa Kok for ignoring the issue even though both Lim and Kok had witnessed the incident on Monday. See Also: LGE accused of ignoring gangsterism in DAP |
| Why discriminate Paralympic winners? Posted: 07 Oct 2012 12:01 AM PDT
Ong said he would devote a portion of his debate speech on Budget 2013 to question the system, which offers a lucrative one-off cash reward to Olympics medalists but not to their Paralympics counterparts. Under the Athlete Incentive Scheme (Shakam), gold medal winners at the Olympics received a one-off RM1 million payment while silver and bronze medal winners receive RM300,000 and RM100,000 respectively. This was in stark contrast to Paralympic gold medal winners who received RM300,000 while silver and bronze medal winners get RM200,000 and RM100,000 respectively. "Today, despite them winning medals, there is still a world of differences in terms of the treatments they got as compared to Lee Chong Wei or Pandelela (Rinong). "Disabled athletes fork out double efforts to take part in Paralympics, they should be given equal shares of reward," Ong said in a video clip posted on his YouTube channel. When contacted by FMT, Ong also disagreed with Sport Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek's recent remark that the reward gap was due to the Paralympics games' structure, where multiple sub-categories are found under a category such as 100 meter sprint. He said the ministry should take into account the physical challenges the disabled athletes need to endure and the jobs they may forgo to take part in the trainings. Hence, he urged the ministry to come out with a mechanism that would ensure disabled athletes' job security. "The adoption scheme (bapa angkat) should be extended to disabled athletes, whereby government-linked companies and big corporate entities adopt them and provide them with a flexible job. "At least they don't need to worry that if they go for training for two or three times in a week, they will lose their jobs," he said. Malaysia bagged one silver and one bronze medal in the London Paralympics Games last month, equaled the achievement of the able-bodied athletes in Olympics. Of the 23 athletes in Malaysia contingent, Hasihin Sanawi won a silver medal in archery while Mohd Ziyad Zolkefli clinched a bronze in shot putt. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3p8k8kqCzo&list=UUJyIuR_qvPp33pkCy6GpYQg |
| Budget 2013: Quit political fiction, adopt market principles Posted: 06 Oct 2012 11:39 PM PDT
Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak submitted a proposed fiscal year 2013 Budget of RM251 billion to Dewan Rakyat on Sept 28, 2012. Pakatan Rakyat announced their shadow budget of RM234 billion two days before Friday in Parliament. Watching public debate for budget between BN and Pakatan is just another political play. Dispute on figures, numbers and financial practises and that alone can never be settled as long as they are called politician. They trumping the other guy's proposal and each side attempting to gain political advantage. But in the end, what happens? Back to the budget, if I were a lawmaker in the Parliament, I would vote against both budgets for unbalanced, fiscally irresponsible, immoral budget and mostly put Malaysia in disaster path toward a welfare state. These are Keynesian big budget. People love Keynesianism because Keynes loves government spending, I know. Look around you, RM400 million under 1Azam programme to benefit 58,330, RM2 billion for Green Technology Financing Scheme Fund, RM3 billion for BR1M 2.0 to benefit 4.3 million households and 2.7 million unmarried individuals. Meanwhile, Pakatan Rakyat's budget allocated RM2.8 billion annually for 2.8 million senior citizens above 60 years old and increasing welfare payment to RM550 per month which they claim this policy immediately frees 84,000 families from abject poverty. Sounds like Keynesian enough? For your information, Keynesianism is a philosophy of creative government spending and endless government intervention. Revise and reverse the ideas It is not too late to revise and reverse the influence of the intellectual leaders by moulding critical opinion that should be directed against our own interventionist government. In so doing, first, people must acknowledge the government is running against the market. Strictly speaking, governments do not earn revenue; they expropriate resource by taxing people, enforcement, regulation, summons and seizing goods. They then use the money to acquire goods and services or pay civil servants or pay subsidies to favoured groups. The government budget is a vast machine of wealth redistribution! Time to admit it. Second, serious considerations to cut government spending should be debated and implemented. The cuts being discussed are illusionary and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts for the use of prospective spending. For examples, it is a commendable effort to find the proposal of removing car taxes and lowering car prices by Pakatan Rakyat. And some people cheer when Prime Minister Najib announced that sugar subsidy would be cut 20 sen per kg effective from end September 2012. But looking at their fine prints, these must be 'paid for' by higher taxes elsewhere! Cut individual income tax for Good and Service Tax? Don't you think these people should be prosecuted for fraud? The significant role of saving Do away with reducing the size of civil service, deregulations, rationalising interest rates and lowering taxes. Do not focus on revenues and trust the market cooperation instead. The claim, of course good intention for social commitments will be pleaded and they promise to govern our money well. That is not the case here. It undermines all the good of individual saving and creation of wealth! This brings me to the last point which is saving. Assuming the role of government is rationalised and the money supply is not inflated, individual would be able to accumulate real saving value of money to ensure long term personal prosperity. What people should do with their savings? Well, the free market answer is clear "That's your money, your fruits of labour, keep it and do whatever you want to do with it. This is what I mean by real freedom and liberty" According to the Austrian school of economics, a low time preference society is, the more people save the more there is available to invest in the future, the rapid growth of social and economic. The society becomes wealthier! Sadly, the significant role of saving never stated in both budgets. The politicians simply want to increase household purchasing power (e.g subsidies, BR1M 2.0, RM200 smartphone rebate and cheap money) to buy more consumption goods i.e to reduce the rate of saving. As a result, it distorts this crucial balance of spending, saving, borrowing and invest in our society. Let us hope to see less revenue and less government spending in future. As simple as that, this country does not need bigger role of government and it is individual money really govern the economy. Medecci Lineil is a young Austrian libertarian who is working at Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS). The views expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not represent the views of IDEAS. |
| Posted: 06 Oct 2012 11:28 PM PDT
Vyasa selaku pengarang epik klasik India ini ternyata menggunakan cerita berbingkai dan plot kompleks dalam menyampaikan cerita yang menggabungkan unsur politik, agama, geografi, teknik perang, dharma, moral, falsafah, keluarga, persahabatan, ketaatan dan ribuan topik lain dalam sebuah epik yang diperakui sebagai teks puisi terpanjang di dunia. Epik Mahabharata pada asalnya ditulis dalam bahasa Sanskrit pada sekitar kurun ke-5 Sebelum Masehi dan kurun ke-2 Masehi. Ia mengisahkan perang saudara antara golongan Kauruva (seramai seratus orang) dan golongan Pandava (seramai lima orang) berikutan tindakan golongan Kauruva merampas kerajaan daripada golongan Pandava secara tipu muslihat. Namun begitu, sebagai permulaan kepada kisah yang terbahagi kepada 18 parva (bahagian) ini, Hassan dan Hussain mahu mengenali individu bernama Vyasa yang bukan sahaja bertindak sebagai penggubah epik itu, malah turut tampil sebagai salah satu watak penting di dalamnya. Hal ini boleh dibandingkan juga dengan kehadiran Valmiki sebagai watak dan juga penggubah sebuah lagi epik klasik Sanskrit iaitu Ramayana. Satu lagi nama timangan bagi Vyasa ialah Krishna. Bagaimanapun, nama itu adalah sempena kulitnya yang gelap dan bukan merujuk kepada Dewa Krishna – yang kebetulan juga tampil sebagai satu lagi watak penting dalam Mahabharata. Vyasa dikatakan anak kepada Satyavati dan Parashara. Terdahulu, Satyavati bersuamikan Shantanu dan salah seorang anak yang lahir ialah Vichitravirya. Maka, Vyasa dan Vichitravirya merupakan adik-beradik tiri; seibu tetapi berlainan bapa. Demikian Hussian dan Hassan pernah mendengar cerita daripada datuk mereka. Menurut kisah dalam Mahabharata, Vichitravirya berkahwin dengan pasangan adik-beradik, Ambika dan Ambalika. Malangnya putera itu meninggal dunia akibat batuk kering. Maka ibu mendiang, iaitu Satyavati, cuba memujuk Bhisma (anak tirinya) supaya menggauli Ambika dan Ambalika demi meneruskan generasi Kuru. Ya, kisah dan jurai keturunan dalam Mahabharata memang amat kompleks. Satyavati bersuamikan Shantanu sebelum mengahwini Parashara. Shantanu pula sebelum itu sudah mengahwini Ganga yang melahirkan Bhisma. Maka, Bhisma, Vichitravirya dan Vyasa adalah adik-beradik tiri dalam suatu keluarga yang amat kompleks. Pasangan kembar Hassan dan Hussain terpaksa membuat rajah khas untuk menggambarkan hubungan kekeluargaan keturunan Kuru supaya dapat mengikuti kisah Mahabharata dengan lebih baik. – Bersambung minggu depan Uthaya Sankar SB sedang mengulang baca sedikit demi sedikit epik klasik Mahabharata sambil melakukan interpretasi supaya sesuai dengan zaman. |
| Stubborn Umno ‘killing’ race relations Posted: 06 Oct 2012 11:00 PM PDT
The coming together of various races during Bersih 3.0 earlier this year sent shivers along the spine of the Umno leadership unless of course they misread or simply refused to read the signals sent by the tens and thousands of participants who voluntarily rallied. Umno's approach to ‘unity’ is something like the Nazi final solution. It thinks it can achieve national unity by pitting one race against one another. Today the Chinese, tomorrow the Indians and later all other non-Malay Malaysians. Eventually, it will apply the same gas-chambering treatment to the Malays who dared challenge and reject Umno. The Malays who are opposed and reject Umno are classed as either not having sufficient Malayness or apostates. The majority of us reject this fascism. The socio-political setting in the country has changed but Umno refuses to adapt. And those who don't adapt will perish. As a DAP member, I am also ready to concede that in the long run, DAP will lose its wider relevance if it also refuses to adapt to the new social setting. The new social setting demands recognition that despite being of different races, heterogeneity does not prevent the sharing of universal and common values. Different races value the same freedom and economic justice. Being of different races does not preclude sharing similar ideas about equality or sharing the same idea about a common future. You think the right thinking Malay is unmoved to see Umno abuse the Malay definition? The ordinary Malay finds it reprehensible when Umno exploits the Malay name to enrich the elite and selected few among the Malays. Vilifying the Chinese Look at the general vilification on Malaysian Chinese who are now more readily associated with DAP. Let me ask you, who is the closest Malaysian Chinese to the Prime Minister these days? It's a Malaysian Chinese who just secured a RM1 billion contract to do the Ampang LRT extension works. In that sense, the Umno president is selling out the Malays. It is certain now that Najib had interceded on behalf of George Kent to award the Ampang LRT extension project to a Malaysian Chinese. The company failed the technical and financial pre-qualification requirements but for Najib's intercession, got the project anyway. Mind you, this is the same Malaysian Chinese who was rumoured to have brokered the contract for the double tracking project for China Harbors. Additionally, this same Malaysian Chinese was rumoured to have asked US$500 million from the Chinese government allegedly for the benefit of Najib. ‘Tanda Putera’ Umno's direct or indirect support and endorsement to the film Tanda Putera must also be condemned as an attempt by a desperate government to drive a wedge in between the races of Malaysia. Umno's ‘black hand’ must be condemned as a highly irresponsible act of a government that claims it's committed to democracy and a united Malaysia when in reality its interest is to maintain divisons within this country by playing of one anti-Umno/BN group against the other. Is that how one proves one's Malayness? That is the way of an imbecile. Now, isn't it the Malay leadership that is responsible for havoc visited upon the ordinary Malay? The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman but joined DAP earlier this year. He is a FMT columnist. |
| Helping the poor can get you into trouble Posted: 06 Oct 2012 10:57 PM PDT
That was in 1998, a year before DAP fielded him as an election candidate in Sungai Siput. He told FMT the scholarship offer was just one of several attempts to get him out of Perak, where he had been relentlessly fighting for social justice for the poor since his undergraduate days in the late 1970s. He was also offered the job of heading the medical department of a government hospital in Pahang. He turned down that offer too. But he has paid a heavy price for his activism. The government once stopped paying his salary as a doctor and referred him to a disciplinary committee. That was when he decided to play an active role in politics, eventually joining Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM). The soft-spoken MP said he opened his eyes to the plight of the poor in 1977 when, while pursuing his medical degree at Universiti Malaya, he participated in a community service project in a rubber estate in Sungai Siput. He soon joined an NGO called Alaigal, which worked with estate and urban pioneer communities, and has since continued with his social activism and community service. “Actually I’m not the kind of person who is very keen on politics," he said, "but involvement with squatters and estate workers motivated me to do good for people as an elected representative.” In 1999, he offered himself to DAP as its candidate for the Buntong state seat, but the party preferred to place another candidate there and told him to contest in Sungai Siput instead. He lost to the then formidable S Samy Vellu. He lost again in 2004, but became the giant killer in March 2008. In both elections, he contested under the PKR ticket. (PSM was registered only in August 2008.) He has maintained his service centre in Sungai Siput since the 1999 election while continuing to run his private clinic in Ipoh. The 57-year-old politician acknowledged that he could not allocate enough money for activities in his constituency, but he believes he still has support among voters because they want an honest and dedicated politician to represent them. Anti-capitalism He described PSM as "a lightweight party within Pakatan Rakyat" but said it had an important role to play in the alliance by virtue of its anti-capitalist stand. “Other parties within Pakatan are in favour of capitalism, but PSM has always been firm in our stand that socio-economic problems in the country are mainly due to our market oriented economy.” Dr Jeyakumar said the main issues in Sungai Siput were unemployment, landlessness and the displacement of estate workers, with youths being forced to seek work as far away as Singapore. “SMIs operating within the industrial zone in Sungai Siput prefer to employ foreigners," he said. "They claim that it is cheaper to employ Nepalis and Bangladeshis, besides their being much easier to control than locals." He said unemployment forced people to remain as squatters and resulted in various social problems. Dr Jeyakumar reckons that there are about 700 squatter families in Sungai Siput, 300 of them living on government land and the rest on private land. “We have managed to stop the forced eviction of these families, but our effort to secure land titles for them is not getting much support from the land office and local council,” he lamented. He said so far only two squatter settlements had received a positive response to their application for alternative land. "But it will cost each family at least RM50,000 to relocate and build a new house." He said even the Orang Asli Department was not supporting land applications for members of the aboriginal community, who make up 7% of Sungai Siput voters. Dr Jeyakumar's service centre deals with about 30 cases a week. Most of these, he said without elaborating, were welfare cases. Speaking about the 13th general election, he said PSM was likely to field candidates in Sungai Siput, the Perak state seat of Jelapang and the Selangor state seats of Semenyih and Kota Damansara, just like in 2008. He attributed his 2008 victory to the determination of Indian voters to see the defeat of BN. He said Sungai Siput voters decided to punish Samy Vellu for what they saw as his arrogant response to Hindraf's 2007 rally. For the coming election, he believes that voters will also consider local issues. “I can’t give much money to support their programmes, but I believe they value my service not only in Sungai Siput but also in Parliament,” he said. According to his analysis, Indian support for BN prior to 2007 was between 70% and 80%, but in 2008 less than 40% voted for Samy Vellu. He believes that the various government announcements about projects for the Indian community have helped BN to regain some support. Perhaps up to 50% of Indians would vote for BN this time around, he said. He added that some Indians were not happy that Pakatan and their representatives had not done enough for the betterment of the community. He said the Chinese and Malays in his constituency had not complained much about his performance, but he acknowledge that he needed more time to tackle several issues affecting them and other communities, particularly the questions of landlessness and a lack of employment opportunities. Referring to the Orang Asli voters, he said only 1% supported him when he contested as a DAP candidate. “It improved to 4% in 2004 and then 10% in 2008, when I contested under PKR.” |
| Posted: 06 Oct 2012 09:24 PM PDT
The prime minister’s two-day visit next weekend to what the BN terms its ‘fixed deposit’ state will be his fifth trip to Sabah this year and comes at a time the ruling coalition is suffering a loss of credibility and losing its aura of invincibility. According to his schedule made available by the Information Department, Najib will fly in on Oct 13 and head straight to Kg Inobong in Penampang to officiate at the groundbreaking of the Native Court building and to declare open a new bridge spanning the Moyog River. He will then head to Kundasang to attend a meeting with state BN leaders at Kinabalu Park Kundasang where 26th Kinabalu International Climbathon is taking place over the weekend and he will flag off the 658 participants from 28 countries at 7am on Oct 14. The prime minister will then fly to Kudat by helicopter and go on a walkabout at Kg Ayer within the town limits. He will then making a flying visit to Tuaran for for a meet-the-people event before returning to Kuala Lumpur at 5pm the same day. |
| Posted: 06 Oct 2012 07:58 PM PDT OSTEND, (Belgium): Belgium’s 72-km stretch of coast is distinguished by the world’s longest unbroken tramway to take beach-lovers from the Dutch border to the edge of France or vice-versa. Mostly, it’s a very urban experience. High-rise development dominates and the challenge is to winkle out the remnants of graceful art-deco and unspoiled nature. Correspondents with local knowledge can help. Day 1
Ostend shot to prominence as a vacation spot after the Belgian King Leopold I had a summer residence built there in 1834. Now it’s better known for its ferry terminal. It also has 9 km of sandy beach, a Napoleonic fort and an art heritage. Painter James Ensor, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism, was born in Ostend and lived there for almost all his life (1860-1949). His house and studio in Vlaanderenstraat, near the sea front, is a museum (closed on Tuesdays), preserved as he lived in it to give visitors an insight into the man behind the powerful artistic angst. Ensor also bequeathed to the city the Dead Rat Ball, a costumed ball, named after a Paris bar. He set up the event with his friends and it is still celebrated every March. 12 noon – Wander from Ensor’s house around the sea front to the area near the station and the port, where lunch options range from simple fish and chips or pots of prawns to full-on gastronomy. Au Vieux Port on Visserkaai gets mostly glowing reviews. 2 p.m. – Belgium’s famous coastal tram (Kusttram in Dutch) departs every 10 minutes during the summer months, every 15 minutes in the spring and autumn. Depending on how many journeys you plan, there are various ticket prices, starting from two euros. Fares are cheaper if you buy before boarding.
The trip from Ostend to De Panne, on the French border, is one of the few stretches from which you can see the sea. For the best view, sit on the right side of the tram heading towards De Panne, or left when heading back to Ostend. From the Ostend station stop, the tram rattles through the sand-dunes to De Panne in around an hour. If you get off at the Esplanade tram stop, the first thing you notice is a statue of Leopold I, who in 1831 first stepped on to Belgian soil at De Panne after he was chosen to become king of the newly formed country. Walk on to the beach and bear left, towards the French border. After 500 metres, make for the dunes of the Westhoek nature reserve, an unspoiled landscape, spread over about 340 hectares, with 11 km of footpaths, in serene contrast to the bustling tourist towns. Don’t miss the 400-metre wide Wandelduin (shifting dune), which explains why locals call this area the Flemish Sahara. 5 p.m. – De Panne’s beach is the widest in Belgium (up to 425 metres at low tide). As a result, it has become popular for beach sailing, or land yachting, in which small carts are attached to sails to attain speeds of more than 100 km per hour. If you feel up to the challenge, classes are on offer in the summer months for 20 euros (US$26.01) an hour. 6:30 p.m. – Time for a Belgian beer in a cafe along the beach promenade. Naturally, there is a local Flemish brew to be had: Gouden Pier Kloeffe, an 8.1 percent pale ale named after a local fisherman, also reputed for his brewing nous. 8 p.m. – Dinner spots include French-style Le Flore on Duinkerkelaan, with set menus from 25 euros. Hotel Maxim in Toeristenlaan, near the beach, has been praised for its restaurant and also its accommodation, if you’re looking for somewhere to stay. Day 2 10 a.m – Take the tram to De Haan (Le Coq in French; the cockerel/rooster in English), the one part of the Belgian coastline that has retained low-rise Belle Epoque architecture. Its tram station, also the tourism office, is suitably picturesque. De Haan’s most famous resident was Albert Einstein, who lived there for six months in 1933. Some of the residents still tell stories, passed down by their parents, of how he strolled along the sea front, drank coffee in the Grand Hotel Belle Vue and agonised over his decision to abandon Nazi Germany. 12:30 p.m. – Lunch. Grand Hotel Belle Vue’s restaurant is one option. Less grand, but hearty good value is The Strand Hotel on the sea front. 2 p.m. – Back on the tram, this time to Knokke (pronounced K-nokke). It’s not quite the Cote d’Azur, but a glut of designer shops make it Belgium’s most fashionable resort. To add to the glamour, it has an art deco casino, famed for a Rene Magritte mural The Enchanted Domain. Away from the slightly surreal experience of gambling away your wages or spending them on designer outfits, a cheaper pastime is hiring one of a vast array of bicycles, ranging from tandems to mountain bikes, available near the station and from hire shops near the sea front. 4 p.m. – If you carry on pedalling towards the Dutch border, you leave behind the wall of high-rise development to reach the dunes and marshland of Zwin nature reserve. 5 p.m. – Make your way gradually back to the urban zone via Surfers Paradise. As the name suggests, it’s a surfers’ club and surfing is on offer. But it’s also a laid-back bar open to the public that serves cold beers and fresh sandwiches on the edge of an unspoiled stretch of soft sand. 7 p.m. – While away a couple of hours as energetically or lazily as you please before heading back along the cycle path to the beach-side restaurants for a seafood supper or even a trip to the casino and Magritte’s Enchanted Domain.—Reuters |
| Posted: 06 Oct 2012 07:58 PM PDT
A Like-A-Hug vest on display Friday at the website of designer Melissa Kit Chow was touted as “wearable social media” that inflates to embrace wearers whenever Facebook friends “Like” items they post at the social network. Chow worked with Andy Payne and Phil Seaton in the MIT Media Lab to create the puffy black vests, according to her website. Like-A-Hug lets hugs “be given via Facebook, bringing us closer together despite physical distance,” Chow said in a post describing the vest. And, provided the sender is also wearing Like-A-Hug, a recipient can return a hug by squeezing their own vest to deflate it. Chow described herself as a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design who subtly skews everyday interactions with the environment for “a reawakening of a sensorial spacial experience.”—AFP |
| Asian men pampering their skin Posted: 06 Oct 2012 07:57 PM PDT  SINGAPORE: Asia is driving global sales of men’s skin care products, with Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans the most avid users in the region, a report on male grooming trends showed Friday.Consumer research group Euromonitor International said the Asia-Pacific accounted for nearly 60 percent of worldwide sales of men’s skin care products, a fast-growing section of a US$33 billion male grooming industry. “As features from women’s skin care are replicated in male-specific products, an array of products targeting issues from ageing and blemishes to brightening has become available,” said the report sent to AFP on Friday. Male grooming habits vary worldwide, with Asian men spending more on skin care and their counterparts in Brazil — set to overtake the United States as the largest single market in three years — devoting more money to deodorants. Shaving items were the most widely sold grooming products in 2011 but toiletries including deodorants and skin care were catching up. Euromonitor said the global market for male grooming products has plenty of room for expansion, with average growth over the past five years at only 6.0 percent to reach nearly US$33 billion last year. However, the rate of growth varies sharply across regions, with Latin America posting double-digit expansion and western Europe, hit by a prolonged financial crisis, rising at a slower pace. While western Europe remains the biggest market for men’s grooming products, Latin America is closing the gap, it said. Brazil is expected to overtake the United States as the leading market for men’s grooming items in 2015. By 2016, the Asia-Pacific will be the second biggest contributor to growth in the category after Latin America, Euromonitor said. “The region’s potential for the men’s grooming market remains largely untapped,” it said. “It is the region to watch for men’s grooming.”—Reuters |
| India divided over FDI in retail Posted: 06 Oct 2012 07:47 PM PDT
KOLKATA/NEW DELHI: Thousands of shopkeepers in Sir Stuart Hogg Market in Kolkata, the business hub of eastern India's biggest city, are all talking about one thing: what they will do when multinational companies invade their ancient marketplace. Also known as the New Market, this shopping centre was opened in 1874 when Kolkata was still the capital of British India, and has since been a haven for local vendors and traditional retailers. Now its streets are abuzz with questions about the impact of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent decision to pass reforms that will allow 51 percent of foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, effectively opening India's many doors to giant supermarket chains and other multinational retailers. Singh's government says its decision to allow investment in the country's retail, aviation and broadcast sectors is a bid to revive growth and confidence in Asia's third largest economy. But local retailers feel it will pave the way for big brands like Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour to exploit the huge Indian consumer market, currently estimated at roughly 500 billion dollars. "I am absolutely against it (the reforms) – it will kill us," said Rajkumar, a retailer in south Kolkata's Dhakuria whose cramped shop boasts every stationery product imaginable. "When a Spencer's supermarket (a leading retail chain in India) came up in our neighbourhood South City Mall some years ago it definitely hit our retail shops since we have no sprawling space to (allow customers to) cart purchases in trolleys and shop in style. Now FDI in retail will be a final blow," he said. Besides opposition groups like the Communist Party or the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the announcement last month also sparked a strong backlash from the ruling coalition's second biggest constituent, the Trinamool Congress, which announced withdrawal of support for the Singh government over the issue and ordered all its central ministers to resign. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) are also extremely concerned. According to Anil Sharma, CAIT's FDI research committee convenor, a few retailers might prosper as result of the reforms but many others will perish. "The government must clarify how (the reforms) will impact traders, farmers, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and consumers," Sharma told IPS. "There should be a regulatory authority with enough teeth to ensure that small traders do not suffer and that (adequate) cold storage facilities and warehouses are constructed to ramp up the infrastructure." According to Sharma, the government's prediction that FDI in retail will create around 10 million jobs in three years, with four million jobs created directly and the rest in backend logistics, is "highly imaginative". "If four million jobs are to be created in India in three years, even Walmart, which has the largest average (number of) employees per store, will need to open over 18,600 supermarkets in India, which means 644 retail stores in each of the 53 metropolitan cities where they are permitted to operate. "Global experiences of organised retail have clearly shown that instead of creating employment, mega retail corporations actually reduce employment," he added. One of India's leading economists, Jayati Ghosh, agrees. "Walmart's global operation is capital intensive. They will completely transform the supply chain and it will be no good for jobs," Ghosh, a professor at the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University, told IPS. "There will be a negative impact on the employment scene, since the majority of the 40 million people (currently) employed in retail trade in India are self-employed, and they will not be able to compete with large supermarkets. "One Walmart can displace about 1,400 small shops that create 5000 jobs," she added. "What we can demand from the government now is the (creation) of infrastructure to store post-harvest produce. There should be more cold storage (facilities) and warehouses." "If you want the modernisation of the retail sector, you want upward pressure in the quality of employment. Modern retail produces better quality jobs. If the labour growth is going down to one percent or so and GDP is growing at eight to nine percent, jobs will be created in many different sectors," he argued. Various big industrial players also support the move. According to Rajkumar N Dhoot, president of the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), the decision to allow FDI in multi-brand retail will also improve India's image in the eyes of foreign investors. "Today, we live in a globalised environment. We all know how precarious the global economy is and how our own exports, both goods and services, are being hit in the western markets," he said in reference to the need for increased FDI. Even some local shopkeepers in New Market seem unfazed by the imminent arrival of massive competitors. "I do not think a Walmart can completely kill us," Subir Saha, who runs a crockery and utensil shop in New Market, told IPS. "When the shopping malls came up in the city (they) did affect our business, but we survived it and are still here." Farhad Ali, a garment-store owner, echoed his sentiment: "People come to us for many reasons, from low price tags to unique collections," he told IPS. But experts claim the belief that huge retailers will not destroy the local market is optimistic. According to Ghosh, "In the beginning the situation will be better (for some job-seekers and consumers). But this will be part of a strategy by these companies to establish themselves in the market. Once it is done, they will start doing the unpleasant things," she said, citing examples of Thailand and Malaysia, whose local retailers and farmers were hit hard by the entry of multinational retailers into the domestic market. IPS [Photo credit: IPS] |
| River is not just a source of water Posted: 06 Oct 2012 07:45 PM PDT
This week, we talk to Assoc Prof Eva G Abal, Director of Water Initiative, University of Queensland, Australia. Can you tell us a bit more about the waterways of South East Queensland? Moreton Bay is a bay on the eastern coast of Australia, about 45km from Brisbane, Queensland, and is one of Queensland’s most important coastal waterways. The Bay and Islands form Brisbane's very own marine park, and is recognised as one of the world's best whale watching spots. The bay is shielded by a series of islands, and its relatively shallow depth allows the growth of marine plants like seagrass that is the feeding ground of turtles and dugong. There is also a tourism industry that is based on seasonal whale-watching. Part of Moreton Bay is also a Ramsar site, or what is known as wetlands of international importance on account of their biodiversity, and is a breeding ground for dugongs, turtles and migratory wading birds. The bay itself covers 1,523sqkm and has a catchment covering about 21,700sqkm (about the size of the state of Perak), or about 14 times larger than the bay, and includes 14 major river catchments in six drainage basins, with the Brisbane River forming the largest basin. The city of Brisbane, near the centre of the catchment, is the largest urban area. This is the only area in the world where you can stand on a boat, and see dugongs and turtles as well as the city skyline in the background. This is a high-pressure development area. What are the challenges faced by the bay? There are lots of activities ranging from agriculture to urbanisation within the catchments that drains into Moreton Bay. Other activities within the bay itself range from tourism, boating, shipping and fisheries. Challenges faced include water quality issues from point source pollution and non-urban diffuse source pollution such as runoff from farms. There are nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment loads going into the bay, and the flow of nutrients into the bay also causes occasional coastal algal blooms (especially during the summer months from December to January). Algae can choke waterways and become toxic to humans, fish and other marine life. Mud is washed off the land into our waterways and oceans which can smother and kill seagrass, thus reducing the amount of food for fish, turtles and dugongs. The millions of tonnes of mud that entered Moreton Bay during the January 2011 flood have now settled on the bottom of the bay, and this mud layer will negatively impact flora and fauna that live on the bay floor. Unless they get flushed out, mud also gets resuspended all the time. We predict that by 2026, we will have increasing nitrogen loads in the bay. How did the authorities and citizens come together to do something about the catchment and bay? The waterways of South East Queensland (SEQ) are an integral part of our lifestyle and economy. The challenge is to sustain the improvements It is critical to have a political champion, and the former Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Jim Soorley (holding office from 1991-2003), was the one who started a campaign for the city to embrace the river by pushing for higher sewage treatment standards, and that homes should face the rivers instead of the other way round. Along the way, there were numerous river beautification projects, including floating walkways along the river. Real estate prices along the river eventually soared because now people want to live along the river. Healthy Waterways started in 1994 as a collaboration between the Queensland Government, local councils, community organisations, industry and research groups that are committed to improve the health of SEQ waterways through effective catchment management strategies, education and systematic monitoring of ecosystem health. Healthy Waterways is a not-for-profit, non-government, membership-based organisation working to improve waterway health. What is the role of scientists and academia in river care? The Science and Innovation Programme provides independent scientific advice to the SEQ Healthy Waterways Partners as well as ensuring that SEQ Healthy Waterways' work is based upon solid science. The Scientific Advisory Group is a consortium of scientists from universities, research organisations, Queensland Government agencies and industry. We communicate the results through a report card based on a grading ranging from A to F, which would let people know immediately where they stand. We find the report card method to be very powerful. The report, which is a scientifically rigorous product, is presented by the Chief Scientist to the mayor of Brisbane annually. The first report card was given in 1998. The challenge for river scientists is not just to be able to tell the government that there is a problem, but also where it is coming from, and how it could be handled. In 2010, the bay got its first "D" grade, which was a wakeup call. The background was that there was a ten-year drought, followed by very heavy rainfall, which washed a lot of sediments into the bay. When we sampled the mud in Moreton Bay and found that 70% of the mud comes from 30% of the catchment. It follows that if you restore 30% of your catchment, you can take care of 70% of the mud, and the ratio is pretty manageable. We don't even have to look hard for the source. The lesson learnt from there is that now we know that we need to do more than just upgrading sewage treatment plants – we had to restore the catchment. Healthy Waterways facilitates careful planning and coordinated efforts at local and regional levels among a network of member organisations from the Government, industry, research and the community. We have been studying Moreton Bay since 1992, and learned a lot since then. The Healthy Waterways Vision is that by 2026, our waterways and catchments will be healthy ecosystems supporting the livelihoods and lifestyles of people in SEQ, and will be managed through collaboration between community, Government and industry. In all these, the role of the universities is very critical. What can the rest of the world learn from South East Queensland's experience? Where rivers are concerned, there is a need to shift how we view it: from a service based, to outcome based. There needs to be a paradigm shift, from viewing a river as a mere source of water, to one where it is integrated as a lifestyle element, and then to treat it like something to be passed on to future generations – where we restore or protect it for future generations, and not so much what we can get out of it. We also need to transition from being reactive (knee-jerk reaction based), to more risk-based management, for that is the only way to go. The other is the adoption of a whole-of-system outlook when formulating policy, and that includes a need to look at the environment as currency (assigning dollar value to it). It is also important for the community to celebrate its rivers. In Brisbane, there is an annual river festival, which is a major cultural event supported by all sectors. In Asia, there is still a lot of gross pollutant (floating rubbish) in the rivers, and these need to be cleared first before one can move to the next level, which will be more difficult and expensive. Australia is privileged in the sense that it has moved beyond gross pollutants (things we can see), and is now taking care of nutrients and sediments (less visible things). Having community, political and academic champions are important. There is a critical role for NGOs like the Global Environment Centre to move things. Organisations like the GAB Foundation are also critical as there is a role for corporate sponsorship in all these. Lastly, the role of the community also needs to be given due recognition. There is a lot of community involvement in river care, and we sometimes take it for granted. We don't appreciate it (in terms of dollars), and it is therefore undervalued because it is free. But when you tabulate it up, the amount can be pretty significant on a per hour basis. Eva G Abal's expertise includes coordination of multidisciplinary projects, effective science communication, development of Ecosystem Health Report Cards and strategic research planning. |
| Brothers angered by lack of compensation for land Posted: 06 Oct 2012 05:55 PM PDT
The two said the government had no right to delay compensation especially after claiming that they (both governments) were on a sound financial footing and were showing this by disbursing cash handouts to the people via various programmes ahead of looming elections. Othman and Ahmad Shah Mohd Yussof said they have been given the run-around after knocking on the doors of various government departments to be reimbursed for the loss of two parcels of land together measuring some five acres in Karambunai near here. The land in question is said to have been taken over by the state and federal governments respectively for the constructions of a water reservoir in Telipok and an access road to a navy base in Sepangar. Speaking at a news conference arranged by his counsel, Erveana Ansari Ali, Othman said the land had been expropriated in 2005 and 2006. Being the Karambunai Umno division chief has been of little benefit to Othman in this instance. He said he and his brother had no choice but to come out in the open to highlight their plight after exhausting all avenues to be compensated by the government for their loss. Of the two pieces of land, the bigger was taken by the state government for the reservoir project in March 2005 and measures approximately 4.882 acres. The plot acquired by the federal government the following year measures approximately 0.068 acre. The two, Othman said, are valued at RM7.3 million and RM912,000 respectively and both ware listed as commercial land. "What is frustrating was that when our counsel officially wrote to the state Lands and Surveys Department on the matter, our counsel was told to refer to the State Attorney General and until today we are still waiting for an amicable settlement," the Karambunai Umno chief said. He wants Chief Minister Musa Aman to intervene and to include the compensation for the land acquisition in the State Budget 2013 which will be tabled in the State Legislative Assembly on Oct 17. "We also appeal to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defence to expedite the compensation for the piece of land acquired for the construction of the access road leading to the Navy Base." He warned that both he and his brother would go to the courts to seek redress if the federal and state governments continued to ignore their legitimate demands. |
| No RM7.2 bil capital outflow, says Pua Posted: 06 Oct 2012 05:53 PM PDT
Pua was responding to MCA Young Professionals bureau chief Chua Tee Yong's statement yesterday that some 3 million foreign workers in Malaysia would benefit should Pakatan review minimum wage from the current RM900 to RM1100. The extra RM200 pay rise would cost the market RM600 million a month and RM7.2 billion a year in capital outflow, Chua had said. But Pua when contacted by FMT yesterday said “there won't be RM7.2 billion because there will be less foreign workers." He explained that by providing equal minimum wage to local workers and foreign workers, employers would end up hiring more locals as there is no extra cost incurred. "Foreign workers will no longer be cheap because they need accommodation, documents and licensing costs. Chua has got his economics wrong!" he said. Meanwhile, DAP parliamentarian for Bukit Bendera Liew Chin Tong said the Pakatan's minimum wage proposal include a wide-ranging reforms to assist businesses in technology and skill upgrading, reduce the number of foreign labour and abolish monopolies. "(The RM200 paid rise) shouldn't be taken out of context," he told FMT in a text message yesterday. |
| City sink Sunderland to get back on track Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT  LONDON: Manchester City got back on track after their recent struggles as the Premier League champions cruised to a 3-0 win over Sunderland yesterday.Roberto Mancini’s side have made a spluttering start to both their title defence and their assault on the Champions League, but they finally produced a convincing display as goals from Aleksandar Kolarov, Sergio Aguero and James Milner saw off Sunderland at Eastlands. It was just City’s second victory in their last seven fixtures in all competitions and their first cleansheet of the season at the 10th attempt. The win lifted Mancini’s men into second place in the table, although Everton can climb back above them with a victory at Wigan later on Saturday. “In the first half we missed two or three chances like in other games, but we had a good performance,” Mancini said. “Every game is difficult in this moment. I am happy because we got a clean sheet and scored three, but also because of our performance. “You can only beat Sunderland if you play well. They have a strong squad.” City made the perfect start as Serbian defender Kolarov curled a superb fifth minute free-kick past Sunderland goalkeeper Simon Mignolet. Sunderland were the only team to take a point off City at home in the Premier League last season, but they never looked likely to emulate that feat as their five-match unbeaten run came to an end. Argentine substitute Aguero got the decisive second goal on the hour when he steered in a Kolarov cross from close-range for his first goal at Eastlands since the dramatic strike that won the title on the final day of last season. And England midfielder Milner capped City’s biggest win of the season with an 89th minute free-kick that glanced in off Sunderland’s Craig Gardner. - AFP |
| Falcao reveals Premier League ambition Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT  LONDON: Atletico Madrid striker Radamel Falcao has revealed he is keen to follow in the footsteps of his idol Faustino Asprilla by moving to the Premier League.Falcao has been linked with several Premier League clubs including Chelsea and it has been reported that the Colombia international could move to Stamford Bridge in a £45 million deal during the January transfer window. The 26-year-old, who underlined his talent with a hat-trick against Chelsea in the European Super Cup earlier this season, admits a switch to the Premier League would appeal to him because he grew up watching fellow Colombian Asprilla in action for Newcastle during the 1990s. “England? One day, I could go. It is a game I have watched for a long time and one day I would like to sample it,” Falcao told The Times. “I used to watch it on television when I was a kid. Players like Roy Keane, Eric Cantona, (Gianfranco) Zola. But the one I supported was (Faustino) Asprilla, when he was at Newcastle. “I think I could adapt to England. I think I could score goals.” - AFP |
| Djokovic to face Tsonga in Beijing final Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT  BEIJING: Novak Djokovic brushed aside Florian Mayer in the China Open yesterday to set up a final against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, as Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka made it to the last two of the women’s event.The world number two from Serbia furthered his aim of finishing the year top of the ATP rankings with a simple straight-sets victory, maintaining his unbeaten record at the Beijing tournament that stretches back three years. Top-seed Djokovic defeated the 29th-ranked Mayer of Germany 6-1, 6-4 with the help of seven aces. The 25-year-old, second to Roger Federer in the rankings, has won the China Open on the two occasions he has entered — in 2009 and 2010 — and will aim to make it three out of three on Sunday. “There are no secrets between us,” Djokovic said of Tsonga. Djokovic leads Tsonga 7-5 in head-to-heads, and has won all three of their meetings this year. “We have played a lot of important matches on the big stage. He’s a very powerful player, big serve, big forehand, and if that works, he can win against anybody on any surface,” he added. Tsonga marched into the final when Spain’s Feliciano Lopez retired during the second set of their match. The world number seven thrashed Lopez 6-1 in the first set and was 4-1 up in the second when the left-handed Spaniard called it a day, citing an injury to his left wrist. “I played really well and I felt really good on the court,” Tsonga said. “I didn’t know before he was a bit injured. I’m just happy today with my game.” The Frenchman has enjoyed an easy progression to the final of the Beijing tournament since needing three sets to overcome Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin in the first round. The 27-year-old received a walkover in the second round after Nikolay Davydenko withdrew and beat Russia’s Mikhail Youzhny in straight sets in the third. “During this week my level has got better and better,” Tsonga said. “I have played maybe some of my best tennis here. I haven’t played like this in couple of months and maybe a couple of years now and that’s why I think I can win the final tomorrow.” In the women’s draw, Sharapova overcame home favourite Li Na in straight sets. The 25-year-old Russian defeated Li, Asia’s only Grand Slam winner, 6-4, 6-0, to reach the final for the first time in five attempts, but it took the French Open champion a while to break into her stride. Li sped to an early 3-1 lead due to some poor serving by Sharapova, including three consecutive double faults in one game, but the Russian fought back, winning three games in a row before taking the set with a break. “It was a really high-quality first set with a few ups and downs and obviously she (Li) had the lead,” Sharapova said. “In those first few games I thought my percentage of first serve was low. “Against someone like Li Na who likes to step in and take the ball early, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to have to hit too many second serves. “My goal after that was just to get my first-serve percentage much higher than it was in the first three or four games,” she added. “I came back and then I broke her in that last game of the first set. It was important for me to take that momentum going into the second.” And continue her momentum she did, taking six games without reply to steamroll Li – who has never won her home tournament — in little over half an hour. “She had a better performance than I did and she had better control of the match, but I think I played pretty well today,” Li said. World number one Azarenka from Belarus beat ninth seed Marion Bartoli 6-4, 6-2. “I felt the first set was really close and could have gone either way,” Bartoli said. “Vika (Azarenka) is probably the best returner in the game and it’s not like I was serving badly. She was breaking me because she was returning too well and that’s why I couldn’t win the points,” the world number 10 added. “Maybe she could have missed one or two but she didn’t. That’s the way it is.” - AFP |
| Sharapova beats Li to make China Open final Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT  BEIJING: World number two Maria Sharapova overcame home favourite Li Na in straight sets yesterday to make the final of the China Open, while Jo-Wilfried Tsonga triumphed in the last four of the men’s draw.The 25-year-old Russian defeated Li, Asia’s only Grand Slam winner, 6-4, 6-0, to reach the final for the first time in five attempts, but it took the French Open champion a while to break into her stride. Li sped to an early 3-1 lead due to some poor serving by Sharapova, including three consecutive double faults in one game, but the Russian fought back, winning three games in a row before taking the set with a break. “It was a really high-quality first set with a few ups and downs and obviously she (Li) had the lead,” Sharapova said. “In those first few games I thought my percentage of first serve was low. “Against someone like Li Na who likes to step in and take the ball early, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to have to hit too many second serves. “My goal after that was just to get my first-serve percentage much higher than it was in the first three or four games,” she added. “I came back and then I broke her in that last game of the first set. It was important for me to take that momentum going into the second.” And continue her momentum she did, taking six games without reply to steamroll Li — who has never won her home tournament — in little over half an hour. “She had a better performance than I did and she had better control of the match, but I think I played pretty well today,” Li said. Sharapova will play world number one Victoria Azarenka in the final after the Belarusian beat ninth seed Marion Bartoli 6-4, 6-2. In the men’s draw third seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France marched into the final when Spain’s Feliciano Lopez retired during the second set of their match. The world number seven thrashed Lopez 6-1 in the first set and was 4-1 up in the second when the left-handed Spaniard called it a day, citing an injury to his left wrist. “I played really well and I felt really good on the court,” Tsonga said. “I didn’t know before he was a bit injured. I’m just happy today with my game.” The Frenchman has enjoyed an easy progression to the final of the Beijing tournament since needing three sets to overcome Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin in the first round. The 27-year-old received a walkover in the second round after Nikolay Davydenko withdrew and beat Russia’s Mikhail Youzhny in straight sets in the third. “During this week my level has got better and better,” Tsonga said. “I have played maybe some of my best tennis here. I haven’t played like this in couple of months and maybe a couple of years now and that’s why I think I can win the final tomorrow.” Serbia’s world number two and top seed Novak Djokovic meets Germany’s Florian Mayer in the second semi-final yesterday. - AFP |
| Murray beaten by Raonic in Japan shock Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT
In the final set the Briton squandered a 4-1 lead and missed two match points in the 12th game before going down 3-6, 7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (4/7) to the 21-year-old Canadian. In the final on Sunday, Raonic will play local favourite Kei Nishikori, who defeated Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus 6-2, 6-2. “I played better in the second and third sets, but I was obviously disappointed not to close the match up. He played better on one or two points,” said Murray, whose match-winning streak since the US Open ended. “I hit my passing shots very well in New York (beating Raonic in three sets), but today I don’t think I passed him well, so he came to the net more. Certain thing is he can do easier. “If I could start the match better, it would have helped me, but he played well behind his serve and his fast shot was good, especially in the first couple of sets and that made tough for me,” added Murray, 25. Raonic, seeking his sixth ATP final, got off to a flying start to break the opening game before adding another break in the ninth to take the set. Neither had a break opportunity in the second set and there were no mini-break in the tie-breaker until Raonic failed to hit a forehand on Murray’s set point at 6-5. In the final set, Raonic double-faulted to give a break point to Murray, who fired a sizzling back-handed passing shot down the line to move up to 3-1 and then 4-1, but he went 15-40 down in the seventh game that Raonic cashed in. Raonic again double-faulted twice to give Murray two match points in the 12th game at 30-40 and on Muray’s advantage point. The Canadian hit an easy smash winner at the net to save the first and then his strong forehand forced Murray to hit a back-handed shot long. Raonic also missed his match point at 6-3 on a double fault in the tie-breaker, but Murray’s forehand shot went long on the following point. “Fortunately, they were on my serve,” Raonic said of the match points against him. “So I still have an advantage at that point. I’m happy that I was able to do well.” “In the game I got broken, I made a few mistakes and he came up with a really great pass. At that time I was thinking the whole time to myself ‘Make sure to keep my serve and just try to put a little bit more pressure if we get a tight moment.’ Fortunately, I was able to break,” added Raonic. - AFP |
| Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT  TOKYO: The J-League leaders Sanfrecce Hiroshima found their lead over Vegalta Sendai reduced to just three points after being held to a goalless draw by Yokohama Marinos yesterday.Sendai defeated Gamba Osaka 2-1 with Korean midfielder Ryang Yong-Gi and Takayuki Nakahara scoring in the 76th and 82nd minutes respectively. “I had expected it to be a tough game. Both teams played patiently from the beginning and I think my players kept their concentration very well,” said Hiroshima coach Hajime Moriyasu. “We were a bit defensive for a while in the first half, but our defenders were tenacious and my players created chances. We moved up a gear in the second half and had several chances, but it ended in a draw,” he added. Yokohama coach Yasuhiro Higuchi said: “To be honest, I really wanted to win. We tried to break their 4-1-5 formation and I think we were able to shut out their attacks.” Hiroshima have now 54 points, followed by Sendai on 51 points, Urawa Red Diamonds on 48 points and Shimizu S-Pulse on 44 points. Brazilian midfielder Dutra scored a hat-trick to lead seven-time champions Kashima Antlers to a 5-1 thrashing of FC Tokyo. “I scored a hat-trick for the first time since I turned professional. It means a lot for a professional player’s career. I don’t know how I can express my feeling, because it was the first time,” said Dutra. “I’m glad if I can score one goal, and I’m at a loss after scoring three goals,” he added. In other games, Cerezo Osaka defeated Sagan Tosu 3-2, defending champions Kashiwa Reysol ran out 1-0 winners over Kawasaki Frontale, and Shimizu downed Jubiro Iwata 1-0 to move up to fourth place. Albirex Niigata versus Vissel Kobe and Nagoya Grampus against Omiya Ardija both ended in goalless draws. Consadole Sapporo, who have already been relegated to the second division next season, saved some face by beating former Asian club champions Urawa 2-1. - AFP |
| Delighted Vettel leads Red Bull lock-out Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT  SUZUKA, (Japan): Sebastian Vettel stormed to pole position at the Japanese Grand Prix yesterday at the head of this year’s first all-Red Bull front row, as his late charge for a Formula One world title hat-trick gathered pace.The double defending world champion, who won last month in Singapore to rise to second in the standings, claimed his fourth pole in a row at Suzuka with a supreme level of speed and a lightning fastest lap of 1min 30.839secs. The German timed two-tenths quicker than team-mate Mark Webber as Red Bull locked out the front two spots, highlighting a surge in form by the team that has claimed the last two drivers and constructors titles. But Red Bull’s rivals McLaren were left licking their wounds after Jenson Button, who timed third quickest, was hit with a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change, and departing ace Lewis Hamilton came in a lowly ninth. Vettel even caught a break when he escaped with a reprimand, rather than being given a grid penalty, for blocking Ferrari’s championship leader Fernando Alonso during the final seconds of qualifying. The German’s fourth pole of the season and the 34th of his career gives him a great opportunity to close the 29-point gap on Ferrari’s Alonso in Sunday’s race. “I’m very, very happy with today’s result,” said Vettel. “We had a very good qualifying session and it was very smooth, almost perfect. We didn’t have the best start yesterday but we seem to get better every time we go out. “The car feels fantastic so all in all it came together nicely and we hope for a good race tomorrow. It’s nice to see the support we get at Suzuka and it’s great to come here and drive the circuit the way that I did.” Home hero Japanese Kamui Kobayashi of Sauber put in a stunning late lap to finish fourth fastest, meaning he moves up to third after Button’s penalty, followed by Romain Grosjean in the leading Lotus. McLaren-bound Mexican Sergio Perez will start from fifth in the second Sauber ahead of championship leader Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen in the second Lotus, Button and Hamilton, who said a set-up error had left him with steering problems. Vettel might have clocked an even faster time in the closing minutes, but was slowed when Raikkonen spun his car at the Spoon curve and yellow flags were waved. Webber said: “It has been a good weekend for us so far. Seb and I had a clean run in Q3 at the start. They were two big laps from both of us. Seb got me, it was a good lap for him. “To be this much higher up (the grid) after a rough run of late, I’m happy to be on the front row. For the team, it’s a great tonic for them at this point of the championship.” And Button admitted the McLarens may have trouble catching the Red Bulls in Sunday’s race. “It’s always great driving around here and it was a lot of fun, but we just aren’t quick enough and I’m not sure what we can do about that,” said the Briton. Hamilton, who has made waves by announcing he would join Mercedes next season, also said he may find it tough on Sunday. “With the pace that I have, who knows what will happen in the race,” said Hamilton. “Long-run pace wasn’t bad yesterday but the car… I’m going to struggle with it tomorrow.” The McLarens were unable to mount any serious challenge to the Red Bulls on a day when the champion team were untouchable. “I couldn’t find any more (speed) guys, they were just too quick,” said Button, on his team radio. Meanwhile Alonso was left cursing his luck after Raikkonen’s spin left him unable to set a flying final lap. “What can I say, other than get angry about being unlucky? The yellow flags came at the worst possible moment, when I was coming into turn 14,” said Alonso, who was not available for comment after the stewards’ inquiry. - AFP |
| Kimi spin cost me, says Alonso Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT  SUZUKA, (Japan): Formula One championship leader Fernando Alonso was left cursing his luck yesterday after a late spin by Kimi Raikkonen cost him the chance to set a competitive qualifying time at the Japanese Grand Prix.The Ferrari driver, who has a 29-point lead as he seeks his third world title, said he had to slow down on his final flying lap in Saturday’s qualifying session because of the yellow flags at Spoon curve, where Raikkonen had lost control of his Lotus. Alonso will start the race from sixth spot with Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, the defending world champion and his closest rival in the overall standings, on pole. “What can I say, other than get angry about being unlucky? The yellow flags came at the worst possible moment, when I was coming into turn 14,” Alonso said. “Up until then, my lap was great and there was every chance of setting the fourth fastest time of the day, which would have then seen me start from third on the grid. “From there, the race could have taken on a completely different picture, but we have to accept what happened. We were unlucky today, so maybe we’ll be lucky tomorrow.” Alonso said the grid would make for a difficult race with an all-Red Bull front row and McLaren’s Jenson Button and Lewis Button in eighth and ninth. “We are up against some very strong opponents, like Red Bull who are in front and there is also McLaren who are behind, so we will have to keep an eye on both sides of the track,” said the Spaniard. - AFP |
| Hamilton warns he may struggle in Japan Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:09 PM PDT  SUZUKA, (Japan): Outgoing McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton shrugged off his poor qualifying show at the Japanese Grand Prix as “just one of those days” yesterday – but warned he could struggle on race day.Hamilton, days after ending intense speculation by announcing his departure for Mercedes next season, qualified just ninth for Sunday’s race, and blamed set-up problems for the handling problems which prevented him from fighting for pole. He said: “That was just one of those days. We had a bit of a problem. I think it was P2, with the set-up. We had a lot of under-steer. So we changed it for P3, which was much more front-end but ‘over-steery’. “So we opted to go back – well, I opted to go back – and unfortunately it didn’t work! The 2008 champion added: “I really felt great in the car all weekend before that. It was literally just we made some set-up changes going into this session and I had everything I could to get the car to turn in, it just wouldn’t turn in any more than it was.” He said that the yellow flags which were waved when rival Kimi Raikkonen spun his Lotus were not a serious problem. “I was nowhere anyway!” he said. “But with the pace that I have, who knows. You never know what’s going to happen in the race. The long-run pace wasn’t bad yesterday but the car… I’m going to struggle with it, but I’ll do what I can.” A retirement while leading last month’s Singapore Grand Prix largely put paid to Hamilton’s title hopes, despite two wins in the last four races. - AFP |
| In boost to campaign, Obama takes in US$181 million Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:08 PM PDT  WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama raised US$181 million in September, his campaign said yesterday, in a huge boost for his re-election bid following a limp debate performance against White House rival Mitt Romney.The haul was the biggest monthly cash take by Obama of the 2012 race, and was revealed just a day after supporters disappointed by the debate got another fillip with news that the US unemployment rate dipped below eight percent. It means Obama will have ample money to splash on an advertising blitz in the countdown to the election, exactly a month away on November 6, and with 1.8 million donors in the month is an impressive display of grass roots muscle. Republican nominee Romney has yet to reveal his monthly fundraising figures for September, but early predictions that he would outspend Obama by a distance appear to have been unfounded. Romney however does have the support of an array of SuperPAC independent fundraising committees financed by rich donors and corporations, that can spend unlimited sums to attack Obama and outnumber similar Democratic organizations. Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina alerted supporters to the fundraising coup for the re-election effort and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in an email on Saturday morning. “I have some huge news, and I want you to be the first to hear about it,” Messina said. “We not only surpassed 10 million donations so far in 2012 to the campaign and the Democratic Party – a historic record for grassroots politics. “We also raised IS$181 million in September from 1.8 million Americans – more than 567,000 of whom gave for the first time. That’s by far our biggest month yet.” Messina said the average donation was US$53 and 98 percent of contributions amounted to $250 or less and also boasted that the Obama political machine was in full swing ahead of the election. The September figure was just short of the US$193 million piled up by Obama and the DNC in the equivalent month of the 2008 election campaign. He said the campaign opened its 100th field offices in both Ohio and Florida last month and last week registered 10,000 voters in Florida in a single day. In early voting in Iowa, Messina said that 105,000 people had already cast ballots, 62 percent of whom were Democrats. The release of the fundraising figure came on the second successive morning of good news for the Obama campaign after the president was comprehensively outfoxed by Romney on Thursday in the first of three head-to-head debates. On Friday, new Labor Department data showed that the unemployment rate had dropped to 7.8 percent, the lowest level since the president walked into the Oval Office in January 2009. Obama seized on the news to rebut Romney’s criticisms of his economic strategy and warned that after having come so far, America could not afford to go back to Republican economic policies that had triggered a crisis. But in his weekly radio address Saturday, Obama acknowledged that too many Americans were “still looking for work or struggling to pay the bills” and urged Congress to act to alleviate their plight. He said lawmakers needed to extend tax cuts adopted under former President George W. Bush for the overwhelming majority of working American. The tax cuts are due to expire at the end of the year. Romney, banking on a turnaround in the polls after the debate in Denver, claimed Friday that the Obama economy was not in a “real recovery.” “If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11 percent,” the Republican challenger said as he stumped for votes in the battleground state of Virginia. Romney yesterday was in another vital state Florida, practicing for the next debate showdown with Obama on October 16. Obama was off the trail, but he will head out on a campaign and fundraising swing through California today. Poll watchers were meanwhile keeping an eye on new opinion surveys to gauge if Romney had cut into the narrow lead held by Obama in the national race and in key battleground states. The full impact of the debate and the jobs figures are not likely to be felt in surveys until the middle of next week, though there was signs in some early polls that Romney had made headway in Virginia. The two campaigns meanwhile took their latest hits at one another in new advertising, with the Obama team accusing Romney of being “dishonest” in the Denver debate on his true taxation plans. Romney’s punch meanwhile featured a woman called Melanie McNamara who said she voted for Obama in 2008 but was now going Republican because she believed the former Massachusetts governor was the best bet to restore prosperity. - AFP |
| In Venezuelan vote, all eyes will be on loser’s reaction Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:08 PM PDT  CARACAS: Venezuela’s electoral system gets top marks from observers, but uncertainty hangs over how President Hugo Chavez, his challenger and everyday people will react after votes are counted in today’s election.The National Electoral Council has sought to discard fears of fraud in this oil-rich country, reassuring Venezuelans that the electronic voting machines will keep their votes secret. The US-based Carter Center, a past election observer, agrees. In a show of good faith, Chavez and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, who has given the president the toughest election challenge of his 14-year presidency, have signed a document vowing to recognize the election result. But Chavez, who was briefly ousted in a 47-hour coup in 2002, claims that the “far right” plans not to recognize his victory if he wins a new six-year term. He has never shown evidence to back up his allegation. While Capriles never accused Chavez of plotting to commit fraud, he says the leftist leader misused public funds for his campaign while sowing fear by forcing government workers to attend his rallies. In 2004, a list with the names of millions of people who signed a petition for a recall referendum against Chavez was made public. A number of government workers on the list said they lost their jobs after its release. “It was an error committed by some political groups for political reasons. Today nobody can doubt the vote is secret,” said Tibisay Lucena, head of the National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Chavez loyalists. She urged people to stop writing alarmist messages on social media, stressing in a Venevision network interview that “the eyes of the world are on Venezuela.” Ignacio Avalos, director of the Venezuelan Election Observatory, an independent non-governmental organization, said a Chavez defeat would likely trigger protests but that they would be brief. “The government and the opposition both agree that the electoral system is good in general,” Avalos told AFP. “Opposition experts concluded that you cannot cheat the system.” “My concern is not what happens Sunday. It’s what happens Monday,” he said, noting that the speeches that Chavez and Capriles give after the election will be key to how the people react. The armed forces, he added, would not act as an arbiter in the election, though they would intervene if any protests got out of control. Some 139,000 troops have been deployed to provide security on election day. “How people react will depend on the attitude of the loser,” said Farith Fraija, a political scientist and economist close to the government. Venezuela has become a highly polarized country under Chavez, who has developed a devoted following among the poor. But Capriles has given the opposition new hope after holding his own massive rallies across the nation. Some Capriles supporters fear that the president would have a hard time bowing out gracefully. “Everybody knows that the elections are not transparent,” said Sandra Contreras, a 24-year-old psychology student at the Central University of Venezuela. “We are living in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.” “If Capriles wins, Chavez will not accept defeat,” she said. “People may take to the streets to protest, civil war could happen, or by miracle the national guard intervenes to make him recognize the vote.” Fernando Amador, a 32-year-old blue-collar worker and Capriles supporter, is confident the electoral system is fraud-proof but says that Chavez supporters would take to the streets if the president refuses to concede defeat. “The people would go out, there would be violence and looting,” he said during a lively sidewalk discussion with Chavez supporters in front of the Housing Ministry, which is covered by a giant image of Chavez. But Oscar Nunez, a ministry driver and “Chavista,” said it would be demonstrations of joy that would take place on Sunday as he could not see how Chavez could lose. “We don’t want violence,” he said. “We are all Venezuelans.” - AFP |
| Obama touts jobs report as he seeks to lift campaign Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:07 PM PDT
A decline in unemployment to 7.8 percent in September, announced just more than four weeks before Election Day, gave an unexpected shine to the most vulnerable part of Obama’s record – his economic stewardship – and offered him a chance to reset his re-election bid. The rate dropped from 8.1 percent in August. The much-needed dose of positive news for the Democratic president came two days after he was widely judged the loser in his first presidential debate against Romney, who breathed new life into his own campaign. Reinforcing a sense of momentum for Romney coming out of the first of three face-offs on the national stage, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll of likely voters showed Obama’s lead narrowing to just 2 percentage points – 46 percent to his rival’s 44 percent. Obama had a 6-point advantage in Wednesday’s poll. With Obama’s supporters suddenly more nervous about his re-election prospects, he sought to regain the initiative by focusing on jobs numbers, which he welcomed as a source of “some encouragement” about his economic approach. “Today, I believe that as a nation we are moving forward again,” Obama told an enthusiastic crowd at a campaign rally at George Mason University in Virginia. “More Americans entered the workforce, more people are getting jobs.” “It’s a reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now,” he said. He also seized the opportunity – both in Virginia and later at a campaign event in Ohio, another critical swing state – to accuse Romney of using the debate to reshape himself with an “extreme makeover” on everything from taxes to government regulations. Romney had made the president’s failure to drive the jobless rate below 8 percent a key plank in his campaign, so the drop to the lowest level since January 2009 could deprive him of some ammunition in the final sprint toward the November 6 election. Reacting to the data, Romney said the economy remained weak and noted that the unemployment rate would be closer to 11 percent if it included those who had given up looking for work. “This is not what a real recovery looks like,” he said in a statement. Taking a veiled swipe at the former Massachusetts governor, Obama said, “Today’s news is certainly not an excuse to try to talk down the economy to score a few political points.” While pollsters disagree over how much of an effect economic data have on voting intentions, a good jobs number can only be positive for the incumbent, especially in the aftermath of Wednesday’s debate that put Obama on the defensive. “Good economic news is good political news. President Obama needed that after the debate and it gives him numerical evidence that his policies are working,” said Julian Zelizer of Princeton University. Crucially, the report showed the US workforce was expanding. In some recent months, the unemployment rate had ticked downward largely because many Americans had given up on looking for work. Data showed that employers added 114,000 jobs in September. Uptick in polls for Romney In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, more than nine out of 10 registered voters – 91 percent – said they had seen, heard or read something about the debate, and 54 percent said they thought Romney had done a better job. Thirty percent said it made them feel more positive toward Romney. That was more than double the 14 percent who felt better about Obama after watching the two candidates go head-to-head. The online prediction market Intrade showed the jobs report helped give Obama a better shot at the White House. It put his chances at re-election at about 69 percent, up from 66 percent on Thursday. Romney’s chances on Intrade were about 31 percent. It remained to be seen whether Obama’s weak performance in Denver would become a long-term problem for the president. He has two more chances to redeem himself in debates – a second is set for October 16, and the third is on October 22. Speaking to cheering supporters, Obama played up the improving jobs market as fruits of his policies and warned a Republican return to the White House could turn that around. “We are not going to let this country fall backward, not now. We’ve got too much at stake,” he said. He also kept up an attack on Romney as a flip-flopper who was less than truthful at the debate. “My opponent has been trying to do a two-step, and reposition,” Obama said. “But the bottom line is his underlying philosophy is the top-down economics that we’ve seen before.” In a damaging video from a private fundraising speech, Romney said in May that 47 percent of voters were dependent on government and unlikely to support him. Three weeks after the video came to light, Romney completely disavowed the remarks for the first time, telling Fox News on Thursday that what he said was “just completely wrong.” Often criticized for being wooden, Romney’s aggressive debate performance on Wednesday gave his campaign a burst of energy after weeks of setbacks. Looking at times tired and displeased, Obama did not seize opportunities to attack the Republican on his business record at Bain Capital, the Romney video and his rival’s refusal to release more income tax returns. Romney addressed a large crowd in the coal country of Abingdon, Virginia, and did not respond to the Labor Department report until near the end of his remarks. “There were fewer new jobs created this month than last month and the unemployment rate has you know this year has come down very, very slowly, but it has come down nonetheless,” he said. “The reason it has come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work,” he said. “When I’m president of the United States … the unemployment rate is going to come down, not because people are giving up and dropping out of the workforce, but because we’re creating more jobs.” - Reuters |
| Ex-papal butler convicted, sentenced to 18 months jail Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:07 PM PDT
A Vatican spokesman said the pope, who reigns as a supreme monarch in the world’s smallest city-state, would “most likely” pardon Paolo Gabriele, which would mean he would not have to serve his sentence. The court delivered its verdict after two hours of deliberations and closing arguments by the prosecution and defense. Gabriele had admitted being the source of leaks of highly sensitive papers, including letters to the pope that alleged corruption in the Vatican’s business dealings. “What I feel most strongly inside myself is the conviction that I acted exclusively out of love, I would say a visceral love, for the Church of Christ and its visible representative,” he said in an impassive voice during a final appeal to the court. “If I have to repeat it, I am not a thief,” he added. The prosecution had asked for a three-year sentence while the defense asked the court to reduce the charges from aggravated theft to misappropriation and for him to be freed. The head of the three-judge panel, wearing a black robe with gold tassels, read the verdict with the opening words: “In the name of Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, gloriously reigning, the court has invoked the Holy Trinity and has reached its sentence.” The judge said he had given Gabriele a lighter sentence because he had no previous criminal record. The Vatican spokesman said the former butler had been returned to house arrest in the Vatican for the time being. Gabriele’s lawyer, Cristiana Arru, told Reuters she did not plan to appeal because she felt the sentence was “a just one”. “He is a serene man. He placed himself before justice and is ready to accept any of the consequences,” she said after visiting the Gabriele family in their apartment in the Vatican. “He put his life in the hands of divine providence first and human justice second. He is a man who has no fear,” she said. Breach of trust The trial, which started last Saturday, threw open the window on a betrayal of trust and sensitive secrets in the Vatican. A former member of the small, select group known as “the papal family”, Gabriele was one of fewer than 10 people who had a key to an elevator leading directly to the pope’s apartments. In the course of the trial, intimate details emerged of the inner workings of an institution long renowned for its secrecy. The documents Gabriele leaked constituted one of the biggest crises of Pope Benedict’s papacy when they emerged in a muckraking expose by an Italian journalist earlier this year. The case has been an embarrassment for the Vatican, coming at a time when it was keen to rid itself from the taint left by a series of scandals involving sexual abuse of minors by clerics around the world and mismanagement at its bank. Gabriele told investigators before the trial began that he leaked the documents because he saw “evil and corruption everywhere in the Church” and that information was being hidden from the pope. Earlier this week Gabriele accused the Holy See’s police of mistreating him while in custody. Members of the force in turn depicted the butler as a man obsessed with the occult, Masonic lodges and secret services. - Reuters |
| Man dies in UK from Congo fever after Afghanistan flight Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:07 PM PDT  LONDON: A man has died of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever after flying home to Scotland from Afghanistan, in Britain’s first case of the deadly disease, health officials said yesterday.Two passengers who sat close to the 38-year-old man on a plane are undergoing daily health checks, although they have not yet shown signs of the tick-borne tropical illness. The man was diagnosed within hours of arriving on Tuesday from Kabul on an Emirates airlines plane that went via Dubai and he was initially treated in hospital in Glasgow. But as his condition worsened he was transferred to the high-security infectious diseases unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital on Friday, reportedly on board a special Royal Air Force isolation plane. “A 38-year-old man with Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever being treated at the Royal Free London hospital has died. We would like to extend our condolences to his family,” a hospital spokeswoman told AFP. The hospital said the disease “can be acquired from an infected patient only through direct contact with their blood or body fluids, therefore there is no risk to the general public.” It is the first laboratory-confirmed case of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever in Britain, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) said. Glasgow’s health authority said it had identified and contacted four passengers who may have had contact with the patient. Two of them, including one who was in “close proximity” to the victim during the flight, will be monitored daily for the next two weeks. The other two do not need further surveillance, it said. The risk to all other passengers on the flight from Dubai is “extremely low”, it added. Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever’s symptoms include bleeding of the gums and bodily orifices followed by liver, kidney and lung failure. About 30 percent of cases are fatal, according to the HPA. It is endemic in much of Africa, the Middle East and Asia but rare in western Europe. - Reuters |
| Turkey strikes back at Syria after Erdogan warning Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:07 PM PDT
It was the fourth day of Turkish strikes in retaliation for mortar bombs and shelling by Syrian forces that killed five Turkish civilians further east on Wednesday. The strikes and counter-strikes are the most serious cross-border violence in Syria’s conflict, which began as a democracy uprising but has evolved into a civil war with sectarian overtones. They highlight how the crisis could destabilize the region. NATO-member Turkey was once an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but turned against him after his violent response to an uprising in which more than 30,000 people have died, according to the United Nations. Turkey has nearly 100,000 Syrian refugees in camps on its territory, has allowed rebel leaders sanctuary and has led calls for Assad to quit. Its armed forces are far larger than Syria’s. Erdogan said on Friday his country did not want war but warned Syria not to make a “fatal mistake” by testing its resolve. Damascus has said its fire hit Turkey accidentally. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu struck a more defensive tone on Saturday, saying parliament’s authorization of possible cross-border military action was designed as a deterrent. “With the mandate we did not take a step towards war, we showed the Syrian administration our deterrence, making the necessary warning to prevent a war,” he said. “From now on, if there is an attack on Turkey it will be silenced,” he said in an interview with state broadcaster TRT. Davutoglu said international mediator on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi would come to Turkey before Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Ankara within the next ten days. Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby described Brahimi’s Syria mission as “virtually impossible”, in an interview with Egyptian paper al-Ahram. Asked about the efforts of the Egypt-Saudi-Turkey-Iran quartet to solve the Syrian crisis, Elaraby said: “The solution must comprise Iran. The important thing is that matters get moving.” Mortars land near Turkish village Two rounds fired from Syria struck near Guvecci village in Yayladagi on Saturday, the Hatay governor’s office said. It said the fire appeared to have been aimed by Syrian government forces at rebels along the border. There were no casualties. The first round landed 50 meters inside Turkey at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT) and the Guvecci border post retaliated with four rounds from 81 mm mortars. It fired two further rounds after the second mortar struck around 11:30 a.m. (0830 GMT). The governor’s office warned people in the area not to go out on balconies or spend time in open places, Dogan news agency said. It said the Red Crescent was offering psychological support to people in the area. There were two similar incidents in Hatay on Friday, when Erdogan issued his warning. “Those who attempt to test Turkey’s deterrence, its decisiveness, its capacity, I say here they are making a fatal mistake,” he said in a bellicose speech to a crowd in Istanbul. “We are not interested in war, but we’re not far from war either. This nation has come to where it is today having gone through intercontinental wars,” he said. Turkish artillery bombarded Syrian military targets on Wednesday and Thursday, killing several Syrian soldiers after Syria’s initial fatal bombardment. The United Nations Security Council condemned the original Syrian attack and demanded that such violations of international law stop immediately. Russia, a staunch ally of Syria, has said it received assurances from Damascus that the strike on Turkey was a tragic accident but Erdogan dismissed them, saying Syrian fire had repeatedly hit Turkish soil. Wednesday’s Syrian strike on the town of Akcakale was of a different magnitude to previous incidents over the past 10 days, a Turkish government official told Reuters. “Wednesday was different. There were five or six rounds into the same place. That’s why we responded a couple of times, to warn and deter. To tell the (Syrian) military to leave. We think they’ve got the message and have pulled back from the area.” Syria has since ordered its warplanes and helicopters not to enter an area within 10 km of the Turkish border and told its artillery units not to fire shells in areas close to the border, according to Turkish broadcaster NTV. Syrian authorities have not confirmed this. The Turkish General Staff yesterday sought to quell concerns about scenes of people apparently crossing freely back and forth across the frontier in the Akcakale area. “There are no uncontrolled or illegal transits along the border. The region which we are responsible for is completely under control,” the General Staff said in a statement to state-run Anatolian news agency. The United States has said it stands by its NATO ally’s right to defend itself against aggression spilling over from Syria’s war, while Russia appealed to Turkey to stay calm and avoid any action that could increase tensions. The West has shown little appetite for the kind of NATO intervention that helped topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Turkish calls for a safe zone in Syria would require a no-fly zone that NATO states are unwilling to police. The 18-month-old Syrian revolt increasingly pits a Sunni Muslim opposition against Assad’s Alawite minority. President Barack Obama refuses to arm the rebels, partly out of fear that some of those fighting the Iranian-backed Assad are Islamist radicals equally hostile to the West. Rebel forces are riven by divisions but Syrian government forces appear to lack the numbers to land a knockout blow and permanently hold rebel areas. Rebels said they captured an air defense base with a cache of missiles outside Damascus on Thursday, a boost to their campaign after a series of setbacks in the capital. - Reuters |
| Islamist cleric from Britain to appear in US court Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:07 PM PDT
The Egyptian-born Abu Hamza, 54, is accused by Washington of supporting al Qaeda, aiding a kidnapping in Yemen and plotting to open a training camp for militants in the United States. He was flown late on Friday to the United States along with four other men also wanted on US terrorism charges. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said yesetrday that Hamza and two of the others would make an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court later in the day. A fiery anti-Western speaker, Abu Hamza is said to have inspired some of the world’s most high-profile militants including Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the accused September 11, 2001 conspirators. The cleric was once a preacher at the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, but was later jailed in Britain for inciting murder and racial hatred. Hamza was indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan in April 2004. He is accused of involvement in a 1998 hostage-taking in Yemen that resulted in the deaths of four hostages – three Britons and one Australian. He was also accused of providing material support to al Qaeda by trying to set up a training camp for fighters in Oregon in the United States and of trying to organize support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. If convicted, Hamza could face up to life in prison. US officials said they were pleased that Hamza and the other men would finally answer to the long-standing charges. The extradition “is a watershed moment in our nation’s efforts to eradicate terrorism, and it makes good on a promise to the American people to use every available diplomatic, legal, and administrative tool to pursue and prosecute charged terrorists no matter how long it takes,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. Saudi native Khalid al-Fawwaz, 50, and Egyptian Adel Abdul Bary, 52, will also appear in Manhattan federal court later yesterday. They will be asked to enter a plea on charges that they and others were involved in the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. British citizens Babar Ahmad, 38 and Syed Talha Ahsan, 33, are charged with supporting al Qaeda and other militant groups by operating various websites promoting Islamic holy war. Ahmad and Ahsan pleaded not guilty before a federal judge in New Haven, Connecticut on Saturday morning, court records showed. They will remain jailed pending trial. Attorneys for the men could not immediately be reached. It was not immediately clear if Hamza and the two other suspects had retained or been assigned defense attorneys. Eight year battle Born Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, Hamza moved to Britain as an engineering student in the 1970s, married a British woman and once worked as a doorman at discos in London. Abu Hamza, who wears a hook in place of his missing right hand, says he lost both hands and an eye while living in Afghanistan in the 1980s while carrying out humanitarian work. Authorities say he was fighting for the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. After being held on the US extradition warrant, he was jailed for seven years by a British court in 2006 for inciting Muslims to kill Jews and non-believers, based on extracts of speeches he had given years earlier. He lost his eight-year battle to avoid deportation on Friday after two London High Court judges refused a last bid to delay his departure. The European Court of Human Rights refused to stop London from extraditing Hamza and the four others. No trial soon While all five defendants will make brief court appearances on Saturday before judges in Manhattan and Connecticut, there is little likelihood that a full trial will begin soon. Some US officials are concerned that their trials could ignite politically motivated debate about security threats and coddling of militants. Yet many experts caution that US civilian courts can and have handled many high profile cases that involved Islamist militants. Following a closely watched trial in Manhattan federal court, Tanzanian national Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was sentenced to life in prison in January, 2011 for his role in the 1998 bombings. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw that trial, will also handle the cases of al-Fawwaz and Abdul Bary. - Reuters |
| North Korean soldier defects to South across land border Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:07 PM PDT
Defections across the Demilitarized Zone, a buffer zone dividing the two Koreas, are rare as the 250 km-long land border is heavily armed and tightly guarded. A defence ministry official confirmed a North Korean had defected across the land border, but provided no further details. Local media quoted a statement from the Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying the North Korean soldier crossed the western section of the border at around noon. The North Korean claimed that he shot dead his platoon and squad chiefs while on guard duty shortly before his border crossing, according to the reports. The unnamed defector was being questioned by authorities. The JCS statement was not available immediately. Hundreds of North Koreans flee each year across its northern border with China and most make their way to the South, with more than 20,000 having found refuge in the wealthy capitalist neighbor. Most cite economic hardship and political persecution as the main reasons for leaving home. The two Koreas are still technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended only with a ceasefire, not a peace treaty. - Reuters |
| Yemen foils al Qaeda plan to bomb air base used by United States Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:06 PM PDT
A car packed with explosives was discovered by authorities near the gate of Al Anad air base in Yemen’s southern province of Lahj, the official told Reuters. “This was a planned suicide attack. Once the car was discovered, security forces immediately arrested two men who were inside the vehicle … The car was filled with explosives and anti-tank missiles,” he added. The Al Anad air base is used jointly with US forces to launch attacks against al Qaeda militants across Yemen, mainly using US-controlled drones. Yemen, a US ally, has been in upheaval since a popular uprising ousted veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh in February. Overlooking one of the world’s busiest oil shipping routes, the country is plagued by poverty and lawlessness that the toppling of Saleh has done little to change. Washington backed a military offensive in May to recapture areas of Abyan province – which borders Shabwa province – from Islamist insurgents. Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is viewed by Washington as the most dangerous branch of the militant network established by Osama bin Laden. - Reuters |
| Somali president names political newcomer as prime minister Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:06 PM PDT
Saaid, a political newcomer, has been a prominent businessman in neighboring Kenya and is married to Asha Haji Elmi, an influential Somali peace activist. A Western diplomat said Saaid had a reputation for being above Somalia’s notoriously volatile clan politics, similar to the new president, and the news of his appointment would be welcomed by foreign governments. “Like all the decisions the new president has made so far, this is a good one, and Somalia is on a bit of a roll with the election of (Mohamed Osman) Jawaari as parliament speaker and Mohamud as president,” the diplomatic source told Reuters. Mohamud, a former academic and a political newcomer himself, was elected president in a secret ballot on September 10, a result hailed by his supporters as a vote for change in the Horn of Africa state ravaged by war and anarchy since 1991. Saaid’s appointment as the prime minister will have to be approved by Somali legislators, diplomatic sources said. - Reuters |
| Iran denies offering new plan on nuclear impasse Posted: 06 Oct 2012 04:06 PM PDT
The New York Times reported on Thursday that Iran had proposed a plan to European officials that required the West to lift harsh oil and economic sanctions in return for the eventual suspension of uranium enrichment by Tehran. It reported Iranian officials tried to gather support for the proposal during a visit last month to the United Nations. Several rounds of negotiations over the nuclear program between Iran and world powers – the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany, known collectively as the P5+1 – have failed to secure any breakthroughs. The powers fear that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb. Tehran says its program is for peaceful purposes. The Iranian plan described by the New York Times would likely be a non-starter, as the six powers have demanded Tehran halt its 20 percent enrichment of uranium; ship any stockpile out of the country; close down an underground enrichment facility, Fordow; and permit more intrusive UN inspection of its work. Tehran has refused to meet those demands unless economic sanctions choking its oil exports are lifted first, and denied on Saturday that it had made any new offers to the West to break an impasse that has lasted nearly a decade. “No new offer outside of the framework of the P5+1 negotiations during the last meeting of the United Nations has been made, and the claims of some American news organizations in this regard are baseless,” Mehr news agency on Saturday quoted Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, as saying. Sanctions have begun to take a serious toll on Iran’s economy, with its currency the rial dropping by around a third in value against the dollar in less than two weeks. The United States Congress is considering expanding American economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not ruled out using force to halt the nuclear program. The United States, Israel’s main ally, says it will not allow Tehran to produce the bomb, but sanctions should be given more time to work before force is considered. - Reuters |
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