Hot News Aound the world, Khmer News

Cambodians cheer Pacquiao victory

2009-11-15T21:54:00.001+07:00

pacquiao-finalstats

By Leila Salaverria
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 15:55:00 11/15/2009

MANILA, Philippines -- It's not only Filipinos who are shouting in jubilation over Manny Pacquiao's victory.

Cambodians are also cheering for the Filipino boxer, who has gained a following in the Southeast Asian country, according to journalist Ung Chamroeun.

Chamroeun said in a live chat with this reporter, that the match between Pacquiao and Puerto Rican Manuel Cotto was broadcast live on free TV on the Cambodian Television Network (CTN). The airing was also uninterrupted by commercials. The match was also shown on two cable channels.

Chamroeun said Cambodians had gathered in coffee shops to watch the much-awaited match.

Thailand's PAD rally against Thaksin, Hun Sen kicks off in Bangkok

2009-11-15T21:52:00.002+07:00

BANGKOK, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The People's Alliance for Democracy's (PAD) protest against ousted former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen kicked off on Sunday in Thailand's capital Bangkok.

The PAD protesters or the yellow-shirted people officially started their protest at Sanam Luang in the center of capital Bangkok from 04:00 p.m. local time.

The rally was occurring after Thailand and Cambodia have downgraded their diplomatic relations due to conflict over an appointment of Thaksin as an economic advisor to Cambodia's government and Hun Sen on Nov. 4.

A day after the appointment of Thaksin, the Cambodian government announced recall of its ambassador to Thailand in a move to respond to the Thai government's recall of its ambassador to Cambodia.

Thaksin Shinawatra: Cambodia’s advisor par excellence?

2009-11-15T21:52:00.001+07:00

Op-Ed by Khmerization
15th November, 2009

“Mr. Thaksin, due to his business success and his wealth of economic knowledge, could be Cambodia’s advisor par excellence if he is not a fugitive of the Thai government. However, under the political climate and his fugitive status, he is advisor non par excellence.”

In have opined and editorialised in the past that I see no benefits in the appointment of Mr. Thaksin as Cambodian government’s advisor, beside to irk and to irritate Thailand. Mr. Thaksin would not be able to entice billions of dollars of trades and investments to Cambodia.

In fact, his lecture delivered in Phnom Penh on Thursday the 12th of November has proved just that. His advice had turned out to be not a magic wand for Cambodia’s current economic woes. It was just another seminar and lecture given by a person of high calibre. The seminar failed to attract a single cent of investment to Cambodia. And even Mr. Thaksin himself refused to commit to an investment project in the casino complex in Koh Kong he agreed earlier with Mr. Hun Sen because he is distrustful of Mr. Hun Sen and foresees the political uncertainty and instability his appointment could bring to bear. Mr. Thaksin’s lecture and seminar, if anything at all, is just a simple lecture and seminar by an “economic expert” that Mr. Thaksin is portrayed and purported to be. It has nothing to do with his economic advice to the Cambodian government, but more to do with his political speech. In fact, the seminar has been used as a forum to deliver his political condemnations of the present Abhisit government, which he accused of stoking “false patriotism”.

In perspective, one would like to think that Mr. Hun Sen had opted to gamble away Cambodia’s good relations with the Thai government by risking Cambodia’s larger national interests for the trouble that Mr. Thaksin’s appointment would bring. Mr Hun Sen’s decision to choose personal interests over national interests is beyond anyone’s imagination and comprehension. Mr. Hun Sen might have foreseen that Mr. Thaksin has the support of the majority of the Thai people and eventually he could be returned to government at the next elections. Mr. Hun Sen’s calculated risks or miscalculations with Mr. Thaksin could be a recipe for irreparable damages to Cambodia’s national interests and good relations with future Thai governments.

Cambodia’s association with Mr. Thaksin under the current political environment is a big risk and a recipe for disaster that Mr. Hun Sen should not gamble with. If Mr. Hun Sen thinks that by appointing his “eternal friend” as his advisor will help him gain power in Thailand, then he is wrong. Opinion polls show that Mr. Thaksin’s popularity rating after his appointment has plunged abysmally and Mr. Abhisit’s popularity rating has tripled. The majority of Thai people are against him now, especially after he allegedly said in the interview with the British Times newspaper about the Thai monarchy’s interferences in Thai politics. This remark is considered a lese-majeste offence under Thai laws that carries severe penalty.

Mr. Thaksin’s perceived return to government is a remote possibility. He is fighting an uphill political battle. All the Thai Establishments- the Army, the Court, the bureaucracy and, most importantly, the revered Monarchy, are all against him and are working hard to make sure that he is kept at bay. His acceptance of Mr. Hun Sen’s appointment could be his last straw and his political endgame. His trouble with the revered monarch, who is quietly working behind the scene to end his political life, could spearhead and precipitate his downfall.

However, assume hypothetically that Mr. Thaksin will return to power one day in Thailand. Mr. Hun Sen should not expect the future “Thaksin government” to be more sympathetic to Cambodia’s border woes either. Mr. Hun Sen should know very well that it was Mr. Thaksin’s proxy, the Samak-Nappodon government which sent Thai troops to invade Preah Vihear on 15th July 2008. And the first armed conflict on 15th October 2008 between Khmer and Thai troops happened when Mr. Somchai Wongsawath, who is Mr. Thaksin’s brother-in-law, was the Prime Minister of Thailand. Above all, the burning of Thai embassy in Phnom Penh in 2003 happened during the prime ministership of Mr. Thaksin.

Mr. Hun Sen is knowingly or unknowingly using Thaksin as a Trojan horse to re-gain political influence in Thailand, but he must be mindful that Mr. Thaksin could be a Pandora’s box that could unleash evils and social ills into Cambodian society. While Cambodia’s Finance Minister Keat Chhon hoped that Mr. Thaksin’s appointment could help spearhead Thaksinomics -Thaksin’s economic policy of rural self-sufficiency - in Cambodia, Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya fears the appointment could help import Thaksinocracy - Thaksin’s corrupt style of rule - into the already corrupt Cambodian bureaucracy.

Hun Sen’s support for the revitalisation of Mr. Thaksin’s political comeback, as far as the Thai Establishments is concerned, is a lost cause. As such, Mr. Hun Sen’s association with Mr. Thaksin against the will of the present Thai government is a gamble and a recipe for potential disastrous armed and diplomatic conflict with present and future Thai governments.

In hindsight, all Cambodians from all political persuasions should look back and ask, is Mr. Thaksin’s appointment worth the trouble that it has brought to Cambodian and Thai relations? With the escalated and worsened diplomatic row caused by his appointment, that Cambodia should better do without, we all should realise by now that Mr. Thaksin’s appointment is not at the best interests of Cambodia and the Cambodian people. His appointment has degenerated and culminated into the downgrade of diplomatic ties, annulments of border agreements and the halt of economic aid by Thailand. And now the row reached boiling point after the arrest for espionage of an alleged Thai spy that led to more expulsions of diplomats from both countries.

While the present Thai government is doing its best to trample and demonise Cambodia through its arrogant diplomatic gestures as well as its military superiority, Mr. Hun Sen should sometimes swallow his pride, close his eyes and apply cool diplomacy for the sake of Cambodia’s national interests. The wild-mannered behaviours that have been displayed by Mr. Hun Sen so far have not helped Cambodia’s cause and is a bad publicity coup that Cambodia could do without. These sorts of crude diplomacy can undoubtedly tarnish Cambodia’s international image that makes Cambodians look like the bellicose and belligerent people in the eyes of the world.

To conclude this editorial, may I say that, Mr. Thaksin, due to his business success and his wealth of economic knowledge, could be Cambodia’s advisor par excellence if he is not a fugitive of the Thai government. However, under the political climate and his fugitive status, he is advisor non par excellence.

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Posted by Khmerization

Some wild suggestions to end Thai-Cambodian row

2009-11-15T21:51:00.002+07:00

Friday, November 13, 2009
By Veera Prateepchaikul
Bangkok Post

Ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra must feel at home with the red-carpet welcome accorded him by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and with his new job as economic adviser to the Cambodian government.

Mr Thaksin’s meeting with some 300 top Cambodian businessmen and officials on Thursday morning in Phnom Penh, when he delivered a lecture on economic affairs and slammed the Thai leadership, most certainly gave him a sense a de'ja'vu – recollections of the old days when he sat at the head of the table controlling the cabinet meeting and lecturing his ministers who merely listened and rarely raised objections.

And, as in the good old days when he was always surrounded by his followers, the fugitive will today be feted by Hun Sen in the company of his faithful followers from the Puea Thai party who flocked in droves into Cambodia to pay him a visit and to ostensibly engage in light chit-chat.

Aside from Hun Sen who continues to treat Thaksin as his “eternal friend”, many Cambodians, especially the grassroot people, will, I believe, warmly embrace the fugitive with the hope that he can help lift them above the poverty line, so they no longer have to envy the Thai people next door. Several businessmen who attended his lecture admitted they were impressed with him.

Personally, I don’t envy the Cambodians at all over the free-of-charge advice being delivered by Thaksin in his capacity as economic adviser. In fact, I wish them the best of luck.

Honestly speaking, the row between Thailand and Cambodia was exacerbated from Hun Sen’s unprovoked conduct and perceived interference in Thailand’s internal affairs more than it was from Thaksin’s acceptance of the job in Cambodia. This was clearly evident in Hun Sen’s interview on November 9 when he publicly insulted Thailand and the Thai justice system and accused Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of being a “thief” for stealing the premiership.

But despite Hun Sen’s unbecoming conduct, most Thais do not hold a grudges against the Cambodian people. On the contrary, many of them despise a handful of Thais whom they suspect are using the hands of Hun Sen or vice versa to hurt Thailand.

Now, since Mr Hun Sen is being so generous with Thaksin and values his friendship so highly that Thai-Cambodian relations mean nothing to him, how about granting the fugitive permanent residence in Cambodia -- so that he does not have to hop from one country to another like a drifter.

And instead of just making Thaksin an adviser, why not make him a minister, which would at least partially fulfill his ultimate ambition for a political comeback in Thailand. If that cannot be legally done, then just change the law, since Hun Sen is already in total control of the Cambodian parliament. Or he could just grant Thaksin honorary citizenship of Cambodia which is quite a common practice for a government to honour a foreign citizen in return for his or her valuable contribution to its country.

Who knows, the ousted prime minister just might even be happy with that, and finally find peace of mind in such a generous -- though admittedly outlandish – offer. And with that, just maybe, Thailand and Cambodia could forget their row over the man from the North and become good neighbours again. As they should be.

Cambodian man arrested on suspicion of spying for Thailand

2009-11-15T21:51:00.001+07:00

Saturday, November 14, 2009
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

In the morning of 13 November, near the border in Poipet, Cambodian police arrested 29-year-old Chuob Sovann, an employee of the Tropicana casino. The man was arrested for taking pictures of Thai red shirts boarding a car convoy to Siem Reap. When he was sent to the Poipet police, the man said that Pachai, a Thai administrator of the Tropicana casino, ordered him to take pictures of the activities conducted by the Thai red shirts people, as well as their reception at the Cambodian border for reporting purposes. The man was arrested at 2:30PM on 13 November 2009.

Freedom Prize Laureate Sam Rainsy’s Speech at The Liberal International 56th Congress

2009-11-15T21:49:00.000+07:00

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy

FREEDOM PRIZE LAUREATE SAM RAINSY’S SPEECH AT THE LIBERAL INTERNATIONAL 56th CONGRESS

PRESENTATION OF BOOK “25 YEARS PRIZE FOR FREEDOM”

31 October 2009 - Cairo, Egypt

Aung San Suu Kyi, Vaclav Havel, Benazir Bhutto, Corazon Aquino, Mary Robinson, Martin Lee, who doesn’t know these inspiring figures who have made the world’s recent history? They were also recipients of the Liberal International Prize for Freedom.

Today we are launching a book to celebrate 25 years of LI Prize for Freedom.

Founded in 1985, the Prize had 26 laureates (there were two laureates in 1991).

I was honored to receive the Prize in 2006 in Marrakech (Morocco).

Now, I am humbled to also, in a way, represent the other laureates at this ceremony.

They are, or were, most distinguished people who deserved the Prize much more than me.

But I am here because nobody else could come to Cairo today…

Let me first recall the origins, backgrounds and main features of the 26 laureates.

In terms of gender, there were sixteen males and ten females.

In terms of geographic origin, the laureates represented 25 nationalities (two of them were from South Africa).

In terms of occupation and professional background, there were 19 politicians also known as human rights advocates, and seven persons from the civil society including three human rights activists and four other persons: a scientist, a scholar, a writer and a poet who all worked for peace and freedom.

Are all the laureates still alive? 23 are still alive. Three have passed away: Raul Alfonsin (Argentina), Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan) and Corazon Aquino (Philippines).

Those who are still alive, what are they doing now? Most of them are old now – for sure older than 25 years ago – but they are still active in defending liberal values and ideals. One of them is the current president of Senegal, Mr Abdoulaye Wade. Two are in jail or under house arrest (Aung San Suu Kyi). Four are leaders of the opposition in their respective countries, including myself.

To fully understand the meaning and the importance of the LI Prize for Freedom, I invite you to read the book introduction by our president John Lord Alderdice.

“The Prize for Freedom was to be awarded to those who had struggled for Freedom in some of the most difficult and challenging political environments for Liberals around the world.”

“The Award would provide encouragement, recognition, in some cases, a degree of protection, since it would warn authoritarian regimes that moves against a Prize for Freedom Laureate would produce a storm of protest from liberals around the world.”

I fully subscribe to what John Alderdice wrote in his introduction.

I would add that, at least in my case, the Prize was not given to an individual. It was to honor a just cause in a particular context.

The cause is the defense of liberal values, above all Freedom that we all cherish.

The context for me was Cambodia.

The Prize was not given to me as an individual. I just received it, as the head of a team, on behalf of countless known and unknown colleagues and friends who had made sacrifices while serving the cause of freedom.

Founded in 1995, the political party that I lead in Cambodia, the SRP, is now the country’s second largest party and we will become, God willing, the number one party in a not too distant future.

But as of today, over eighty members of my party have been assassinated. Countless others have been injured, arrested, jailed, or forced to go into hiding or into exile.

I can never forget those who have been killed, sometimes in front of my eyes.

I have attended too many funerals. I would prefer not to receive any prize or award at all if I only could stop attending unnecessary funerals.

But things being as they are, the LI Prize for Freedom is a useful recognition of our legitimate fight and a powerful encouragement to us to go on fighting our uphill battle against a powerful dictatorship. The Prize gives us more courage and strength in the face of dictators who use the state media they control to denounce us as “traitors”, “anarchists” or “hooligans.”

Such a prestigious international award as the LI Prize for Freedom gives us legitimacy and honorability in the eyes of the whole world. It gives us irrefutable international credentials as democrats fighting for freedom, and that proves to be an invaluable protection against assaults from dictators who just want to eliminate us.

Thank you.

Funeral held for Melody Ross, teenager shot after high school football game

2009-11-15T21:48:00.001+07:00

Sary Choeun, left, aunt of Melody Ross, sits with the girl's parents, Chantha and Vanareth Ross, right, at the funeral service. People across the country have expressed their sympathy and sorrow on a memorial Web page. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times / November 14, 2009)

Friends, family and dignitaries pay tribute to the Long Beach girl.

By Ruben Vives
November 15, 2009

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

Melody Ross, the Wilson High School honors student whose shooting death after a Long Beach football game touched off an outpouring of sympathy from around the country, was buried Saturday in Whittier.

A hushed throng of family members, friends and dignitaries gathered at SkyRose Chapel at Rose Hills Memorial Park and Mortuary, where her first name was spelled out in a collage of photographs taken over the 16 years of her life.

A slide show was screened above her open wooden casket, set amid wreaths of flowers. Nearby, a Wilson football helmet, a Gatorade bottle and a football sat on marble stands, each bearing signatures of those who knew her.

Looking over the crowd, Melody's Uncle, Sam Che, 36, said he was touched by the expressions of love for his niece. He pointed to a photograph of Melody and gently said, "Look at her smile."

At the podium, a family member read a eulogy written by her parents, describing the family's journey from Cambodia to the United States in the mid-1980s to escape the Khmer Rouge.

Melody's parents had moved to North Long Beach only a month ago, tired of the violence in their former neighborhood near Anaheim Street, the center of Long Beach's large Cambodian community. They had hoped to raise their three daughters -- Emily, 17, and Kimberly, 6, as well as Melody -- in a new home.

"In the same house, we hoped to raise our girls to be good citizens and to grasp the potential for a great future," the eulogy said.

But that changed two weeks ago when Melody was gunned down near Ximeno Avenue and 10th Street as she and friends left the homecoming football game.

Authorities said Melody was fatally shot during feuding between rival gangs. Two 16-year-olds have been charged as adults in the killing.

Two other men -- ages 18 and 20 -- were wounded and survived.

Melody's death sparked several candlelight vigils and bake sales to help raise money for her funeral. Music videos and slide shows have been posted on the Web in her honor. Thousands of strangers from across the country also shared their sympathy and sorrow on a memorial page.

"We have lost one of our best people," Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster said. "We're here to celebrate the life of an engaging, caring, vibrant, energetic and intelligent young woman."

Students, coaches and Wilson's principal said the loss of Melody, a track athlete, had a strong effect not only on the community but also on the school.

"In the last 15 days, we all have had the opportunity to see and feel the impact one person has on us," said Wilson High Principal Dr. Sandy Blazer.

Weeping, Melody's best friend, Tori Rowles, read a letter to Melody describing how that night replays in her head, how she struggles to understand why it happened. Rowles was a witness to the shooting but was not injured.

"You understand me the best," she said. "I miss you so much."

The three-hour ceremony came to an end as everyone lined up to view Melody's body. Family members wept and stroked her black hair, placing items near her fingers.

During the burial, 16 white doves and a balloon were released into the air. As a prayer was said and a hymn sung, each mourner dropped a rose on the casket, bidding a final farewell.

ruben.vives@latimes.com

The Cambodian Prime Minister: China Becomes the Constructor of the Longest Sections of Roads in Cambodia

2009-11-15T21:47:00.000+07:00

http://cambodiamirror.wordpress.com/

Posted on 15 November 2009
The Mirror, Vol. 13, No. 638

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

“Stung Treng: The Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia, Samdech Akkak Moha Senapadei Dekchor Hun Sen, said that China becomes the country that has constructed the most roads in Cambodia, sections of road of more than 1,500 km, which had been constructed, are being constructed, or are planned to be constructed. Moreover, China has provided loans to construct bridges with a total length of 3,014 meters, for which in total more than US$800 million have been offered for road construction and more than US$100 million for building bridges. Besides, there are hydro-electric projects in some provinces with 700 megawatt power, costing approx. US$1.7 billion.

“Samdech Dekchor said so during the launching of a construction site on National Road 78 in the morning of 12 November 2009: ‘The site to construct and to restore National Road 78, starting at 121 km from Ou Pong Moan in Stung Treng, to Ban Lung in Ratanakiri, is to be covered by red gravel, 6 meter wide; it was started with a loan from the People’s Republic of China, also with 5% contributed by the Royal Government.

“The Minister of Public Works and Transport, Mr. Tram Iv Tek, stated that the construction of this road will take 40 months, the width will be broadened to 11 meters, it will be paved according to the Double Bituminous Surface Treatment, following the 3rd standard of China, with 13 bridges of together 903 meters, and 126 culverts. It will cost US$73.3 million, to be paid by a loan provided by the People’s Republic of China, together with a 5% share from the Royal Government of Cambodia. But this amount does not cover expense for taxes, the state’s burden importing materials and other means for the construction, and for clearing mines and unexploded ordnance along the road.

“The National Road 78 branches off from the National Road 7 in Ou Pong Moan in Stung Treng, leading to Ou Ya Dav at the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. But a another portion of National Road 78 from Ban Lung to Ou Ya Dav is being constructed with a loan from Vietnam, and has already been finished 90%.

“Samdech Dekchor Hun Sen said that National Road 78 has the characteristic of serving for both internal and regional integration. This road contributes to provide advantages for integration in the country as well as connecting to economic centers in Stung Treng and Ratanakiri, in order to encourage economic and social development in Cambodia, to reduce the gap between the urban and the rural areas. It also helps to promote the livelihood of citizens in the Northeast through facilitating transport, commerce, the exchange of agricultural products, and industry, and to encourage cooperation and development in the triangle zone of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, through the Ou Ya Dav boarder crossing in Ratanakiri and through the connection of National Road 7, which is the Asian Road 11, from Vientiane in Laos to the Sihanoukville International Port. In addition, National Road 78 serves nature tourism, because the Northeast is a green area, rich in beautiful big lakes, waterfalls, mountains, and forest. It is also rich in many types of mineral resources and fertile soil that is favorable for agro-industrial crops, where rubber trees are prioritized.

“On behalf of the Royal Government and the Cambodia people, Prime Minister Samdech Dekchor expressed great gratitude towards the Chinese people and the Chinese government for assisting and supporting Cambodia. Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen added that among the 11 road construction projects of more than 1,200 km that will be subsequently opened in 2010, including the roads that the government builds by its own resources, as many as 7 projects are implemented with Chinese loans.

“Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen encouraged the Shanghai Construction Company and the Kwang Ju Vanan [? - phonetic] technical monitoring consultancy to take good care of the implementation to construct the crucial National Road 78, so that is has the quality compatible with the technical standards, and so that it is finished as planned or before the deadline.”

Rasmei Kampuchea, Vol.17, #5046, 13.11.2009
Newspapers Appearing on the Newsstand:
Friday, 13 November 2009

Thai protesters denounce Thaksin's royal remarks

2009-11-15T21:46:00.000+07:00

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra attends a conference called "Cambodia and the world after financial crisis" to give a lecture on economic matters to more than 300 Cambodian economics experts at the Ministry of Economy and Finance in Phnom Penh November 12, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

By Ploy Ten Kate

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thousands of Thais gathered in central Bangkok on Sunday to protest at remarks made about the monarchy by fugitive ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The demonstrators were also angry about the ousted premier's visit last week to neighbouring Cambodia, which refused to extradite him, sparking a diplomatic row.

Police said around 6,000 demonstrators were present by 5 p.m. (1000 GMT), making it one of the biggest protests by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) since its week-long seizure of Bangkok's two airports late in 2008, which helped weaken a pro-Thaksin administration that lost power last December.

PAD's re-emergence on the street will add to the tension in Bangkok, where Thaksin's "red shirts" have stepped up their anti-government protests in recent weeks and will be galvanised by his appearance so close to home in Cambodia.

"We want to send a message out there that the Thai people are loyal to their monarchy and will not let anyone tread on it," PAD spokesman Panthep Puapongpan told Reuters.

The PAD brings together royalists, businessmen, academics and the urban middle classes opposed to Thaksin's attempt to shake up the business and political establishment. The former telecoms tycoon remains popular with poorer voters.

Its supporters normally don yellow shirts, but that was not the case this time, with the organisers trying to emphasise all Thais, not just PAD people, were angered by Thaksin's behaviour.

The PAD has accused Thaksin in the past of irreverence towards King Bhumibol Adulyadej, seen as semi-divine by many Thais, and of having republican leanings, which he denies.

Those allegations were revived last week after an interview he gave to Britain's Times newspaper in which he reportedly blamed "palace circles" for his downfall, taking care to exclude the king, queen and crown prince from any criticism.

Thaksin has lodged a complaint at what he called distortions in the story, complaining in particular about a website headline.

ANGER AT CAMBODIA

The rally also aimed to express anger at Cambodia's appointment of the fugitive premier as an economic adviser.

"We want to show our love for the motherland and that the country's dignity and integrity must be protected," Panthep said.

Thaksin left Cambodia on Saturday, having given a lecture and met officials as part of the job given to him by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. He also met supporters, including scores of Thai members of parliament, during his stay.

Cambodia refused Thailand's request that Thaksin be extradited to serve a two-year jail term for a conflict-of-interest conviction in 2008, setting off a diplomatic row in which the two countries withdrew their ambassadors.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva blamed Cambodia for the row in a weekly broadcast to the country, saying it had not only failed to extradite a fugitive but had cast aspersions on Thailand's legal and political systems.

"Our goal is clear, that we do not want a problem that will lead to violence," he said, adding that life along their common border -- scene of deadly clashes over the past 18 months because of a row over a disputed ancient temple -- remained normal.

The PAD was founded in 2005 by Sondhi Limthongkul, a former business associate of Thaksin. Sondhi survived an assassination attempt in April.

PAD street protests against Thaksin's government fuelled the instability that led to the military coup that toppled him in 2006.

Abhisit took power in December, luring some former Thaksin allies into a coalition government, with a nudge from the army.

Some members of his Democrat Party are PAD activists -- Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya took part in the airport siege -- but the PAD has recently taken its distance from Abhisit, going so far as to form its own party.

(Additional reporting by Boontiwa Wichakul; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Thai PM, Indonesian president discuss bilateral relations, Cambodia

2009-11-15T21:45:00.002+07:00

http://enews.mcot.net/

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

SINGAPORE, Nov 15 (TNA) -- Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono early Sunday conferred on bilateral relations as well as on the ongoing diplomatic standoff between Thailand and its neighbour Cambodia, according to Thai Foreign Affairs Minister Kasit Piromya.

The discussion was held on the sidelines of the three-day 17th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings which are scheduled to end later Sunday in Singapore.

Mr Kasit said Mr Yudhoyono expressed concern over the Thai-Cambodian dispute and offered to mediate the crisis. The Thai premier reportedly told the Indonesian leader that his government will remain patient so that the problem would not affect the peoples of the two countries.

Mr Yudhoyono is scheduled to meet with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Sunday afternoon regarding the diplomatic row between the two countries and, according to Mr Kasit, results or progress from the meeting will be conveyed to him by his Indonesian counterpart.

Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia along with Brunei, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, are ASEAN members.

Diplomatic ties between Cambodia and Thailand worsened after they recalled their ambassadors, expelled the first secretaries of each embassy, and the Cambodian government arrested a Thai man which it accused of spying on fugitive, ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thailand has said emphatically that the accusation against the Thai national is groundless.

The Thai government has said the problem began with Mr Hun Sen’s appointment of Mr Thaksin as economic adviser to his government earlier this month.

Mr Abhisit, currently chairman of ASEAN, and the ASEAN leaders are to hold a summit with US President Barack Obama on relations between the regional bloc and the US which also include economic and security cooperation.

Mr Abhisit is scheduled to return to Bangkok Sunday evening. (TNA)

Thailand's Abhisit: Early Poll Likely

2009-11-15T21:45:00.001+07:00

http://online.wsj.com/

By COSTAS PARIS and JENNY PARIS

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

SINGAPORE - Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Saturday that he will likely call early elections after the economy has firmly recovered.

"The likelihood is that there will be early elections once the economy is firmly grounded," Mr. Abhisit told Dow Jones Newswires. "The early poll could be called any time," he said, declining to specify a timeframe.

Calling early polls would help legitimize the rule of Mr. Abhisit, who was selected by Thailand's Parliament late last year after top army leaders helped broker the formation of a new coalition government. If Mr. Abhisit's Democrat Party and its coalition allies secure a majority in parliament, it could help turn down the heat on years of turmoil in the country, which is badly split between supporters and critics of former prime minister and telecommunications magnate, Thaksin Shinawatra.

Since being ousted in a military coup in 2006, Mr. Thaksin has continued to rally his supporters from overseas, where he is evading imprisonment on a conflict of interest conviction -- an allegation he denies.

Last week, he visited neighboring Cambodia, and dozens of supporters crossed the border to meet with him. Relations between historic rivals Thailand and Cambodia further soured when Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen appointed Mr. Thaksin as his economic adviser, and the two countries have recalled their ambassadors over the incident. Mr. Thaksin left Cambodia Saturday aboard his private jet.

Mr. Abhisit said Mr. Thaksin still has "a lot of support, but he should accept the consequences of his actions and take responsibility for breaking the law."

Speaking on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore, Mr. Abhisit said he expects Thailand's export-driven economy to contract 3% to 3.5% this year as it absorbs the full impact of the global financial crisis, but a rebound is likely next year, potentially enabling him to call fresh elections. "3.5% growth is achievable," Mr. Abhisit said.

Mr. Abhisit said he will continue to help exporters to help nurture that recovery, and suggested he believes the Bank of Thailand, Thailand's central bank, won't raise interest rates any time soon and put further upward pressure on the country's baht currency.

The weakening U.S. dollar has been a recurring theme at the APEC talks -- especially the way China's yuan has tracked the greenback down to undermine Asia's other export-led economies.

Thailand's central bank is among many in Asia that have been selling their currencies for dollars in recent months. "All we can do is to stop excessive volatility, and we have to adapt," Mr. Abhisit said. "For China, or any other government, having a misaligned currency serves nobody. So, eventually it will be corrected."

The central bank has bought $15 billion so far this year to curb the local currency's rise, Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday, adding that the weakness of the yuan will likely require further intervention by Asia's central banks.

Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@dowjones.com and Jenny Paris at jenny.paris@dowjones.com

Govt ready to fly Thais out of Cambodia

2009-11-15T21:44:00.004+07:00

http://www.asiaone.com/

Sun, Nov 15, 2009
The Nation/Asia News Network

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

"The arrest of a Thai national will not lead to closure of the embassy [in Phnom Penh]. The Thai government will ensure security for the Cambodian Embassy in Thailand and we believe Cambodia will also take care of our embassy in that country," Suthep said.

"If bilateral relations become more violent, the government is ready to evacuate Thai citizens from Cambodia immediately," he added.

In early 2003, the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh was burnt by rioters and several Thai-owned businesses in Cambodia were attacked following a rumour that a Thai actress had claimed the Angkor Wat temple - Cambodia's prized cultural icon - belonged to Thailand. An evacuation of Thai citizens followed the riots.

Suthep said the government had provided legal assistance for a Thai engineer arrested in Cambodia last week on charges of spying.

Siwarak Chothipong, 31, who works at Cambodia Air Traffic Service, is accused of supplying the Thai Embassy with details of ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra's flight schedule, according to Cambodian police.

Thailand submitted a request to visit the detained suspect, which was being considered by Cambodia's Interior Ministry, said officials from both countries.

"We have to see him, whatever happens," said Chavanond Intarakomalyasut, secretary to Thailand's foreign minister. "Thailand categorically denies all of the spy allegations."

There was no reply from the Cambodian authorities yesterday, he said, adding that it was probably because it was a holiday.

Suthep told journalists that flight information on Thaksin's journey to Cambodia was not a secret, as the Aviation Department and Aeronautical Radio of Thailand had been asked to allow his chartered jet to fly over Thai airspace. After learning that the plane had Thaksin on board, the government refused to allow it permission to pass through Thai airspace as he has been convicted and was also facing charges of threatening national security, Suthep said.

The deputy prime minister said Thailand would use this evidence to defend Siwarak, but the government would not intervene in Cambodia's judicial system. Initially, Samart Corp - Siwarak's employer - sent a lawyer to assist him.

In Singapore, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said yesterday that the ongoing diplomatic spat between Thailand and Cambodia would not affect cooperation among Asean members, emphasising that the problem must be solved by the two countries.

Abhisit, who is attending the 17th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting, told journalists that Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan had advised that Thailand and Cambodia should resolve the tension before the Asean leaders meet US President Barack Obama today.

He affirmed that Thailand, currently the Asean chair, would not raise the issue at the meeting.

Detained engineer in Cambodia's fine

2009-11-15T21:44:00.003+07:00

Published: 15/11/2009

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

The Thai engineer who has been arrested in Cambodia on spy charges is safe, Thai charge d'affaires to Phnom Penh, Chalothon Phaowibun, said on Sunday.

The Cambodian government has accused Mr Siwarak Chothipong, a 31-year-old engineer working for the Cambodian Air Traffic Services, of stealing the flight information of deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra and Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen.

"Mr Siwarak is being detained in a prison in Cambodia and he is safe. I have reported the details to the Foreign Ministry and the situation in Cambodia is still normal," Mr Chalothon said.

Meanwhile, army spokesman Sitthichai Makkunchorn said no officer from the Armed Forces Security Centre under the name Manit was arrested in Cambodia.

He said the centre had not dispatched its officials to spy the neighbouring country, since the situation was fragile.

He believed this report was released to create a psychological war.

"The ties between the Thai and Cambodian armed forces are stable, especially along the Thai-Cambodian border," the spokesman added.

BANGKOK, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The People's Alliance for Democracy's (PAD) protest against ousted former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra and Cambodian P

2009-11-15T21:44:00.001+07:00

http://www.chinaview.cn/
2009-11-15

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

BANGKOK, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The People's Alliance for Democracy's (PAD) protest against ousted former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen kicked off on Sunday in Thailand's capital Bangkok.

By 05:00 p.m. local time, around 10,000 PAD protesters or the yellow-shirted people were rallying at Sanam Luang in the center of capital Bangkok after they officially started their protest from 04:00 p.m. local time.

The PAD rally, which was participated by the supporters from both Bangkok and many provinces across the country, was occurring after Thailand and Cambodia have downgraded their diplomatic relations due to conflict over an appointment of Thaksin as an economic advisor to Cambodia's government and Hun Sen on Nov. 4.

A day after the appointment of Thaksin, the Cambodian government announced recall of its ambassador to Thailand in a move to respond to the Thai government's recall of its ambassador to Cambodia.

About 1,500 police staff were deployed to ensure law and order around the rally site as it is expected that the number of the PAD protesters will rise on Sunday's night.

The PAD core leaders earlier announced that the PAD demonstrators will disperse peacefully at about 23:00 p.m. local time.

Thaksin was ousted by the military coup in September 2006, in accusation of corruption, and has been kept in exile since then.

He returned to Thailand in February 2008 to face corruption charges, but he later fled into exile again and was convicted in absentia.

Editor: Wang Guanqun

PM wants Cambodia to revise stance

2009-11-15T20:50:00.000+07:00

* Published: 15/11/2009 at 11:29 AM
* Online news: Breakingnews

The Thai-Cambodian dispute will end if Cambodia revises its position towards the Thai government, according to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

"If the Cambodian government adjusts its stance, the problems between the two countries will be resolved," Mr Abhisit said in his weekly broadcast on Sunday while attending the Apec summit in Singapore.

"Thailand, as the Asean chair, will not let the Thai-Cambodian issues affect other trading partners and I would like Thai people to be patient and show their sincerity by being good neighbours while protecting their national interest."

He insisted his government did not start the problem, as ties between the two countries were smooth before the Cambodian government appointed ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as its advisor and refused to extradite him.

The government had used diplomatic measures to counter Cambodia, but it did not want the problems to exacerbate, he said.

The revision to revoke the maritime agreement with Cambodia was constitutional and it had to pass the parliament's approval, he said. The Foreign Ministry had been assigned to look into all the related laws.

On domestic affairs, he said the government had three main tasks: to reform the rail operation, to resolve the Map Ta Phut impasse and to eradicate narcotics nationwide.

He said the government will urgently solve the dispute between the State Railway of Thailand's management and labour union, while ensuring the safety of train passengers.

The economic ministers on Wednesday approved a budget of 100 billion baht to reform the rail operation by improving its services, products and personnel.

"The government wants the trains to run at a speed of 100 to 120 kilometres per hour. A dual gauge system will be used and rail services will expand to neighbouring countries. The management system will be enhanced and divided to support new projects in the future."

Mr Abhisit said a four-party committee, chaired by former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, had been form to seek short- and long-term solutions for Map Ta Phut, after the Administrative Court passed a ruling to temporarily suspend 76 industrial projects at Thailand's largest industrial estate in Rayong.

"The problems will be divided into 16 projects and the tasks must be achieved within 60 days. They are expected to start next week," he said.

The premier said the measures to suppress drug trafficking along the border areas will be more stringent, and officials will work more closely with communities to prevent illegal drugs from spreading.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/

Royalists protest in Thai capital against fugitive prime minister

2009-11-15T18:47:00.000+07:00

Bangkok - A pro-royalist group Sunday protested in the Thai capital against the "ugly" Cambodian visit of fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

About 20,000 demonstrators were expected in central Bangkok where speakers denounced Thaksin for his lack of patriotism in allying himself with a foreign government "for personal gain."

Thaksin left Cambodia Saturday after a five-day visit at the invitation of Prime Mnister Hun Sen, who hired him as an advisor and called him an "eternal friend" who was wrongly ousted in a bloodless 2006 coup.

Thaksin's activities in Cambodia, including meeting scores of his Thai supporters, seemed designed to undercut Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva during the Asia-Pacific leaders conference in Singapore, Thai analysts said.

Sondhi Limtongkul, a leader of the royalist group, said it was important to remind everyone that Thaksin is a dangerous man.

"He is a publicist not a statesman. Everything he does is insincere and for his own ambition," he told German Press Agency dpa.

"It is quite incredible that Thaksin should allow his country to be insulted like this," he added.

The protest Sunday was also designed to emphasize Thaksin's lack of respect for King Bhumibol Adulyadej, said Somsak Kosaisuk, another nationalist leaders. Thaksin allegedly insulted the monarchy in a recent interview with the London Times, his critics said.

The status of the monarchy is particularly sensitive because 81-year-old King Bhumibol has been ill in hospital for the past two months.

Lawyers for Thaksin threatened defamation suits Saturday against anyone in Thailand who asserts that he is against the monarchy.

Thailand withdrew its ambassador when Cambodia refused to extradite Thaksin, who is fleeing from a two-year prison sentence for a conviction on charges of abusing power as prime minister. Cambodia also withdrew its ambassador and later accused a Thai national of spying. (dpa)

http://www.topnews.in/

Thaksin opponents to rally over Cambodia trip

2009-11-15T15:48:00.001+07:00

Thousands of members of Thailand's royalist "Yellow Shirt" protest movement are set to rally in Bangkok on Sunday

By Thanaporn Promyamyai (AFP) BANGKOK — Thousands of members of Thailand's "Yellow Shirt" protest group were set to rally in Bangkok Sunday against a visit to Cambodia by their arch-foe, fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

The royalist movement said it was also gathering to express outrage at comments that billionaire Thaksin, who was ousted by the army in 2006, made in a newspaper interview about Thailand's widely revered king.

The yellow-clad People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) blockaded Bangkok's airports almost one year ago to force Thaksin's allies out of government, and also staged protests against him in the months before the coup.

Senior PAD leader Somsak Kosaisuk said the latest protest was against neighbouring Cambodia's appointment of Thaksin as an economic adviser, and Phnom Penh's refusal to extradite him when he visited the country this week.

Thaksin left Cambodia on Saturday for Dubai, where he has spent most of the time since fleeing Thailand in August 2008 to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption. Thailand has also frozen 2.2 billion dollars of his assets.

"Our duty is to protect and preserve the country's honour and dignity and the monarchy. Cambodia violated the extradition treaty and allowed a convicted person to be its advisor," Somsak told AFP.

"This action harms our country's prestige. We will denounce both convicted Thaksin and (Cambodian Prime Minister) Hun Sen at the protest," he said.

Police estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 people would join the rally, which starts at 4:00 pm (0900 GMT) at the Sanam Luang parade ground in downtown Bangkok.

Deputy national police spokesman Piya Utayo said around 1,500 police officers would be deployed in the capital for the rally.

The strongly nationalist Yellow Shirts are also up in arms over comments made by Thaksin to British newspaper The Times, in which he called for reform of institutions around the monarchy.

The issue is sensitive because 81-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej -- a major force for stability in the politically divided nation -- has been in hospital for the past two months.

Thaksin's four-day visit to Cambodia sparked a diplomatic crisis between Bangkok and Phnom Penh, with relations already tense after a series of deadly clashes in the past year over a disputed temple on their border.

The neighbours recalled their respective ambassadors and expelled the first secretaries of each other's embassies. Cambodian police have also charged a Thai man with spying for the Thai embassy.

The coalition government of Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva -- which took power soon after the Yellow Shirt airport blockade -- has been rattled by the prospect of Thaksin using Cambodia as a base for a political comeback.

Thaksin, a telecommunications mogul, remains hugely influential in Thailand's political scene, which remains bitterly split between largely anti-Thaksin urbanites and his die-hard backers among the rural poor.

His so-called "Red Shirt" supporters have themselves staged several massive protests over the past year, including the disruption of a summit of Asian leaders and subsequent riots in April.

But analysts said that by siding with Cambodia he could lose public support.

"To identify yourself with Hun Sen is a terrible political mistake," said Bangkok-based political analyst Chris Baker, who has written a biography of Thaksin.

"I think Thaksin has considerably weakened his own position. He's in a desperate state to try to negotiate over his money and he's overplayed his hand very badly indeed."

In September, Yellow Shirts calling for the Thai government to defend the country's sovereignty clashed with police and Thai villagers during a protest close to the Preah Vihear temple, leaving dozens of people injured.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
http://www.google.com/hostednews

Cambodian gov't guarantees safety for all Thais, no sign against Thais: official

2009-11-15T15:47:00.001+07:00

www.chinaview.cn 2009-11-14 23:54:33

PHNOM PENH, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will guarantee safety and security for Thais including diplomats, business people and travelers in the country, government official said on Saturday.

"The Cambodian government will ensure the safety and security for all Thais like diplomats, business people, travelers and other foreigners staying in Cambodia," Koy Kuong, spokesman and undersecretary of state of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation told Xinhua.

"Thais should not be afraid of staying in Cambodia, the Royal Government will ensure security for them," he said.

"We do not see any sign to protest against Thais or to run riot at Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh," Koy Kuong said, adding that no sign of riots against Thais at all. Cambodian government has responsibility for all Thais as Thai government does for our people and diplomats in their country, he stressed.

It is a response to some Thais here who expressed their concern over the tit-for-tat moves taken by Cambodian and Thailand governments in recent days.

Relations between the two neighboring countries were further strained recently after Cambodia named ousted former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra its economic adviser on Nov. 4. Thailand recalled its ambassador on Nov. 5, and Cambodia followed suit.

Those Thais worried that the rows between the two countries will result into any riots against Thais in Cambodia as it was in 2003, in which a part of Thai embassy and some property of Thai companies were under fire.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

Lucy Liu film highlights child trafficking

2009-11-15T15:46:00.000+07:00

Published: Friday | November 13, 2009

CAIRO (AP):

Actress
Lucy Liu, who has produced a film about children sold into the sex trade in Cambodia, says the fight against human trafficking will be long.

Liu praised several projects funded by the United Nations (UN) children's agency in Egypt, where she was promoting the film Red Light at the Cairo International Film Festival.

The actress co-produced and narrated the movie, which follows the stories of a number of girls over the course of four years as they are kidnapped and sold to brothels in Cambodia.

conservative societies

Liu said on Wednesday it "is really going to take a really long time" to fight human trafficking, labelled the third most profitable business in the world after weapons and drugs trading.

That assessment rings true in the Middle East, where stigma in conservative societies and a lack of data have frustrated activists' efforts. Highlighting those challenges, organisers of several UNICEF-funded programmes Liu visited in Egypt did not even want to make details of their efforts public out of fear doing so would stir up controversy and pressure from conservatives.

"The first step is there are a couple of projects that exist and that is something wonderful," Liu said.

In Egypt, the sex trade is often hidden under the guise of temporary marriages sanctioned by some religious figures and local authorities. Under these marriages, hundreds of underage girls in rural Egypt are essentially sold by their families for large sums to wealthy visitors from Gulf nations.

Egypt recently passed its first child protection law, which criminalised trafficking and raised the age of marriage to 18.

The country's first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, launched a global initiative to fight human trafficking in 2006, signalling that there is a political will to confront an issue affecting nearly 2.4 million people around the world, according to 2007 figures from the UN International Labour Organisation.

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/

At 39, Loung Ung enters a new phase of writing and storytelling

2009-11-15T15:45:00.002+07:00

Loung Ung has broken bread with Queen Noor of Jordan, lunched with Paul McCartney and opened her own restaurant, Bar Cento, in Ohio City.

At 39, she is a world away from the childhood starvation that distended belly and drove her to swallow rotten leaves. Born into an upper-middle-class family, Ung was 10 when she fled Cambodia with an older brother. Eventually, they learned that more than 20 relatives, including both their parents, had been murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

Those privations are contained in her 2000 memoir, "First They Killed My Father," a story that Ung tells in a child's voice. It is now widely taught and has been translated into 10 languages.

Critics have praised her as the Anne Frank of Pol Pot's killing fields.

Nevertheless, Ung said she was surprised to be asked to speak Sunday at the Cleveland Public Library. The memoirist and activist described the invitation as an unanticipated honor.

For local authors, it signals an arrival of sorts. Ung, who lives in Shaker Heights, will deliver her speech in English, her fourth language, after Khmer, Chinese and French. In advance of the Writers & Readers talk, she agreed to answer a few questions.

In your peripatetic anti-land mine work, you've become a professional lecturer. How do you find the proper distance for telling your own story?

My work has evolved from personal writing, writing that was therapeutic, a way to take away the power of those soldiers, who were monsters and gods of mythical proportion.

It changed next to activist writing, interviews with those at the rehabilitation centers [in Cambodia], writing that can actually do something. Now I write because I really enjoy it. I'm in a third phase that combines the internal and external. Honestly, I love it.

Memoir as a genre has taken a beating since the James Frey fiasco. Where do you see it now?

I think it is swinging back. I'm one who believes there are always going to be a few bad apples. And I've read many novels that are inauthentic.

Memoir is a collection of memories -- different from biography or autobiography. For me, it started as a beautiful form. People tell me all the time that my books read like novels.

One hundred and 20 million people have survived some kind of war. And the stories of all the Cambodians who survived seem like fiction to Americans. I get mail every day from readers, and they often say it took them years to open my book.

You know with something called "First They Killed my Father" that you're not in for a funny, rock 'n' roll ride.

Your second book, "Lucky Child," focuses on the parallel life of your older sister, Chou, who stayed in Cambodia. How is she now?

She's fabulous. She's 41 and a grandmother for the second time. She's really happy.

When I last saw her, I was watching her brush her hair. Most Cambodian girls do have long hair, and the bonding thing between sisters and cousins is you brush each other's hair.

She asks me, "Who brushes your hair?" and I have to say, "I do." It is so good for me to spend time around her. I've been back to Cambodia many, many times.

You've suggested, intriguingly, that your family may have picked you, the sixth of seven children, to escape with your brother because you were combative, and therefore more likely to survive but harder to marry off in Cambodia.

In every culture, being a tomboy is not highly prized. But my father praised me; he saw it as a sort of cleverness. My mother didn't like it. She'd always been two-dimensional to me -- my mother, my father's wife. [Ung last saw her mother alive when she was 8.]

But I'm writing a book now about my mother, and I'm newly in love with her. I've interviewed her best friend, my uncle and my aunt. She was really funny and spunky and a woman before her time.

Author's found write balance in Cambodia

2009-11-15T15:44:00.001+07:00

A FORMER Cleethorpes resident is enjoying a new life in Cambodia as a self-published author.

Robert Webster's debut novel – Buddha's Tooth, which features characters from Cleethorpes – sold 1,700 copies inside a year and was downloaded from the Internet more than 7,500 times within three months.

The 49-year-old, who used to live in Edward Street and was schooled at Matthew Humberstone, has a second book currently in production and a third planned.

Mr Webster lived in Thailand for many years and moved to Sihanoukville, in south-east Cambodia, about three years ago.

He said: "I was bored a few years ago and decided to try to write a novel.
Click here for more

"I thought it would be hard but it was not only easy but a lot of fun."

Read more about Mr Webster's life in Cambodia in today's Grimsby Telegraph.

You can download Buddha's Tooth by clicking the link on this page.

PM Abhisit: Thai-Cambodian diplomatic standoff must be resolved by both parties

2009-11-15T15:43:00.000+07:00

SINGAPORE, Nov 14 (TNA) -- Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Saturday that the ongoing diplomatic spat between Thailand and its neighbour Cambodia will not affect cooperation among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), emphasising that the problem must be solved by the two countries.

Mr Abhisit, now at the three-day 17th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Singapore, told journalists that ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan advised that Thailand and Cambodian should resolve their tensions before ASEAN leaders meet US President Barack Obama on Sunday. He affirmed that Thailand, currently chairman and a member of ASEAN, will not raised the issue at the meeting.

Thailand and Cambodia, along with Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, are ASEAN members.

Mr Abhisit said he would confer with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on the sidelines of US-ASEAN summit Sunday.

Diplomatic ties between the Cambodia and Thailand have worsened after their ambassadors were recalled, first secretaries expelled and the Cambodian government arrested a Thai man allegedly spying on fugitive, ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, but Thailand has said that the accusation was groundless against the Thai citizen.

Cambodia Deputy National Police Chief Lt-Gen Sok Phal was quoted by the Associated Press as saying 31-year-old Siwarak Chothipong gave Mr Thaksin’s flight schedule to the first secretary at the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh.

Mr Abhisit said Thai government officials would try to meet detained Mr. Siwarak and ask him what charges have been leveled.

The Thai prime minister said he would be surprised if the Cambodian government refuses Thai officials an opportunity to meet Mr Siwarak, an engineer at Cambodia Air Traffic Services (CATS).

He added that the flight information was not considered as secret. (TNA)

Political News : Last Update : 14:51:25 14 November 2009 (GMT+7:00)

Ousted Thai PM rallies supporters to Cambodia

2009-11-15T15:41:00.002+07:00

Thailand's former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra stands in front of Angkor Wat, the country's most popular tourist destination, during his private tour to the north province of Siem Reap, about 320 kilometers (199 miles) from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009. Ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin has accused his detractors of false patriotism in a speech Thursday, following the uproar over his appointment as an economic adviser to the Cambodian government. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

By SOPHENG CHEANG (AP) – PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Thailand said Friday it would not be provoked into violence in its diplomatic tussle with Cambodia over fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, even as the ousted leader taunted the Bangkok government by meeting with political supporters in the neighboring country.

Thaksin's visit to Thailand's doorstep has highlighted his ability to command headlines in his homeland and destabilize its politics, even three years after he lost power and fled into exile.

Dozens of opposition politicians and other Thaksin supporters drove across the border into Cambodia to meet with the ousted leader, irritating Thailand's government, which considers him a convicted criminal and a threat to its power.

Thaksin's warm welcome in Cambodia has strained already uneasy bilateral relations.

On Thursday, Cambodia expelled a senior Thai diplomat and arrested a Thai employee of Cambodia Air Traffic Services — which manages flights in the country — for allegedly stealing Thaksin's flight schedule and giving it to the diplomat.

Thaksin, a former telecommunications billionaire, was ousted by a 2006 military coup. He fled Thailand last year to avoid imprisonment on a corruption charge and now spends most of his time in Dubai.

Thaksin "is using a helping hand from a neighboring country as a tool to overthrow the monarchy and the Thai government," Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said Friday in Bangkok.

Thaksin's political battle with the Thai government — which came to power this year after months of protests aimed at removing the former leader's allies from power — has bitterly divided his country.

He accuses Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of having taken control by undemocratic means. Thaksin remains hugely popular among the rural poor, who have staged frequent rallies calling for his return to power, but he is reviled by many in the educated urban elite.

Abhisit said Friday that Cambodia's expulsion of the Thai diplomat was intended to provoke a "violent response" from his government, but that he would respond peacefully.

"The Thai government didn't fall for their trick," he told reporters in Bangkok.

Thaksin was named an adviser to Cambodia's government on economic affairs last week, causing Thailand to recall its ambassador, with Cambodia following suit. On Wednesday, Cambodia rejected a Thai request for Thaksin's arrest, saying he was being prosecuted for political reasons.

Nationalist passions have been running high on both side of the border since Thailand opposed Cambodia's bid to have an ancient temple designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Preah Vihear temple was awarded to Cambodia by the World Court in 1962, but some land around it remains in dispute.

Both countries deployed troops to the border over the dispute, leading to skirmishes that left at least seven soldiers dead.

Cambodia on Friday withdrew 1,000 special forces troops from the disputed border area, though others remained.

"We are withdrawing our forces because we want Thailand to understand that Cambodia wants the border of the two countries to stay peaceful and for the area to be developed for the sake of both countries," deputy commander in chief Lt. Gen. Chea Tara said.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Cambodia Raises Stakes, as Ties with Thailand Plummet

2009-11-15T15:40:00.000+07:00

By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR / IPS WRITER

BANGKOK — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is known for his brash and earthy vocabulary even when, as he did in early April, he talks about himself. “I am neither a gangster nor a gentleman, but a real man,” the politician who has led his country for 25 years said in a fit of rage.

The target of his ire at the time was Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, following comments the latter had made during a parliamentary debate in the Thai capital.

Hun Sen criticized Kasit for calling him a “gangster” during that debate, but Kasit shot back, saying his description of Hun Sen in Thai had got lost in translation. The actual words were “Nak Leng,” Kasit had explained, which in Thai means “a person who is lion-hearted, a courageous and magnanimous gentleman.”

It was Kasit’s second run-in with the Cambodian leader in under a year. In late 2008, when the former veteran Thai diplomat was in the political wilderness as a speaker for a conservative, right-wing protest movement, he had called Hun Sen a “thug” during a speech at a public rally.

If the new Thai government, formed under a cloud of controversy last December, was hoping that Hun Sen would move on from such moments, then the current war of words between the two countries suggests otherwise.

“The Thais seem to have forgotten that Hun Sen has a very good memory. He does not forget easily,” a Southeast Asian diplomat from a regional capital told IPS on the condition of anonymity. “He unearths details and history he knows well to go after those who criticize him.”

But the current war of words between Cambodia and Thailand has degenerated into personal insults and a trading of charges about interfering into each country’s judicial and domestic affairs.

Hun Sen raised the stakes this week in an increasingly volatile relationship between the two Southeast Asian kingdoms by targeting his Thai counterpart, Abhisit Vejjajiva, in a verbal barrage.

“I would not be surprised if there was a link here with comments made by political allies of Abhisit,” the diplomat added. “It is Hun Sen getting back.”

Besides words, Phnom Penh also rejected a request by Bangkok on Wednesday for the extradition of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who arrived in Cambodia on Tuesday to begin his new role as Hun Sen’s economic advisor.

Thaksin, whose popular elected government was turfed out of power in a 2006 military coup, has been living in exile to avoid a two-year jail term after a Thai court found him guilty in a conflict-of-interest case.

To goad the Abhisit administration, Hun Sen welcomed Thaksin with open arms and handshakes, and offered his own villa in Phnom Penh for the fugitive former Thai premier to stay in.

Bangkok has not fallen for Phnom Penh’s bait, for now. Even though it bristles at such hospitality and the verbal salvos, the Thai government is trying to stay above the fray, offering statements that appear calm and diplomatic.

“The government is stressing that the problem between both countries is still a bilateral issue,” Thani Thongphakdi, the Thai Foreign Ministry’s deputy spokesman, told IPS. “We want to see a positive sign from Cambodia that gives precedence to bilateral ties over personal relationships.”

Yet at the same time, the Thai government is taking a tougher line towards the range of ties it maintains with its eastern neighbor. “We are reviewing existing agreements, existing cooperation and future cooperation between the two countries,” Thani revealed. “Everything is on the table.”

Bangkok’s unilateral actions against Cambodia has already seen the Thai ambassador in Phnom Penh withdrawn and Thailand revoking a memorandum of understanding between the two countries to explore oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Thailand.

It followed Hun Sen’s tongue-lashing that targeted Abhisit. “People should know that when I was starting my political career, [Abhisit] was still a child running around, playing,” Hun Sen told Cambodian journalists on Sunday.

“If Abhisit is so sure of himself, then he should call an election. What are you afraid of? Is it that you are afraid you will not be the prime minister?” Hun Sen continued, driving home his status as Southeast Asia’s longest-standing premier, as opposed to Abhisit, who has been in office for less than a year.

“I am prime minister of Cambodia who has received two-thirds of the vote in the Cambodian parliament. How many votes does Abhisit have? You have chosen somebody else’s chair to seat yourself in,” goaded Hun Sen, referring to the question of legitimacy that has dogged the Abhisit government. “You claim other people’s property as your own.

How can we respect that?”

The 57-year-old Hun Sen has been Cambodia’s premier for 25 years, a period during which he has not shied from revealing his authoritarian streak, using a mix of violence, intrigue and verbal attacks to cling to power. His journey to power began on the economic and social fringes of the poorer Cambodia, including a short stint when still a teenager as a soldier for the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the later 1970s.

The 45-year-old Abhisit hails from the opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum, being born into wealth, enjoying a British education and feeling at home among Thailand’s patricians. He formed a coalition government after a controversial court ruling last December saw the collapse of the elected government. Through a combination of military influence and cash enticements to broker a deal, his Democrat-led government came to power by parliamentary vote rather than by going to the polls in a general election.

Hun Sen’s penchant for dipping into his country’s history to take on the Abhisit administration is also threatening to expose a darker side of Thailand’s relationship with its poorer and weaker eastern neighbor.

To counter Bangkok’s current charges that Phnom Penh is interfering in Thailand’s internal politics and judicial system by rolling out the welcome mat for Thaksin, Hun Sen retorts by reminding the Thais about the hospitality they offered to Khmer Rouge leaders like Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, now about to face justice in a United Nations war crimes tribunal.

“The Thai judiciary has not much value to be respected,” Hun Sen said during his weekend encounter with Cambodian journalists. “Khmer Rouge leaders Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were living in Thailand for years. This was a violation of international law that Thailand had signed.”

“Hun Sen is absolutely correct,” said Tom Fawthrop, co-author of “Getting away with Genocide? Elusive Justice and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.” “In fact, after 1979, when the Khmer Rouge were driven out of Cambodia by Vietnam, [Khmer Rouge leader] Pol Pot and other leaders all fled to Thailand.”

“The Khmer Rouge’s fight to regain power was aided by logistics and weapons that flowed through Thailand, even tanks,” Fawthrop, a regional expert who spends time in Phnom Penh, told IPS. “The Thais violated the international law after the 1991 Paris peace accord by letting the Khmer Rouge operate along its border, which was not the case along the Vietnamese and Laotian borders.”

Hun Sen’s current anti-Abhisit rhetoric may not be the isolated views of Cambodia’s leader but may find resonance among its people, added Fawthrop. “The Thai-Cambodian relationship has to be looked at in a historical context. The Cambodians feel a huge sense of grievance.”

http://www.irrawaddy.org/

FDA to ban caffeine in alcoholic beverages

2009-11-15T14:47:00.002+07:00

Alcoholic drinks
with a shot of caffeine have become more and more popular on college campuses and also among underage teen drinkers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet okayed caffeine for use in alcoholic drinks nor have they found it to be dangerous.

Some of the businesses targeted are Constellation Brands Inc (STZ.N), which makes the drink Wide Eye, and the North American unit of Diageo plc (DGE.L) (DEO.N), which makes Smirnoff Raw Tea
.

The companies have been given 30 days to show that their drinks are not dangerous to their customers, or the FDA will be obligated to take additional legal action. The beverages have been marketed using social media sites like Twitter, says The New York Times. These drinks have already been approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade bureau and will provide the beverage companies with a defense against the allegations.

“Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a substance added intentionally to food (such as caffeine in alcoholic beverages) is deemed “unsafe” and is unlawful unless its particular use has been approved by FDA regulation, the substance is subject to a prior sanction, or the substance is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS),” says the alert.

College drinkers are the primary demographic for marketing of highly caffeinated drinks like Red Bull. Caffeine has not been approved for use at any level in alcoholic beverages, the FDA noted. Caffeine has been approved for use in soft drinks in concentrations of no greater than 200 parts per million. The market for caffeinated alcoholic drinks is about 1 percent of the total beer industry

The FDA also noted that in the past year, Anheuser-Busch and Miller agreed to stop selling their popular caffeinated alcoholic beverages — Tilt, Bud Extra, and Sparks — and agreed not to produce any caffeinated alcoholic beverages in the future.

Helicopter Crash Leaves Three Dead Near Reno

2009-11-15T14:46:00.002+07:00

Reno, NV (AHN) – A medical helicopter crashed early Saturday morning near the California-Nevada border, leaving three dead.

After dropping off a patient in Reno, the Mountain Lifeflight helicopter 3 was on its way back to Susanville when the crash occurred about 2 a.m., the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

The Federal Aviation Administration reported that the crash and the resulting fire destroyed the helicopter, an Aerospatiale AS350. At the time of the accident, the pilot was not in communication with air traffic controllers.

In a statement, Mountain Lifeflight confirmed that the crewmembers aboard had died.

Nasa's LCROSS mission proves once and for all there is water on the Moon

2009-11-15T14:43:00.001+07:00

A new chapter in space exploration has been opened up after Nasa confirmed that their mission to bomb the Moon had found "significant quantities" of frozen water.

Scientists said the "exciting" findings had gone "beyond expectations" as fully formed ice was found in a crater on the planet.

They said that the ice – thought to be in granules mixed with grains of Moon dust – heralded a major leap forward in space exploration and boosted hopes of a permanent lunar base.

The water was found in one mile high plume of debris that was kicked up by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) last month when it crashed into the Cabeus crater near the Moon's south pole.

"We are ecstatic," said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist and principal investigator for the £49 million space mission.

"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount."

He said in a "eureka moment" analysis of the plume of debris sprayed up by a 30 ft crater showed the equivalent of "a dozen two-gallon buckets" of water was thrown up by the impact.

"This is a great day for science and exploration," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator of LCROSS. "The remarkable results have gone beyond our expectations. It is incredibly exciting."

The identification of water-ice in the impact plume is important for purely scientific reasons, but also because a supply of water on the Moon would be a vital resource for future human exploration.

The findings, which completely contradict previous beliefs that the Moon was a dry arid place, justify the controversial mission.

It also reignites mankind's dreams of colonising Earth's only satellite.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbour and, by extension, the Solar System," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at Nasa's headquarters in Washington DC.

The mission took place on 9th October and was watched by millions across the globe live on the internet.

One rocket slammed into the Cabeus crater, near the lunar southern pole, at around 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometres) per hour.

The impact sent a plume of material billowing up from the bottom of the crater, which has not seen sunlight for billions of years.

The rocket was followed four minutes later by a spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the impact. At the time the crash seemed to be disappointing as the "plume of debris" was not visible to Earth based satellites.

However analysis of the huge amount of data the spacecraft collected and from satellite's spectrometers provided definitive evidence about the presence of water.

A spectrometer examines light reflected from a substance and is able to identify their composition.

Over the last decade, scientists have found some hints of underground ice on the moon's poles, mainly in the form of compounds of hydrogen but this is the best evidence yet.

The discovery is expected to have major implications for the future of lunar exploration, and a ready supply of water could help set up lunar bases or launch missions to Mars.

Mr Colaprete said that it should be possible to purify the water for drinking even though it appeared to mixed with poisonous methanol.

Only 12 men, all Americans, have ever walked on the Moon, and the last to set foot there were in 1972, at the end of the Apollo missions.

But Nasa's ambitious plans to put US astronauts back on the moon by 2020 to establish manned lunar bases for further exploration to Mars under the Constellation project are increasingly in doubt.

Nasa's budget is currently too small to pay for Constellation's Orion capsule, a more advanced and spacious version of the Apollo lunar module, as well as the Ares I and Ares V launchers needed to put the craft in orbit.

A key review panel appointed by President Barack Obama said existing budgets are not large enough to fund a return mission before 2020.

As well as a possible site for a base, the permanently shadowed regions could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data. In addition, water, and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.

Apple outflanks Psystar in crushing legal victory

2009-11-15T14:41:00.001+07:00

Apple has finally managed to outflank Psystar after fighting a bloody and protracted legal battle against the infamous Mac clone manufacturer.

Victory came in the form of a ruling by US (Northern California) District Judge William Alsup, who determined that Psystar had infringed Apple's "exclusive right" to create derivative works of Mac OS X by replacing original files with unauthorized software.

alt

According to Alsup, Psystar executed three primary unlawful modifications:

* Replacing the Mac OS X bootloader with an alternative to run unauthorized copies of Mac OS X to run on Psystar's computers.
* Disabling and removing Apple kernel extension files.
* Adding non-Apple kernel extensions.

"Psystar contends that this did not amount to creating a derivative work, because Apple's source code, object code, or kernel extensions were not modified. This argument is unavailing. Psystar admittedly replaced entire files within the software while copying other portions," opined Alsup.   

Apple OS X

"This resulted in a substantial variation from the underlying copyrighted work. In fact, if the bootloader and kernel extensions added by Psystar were removed, then the operating system would not work on Psystar's computers. The inclusion of the copyrighted Mac OS X with the above-described additions and modifications makes Psystar's product an infringing, derivative work."

Unsurprisingly, Alsup's ruling against Psystar was termed a "total massacre" by Internet legal site Groklaw.

"Psystar just got what's coming to them in the California case. It's a total massacre. Psystar's first-sale defense went down in flames. Apple's motion for summary judgment on copyright infringement and DMCA violation is granted. Apple prevailed also on its motion to seal, [while] Psystar's motion for summary judgment on trademark infringement and trade dress is denied.

"So that means damages ahead for Psystar on the copyright issues just decided on summary judgment, at a minimum. In short, Psystar is toast, [their] only hope now is [the] Florida [legal system] and frankly I wouldn't bet the house on that one. The court's message is clear: EULAs mean what they say; if you don't want to abide by its license, leave Apple's stuff alone."

Painted ladies fly to ISS

2009-11-15T14:40:00.002+07:00

In a project known as Butterflies in Space, the Atlantis space shuttle will next week carry a butterfly habitat containing monarch and painted lady adults and larvae to the International Space Station.

Painted ladies fly to International Space StationThe idea is that thousands of schoolkids across the US will be able to study the effects of space travel on the little astronauts, comparing them with examples reared in their own classroms. The children will be able to monitor their progress via still and video images.

"One of the most exciting things about this project is that we can use the International Space Station to bring spaceflight experiments into classrooms around the country," said BioServe Director Louis Stodieck, principal investigator on the project. "Our continuing goal is to inspire K-12 students around the country in science, technology, engineering and math."

The butterfly payload has been designed and built by BioServe Space Technologies in CU-Boulder's aerospace engineering department and will carry two butterfly habitats containing monarch and painted lady butterfly larvae and enough nectar and other food to support them as they develop.

Record Highs Far Outpace Record Lows Across U.S.

2009-11-15T14:38:00.002+07:00

The ratio of record daily highs to lows from 1950-2009 at 1,800 U.S. weather stations. Courtesy of NCAR

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.

Results of the research, by authors at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO, Climate Central, The Weather Channel, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have been accepted for publication in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States," says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, the lead author. "The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting."

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR's sponsor, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Climate Central.

"This intriguing study provides new evidence of climate change," says Steve Nelson, NSF program director for NCAR. "And it's change that's affecting our daily lives."

If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even. Instead, for the period from January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009, the continental United States set 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows, as the country experienced unusually mild winter weather and intense summer heat waves. A record daily high means that temperatures were warmer on a given day than on that same date throughout a weather station's history.

The authors used a quality control process to ensure the reliability of data from thousands of weather stations across the country, while looking at data over the past six decades to capture longer-term trends. This decade's warming was more pronounced in the western United States, where the ratio was more than two to one, than in the eastern United States, where the ratio was about one-and-a-half to one. The study also found that the two-to-one ratio across the country as a whole could be attributed more to a comparatively small number of record lows than to a large number of record highs.

This indicates that much of the nation's warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows. This finding is consistent with years of climate model research showing that higher overnight lows should be expected with climate change.

In addition to surveying actual temperatures in recent decades, Meehl and his co-authors turned to a sophisticated computer model of global climate to determine how record high and low temperatures are likely to change during the course of this century. The modeling results indicate that, if nations continue to increase their emissions of greenhouse gases in a "business as usual" scenario, the U.S. ratio of daily record high to record low temperatures would increase to about 20-to-1 by mid-century and 50-to-1 by 2100. The mid-century ratio could be much higher if emissions rose at an even greater pace, or it could be about 8-to-1 if emissions were reduced significantly, the model showed.

The authors caution that such predictions are, by their nature, inexact. Climate models are not designed to capture record daily highs and lows with precision, and it remains impossible to know future human actions that will determine the level of future greenhouse gas emissions.

The model used for the study, the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, correctly captured the trend toward warmer average temperatures and the greater warming in the West, but overstated the ratio of record highs to record lows in recent years. However, the model results are important because they show that, in all likely scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, record daily highs should increasingly outpace record lows over time.

"If the climate weren't changing, you would expect the number of temperature records to diminish significantly over time," says Claudia Tebaldi, a statistician with Climate Central who is one of the paper's co-authors. "As you measure the high and low daily temperatures each year, it normally becomes more difficult to break a record after a number of years. But, as the average temperatures continue to rise this century, we will keep setting more record highs."

The study team focused on weather stations that have been operating since 1950. They found that the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures slightly exceeded one to one in the 1950s, dipped below that level in the 1960s and 1970s, and has risen since the 1980s. The results reflect changes in U.S. average temperatures, which rose in the 1950s, stabilized in the 1960s, and then began a warming trend in the late 1970s.

Even in the first nine months of this year, when the United States cooled somewhat after a string of unusually warm years, the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures was more than three to two. Despite the increasing number of record highs, there will still be occasional periods of record cold, Meehl notes.

"One of the messages of this study is, you still get cold days," Meehl says. "Winter still comes. Even in a much warmer climate, we're setting record low minimum temperatures on a few days each year. But, the odds are shifting, so there's a much better chance of daily record highs instead of lows."

The study team analyzed several million daily high and low temperature readings taken over the span of six decades at about 1,800 weather stations across the country, thereby ensuring ample data for statistically significant results. The readings, collected at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, undergo a quality control process at the data center that looks for such potential problems as missing data, as well as inconsistent readings caused by changes in thermometers, station locations or other factors.

Meehl and his colleagues then used temperature simulations from the Community Climate System Model to compute daily record highs and lows under current and future atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

To Play With Giants, App Devs Risk Getting Squashed

2009-11-15T14:36:00.002+07:00

Hot-selling mobile apps have earned some independent programmers hundreds of thousands of dollars. But one of the greatest risks of developing apps for a platform controlled by a large corporation, such as Google or Apple, is that you can easily get crushed.

Take for example Mike Jacobs, a developer of software startup Hello, Chair. For nine months, his team of three has been working on an iPhone app called Appsaurus, which makes App Store recommendations based on the apps you already own. So it was very bad news for Hello, Chair when Apple in September introduced a free App Store recommendation tool called App Store Genius.

“That’s one of the scariest things: If Apple moves an inch, they crush a bunch of little developers,” Jacobs said in a phone interview.

With giants dominating Silicon Valley, start-ups and independent programmers are fitting in between the cracks by developing apps for corporations’ mobile platforms. Apple’s App Store, which launched July 2008, is the largest to date with 100,000 apps and counting. Google’s Android platform is second largest, serving roughly 14,000 apps. In the case of the App Store, a lucky bunch have struck it rich with soaring sales, while others have suffered at the mercy of the giant they’re developing for.

More often, Apple is scrutinized for its questionable approval policy. The company has rejected some developers’ apps for unclear reasons, which often puts them in financial hurt (in severe cases, a six-digit loss).

But stories like Hello, Chair’s — where the corporation inadvertently competes with its developers — are a bit rare. Jacobs said his company was striving to provide something the iPhone was missing in hopes to make the platform even better. However, Apple, too, is thinking of ways to improve its products — and with a considerably larger team of in-house programmers and billions of dollars in resources, the Cupertino, California company beat a small start-up to the idea of an App Store recommendation tool.

Hello, Chair submitted Appsaurus to Apple this week and nervously awaits Apple’s approval. The team is hoping it does not face the same outcome as Podcaster, an app Apple rejected in September 2008. The Podcaster app enabled the iPhone to download podcasts and listen to them on the fly. Apple rejected Podcaster, saying it “duplicates the functionality” of the iPod. However, the iPhone didn’t have this feature when Podcaster was submitted. Only after rejecting Podcaster did Apple introduce a podcast downloader through its iTunes app.

Alex Sokirynsky, who developed Podcaster, said he had spent four months learning the iPhone’s programming language, and he was “heartbroken” by Apple’s rejection of Podcaster.

“Apple has a very tight hold on everyone in the App Store,” Sokirynsky told Wired.com. “They could pull any app for any reason, and the developer has no say. This could ruin a new company.”

This Goliath-stomps-on-David scenario isn’t unique to Apple, either. Etienne Baratte, a software engineer, was developing an app for the Google Android platform called Jamdroid, which would provide real-time traffic information anywhere on the globe. Baratte entered Jamdroid in Google’s Android Developer Challenge, a contest inviting developers to submit app prototypes for a chance to win awards. Jamdroid received an honorable score in the competition — but Google in August 2009 announced it was working on almost the exact same traffic-analysis tool.

Baratte was dismayed: He’d been working on Jamdroid since November 2007 with a few partners. He killed his project when Google rolled out its traffic service in August.

“There’s no competition possible at all,” Baratte said in a phone interview. “I can’t say they stole my idea. They’re in their right to implement such a service, and in fact, in a way I am quite happy that they did so…. But I spent all my free time on this.”

Hello, Chair hasn’t given up on Appsaurus, however. When Apple introduced App Store Genius, Jacobs and his team proceeded to add more features to Appsaurus to make it better than Apple’s recommendation system. When making recommendations, App Store Genius only takes into account the apps currently installed on a user’s iPhone. Appsaurus, Jacobs said, will use an interactive algorithm that allows users to rate and modify suggestions in real-time. The app will also make app recommendations based on other apps people have purchased, similar to Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature.

Obama under fire on trade as Asia-Pacific leaders meet

2009-11-15T14:30:00.001+07:00

US President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong before the gala dinner for APEC leaders in Singapore. Photo: AP

US President Barack Obama has come under fire from Asia-Pacific leaders for backsliding on free trade at a regional summit devoted to driving the world economy out of crisis.

"President Obama is facing severe political constraints that run counter to free trade," Mexican President Felipe Calderon said, complaining about US foot-dragging on full implementation of the NAFTA pact for North America.

"The cruel paradox is that within a global economy, what really kills companies is inefficiency and lack of competition. Therefore protectionism is killing North American companies," he said in a speech in Singapore on Saturday.

"So I think this has to do with the fact that the US government is under strong political pressure that really is not being counteracted from the political perspective" of the Obama administration.

The US Congress has turned even more sour on free trade after the worst economic crisis since World War II.

One landmark pact with South Korea is languishing and critics say the White House has done little to revive it.

The US economy is picking up but unemployment has breached 10 per cent and economic leaders, including the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, warned in Singapore that protectionism could choke off recovery.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said controversial tariffs enacted by his government to shore up ailing industries were temporary and urged his regional colleagues to "do anything we can to refrain from protectionism in any sphere".

The warnings came as a two-day summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum began on Saturday.

Obama arrived later in Singapore to join the 20 other leaders, after a visit to Tokyo.

In a speech in the Japanese capital, Obama reaffirmed a US commitment to finally concluding the World Trade Organisation's Doha round of talks - a long-running bid to tear down barriers to global commerce.

And he said the United States was interested in an obscure trade pact that leaders say could become the nucleus for a massive trans-Pacific free-trade zone covering 2.6 billion people.

"The United States will also be engaging with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries with the goal of shaping a regional agreement that will have broad-based membership and the high standards worthy of a 21st century trade agreement," he said.

The TPP now involves Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore.

Australia, Peru and Vietnam have expressed interest in joining, and Obama's remarks were the clearest so far about Washington's plans.

"The US announcement is a significant statement of its intent to the Asia-Pacific region," Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean said.

"Importantly, it provides the critical mass essential for this initiative to go forward."

Obama meanwhile called for "balanced and sustained" growth around the world in the post-crisis phase, pressing Asian exporters including China to wean themselves off US consumers and build up their own demand.

His comments underlined a central theme of the APEC summit - that the world economy must be rebalanced so that voracious US consumerism is no longer the sole cylinder firing global growth.

Officials said the realignment was a main item of summit discussion prior to an evening dinner, when the leaders continued an APEC tradition by donning specially designed shirts reflecting the host nation's culture.

AFP

China bank regulator: US dollar's decline adding risk

2009-11-15T14:14:00.001+07:00

Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission

(AFP) – BEIJING — China's chief banking regulator warned Sunday that persistently low US interest rates and a declining dollar were seriously affecting asset prices and threatening the global economic recovery.

China Banking Regulatory Commission Chairman Liu Mingkang told a finance forum in Beijing that Washington's promise to keep interest rates low for an extended period was encouraging a dollar "carry trade" and fuelling massive speculation.

He was referring to investors who have been taking advantage of low US interest rates to borrow cheap credit there to invest in higher-yielding assets elsewhere.

These conditions "are seriously impacting global asset prices and encouraging speculation in stock and property markets," Liu said.

Liu warned the declining US dollar was threatening the global economic recovery, especially in emerging economies.

He spoke at the Beijing International Finance Forum ahead of US President Barack Obama's first visit to China, which was scheduled to start late Sunday.

-- Dow Jones Newswires contributed to this report --

Broadcast pioneer NBC prepares for cable takeover

2009-11-15T14:11:00.003+07:00

By DAVID BAUDER (AP)

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 1976 file photo, NBC's "Today" show host Tom Brokaw and newswoman Jane Pauley share a moment prior to Pauley's first appearance on the network morning news program. Eight decades after pioneering the concept of broadcasting, NBC is on the verge of a startling move that illustrates broadcast television's decline. (AP Photo/File)

NEW YORK — Eight decades after pioneering the concept of broadcasting, NBC is on the verge of a startling move that illustrates broadcast television's decline.

Cable TV operator Comcast Corp. is expected to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal, perhaps as early as next week, bringing the network of Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Tom Brokaw under the corporate control of the company that owns the Golf Channel and E! Entertainment Television.

"This is highly symbolic," said Tim Brooks, who had worked at NBC for 20 years and now writes books on television history.

Starting Sunday, Vivendi SA has an option to sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal. Majority owner General Electric Co. is expected to buy it and then sell a 51 percent stake of the entire NBC Universal unit to Comcast, which serves about a quarter of the nation's subscription TV households.

Broadcast people, the folks who remember when television was ABC, CBS, NBC and little else, used to look down upon cable.

The idea of broadcast TV was implied in the name; the networks tried to reach the broadest possible audience. For cable it's important to do something specific and do it well, and the audience doesn't need to be as large.

NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker recognizes this. Cable properties such as USA, SyFy, CNBC and The Weather Channel mean more to NBC Universal's bottom line than staggering NBC, fourth place in the ratings.

And those cable properties — more than the flagship "Peacock" network — were the draw for Comcast. By owning more content, Comcast further hedges its bets as mainly a distributor of shows in case viewers ditch their cable TV subscriptions and migrate to the Internet, mobile devices or a platform that has yet to emerge. The company could charge for the shows or sell ads wherever the viewers are.

In a sense, NBC would become a pioneer again, as it seeks to stay relevant amid intensifying audience fragmentation.

NBC was established as the nation's first radio network in 1926. Its parent company, the Radio Corporation of America, made radios and realized the best way to get people to buy the product was to make sure there were interesting things to listen to.

"Without NBC, there wouldn't be broadcasting as we know it," said Walter J. Podrazik, a consulting curator at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

NBC was the leading radio network, so powerful in those days it had two networks: NBC-Red and NBC-Blue. It was forced by the Federal Communications Commission in the early 1940s to divest itself of one network. NBC-Blue eventually became ABC. In fact, all three original broadcast networks can be traced back to NBC. One of its original owners, Westinghouse Electric Co., bought CBS in 1995.

Some of NBC's radio profits were funneled into researching the new television technology. NBC began television broadcasts in 1939 by covering the opening of the New York World's Fair.

RCA's chief David Sarnoff took to the airwaves to introduce that broadcast, and his description of the moment — "the birth of a new art bound to affect all society" — was prescient and maybe even understated. The Nielsen Co. reported that just last year, the average American watched four hours and 49 minutes of television each day.

"He was as much a cheerleader as he was an investor," Podrazik said, "and he was right."

In 1947 came the first NBC program that's still around today — Sunday morning's "Meet the Press." But 1948's "Texaco Star Theater" with Milton Berle was television's first big hit. Many people bought their first TVs, or crowded around the few ones available, to see a comic who'd mine for laughs each week by wearing a dress.

Television's early years had NBC and CBS fighting for dominance, with CBS more often than not gaining the upper hand. NBC settled for innovation, and the work of executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver is still apparent today. He introduced the concept of multiple ads appearing on shows, instead of programs that had single sponsors, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

Weaver expanded television's day by introducing the "Today" and "Tonight" shows, which became huge profit centers for the network.

"Tonight" was particularly influential, with Steve Allen, Jack Paar and, for more than a quarter-century, Carson. His monologues were the bedtime stories for millions, and he introduced hundreds of talented artists to the public. "Saturday Night Live" is a new generation's comic touchstone.

NBC News expanded in the 1960s, and the evening news report with David Brinkley and Chet Huntley made "Good night, David" and "Good night, Chet" simple catch phrases. News is a strong suit for NBC today, with Brokaw retiring at the top and Brian Williams continuing the legacy. The "Today" show has been No. 1 in the ratings for 726 consecutive weeks.

There's been no such consistency in prime time through the years, however.

NBC slumped in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the "Supertrain" series became a shorthand for a comically inept idea. Spinoff ABC surpassed NBC in ratings. One man changed all that: Bill Cosby's sitcom dominated television in the mid-1980s, as millions of Americans checked in each week on the Huxtable family.

In the 1990s, NBC's promotion team dubbed Thursdays as a "must-see" night of television. The slogan stuck because it was true. The network's run of memorable series including "Cheers," "Seinfeld," "ER," "Frasier," "Friends" and "The West Wing" represented a golden age. NBC was not simply the most popular network. It was the best. That seems more distant each year, and not just in time.

NBC's decline has been slow, steady and sad. Their "must-see" series all ran their course, replaced by nothing comparable. Each of their rivals minted influential, highly popular reality series — Fox's "American Idol," ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and CBS' "Survivor" — yet the best NBC could do were the moderately successful "The Apprentice" and gross-out show "Fear Factor."

Worse yet is Hollywood's impression that NBC now is more interested in saving money than in producing memorable television.

Famed producer John Wells said as much in criticizing the network for canceling his expensive drama "Southland" this fall before the season's first episode aired. Jay Leno's move to prime-time, replacing more expensive scripted show at the 10 p.m. slot, reduced NBC's audience and influence even more.

NBC is turning, some of its fans fear, into something comparable to a cable network in ambition and reach.

Yet Comcast may give the network hope as audiences turn to video on the Internet and mobile phones. NBC is a founding partner in Hulu, an ad-supported site that lets viewers watch shows for free. NBC's combination with Comcast could let the network take advantage of the cable operator's efforts to reach additional platforms.

The fact that Zucker would likely stay at the helm, reporting to Comcast executives, suggests that the cable operator won't be making major changes overnight.

A Comcast takeover is largely symbolic now, though practical reality ultimately may overshadow that as NBC and other broadcasters face declining audiences.

"The question," Brooks said, "is what will they do with it?"

Sandro focused on Inter

2009-08-30T18:39:00.000+07:00

Internacional midfielder Sandro says he is not 'frustrated' that the club rejected an offer from Tottenham Hotspur.

The highly-rated Sandro has been hly-rated Sandro has been linked with a move to White Hart Lane, with reports claiming Spurs had offered �14million.

The Brazilian club's president Vittorio Piffero has described the bid as 'reasonable', but it is not enough to secure Sandro's signature.

Sandro is aware of the rumours surrounding his future, but he insists he is in no rush to leave the Porto Alegre-based club in order to join a European team.

"I am not frustrated by this matter," Sandro told the Brazilian media.

"For me to play in Europe is a dream, but there is time to have another chance to do this.

"At the moment I want to focus on my performances for Inter."

On Friday, Spurs announced a strategic partnership with Inter which could see players head to White Hart Lane from the Brazilian side

Premier League round-up

2009-08-30T18:35:00.000+07:00

Chelsea and Tottenham both maintained their 100 per cent starts to the new season on an afternoon when Liverpool came from behind to beat Bolton.

Champions Manchester United also hit back in the evening game to defeat Arsenal 2-1 at Old Trafford.

The Gunners controlled much of the first half and took the lead through an excellent long-range strike from Andrey Arshavin five minutes before the interval.

United improved in the second period and Wayne Rooney equalised from the penalty spot in the 59th minute after being brought down by Manuel Almunia.

Abou Diaby then headed a Ryan Giggs free-kick into his own net five minutes later to put United ahead, while the game ended with Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger being sent off.

Chelsea were highly impressive as they chalked up a fourth successive league win via a 3-0 defeat of Burnley.

The Clarets will rue Martin Paterson's profligacy in front of goal with the scoreline blank, as once Nicolas Anelka broke the deadlock on the stroke of half-time there was no way back.

Michael Ballack stooped to double Chelsea's lead after the break before Ashley Cole's stunning angled drive capped another imperious display from Carlo Ancelotti's side.

Tottenham left it late at White Hart Lane as Aaron Lennon's last minute strike against Birmingham City secured a 2-1 victory.

Worryingly for Harry Redknapp, Ledley King and Luka Modric hobbled off injured before the latter's replacement, Peter Crouch, scored his first Spurs goal with a looping second-half header.

Lee Bowyer restored parity via the scruffiest of efforts as Christian Benitez appeared to push Alan Hutton in the build-up to the goal, much to the ire of Redknapp, and the delight of a travelling Blues faithful.

It was, though, Spurs who had the last laugh as Lennon's impressive drive won it at the death.

Rafa Benitez has experienced better weeks in his football career and he'll be thankful for Steven Gerrard after his captain scored a thumping winner as Liverpool won 3-2 at ten-man Bolton.

Following Monday night's defeat to Aston Villa, things got a whole lot worse for Liverpool just past the half-hour mark when Bolton striker Kevin Davies stabbed home after a scramble in the box.

Davies' opener had come against the run of play so it came as little surprise when the in-form Glen Johnson restored parity before half-time when he cut inside on the edge of Bolton's box, before firing a daisy cutter beyond Jussi Jaaskelainen.

It was, though, a frailty at the heart of Liverpool's defence that was exposed again after half-time as Davies' flick header from a set-piece fell invitingly for Tamir Cohen to ram home.

Sean Davis saw red for two bookable offences before Gerrard struck the bar and Fernando Torres levelled matters with a neat finish. The scene was set fonish. The scene was set for Gerrard to emerge as a hero and he did just that with seven minutes remaining, via a searing drive from range.

Hull City and Wolves both went for three points in a bright game at Molineux but had to settle for one apiece after a 1-1 draw.

Stephen Hunt continued an encouraging start to his Hull career as his powerful run and cross from the left was headed in by Geovanni past Wolves goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey.

Wolves struck back early in the second half when a free-kick from deep fell to Richard Stearman, who finished with aplomb for a centre-half.

Dave Kitson followed up his first ever Stoke goal in midweek, in the Carling Cup, with a debut league strike as his first-half effort was enough to give the Potters a 1-0 win at home to Sunderland following a scramble in the box.

Blackburn's game with West Ham at Ewood Park ended in a disappointing stalemate as neither club did enough to take the spoils.

Summer Bird soars in Travers Stakes

2009-08-30T18:26:00.000+07:00

Jockey Kent Desormeaux celebrates atop Summer Bird after winning the Travers Stakes horse race at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009. (AP PhoAug. 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Mike Groll) (Mike Groll - AP)

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- Summer Bird isn't the other Bird anymore.

The Belmont Stakes winner came charging off the far turn and splashed his way to victory in the $1 million Travers Stakes at rain-soaked Saratoga Race Course on Saturday.

Now that Summer Bird is the only 3-year-old male with two Grade 1 wins, the son of Birdstone almost certainly moves to the head of his class. Of course, Rachel Alexandra is No. 1 3-year-old filly and leading contender for Horse of the Year.

But Summer Bird is the word in the boy's world - ahead of Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird, who missed the Travers as he recovers from throat surgery, and ahead of Quality Road, who finished third in the slop as the 3-2 favorite, five lengths behind the winner.

"To me, he is the 3-year-old champion now," a delighted winning trainer Tim Ice said. "They can call him the other Bird if they want, but he's won the Belmont and the Travers. Take it from there."

Like father, like son, too.

In completing the Belmont-Travers double, Summer Bird joins his sire, Birdstone, who did it in 2004. Summer Bird is the 30th horse to win both races.

"Winning this race means as much as winning the Belmont," Ice said. "For my colt to win the Belmont and come back and win the Travers like his sire means a lot."

A crowd of 34,221 braved showers all day for the biggest racing card of the six-week season, capped by the 1 1/4-mile Midsummer Derby.

Summer Bird, with Kent Desormeaux aboard, came into the race off a runner-up finish to Rachel Alexandra in the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park on Aug. 2. For two weeks, Ice had been saying his colt was ready for a big race, and he surely delivered.
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Quality Road, who would have been the Derby favorite before he was sidelined with hoof issues, won the Amsterdam Stakes earlier in the month in his return. But he wasn't quite ready for the Travers: He bucked jockey John Velazquez off before entering the starting gate, was squeezed between horses at the start and finished third in the seven-horse field.

Charitable Man was fourth, followed by Warrior's Reward, Kensei and Our Edge.

Kansas City Chiefs lose Matt Cassel to leg injury

2009-08-30T18:22:00.000+07:00

Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel grabs his left leg after he was sacked in the first quarter Saturday. (Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images / August 29, 2009)

Matt Hasselbeck threw for 216 yards and two touchdowns with newly signed Edgerrin James watching on the sideline, leading the Seattle Seahawks to a 14-10 win over the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday night in Kansas City, Mo., in a game in which the Chiefs lost quarterback Matt Cassel to a leg injury.

James, the NFL's active rushing leader, signed with Seattle on Tuesday but spent the game in sweats, pen and notepad in hand.

Hasselbeck put on a good show for his new teammate, leading the Seahawks on scoring drives to end the first half and open the second.

Kansas City had a woeful night on offense -- its only touchdown came on defense -- and lost two starters in the game's first three minutes: Cassel and cornerback Brandon Flowers (shoulder). Receiver Devard Darling also had to be helped off in the second quarter, favoring his left leg.

New York Jets 27, at New York Giants 25: Mark Sanchez, in his first game since being named the Jets' starting quarterback, completed a spectacular 31-yard touchdown pass play to Chansi Stuckey and put 20 points on the board in 2 1/2 quarters as the Jets took the annual New York braggin' rights game in East Rutherford, N.J. Sanchez overcame a slow start and a little early pressure to complete 13 of 20 for 149 yards for the Jets, who gave Rex Ryan his first victory as a head coach.

New Orleans 45, at Oakland 7: Drew Brees completed 14 of 17 passes for 179 yards and drove the Saints to touchdowns on all three drives he played.

San Francisco 20, at Dallas 13: Dallas rode Felix Jones and Marion Barber for most of a 94-yard touchdown drive, the highlight series during the first-half battle between the first-team units in a preseason game against the San Francisco 49ers.

at Pittsburgh 17, Buffalo 0: Ben Roethlisberger played a nearly flawless first half in his first game since injuring his right foot, James Farrior had a 22-yard interception for a touchdown and the Bills starting offense struggled yet again. Roethlisberger led two scoring drives while going 15 of 19 for 168 yards and 103.5 passer rating before sitting out the second half.

at Cleveland 23, Tennessee 17: Brady Quinn threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to Braylon Edwards and outplayed Derek Anderson in perhaps their final auditions for Coach Eric Mangini to be the Browns' starting quarterback.

at Detroit 18, Indianapolis 17: Third-string quarterback Drew Stanton threw a 21-yard pass to rookie Dan Gronkowski and a two-point conversion to John Standeford with 4:13 left to win it for the Lions.

at Atlanta 27, San Diego 24:

The Chargers' Philip Rivers led touchdown drip Rivers led touchdown drives in two of his three possessions in his first game since signing a contract extension, before the Falcons' backups rallied.

Baltimore 17, at Carolina 13: Joe Flacco threw for 247 yards and a touchdown and the Ravens' defense shut down Carolina's first unit.

Elsewhere

Byron Leftwich has won Tampa Bay's prolonged quarterback derby by beating out Luke McCown. Leftwich will start the team's regular-season opener against the Dallas Cowboys.

Buccaneers Coach Raheem Morris announced the selection after practice Saturday, saying Leftwich had an edge over McCown heading into training camp.

New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick said Tom Brady left Friday night's exhibition game so the coaches could look at the backup -- not because of injury.

The team had announced at the game that Brady had a sore right shoulder.

Lineup switch lifts Revs past Quakes

2009-08-30T18:19:00.000+07:00

New England notches two late goals to extend winning streak
08/30/2009 01:56 AM
By Kyle McCarthy / MLSnet.com Staff

OXBOROUGH, Mass. -- The first UGH, Mass. -- The first half wasn't exactly what the New England Revolution had in mind as they carried a two-match winning streak into Saturday night's 2-1 win against San Jose.

All of the things that New England had done to achieve those wins against Seattle and Real Salt Lake last week -- tidy passing, opportunistic finishing and cohesive defending -- weren't on display. But for a few timely misses from the Earthquakes, the Revs would have entered the break down.

"We weren't too happy about our first half," Revolution midfielder Wells Thompson said. "We wanted to go out there from the start and get after it. We struggled a little bit. (Revolution coach Steve Nicol) just tried to calm us and get us together. We weren't down at half. The game wasn't over. We had another half to go out and give it to them. That's what we did."

Nicol made a couple of early switches in the second half, sending on Sainey Nyassi and Pat Phelan in place of Mauricio Castro and Kheli Dube. The moves were designed, Nicol said, to aid the Revolution's hold up play with midfielder Shalrie Joseph shifting into a target role.

"We were trying to get a lot more numbers up," Joseph said. "Our problem in the first half, and a little bit to start the second, was that when we got the ball up into the attacking third, it wasn't sticking."

The ball didn't need to stick for the Revolution's opener as Joseph flicked on Matt Reis' long clearance into the penalty area for Steve Ralston to chip over Earthquakes goalkeeper Joe Cannon.

"I was just trying to run off of it," Ralston said. "Shalrie makes a big difference. Kheli worked his butt off up there and was challenging everything, but I guess he doesn't have the body to win balls over their center back, who's a big guy. Shalrie was able to do that. He was able to hold the ball for us, and it made a big difference. On that specific play, I just tried to time it right and get off the center back's back shoulder. And the ball just sat up perfectly for me."

Ralston turned provider six minutes later when he set Thompson free down the right side and allowed him the opportunity to take Earthquakes left back Ramiro Corrales one-on-one. Thompson elected to cut inside onto his left foot and unleashed a stunning effort into the far upper left corner to double the Revolution's lead.

After pointing out that he had struggled with indecision over the past few weeks, Thompson said he wanted to do a better job of making the right choices. The decision to go for goal instead of cut towards the end line stemmed from another area he wanted to improve.

"One thing I've been trying to do is shoot out a little bit more," Thompson said. "It workedhompson said. "It worked out."

Earthquakes midfielder Ramon Sanchez grabbed a consolation goal in second-half stoppage time, but that wasn't enough to put a damper on the Revs' third consecutive win on a dreary night in suburban Boston. New England's first three-game winning streak since May 2008 ensured it would end the weekend in third place in the Eastern Conference.

Thompson said his team can point to its positive response after the difficult start as the reason why it managed to achieve the result it needed.

"That's the great thing about soccer," Thompson said. "It's a 90-minute game. You can beat the other team for 80 minutes and still lose the game 3-0. We just had to keep our heads in it and stay positive, and contain and push forward. And when Steve (Ralston) got that goal, and we didn't want to stop there."

Paul Goydos, Steve Marino tie for lead at Barclays

2009-08-30T18:06:00.000+07:00

Both have triple birdies and shoot a three-under-par 68 in the third round to finish at nine-under 204.
Paul Goydos figured Liberty National at least would look good on television, with the Statue of Liberty and so many other New York landmarks serving as a spectacular backdrop at the Barclays.

Inside the ropes is starting to look pretty good to him too.

Goydos put together three straight birdies early in the third round Saturday to build a lead that stood up until Steve Marino ran off three straight late on the cloudy afternoon to catch him for the lead. Both shot three-under-par 68 and were at nine-under 204 at Jersey City, N.J.

Goydos has only two victories in his 17 years on the PGA Tour. Marino made his debut as a PGA Tour rookie in 2007 at the last tournament Goydos won (Sony Open) and is still looking for his first victory.

The focus shifted behind them on a day of light rain that didn't last long. Suddenly lurking is Tiger Woods, who struggled with his putter but made enough for a 67 that put him within five shots of the leaders.

The opening event of the PGA Tour Playoffs for the FedEx Cup has several possibilities:

Of the top six players on the leaderboard, only Steve Stricker, who is three shots behind, has won this year. Stricker won the inaugural playoff event two years ago at the Barclays. He kept bogeys off his card, yet made only birdies on the par fives for his 68.

Marino had two chances to win this year, losing a playoff at the Colonial and sharing the 36-hole lead with Tom Watson at the British Open. He might find out how that experience will help him now.

Two shots out of the lead were Fredrik Jacobson (72), the Swede with moving parts in his swing, who is winless in his six years on the PGA Tour; and 24-year-old Webb Simpson, who overcame a triple bogey to shoot 72 and give himself a chance to become the first rookie to win on tour this year.

Champions Tour

Mark McNulty shot a seven-under 65 to share the lead with Loren Roberts entering the final round at the Boeing Classic at Snoqualmie, Wash.

Roberts had four birdies in his final six holes to match McNulty's 65 and finish at 11 under in the second round. The duo holds a two-shot lead over Bernhard Langer and first-round leader Mark O'Meara.

McNulty was four under on his first nine holes, then made another four birdies on the back nine.

LPGA Tour

Rookie Anna Nordqvist's three-under 69 moved her into a one-shot lead over Seon Hwa Lee and Ai Miyazato going into the final round of the Safeway Classic at North Plains, Ore.

Nordqvist, who won the LPGA Championship this year, was at 10-under 134 after the first two rounds.

Miyazato had three straight birdies on Nos. 8-10, all par-five holes, to edge up the leaderboard with a 68. Lee sank a birdie putt on the par-four 18th hole and wound up with a 70.

U.S. Amateur

Byeong-Hun An will fa0D
Byeong-Hun An will face fourth-seeded Ben Martin in his bid to become the youngest winner of the U.S. Amateur.

After being 1 down heading to the 13th hole, the 17-year-old South Korean won four straight holes to close out a 3-and-2 victory against Fresno State sophomore Bhavik Patel at Tulsa, Okla.

Martin took a 4-up lead through six holes as Texas senior Charlie Holland got off to a sloppy start, and he cruised to a 5-and-4 victory.

South coast blaze 'unpredictable'

2009-08-30T18:02:00.000+07:00

Swirling winds are creating unpredictable conditions for firefighters battling a blaze close to homes at Burrill Lake on the New South Wales south coast.

Authorities haify;">Authorities have confirmed a holiday cottage near Dolphin Point was destroyed by the blaze last night.

Helicopters are waterbombing the fire and crews from surrounding areas have been called in to help protect properties.

Tim Carroll, from the Rural Fire Service (RFS), says strong winds are pushing the fire towards the township of Lake Tabourie, south of Ulladulla.

He says several rural properties are in the path of the fire and if residents choose to leave the area, they should go early.

Mr Carroll says if residents can see smoke and flames, it is probably already too late to leave.

RFS spokesman Matthew Schroder says the wind blowing on the fire ground is averaging about 40 kilometres an hour, with gusts of up to 60 kilometres an hour.

"The fire is still continuing to burn in amongst the properties there so our crews are in there working in behind the homes to ensure those properties are safe," he said.

"There is some wind that is impacting the fire at the moment, so the firefighters are experiencing quite sporadic fire activity as we speak, so they're trying to combat that throughout the day."

The Princes Highway is shut in both directions at Burrill Lake because of the fire.

RFS Assistant Fire Commissioner Rob Rogers says the holiday cottage destroyed last night "couldn't be defended" and the burnt out shell was discovered this morning.

Fingal Bay fire eases

Authorities say a bushfire burning at Fingal Bay, north of Newcastle, no longer poses a threat to properties.

Crews have worked this afternoon to contain a blaze burning through bushland in the Tomaree National Park in the Port Stephens area.

Lower Hunter Superintendent Jason Mckellar says the fire was heading towards properties, but it is now under control.

"What crews have worked on this afternoon is doing a backburn of an... area behind the houses at the back of Fingal Bay," he said.

"[The fire] has burnt out into the national park and met up with the wildfire and taken the intensity out of it.

"Now it will be a process of mopping up and patrolling that area."

Swat diary: 'Bright future ahead'

2009-08-30T18:00:00.000+07:00

Munir (not his real name), an administrator in the Swat region of Pakistan, has returned to his home in Swat three months after his family fled the conflict there. He describes the challenges of daily life with optimism about the future.

We returned to Swat on 2 August. We were very excited. We were desperate to go to our village, but we were told by other villagers over the phone that people were not allowed to enter the village without a special pass.

Therefore we had to stay near Mingora for two days to obtain such passes before we could return to our home village. More than two feet grass had grown while we were away. Everything seemed to be in its place, nothing was stolen.

See a map of the region

After a few days staying at home I went out for a walk around the village. I found many houses badly damaged in the fighting. Our relatives' houses were among the damaged ones. Electricity wires and phone cables were lying scattered on the ground, although we do have power and our phone is working.

Many houses and shops were plundered. I saw three shops completely emptied. One shopkeeper told me that 200 sacks of rice had been stolen from his shop.

Three or four houses belonging to militants were completely razed to the ground. The army is still coming to our village to destroy houses known to belong to militants.

'Militants defeated'

I saw the hairdresser in my village openly and bravely shaving people. I heard songs in the streets and in the shops for the first time after a long while.

About 80% of the people from our village have returned. Life is getting back to normal, but there are problems.

Many people are without jobs d people are without jobs due to the curfews and people can't move easily inside Swat. Swat is like a jail for us now - there are many checkpoints and curfews are imposed all the time. People are sick of them.

Electric power is another big problem. It is so weak, that we can't switch on the motor to pump water up and we can't turn on the refrigerator to cool things. Power cuts can happen any time.

People are a little bit worried again as several suicide attacks occurred in the last few days. But as a whole, people are happy and satisfied with the operation in the area.

We are very happy with the army: people pat soldiers on the back and give them food and gifts - something that had never happened in the past. The army has regained its popularity. People feel indebted to the army also because it has reduced the price of bread from five to two rupees.

Everyone is pleased to be back home, though most people, including me, are anxious that leaders of the militants still haven't been arrested or killed.

You hear about bodies of militants turning up these days. Many people are of the view that the security forces are behind this.

But regardless of who's responsible, people get really happy when they hear that militants have been killed, because their dear ones were brutally killed by those militants.

I have so many stories of the cruelties happening in our lands. I hope I will write them down one day.

I am myself very happy of the way things have turned up. I am optimistic about the future because I see that the militants have been defeated.

They can't hold such a powerful position here again. Swat has a bright future because its people have learnt the importance of peace and education. They have become united.

I am now thinking about my wedding, which will take place soon after the Eid, before October.

Cosgrove honoured amid E Timor celebrations

2009-08-30T17:52:00.000+07:00

Retired General Peter Cosgrove has been presented with one of East Timor's highest honours at a ceremony celebrating the country's 10 years of independence.

Galign: justify;">General Cosgrove has been presented with the collar of the Order of East Timor by the country's President, Jose Ramos-Horta.

General Cosgrove was the head of the Australian-led multinational peacekeeping mission which arrived in East Timor after the vote for independence in 1999.

He says he is receiving the award on behalf of all those involved in the mission in East Timor.

Earlier today, Dr Ramos-Horta thanked Australia for its support and friendship.

Australia's Governor General, Quentin Bryce, has also presented Dr Ramos-Horta with three corrugated iron kangaroo sculptures which are now at the front of the President's palace.

Earlier, Dr Ramos-Horta restated that there would be no international tribunal to bring people responsible for human rights abuses in East Timor to justice.

He said he respected those calling for an international tribunal, but he said one would not be set up.

He called on the United Nations to disband its serious crimes unit, which is gathering evidence on those responsible for the violence in East Timor.

Indonesia's foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, attended the ceremony in Dili this morning.

Dr Ramos-Horta said he was confident Indonesia would bring people to justice in its own time.

Adopted teen finds answers, mystery in China

2009-08-30T17:44:00.001+07:00

By Barbara Demick
Christian Norris of Easton, Md., remembers little of his pre-U.S. life. A reunion at a Beijing hotel helps fill in some of the gaps. Reporting from Beijing - The father fell to his knees, weeping. The mother quietly buried her face in her hands. The 17-year-old boy stood upright and motionless -- whether out of shock or stoicism, no one knew.

Christian Norris, who had just returned to China for the first time since he was adopted by an American eight years ago, didn't know what to think.

The interpreter stood quietly on the sidelines waiting for what seemed an eternity, the only sounds were the sobs and the clicking of cameras that filled the room.

"Honey, are you OK?" Christian's adoptive mother, Julia Norris, finally asked. He nodded affirmatively, but said nothing.

The reunion between Christian, a high school student in Easton, Md., and his birth parents took place Saturday in a Beijing hotel room crowded with well-wishers and media on hand to witness the virtually unprecedented event.

Since the early 1990s, an estimated 75,000 Chinese-born children have been adopted abroad, and although they increasingly visit China on heritage tours, Christian is one of only a few who have managed to chase down their personal history.

"I'm not sure yet," Christian answered with a teenage boy's characteristic reticence when asked what he hoped would come of the reunion. "I want to move on."

Christian's case is unusual in several respects: He's male, whereas most adoptees are girls abandoned because of the Chinese preference for boys and the government's "one child" policy. And unlike most adoptees, who are given up as babies, he lived with his family until he was nearly 7, leaving him with fragmentary memories that became vital clues in the search.

His birth parents were medical researchers, better educated than most who give up their children, and it was possible to track them down on the Internet.

It also helped that his U.S. mother, who works for an adoption agency, is both a firm believer in open adoptions and a tenacious investigator who once worked for the television show "America's Most Wanted."

Julia Norris was able to enlist an army of volunteers through a Chinese nonprofit called Baby Come Home, which helps Chinese parents search for lost children.

"This is the first case we've handled where an adopted child came back to find birth parents, but I expect it is going to happen more often," said Yang Guan, one of the agency's founders. "I hope that China can move to a more transparent system where orphanages are more able to make information available."

Like many families, Christian's had its secrets and silences.

He was born Jin Jiacheng in 1991 in Yinchuan, a city in the Ningxia region several hundred miles west of Beijing, to a couple who both worked in a hospital and already had a son. Because his parents could have been penalized for having a second child, he was sent as a newborn to his father's home village to be raised by his grandmother and a 23-year-old uncle, who pretended the infant was his own son. When he turned 6 and was ready to start school, they sent him back to the city.

He had lived only briefly with his birth parents when he somehow got lost, his family says. His father, Jin Gaoke, said that they were on an excursion by bus and that he got off for a few minutes to buy food at a market, returning to discover that the bus had driven off.

"I hope you can forgive our mistakes," the father mumbled repeatedly during the reunion.

The family was wrenched apart by the boy's absence. His mother went into a deep depression. His father and uncle stopped speaking to each other, the younger one blaming the father for losing the child.

"He was like my son. I felt so bad when he was lost, I would drink liquor to take away the sadness," said his uncle, Jin Xiaowang, now 40 and still farming wheat, potatoes and corn at the village home.

Jiacheng somehow ended up 350 miles to the east in Henan province, where he was found wandering under a bridge and brought to an orphanage in the city of Luoyang.

In 2000, Julia Norris was 2000, Julia Norris was touring the orphanage on a business trip when she met the boy and fell in love. She returned the following year to adopt him, becoming a single mother. Three years after that, she adopted a Chinese girl as well. Christian Norris of Easton, Md., remembers little of his pre-U.S. life. A reunion at a Beijing hotel helps fill in some of the gaps. Growing up, Christian was frustrated by the fragmentary nature of his memories. He could remember only a house in the country, mountains in the distance, grazing yaks, a few names. How he had gotten lost had been erased from his memory, perhaps by the trauma of it all; he remembers only a man buying him food and giving him money.

"I thought they abandoned me. It didn't feel good," Christian said.

Julia Norris decided to pursue Christian's origins because she worried he would be tormented for life by nagging questions.

"He needed the peace of mind of knowing what happened," she said.

She worries that many Chinese adoptees, now young children, will eventually be asking questions that will be almost impossible to answer. Adoptees usually have no information except the date and place they were found.

Norris' daughter, now 6, keeps asking, "Mommy, can I find out who my birth parents are too?" Norris said. "I can't make her any promises. She was found on the day she was born."

For Christian, the memories aren't exactly flooding back, but bits and pieces are starting to make sense. He can't remember a word of Chinese or his birth parents, but he recognized his grandmother and the uncle who raised him. At the reunion, his Chinese family gave him a bag with his favorite candy as a young child and an abacus -- on which he had been learning to count before he disappeared.

"This I remember," he said, fingering the beads -- one of the few times he smiled.

His Chinese family seems just as eager to understand the life that Christian has led in the United States. They pored over a photo album the American family brought: Christian posing with a surfboard. With a Halloween jack-o'-lantern. With his sister in front of the Christmas tree.

They marveled over the strapping American teenager Christian has become. A handsome, athletic boy, at 5 foot 8 he towers over all of his Chinese relatives.

"He's so big," his uncle exclaimed. "And he has hairy legs. Just like an American."

Christian and his mother, along with an aunt and uncle, will travel this week to Ningxia to visit his birthplace. Then he will return to start classes at Easton High School.

His birth parents say they are thrilled to see him, but do not expect him to move back.

"Jiacheng's roots are in China, but his future is in the United States," his father said. "It is clear that he has been well cared for and has a bright future in America."

His birth mother, Shao Julian, added quietly, "We hope to stay in touch with him, but we wouldn't try to force him to come back to China -- we wouldn't want to hurt him twice."

10,000 homes are threatened

2009-08-30T17:39:00.001+07:00

Homeowners Jack and Debra Carr feel relief after hearing word from a U.S. Forest Service employee that their home in Big Tujunga Canyon is safe on Saturday night. (Christina House / For The Times / August 29or The Times / August 29, 2009)

Across the burning foothills, 1,000 are ordered to flee. Others watch, and dread the phone call to evacuate.
The unstoppable Angeles National Forest fire threatened 10,000 homes Saturday night as it more than tripled in size and chewed through a rapidly widening swath of the Crescenta Valley, where flames closed in on backyards and at least 1,000 homes were ordered evacuated.

Sending an ominous plume of smoke above the Los Angeles Basin, the fire was fueled by unrelenting hot weather and dense brush that has not burned in 60 years.

It took off Saturday afternoon in all directions, forcing residents out of homes from Big Tujunga Canyon to Pasadena, and reached toward Mt. Wilson.

Heavy smoke clung to the mountains and created a hot and massive convection column that limited the evening aerial fire fight.

Officials predicted that the blaze would continue its march toward homes and across hills through the night with flames that could reach as high as 80 feet.

Late Saturday, U.S. Forest Service officials said they were moving "several hundred firefighters" into the Acton area, where they expected the fire to reach this morning.

At midnight, crews were on alert for a wind shift.

The fire was headed toward Yerba Buena and Santa Clara ridges. El Dorado County Fire Capt. Larry Marinas said it was currently "probably bumping" against them, but all he could say for sure was that flames could reach those ridges "in 12 hours."

Forest Service officials said three civilians were burned and airlifted from rural Big Tujunga Canyon, where at least three to five homes were destroyed. One fire official, after surveying the canyon, estimated that the damage toll may be much worse.

No other homes had been lost by early evening as throngs of residents -- belongings loaded in cars -- descended from the hills.

"I wish I had good news for you," Les Curtis, a fire operations chief, said during a night briefing for firefighters. He shook his head and pointed to the map of the expanding fire zone. "How many of you have knots in your stomach?" he asked. More than a dozen raised their hands.

"Nothing can stop it," said Jost Vielmetter, 62, a Caltech scientist who watched the flames from the northern edge of Altadena.

By late Saturday afternoon, the fire had consumed more than 21,000 acres, propelled by temperatures that eclipsed 100 degrees, single-digit humidity and steep, rugged topography that made for a formidable foe despite low winds.

Firefighters can only expect a slight reprieve on the heat today as red-flag warnings extend until tonight. But more significant cooling and even a moist maroling and even a moist marine layer are expected Monday morning.

Fire officials estimate that about 10,000 homes are in danger if the fire continues burning unchecked.

At sundown, as scattered power outages hit the area, flames encircled the ridges near Briggs Terrace on the northeastern edge of La Crescenta. By 7:30 p.m., the northern end of Pickens Canyon, close to the neighborhood, exploded in flames.

"Oh, my God. This is what I've been dreading all day," said David Ferrera, 35, who grew up in the area.

It was the first time that he and his neighbors were seized with worry. At that point, clouds of glowing embers began floating up from the fire. Suddenly, so-called hotshots -- firefighters with shovels and axes -- rushed by on their way to battle.

Later, a wall of fire crept like lava along the mountainside toward Pickens Canyon homes. A tree would light up in a column of fire every few moments. On the streets, the air was still and quiet except for the crackle and roar of flames.

Firefighters climbed through backyards at the ends of the cul-de-sacs fronting the forest, laying their hoses and waiting to make a stand.
Across the burning foothills, 1,000 are ordered to 2C 1,000 are ordered to flee. Others watch, and dread the phone call to evacuate.
Capt. Kevin Klar of the Los Angeles County Fire Department was in place on Bristow Drive. "As far as the area goes, I think we're going to be all right," he said.

More than 1,800 firefighters from throughout California and the West used an arsenal of weapons to fight the flames.

Ten helicopters dropping buckets of water and eight air tankers were enlisted in the daytime fight.

Officials also are deploying at least one DC-10, one of the largest and most expensive pieces of firefighting equipment in the world.

Elsewhere, firefighters were on the verge of containing the Morris fire north of Azusa and a separate blaze on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Firefighters also made progress on a fire near Hemet in the San Bernardino National Forest, which has burned nearly 2,300 acres and was 30% contained.

As flames bore down on canyon cul-de-sacs in the Crescenta Valley into the evening, residents watched raptly as firefighters -- in the air and on the ground -- valiantly kept the fire away from homes.

On the northern edge of Altadena, a DC-10 unloading fire retardant at the base of a column of smoke received a standing ovation from residents in the 3900 block of Chapman Court, which had been under mandatory evacuation orders for an hour.

Among them was physician John Cooper, 52.

"I think the firefighters are doing an incredible job. I'm in awe. I'd like to line them all up and shake their hands one at a time -- and we also have our fingers crossed," Cooper said, acknowledging the precarious nature of his address. "Live on the edge, and you take your chances."

Evacuated residents could only wait, watch and worry as flames licked the ridges near their homes. Some La Cañada Flintridge residents were evacuated Friday night, but on Saturday that mandatory evacuation order widened to parts of Altadena, La Crescenta, north Glendale and Big Tujunga Canyon. More evacuations were expected throughout the night.

All faced the same nerve-racking drill: the automated phone calls ordering them to leave, the choices about what to pack up, the negotiations with skittish pets refusing to be stuffed into portable kennels.

In Glendale, in the evacuation area north of Santa Carlotta Road, residents were packing up their cars and watering their lawns after being notified to leave.

Joanna Linkchorst, 42, dashed around her house videotaping her belongings, but appeared possessed of a preternatural calm. "For some reason I'm not concerned," she said. "There are far too many houses that would have to burn before it gets down here."

Although authorities stressed that people should not defy evacuation orders -- it puts them as well as fire and police personnel at risk -- some did anyway.

In Pickens Canyon, firefighter hotshots had taken up positions in front of about a dozen homes beneath the oak canopy. Every few minutes, patrol cars cruised by, urging holdouts to leave.

At 8:30 p.m., a law enforcement officer asked Bob Jamison and Gary Ireland, who were sprawled on lawn chairs watching the fire, to collect their belongings and leave the area.

"Everything's under control here," Jamison responded. "We got all the women, pets and important papers down the mountain."

Jay Porter, 47, and his two teenage sons stood on an Altadena ridgeline overlooking tinder-dry Millard Canyon as flames advanced to within 1,000 feet of his two-story Spanish-style home.

"I want to know what's going on here for as long as I possibly can," said Porter, who wasn't budging early Saturday evening. "Right now, I have more information than a lot of my neighbors."

He said, however, that he would relent overnight. He made reservations at a nearby Westin hotel that he said was offering "refugee specials" for evacuees -- in his case, that includes two dogs and a cockatiel.
Across the burning foothills, 1,000 are ordered to flee. Others watch, and dread the phone call to evacuate.
He watched as earthmovers in the distance rumbled over the ridge, toppling flammable chaparral and small trees in their paths. "Makes me happy," he said.

Ray Henmann, a 76-year-old graphic designer from Glendale whose home on Brookhill Street is in the evacuation area, said he had no plans to leave his home of 48 years.

The fire, he said, would have to come within a few streets of his home before he fled. "I'm not going to panic, I've lived too long to panic," Henmann said.

Across the region, there was no escaping the specter of what has been dubbed the Station fire. An ominous cloud of smoke wafted across the area and rose as high as 20,000 feet in the air, visible from the ocean and the San Fernando Valley, even the Antelope Valley. Otherwise fire-savvy Los Angeles residents were so startled by the sight that they inundated 911 emergency lines with calls about smoke. Authorities begged people to stop calling.

Donna Robinson, 60, of La Cañada Flintridge had been preparing to be evacuated since Wednesday, packing up documents, clothes and baby dish mementos of her adult children. She also packed up two dogs and three cats.

"I'm not even afraid now. I think it's good we're just out of the house. Now I feel it's not under my control," Robinson said Saturday morning as she sat with her husband, Paul, 57, outside the gym at La Cañada High, the evacuation center.

Others couldn't escape the worry. It showed on Sonia Castellon's face as she made her way into the evacuation center. "I was trying to keep calm, keep it together. But the moment you leave your home it's hard," the 46-year-old dentist said as she began to tear up.

U.S. fears clock ticking on Afghanistan

2009-08-30T17:34:00.001+07:00

Lance Cpl. Mark Chieffallo of Pittsburg arrives at an observation post on a peak above a village in Helmand province with over Marines. (Julie Jacobson / Associated Press / August 22, ed Press / August 22, 2009)

As public support wanes, the Obama administration feels it needs to deliver speedy progress in Afghanistan so that it can gain time and backing for its long-term military strategy.
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Washington - The Obama administration is racing to demonstrate visible headway in the faltering war in Afghanistan, convinced it has only until next summer to slow a hemorrhage in U.S. support and win more time for the military and diplomatic strategy it hopes can rescue the 8-year-old effort.

But the challenge in Afghanistan is becoming more difficult in the face of gains by the Taliban, rising U.S. casualties, a weak Afghan government widely viewed as corrupt, and a sense among U.S. commanders that they must start the military effort largely from scratch nearly eight years after it began.

A turnaround is crucial because military strategists believe they will not be able to get the additional troops they feel they need in coming months if they fail to show that their new approach is working, U.S. officials and advisors say.

"Over the next 12 to 15 months, among the things you absolutely, positively have to do is persuade a skeptical American public that this can work, that you have a plan and a strategy that is feasible," said Stephen Biddle, a military expert who advises the U.S.-led command in Afghanistan.

A similarly urgent view was voiced by military and diplomatic officials who described the administration's goals and self-imposed deadline during recent interviews in Afghanistan and Washington. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment publicly.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in an interview last month, first pointed publicly to the need for progress by next year. Since then, the goal has spanned the administration's international diplomatic efforts, its aid program for the Afghan government and its combat strategy.

Unlike during the Bush administration years, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld clashed with other Cabinet members, particularly in the State Department, Gates' assessment appears to be shared by every other major Obama administration player. At the White House, State Department and elsewhere, officials agreed on the need for rapid progress in key areas.

Besides reversing Taliban advances and strengthening the central government, U.S. officials will strive to hold the NATO alliance intact while reshuffling deployments to consolidate gains, especially in the eastern part of the country, near the Pakistani border.

Administration goals in Afghanistan also include stemming government corruption, improving security fon, improving security forces, especially the police, and reducing violence through efforts such as wooing insurgents.

In part, the administration thinking reflects the growing impatience of liberal Democrats with the war. Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin has called for a "flexible timetable" for troop withdrawals, while House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin has warned of funding cuts next spring unless there is significant progress.

A senior administration official said Obey's comment was "a very important signal" to the White House.

Among military commanders, there has been no effort to sugarcoat conditions in Afghanistan.

"We need a fundamental new approach," said one officer, a senior advisor to Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly appointed top commander in Afghanistan.

McChrystal's initial assessment of Afghanistan to Pentagon officials is due soon, in a report expected to be made public in early September.

That report will probably avoid a troop recommendation, but by outlining McChrystal's view of what has gone wrong and his vision for fixing it, officers hope he can make Washington more receptive to a later request for more troops.

"We have to demonstrate we have a clear way ahead, matched with appropriate resources, that is making an impact on the ground," said the officer.

The proportion of Americans who believe it was a mistake to send troops to Afghanistan rose from about 25% in 2007 to 42% this year, according to Gallup surveys. A slight majority of Americans no longer believe the war is worth fighting, according to a Washington Post-ABC survey this month.

August has been the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. A U.S. fighter was killed Friday when his vehicle hit an explosive device in eastern Afghanistan, bringing the number of U.S. military deaths to 45 and exceeding the previous record, set in July. At least 732 U.S. service members have been killed in the Afghanistan war, compared with more than 4,300 killed in the Iraq conflict.

The faltering public support highlights another concern: the U.S. midterm elections next year. Democratic lawmakers fear they may become targets of Republican political attacks over the administration's handling of the war.
As public support wanes, the Obama administration feels it needs to deliver speedy progress in Afghanistan so that it can gain time and backing for its long-term military strategy.

In the face of those doubts and time pressures, top Obama administration officials such as James Jones, the national security advisor, have expressed skepticism about the prospects of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

President Obama has committed 21,000 additional troops this year, bringing the U.S. force to 68,000 by the end of the year. But military analysts said that the new strategy being developed in Kabul, the Afghan capital, will require still more troops.

Officers in Afghanistan consider much of the effort of the last eight years wasted, with too few troops deployed, many in the wrong regions and given the wrong orders.

For instance, in Iraq, the military spent between three and nine months on programs to roust militants from cities. In Afghanistan such clearing operations have lasted as little as three weeks.

"Clearing operations aren't about kicking down doors, or even going house to house once," said Kimberly Kagan, a strategist who has advised the military in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "They are about establishing presence and then building a trust relationship with the local population so that over time they feel they can provide information."

Shoring up NATO

Diplomatically, U.S. officials have begun a push to persuade NATO countries to send more forces to Afghanistan. And they are also trying to stave off departures by key allies.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with its 38,000 troops, is considered important both to combat efforts and to the international credibility of the war.

But Canada, which now oversees the southern regional command, is scheduled to pull out its combat troops in 2011, and the Dutch are scheduled to leave next year. A German opposition party, the Free Democrats, this month called for the removal of Germany's 4,500 troops. And in Britain, public support for the war is flagging.

Any departures mean more work for U.S. forces, but are also likely to raise questions at home about why Americans are shouldering so much of the burden of the conflict.

"We cannot afford to re-Americanize the war," said a senior administration official.

Fighting corruption

As the military is overhauling its priorities, so too is the State Department. Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has signaled a major push to reduce corruption in the government as soon as the presidential election results are known.

Senior officials are weighing a number of approaches, including, possibly, an international commission to probe corruption cases. The goal is not only to improve Afghans' low regard for their government, but also to reassure Americans that the $2.6 billion a month they are providing is well spent.

U.S. officials acknowledge that the task is not easy. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, expected to win the election, has built political support for his administration through alliances with a number of regional leaders and warlords who face allegations of corruption.

One is his running mate, former Defense Minister Mohammed "Marshal" Fahim, accused of involvement in drug trafficking. U.S. officials have already warned Karzai that they were not happy with the prospect of Fahim as vice president.

Improving the police

Key to both the diplomatic and military strategies is a rapid expansion of the Afghan security forces.

U.S. officials are particularly focused on stepping up police training programs, a key to long-term stability in the country.

Holbrooke describes police training as one of the toughest jobs the allies face, and predicts that success in Afghanistan will depend heavily on whether a skilled force can provide security. But NATO officials continue to report that Afghan police, woefully undertrained in many regions, can't be trusted with many of the most important assignments.

Choosing fights

Most military officers believe lasting progress will be years in the making. But they also realize that they only have a few months to add to the perception that they are making headway.

As a result, the military is likely to focus on select goals instead of trying to save the entire country at once. McChrystal has said he plans to focus efforts on securing population centers. That means, at least initially, Taliban outposts that do not threaten significant Afghan cities or villages will not be targeted.

"We have to do triage," Biddle said. "We do not have the resources to stabilize the whole country at once."

U.S. fears clock ticking on Afghanistan

2009-08-30T17:34:00.000+07:00

Lance Cpl. Mark Chieffallo of Pittsburg arrives at an observation post on a peak above a village in Helmand province with over Marines. (Julie Jacobson / Associated Press / August 22, 2009)

As public support wanes, the Obama administration feels it needs to deliver speedy progress in Afghanistan so that it can gain time and backing for its long-term military strategy.
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Washington - The Obama administration is racing to demonstrate visible headway in the faltering war in Afghanistan, convinced it has only until next summer to slow a hemorrhage in U.S. support and win more time for the military and diplomatic strategy it hopes can rescue the 8-year-old effort.

But the challenge in Afghanistan is becoming more difficult in the face of gains by the Taliban, rising U.S. casualties, a weak Afghan government widely viewed as corrupt, and a sense among U.S. commanders that they must start the military effort largely from scratch nearly eight years after it began.

A turnaround is crucial because military strategists believe they will not be able to get the additional troops they feel they need in coming months if they fail to show that their new approach is working, U.S. officials and advisors say.

"Over the next 12 to 15 months, among the things you absolutely, positively have to do is persuade a skeptical American public that this can work, that you have a plan and a strategy that is feasible," said Stephen Biddle, a military expert who advises the U.S.-led command in Afghanistan.

A similarly urgent view was voiced by military and diplomatic officials who described the administration's goals and self-imposed deadline during recent interviews in Afghanistan and Washington. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment publicly.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in an interview last month, first pointed publicly to the need for progress by next year. Since then, the goal has spanned the administration's international diplomatic efforts, its aid program for the Afghan government and its combat strategy.

Unlike during the Bush administration years, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld clashed with other Cabinet members, particularly in the State Department, Gates' assessment appears to be shared by every other major Obama administration player. At the White House, State Department and elsewhere, officials agreed on the need for rapid progress in key areas.

Besides reversing Taliban advances and strengthening the central government, U.S. officials will strive to hold the NATO alliance intact while reshuffling deployments to consolidate gains, especially in the eastern part of the country, near the Pakistani border.

Administration goals in
Administration goals in Afghanistan also include stemming government corruption, improving security forces, especially the police, and reducing violence through efforts such as wooing insurgents.

In part, the administration thinking reflects the growing impatience of liberal Democrats with the war. Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin has called for a "flexible timetable" for troop withdrawals, while House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin has warned of funding cuts next spring unless there is significant progress.

A senior administration official said Obey's comment was "a very important signal" to the White House.

Among military commanders, there has been no effort to sugarcoat conditions in Afghanistan.

"We need a fundamental new approach," said one officer, a senior advisor to Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly appointed top commander in Afghanistan.

McChrystal's initial assessment of Afghanistan to Pentagon officials is due soon, in a report expected to be made public in early September.

That report will probably avoid a troop recommendation, but by outlining McChrystal's view of what has gone wrong and his vision for fixing it, officers hope he can make Washington more receptive to a later request for more troops.

"We have to demonstrate we have a clear way ahead, matched with appropriate resources, that is making an impact on the ground," said the officer.

The proportion of Americans who believe it was a mistake to send troops to Afghanistan rose from about 25% in 2007 to 42% this year, according to Gallup surveys. A slight majority of Americans no longer believe the war is worth fighting, according to a Washington Post-ABC survey this month.

August has been the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. A U.S. fighter was killed Friday when his vehicle hit an explosive device in eastern Afghanistan, bringing the number of U.S. military deaths to 45 and exceeding the previous record, set in July. At least 732 U.S. service members have been killed in the Afghanistan war, compared with more than 4,300 killed in the Iraq conflict.

The faltering public support highlights another concern: the U.S. midterm elections next year. Democratic lawmakers fear they may become targets of Republican political attacks over the administration's handling of the war.
As public support wanes, the Obama administration feels it needs to deliver speedy progress in Afghanistan so that it can gain time and backing for its long-term military strategy.

In the face of those doubts and time pressures, top Obama administration officials such as James Jones, the national security advisor, have expressed skepticism about the prospects of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

President Obama has committed 21,000 additional troops this year, bringing the U.S. force to 68,000 by the end of the year. But military analysts said that the new strategy being developed in Kabul, the Afghan capital, will require still more troops.

Officers in Afghanistan consider much of the effort of the last eight years wasted, with too few troops deployed, many in the wrong regions and given the wrong orders.

For instance, in Iraq, the military spent between three and nine months on programs to roust militants from cities. In Afghanistan such clearing operations have lasted as little as three weeks.

"Clearing operations aren't about kicking down doors, or even going house to house once," said Kimberly Kagan, a strategist who has advised the military in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "They are about establishing presence and then building a trust relationship with the local population so that over time they feel they can provide information."

Shoring up NATO

Diplomatically, U.S. officials have begun a push to persuade NATO countries to send more forces to Afghanistan. And they are also trying to stave off departures by key allies.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with its 38,000 troops, is considered important both to combat efforts and to the international credibility of the war.

But Canada, which now oversees the southern regional command, is scheduled to pull out its combat troops in 2011, and the Dutch are scheduled to leave next year. A German opposition party, the Free Democrats, this month called for the removal of Germany's 4,500 troops. And in Britain, public support for the war is flagging.

Any departures mean more work for U.S. forces, but are also likely to raise questions at home about why Americans are shouldering so much of the burden of the conflict.

"We cannot afford to re-Americanize the war," said a senior administration official.

Fighting corruption

As the military is overhauling its priorities, so too is the State Department. Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has signaled a major push to reduce corruption in the government as soon as the presidential election results are known.

Senior officials are weighing a number of approaches, including, possibly, an international commission to probe corruption cases. The goal is not only to improve Afghans' low regard for their government, but also to reassure Americans that the $2.6 billion a month they are providing is well spent.

U.S. officials acknowledge that the task is not easy. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, expected to win the election, has built political support for his administration through alliances with a number of regional leaders and warlords who face allegations of corruption.

One is his running mate, former Defense Minister Mohammed "Marshal" Fahim, accused of involvement in drug trafficking. U.S. officials have already warned Karzai that they were not happy with the prospect of Fahim as vice president.

Improving the police

Key to both the diplomatic and military strategies is a rapid expansion of the Afghan security forces.

U.S. officials are particularly focused on stepping up police training programs, a key to long-term stability in the country.

Holbrooke describes police training as one of the toughest jobs the allies face, and predicts that success in Afghanistan will depend heavily on whether a skilled force can provide security. But NATO officials continue to report that Afghan police, woefully undertrained in many regions, can't be trusted with many of the most important assignments.

Choosing fights

Most military officers believe lasting progress will be years in the making. But they also realize that they only have a few months to add to the perception that they are making headway.

As a result, the military is likely to focus on select goals instead of trying to save the entire country at once. McChrystal has said he plans to focus efforts on securing population centers. That means, at least initially, Taliban outposts that do not threaten significant Afghan cities or villages will not be targeted.

"We have to do triage," Biddle said. "We do not have the resources to stabilize the whole country at once."

Suicide Blast Kills 12 in Pakistan's Swat Valley

2009-08-30T17:30:00.000+07:00

A Pakistani police officer stands at the site of a suicide bombing in Mingora, the main town of Pakistan's troubled of Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley, Sunday, 30 Aug. 2009

By VOA News
Pakistan officials say at least 12 police recruits have been killed in suicide bomb attack.

Authorities say the attack in the northwestern Swat Valley happened Sunday while the cadets were training near a police station.

Associated Press says television footage shows officers picking up mutilated bodies.

The attack on the police comes a day after Pakistan's military announced it destroyed a training camp for suicide bombers in the Swat Valley.

The army said in a statement that reports from intelligence sources and local residents led them to the location in northwest Pakistan.

Six militants were reported killed in the operation and several others were said to be wounded.

Pakistan's government has been fighting a Taliban insurgency in the northwest.

Fighting Stops as Kokang Surrender Arms to Chinese

2009-08-30T17:22:00.001+07:00

ighting near the Sino-Burmese border came to an abrupt halt today after about 700 Kokang troops handed over their weapons to Chinese officials following days of clashes that sent thousands fleeing across the border.

Aung Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese military analyst who is close to the Kokang, told The Irrawaddy on Saturday that at least 700 soldiers from the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), an ethnic-Kokang militia, crossed the border into China today and surrendered their arms to local officials.He added that troops from the United Wa State Army (UWSA), a much larger force allied to the Kokang, have been repositioned to Wa-controlled territory.

The Irrawaddy was unable to verify this information with other independent sources.

The sudden end to 0A
The sudden end to the fighting came a day after Kokang and UWSA troops ambushed a convoy of Burmese army vehicles in Kokang territory. According to unconfirmed reports, more than a dozen Burmese soldiers were killed in the attack.

On Thursday, a 20-year ceasefire between the Burmese army and the armed ethnic groups broke down after government forces moved to occupy Kokang territory. Since then, the Burmese army has sent reinforcements into the area from Light Infantry Divisions 33 and 99.

The crisis began on Monday, when tens of thousands of refugees, including Chinese businessmen, started flooding across the border into China from Laogai, a town in Kokang territory. Cross-border trade in Laogai has since come to a standstill and trading at other border checkpoints has decreased, say sources in the area.

The rapidly deteriorating situation caused consternation in Beijing, which has long had close relations with both sides in the conflict. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said China hoped the Burmese junta would deal with the situation properly and ensure stability along the border and protect Chinese citizens in Burma.

“China is following the situation closely and has expressed concern to Myanmar [Burma],” said Jiang.

Some observers said that junta head Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s decision to send troops into Kokang territory despite China’s concerns showed his determination to demonstrate that he will not be constrained by Beijing.

“The Burmese junta doesn’t care what anybody thinks, so I don’t think the generals are thinking about China’s response,” said Chan Tun, a former Burmese ambassador to China.

But while Naypyidaw showed little concern about the consequences of renewed fighting in the area, Beijing couldn’t ignore the worsening situation, as Chinese living near the border expressed outrage at the Burmese military’s actions.

“I feel upset with the Burmese government. The Kokang people have Chinese blood. And in China, many people are so angry that they are urging the Chinese government to send troops to help the Kokang,” said a Chinese journalist who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Although Beijing appears to have defused the potentially explosive situation for the time being, it remains to be seen if fighting will resume between the Burmese and the Wa, who command a much larger military force uch larger military force than the Kokang.

The current conflict stems from the refusal of ethnic ceasefire groups, including Kokang, Wa, Kachin and Shan militias, to transform themselves into border security forces under Burmese military command.

The 20,000-strong UWSA presents the greatest obstacle to Burmese ambitions to pacify the country’s borders after six decades of civil conflict. Although they were among the first ethnic groups to sign a ceasefire agreement with the current regime in 1989, they have also been the most resistant to any effort to weaken their hold over their territory.

In Rangoon, news of the clashes in the country’s north has revived memories of the insurgencies that wracked the region for decades.

“People here are talking about it at teashops. They are saying that this is the return of civil war,” said an editor of a private weekly journal in Rangoon.

Meanwhile, Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), called for a peaceful resolution of the ongoing conflict in northern Burma.

“We want the junta to resolve the issue in a peaceful way with ethnic groups,” NLD spokesman Han Thar Myint told The Irrawaddy on Saturday. “The cause of the conflict is the Burmese regime’s failure to resolve problems in the country politically.”

Cambodia Wants Closer Relationship With Next Japanese PM

2009-08-30T16:58:00.000+07:00

Written by DAP NEWS

Cambodian-japanese cooperation will increase in all fields and a closer relationship with newly the elected Japanese Prime Minister will help ties “become more developed and better than before,” a Foreign Affair and International Cooperation spokesman told DAP News Cambodia on Friday.

A general election will be held in Japan on August 30 as the Liberal Democratic Party (CDP) leader, Taro Aso, is unpopular among voters having led Japanese into one of the worst economic crises in living memory. According to a survey in Japan, opposition party leader, Yukio Hatoyama, of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is expected to be voted in as the next PM.
“Cambodia’s relationship with Japan will not be changed whoever will be the next Prime Minister,” said Kuy Koung.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman said that world leaders are promoting globalization so that all fields of cooperation among Cambodia and Japan, especially assistance and aid, will be not be changed, Kuy Koung reiterated.
Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), on Friday claimed to be too busy to give comment.
Hatoyam, a founder of the DPJ who would be a senior minister in any future government, emphasized the need for political and economic integration with East Asia, especially with China, and warned that, under a DPJ government, Japan would be as likely to criticize the US as to support it. He rejected the habit of past LDP government of virtually worship the US in the belief that everything will be all right if Japan does whatever the US does, according to Japanese local news agency.
Yukio Hatoyama has called for a single Asian currency to strengthen the region´s economic and political ties. A single currency would help Asia fend off the impact of any future global economic crises and also reduce political confrontation in the region, his saying quoted by article in monthly magazine. Japanese government has donated a great deal of aid and support to Cambodian government aiming at reducing poverty in Cambodia as the government’s core policy.
Japan on August 13, 2009 provided US$72 million in concessionary loans to develop Cambodia’s Sihanoukville port to expand its capacity.
“The fund is to improve the capacity of Sihanoukville port, the only international deep sea port in Cambodia, by constructing multipurpose terminals including a bulk terminal and oil supply base, and developing infrastructure related to the terminal at the port,” Hor Namhong, deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation told reporters. The minister signed the exchange note with Shinohara Katsuhiro, Japanese Ambassador to Cambodia, with the presence of Prime Minister Hun Sen.
It will also help contribute to industrial development and economic growth in Cambodia. And it is the third time that Japan has helped Sihanoukville port since 1999 aimed at improving handling capacity of containerized cargos, Namhong said.
Japan also provided about US$10 million non-project grant aid for promotion of economic and social development efforts in Cambodia, Hor said, adding that since 1993, under the type of grant aid, Japan has extended to Cambodia a total amount of US$187 million.

Electric Crematorium Online

2009-08-30T16:55:00.000+07:00

Written by DAP NEWS

Cambodia’s newly-constructed electric crematorium will soon open to replace the wood burning crematorium located in Resey Sanh pagoda, Preysor commune, Dongkor district, Phnom Penh, according to the Phnom Penh Governor on Thursday.

“This news electronic crematorium cost US$500,000 and will much reduce environmental affects by replacing burning by wood,” Kep Chuktema (First smiling man in picture) told reporters on Thursday.
“This cremation will serve all class of citizens and we do not charge poor people. We don’t force to those who do not want to use this crematorium, but it shows the attention of the Phnom Penh authorities.”
The governor dismissed criticisms that the site is too far from the city centre.
High ranking officials and the rich who wish to be buried at Wat Unaloum and Wat Langka could continue to use these city-center sites, he said. “They have a full right to choose; it is their decision,” he confirmed.
Both the crematoriums at Wat Unaloum and Wat Langka have been demolished, as will other crematoria around the capital.

Wife found her husband after he went missing for 20 days

2009-08-30T16:35:00.000+07:00

A woman found her husband, 20 days after he went missing. But when she found him, instead of a scream of joy, she screamed in anger causing panic and curiosity among passersby.

The woman standing in front of her husband's car to block him from driving off. Source: Deum Ampil newspaper Reported in English by Khmerization

A 45 year old man went missing for 20 days with his luxury Lexus at a time when one of his children was very sick and when his wife went to do business in Siem Reap. After the man failed to return home, the wife cut short her trip and returned to look for him across Phnom Penh City.

At 11:40 pm today (30th), passersby and shoppers were alerted by a loud scream. They looked toward to the scream and saw a lone woman standing in front of a luxury 4-wheel drive Lexus. Fearing that she was hit by the luxury Lexus, they all ran to investigate. But the woman was fine. She was not hit by the car, instead she screamed because her 'lost' husband was driving his luxury Lexus with a young beautiful girl by his side.

The police was called. At the police station, the alleged wife accused the young girl of being her husband's mistress. The husband responded that the girl is merely a relative. The young girl also concurred the man's story. But the wife responded "if she is your relative, how come I never knew her?" The man and the young girl were dumbfounded.

Now, it is the turn to verify if the woman is really the real wife of the man as the man did not admit either way whether she is his wife or not. In order to prove that she is his real wife, she called all her children to come to the police station to prove it.

After a long talk, the parties reached a reconciliation and the husband agreed to return home leaving a teary young mistress distraught.

The woman said when she went to Siem Reap she got a call from a neighbour that her husband was going out with a young girl everyday. As a result, she cut short her trip to Siem Reap to return home to confront him and caught him red-handed with his young beautiful mistress by his side in their luxury Lexus.

Mr. You Hok Sim, commander of Monorom Police Station, confirmed the story to Deum Ampil. "Yes, there is a case happening as described above, but when the police called them to a round table discussion, they were reconciled and have now returned back home happily together."

According to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity, the unnamed man is a senior anti-drug trafficking police officer and is also a senior advisor to the leader of the Cambodian parliament (Mr. Heng Samrin's adivsor?).

500 soldiers from Division 11 withdrawn from Preah Vihear

2009-08-30T16:32:00.001+07:00

Source: Khmer Sthapana newspaper
Reported in English by Khmerization

Cambodia had unilaterally begun to withdraw troops from the disputed borders with Thailand under order from Prime Minister Hun Sen to cut troops by 50% from the disputed border areas.

A convoy of military trucks transporting soldierrucks transporting soldiers fks transporting soldiers from Division 11 passing through Phnom Penh to Takeo on 28th August.

At 4 am on 28th August, 500 troops from Division 11 had been withdrawn from Preah Vihear in a convoy of 36 American-made military trucks to return back to their barracks in Takeo.

Gen. Chea Drara, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Cambodian Armed Forces in charge of the Preah Vihear operations, said these 500 soldiers are the first batch to be withdrawn from the borders.

Prime Minister Hun Sen unilaterally ordered the troops withdrawals because he needs the troops to help Cambodian farmers who face the drought and also because the border situations have eased significantly since 25th August.

Being so used to be hand-fed by the CPP for free, Kampuchea Thmei couldn’t fathom why someone would pay to buy their own food to listen to Mu Sochua

2009-08-30T16:28:00.000+07:00

$20 fee to meet with Mrs. Mu Sochua
Kampuchea Thmei (Pro-CPP) newspaper
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

[KI-Media note: It is customary in democratic countries where a large number of Cambodians are currently living, that participants who attend meetings with Cambodia politicians help pay for their own food and other miscellaneous cost to organize these meetings. This is quite contrary to Cambodia where, corrupt politicians usually pay for the public to come to listen to them. Generally, due to poverty, Cambodians are enticed to come and listen to propaganda speeches organized by CPP candidates in exchange for one or two kilos of rice, one krama (towel) and one sarong. In return, these poor Cambodian constituents are also forced to pledge their vote to these vote-buying CPP candidates.]

SRP MP Mu Sochua (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

An announcement indicates that each participant must pay $20 to participate in a meeting and a session to demand freedom organized in Philadelphia, USA.

Kampuchea Thmei received unbelievable news that Mrs. Mu Sochua plan to meet with member in the US, and members who plan to attend the meeting with Mrs. Mu Sochua are frankly told that they must each pay $20. According to an announcement posted on the SRP website, SRP members in the US plan to organize a meeting session on 05 September 2009 at the Grand King Buffet, Philadelphia, USA, from 6PM to 9PM.

According to this announcement, participants to this even must each pay a contribution of $20. The event, labeled: a ceremony to demand freedom and justice, will include the participation of SRP MP Mu Sochua.

The announcement indicates also that Mrs. Mu Sochua, the SRP MP for Kampot province, is a courageous Cambodia woman who stood up against injustice to defend women’s rights in Cambodia – rights that were looked down and violated under the threat of the Cambodian government.

The announcement also indicated that participants to the event must prepare their questions to ask them directly to Mrs. Mu Sochua according to their personal views.

SRP MP Mu Sochua left Cambodia after the Phnom Penh municipal court decided that she lost her case against Hun Xen’s defamation lawsuit. The court ordered her to pay a fine of 16.5 million ($4,125). Her departure overseas took place at the same time as the Appeal court summoned her in for clarification. However, Mrs. Mu Sochua asked for a delay in this summon until after 20 September 2009, and she claimed that she was busy with taking care of her health overseas.

Following her departure, several local news media reported that SRP MP Yim Sovann, SRP spokesman, claimed that Mrs. Mu Sochua is seeking to set up a fund in Canada, the USA, etc… to help the victims of the judicial system in Cambodia.

The announcement indicates that the meeting with Mrs. Mu Sochua will take place on 05 September 2009 in Philadelphia, USA.

Regarding this announcement, a number of analysts claimed that it a merely a meeting to collect funds to conduct politics in Cambodia, and involvement in politics through these minor fundraisings, these analysts do not believe that it will lead to success.

Duch’s trial: black day for victims’ participation

2009-08-30T15:51:00.000+07:00

By Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set

The role of civil parties is one of the main issues at stake in Duch’s trial, which enshrines their first participation in a jurisdiction with international support established to judge crimes against humanity. However, this characteristic of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal – often presented as an important progress – was severely curbed on Thursday August 27th,

Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 27/08/2009: The hands of François Roux, Alain Werner, Ty Srinna, Nil Nonn, Jean-Marc Lavergne, Hong Kim Suon, Vincent de Wilde and Kar Savuth during the debate on the admission of civil parties on Day 66 in Duch’s trial at the ECCC  (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum)

following a debate abruptly opened by the Trial Chamber and which it quickly ruled on by taking a brutal decision that partially closes the victims’ participation to the trial. The Chamber’s move occurred ten days before the plenary session – when judges revise and amend, if necessary, the directions and Internal Rules – and may hint at the possible adoption then of potentially critical changes regarding the place of victims in the next trials before the ECCC. Often criticised for failing to measure up to their mission and frequently overstepping their role, the civil party lawyers appeared to try and make up for a failing prosecution office. For its part, the Chamber rarely sought to channel these abuses or drifts and did not use its full authority to ensure a strict direction of the hearings. Thursday/ the hearings. Thursday, while there was likely only a few days of hearings left, the Chamber allowed itself to invent a new rule of the game. On the substance, this turning point stirred consternation, not only among civil parties, but also the prosecution and the defence, whilst among the judges, judge Lavergne registered a dissenting opinion for the first time.

Unconvincing Salesman Par Excellence

2009-08-30T15:49:00.000+07:00

Alternatives Watch – 30viii09
Op-Ed by Ung Bun Ang
Originally posted online

Council for Development of Cambodia secretary-general Sok Chenda may find it most difficult to attract foreign investments. He is confident, enthusiastic, and optimistic, which are necessary attributes for the task. However, he may need to be more. Reporter Roger Mitten, who conducted and published an insight interview with Sok Chenda, concludes he is only half convinced after encountering the man he dubs the salesman par excellence.

Sok Chenda Sophea

There are reasons why the salesman par excellence is not fully convincing. He claims all businessmen are interested only in profit, “not physical incentives, the political regime, not even religion – Ramadan or not, they don’t care”. His best selling point is simply that there is money to be made in Cambodia. He says there are fiscal incentives, total foreign ownership, and many untouched sectors to choose, offering “unique” opportunity foreign investors cannot find elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the sale pitch is only half truth. Globalised Cambodia, of which Sok Chenda is proud, also means investors do have access to other truth the salesman par excellence would prefer buried. Many long term investors – the type that Sok Chenda claims like growing up with the host country – take into account in their investment decisions those Sok Chenda dismisses as irrelevant, plus much more.

One of them is the high cost of doing business in Cambodia, which Sok Chenda acknowledges in particular for electricity, telecommunication, and transportation sectors. The government’s effort to reduce the electricity costs by buying it from Vietnam is commercially sensible at least in the short run, but this will not address a structural defect that keeps the cost high – corruption.

Sok Chenda shows the least concern about the impact of corruption. He maintains as long as there is a profit at the end businessmen do not mind making some payment they “should not really have to make”. He does not seem to realise these unnecessary payments push the business cost up, requiring the businessmen to pass them onto consumers in the form of higher prices to retain their profit. This in turn keeps away other businessmen whom Sok Chenda tries to entice. It is a vicious cycle that could be broken only by bringing corruption under control.

However, the corruption is likely to persist, if not prospering. Sok Chenda trivialises corruption by claiming the number one in transparency Singapore still has “people who are corrupt and who cheat the tax department”. He fails to distinguish between corruption and impunity for corruption when asserting, “Singapore has policemen and jails for a reason [corruption]”. It would be hard pressed for him to come up with any case where a Cambodian high profile official is convicted and jailed for corruptiod and jailed for corruption. Incidentally, Sok Chenda – he says he ends the interview so that he can pick up his daughter at the British School – may have difficulty in justifying the school fee with his official meagre income.

Thus, the salesman par excellence appears to be an optimist who would say, “See, I am not injured yet” while falling from Eiffel Tower.

Ung Bun Ang

Quotable Quote:
“The latest definition of an optimist is one who fills up his crossword puzzle in ink.” - Clement King Shorter (1857–1926), British journalist and literary critic. Observer.

Let Freedom Ring For Khmer-Krom

2009-08-30T15:45:00.000+07:00

By Somalin Thach
Khmer Krom Youth Quarterly Vol. 9

I would like to say THANK YOU to our youths who attended the KKFYC 3rd World Conference in Philly for your great support and precious time from the very bottom of my heart. Also THANK YOU to the elders for their warm support with places for us to stay and food for us to eat while we were on our mission at the UNPFII.

Just like our people in our homeland facing oppression due to restrictions of the Vietnamese Government, we here are facing depression due to economic crisis. Everyone is busy trying to make ends meet and trying to over come daily challenges life have set forth for us. I hope these challenges can only bend our feelings and not break our feelings in support of our voiceless people back home in Kampuchea-Krom.

I have learned a lot from just participating in the UNPFII this year alone. I learn that there are still great fears that linger around people outside and inside Kampuchea-Krom. Why fear when we are only doing the things that are right? We only ask for what the Vietnamese Government signed up to become a member of the UN back in 1977 and promised to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. We just want to provide recommendations to help the Vietnamese Government achieve their goals.

On May 28, 2009 at the UNPFII, my tears unexpectedly shed in the middle of delivering the Future Work speech to the UN delegates. Can anyone answer why? You don’t need to tell me I had already guessed. Your tears would have dropped if you were in my position at that time delivering the truthful speech to the UN and to the Vietnamese Government. What you need to answer now is: What can we do and how can we help to save our identity from diminishing?

It is a fact that we can not open a Khmer school in Kampuchea-Krom. It is a fact that we can not practice our religion like our ancestors did in Kampuchea-Krom. It is a fact that we can not practice our culture. It is NOT a fact that we are not intelligent or a dunce like the Vietnamese government had assumed; it is because we are not given the opportunity to grow, to blossom and to challenge our minds.

In support of our voiceless people in Kampuchea-Krom especially for the women and youths, we need to join hands with KKF and KKFYC to help making our dreams a reality. To merge out of the oppressed condition we are forced to hold within and break free like many other Indigenous peoples around the world. We deserve our rights. We deserve equality. We are the Indigenous Peoples of the Mekong Delta region. We are the Khmer-Krom people of Kampuchea-Krom. We want to be free! Let Freedom ring for Khmer-Krom!

Ronaldo in winning start for Real

2009-08-30T11:32:00.000+07:00

Former Man Utd star Ronaldo celebrates netting a spot kick

Cristiano Ronaldo scored on his La Liga debut for Real Madrid in a 3-2 victory against Deportivo La Coruna.

The £80m Portuguese - one of eight summer 'galactico' recruits - netted the second goal, but Real had to rely on Lassana Diarra for the winner.

Raul put Real ahead while Riki equalised for Deportivo, before Ronaldo drilled home a 35th-minute penalty after Raul was fouled by Aranzubia.

Juan Carlos Valeron levelled, only for Diarra to fire home on the hour.

"We created a lot of chances, but the most important thing was to achieve the victory," said £65m signing Kaka. "It wasn't an easy game."

Usain Bolt, fresh from his record-breaking exploits in the 100m and 200m at the athletics World Championships, was presented to the Bernabeu crowd prior to kick-off and launched president Florentino Perez's latest 'galactico' era with the ceremonial first kick.

Perez spent about 250m euros bringing in the likes of Ronaldo, Kaka, Karim Benzema and Xabi Alonso to the Spanish capital, and they were all included in new coach Manuel Pellegrini's starting lineup.

Perez is keen to dislodge archrival Barcelona from the pinnacle of European football after the Catalan club became the first Spanish team to win the treble - the Champions League, La Liga and Copa del Rey - in a season.

Although Real looked disjointed in the early stages, they took a 26th-minute lead when veteran Raul finished easily after Karim Benzema's shot was deflected onto the near post by Daniel Aranzubia.

Ronaldo should have made it 2-0 three minutes later but his header from fellow debutant Xabi Alonso's free-kick went over the bar.

Deportivo equalised from an almost identical situation, when Juca launched a free-kick into the box and Riki, the former Madrid youth-team player, got in between two defenders to direct a header past Iker Casillas from seven yards.

The equaliser fired Real into action and the spotlight was on Ronaldo when Raul had been sent sprawling by Aranzubia.

The Fifa World Player of the Year, Real Madrid's record signing, showed no signs of nerves as he drove his spot-kick just inside the post.

Real missed a few chances and were punished for their profligacy when, a minute after the break, Deportivo equalised again.

Andres Guardado's cross to the edge of the box found Valeron unmarked and the veteran had sufficient time to control the ball and fire past Casillas.

Ironically, given the publicity surrounding the high-profile signings this summer, Pellegrini had former Portsmouth player Diarra to thank for getting Real off to a winning start.

The midfielder took aim with a low 25-yard shot which crept inside the far post and handed Pellegrini's men the points as they seek to challenge Barcelona.

Johnston arrives with global pedigree

2009-08-30T11:25:00.000+07:00

Alastair Johnston has taken over the chairman's role at Ibrox

With Sir David Murray stepping down as Rangers chairman for the second time, Alastair Johnston has become the new man at the Ibrox helm.

But, with Murray remaining as the club's majority shareholder, Johnston's role will extend primarily to the everyday running of the club, rather than the investment side of the business, which was Murray's raison d'etre for much of his time in the chairman's seat.

Murray briefly relinquished the role between 2002 and 2004, during which time John McLelland assumed the chairman's title while his predecessor maintained the role of honorary Rangers chairman.

However, on this occasion, there is more of an air of finality to Murray's departure with it being described more as 'retirement' from the role. Furthermore, Murray has iterated that he is unlikely to ever return to the chair.

So Johnston has the opportunity to make the role his own during a turbulent time for ring a turbulent time for a club that posted a £3.9m loss and debts of around £25m in their annual accounts earlier this year.

An accountancy graduate from the University of Strathclyde, Johnston has had a near 40-year association with IMG, an international talent agency and production company that specialises in televised sport and endorsement.

Alastair's got far greater global reach in the sporting world than I've ever had

Sir David Murray

Johnston has served as chief operating officer of Arnold Palmer Enterprises and has also been heavily involved in IMG's worldwide golf interests.

Currently, Johnston is vice-chairman of IMG and splits his time between Florida and his homeland.

His association with Rangers began in 2004, when he joined the club's board of directors.

"I consider it a great honour to be appointed chairman of the club and can say to our supporters that the board, management and staff will spare no effort in striving to ensure that Rangers Football Club enjoys a successful future," Johnston said.

Murray added: "I am delighted that Alastair Johnston has accepted the chairmanship. He is an internationally renowned and respected businessman and will be an excellent servant to the club."

It is perhaps no surprise that Rangers have installed someone of Johnston's international background in the role of chairman.

Ever-frustrated by the limitations of thd by the limitations of the Scottish market, the Old Firm have long tried to promote their brands overseas.

It has borne fruit for Celtic, with the signings of Shunsuke Nakamura and Koki Mizuno bolstering the club's profile in Japan, where they also have a permanent scouting network.

"We are very fortunate to have Alastair," Murray told BBC Scotland on the day he announced he was stepping down.

"He's got far greater global reach in the sporting world than I've ever had, having managed Arnold Palmer for most of his career.

"He represents IMG with the R&A and Wimbledon and bigger sporting events

"He brings a completely different dimension and experience, which will be very beneficial. And, having been on board for five years, he understands the workings of the football club."

Murray has, for some time, been keen to sell his stake in Rangers and Johnston may play a big part in any proposed takeover.

But, in the meantime, Murray has outlined what is likely to be Johnston's mantra as the club look to reduce debt and boost profits.

"If Rangers make money, it'll have money to spend, it has to live within its means," said the entrepreneur.

"It's like every other business in the United Kingdom.

"Walter Smith made it quite clear at the agm last year that we were going to work with 20 senior players and youth. I made that clear in January. I believe that that is the best way forward for the club.

"We've won the league, we've won the Scottish Cup, we've kept our best players and I think things are better than people would like to perceive."

3 homes destroyed, many more threatened by Ca fire

2009-08-30T11:22:00.003+07:00

LOS ANGELES – Authorities say a wildfire north of Los Angeles has destroyed at least three homes and is threatening thousands more.

Captain Mike Dietrich — the incident commander for the U.S. Forest Service — said at a news conference Saturday night that the fire was "the perfect storm of fuels, weather and topography coming together" and called the situation "very treacherous."

He says firefighters have discovered three burned homes in remote sections of the Angeles National Forest and are looking for more that may have been destroyed.

The fire near the mountain communities of La Canada Flintridge and Altadena had tripled in size Saturday to more than 31 square miles, sent huge billows of smoke over Los Angeles and left three people injured.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check baKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A growing wildfire sending massive billows of smoke into the sky north of Los Angeles nearly tripled in size Saturday, injuring three residents, burning a small number of homes, knocking out power to many more and prompting thousands of evacuations in a number of mountain communities.

Mandatory evacuations were extended Saturday into neighborhoods in the canyons on the northwestern edge of Altadena, Glendale, Pasadena, La Crescenta and Big Tujunga Canyon, Forest Service spokesman Bruce Quintelier said.

The flames crept lower down the slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains despite winds blowing predominantly in the other direction, in the other direction, in the other direction, threatening more than 2,000 homes in the La Canada Flintridge area.

A few homes and about 25 recreational cabins have burned but exact numbers were not immediately available, said Forest Service spokesman Gabriel Alvarez.

An evacuation center was set up at La Canada High School and Jackson Elementary School in Altadena.

The fire was the largest and most dangerous of several burning around southern and central California and in Yosemite National Park.

Flames knocked out power to at least 164 residences in La Canada Flintridge Saturday afternoon, according to Southern California Edison. Repair crews were ordered to stay out of the area because of fire danger.

More than 31 square miles of dry forest was scorched by the fire, which continued to move out in all directions, the most active flanks to the north, deeper into the forest, and east, Quintelier said. The blaze was only 5 percent contained.

At least three residents of Big Tujunga Canyon were burned and airlifted to local hospitals, Quintelier said. The details of their injuries were unknown.

Air crews waged a fierce late afternoon battle against the southeast corner of the fire, burning dangerously close to canyon homes. Spotter planes with tankers on their tails dove well below ridge lines to lay bright orange retardant then pulled up dramatically over neighborhoods, and giant sky crane helicopters swooped in to unleash showers on the biggest flareups.

The amount of smoke was hampering air operations in some areas, officials said.

"It's difficult for water-dropping aircraft to get in there, but they're still trying," Forest Service spokeswoman Jessica Luna said.

The fire was burning in steep wooded hills adjacent to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in northern Pasadena. Nearby, Dawn James, 39, a physical therapist, and friend Leah Evans, 39, watched flames roil on the mountainsides from an equestrian park where they had brought two horses from their stables. James lives in the area and her husband stayed up at the house while she watched the horses.

"We always knew it could come. We knew it was a possibility," James said.

Evans said she watched the flames spread as she spent the night in her pickup truck near her horses.

"Through the night, you kind of watch it diminish, and then flare up," said Evans. "It's just amazing to watch, kind of unbelievable."

In La Vina, a gated community of luxury homes in the Altadena area, a small group of residents stood at the end of a cul-de-sac on the lip of a canyon and watched aircraft battle flames trying to cross the ridge on the far side.

At one point, the flying circus of relatively small propellor-driven tankers gave way to the sight of a giant DC-10 jumbo jet unleashing0 a rain of red retardant.

"We see a drop, we give a big cheer," said Gary Blackwood, who works on telescope technology at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We've watched it now for two days hop one ridge at a time and now it's like we're the next ridge."

A major goal was to keep the fire from spreading up Mount Wilson, where many of the region's broadcast and communications antennas and the historic Mount Wilson Observatory are located, officials said.

A thick layer of smoke hovered over the Los Angeles Basin and San Fernando Valley, and officials issued a smoke advisory for communities near the fire. Residents were urged to avoid exertion and seek air-conditioned shelter.

A second fire in the Angeles National Forest was burning several miles to the east in a canyon above the city of Azusa. The 3.4-square-mile blaze, which started Tuesday afternoon, was 85 percent contained Saturday. No homes were threatened, and full containment was expected by Monday.

A wildfire on the Palos Verdes Peninsula on the south Los Angeles County coast was 100 percent contained Saturday afternoon, according to county fire officials. As many as 1,500 people were forced to flee at the height of the fire Thursday night. Six homes received minor exterior damage, but the only structures destroyed were an outbuilding and gazebo. No injuries were reported.

Southeast of Los Angeles in Riverside County, a 3 1/2-square-mile fire in a rural area of the San Bernardino National Forest was 10 percent contained.

Crews aided by aircraft were working to build a line around the fire, which was burning in steep, rocky terrain in Beeb Canyon, according to Forest Service spokeswoman Norma Bailey. No structures were threatened. Temperatures were expected to top 100 degrees in the region, but winds remained light.

To the north, in the state's coastal midsection, a 9.4-square-mile fire threatening Pinnacles National Monument kept 100 homes under evacuation orders near the Monterey County town of Soledad. The blaze, 60 percent contained, was started by agricultural fireworks used to scare animals away from crops. The fire destroyed one home.

In the southern part of Monterey County, firefighters had 100 percent containment of a 5 1/4-square-mile fire that had threatened 20 ranch homes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Friday in Los Angeles and Monterey counties.

"It's fire season, clearly," he said. "There's tremendous amount of heat all over the state."

A state of emergency was declared Saturday for Mariposa County, where a nearly 5.5-square-mile fire burned in Yosemite National Park. The blaze was 30 percent contained, park officials said. No structures were threatened.

Park officials closed a campground and a portion of Highway 120, anticipating that the fire would spread north toward Tioga Road, the highest elevation route through the Sierra. The number of firefighters was expected to double over the weekend to 1,000.

The Mariposa County Sheriff's Office ordered guests and staff at the Yosemite View Lodge, in the town of El Portal just outside the park's western gate, to evacuate Friday due to the fire.

The evacuation was broadened later Friday to include the eastern part of El Portal, with about 100 residents leaving their homes, said Brad Aborn, chairman of Mariposa's Board of Supervisors. He said the remainder of the town, an estimated 75 people, were evacuated Saturday morning.

People without lodging were offered beds in a shelter in Mariposa staffed by the Red Cross.

"I went over and visited. ... Only one spent the night," Aborn said. "They're probably staying with friends."

Police review cases for connections to kidnap case

2009-08-30T11:20:00.001+07:00

ANTIOCH, Calif. – Police on Saturday searched the home of a California couple charged with kidnapping a little girl 18 years ago looking for evidence linking them to other open cases in the area, including the unsolved murders of prostitutes.

The investigations are "preliminary," said Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department, east of San Francisco Bay. He declined to discuss what cases were being reviewed.

Police in Pittsburg are investigating whether Phillip Garrido, whose home is in nearby Antioch, is linked to several unsolved murders of prostitutes in the early 1990s. Antioch police are also looking into unsolved cases but declined further details.

About a dozen agents scoured the modest house and the acre of land it sat on Saturday afternoon as the temperature soared into triple digits.

Residents on the once-quiet street complained about the media circus that has engulfed their working class neighborhood since the arrest of Phillip and Nancy Garrido on Wednesday. Television trucks were parked on both sides of the street and about a dozen journalists paced in front of the home, which was cordoned with yellow, crime-scene tape.

Phillip and Nancy Garrido are in jail, suspected of abducting Dugard 18 years ago and subjecting her to nearly a lifetime of torment in a squalid backyard compound. They pleaded not guilty Friday to a total of 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment.

Authorities say Jaycee Lee Dugard, the little girl abducted in 1991 who is now 29, has had two daughters with Garrido.

Neighbors in Antioch had complained to law enfohad complained to law enforcement that a psychotic sex addict was in their midst, alarmed that Phillip Garrido was housing young girls in backyard tents. A deputy showed up to investigate, but never went beyond the front porch.

Probation officers showed up at the home, too, but had no inkling that his backyard was actually a labyrinth of tents, sheds and buildings that were Dugard's prison. They didn't even know he had children on the premises.

Garrido wore a GPS-linked ankle bracelet that tracked his every movement, the result of earlier sex-crime convictions in Nevada.

Outrage came as the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department acknowledged it missed an opportunity to arrest Garrido in 2006 after the neighbor's complaint about children living in the yard.

"I cannot change the course of events but we are beating ourselves up over this and continue to do so," Sheriff Warren E. Rupf said Friday.

"We should have been more inquisitive, more curious and turned over a rock or two."

Garrido gave a rambling, sometimes incoherent phone interview to KCRA-TV from the county jail Thursday, saying he didn't admit the alleged kidnapping to investigators and that he had turned his life around since the birth of his first daughter 15 years ago.

Garrido came under suspicion in the unsolved murders of several prostitutes in the 1990s, raising the prospect he was a serial killer as well. Several of the women's bodies — the exact number is not known — were dumped near an industrial park where Garrido worked during the 1990s.

Dugard, now 29, was reunited with her mother, sister and another relative Thursday. She is said to be in good health, but feeling guilty about developing a bond with Garrido, said her stepfather Carl Probyn. Her two children, 11 and 15, remain with her.

"Jaycee has strong feelings with this guy. She really feels it's almost like a marriage," said Probyn, who was there when little Jaycee was snatched from a bus stop in 1991 and has been in contact with her mother since they found out the girl was alive.

"Hi, mom, I have babies," was Dugard's first words to her mother when they were reunited Thursday, Probyn said, adding it appears she never told them she was kidnapped by their father.

She is now free thanks in large part to two quick-thinking police employees at the University of California, Berkeley. Garrido was on campus with his two daughters earlier this week saying he wanted to hold some sort of religious event.

Garrido seemed incoherent and mentally unstable, and the girls wore drab-colored dresses, were unusually subdued and had an unnaturally pale complexion, said Lisa Campbell, a special-events unit manager with UC Berkeley's police department.

Garrido's parole officer was alerted. On Wednesday, Garrido arrived at the probation officer's building with his wife, the two girls and a woman who initially identified herself as Allissa — who was in fact Dugard. Investigators said Garrido confessed to the kidnapping.

Authorities say they do not yet know whether Dugard ever tried to escape or alert anyone of her whereabouts. During her period of captivity Garrido did a stint behind bars.

After his release, Garrido met with his parole agent several times each month and was subject to routine surprise home visits and random drug and alcohol tests, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Gordon Hinkle said. The last unannounced visit by a team of local police agencies was conducted in July 2008.

"There was never any indication to my knowledge that there was any sign of children living there," Hinkle said.

The heavily wooded Antioch compound was arranged so that people could not view what was happening, and one of the buildings was soundproofed.

Garrido was required to register as a sex offender because he was convicted in 1977 of kidnapping a 25-year-old woman from parking lot in South Lake Tahoe, the same town Jaycee Dugard lived in when she was kidnapped.

Kennedy laid to rest at Arlington, beside brothers

2009-08-30T11:18:00.000+07:00

WASHINGTON – Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was laid to rest Saturday night alongside slain brothers John and Robert on hallowed ground at Arlington National Cemetery, celebrated for "the dream he kept alive" across the decades since their deaths.

Crowds lined the streets of two cities on a day that marked the end of an American political era — outside Kennedy's funeral in rainy Boston where he was eulogized by President Barack Obama, and later in the day in humid, late-summer Washington.

With flags over the Capitol flying at half-staff, his hearse stopped outside the Senate where he served for 47 years. His widow, Vicki, embraced former staff members in the crowd.

Later, at a graveside enveloped in deepening darkness, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick offered sympathies to Kennedy relatives and "an extended family that must probably include most of America."

A squad of seven riflemen fired three volleys in a traditional military funeral ritual, and a bugler sounded taps. Lightning flickered across the sky.

Hours earlier, Obama delivered the eulogy in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Boston, packed with row upon row of mourners — including former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

"He was given a gift of time that his brothers were not. And he used that time to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow," Obama said in remarks that also gently made mention of Kennedy's "personal failings and setbacks."

As a member of the Senate, Kennedy was a "veritable force of nature," the president said. But more than that, he was the "baby of the family who became itf the family who became itf the family who became its patriarch, the restless dreamer who became its rock."

Those left behind to mourn "grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good he did, the dream he kept alive" Obama said.

One of Kennedy's sons, Patrick, wept quietly as another, Teddy Jr., spoke from the pulpit. Teddy Jr. recalled the day years ago, shortly after losing a leg to cancer, that he slipped walking up an icy driveway as he headed out to go sledding. "I started to cry and I said, `I'll never be able to climb up that hill.'"

"And he lifted me up in his strong, gentle arms and said something I will never forget. He said, `I know you can do it. There is nothing that you can't do.'"

Kennedy's freshly excavated gravesite was on a gently sloping Virginia hillside, flanked by a pair of maple trees. His brother Robert, killed in 1968 while running for president, lies 100 feet away. It is another 100 feet to the eternal flame that has burned since 1963 for John F. Kennedy, president when he was assassinated.

The youngest brother died Tuesday at 77, more than a year after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. An oak cross, painted white, marked the head of his grave, and a flat marble footstone bore the simple inscription, "Edward Moore Kennedy 1932-2009."

McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington, read from a letter from Kennedy to Pope Benedict XVI, hand-delivered earlier this year by Obama.

"I know that I have been an imperfect human being but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path," the dying senator wrote. He wrote the pontiff "with deep humility to ask that you pray for me as my own health declines."

The Vatican responded with a letter that said "his Holiness prays that in the days ahead you may be sustained in faith and hope."

Morning rain beat down steadily as Kennedy's coffin was borne by a military honor guard into the Catholic church, and again when it was brought back out for the flight to Washington and the military cemetery just across the Potomac River from Washington.

In life, the senator had visited the burial ground often to mourn his brothers, killed in their 40s, more than a generation ago, by assassins' bullets.

Hundreds lined nearby sidewalks, ignoring the rain, as the funeral procession passed.

"I said to myself this morning, 'No matter what the weather, I'm going, I don't care if I have to swim," said Lillian Bennett, 59, who added she was a longtime Kennedy supporter and determined to get as close as she could to the invitation-only funeral.

"The Mass of Christian burial weaves together memory and hope," said the Rev. Mark R. Hession, the Kennedy's parish priest in Cape Cod.

There was plenty of both in a two-hour service filled with references to Kennedy's political accomplishments and personal recollections of his private life. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and tenor Placido Domingo provided musical grace notes.

Kennedy's widow, Vicki, his sole surviving sibling, Jean, and Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel, carefully arranged the cloth funeral pall atop the coffin.

Like others, Teddy Jr., touched on his father's legacy.

"He answered Uncle Joe's call to patriotism, Uncle Jack's call to public service and Bobby's determination to seek a newer world. Unlike them, he lived to be a grandfather," he said.

Joseph Kennedy Jr. died in World War II, John F. Kennedy was the nation's 35th president when he was assassinated in 1963 and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was killed five years later as he campaigned for the presidency.

Saturday's events marked the end of four days of public and private mourning meant to emphasize Kennedy's 47 years in the Senate from Massachusetts, his standing as the foremost liberal Democrat of the late 20th century yet a legislator who courted compromise with Republicans, a family man and last heir to a dynasty that began in the years after World War II.

Thousands of mourners filed past his flag-draped coffin earlier in the week when Kennedy lay in repose at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. Republicans and Democrats alike recalled his political career in a bipartisan evening of laughter-filled speechmaking on Friday.

Even the church had special meaning for the family. Kennedy prayed there daily several years ago during his daughter Kara's successful battle with lung cancer.

New Mexico governor urges U.S., Cuba to improve ties

2009-08-30T11:03:00.000+07:00

HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- The United States and Cuba should show some flexibility and take steps to improve relations, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday during a weeklong trade mission to the island nation. "There is a good atmosphere [between the two countries]," he said at a news conference in Havana on Friday. "It is the best atmosphere I've seen in many years." Richardson called for "concrete steps from both sides," but noted a "lack of flexibility in their positions" and reciprocity from the Cuban government.

He also called on the United States to "pay more attention to the Cuba issue, though acknowledged more urgent U.S. priorities like health-care reform have drawn attention away from normalizing relations.

In his first trip to Cuba in 13 years, when he negotiated the release of three political prisoners in 1996, Richardson said he is not in Cuba as a special U.S. envoy.

"My main objective is trade and to improve commercial ties with Cuba," he said, though he acknowledged plans to report recommendations to the Obama administration early next week. Watch Richardson discuss goals for Cuba trip »

Despite the near half-century trade embargo, the U.S. Treasury Department allows U.S. states to sell agricultural, medical and IT products in Cuba on a cash basis.

The governor also called on the Obama administration to ease restrictions of biotechnology products, allow Cubans to travel to the United States for academic and cultural exchanges, and implement the changes to Cuban-American travel and remittances announced in April.

He mentioned a proposal to allow diplomats in either country to move more freely and offered to broker a dialogue between the Cuban government and Cuban-Americans.

"If there's going to be a solution for the normalization of relationship between Cuba and the United States, Cuban-Americans must play a role," he said, noting that any such dialogue would not substitute government-to-government talks.

Richardson -- known for his diplomatic resume, including high-level talks with North Korea, Sudan and Iraq -- met with Cuba's National Assembly president, Ricardo Alarcon, and received a personal letter from former President Fidel Castro.

He mentioned a proposal to allow diplomats in either country to move more freely and offered to broker a dialogue between the Cuban government and Cuban-Americans.

"It was a positive message that I got," he said of the letter.

The former presidential candidate was nominated for Commerce Secretary in the Obama administration, but withdrew amid an investigation over whether CDR Financial Products inappropriately won $1.4 million in state work for New Mexico.

A sister’s special tie with her youngest brother

2009-08-30T11:01:00.001+07:00

By Brian C. Mooney In a life lived mostly out of the spotlight, Jean Kennedy Smith had a close bond with the brother she buried yesterday in Arlington National Cemetery.

Now 81, Kennedy Smith is the last living child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, the final link to an extraordinary constellation of siblings who left an indelible mark on postwar America. Since Edward M. Kennedy’s death Tuesday, Kennedy Smith, along with the senator’s wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, has led the extended Kennedy family in mourning.

“Jean, I know you lost your soul mate,’’ Kennedy’s niece, Caroline, told her at Friday night’s memorial service at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. “All your nieces and nephews are here to help you as best we can.’’

Kennedy Smith was the eighth of nine children; Edward Kennedy was the youngest, born four years later. She introduced him to his first wife, Joan, and, when she was 65, her brother prevailed on President Clinton to name Kennedy Smith ambassador to Ireland.

When their sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver died two weeks before the senator, Kennedy Smith stayed with her brother, whose failing health prevented him from attending the funeral.

“Jean always had a special relationship with Teddy,’’ their mother wrote in her 1974 memoir, “Times to Remember.’’

“They were a pair; they trotted around together; she sometimes admonished him and sometimes scrapped with him but mainly was his valiant friend and big sister,’’ she wrote.��’ she wrote. “She still is, though he is now nearly twice as big as she is.’’

Kennedy Smith worked on the campaigns of her brothers John, Robert, and Edward, and she accompanied President Kennedy on his famous visit to Ireland in 1963, five months before his assassination.

She is best known for her service as ambassador to Ireland, from 1993 to 1998, when she played a significant and controversial role in advancing the cause of peace in Northern Ireland. In 1994, over the objections of the British and members of her own staff, Kennedy Smith strongly urged the State Department to allow a US visit by Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. The IRA later declared a cease-fire, and the visa is viewed as a factor in that decision.

Two years later, however, Kennedy Smith was reprimanded by the secretary of state of the time, Warren Christopher, for retaliating against a pair of subordinates who had objected to granting Adams a visa.

She also raised diplomatic eyebrows by taking Communion in an Anglican church in support of the Irish president, Mary McAleese, who was being criticized for doing the same in an effort to promote religious tolerance.

“There’s no ambiguity about the Kennedys in Ireland, so doors opened for her,’’ said Maurice Mannin�� said Maurice Manning, who was leader of the Seanad, Ireland’s senate, at the time. “She was a very unorthodox ambassador, at times annoying people in government because she had her own agenda, which was essentially to bring Gerry Adams and company in from the cold. She was hugely successful and hugely influential in doing that.’’ Manning, who is now chancellor of the National University of Ireland, said, “There’s a quietness and charm but also a toughness and single-mindedness to Kennedy Smith.’’ She was also, Manning said, “very socially gregarious and gave the best parties of any ambassadors anywhere. People fought to get into her place’’ at Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

As Kennedy Smith prepared to return to the United States, McAleese bestowed on her honorary citizenship in the country that her great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, had left 150 years earlier.

Like her mother, Kennedy Smith was educated at schools run by the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. These included convent schools in the United States and England and her mother’s alma mater, Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y. At Manhattanville, her roommate was Ethel Skakel, whom she introduced to her older brother, Robert. Later, she introduced a younger Manhattanville student, Joan Bennett, to brother Ted, and they were engaged not long after.

Kennedy Smith married Stephen E. Smith, who grew up in Brooklyn in a wealthy family that made a fortune in the tugboat and barge business in New York. Smith, who died of cancer in 1990, was a major behind-the-scenes figure in the Kennedy family, managing political campaigns, the family finances, and the effort to build the Kennedy Library. The couple lived in Washington and New York’s Upper East Side and raised two biological sons and two adopted daughters.

Their second oldest, William Kennedy Smith, a physician whose practice focuses on victims of landmines, was acquitted in 1991 of charges he raped a woman in Palm Beach, Fla., after a night of drinking with his uncle Ted and cousin Patrick Kennedy.

While her sister Eunice won acclaim for establishing and promoting the Special Olympics, which has changed perceptions of the mentally challenged, Kennedy Smith in 1974 established VSA Arts, which promotes learning and education through the arts for people with disabilities in more than 50 countries. In 1993, she co-wrote with George Plympton “Chronicles of Courage: Very Special Artists.’’

Besides VSA, she has promoted and raised funds for causes and philanthropies ranging from international peace to Irish immigration.

Tally in Afghanistan Shows Karzai Lead Widening

2009-08-30T10:59:00.000+07:00

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — President Hamid Karzai widened his lead in Afghan elections as new vote tallies were released Saturday, inching closer to the 50 percent threshold of votes he needs to avoid a runoff.With ballots counted from about a third of the country’s polling stations, election authorities said Mr. Karzai had 46.2 percent and his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, had 31.4 percent.

The country’s Independent Election Commission has been slow in releasing partial results from the Aug. 20 presidential vote, while accusations of fraud have mounted. The United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has said the number of complaints that could “materially affect” the outcome had soared to 270.

Videos of possible fraud have been posted on the Internet, and Mr. Abdullah and other challengers have made complaints about cheating.

The accusations, along with low turnout in the south because of Taliban threats of violence, could strip the vote of legitimacy in Afghan eyes. Final results are to come in late September.

The lengthy election process has added to strains in relations between the United States and Afghanistan, which had already cooled since the Obama administration took office.

Meanwhile, Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, paid a surprise visit Saturday to British troops in southern Afghanistan, promising more help to cope with the Taliban insurgents who have inflicted casualties on the embattled force and undercut support in Britain for the war.

Mr. Brown, speaking at the British base in Lashkar Gah, pledged to provide more equipment to help overcome roadside bombs, a major threat to NATO forces.

A British marine was killed by a bomb in Helmand on Saturday, the Defense Ministry said in London. And, Reuters reported, an American serviceman was killed by a roadside bomb in the east, NATO-led forces said in a statement that gave no further details.

Last week, British troops cleared 337 roadside bombs from some of the most dangerous roads in Helmand Province, a main focus in the recent fighting.

“Let me pay tribute to the courage, bravery, professionalism and patriotism of our forces,” Mr. Brown told the troops. “This has been a most difficult summer in Afghanistan, because the Taliban have tried to prevent elections taking place.”

He added, “I think our forces have shown extraordinary courage during this period.”

Mr. Brown also called for speeding up the elled for speeding up the effort to train about 50,000 additional Afghan troops, which would bring the overall level trained to around 135,000.

The prime minister arrived with Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the British defense staff, and met with senior commanders including the top United States officer, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

More than 200 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001 — more than Britain lost in the Iraq conflict. Many in Britain believe the mission is too open-ended, and its goals too vague.

Mr. Brown’s visit came a day after Britain replaced its top army official, Gen. David Richards, a former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. He succeeded Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, who was appointed in 2006 and frequently clashed with lawmakers over defense spending, particularly relating to delays in providing helicopters.

General Richards, regarded as politically savvy, was able to build close relationships with Mr. Karzai and his ministers while leading NATO troops.

British officials said that they recognized the need for better-armored vehicles and more helicopters and that they would get them here as soon as possible.

As NATO commander, General Richards was a prominent backer of a controversial peace plan in the southern Afghan town of Musa Qala under which NATO, Afghan and Taliban soldiers were not allowed in the town.

The deal collapsed when Taliban fighters overran the area, though foreign and Afghan troops later waged a fierce battle to recapture Musa Qala.

Bush shoe thrower to be freed

2009-08-30T10:57:00.001+07:00

An Iraqi journalist jailed after hurling his shoes at George Bush, the former US president, will be released in September.

Muntadhar al-Zaidi's sentence was reduced for good behaviour, his lawyer said on Saturday.

Karim al-Shujairi, a defence attorney, said al-Zeidi will now be released on September 14, three months early.

Al-Zaidi was initially sentenced to three years after pleading not guilty to assaulting a foreign leader, then the court reduced it to one year because the journalist had no prior criminal history.

The act of the 30-year-old reporter during Bush's last visit to Iraq as president turned him into a folk hero across the Arab world amid anger over the 2003 invasion.

The incident, which took place on December 14, embarrassed Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, who was standing next to Bush at the time during a joint news conference.

Neither leader was injured, but Bush was forced to duck for cover as the journalist shouted in Arabic: "This is your farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

Yemen rebels 'seize army hardware'

2009-08-30T10:55:00.000+07:00

Shia fighters in Yemen's north have released pictures of military equipment that they say they seized from government forces.

The images came as the UN on Saturday called for the creation of safe corridors to let people out of Saada city, now practically cut off from the outside world by nearly three weeks of fighting between government forces and the fighters.

Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said humanitarian corridors could allow the delivery of much-needed aid to thousands of displaced people in the Saada region.

The UNHCR estimates that about 35,000 people have been displaced by the fighting between the army and the Shia fighters, also known as Houthis after their leader.

Speaking in Geneva, Andrej Mahecic, a UNHCR spokesman, said that Saada, in Yemen's north, had been "practically cut off from the rest of the world".

"The residents, as well as those displaced in Saada city, are unable to leave," Mahecic said, according to a statement on the organisation's website.

There are no reliable reports of casualty figures.

'Operation Scorched Earth'

Some reports said that the Houthis had stopped government troops from advancing in several areas, including Malaheez, and Sufyan district in neighbouring Imran province.The Houthis also claimed to have captured an undetermined number of soldiers, destroying two tanks in an attack on an army point in Maqash, near Saada city.

But a military spokesman claimed that the army killed several fighters in the same clash. The government insists that it has inflicted heavy casualties on the fighters, who are from the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam.

Telehia Islam.

Television footage showed warplanes striking targets in the mountains around Saada and salvos of rockets being fired by a line of launchers.

The Houthis have accused the government of targeting civilians in its attacks.

They have also alleged neighbouring Sunni Saudi Arabia has been sending warplanes to aid Yemeni troops, during the course of the 18-day conflict, which the government has dubbed "Operation Scorched Earth".

That claim has been ridiculed by the Yemeni government which accuses Shia Iran of backing the Houthis.

The government had offered a six-point plan to end the fighting but the rebels dismissed the offer, recalling that a Qatari-brokered peace deal reached in June 2007 had never been implemented.

Japan votes in parliamentary poll

2009-08-30T10:50:00.000+07:00

Voting has begun across Japan in parliamentary elections which are widely predicted to sweep the opposition into power.

Opinion polls indicate that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), led by Yukio Hatoyama, will put an end to more than 50 years of almost continuous rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Taro Aso, the prime minister.

Voting booths opened at 7am local time (22:00 GMT on Saturday) and close at 8pm (11:00 GMT on Sunday), with exit polls expected shortly afterwards.

About 103 million Japanese are eligible to vote, with turnout expected to be high.

In advertisements published in major newspapers on Sunday, the DPJ confidently predicted: "Today, a government change."

"A courageous decision by the people will open the door for a historic and major event," it said in a separate statement. "Please join in this big task to change Japan and protect the people's lives."

The LDP has ruled for all but 10 months since it was founded in 1955, but the DPJ already controls the less powerful upper house of parliament following elections in 2007.

'Hope tomorrow'

In its own advertisements, the LDP urged voters: "Don't destroy Japan".

"Hope tomorrow can only come from stability today," it said.

Al Jazeera's Steve Chao, reporting from Tokyo, said that last-minute surveys indicated that the opposition was still on its way to a landslide victory.

"There is still a great deal of dissatisfaction among the public with the ruling government and its ability to govern the country."The economy is in the worst state since the second world war, unemployment is at 5.7 per cent, which means that three and a half million people are unemployed.

"The opposition has been [conducting] on an Obama-style campaign, promising massive changes, to take on the heavy bureaucracy created by the ruling government that is largely blamed for the problems of the country."

Surveys in major newspapers, including the Mainichi and the Asahi, said that the DPJ was likely to win more than 320 seats in the 480-member lower house of parliament.

Hatoyama travelled to the city of Sakai in western Japan on Saturday - the final day of campaigning - where he repeated his call for voters to support change.

"This is an election to choose whether voters can muster the courage to do away with the old politics," he said.

Cash handouts

Under a mantra of "Putting People's Lives First", the DPJ has offered a platform heavy on social-welfare initiatives, including cash handouts for job seekers in training and families with children.

Our correspondent said that Aso had also come out strongly on Saturday, making a his last-minute appeal to urge voters "to reconsider and to question whether they could trust the opposition to run the government at a time of economic crisis.

"He has also stressed that he needs more time to implement the massive economic reforms to deal with the global financial crisis.

"Japan is the world's second largest economy and that's why it matters a lot, not only to the voters down here but to the rest of the world because what happen world because what happens in Japan is often a bellwether for the health of the world’s financial status."

Iraqi Shia leader buried in Najaf

2009-08-30T10:48:00.000+07:00

Thousands of mourners in Iraq's holy Shia city of Najaf have paid their final respects to one of the country's most powerful leaders.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, was buried in Najaf on Saturday, three days after his death of lung cancer in a Tehran hospital.

Al-Hakim's son and potential successor, Ammar, read out portions of the Iraqi political leader's will, in which he called for coexistence among Iraq's fractured sects.

He also warned that loyalists to Saddam Hussein, the executed former Iraqi leader, and Sunni extremists, were trying to target national unity in the country, The Associated Press news agency reported.

"They see that the only way to achieve their victory is by creating sedition between Iraqi Shias and Sunnis," al-Hakim wrote.

Mourning tour

Saturday's ceremony and the arrival of the casket in Najaf marked the end of a three-day mourning tour that started in Iran and went on to Baghdad and other parts of Iraq's predominately Shia areas.

In depth


	Obituary: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim
	Video: Rift appears among Iraq Shia

Wailing crowds touched the Shia leader's coffin as it was carried through Baghdad amid tight security following an official ceremony on Friday. Al-Hakim was a power broker who helped pave the path for the re-emergence of Iraq's Shia political majority after decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government.

Although he was seen as the Iraqi politician with the closest ties to Iran, where he lived in exile for 20 years, he also managed to build a rapport with the build a rapport with the US.

But his death has sparked fears of political instability ahead of national polls that many fear may be marred by violence.

Bombing attacks

His burial followed two bomb attacks in northern Iraq that killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 30 others.

In one attack on Saturday, a suicide car bomber killed at least nine people and wounded 11 others at a police station in the town of Shirqat, 300km north of Baghdad, in Salahuddin province.

The other bombing killed six people and wounded 20 others in the town of Sinjar, 390km northwest of Baghdad, which is home to Yazidis, members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect.

A surge in violence in the past two months has raised doubts about the durability of security gains, including lorry bombings that killed almost 100 people at government ministries on August 19.

Pressure grows on Gordon Brown over Libya trade talks

2009-08-30T10:45:00.000+07:00

The pressure on Gordon Brown over the UK's dealings with Libya has intensified after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son said there was an "obvious" link between their trade talks and efforts to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

The Tory leader, David Cameron, led a chorus of opposition complaints after Saif Gaddafi said it was "not a secret" that Libya's oil and trade talks with the UK were linked to its efforts to get Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, jailed in 2001 for planting the bomb that killed 270 people, returned to Libya.

The Tories, Liberal Democrats and senior SNP MPs said Brown now had to disclose all the details about ministerial meetings and dealings with the Libyan regime before Megrahi was released last week by the Scottish government.

Saif Gaddafi attempted to dampen down the row by insisting that the prisoner transfer agreement signed by Tony Blair in 2007 ultimately had no bearing on the decision by Scottish ministers to free Megrahi, who is close to death with prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds.

The prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) "was one animal and the other was the compassionate release," he told the Herald newspaper. "They are two completely different animals. The Scottish authorities rejected the PTA. It did not work at all, therefore it was meaningless. He was released for completely different reasons."

Gaddafi added, however, that although Megrahi was never mentioned by name when the trade deals and prisoner transfer deal were being negotiated, "it was obvious we were talking about him. We all knew that was what we were talking about. People should not get angry because we were talking about commerce or oil. We signed an oil deal at the same time. The commerce and politics and deals were all with the PTA."

Even so, Gaddafi said there was "zero link" between Megrahi and his meeting with the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, in Corfu. But Cameron suggested the clear association between the prisoner transfer agreement and trade deals raised questions about the ethics of ministers.

The Tories would table parliamentary questions pressing for answers when Westminster returns from the recess, Cameron said. "The real questions remain unanswered. To begin with, what dealings has his government had with that of Libya on this issue?"

"And most importantly of all, what is Gordon Brown's opinion of the decision to return Mr al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds? I have made my view clear. I think it was wrong. I see no justice in affording mercy to someone who showed no mercy to his victims."

The BBC released a poll showing 60% of Scots opposed Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds and 74% believed it had damaged Scotland's reputation. The same BBC poll said 68% of Scots also thought it had harmed Brown's standing.

Scottish government officials in Edinburgh said neither the first minister, Alex Salmond, nor his industry ministers had had discussions about Libyan oil deals with any Scottish businesses, Libyan officials or ministers before Megrahi was freed.

The SNP sought to deflect criticism by supporting Cameron's demands for greater transparency by UK ministers. Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westm2C the SNP leader at Westminster, said Salmond had been furious the UK government had signed the PTA without his agreement, knowing it had no power to influence Scottish ministers or judges. "The SNP spoke out against Tony Blair's deal in the desert when it was first struck, but the UK denied that Megrahi was the target and refused to exclude him from the agreement," Robertson said.

"The UK government's negotiation of a prisoner transfer agreement and meetings between the UK government and Libya remain shrouded in secrecy. It is time for the UK to open up on Blair and Brown's dealings with Colonel Gaddafi."

Saif Gaddafi also tried to play down the controversy over last Thursday's celebrations at Tripoli airport, when Megrahi was greeted by him and a saltire-waving Libyan crowd. He insisted it was not an official celebration but a spontaneous display organised by Megrahi's large extended family and ordinary Libyans.

The Libyan government had planned to keep it low-key, but Megrahi's heavily televised release from Greenock prison and transfer to Glasgow airport had made his arrival home much more public.

"There was no official celebration, no guards of honour, no fireworks and no parade," he said. "We could have arranged a much better reception."

He denied speculation that Megrahi would be guest of honour at next week's 40th anniversary celebrations of his father's seizing power.

He added: "The decision by Scotland was not influenced by any of these things. I think the Scottish justice secretary is a great man. He made the right decision.

"So many of us think that, including so many of the relatives of the victims, because Mr Megrahi is innocent. One day, history will prove this."

from:http://www.guardian.co.uk

Dalai Lama Consoling Taiwan Storm Victims May Hurt China Ties

2009-08-30T10:43:00.001+07:00

(Bloomberg) -- The Dalai Lama arrives in Taiwan tonight to console survivors of the island’s deadliest storm in half a century, a five-day stay that may endanger efforts by President Ma Ying-jeou to widen ties with mainland China.

Ma agreed to the visit, organized by opposition politicians, as his popularity declined after the government’s slow response this month to the devastation caused by Typhoon Morakot.

China views the Dalai Lama, a rallying figure for Tibetan independence supporters, as a divisive force and has reacted angrily toward countries that host him. Relations across the Taiwan Strait have thawed under Ma, leading to agreements on investment and travel.

“Ma doesn’t really have a choice but to let the Dalai Lama come as this is his chance to win support from constituents in the south, worst hit by the typhoon,” said Yang Tai-shuenn, a political scientist at Chinese Culture University in Taipei. “Of course China won’t like it. But Ma can try to amend relations by further relaxing restrictions on cross-strait investments and other economic agendas.”

Morakot pummeled Taiwan Aug. 6-9, dumping the most rain ever recorded in any 48-hour span, according to the Central Weather Bureau. The storm killed at least 543 people, causing floods and landslides, burying villages and destroying roads and bridges throughout the south.

Too Little, Too Late

Survivors say rescue efforts were too slow after the government initially rejected offers of assistance from countries including the U.S. and Israel. A TVBS opinion poll on Aug. 12 showed 47 percent disapproved of Ma’s rescue efforts, while 51 percent disapproved of Premier Liu Chao-shiuan. In southern Taiwan, Ma’s disapproval rate rose to 51 percent, the survey showed.

Letting the Dalai Lama visit is a “calculated decision” by Ma “to secure more votes from the south” in December’s local elections, said Andrew Yang, secretary-general of Taiwan’s Chinese Council for Advanced Policy Studies in Taipei. Ma’s ruling Kuomintang party “may suffer a defeat if he doesn’t allow the visit,” Yang added

The Nobel Peace Prize winner has visited Taiwan at least twice, in 1997 and 2001, the Foreign Ministry in Taipei said.

Ma, who in December ruled out a visit by the Tibetan leader, saying the timing wasn’t appropriate, has no plans to meet him, according to Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu- chi. “We have made no arrangement” for such a meeting, Wang said by telephone yesterday.

Prayer & Comfort

The main purpose of the Dalai Lama’s visit is to offer prayers and provide comfort to people affected by the typhoon, Tenzin Takhla, a spokesman, said on Aug. 27 from Dharamshala, northern India, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based.

Ties with China won’t be harmed by the visit, Wang said the same day.

China “resolutely opposes” such a visit, its official Xinhua news agency reported after Wang spoke.

“Under the pretext of religion, he has all along been engaged in separatist activities,” Xinhua reported that day, citing a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office it didn’t name. “The Dalai Lama is not a pure religious figure.”

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet after a failed rebellion against Chinese forces in 1959. He accuses the government in Beijing of committing “cultural genocide” there and says mass migration of ethnic Han Chinese has made Tibetans a minority in their own land. China says it peacefully liberated Tibet and saved its people from serfdom.

Economic Diplomacy

Ma wants closer ties with China, the island’s biggest trading partner, to revive an economy that slid into a recession in the fourth quarter of last year. Gross domestic product contracted 7.54 percent in the second quarter of 2009, after declining a revised 10.13 percent three months earlier, the government said this month.

Taiwan and China have been ruled separately since Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, or Nationalists, fled to the island after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communists in 1949. China regards Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force to reclaim it.

Ma abandoned his predecessor’s pro-independence stance after taking over the presidency in May 2008. Direct flights, shipping and postal services across the Taiwan Strait resumed in December, ending a six-decade ban. In June, Taiwan opened 100 industries and projects to Chinese investments.

“Whatever Ma does, he has to make sure he isn’t endorsing Tibet’s political agenda,” Yang said.

Zuma Holds Talks with Both Mugabe, Tsvangirai to Break Deadlock

2009-08-30T10:36:00.000+07:00

South African President Jacob Zuma tours the Harare Agriculture Show in Harare, Zimbabwe, 28 Aug 2009

By Peta Thornycroft
Harare
Zimbabwe's two main political leaders, President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai had talks with outgoing South African Development Community (SADC) chairman and President of South Africa Jacob Zuma into the early hours of Friday morning. Mr. Zuma came to Harare to try and unblock outstanding issues from the political agreement which is nearly a year old and which brought the unity government in Zimbabwe to power in February.

Mr. Zuma has had one-on-one talks with both Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai and then with both of them together since he arrived in Harare late Thursday.

Mr. Zuma seemed confident that outstanding political roadblocks to fulfillment of the political agreement could be solved.

Mr. Mugabe and his closest lieutenants have told Mr. Zuma that existing European Union and U.S. visa and business restrictions against the top ZANU-PF leadership, were an outstanding issue from the political agreement. Mr. Mugabe blames these restrictions for Zimbabwe's economic problems.

"Those very countries who have hitherto imposed sanctions on us still maintain these illegal punitive measures in spite of the progress we have made as an inclusive government. One is tempted to conclude, your Excellency, that regime change on the part of our detractors is still an active policy option," he said.

After the talks between the three political leaders, Mr. Zuma opened the Harare Agricultural Show and in his speech mentioned the work done by Movement for Democratic Change finance minister Tendai Biti, who he said had ensured an end to hyper inflation by introducing multi currencies in to the economy at the beginning of the inclusive government.

He said Zimbabwe's economy had been built on agriculture and that it had been the bread basket of the region and he hoped the sector would recover soon.

He also spoke about the need for Zimbabwe to resolve the outstanding issues in the political agreement.

"We appeal to the international commnity to remove any remaining hindrances to Zimbabwe's economic recoverery including sanctions and at the same time we also emphasize that the parties in Zimbabwe should work together to remove any remaining obstacles to implementation of the agreement," said Mr. Zuma.

Political sources say that Mr. Tsvangirai has an easier relationship with Mr. Zuma than his predecessor, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who was the facilitator of the political agreement on behalf of SADC.

Mr. Tsvangirai's colleagues say Mr. Zuma's approach and conduct in the talks which have now ended was "very fair."

In the talks, Mr. Tsvangirai highlighted that Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) provincial governors have not been sworn in, nor has his deputy agriculture mi his deputy agriculture minister, Roy Bennett, and senior civil servants in key positions were appointed by Mr. Mugabe after the political agreement was signed in Harare in September of last year.

Next week, an MDC political source said, will be a crucial test for the inclusive government as SADC is holding a summit in Kinshasa and the chairmanship passes from Mr. Zuma to Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila.

Also on the agenda at the summit, is a ruling against Mr. Mugabe, accusing him of contempt of the regional group's tribunal last year, which ordered him to leave the few remaining white farmers in peace.

Mr. Zuma toured the Harare Agricultural Show before opening it Friday.

MP wants more Afghanistan troops

2009-08-30T10:33:00.000+07:00

Commanders have asked for extra troops for two years, says Mr Mercer

Sending more UK troops to Afghanistan could save lives, Conservative MP Patrick Mercer has said.

His comments came after the prime minister announced plans suggesting a greater role for British troops, during a surprise visit to the country.

Mr Mercer, a former soldier, saw Gordon Brown's announcement as a pledge to send more British personnel.

He said his former regiment was in Afghanistan "and they tell me that the secret to this is extra manpower."

Speaking in Helmand province, Mr Brown pledged greater protection for troops from roadside bombs and better equipment, including more armoured vehicles.

He announced plans for the British to train another 50,000 Afghan troops trained by November 2010, which would enable them to "take more responsibility for their own affairs".

Improvised devices

Mr Mercer said: "For at least the last two years, commanders on the ground have been asking for extra troops. That was denied by the government.

"I don't quite know why Gordon Brown only now is announcing this.

"With the extra manpower that is now being promised, perhaps so many lives wouldn't have been lost over the last few months."

The BBC's deputy political editor, James Landale, who was in Helmand with the prime minister, said training that number of Afghans so quickly could require an increase in the number of British troops.

There are currently 9,000 UK troops in the country, mostly in Helmand.

Mr Brown said another 200 soldiers skilled in countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs) would be deployed in the autumn.

There would also be more unmanned surveillance aircraft, he said.

The latest death in Afghanistan - a Royal Marine killed on foot patrol in Helmand early on Saturday morning - was announced as the prime minister was flying home.

He is the 208th member of the UK forces to have died in Afghanistan since 2001.

Wally Masur previews the US Open at Flushing Meadows in New York

2009-08-30T10:24:00.000+07:00

Top guns ... Federer, Williams the players to beat. Reuters

Defending US Opens champions Roger Federer and Serena Williams are the players to beat once again. Fox Sports tennis commentator Wally Masur previews the New York grand slam.
Defending champions Roger Federer and Serena Williams would appear to be the players to beat once again in Flushing Meadows?

I definitely think Federer is. His wife had their twins not so long ago and he was a bit scratchy up in Canada, but he played awfully well in Cincinnati. And it almost seems as if the effort from Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray to catch the defending champion takes its toll in certain ways. They're all playing good tennis, but Federer just seems to have a few more gears to go to.

I also think Roger seems to like the US Open surface - it's a bit quicker, as is Cincinnati, and that plays into his hands because he's by far the best server of all the top players.

And in the women's draw ...

The Williams sisters seem to tune in and tune out a little bit on the tour, and they've been a bit disappointing in their lead-up events. They haven't played particularly well since Wimbledon, where Serena won the title. But the thing about the Williams sisters is they seem to catch fire when it matters most. And that's at the Majors.They've got a great record at the US Open. They seem to sharpen their focus at the US Open, with it being their home grand slam tournament.

I certainly lean towards Serena, provided there's no injuries. If she really wants it, she's the best athlete and the fiercest competitor.

There's question marks, still, over a lot of the Russian girls - Elena Dementieva, Svetlana Kuznetsovza, Dinara Safina - when it gets to the crucial moment on the big stage. Sometimes they can be found wanting when they come up against the likes of Serena Williams. They've certainly got the game to win, no doubt about that, but ...

We seemed almost to have written off Roger Federer as a force before he won the French Open for the first time; how wrong we seem to have got it!

It's interesting, isn't it. He sets such impossibly high standards, and the moment he dips just a little bit we're all writing him off. I was guilty of that. Ever since he got rid of Tony Roche, he hadn't hired another coach and he didn't seem to be to be ticking all the boxes to get back where he needed to be.

But he knew what he was doing, and he's done it his way. And as I said, the effort for Nadal and Djokovic to catch Federer in the points - it almost seems as if the effort has knocked those two out; Djokovic seems to be struggling a little bit mentally, and Nadal is struggling a little bit physically.

Federer, we have to forgFederer, we have to forgive him for a minor mid-career lapse. He seems to have got his foot back on the throttle, and he's just reminded us of just how good a player he is. The game seems to come easily to him.

You mention Rafa. Do you think he's fully recovered from his knee problems to play well on the hardcourts in New York?

The US Open's never been his best surface because, once again, it's a little quicker and Nadal likes a little time to create and set up on his forehand, in particular. And he gets a little caught up on return; remember that match he played Andy Murray at the US Open last year? Nadal was playing about four miles behind the baseline, and the amount of running he was forced to do catches up with you on that surface.

We know that he can play further up the court - we saw him do that at Wimbledon last year - but he seems reluctant to do that at the US Open, and he's had some losses there because of that. A few years ago, he lost to Mikhail Youzhny, who exploited that fact pretty well. I think he'll be very competitive, and he's always a dangerous player, I'm just not sure that he'll find his best tennis at the US Open so quickly after his layoff.

While everything seems to come to Federer very easily, Nadal's all effort, isn't he. Not only the way he plays but also the way he practises; I've seen him practise, and it's brutal. He only seems to have one gear, and that's flat out. He definitely hurts himself over the course of the year, on all surfaces. I would like to think he's got good people around him, and that he'll be able to manage that injury - patella tendinitis - to remain a great foil for Federer, but, as I said, I don't think he'll find his best tennis straight away. But he'll be back, no doubt about that.

Andy Murray? He made the final last year, and he's had a great season - winning five tournaments to claim the world No.2 ranking, including the Montreal Masters.

He's had a busy year and he's been very successful, but I think he has to be a little bit careful, too, to prevent himself kind of burning out. He just has to manage his schedule. Obviously, we're talking here about the US Open so he'll be right at the top of his game, for sure, and he's another player who's right on the cusp of being the world's best player. And he's got a great record against Federer. But, once again, he's had a very heavy workload so let's hope he's timed it right so he can play his best tennis at the US Open. He's certainly a player who can win it, in my eyes.

What about the Australian challenge? Can we look forward to a level of Australian success?

The exciting thing for us is the way Sam Stosur's been playing. While I think Sam would probably prefer a court slightly slower, and a bit more grippy, I still think she can be very dangerous at the US Open - all on the back of her serve and her forehand. If the rest of her game can come along for the ride, she can be very dangerous.

In the men's draw, Lleyton Hewitt remains our No.1 player. Chris Guccione is playing well; he just won a Challenger Tour title and he won some very good matches in Cincinnati. And Carsten Ball got to the final in Los Angeles.

We've got a situation where I'd like to think we can start to get some players back inside the top 100. Lleyton's made a nice move; he's seeded now and that'll give him some comfort even though he's been drawn to meet Roger Federer again in the third round. At least he's moving forward.

Ball's in the qualifying tournament, and I'd love to think he can make it though to the main draw. He's an awfully dangerous player, nearly 2m tall with a massive left-handed serve a little bit in the Wayne Arthurs mould. He's also competent from the back of the court, and he's gaining in confidence after reaching that LA final.

If Ball gets through qualifying, I can certainly see him and Guccione doing some damage. But we're a little thin on the ground, and obviously we look towards Lleyton in these big tournaments.

He showed us at Wimbledon that he's not too far away from playing some of his best tennis, and he is a player who loves playing on the US Open surface. Again, it's a little faster and the ball comes on to his racquet. It's not all about generating your own pace. You can use some of the pace of the court, and Lleyton does that better than anybody.

I'd love to see Lleyton play some good tennis, and it appears from Cincinnati, where he made the quarter-finals, that his doing well at Wimbledon wasn't just the grass, that he's starting to play well on all surfaces. I would love to see him do well at the US Open.

Chelsea bring Burnley back to earth with 3-0 win at Stamford Bridge

2009-08-30T10:11:00.000+07:00

Chelsea maintained their blistering start to the Barclays Premier League season, defeating Burnley 3-0 at Stamford Bridge to go top of the ladder.

The Blues chalked up their fourth successive win under new Italian manager Carlo Ancelotti thanks to goals from Nicolas Anelka, Michael Ballack and Ashley Cole.

Ancelotti will have been thrilled by Chelsea's patience, as much as their panache.

The scoreline might look comfortable, but the title hopefuls were frustrated until deep into first-half stoppage-time, when Anelka finally broke through Burnley's defence.

Ultimately, however, this was a deserved victory against a side who had already beaten Manchester United and Everton this season.

"I am very happy," Ancelotti said.

"We have improved the confidence of our play and we are very happy. All the players are in very good condition.

"Every week we work to play well and for a coach it's important that we play good football. That's the most important thing of all because it means we are on the right way as a club.

"At the moment, I propose an idea and the players then develop this idea. They are doing this very well now.

"I know we have the possibility to win the title but the season is very long. It will be difficult, for sure, but we have the possibility to step up."

Burnley had travelled south with a spring in their step, but this defeat will serve as a reminder to Owen Coyle's promoted team that the top flight can be an unforgiving environment.

Coyle, however, refused to overreact in the aftermath, knowing that six points out of a possible 12 represents a reasonable return in their first season in the top flight.

"I have a remarkable group, and Brian (Jensen) is a very good keeper," Coyle said.

"He responds to everything we are doing and is an integral part of our group.

"I was never worried that the score would get out of hand because this group will always give us everything they have.

"We have been taught a bit of a lesson by Chelsea but the fact that we have come here and are disappointed with being beaten is a measure of how far we've come."

The only disappointment for Ancelotti was that his side did not bolster their goal difference by an even greater margin, and Anelka, for one, could have helped himself to a hatful in the first half alone.

Having already seen a low shot saved by Jensen, the Frenchman had an even more inviting chance in the third minute, when he snaffled possession from Tyrone Mears and burst clear. He ignored the waiting Didier Drogba in favour of trying to round Jensen, who saved at his feet.

But Anelka was not the only striker in a generous mood. Burnley's Martin Paterson was equally culpable in the 10th minute when he squandered a glorious chance to put the visitors into a shock lead.

After Frank Lampard had inexplicably gifted the ball to Mears, the full-back sprinted clear and picked out Paterson with a square pass. The Northern Irishman simply had to roll into the corner, but directed his shot just wide.

That, however, was a rare moment of threat from Burnley, who were reliant on Jensen to hold back the blue tide almost single-handedly.

He produced another magnificent stop to deny Ballack, after the German had been teed up by Lampard, and then reacted smartly to block a close-rangrtly to block a close-range volley from John Terry.

When Lampard then saw an almost identical chance fisted away, Chelsea might have feared the worst.
ve feared the worst.
ve feared the worst.
ve feared the worst.

They need not have worried. With Burnley eying the clock as it ticked into stoppage time, Michael Essien split their defence to release Drogba and the Ivorian's cross was bundled in at the back post by Anelka.

That left Burnley's hopes of snaffling a pont hanging by a thread and they were dashed entirely moments after the re-start, when Lampard's chipped cross into a crowded penalty area was headed in by the diving Ballack.

A two-goal cushion allowed Chelsea to relax and play some picture-book football. A particularly pretty move in the 52nd minute led to the third goal, Lampard's lofted pass allowing Cole to flash a first-time volley over the diving Jensen for just his third strike in three years.

From then on, Burnley's efforts were devoted to simply keeping the score down.

They succeeded, partly through Chelsea's profligacy - Anelka clipped the top of the bar when it looked easier to score - and also through Jensen, who produced outstanding saves to deny Essien, twice, and Ballack.

Mears also cleared an effort from Salomon Kalou off the line in the dying seconds, but by then the match was long decided.

Agence France-Presse

Fury at Nato's Afghan clinic raid

2009-08-30T10:06:00.001+07:00

A member of the Afghan parliament has criticised a Nato air strike on a clinic where a Taliban leader was being treated for his injuries.

US and Afghan forces attacked the clinic in the Sar Hawza district of Paktika province, eastern Afghanistan, on Thursday.

Khalid Faroqi, who represents Paktika province, said it was an offence to fire on such a facility.

Nato says that troops first made sure there were no civilians inside.

It says security forces were fired upon as they approached the clinic and responded by ordering helicopter strikes.

Amnesty International has called for an investigation into the attack, but added that if the Taliban fired first, they had committed a serious violation.

Nato said one

Nato said one soldier was killed and seven gunmen were arrested, but local officials said 12 militants died in the incident.

"After ensuring the clinic was cleared of civilians, an AH64 Apache helicopter fired rounds at the building, ending the direct threat and injuring the targeted insurgjuring the targeted insurgent in the building," Nato said on Thursday, adding that there were no civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, Nato troops and Afghan security forces say they have killed several gunmen, including a woman, in an exchange of fire with militants linked to the Taliban.

Officials said that the insurgents were killed in a gun battle in northern Kunduz province as troops approached a militant compound.

Nato said a number of weapons were recovered from the compound.

7 Are Dead and 2 Injured in Georg

2009-08-30T10:05:00.000+07:00

By JENNIFER JENKINS

Seven people were found dead and two others critically injured Saturday at a mobile home near Brunswick, Ga., the police said.

The deaths are being treated as homicides, officials said Saturday, and the two survivors were taken to a hospital in Savannah.

Officers from the Glynn County Police Department discovered the bodies at a residence at the New Hope Plantation Mobile Home Park after receiving a 911 call shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday.

“This is a record for us,” said the Glynn County police chief, Matt Doering, as reported by The Associated Press.

“We’ve never had such an incident with so many victims,” Chief Doering said, adding, “It’s not a scene that I would want anybody to see.”

Chief Doering said that the police were working on leads to identify a suspect but that no arrests had been made as of Saturday afternoon.

Officials said that some of the victims had been tentatively identified, but their names would not be released until family members had been notified.

The mobile home park has about 100 spaces, according to its Web site. It is on Highway 17, a mile east of Interstate 95 and nine miles north of Brunswick.

The police said in a news release that they were withholding further information to avoid jeopardizing the investigation.

Lisa Vizcaino, who has lived at New Hope for three years, said that the management worked hard to keep troublemakers out of the mobile home park and that it tended to be quiet, according to The A.P.

Ms. Vizcaino did not know the victims, she said.

“New Hope isn’t run down or trashy at all,” Ms. Vizcaino said.

“It’s the kind of place,” she said, “where you can actually leave your keys in the car and not worry about anything.”

Bombs kill 18 in Iraq, mostly in remote villages

2009-08-30T10:04:00.000+07:00

By SAMEER N. YACOUB (AP) – 6 hours ago

BAGHDAD — Bombs struck a cafe in Baghdad and remote communities in northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least 18 people, as the visiting Iranian foreign minister warned that Iraq's instability affected the whole region.

The blasts came just over a week after suicide truck bombers devastated the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad, killing about 100 people and dealing a blow to confidence in the Iraqi government's ability to protect the people as U.S. forces scale back their presence.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called on neighboring countries to play a positive role in helping stabilize Iraq. His comments took on added significance amid a diplomatic dispute between Iraq and Syria over demands that Damascus extradite suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists blamed for the Baghdad ministry bombings.

"The lack of stability and security in Iraq will definitely affect the region," Mottaki said at a news conference with his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshyar Zebari. "All of Iraq's neighbors should work seriously and help Iraq in providing security and stability."

The Iraqi government has blamed an alliance of al-Qaida in Iraq and Saddam loyalists it says are based in Syria for the Aug. 19 bombings and demanded that Damascus hand over two suspected plotters, raising tensions between the two countries.

Iraqi forces have stepped up security in Baghdad and other cities since the truck bombings.

But attackers were still able to detonate an explosives-ladeetonate an explosives-laden motorcycle near a cafe in an eastern section of the capital at about 8 p.m. on Saturday, killing at least two civilians and wounding 12, according to police and hospital officials.

Saturday's deadliest attack was a suicide truck bombing targeting a small police station in the Sunni village of Hamad north of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people, including six policemen, and wounding 15, according to Iraqi officials.

Such remote villages often depend on a small security force for protection. Bombers have been exploiting that vulnerability in villages surrounding Mosul, in particular. They have mainly targeted ethnic minorities.

In Hamad, police attempted to stop the truck, opening fire and forcing the attacker to change direction and slam into a concrete barrier near a market, the officials said.

The police chief of the nearby town of Shirqat, Col. Ali al-Jubouri, said police had defused a car bomb in the same area days earlier and he believed Saturday's attack was retaliation for that.

A second bombing in northern Iraq targeted a market in the city of Sinjar, near the Syrian border. An explosives-laden truck blew up, killing at least four people and wounding 23, police said.

Sinjar, which is near the volatile city of Mosul, has been hit several times by bombings, most recently on Aug. 13 when double suicide bombings killed 21 people in a cafe.

"The terrorists targeted a popular market where innocent people and children were wandering about," said city council member Alyas Khudr. "They will not leave us in peace to have a normal life."

The city, which is dominated by members of the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi religious minority, was also hit by four suicide truck bombers nearly simultaneously, killing as many as 500 Yazidis, on Aug. 14, 2007.

Iraqi troops foiled another attempted suicide car bombing in the mainly Sunni Azamiyah area in northern Baghdad, shooting to death the attacker as he tried to flee, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said.

The spike in deadly bombings has heightened fears about the abilities of Iraqi security forces to protect the people just two months after U.S. forces pulled back from populated areas, with plans to fully withdraw from the country by the end of 2011.

The government has stepped up its rhetoric against Saddam loyalists known as Baathists for their membership in his former party, demanding Syria turn over suspects living on its territory. The dispute caused both countries to recall their ambassadors.

"We are dealing with the crisis, containing it and preventing any further escalation or tension," Zebari said, adding that the government plans to ask the United Nations to back the creation of an international court to try people involved in terrorist acts for war crimes and genocide.

The Iranian foreign minister also met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani before traveling south to the holy city of Najaf for the burial of one of Iraq's most powerful Shiite leaders, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. Al-Hakim died Wednesday of lung cancer in Tehran.

Al-Hakim led the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Iraq's largest Shiite party, and was widely revered for helping pave the way for the re-emergence of Shiite power after decades of oppression under Saddam's Sunni-led regime.

Thousands of mourners followed al-Hakim's casket in a procession when it arrived in Najaf after a three-day tour through Iran, Baghdad and Karbala.

He was buried in a shrine next to his brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who led the party until he was killed in a car bombing in Najaf soon after the brothers returned to Iraq in 2003 after years in exile.

In his will, al-Hakim called for peaceful coexistence among Iraq's fractured sects.

"The terrorists see that the only way to achieve their victory is by creating sedition between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis," he said in the will, which was read by his son and chosen successor, Ammar, at the funeral service.

Associated Press Writers Hamid Ahmed and Bushra Juhi in Baghdad and AP employees in Najaf contributed to this report.

Farewell to Kennedy in funeral he helped plan

2009-08-30T10:02:00.000+07:00

Barack Obama yesterday paid a poignant public farewell to Senator Edward Kennedy, the veteran Democratic powerbroker, whom he described as “the heir to a weighty legacy . . . a champion to those who had none”. After a sombre day of rare political unity in Washington, Kennedy was last night being buried in Arlington national cemetery, close to brothers tery, close to brothers John and Robert, after a moving funeral service in Boston at which the president led America’s mourning for the scion of one of its greatest political families.

His voice breaking as he paid tribute to “the baby of the family who became its patriarch”, Obama hailed Kennedy as “a force of nature” from an age “when adversaries still saw each other as patriots”.

He, three former presidents and politicians of all hues had gathered in Boston under dark clouds to mark the passing of a flawed but potent deal-maker whose life was marred by tragedy and self-inflicted folly, but who somehow survived to become a senatorial legend.

The president referred only obliquely to Kennedy’s troubled past when he spoke of a “string of events that would have broken a lesser man”.

Obama added that it would have been easy for Kennedy “to surrender to self-pity and regret, and retreat from private life. That was not Ted Kennedy”.

Beneath the vaulting arches of the Catholic Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Kennedy was also remembered as a Massachusetts hero, a loving father and grandfather and, in the minds of many of his colleagues, a final and irreplacea-ble link to the Camelot era of Kennedy greatness, when JFK was president.

Obama referred repeatedly to the burdens Kennedy had faced after the assassinations of his older brothers. It was because the senator had experienced so much suffering of his own that he was “more alive to the plight of others”, the president said.

“He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not . . . he became the greatest legislator of our time.”

Obama was joined by three former presidents — George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter — and a host of current and past politicians from both sides of the political aisle. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California governor who is related to the Kennedys by marriage, led a strong contingent of Republican notables who included John McCain, the party’s former presidential candidate. Also in the church was Jack Nicholson, the actor.

In recognition of Kennedy’s often controversial interest in Irish affairs, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, and Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland assembly, attended. Britain was represented by Sarah Brown, the prime minister’s wife, and Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland secretary.

For Obama, the occasion provided an opportunity to display his much-vaunted rhetorical skills, and most commentators judged his address to have been perfectly pitched.

It had been Kennedy’s early endorsement in last year’s presidential campaign that provided Obama with a crucial boost as he fought off Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Yet almost as if to prove that no hard feelings remain, the president sat next to Hillary, now his secretary of state, in the front row of mourners.

Obama avoided overtly partisan references and did not dwell on the healthcare issue that he and Kennedy championed, yet which has since became bitterly divisive. Instead the president talked simply and eloquently about “learning from our mistakes and growing from our failures”.

He also joked that when he once asked Kennedy how he had pulled off a voting majority for a difficult piece of legislation, the senator had “just patted me on the back and said, ‘luck of the Irish’.” The president concluded: “The greatest expectations were placed upon Ted Kennedy’s shoulders because of who he was, but he surpassed them all because of who he became. We do not weep for him today because of the prestige attached to his name or his office. We weep because we loved this kind and tender hero who persevered through pain and tragedy.”

Diagnosed with brain cancer 15 months ago, Kennedy had helped plan his own funeral before his death last Tuesday. He chose the Boston basilica because it was where he had often gone to pray after his daughter, Kara, was diagnosed with lung cancer aged 42 six years ago. She recovered and was yesterday among family members who gave readings.

Despite the forbidding weather , thousands of Kennedy’s former constituents turned out to watch a Cadillac hearse drive his flag-draped coffin to the basilica from the John F Kennedy presidential library. An honour guard of six military pallbearers carried the coffin into the church as Kennedy’s widow, Victoria, stood beneath a black umbrella, looking pale and tired.

Inside the church the flag was removed and replaced with a simple white shroud as the Rev Donald Mohan paid tribute to Kennedy’s “uniquely public life”. The two-hour service also featured performances by Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist, and Placido Domingo, the tenor.

There was laughter too, as Kennedy’s son, Ted Jr, recalled his father as a fearless adventurer whose energetic ideas for family holidays “left us injured and exhausted”. He also remembered the senator saying: “I don’t mind not being president. I just mind that someone else is.”

In an oblique reference to the scandals that dogged his father, Ted added: “At times it hasn’t been easy to live with this name, but I’ve never been more proud of it than I am today.”

Yet there were few yesterday who wanted to dwell on Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne, the woman who lost her life when Kennedy drove off a bridge on a small island off Martha’s Vineyard in 1969.

Although it was clear last week that some Republicans were biting their lips about Kennedy’s life of privilege and protection from political mishaps that might have sunk anyone without his connections, most preferred not to “speak ill of the dead”, as William Bennet, a former Republican cabinet secretary, put it.

Japan votes in election, opposition tipped to win

2009-08-30T09:59:00.000+07:00

By Linda Sieg, Chief Political Correspondent, Japan

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese vo

Publish Post

ted in an election on Sunday that looked set to oust the long-ruling conservative party and give the untested opposition the job of nurturing a recovery from the country's worst recession since World War Two.

Media surveys suggested the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) could win the lower house election by a landslide in what would be a political earthquake in Japan, although some analysts say those predictions may be excessive.

A DPJ victory would end more than 50 years of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and break a deadlock in parliament, where the opposition and its allies won control of the less powerful upper chamber in 2007 and can delay bills.

"I don't like what's going on now in this country. Things have to change," said Kazuya Tsuda, a 78-year-old retired doctor in Tokyo who voted for the Democratic Party.

"I don't think the Democrats can do everything they have pledged under their platform, but it should be better than the current political situation under the LDP."

Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, the wealthy 62-year-old grandson of a former prime minister, told voters on Saturday the election would change Japanese history.

"This is an election to choose whether voters can muster the courage to do away with the old politics," he said.

Japanese media will annouEJapanese media will annouEJapanese media will announce the results of exit polls after voting ends at 8 p.m. (1100 GMT). Later in the evening they will issue further projections based on partial vote counts.

TROPICAL STORM

A tropical storm was approaching Tokyo, and the weather could be a factor if it brings gales and rain that keep voters at home. A high turnout is generally believed to benefit the opposition.

The Democrats have pledged to refocus spending on households with child allowances and aid for farmers while taking control of policy from bureaucrats, often blamed for Japan's failure to tackle problems such as a creaking pension system.

The party wants to forge a diplomatic stance more independent of the United States and build better ties with Asia, often strained by biia, often strained by bitter wartime memories.

"I don't think the LDP can change anything," said Ryoji Kawakita, a 63-year-old white-collar worker who voted for the Democratic Party. "I think, even though it will be difficult, the DPJ might be able to achieve change because they have the will."

Financial markets would generally welcome an end to the two-year parliamentary deadlock.

Analysts worry spending plans by the Democrats, a mix of former LDP members, ex-Socialists and younger conservatives founded in 1998, will inflate Japan's massive public debt and push up government bond yields.

Japan is aging more quickly than any other rich country, inflating social security costs. More than a quarter of Japanese will be 65 or older by 2015.

RETURN TO GROWTH

The economy returned to growth in the second quarter, mostly because of short-term stimulus around the world, but the jobless rate rose to a record 5.7 percent in July.

"For voters, the biggest issue by far ... is the economy," the Japan Times newspaper said in a weekend editorial.

Incumbent Prime Minister Taro Aso has said the Democrats would be unable to manage the economy and the business-friendly LDP had better plans for growth. The LDP has favored steps to promote corporate activity rather than giving cash to consumers.

"There is not one line in the Democratic Party's manifesto about economic growth," Aso said on Saturday.

If victorious, Hatoyama is expected to quickly cement a coalition with two tiny allies whose cooperation is needed to maintain control of the upper house.

A new leader will want to attend a series of international meetings including the U.N. General Assembly and a G20 summit in Pittsburgh in September.

A key challenge for the next government will be managing ties with China, forecast to overtake Japan as the world's second-biggest economy next year.

(Additional reporting by Olivier Fabre, Rie Ishiguro and Colin Parrott, Editing by Dean Yates and Rodney Joyce)

Jarryd Hayne could be 'best ever' league player, Andrew Johns says

2009-08-30T09:57:00.001+07:00

arryd Hayne ... 'all everybody is taking about'. Mark Evans

Jarryd Hayne can develop into the greatest player in rugby league history, and is "worth every cent" of his $1 million-a-season price tag, Andrew Johns says.
The Parramatta ace was mesmerising again as the Eels dismantled finals hopefuls Penrith on Friday to continue their own charge towards the play-offs.

Parramatta have won seven successive matches on the back of Hayne's brilliance, and they face a final-round showdown with ladder-leading St George Illawarra on Friday.

Hayne's blazing form has become the talk of the league world.

In two months, the Eels fullback has turned himself into the game's most influential player, leaving even Johns searching for superlatives.

"The way he's going, he's probably worth even more than a million a year," Johns said on Saturday.

"He can pack stadiums on his own. Why wouldn't there be full houses when you get to watch a kid of his freakish skills play?

"He's the best in the game right now and if he keeps going the way he is, he could be our best ever. He's all everybody is taking about."

Johns was in Townsville for the North Queensland Cowboys-Brisbane Broncos match on Friday night , but he rushed back to his hotel room to catch the second half of the Eels game on television.

"Some of the things he's doing on the footy field are mind blowing," Johns said.

"That inside ball he threw for Daniel Mortimer to score under the posts - only a handful of players in the world in either rugby code could have pulled that off.

"And then he rushes to the crowd and high-fives the fans. How good was that?

"If that sort of thing doesn't bring people flooding to our games, nothing will. It was just sensational."

Johns believes Hayne already is pushing the limits of greatness, and says he feels sorry for rival fullbacks such as Melbourne Storm custodian Billy Slater and Newcastle Knights No.1 Kurt Gidley.

"There is nothing wrong with the form of Billy or Kurt right now, but Jarryd is just unstoppable," Johns said.

"Billy was the best player in the world last year and he is probably playing at a similar level, but Jarryd is now in a world of his own.

"That's how good he's going."

Johns believes Hayne's Rugby League World Cup experience with Fiji last year was the catalyst for his extraordinary season.

"I know during the Origin series, he was telling everyone that playing for Fiji was the greatest thing he had done," Johns said.

"That's how much it meant to him.

"I'm not sure how, but it's turned his footy career around and it's probably helped turn his life around as well.

"He's still only a kid but he has grown up a lot. He seems a lot more settled off the field.

"Gihe field.

"Given what's happened, I'm surprised just how level-headed he is. It's a credit to him and the people around him.

"I know he is close to his mum, and she has obviously been a big influence."

Revenge killers target Taliban

2009-08-30T09:57:00.000+07:00

NEARLY three months after the Pakistani army retook the Swat valley from the Taliban, corpses are appearing on the streets almost every day.

This time the killings are about revenge. The bodies are suspected militants or Taliban collaborators. Their killers are alleged to be the security forces, although this is denied officially.

The murders are a sign that peace has not yet returned, even though the American government has hailed the offensive as a successful blow against militancy, and refugees are returning.

The body of Afzal Khan, who was in his mid-thirties and lived in the village of Salampur, is one of dozens that have been found since last month. Khan used to serve food to the Taliban and was friendly with Shah Dau-ran, their commander. Dau-ran was killed in June. “Khan went missing from his house one night and after 15 days, we found his corpse with bullet wounds to his head,” said a neighbour.

Akhatar Khan, a clerk in Mingora, the main city of Swat, met a similar fate. He was told by friends that he was on the security forces’ wanted list. He went to the police to clarify his position and his body was found dumped near his home a few days later.

Some families have protested that innocent relatives have been targeted: the Ullah brothers were found blindfolded, with their hands tied behind their backs, after they had been killed with a shot to the head. “My sons had nothing to do [with the Taliban]. They were innocent,” said their mother, Bakht Begum.

The reprisals are a grim echo of the Taliban’s own reign of terror. However, many believe they are the only way to stamp out the Taliban forever.

“Tver.

“They must be punished for their atrocities, for beheading people, lashing girls and destroying schools,” said Ameer Muhammad, the owner of a shop selling records. The Taliban had warned him to close his business.

Zahoor, a security guard in Mingora, said he he had not been able to sleep since the Taliban killed an innocent man in the street near his home.

“Those responsible for such acts do not deserve any other treatment than the one being given to them,” he said.